As a growing business, your priority is to make it stand out in the crowd so you can get more customers and loyal conversions. However, doing that isn’t always easy. This is also one of the reasons you should leverage social media trends for your business to ensure that you capture the audience from there.
Social media has become integrated into our lives and is quickly rising as the most effective platform for conversion. This is especially true for brands.
So, if you still haven’t incorporated social media trends into your marketing strategy, you are missing out big time, and it’s time to change that.
To give you a headstart, we’ve analyzed the recent social media trends you need to follow to boost your business presence.
Excited? Let’s start!
1. Invest in TikTok Marketing – It’s on the Rise!
In 2021, TikTok exceeded the 1 billion user threshold. That elevated it to the seventh-most popular social network globally.
Most social media trends today originate from TikTok, which are then posted on Instagram and Youtube.
Many famous Brands like Chipotle, Guess, and Crocs are now actively posting videos and commenting on relevant Tiktok videos, making them popular among GenZ kids, who are
most likely their target audience.
If your target audience is GenZ and Millenials, then you need to hop onto Tiktok asap, hire a social media manager who keeps up with all the trends and make sure to react quickly because trends come and go with the speed of light.
It is way easier to go viral and have a greater reach than any other social media platform; therefore, its full potential needs to be realized quickly, especially since titkok launched several helpful tools like business profiles and ads for businesses.
2. Influencer Marketing is the Way to Grow!
This marketing strategy involves brands collaborating with influencers to create promotional posts by paying them and promoting the influencer in return.
This strategy has been popular but has shifted slightly as the brands have started collaborating with micro-influencers for promotions.
This niche-ing down has worked in favor of the brands because the engagement is way higher and costs much less than hiring a celebrity.
It’s also crucial to understand that the majority of influencers have worked hard to develop a committed and enthusiastic following. These consumers intentionally choose to follow influencers over brands.
Your brand doesn’t genuinely interest the audience. They are just interested in the influencers’ viewpoints. Don’t try to impose laws on your influencers. They own the audience; therefore, they are free to go anywhere.
These influencers have a high level of expertise or social clout in their respective fields. It’s common for people to misunderstand this and confuse influencer marketing with celebrity marketing.
There may be some overlap, but a person’s alleged fame alone is insufficient to create efficient influencer marketing.
Don’t forget to discuss your campaign goals with the influencers so they can tailor their material to your desired goals.
3. Pinterest Ads are Becoming the Next Big Thing
Almost 89% of people on Pinterest have their credit cards out and are ready to shop.
Pinterest also now offers Product Pins for business accounts.
As a visual search engine, Pinterest is spectacular for introducing new potential customers to your brand and providing businesses of all sizes with a distinctive approach to selling
themselves.
The reason for this is because Pinners utilize the platform to find inspiration. They seek fresh experiences, new concepts, delicious recipes, and inspiration for their upcoming purchases.
Anything that becomes a social media trend gets searched up on Pinterest to search for more inspiration or purchase.
A type of Pinterest advertisement is Promoted Pins. They are Pins that businesses have paid to advertise to increase the likelihood of Pinners seeing them. These Pins have a “Promoted” badge and are visible in the home feed, category feed, and search results.
4. Invest in Social Commerce
Social commerce is the act of directly buying and selling products and services on a social media network.
This strategy encourages consumers to finish the entire purchasing process without leaving their favorite apps, expanding social media‘s traditional role in the purchase process.
Social commerce expedites the transaction process and provides a fantastic opportunity to get feedback.
Your product catalog is available for customers to evaluate and comment on in public.
Unlike traditional e-commerce and marketing, social commerce allows you to put particular, ready-to-buy products in front of the precise people who would enjoy them.
Social media sales are made possible by social commerce. Because it reduces friction from online purchase experiences that begin on social sites, it is a successful sales technique.
So, if you plan to take advantage of social commerce this year, choose a design that supports a simple and convenient purchase experience.
5. Communicate With Social Media Communities
One of the social media trends that are big right now is focusing on promoting products in smaller specific groups.
An example of these types of social communities is Facebook Groups. Such groups are frequently used by brands to gather all their current and potential customers and communicate with them meaningfully.
Members of the group can share their experiences, engage in a variety of discussions, and look for answers to problems.
As a brand, you may also introduce new items, get customer input, and learn useful customer insights using their social media communities. To strengthen online communities in 2022, consider how engaging communities might be built when developing new content.
6. Give In to the Supremacy of Inclusivity
While this isn’t exactly a trend and more of a brand’s social responsibility, it is still on the rise as a trend and you should look out for it.
The goal of inclusive marketing is to build genuine relationships, loyalty, and trust. Genuinely inclusive marketing can aid in making the voices of underrepresented people heard. It can affect social change for the better, and that is also significant in improving customer relationships.
There are numerous financial, brand perception, retention, staff morale, and productivity advantages of inclusive marketing.
Additionally, you must avoid using any stereotypes.
Inclusiveness means acknowledging that your users are different and have their thoughts, ideas, and behaviors, regardless of what they wear, how they appear, or how they speak. You must refrain from passing snap decisions and grouping people into categories. This breeds prejudice, and inclusivity doesn’t stand for that.
7. Be Conscious of Sustainability
Social commerce is being impacted because sustainability and climate change are increasingly important factors in purchasing decisions.
As an emerging brand, you should prioritize people and the environment. Reducing carbon footprints and greenhouse gas emissions can help the environment.
And building a trustworthy brand image is an excellent method for companies to win over customers. The opinions of Gen Z adults toward brands also reflect their concern for the environment.
The conscious yet skeptical consumer values transparency from companies who are enthusiastic about their beliefs. And remember, you must do it properly and with complete transparency. Otherwise, consumers are fast to spot corporate greenwashing if it’s not done honestly.
8. Learn Paid Advertising
Simply put, an organic reach has become harder to achieve; therefore, paid advertising has become essential for a profitable business.
Ads may be made in a matter of minutes, and numerous tools are available to help you make the required images for little to no money. Effective marketing campaigns make use of all available promotional tools.
Paid advertising is an efficient approach to spread the word about your business to a big audience, even if it is more expensive than owned or earned advertising.
Users typically see Paid advertisements on the sides, tops, or bottoms of online pages. To enhance traffic, marketers might spend more to show their adverts on more well-known websites.
Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have recently become successful platforms for paid advertisements, thanks to the rising popularity of social media.
Every advertising platform makes it simple for its customers to assess the effectiveness of campaigns. You can keep track of the number of users who viewed your advertisements, clicked through, and became paying customers.
With paid advertising, you can use your content to boost your brand with precise targeting and obtain more qualified leads.
You are also guaranteed to reach a certain audience. With the help of paid advertising, you may contact customers interested in your business, match your sales personas’ demographics, and live in the precise area you want to target.
Paid advertising helps you put adverts for keywords and drive high-quality traffic to your website if it doesn’t crop up on the first page of Google results.
9. Shorter Videos are Better Performing
Following the increasing popularity of the video-based app Tiktok, Instagram recently added a feature called “Reels” to its platform, allowing users to shoot and share little clips.
In the near future, more social apps may incorporate new tools to help produce video content.
Video content is among the most captivating types of material, and it is here to stay in the long term. In reality, marketers are choosing video content over written and visual material.
But it’s crucial to remember that long-form material is no longer the preferred format moving forward.
You only need to consider Stories, Reels, and TikTok’s popularity to understand why the consumer prefers short-form videos.
10. Target the Local Communities for Better Engagement
Another social media trend right now is Local targeting. It has become increasingly common in 2022 and will stay that way in the years to come.
Local businesses use geotagging in their social media posts and stories to engage with their target audience.
Many businesses utilize location-based targeting to connect with and draw customers from a particular area.
Local brands can now be found more easily thanks to Instagram’s ability to search for posts and stories in the area.
Additionally, businesses can use IP addresses to target people from a certain region with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram marketing. Your social media material will immediately get more engagement if you include a location.
11. Polish Up Your Memes Game!
No social media trend is complete without a good ole meme.
The term is most typically linked to an image or video that illustrates a specific idea or concept and is then typically shared through online social networks.
Social media, forums, instant messaging services, and even news websites continue to spread trending memes.
The graphics and videos that convey the message are frequently modified and expanded upon, which frequently leads to the evolution of the initial concept into something altogether different. They might simply be altered with a different caption.
In pursuit of becoming more relatable to the audience, brands have started to participate in creating relevant memes according to whatever memes have been floating around at the time.
If the meme is done well, it can make the brand gain great traction and higher engagement since they are easily shareable, although it definitely can backfire if not done properly.
12. Live Streaming is Getting Popular
There is almost no doubt that live videos on social media will become very popular in 2022, with most social media professionals urging companies to focus on video marketing for some time now.
Brands are increasingly experimenting with live streams to engage in casual conversations with their audience.
Unexpectedly, demand for video content has also fallen behind the popularity of live videos.
Because roughly 82 percent of people prefer live videos on social media, live videos are currently being broadcasted on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Tumblr.
Additionally, there has been a rise in the number of brands inviting popular celebs to participate in live chats, giving consumers more chances to connect with their idols or favorite celebrities.
13. Recreation of Trending or Viral Content
You can spread your message or product very organic way by giving the social media trend your unique spin.
Through TikTok’s discovery page, where popular hashtags and audio clips can be found, you may locate trends and get lots of inspiration for content.
Keeping up with popular content provides you with an edge. If you constantly share or create high-quality material that interests your audience, people are more inclined to follow you and pay attention to what you have to say.
Consider yourself a trend-setter or thought leader if you are one of the first to share or comment on this content.
Don’t forget to add a call to action to the end of your social media content and a relevant link to your website in your bio to direct users away from the platform and to your website.
14. Ephemeral Videos are Getting Higher Reach and Visibility
Stories are entertaining and engaging.
That’s because they are sweet, interactive, and visible to most audiences. So, to provide their customers a peep into their world, brands are experimenting with the “Story” function on Facebook and Instagram.
The brand stories are intended to be more intimate and casual, but photographs, videos, and textual content continue to inform everyone of new releases, deals, and other public announcements.
Customers can anticipate far greater brand involvement in the upcoming days as companies roll out surveys, quizzes, “behind the scenes” glimpses, impromptu banter, office tours, and a wide range of other interesting content that will help them to know a company better.
15. Chatbot Marketing Has Become Essential
A social media trend that is seen to be growing more popular by the day.
To generate sales, chatbot marketing is a marketing strategy that uses computer programs to automate conversations with prospects and consumers on your website or in your app.
Unlike humans, chatbots are always available and require no pay; thus, building a chatbot is a one-time investment.
With less resources, a chatbot enables your company to serve more customers.
It also aids in traffic segmentation. By steering the conversation in various directions, chatbots broaden the audience that you are targeting.
Key Takeaway
It’s essential to keep in mind that social media is everchanging. It’s not a given that previous strategies will produce the same outcomes. So the best way to go about these trends is deciding which ones match the best with your marketing strategy and then focusing on executing them well.
You should also pay attention to your audiences while determining what works for you and your company.
While following Social media trends will definitely get you the reach you want; ranking on Google for a great website and overall good digital presence can also drive long-term results for your brand. And this is where agencies like UPQODE can help you understand and leverage the best social media trends for guaranteed results.
