Social media platforms are ever-changing – meaning for marketers, getting a good grasp of ‘best practices’ can be difficult. Just when you think you’ve mastered it; a new trend takes hold and you’re back to the bottom of the pile.
That’s why we’ve compiled a list of our predictions on the biggest social media trends for 2024. Just like our SEO trends for 2024, we’ve provided an insight into what we think will be popular over the coming year. From the rise of short-form video content to the call for social responsibility discourse, our simple guide pinpoints the areas you should be driving your strategy towards.
Short Form Video Content
Throughout 2023, platforms like TikTok revolutionised the demand for short-form content and introduced a creative method of emulating company culture, core values and services. The introduction of Instagram reels and YouTube Shorts – stemming from the boom in popularity over on TikTok – make it even more important to focus on creating high-quality short-form video content that appeals to current trends.
Pay attention to and use the relatively new video content features. Ignoring them and sticking with the ‘image and catchy caption’ strategy you know could see you falling behind. Try adapting a trending sound or filter to make it fit-for-purpose – recreating the trends your demographic love could see huge growth in brand awareness, visibility and interactivity.
Look closely at what the audience consume and find a way to implement your message into a format that clearly appeals to them – with the average user opening the TikTok app 8 times per day, by failing to appeal to this demand, you are dismissing a huge opportunity to reach your demographic.
Social Responsibility and Sustainability
Society as a whole is making the move to become more eco-conscious in their everyday practices. And on that note, social media is an everyday practice for over 57 million people in the UK. That’s why audiences are expecting more discourse from brands concerning the environmental and social issues they care about. Users want to see themselves emulated in a company’s ethos in order to fully assimilate and commit their loyalty to them.
However, it’s not just about donating a few pounds to your local charity and using it as a PR piece on social media.
Sharing educational content and engaging with eco-conscious consumers can assist in curating a community feel within your platform – creating a loyal community who views your company as a trusted resource for the causes they feel strongly about. Additionally, showing you care about your employees’ charitable interests can go a long way in building a solid company culture both on and offline.
The Presence of AI
The modern capabilities of AI are constantly growing and a great strain has been placed upon the marketing sector to understand and harness it into their ongoing strategy for content writing.
Learning how to effectively use AI to generate posts or ideas for content could greatly benefit your strategy. The more you tailor your request to an AI generator, the more personalised the content will be to your business – effectively, you have full authority over the topic, tone and focus of the content, without having to write it from scratch yourself.
In this respect, AI could prove to be a powerful time-saving – but equally effective - tool for digital marketing specialists to implement within their strategy. By using Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI tools create content that is reflective of your audience and can work to better target their social media habits.
AI can work to free up some time that could be used to focus on elements of social media strategy that require your more focused attention – i.e. creating and researching the role of short-form video content as we mentioned earlier.
Promotion and Influencer Culture
Three buzzwords for you – authentic, natural, and conversational promotion.
The nature of promotion and advertisement is changing. The reason influencer culture has proved to be so successful on countless social media platforms is because they aren’t reliant on brand awareness or a big pull to receive the leads they need – they are the big pull.
Authenticity is becoming an integral and central part of social media promotion. Gone are the days of plainly and obviously advertising at people. The traditional methods of gaining traction and conversions – ‘enquire today for more information!’ – are fizzling out. Instead, finding a way to advertise to and with your audience will see a much more successful rate of post/link clicks and website conversions.
It is important to promote your services in a way that is authentic and natural. A conversational tone and infusing an element of relatability is an easy-win method to deliver conversions and leads in a more dynamic way. This way, your promotion is reaching people who actually suit your product or service because you are speaking directly to what they think they want as a person who connects with your company ethos and image.
Every promotion or nod to your website needs to seem like it happens naturally and organically.
Final Thoughts
Over the course of the year, the way users are choosing to interact with social media has seen enormous change. Adapting to your consumer is key, keeping up to date with the content they’re favouring, the format they prefer and their habits should be central to every post you put out onto your platforms. Implementing just a few of these trend suggestions into your 2024 social media strategy could work to realign your approach with the needs of your audience and improve your visibility, reach and interactivity metrics.
