Family-orientated content, a need to engage with social and political issues, and a surge of interest in haircare are among the trends that could be of importance for retailers this year.

“What can we expect from 2019?” Laurel Dunne, a technical account manager at Shareablee, the social intelligence provider, asked during a recent webinar held by the company. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: How new brands capture the influence of influencers – while traditionalists don’t.)

In answering this question, she predicted that “there is going to be the rise in family-orientated content”, a trend that retailers – and other brands – should be alert to.

“All the famous mommy bloggers that we used to follow a couple years ago now have children. Those children have grown up with their own social media-presence,” Dunne said.

Content also will extend beyond specific products of services, Shareablee believes. According to Dunne, “The most engaging retailers – PrettyLittleThing, Fashion Nova, and Victoria Secret – are serving their audience as publishers.

“They’re announcing that they're commenting on global and local market news as well as political situations. If you're going to be talking about news that they're not interested in, it's not going to work ... You just need to identify what is it your audiences are really interested in.

“This is going to trend across the wider retail industry: The high-flyer retailers are doing it already, but, in 2019, the wider retail industry will serve their audience in this way.”

A new topic focus should take shape this year, too, Dunne predicted: “In 2019, haircare is going to compete with beauty. The apparel, beauty, and skincare brands do so well on Instagram because they can create very rich, visual content.

“Influencers and celebrities are continuing to tag their own celebrity hairstylists, who are then promoting their own products. So, we're expecting that haircare will emerge, as, next, #hairoftheday will emerge over #outfitoftheday in 2019.”

And, aside from broad-based content considerations, Dunne identified a tweak in tools: “We’ve actually seen a pattern of different colors being used. Black-and-white, pink, and neon green consistently came up when we [examined] the most engaging content.

“Black-and-white, pink, neon green: Let your graphic designers know as soon as possible.”

Sourced from WARC