6 New Social Media Platforms Marketers Should Watch in 2021

 When you visit the App Store or Google Play and search "social media," there are hundreds of apps to choose from. But, as the pool of social platforms grows, will any of them really change the game for marketers this year?

The truth is, probably so. The year 2020 changed the way we did just about everything — including socializing. Social distancing became a familiar part of our lives leaving a void for personalized communication we used to have in-person.

Nevertheless, humans are adaptable, and several new social networking sites have emerged in the last twelve months to recreate the communities we've had to abandon abruptly.

Download Now: Social Media Trends in 2021 [Free Report]

2021 Social Media Trends

The hottest trend thus far is audio-based social networking. Stephanie Morgan, social media expert and founder of marketing agency Social Lock sees a bright future for this new type of community, “Audio-based social networking is a relatively new concept, but it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

Aside from Facebook and Snapchat, we've also been watching platforms like Reddit and Pinterest aim to improve on advertising and marketing features.

But, if your role specializes in social media, audience growth, or online engagement — or if your company targets the early-adopters in Gen-Z or millennial age groups — you'll still want to be on the lookout for platforms that could gain momentum later on.

Why? Watching the growth of young, promising social channels will help you determine which are worth joining and which aren't worth your time. And, if you do end up joining a hot new social channel early on, you may have more time to pick up on what promotional content works there. This will put you ahead of competitors that launch their accounts later and might struggle to come up with creative post ideas.

To help you stay on the cutting edge of social media, we've compiled a list of six young social platforms that you might want to put on your radar this year. These platforms have all gained a large user base, interest from investors, or news buzz in recent months.

For each platform, we'll walk you through how it works, its user base, why it might be promising to marketers later on, and how you should approach it today.

New Social Media Platforms Marketers Should Watch

  1. TikTok
  2. Clubhouse
  3. Twitter Spaces
  4. Caffeine
  5. Instagram Reels
  6. Houseparty

1. TikTok

Year Launched: 2017 (Founded in 2016)

Number of Users: 1 billion monthly active users

In 2018, the lip-syncing app, Musical.ly merged with a similar one-year-old app called TikTok. Since then, TikTok has reportedly reached 1 billion active monthly users. With more than 2.6 billion global downloads, TikTok is now more popular in app stores than Facebook, Instagram, and other prominent social media platforms.

For those who remember Vine or Musical.ly, TikTok is like a mix of the two. The platform allows you to film short videos that play on a repetitive loop just like Vine. But, like Musical.ly or Snapchat, you can add fun effects, AR filters, text, and musical overlays to zest things up. Like similar video platforms, it has been primarily adopted by users under 30 years old.

Once you make a video, the app also allows you to optimize it by adding hashtags that can make it easier to find via search.

One way hashtags have been embraced on TikTok is through its "Challenges" tab. This area of the platform prompts you to propose a challenge with a themed hashtag. When you post a video that responds to a challenge, you can include the corresponding hashtag so those following the challenge can see your videos.

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