It’s once again the start of a new year, 2024, which will inevitably bring even more social media changes. The social media landscape continues to evolve rapidly, presenting new opportunities and challenges to those of who work in it. Staying ahead of the curve on social media trends allows you to make your campaigns this year pop, and allow consistent innovation and success in 2024.
Short-Form Video Evolution 📈
Short-form videos aren’t going anywhere, but their format continues to be evolving with the audience. Platforms will continue to refine and expand their short-form video capabilities, offering advanced editing tools, interactive features, and monetisation options to keep creators, brands and audiences engaged.
On the other hand… longer videos may also be having a comeback. Platforms like TikTok are already requesting users to post content over 1 min long, and we’re likely going to see a resurgence of content between 60s and 240s long. These will fit with the increasing max video lengths on Instagram, TikTok and more… whilst not quite trying to compete with long-form platforms like YouTube or streaming on Twitch.
Text-Only Posts 📝
With X f.k.a Twitter on the decline, and multiple similar apps showing up to the marketplace, consumers have been looking for these platforms to continue their text-only posts which is very different to Instagram and TikTok. We’ve seen Instagram and TikTok also implement new post types to create text-based content for their users too. Showing that the consumers are hungry for text across all platforms, and will continue to be an important part of your content strategy.
Platform Simple Selection 🥇
In 2023 we’ve seen new platforms come to market to fill the gap Twitter/X MAY leave if it continues on a decline. However, strategically, we expect most brands to select a few platforms to focus their attention on instead of forcing social media managers to be on every new platform. This will allow for stronger content creation for the audiences on each platform, and therefore a better ROI for brands who do this.
Shift to Engagement Content 🗣️
After social connection with friends and family, most people use social media to be entertained and to mentally unwind. In order to cater to this, and encourage high engagement rates, more brands will create content fit for engagement over self-promotion.
This will continue to increase the amount of work social media teams need to put in, in order to both cater to audiences and internal stakeholders to get the right balance of sales, marketing messaging and entertaining content.
SEO for Social Media ⁉️
Social media channels represent the biggest threat to traditional search engines, with many users already turning to TikTok and Instagram with their questions. TikTok has already integrated Google search results in its app, and we will likely continue to see updates to this in 2024.
With this change in how people are trying to get information, social media marketers can amplify their content by catering to what users are searching for. This allows for a longer-tail of impressions as it can act as more evergreen content (depending on the question) and may help boost numbers past the first day of posting.
Tools such as keyword research and optimisation may become a bigger part of the daily tasks of social managers because of this. Your social strategies need to evolve into entertainment content that engages and also answers search intent to be in the best position to grow.
Get Personal as People Become more Private 👀
We’re continuing to see stronger privacy-centric features across platforms, with many users opting for more private lives. We’re seeing a shift to people using DMs, group chats, and close friends to then make their circles, opinions, and sharing of content even smaller than before.
To counter this we can encourage users to jump in brand DMs for engagement and a more community centric approach. We’re also keeping eyes open on how brands will use new features like Instagram’s broadcast channel within DMs and close friends. Our measurement of engagement may also need to shift definitions, where shares and saves may become more and more of an indicative measurement of how well content is doing.
AI 🤝 Social Media Managers
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) broke the mainstream and has been a broad topic of discussion, especially within social marketer circles for the past couple of years. With both positive and negative views, it’s unlikely that AI is going away next year but is instead something to continue keeping an eye on how to utilise AI to improve workload and efficiency.
Social media marketing continues to be a nuanced and creative field, where AI can’t quite be as creative as some of our strongest minds. However AI is a great assistant, and learning to delegate some tasks to an AI for better support, with you of course leading and ensuring the content is correct after the fact will be important.
AI is expected to play a pivotal role in enhancing user experiences, with hyper-personalised content on social media platforms. Like current algorithms, our feeds will become even more tailored, with customised recommendations and pushing content that aligns with users preferences and interests.
As we step into 2024, the social media landscape promises innovation, immersion, and a deeper connection between users and platforms. Embracing these trends and staying agile in your strategies, will help show you the transformative power of social media in shaping the future of online interactions. Those who adapt will thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape, and remember to stay on top of the everchanging social media news too.