As each year passes and another begins, it’s essential to prepare for emerging trends to ensure your brand is up-to-date. This allows content creators, marketers, and graphic designers to shape their strategy into one that will be successful in the upcoming year.
To help keep your social media marketing strategy fresh and on-trend, we’ve created a list of the top 5 social media marketing trends you’re likely to see in 2022.
short-form video marketing
By now, I’m sure you’re aware that video marketing is here to stay. TikTok is the 4th most popular social media network after Instagram, excluding messaging networks. With short-form video at the forefront of the app’s experience, other social media platforms, especially Instagram, are looking for ways to keep up with TikTok’s rising success. You can expect to see social media platforms placing a considerable emphasis on this kind of content, such as reels on Instagram.
Why do users enjoy short-form video content? Not only are videos a much more interesting form of content to absorb, but as attention spans continue to decrease, users want engaging content but also short and to the point. Especially with videos that showcase a real person talking directly to the audience, this form of content also builds intimacy and trust with your followers, which will ultimately build brand loyalty.
a focus on micro-influencer marketing
While influencer marketing has increasingly gained popularity over the last few years, it will only continue to grow as we head into 2022. When influencer marketing first started gaining traction, the number one influencer that came to mind was a celebrity–if not a celebrity, someone with a similar amount of followers. This is because people trust their favorite celebrity and want to be just like them; therefore they’ll most likely buy the product this celebrity is aligned with. As we move into the new year, we’ll start to see a shift toward brands aligning themselves with micro-influencers. A 2021 report from Later shows that content from influencers with 25,000 or fewer followers gets the most engagement — by a pretty wide margin.
Why is this? The more followers an influencer has, it’s assumed they’re getting paid more. As a result, users may have less trust that macro-influencers actually use a brand or care as much about a brand as they discuss online.
social shopping will continue to grow
During the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, eCommerce and online shopping dramatically increased as customers were unable to leave their homes. In 2022 we’ll see many more brands taking this a step further and offering customers the ability to shop directly from their social media accounts such as Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Again, with attention spans decreasing, customers find it helpful to do everything they need to do all in one place. With social media use and high cart abandon rates typically on mobile, allowing customers to purchase from a brand’s social media account decreases the risk of cart abandonment.
omnichannel social media presence
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that brands have different audiences on different social platforms. In this day and age, it’s hard to attain your maximum reach potential with only one social media account. According to eclincher, brands using three or more channels see a 287% higher purchase rate than single-channel brands. This is because unique audiences require unique messaging–to deliver content they’ll relate to, it’s essential to do so on the platform they’re more likely to visit. The more opportunities potential clients have to see your brand, the better your business.
increased ephemeral content
Over the years, we’ve seen an increase in the popularity of ephemeral content such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook stories. These stories exponentially increase the opportunities for engagement on behalf of your followers. With the ability to include links, polls, quizzes, etc. on Instagram, your followers can not only engage with your permanent post but with your story about the post as well. According to 99Firms, Instagram Stories reach an average of 7.2% of a brand’s audience. Since these stories disappear after 24 hours, brands can use this to their advantage and tap into viewers’ FOMO. Consider posting on your brand’s snap stories for one-time events or limited-time offers to pique interest.
Looking to implement any or all of these social media marketing trends into your 2022 social media strategy but unsure of where to start? Drop us a line, email, or send us a DM on our social media accounts @clevermethod, and we’d be more than happy to assist!