38 new media trend predictions for 2020!

What is the hottest new media in 2019? When you mention this, perhaps a long list of various words will emerge in your mind: Douyin, Kuaishou, private domain traffic, live broadcast, Li Jiaqi...

For new media practitioners, with the rise of various communication media, the scope of knowledge and abilities they need to understand and master are becoming increasingly broad, and more closely connected with these emerging symbolic vocabularies.

So, what are the development trends of new media in 2020? What changes will occur in platforms such as WeChat and short videos? What challenges does it pose to new media practitioners?

Regarding these issues, we interviewed professionals such as Yuan Yuan, a new media mentor at Mantou Business School, Murong Jicheng, founder of Xindong Media MCN, and Tian Fang, former deputy director of R&D at Oriental Satellite TV. We also consulted various industry reports and summarized 38 trend forecasts for the development of new media in 2020 for your reference.

If you have any new ideas, please leave a message in the comment section.

3. Articles that excessively create and sell anxiety will become content minefields, and will basically be condemned by everyone. What is the most important event in the public account industry this year? It is probably the cancellation of Mimi Meng’s official account, which is a wake-up call for content creators: excessive creation and selling of anxiety is no longer tolerated by mainstream social values ​​and mainstream people.

4. Vertical content is more popular. The social division of labor is becoming increasingly refined, and vertical communication is the general trend. Judging from the WeChat top 500 rankings, public accounts with large readerships are basically those that are deeply involved in a certain vertical field. Public accounts with more comprehensive content will not develop very well.

5. Public accounts related to entertainment, life, and emotions are still popular among users. As for the content of the article itself, users prefer "new knowledge" articles that are topical, logically clear, useful and interesting, and their requirements and aesthetics for content quality are constantly improving.

6. Graphics and text will remain the mainstream market, and the proportion of comic strips, audio, video and other content forms will increase, and the ecology of social communication will become more and more diversified. Comic strips are more likely to become hits and easier to create IPs.

7. Users’ identification and dependence on creators are increasing, their stickiness will become stronger and stronger, and the resulting “small group effect” will become more and more obvious.

8. WeChat will not relax its pace of banning external links. It is necessary to be more cautious when playing fission under Tencent's rules. So, how to elegantly tap into new traffic on WeChat? 1. Layout of mini programs; 2. Learn from Pinduoduo. By deploying mini-program e-commerce in the WeChat ecosystem, the coverage of traffic is wider, the purchasing operation is more convenient, and users are more likely to develop the habit of "planting grass and consuming" in the WeChat ecosystem, which has a higher conversion effect.

9. The cost of acquiring online traffic will become higher and higher, and private domain traffic will receive more attention. The so-called private domain traffic mainly refers to private target groups that can be reached at any time, used repeatedly, and are free of charge, most of which are old users. In the future, companies will need to operate their own private traffic in a more refined manner, including WeChat public accounts, personal accounts, WeChat groups, etc., which are actually the maintenance, activation and reach of old users. By managing old users carefully and through introductions and promotions from old users, you can also bring more new traffic to the company.

10. The opening rate of public accounts will continue to decline, and the proportion of community operations will increase, which will put higher demands on the operational skills of community operators. Communities need to do more than just basic tasks such as fission, interaction, and user research; operators can also do advanced tasks such as user sharing, building community KOLs, and doing user UGC. The ultimate goal is to increase conversion and achieve commercial monetization.

11. On the one hand, more and more offline self-media stores such as Shidian Reading and Yitiao, which have grown from public accounts, are being launched. On the other hand, offline industry stores are stepping up their layout of the online WeChat ecosystem. With the integration of new media and related industries, the trend of online and offline linkage is becoming stronger and stronger .

12. Affected by the Internet winter, the advertising budget in the marketing budget will decrease. The advertising prices for large-sized accounts have basically reached their peak, and may even show a downward trend in prices. However, there is still room for the advertising prices for medium and long-tail accounts to rise. The proportion of brand advertising has decreased, while the proportion of performance advertising has increased. Traditional products such as wedding photography and education have good advertising results on Tencent, but emotional accounts will encounter bottlenecks.

13. Compared with the number of readers and dissemination, advertisers pay more attention to the accuracy, purchasing power and quality of content of public account fans. In addition, advertisers can also choose other forms of advertising within the WeChat ecosystem, such as Moments ads, which also target very precise audiences.

14. More and more traditional enterprises will pay attention to the layout of the WeChat ecosystem and apply WeChat to R&D, production, operations, marketing, management and other business links to improve efficiency, reach users more accurately and increase corporate revenue.

15. With the enrichment of new media forms, the skill requirements for new media talents are becoming higher and higher. Compound new media talents are more popular. They must be able to follow hot topics, write soft articles, handle operations, and shoot short videos. There is still a shortage of new media talents who can produce high-quality content. Having a core skill and some other skills that do not require mastery will make you more valuable.

17. The era of everyone selling goods has arrived. More ordinary users will sell goods on Douyin and Kuaishou, and there will be more and more bloggers with fewer fans but strong ability to sell goods. In the future, short video platforms will be a battlefield for precise marketing and efficient conversion involving celebrities, internet celebrities, KOLs, and ordinary people. In order to compete for users, social content platforms will further develop e-commerce, and comprehensive e-commerce platforms will continue to focus on content.

18. Both Douyin and Kuaishou are building closed-loop ecosystems. Douyin will decline and Kuaishou will rise , and the overlap of user groups of the two platforms will become higher and higher; the content monetization services of short video platforms will be upgraded, Kuaishou will increase its brand advertising, and Douyin will accelerate the upgrade of live broadcast reward formats, and the business models of the two companies will become closer and closer.

19. Kuaishou will provide more resources to MCN agencies. MCN agencies will receive better support from Kuaishou. Kuaishou's commercialization process will be accelerated, and the monetization model will be more diverse.

20. Both Douyin and Kuaishou platforms will increase their support for mid- and low-tier influencers, distribute more traffic to them, and provide them with more opportunities to earn dividends.

21. Cross-platform linkage and distributing content to multiple short video platforms can more easily create a larger voice, which has become a content distribution strategy for many bloggers. At the same time, entering the overseas market like Liziqi will also become a new way for many Internet celebrities to expand their influence and realize commercial value.

22. Many professional teams, film and television teams, and advertising companies will enter the short video platform, and the resulting content competition will become more intense. Companies that start businesses based on the short video ecosystem will be favored by capital, whether they are e-commerce or MCN agencies.

23. Douyin may open up permissions for 15-minute videos, and short videos will become less and less short.

24. Short video platforms pay more attention to the content quality of videos rather than the number of fans. The importance of the content itself has increased. Mid- and low-end Internet celebrities are still traffic depressions and there is still a lot of room for growth.

25. By 2020, the total number of daily active users in the domestic short video industry is expected to reach 1 billion, which is almost equal to the number of daily active users of WeChat today. As the user scale of the short video industry reaches its peak, the platform's strategic focus will gradually shift from expanding the user scale to deeply exploring the value of individual users and increasing user stickiness.

26. In which fields are short videos the most popular? At this year's TikTok Creator Conference, TikTok officially announced for the first time 27 content areas on the platform with an average daily playback volume of over 100 million. Among them, life recording content accounts for as much as 21%, which is the most popular content area on the Douyin platform.

27. The traffic dividend in the sinking market still exists, with the user scale exceeding 600 million. The average usage time of mobile Internet by users in lower-tier cities exceeds that of users in non-lower-tier cities, and is growing faster. The battlefield for short video growth and traffic competition has shifted from first- and second-tier cities to third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities and rural markets. There will be more content related to the sinking market, and more and more records about rural life.

28. Live streaming will continue to be popular, but it is not just about selling goods. It also needs to be entertaining and informative, and the richness of live streaming content is increasing. The pace of live streaming was accelerated in 2019 by top live streaming hosts such as Li Jiaqi and Viya. Behind the fast-paced, dense information particles is a strong supply chain, teamwork, the trust endorsement built by the anchor through vision and knowledge, and the overall improvement of live broadcast skills.

29. The rise of new vertical live broadcasts will create more influential anchors in vertical fields. There may be "number one brothers" and "number one sisters" in other categories similar to the "number one lipstick brother" and "number one Taobao sister". However, in terms of popularity on the entire network, it is difficult to reach the heights of Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya.

30. Live streaming to sell movie tickets will become a new model for online movie promotion and marketing. In the future, online movie roadshows are likely to be a new trend and become a standard for film roadshow promotion and marketing.

31. The number of celebrities joining short video and live broadcast platforms will increase , the trend of celebrities becoming internet celebrities will become more and more obvious, and the boundary between celebrities and internet celebrities will gradually blur. More and more celebrities will enter the live broadcast room to sell products together with internet celebrities, or sell products independently.

32. As the deadline for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects in 2020 approaches, the pace of poverty alleviation through the Internet will continue to deepen. Many stars and Internet celebrities will join the public welfare live broadcast team to help farmers sell their goods, help new farmers increase their voice, and encourage more ordinary people to start broadcasting, so as to achieve symmetry of agricultural information and help poor households get out of poverty.

33. In the future, more e-commerce influencers will establish their own brands to serve the e-commerce conversion and advertising of their own brands. More "limited editions" and "exclusive customizations" will appear to help users showcase their personality and design sense.

34. With increasingly strict supervision, video bloggers need to constantly regulate their own behavior. In 2019, the official media criticized the chaos in new media a lot, and this will not be relaxed in 2020. The red line for video content is tightening. If you fail to grasp the content direction, or if you speak nonsense in the live broadcast room and challenge the public bottom line, the chances of being banned will be very high, regardless of whether you are a big or small account.

35. The development of 5G will give rise to new technological changes, promote the maturity of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and VR technologies, and the short video and live broadcast industries will also enter the next stage of rapid development and usher in their "second spring."