The social media landscape is constantly changing, which can be tough to keep up with. If you’re wondering what’s popular, what’s not, and how to fit social media trends into your strategy, you’re definitely not alone. But don’t worry, we have answers.
In the next few years, social media usage is expected to go up. Nevertheless, professionals think that the most widely used websites might experience a significant decrease in users, because less popular ones will take away some of their customers.
In this report, we will discuss some of the most vital social media trends that will occur in the next few years.
1. You will start spending big ad dollars on smaller networks
One of the most surprising social media trends is that people are using it less.
A new study has found that people may be more responsive to advertising on smaller social media platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest, rather than on the bigger networks.
Google Search Trends data indicates that there has been a steady increase over the last two years in the number of people looking for ads on social media platforms such as TikTok. TikTok seems to be leading the pack in this regard.
All three of these platforms encourage advertisers to make their ads look like they belong there with the organic content that regular users post.
The outcome of this is that ads are more entertaining and less disruptive, which leads to more conversions and a generally positive feeling for businesses.
2. You will outsource (at least some of) your engagement tactics to a Creator
The creator economy is one in which people create and sell content, either online or offline. This can include anything from blog posts and YouTube videos to ebooks and physical products. The creator economy has been around for about a decade. But it boomed during the pandemic as people looked for ways to diversify their income (due to unemployment, or a sudden influx of spare time, or both). The pandemic caused many people to lose their jobs or have more free time, so they turned to creating content as a way to make money.
Many people make money from social media by monetizing their hobbies, finding freelance work, or creating a second income stream. This is not just limited to YouTube stars, but regular people as well.
By 2022, it is estimated that businesses will spend $15 billion on influencer marketing, with 50 million people identifying as creators on social media networks.
Social networks are both driving and responding to this boom by adding many new native monetization tools, such as:
- TikTok’s Creator Marketplace
- Instagram’s Collabs
- Instagram’s Branded Content Ads
- Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager
- YouTube Brand Connect
- Twitter’s paid Super Follows
The purpose of these tools is to help content creators get paid, so they can continue providing value for brands and users on their chosen platforms.
The networks are hanging on to their portion of the $15 billion pie with the help of these apps. However, there is a chance that one of the thousands of other similar apps will figure out how to be successful and take their portion of the pie away.
3. You need to learn paid advertising (even if you don’t do ads yet)
This social media trend has been around for a few years, but is still worth mentioning, especially given the results of the Hootsuite 2022 Social Media Trends survey.
The largest challenge for social media managers, cited by 43% of respondents, is the declining organic reach and the need to supplement content with paid advertising. The second largest challenge is coming up with ideas for content.
Small to medium-sized businesses listed the decline of organic reach as their primary challenge.
This is understandable. The decrease in organic reach has been documented for years, especially on Facebook and Instagram. Most small businesses don’t have a lot of money to put towards paid strategies.
The pandemic has had some mixed effects on social advertising. Some businesses have reduced spending on ads, while others have continued to spend but have been disappointed with the low return on investment due to the over-saturation of networks.
Additionally, Apple provided users with the option to discontinue Facebook tracking, which forced Facebook advertisers to alter their methods of ad targeting.
Although the average organic reach for a Facebook post is low at 5.2%, this fact remains.
This suggests that you will need to spend money on advertisement in order for most of your followers to see your posts.
You can expand your social media strategy to other platforms like TikTok in order to try to get more attention without spending money. However, it’s more likely that you’ll stay focused on the platforms where you have already built up an audience.
No matter what your budget, at least one person on your social marketing team will need to learn how to boost posts. Everyone on the team will also need to learn the basics of audience targeting.
Many businesses that had never used social listening before began using it during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found it helpful to be able to respond to questions and conversations with customers in real-time during such a challenging time.
The pandemic showed businesses that social listening could help them understand customers’ changing preferences and avoid PR problems.
Hootsuite’s 2022 Social Media Trends survey found that most respondents believe that social listening has become more valuable to their organization over the past year.
We also see an increase in Google searches for keywords like “social listening” and “social listening tools” by 22% from last year. This suggests that more people are interested in either finding out what social listening is or purchasing a tool for their business.
The clubhouse app is an audio-centric social media platform. Clubhouse is a social media platform that focuses on audio. It launched in April 2020 but gained popularity in early 2021.
Twitter recently launched its social audio platform, Spaces, and Facebook is also reportedly trying to enter the live audio format.
Many social marketing teams were scrambling to decide if it was worth it to invest in social audio when these events happened. According to the 2022 Social Media Trends survey, most businesses think it is worth investing in social audio.
The most popular investment option among respondents was hosting or leading audio live streams as thought leaders. Results were fairly mixed across the board when asked specifically how they were planning to invest.
Kudos to anyone who’s been appointed to start a company podcast- double blink if you need help.
6. Social Media Emerges As A Shopping Platform
Searches for “Instagram shopping” have increased by 900% over the past 10 years. In fact, as many as 70% of consumers look to Instagram to discover a product.
Approximately 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business page, however Facebook leads the way as the top choice for social commerce. In 2020, Facebook added Facebook Shops to its range of shopping tools, which include Facebook Marketplace and shoppable ads. Now businesses of all sizes can build free online storefronts where they can showcase and sell products.
Facebook users can now create an online store that can be accessed from both Facebook and Instagram.
The number of online searches for “Facebook Marketplace” has increased dramatically over the past 5 years, by over 2000%.
Other social media platforms are expected to join the market in the future.
Towards the end of 2019, TikTok began experimenting with product links.
As social media platforms continue to grow in popularity, they are likely to adapt features that make it easier for users to shop. Consumers are becoming more and more reliant on social shopping and purchasing features.
About one third of consumers would rather interact with customer service on social media than on the phone or email.
Approximately 42% of individuals who submit a customer service request through social media platforms expect a response from the company within one hour.
7. Proliferation Of Short-Form Video Content
Video posts are more popular than static photo posts on social media. A study found that 82% of online content will be videos this year.
TikTok is a social media platform built for short-form videos. In the first three months of 2020, it was downloaded 315 million times, setting a record for quarterly downloads of any app.
The number of searches for “TikTok” have increased by 81% over the past 2 years.
Short-form videos are becoming more popular on social media. Other companies are following the trend and creating more options for them.
In order to stay competitive with TikTok, Instagram launched Instagram Reels in 2020.
In addition to IGTV and Stories, Reels provides a way for users to edit and share videos with different effects. Users can record videos up to 30 seconds in length using Reels.
According to the NBA, people were twice as likely to engage with their Instagram Reel posts than with their regular video posts.
Although “Instagram Stories” did not have as many searches as TikTok, there was still a 260% increase in the past 5 years.
In 2020, YouTube Shorts was rolled out as a competitor to TikTok and Instagram Reels.
YouTube Shorts is YouTube’s answer to TikTok.
YouTube Shorts allows users to post 15-second videos.
YouTube Shorts is still new, but it’s already getting 15 billion views every day from all over the world.
Although short-form videos are becoming more common, longer videos are still popular.
More people have been using live streams to host public events and meetings online during the pandemic.
The live streaming industry grew rapidly in 2020, and is expected to continue growing in the next few years. The most popular live video platform in 2020 was Twitch, which saw a huge increase in popularity over the course of the year.
Users are spending approximately 60.5 million hours watching videos on the platform per day.
Online searches for “Twitch” increased 138% in 5 years.
8. Social Media Becomes Part Of Daily Life
A majority of Americans and Canadians are on social media, with the percentage of users in both countries increasing from 2019 to 2020.
The number of social media users is not only growing, but the amount of time that users are spending on social media platforms is growing as well.
People now spend about two hours on social media every day
Global social media usage increased by 21% during the pandemic, making it an increasingly popular marketing channel.
Although online searches for “social media marketing” have only increased by 95% over the past 5 years, this is still a significant amount.
There has been an increase in the number of people who are dependent on social media platforms. This has led to more people advocating for taking breaks from social media or using it less overall. There are even events, like National Day of Unplugging and Digital Minimalism, which promote this idea.
Although these campaigns may have some effect, they are not likely to change the overall trend of social media usage, which is increasing.
There’s also the growing trend of social media influencers.
The search term “influencer marketing” has been used 305% more in the past 5 years than it was before.
The way businesses approach digital marketing is changing.
Many people with large followings on social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube are using those platforms to create mini empires.
9. Facebook Remains On Top (For Now)
Even though other social media platforms are becoming more popular, Facebook is still the most used one. YouTube is the second most used platform, and Instagram and TikTok are the fourth and seventh most popular ones.
Despite some negative press coverage, Facebook’s growth has not been affected. The platform currently has about 1.845 billion daily users and had about 22 billion total visitors in August 2021. The average user spends about 58 minutes on Facebook each day.
The average person spends around 40 minutes on YouTube each day. The site has approximately 30 million users who visit the site daily. In July of 2022, YouTube had a total of 35 billion visitors.
Approximately 500 million people use Instagram on a daily basis, and in July of 2022 there were approximately 6.6 billion total visitors. The average person spends approximately 53 minutes using Instagram.
Google searches for the word “Instagram” have increased by 49% over the past 5 years.
The average user spends 52 minutes on TikTok daily, while some younger users spend 80 minutes on the app daily.
New social media platforms are being launched each year, but not all of them are successful.
10. Shorter Attention Spans Result In More Bite-Sized Content
The amount of time people are spending on social media is increasing, however the amount of time spent engaging with individual posts is decreasing.
The average person’s attention span is shorter now than it was 20 years ago, according to studies.
People who access social media content on computers spend more time on each piece of content, on average, than those who access it on mobile devices. For example, people who access Facebook from a computer spend, on average, 2.5 seconds on a piece of content, while those who access Facebook from a phone spend 1.7 seconds on the same content.
Social media sites are accommodating the growing demand for short-form content by increasingly offering options such as short-form videos and ephemeral (disappearing) content. In late 2020, Twitter introduced Fleets, a feature similar to Snapchat and Instagram Stories.
Fleets allows users to post disappearing messages and videos. Though it has only been around for a few months, feedback suggests it boosts engagement.
These are the 10 social media trends we think you need to know in order to stay ahead in 2022.
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