The real social media trends of 2024
- Content, Social media
Social media trends are constantly evolving. Both users and marketers must strive to keep up with these developments, or risk missing out. In this blog, we delve into the real trends shaping the social media marketing landscape and update you on influencer marketing developments. Join us for the read!
1. Authenticity above all else
Despite promoting Beyond Meat, Kim Kardashian doesn’t actually eat their ‘meat’. The internet was abuzz. Promoting a product without being a genuine user is a big mistake. Lack of authenticity and omitting sincere opinions can lead to influencers being penalized. Nowadays, authenticity is crucial for a successful influencer marketing campaign on social media. This may seem obvious, but evidently, it’s not.
Many brands are moving away from a picture-perfect Instagram feed to one that’s more relaxed, human, and natural. The push for authenticity is also evident in the rise of the BeReal platform, dubbed the ‘anti-Instagram’. Users receive a random daily notification to ‘be real’ and have two minutes to share what they’re doing at that moment.
To inspire you, we’ve included an updated video clip of Christina Aguilera’s ‘You are beautiful‘, highlighting the demand for authenticity.
Deinfluencing
“You don’t need these products”. Deinfluencing is when an influencer tells you not to buy one product, but rather another (better) product. Deinfluencing is about transparency and honesty. This way, as an influencer, you also make sure you come across as more authentic and don’t just want to convince people of whatever sponsorship you currently have.
This is also in line with the trend towards ‘consumerism’. Instead of promoting impulsive purchases, deinfluencers focus on the necessity and sustainability of products.
There are also some consequences to deinfluencing:
- Deinfluencing can lead to more interaction with followers, as it invites discussion about the real value and effectiveness of products.
- This trend may lead to a shift in how brands collaborate with influencers, with more emphasis on real experiences and less on sponsored content.
- Brands may be forced by deinfluencing to be more transparent about their products and possibly adjust their marketing strategies.
2. Short form video
96% of marketers agree that the optimal duration of a video is less than 10 minutes. But when we talk about short form video as a social media trend, the duration soon runs down to a few minutes to mere seconds. Years ago, we saw the short form videos already in back on Vine: videos of only 6 seconds with the aim of making people laugh!
Today, we see short-form videos on all major social media platforms. 82% of all online content was video by 2022. TikTok left a lasting impression and put pressure on other platforms to keep evolving. Not much later, Instagram rolled out the Instagram Reels feature, and YouTube too now has ‘Shorts’.
To reinforce this, YouTube Shorts – like regular videos – are also monetizable and creators can receive 45% of ad revenue. To grab the attention of your audience, though, you need to be of good cheer. Short-form videos are extremely ‘scrollable’ and users will scroll past your content in no time.
Not insignificantly, 73% of respondents in research by the Influencer Marketing Hub prefer watching a video to learn more about a product.
3. Game changer: TikTok as a search engine
Tiktok only for videos? Yes! And no. Although TikTok is particularly known as a place to share and watch videos, there are also features that help users find specific content or users in the app. The common denominator with “traditional” search engines, of course, is that users find the answer to a particular question. For example, how to crochet stuffed animals or what is an effective workout routine.
The most important component of answering a search query is relevance. Using hashtags or keywords will go a long way on TikTok. Users can also use the “Discover” feature to browse through popular accounts within a given category. Obviously, you cannot ‘rank’ on TikTok using the same SEO techniques.
Ranking on TikTok
Not to worry, of course there are techniques to attract more traffic to your TikTok account or website.
- Make use of relevant and descriptive hashtags. TikTok uses hashtags to index and categorize your content. You’ll make your profile more visible with the right hashtags.
- Follow the big trends and hook in. For example, use trending audio to base your videos on or translate viral videos to your own brand.
- Add a link to your website on your profile. This way you can direct users from your profile to your website.
- Use keywords in your video titles and descriptions. As in SEO on YouTube, this is also best practice on TikTok.
- Interact with your audience. This creates positive associations with your (personal) brand and helps you attract a larger audience because your profile is more often introduced to users.
In addition, the advantage of TikTok is that content is presented to users based on interest. So as a user, you are more likely to come across new content that you may also find interesting. Unlike Google where you as a brand are limited by the keywords your target audience does – or does not – use.
New feature: the Search Ads Toggle
To respond to users’ search demand and recommend the right content, TikTok has launched a new feature: the Search Ads Toggle. This allows brands to place their branded content in TikTok’s search results. Brands can extend the reach of their ad to users specifically looking for certain products or information.
4. Customer service on social media
Social media has everything you want from customer service: direct contact with an employee in a quick and simple way. Whether you have a chat open on a website or on social media doesn’t matter much to brands. For customers, it’s nice to know they can just contact you through their preferred medium. According to the Microsoft Global State of Customer Service report, 54% of consumers were more positive about companies with customer service through social media.
Furthermore, social media as a customer support channel is very cost-effective. Compared to telephone departments, you need fewer employees to provide the same amount of support. In addition, customers know how to find you faster and you can reach a large audience because of the number of users of social media. Within your organization, though, the division of labor must be clear to monitor employee satisfaction.
5. The rise of audio: don’t underestimate this social media trend
Besides short form video, audio is also making a solid rise in the list of social media trends. We are talking about music, podcasts and again TikTok. TikTok caused quite a stir in the music industry. In short, TikTok is on the one hand the platform to discover new music and on the other hand a creative outlet for record labels, music marketers, artists and other creators who flood the platform with songs. In addition, brands such as McDonald’s and Pepsi are also making entering the party: because they are bound by copyright, they create their own music to use on TikTok.
The years-long rise of podcasting should not go unmentioned either. 74% of brands said they will produce more audio-only content in the coming year. We cozy up en masse to the hosts to listen in on conversations about anything and everything. With the advent of the ‘gig-economy‘, podcasts about self-development and self-made entrepreneurs exploded. This makes it immediately interesting for B2B companies that have a supply of B2B Thought Leaders richer and easier to reach their target audience.
6. Social commerce is a must have for brands
With each new channel to reach your target audience, the customer journey increasingly deviates from what you envisioned on paper. The customer journey is anything but linear. The possibilities of social commerce are rich and bring you close to your target audience on the channel where they spend much of their time – AND money.
Social commerce is a side branch of e-commerce. And it’s here to stay: according to research by Accenture, the social commerce market is growing by 25% annually and will be worth $1.2 trillion by 2025.Social platforms have a native shops feature where e-commerce brands upload their product catalog to a virtual storefront. Users thus never have to leave the platform to make purchases. According to research by Sprout Social, 98% of consumers plan to make a purchase through social commerce.
Paid, earned and owned media take on new meaning with the rise of social commerce. Separation is a thing of the past. Namely, you create your own shop on a channel you don’t own (owned media). At the same time, you can push your products directly onto the timeline of your target audience with paid advertising (paid media), but also reach a large audience organically through the shareable nature of social media (earned). Ór paid by partnering with influencers. Perhaps your own website will become obsolete to the newest demographic of buyers: Gen Z.
Again, TikTok is making great strides: after a pilot with Shopify, they have set up their own e-commerce environment. And not just any one: TikTok is going into battle with Amazon. Amazon is not letting this go without a fight: Amazon Inspire takes care of that. Content from creators is made immediately shoppable in the app. Who do you think will win?
7. Augmented Reality as a social experience
With the growth in popularity of social media platforms, user demand for richer experiences is also growing. While the adoption rate of Virtual Reality (VR) is still low consumer, Augmented Reality (AR) has been immensely popular for years. Snapchat and Instagram offer rich opportunities for brands and creators to create filters for their target audience.
Such filters are especially interesting in the SEE and CARE phase to appeal to a new target audience on the one hand and to strengthen the relationship with your existing customer base on the other. Many brands also use AR filters in the THINK phase: for example, by ‘testing’ different lipstick colors before you buy it. In addition, integration with the “real world” is a perfect way to boost your retail store. Like Airwalk did with their AR pop-up store or Jeep with scanning cars to find the nearest dealer!
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8. Community building is as important as brand building
Loyal and engaged customers. What brand doesn’t want that? Brands with online communities will celebrate great successes in 2023. They get to know their target audience through and through, know what their motivations are, learn what kind of content they prefer and what their target audience values.
The result: perfect responsiveness to the needs of your target audience. And that has all sorts of positive side effects. For example, loyal customers are less price sensitive and they spread the good word about your brand. 66% of consumers say they are more loyal to a brand when they are part of a community!
To build a community around your brand, you need to create the right conditions for it.
- First, determine your goals: do you want high engagement, more loyalty or more leads? Bring focus!
- Then you choose a platform. Think YouTube, Discord or Instagram, for example. Of course, you can also build multiple small communities and ensure cross-pollination across your channels.
- Next, it’s important to continuously engage with your community. You are in the lead here. Start discussions, respond to questions and comments, and share relevant content!
- Strengthen the relationship with your community through online and offline events and rewarding active members.
- To make the community feel like a safe place, you need some ground rules about what kind of content you don’t want in the community (hateful etc.) and what to do when problems arise.
Well-known examples of brands with active communities are LEGO, Harley Davidson and Sephora!
9. Influencers are business as usual
Influencers have become an integral part of the marketing mix. And we are no longer talking about celebrity endorsement, but creators who have become known because of their expertise, not because they are actors or can sing beautifully Influencers have almost completely taken that place and are therefore indispensable in marketing strategy. As a result, 90% of marketers report that influencer marketing is an effective tactic.
Playtime is over
In the Gartner Hype Cycle, influencer marketing is already in the “Slope of Enlightenment” (see chart). Influencer marketing has matured and become business as usual. More and more companies are riding this wave: some 73% of Gen Z and 70% of Millennials see creators and brands working together on a daily basis. 57% say they bought products as a result of an influencer’s endorsement.
10. AI: the future of content
Stock photos are a thing of the past. AI-generated content is hot. For example, TikTok already offers a basic text-to-image generator. It allows you to change the background of your video. Handy for creators! But, compared to Google’s Imagen, OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and Midjourney’s machine learning models, TikTok is still really at the beginning. The advanced ones create images that look like photographs or complex illustrations that look like they were created by humans. You enter a piece of text and get an image in return, like this bag:
To get an idea of the power of this AI, take a look at the phenomenon of “outpainting” with which DALL-E effortlessly integrates familiar works of art. Outpainting fuses multiple worlds together to paint a perfect picture for your story. You create a kind of Alice in Wonderland experience with just a few clicks.
< Prompt:
A bucket bag made of blue suede. The bag is decorated with intricate golden paisley patterns. The handle of the bag is made of rubies and pearls.
11. The Metaverse is here!
Gartner predicts: 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse by 2026. That’s kind of a big deal if you ask us. The metaverse is a term used to describe the collection of virtual worlds that exist within the Internet. Here you can play games, socialize with other people, work or buy or sell products.
But, you can also do that in the “real” world, right? Yes! But for that real Alice in Wonderland feeling, you really have to The metaverse offers rich experiences for those who enter this world. Roblox already did this in collaboration with Gucci for the Gucci Garden. Want to know more? In our blog on influencers in the metaverse, we reported on this in detail!
Looking for inspiration on how to start small? Then be sure to check out the Starbucks Odyssey experience. Starbucks reward members can then earn loyalty points with web3 in the form of NFTs. All are dedicated to recognizing, surprising, and delighting members. Sounds good, right?
It’s all coming together
Authentic storytelling, building active communities and a range of opportunities through new technology. From the metaverse to short-form video and AI-generated images to an established guard of influencers on new channels. These were the latest social media trends!
How to apply these social media trends within your business? Plan a meeting with our social expert John Meulemans!
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