text: Take a walk through any college campus today and with all the acid-wash jeans, graphic tees, and scrunchies, you'd swear you were back in 1994. But that's not where the similarities end. As the live-streaming and social commerce trends collide in 2021, we're experiencing a rebirth of the home shopping experience Baby Boomers used to love. Only now, consumers aren't limited to the available cable channels, and checkout is a seamless e-commerce experience with no hold-time required.
  With nearly every social network embracing live shopping, it just might be the most cutting-edge trend of the 2021 holiday season. Let's take a look at 4 of the social media technologies enabling this trend.
  Instagram Live Shopping: Now, when your brand goes live on Instagram, you can feature up to 30 different products during your stream and use Instagram checkout to drive an almost instantaneous purchase experience. Live Shopping ties the product and the checkout directly to the content more than ever before. With over 1 billion users on the network, and the unmatched seamlessness of the integration between content and commerce, Instagram Live Shopping might be the biggest player in this trend.
  TikTok: In August, TikTok announced a partnership with Shopify that brought an ecommerce element to countless brands on the video streaming platform. Earlier in the year, brands like Walmart and Nordstrom began experimenting with integrations of TikTok's live streaming functionality and shopping. Walmart's Holiday Shop Along Spectacular increased their follower count 25% and achieved 7x more views than expected. As the most downloaded app of 2020, and an audience that's 50% under the age of 34, live shopping on TikTok is a great opportunity for brands in the 2021 holiday season.
  YouTube: In June, YouTube hosted a small business day meant to attract retailers and attention to their live-stream shopping integration. YouTube's owner Google also recently deepened their partnership with Shopify to make it easier for shoppers to buy across their ecosystem. When 51% of shoppers say they use Google for research before they make an online purchase, streaming live on YouTube might be a powerful strategy to capture some of that audience.
  Amazon Live: When you're talking about digital commerce, it's hard not to mention Amazon. Though not a traditional social network, the retail giant has been toying with live stream shopping since 2019, and its Amazon Live platform allows retailers to stream live video that's closely tied to the brands product listing. Brands like Anker have already created high-quality video experiences to drive interest in their mobile device accessories.
  Accelerated in large part by the pandemic and an already increased reliance on online shopping, it's easy to see why this trend is so important in the 2021 holiday season. And with nearly every major retail and social media company jumping into the live stream shopping experience, it's a trend that's hard to ignore. Whether consumers will adopt this new shopping style in mass remains to be seen, but either way, it's safe to say this is not the home shopping experience your parents are used to.
  Are you ready to adopt live stream shopping? Contact us today to chat with our social media experts about the right approach for your brand.