The future of business is, without a doubt, social media, since about half the entire human population is currently on social media.
These numbers are only expected to rise from 4.7 billion users in 2024 to about 6 billion by 2027.
Social platforms have proved to be a very effective marketing strategy so far; however, social media trends keep evolving.
Learning and incorporating the latest trends into your digital marketing strategy can give you a leg over your competition.
In this article, we’ll discuss 16 social media trends that you should look out for in 2024. Strap in, and let’s get right to it!
Trust Is the New Currency
People will likely make more purchases and engage better with a brand they trust.
You must create a good online presence that offers your audience an emotional connection.
Remember, it is not just about advertising your brand.
Users on social media will often shun businesses that only throw promotional sales pitches in their faces.
For your brand to succeed at winning your audience’s trust, you ought to create emotional appeal by using these kinds of content:
Educative Content
Help your target market learn hands-on skills relevant to your niche.
Incorporating educative content into your digital marketing strategy is extremely important since about 54% of consumers use social media to learn about a product.
Say you’re a dairy goat farmer. You need to help your audience learn every important detail concerning goats and goat milk.
Take time to find out the most frequently asked questions related to dairy goats and answer them in depth.
Inspiring Content
Find real people within your niche who are doing well, especially those who have dealt with hardship and ingenuity.
Feature such stories on your social media, giving hope to your target population. It makes them feel connected with your brand emotionally.
Entertainment
A staggering 36.5% of social media users are there for entertainment.
Provide enough entertaining content relevant to your niche. That'll helps your audience connect emotionally with your brand, leading to better sales.
Assuming you are a dairy goat farmer, post a few real-time videos anytime your goats act silly as you laugh and joke about it.
Persuasive Content
Lastly, after creating an emotional connection with your audience, it is time to slip into their pockets.
Make them tempting offers from time to time, but ensure you do not overdo it!
Authenticity
Establishing your brand’s originality goes a long way in acquiring a considerable market share on any social media platform.
Users engage better with brands they can relate with; authenticity is your best bet.
Using real personalities to share your content in real time is a sure way to increase your audience’s brand loyalty.
Incorporating user-generated content like real-time client testimonials into your marketing content is best.
A warping 80% of consumers bought a product after an influencer recommended it.
Slip in some influencer marketing from time to time with your usual in-house content production.
It increases authenticity and convinces your target market to make purchases.
Schedule occasional live streams where top executive leaders address specific topics.
About 90% of social users would like business CEOs to address upcoming issues. It shows authenticity, which builds customer loyalty.
Real-time Customer Support
About 50% of users in America have a significantly higher preference for brands that offer customer support via social media platforms.
Nearly half of social media users who reach out to brands across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms have customer service issues.
Use these complaints as opportunities to react fast, offer solutions, and create value.
It is wise to use these issues while actively listening on social to boost your reputation management and find ways to meet customer expectations.
Ensure you maintain honesty, transparency, and some good-natured humor to de-escalate the severity of client complaints.
Interactivity
Most people use social media majorly for social interaction.
It is, therefore, important to ensure ultimate user engagement by creating a highly interactive environment.
Your brand’s success lies not in the content you produce, but in how well you interact with your audience.
The interaction will cause most social media algorithms to increase your business’ social media impressions.
The faster you respond to your audience, the better for your brand.
In fact, most users want a brand to respond to them within 24 hours after they reach out.
Bite-sized Content
The human concentration span has reduced from 12 to 8.25 seconds in 15 years.
Such significant change calls for the production of increasingly smaller pieces of content.
Use bite-sized content that grabs your audience’s attention like info graphics, images, short-form videos, and written posts that are easy to skim.
Link these short-form pieces with long-form pieces of detailed content for those interested in learning more.
The Human Touch
For you to succeed, customers need to relate to the brand on a personal level. It helps them relate better to the brand.
Humans think in pictures; therefore, your customers need to have a positive image when they think about your brand.
Using professional video content, consistently offer your audience (a) welcoming face(s) that they can associate with your business.
You must have a particularly inviting person who constantly represents your brand.
The brand representatives also need to communicate both interactively and engagingly.
Short-form Video Content
The rise of short-form videos like Instagram reels and YouTube shorts has been quite beneficial to digital marketers.
85% of marketers credit these videos as the most effective form of content for social media. Live streaming short sessions is also good for your short-form video content.
Long videos often yield low viewership compared to short ones since most people have a short personal attention span.
Animoto even stated that Facebook advises businesses to limit their videos’ length to 15 seconds.
Age-related Social Media Preference
Different social media platforms tend to attract people from different demographics.
In 202o, Facebook users above the age of 25 were five times more than those below 25.
It is estimated that by 2026, Facebook users above 25 will be about seven times more than those below 25.
On the other hand, TikTok is becoming a favorite pass time among the younger generations, who are typically below 25 years of age.
The marketing department should pay close attention to your targeted buyer persona while developing a social media strategy.
If your niche is child education, it might be more profitable to use Facebook than Tik Tok, since you will reach more users above 25, who are most likely to be parents.
Publish valuable content like info graphics. A good example would be a post explaining the importance of board games to kids’ psychological development.
Social Media Is Becoming the New Marketing Giant
The growth of social media users and the steady increase in the amount of time they spend on social media daily makes it the best marketing channel currently available.
Improved data analysis across many social media platforms is quite an instrumental feature.
Business owners are now able to keep an eye on their progress with regard to reaching their business goals in real time.
The Rise of Audio Content
Long videos often discourage users due to the effort they demand.
Short videos, however, are too brief to gather any tangible information.
Users prefer long, detailed audio like podcasts and social audio that they can consume while multitasking.
Picture the last time you listened to your favorite self-help guide or an audiobook while doing your chores, perhaps.
It is easier than sitting down to watch a video of the same length, right?
Podcasts are a perfect option for publishing audio content. Every year, the demand grows by about 5% to 6%.
Market predictions hold the opinion that more businesses will increasingly incorporate audio into their content strategy as we approach 2024.
You could also decide to increase the interaction and engagement of your audio by hosting live audio rooms where experts and listeners share their thoughts, learn and grow in real-time.
Join the wave!
An Unprecedented Social Media Shopping Spree
Social commerce has experienced a huge rise as more businesses take advantage of social media marketing.
Online shopping became the norm during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It has led users to shop more often across different social media platforms.
Social shops like Facebook marketplace and Shoppable Instagram have made shopping easier.
About 78% of users are likely to make a purchase after having a positive social media experience with your brand.
A staggering 73% of business executives claim that social media marketing is very effective. Nearly 80% of marketers claim that including social media to your ad spend is extremely important.
Consequently, 91% of business executives intend to increase their social media marketing budget over the coming years.
Going into 2024, social commerce is expected to gain exponential growth.
It is wise to consider improving your social media presence using both organic content and social media ads to boost your social media sales and conversion rates.
Social Media Is Taking Over Its User’s Lives
As technology advances, social media is becoming an inseparable part of our everyday life. It is now on all kinds of screens; in our pockets, palms, desks, and even walls.
The average social media user spends about 2.5 hours each day on social media and messaging.
This is your cue to act. With so many people using various social sites daily, marketing your enterprise has never been easier.
First, understand the need you ought to satisfy along with the product or service necessary to satisfy it.
Analyze your buyer persona according to different demographic metrics like age and location.
Use this information to produce relevant content to target your audience and grow a community.
Provide content that benefits and engages them while making strategic, irresistible offers. Simply rinse and repeat!
People are spending increasingly more time on social channels each day; therefore, the greater your social media presence, the higher the sales and conversions you’ll get from social media.
Facebook Is the Life of the Party
Facebook is the undisputed King of social media advertising since it’s the most prominent social platform and has been around the longest.
Additionally, about 68% of the adult population in the U.S alone claim to be on Facebook, along with about 3 billion worldwide users.
Apart from the marketplace, you could use paid advertising to place your social media ads before your appropriate target market.
New features could be quite instrumental for small businesses.
Facebook reels, for example, could help you gain a wider reach with organic content. On the other hand, Facebook Business Suite could help you track your progress through real-time analytics.
If you’re running a small business, Facebook marketing should be an integral part of your content strategy.
The large user base and the highly-targeted paid advertising make it easier to reach high sales and conversion rates in a relatively shorter period.
LinkedIn’s New Content-Based Branding
LinkedIn has been a great social platform for finding jobs and qualified workers.
Most people have used it for personal branding over the years.
Right now, it’s no longer just about the skills, certifications, and working experience you can display in your bio.
The site now encourages employers and prospective employees to publish as much content as possible.
Your content proves your expertise as a business or individual looking to get hired.
It helps people discover your experience level, making you an authority in your niche.
Eventually, it enables you to stand out from the rest, which makes easier for employers to hire you.
The Rise of Niche Social Platforms
The social media realm has been experiencing a steady rise in new platforms.
Most of these are tailored toward meeting gaps in the common social sites.
A prime example is the rise of Discord, which was carved out of Reddit.
Its sole purpose, at the point of inception, was to allow gamers to chat through audio when playing games.
More niche social sites are continuously emerging.
You ought to take advantage of these sites since they'll help you find your most promising leads, as long as you can provide authentic content that convinces them to convert.
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
Although Augmented Reality is still in its formative years, some businesses are currently using a different form of Augmented Reality.
Social media platforms like Instagram already use AR, allowing people to make their unique filters. IKEA now allows you to visualize finished furniture through their app.
Virtual Reality is the next big thing. Facebook launched its first VR glasses in 2021. These glasses are supposed to help you record memories without using your phone.
More companies are expected to incorporate these technologies in the near future.
Social Media Trends for 2024: Frequently Asked Questions
What Are the Future Trends in Social Media?
Undoubtedly, the growth of both Virtual and Augmented Reality is the future of social media.
What’s Next After Instagram?
TikTok could take over after Instragram. The platform has been giving Instagram quite the run for its money. It is nearly impossible to mention Instagram without thinking about TikTok.
What Is the Best Social Media in 2024?
Data from reliable statistics show that Facebook remains the undisputed King of all Social Media. It is the biggest platform and continues to grow quite substantially.
What Are the Most Important Trends in Social Media Today?
As of now, TikTok is topping the charts due to its increasing popularity and favorable algorithm. Social commerce, customer support, and short-form videos are also the in-thing.
Final Thoughts - Scale Social Media With Legiit
At Legiit, we help you get more stuff done. We have qualified professionals who take such mundane tasks off your hands, so you can deal with the most important tasks like closing your warm leads.
You could also gain a wealth of knowledge pertaining to social media marketing. Contact us today and get the social media strategy you need to take your business to the next level!
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