10 Social Media Trends Marketers Should Watch for in 2022

2021 was a busy 12 months for social media platforms and 2022 is shaping as much as be even busier. Earlier this 12 months I offered up some predictions on what I assumed the 12 months would maintain for social media. Here’s how I see social media shaping up in 2022, together with what methods entrepreneurs ought to develop for a whole buyer expertise.

Trend 1: The Evolution of the Main Feed Has Begun 

Algorithmic most important feeds in Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Pinterest have lengthy related individuals to information. But the attention-baiting ways they observe have come underneath scrutiny, resulting in an outcry for adjustments in platform methods to deal with bringing worth to the individuals who depend on them for connection. Several adjustments meant to curate posts with extra personalization and privateness in thoughts are on the best way. Twitter, for instance, said its roadmap for future products and features will double its income by 2023. Moves like this reduce the dependency on focused promoting for income whereas creating options ostensibly to higher serve its prospects.  

What This Means: Marketers ought to anticipate — and plan to leverage — extra options that improve buyer experiences. Most rollouts of those options will likely be a trial, nonetheless. The subsequent pattern explains why.

Related Article: Is Social Media Marketing Dying?

Trend 2: Yet Social Media Remains Addicted to Ad Revenue

The parade of advertisements proven alongside information feeds is displaying its age, but the income created has grown to new heights. One forecast from eMarketer predicted Twitter will attain $2 billion in U.S. advert income throughout 2021, regardless of flat progress. That is a 38.5% enhance over 2020. The site additionally forecasted that Instagram will for the primary time make up over 50% of Facebook’s $50.30 billion in web advert revenues in 2021.

What This Means: Marketers mustn’t pause any consciousness for new advertisements options simply but, as digital advertisements will nonetheless seemingly present efficient buyer journey messaging. But an evolution in choices will handle growing strain to display ROI.

Trend 3: Slimmed-Down Media Models Will Turn Up the Competitive Heat

We all know the firmly established social media platforms with large audiences. Facebook, for instance, reported in its earnings report a year-over-year enhance in daily and monthly active users, regardless of public criticism of its practices.

In distinction, newer platforms have emerged which provide a basically slimmed-down media mannequin, meant to make socializing amongst area of interest audiences extra handy to average and safer as a group. Interestingly, not all are social media platforms. These upstarts embrace the podcast platforms like Spotify, livechat platforms akin to Clubhouse, publication platforms like Substack and sub-communities in the established social media platforms, akin to Twitter Spaces. All purpose to permit individuals to forge significant connections with their favourite creators or group relatively than counting on algorithmic suggestions for engagement. 

It’s unlikely anybody platform would be the “subsequent Facebook” any time quickly — nobody is asking for it. The problem for these slimmed-down enterprise fashions is producing income. It’s a final mile downside that guarantees enormous upsides for influencers and platforms via shared income on subscriptions, ideas or ticketed occasions. Twitter and Spotify might doubtlessly leverage this profit quicker, for both present enterprise fashions (podcasts on Spotify) or for rising options (akin to Twitter Tips).

What This Means: These platforms finally imply entrepreneurs should domesticate buyer expertise choices that don’t seem as attention-grabbing content material.

Related Article: Twitter Spaces Challenges Clubhouse for the Live Audio Social Media Crown

Trend 4: As Social Commerce Continues Its Ascent, So Will Customer Service

As mentioned beforehand, social commerce features will continue to roll out to maintain up with how individuals store for items and providers. Customers have grow to be accustomed to initiating a purchase order on-line — be it curbside pickup of groceries or scheduling an appointment — however now need quick responses to customer support wants as nicely. Social media channels devoted to customer support have lengthy existed. The pandemic has solely accelerated adoption of those channels.

What This Means: Marketers ought to look to refine customer support to realize probably the most profit of recent social media platform options.

Trend 5: Calls for Social Media Accountability Will Increase

Public calls for social media platform accountability will enhance, buoyed by the fallout from the Facebook papers and the findings implicating Instagram as a unfavorable affect on younger customers. The findings, first delivered to gentle in a Wall Street Journal report, discovered 32% of teenage ladies surveyed “indicated that after they had unfavorable ideas about their look, Instagram made these emotions worse.” Fourteen % of juvenile boys reported comparable sentiment.

The large query is what sort of laws will emerge. Antitrust debates will reveal clues on legislative progress. Antitrust scrutiny can constrain the key platforms’ capacity to repeat options from smaller platform or outright purchase different platforms, as seen with UK’s regulators telling Meta to promote its Giphy acquisition. This differs from the fast acquisition and dissolution of platforms, as seen when Twitter acquired Periscope. That scrutiny can hold smaller platforms amongst entrepreneurs’ strategic decisions. 

What This Means: Expect extra fallout in 2022 to form what digital media entrepreneurs use to attach with prospects.

Trend 6: The Rise of the Creative Influencers

The proliferation of artistic instruments have allowed for a brand new type of influencer to take form: the Creators. Creators differ barely from conventional influencers, who depend on experiencing the world round them, by producing unique supplies utilizing these instruments. The pandemic has modified what influences are priceless on the go. As a outcome, creators have gained a large follower depend in a world with restricted gathering choices in the course of the pandemic.    

What This Means: Marketers now face two sorts of influencers for branding and leveraging engagement. Creators provide a means of demonstrating the good thing about an answer, creating an extra micro-influencer alternative.

Related Article: Social Media Influencers: Macro, Micro, Nano

Trend 7: The Augmented Reality Buzz Grows in the Wake of the Metaverse Hype

People’s curiosity in augmented actuality (AR) is beginning to develop, although reservations stay. Quite a lot of research have indicated a combined client response to augmented and digital actuality (AR and VR). “Nearly 4 in 10 US adults haven’t used and usually are not in utilizing AR and VR whereas buying, per Bizrate Insights. However, 23% of those that haven’t are very in doing so,” in keeping with eMarketer.

Hesitancy might change as rising competitors in the metaverse continues in 2022. While Facebook rebranded as Meta to higher leverage its funding in AR, Microsoft introduced Mesh, a metaverse for its Teams platform. The high-profile curiosity in the metaverse issues due to its potential to attract downstream AR builders and suppliers into the tech highlight.

What This Means: Marketers needs to be open to experimenting with AR as a strategy to improve buyer experiences. Snapchat has proven clear examples, akin to opening virtual pop-up stores for Wal-Mart and Coke.

Trend 8: Short Video Adoption Will Shape Video Metrics

TikTok dominates the social media atmosphere immediately, triggering a heated competitors to introduce quick movies and dwell streaming capabilities, akin to YouTube’s introduction of YouTube Shorts and Instagram declaring its emphasis on video over pictures. 

What This Means: Marketers want to research if hyperlink playback results in conversion exercise. This means correlating information from social media to gross sales or conversion information. Look for correlation options in reporting or for third-party options starting from open supply information fashions made with R or Python to plugin dependencies for enterprise information options like Power BI or Google Data Studio.

Related Article: TikTok Marketing: Are You Ready to Flip the Switch?

Trend 9: Addressing Mental Health Flaws in Social Media Metrics

People’s elevated reliance on social media in the course of the pandemic has created a new-grown consciousness of the impression extreme social media utilization has on psychological well being. The aftereffects can go away individuals feeling drained, manipulated and exhausted.

Social media platforms have been experimenting on how greatest to reply. For instance, YouTube determined to take away dislike counts from public view of its movies. While a dislike depend is just not a conversion metric, making it non-public makes an attempt to chop again on harassment.

The non-public dislike depend additionally displays a transfer amongst social media platforms to scrub their feeds of unhealthy actors. Creating an atmosphere appropriate for customer support means stopping troll-like behaviors from plugging up the DMs and filtering social media feeds in opposition to abusive habits. Twitter has been main the battle on its platform, introducing Safety Mode, a filter in opposition to abusive tweets when a person is getting unfavorable consideration. Brands are responding as nicely. In one case, Lush Cosmetics introduced it will pull all its social media profiles to point out its issues round psychological well being wellness on social platforms.

What This Means: Marketers ought to anticipate extra coordination among the many social media platforms to stop cross-platform abuse. 

Trend 10: Choosing Where You Forge Better Customer Connections

There’s now a dizzying array of social media decisions, however manufacturers are recognizing they might must be selective to which platforms join them greatest to an meant viewers. For instance, throughout National Black Business Month I famous entrepreneurs have a possibility to attach investments in provider range to buyer impressions of their model. Many prospects scrutinize these efforts via social media, so entrepreneurs must know which platform offers the suitable publicity for connection and messaging.

What This Means: Marketers ought to consider metrics that present the place engagement align with conversions when making main choices.