Social media constantly changes, but this year it's going to be different. You're going to be prepared.
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Today we are going to break down social media trends for 2022.
Now, one thing we want you to do is to tell us the biggest trend that you think is going to happen this year. Let us know, leave a comment, because we’re going to tell you the trends we see, and then we can compare.
It's crazy how social media changes every year. We've seen platforms that get tons of engagement, lose relevancy in a short period of time like Snapchat.
And we've also seen platforms like TikTok just explode in just a couple of years.
As marketers, it's hard to keep up with all these changing algorithms and all these changing social networks that are even coming out, like Clubhouse. But there are some trends that you can end up seeing developing quietly that will become the new norm.
Today we’re going to talk about some of these social media trends for 2022 so that you can up your game and be prepared for them in the coming months. So let's dive into the social media trends for 2022.
Videos are going to even get shorter.
Have you seen the thing called shorts? People don't create shorts because they want to, they're creating shorts because these platforms know that people love watching short 30 second or one-minute videos.
When you look at how successful TikTok videos have been, Instagram has come up with its own version of that. It's called reels. HubSpot found that 64% of marketers plan to leverage more short-form videos in 2022. One of the reasons for that is short-form videos are brief, engaging, digestible, and can be repurposed on many different social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and even LinkedIn, depending on your content.
Social Ads are more sophisticated
The next social trend is marketers and companies will need to make their social advertising more sophisticated. Think about how many businesses are starting on social media every year, just running ads.
Just so you have an idea, a research conducted by Hootsuite shows that more than half, 51.4% of the 18,000 marketers they surveyed are applying to increase their social spend in 2022.
That means that in order to stand out, you'll have to get creative and differentiate your brand from the rest of the competition.
Think of it this way. If you're interrupting people on social media, you're going to have to give them a good reason to listen to your message.
It's just like getting into a party and selling your product. While everyone else just there wants to have fun and talk and engage with each other, you're trying to solve, that's hard.
With social ads, you'll need to get super creative if you want to stand out in 2022.
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Stop improvising with their social media strategy and start hiring more specialists
The next Social Media trends, companies will stop improvising with their social media strategy and start hiring more specialists.
A lot of companies have underplayed the role that social media can play in revenue generation.
Most of them typically run their social media by a committee without a specific direction or strategy, or maybe it's not even a committee, it's one or two people. Or even worse, they get some generalists to run their social media marketing forum.
The problem with that is that people have higher expectations today when it comes to social media profiles from brands that they're engaging with.
They want to have meaningful interactions with these brands. They want to be responded too fast and efficiently, and they almost always want to be able to call your company by phone, or at least message someone by chat or text message even.
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Diversity and omnichannel
Another trend is platform diversity and omnichannel. It's become harder and harder to rely just on one social platform. We used to just be on Facebook. we used to just be on YouTube. And then we had to add in LinkedIn and TikTok.
Yes, some networks like TikTok and LinkedIn give you great engagement over time. They all die down just like the rest.
So, you got to have an omnichannel approach so you can get the best out of all the channels out there. A survey conducted by HubSpot discovered that 64% of marketers currently are leveraging three to five different social media platforms.
So, it's a social media trend that you can expect to continue over the coming years since you won't be able to get all the amazing results that you used to get by just focusing on one channel.
Social commerce
Social commerce is also a huge trend. Facebook, now Meta, conducted research that revealed that 81% of people say that Instagram helps them research products or services, that's just one social network too.
Imagine what happens with all the networks? Social networks are now the second most important channel for online brand research searching according to Hootsuite.
But now, besides being able to research, social media users are actually able to buy directly from social media profiles. And this trend is something that you can expect more and more in 22 and beyond.
Here's another cool thing. Did you know, the home shopping network and QVC, remember those days back, years and years ago, you'd watch the channels, ring the phone and buy the product.
At least our moms did. With those channels and that concept of selling, Facebook now has that on their platform.
You can go live and start selling right then and there, tell people how you're running out of inventory, assuming that's true, and start making sales right then and there.
If you need help with your digital marketing to grow your business in terms of visibility, engagement, and profit, contact us today and speak with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can build the bridge between the point you’re standing at right now and your goals.
