Social media: new trends

Innovations in the social media world are going well! Every year, new trends emerge, and platforms use creativity to retain and attract new users, becoming a real acquisition lever for companies. Retrospective of the key trends on social media platforms for this year 2022!

Trend #1: the TikTok phenomenon

TikTok is the application that literally exploded in popularity during the pandemic. This popular social network has been downloaded 3 billion times, becoming the first app outside of the Meta group to achieve such a level of success. Thanks to its algorithm based on highly personalized recommendation, TikTok is a real ally for businesses, more and more of which are investing on the platform.

TikTok attracts a rather young audience, and offers a very rich diversity of content meeting several objectives: promotion of the employer brand, employee engagement thanks to a fun internal communication method, promoting its notoriety by using influencers active on the social platform... and many others!

Today, TikTok has more than a billion active users per month and millions of hyper-addictive short videos (15 to 60 seconds) sent to the platform. A figure which confirms the importance ofrecent dataon these platforms.

Moreover, TikTok's audience has evolved relatively quickly: the platform is no longer just reserved for younger generations. The current average age is now 35, and we are seeing more and more political actors, infopreneurs, and e-retailers investing on the social network.

Trend #2: the growth of social selling

Social selling consists of directly selling your products or services via social networks. The principle is simple: redirect the user to a sales page on the website of a company or brand X using the sales features offered by many social platforms. In order to improve thelead conversion. Whether Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat… they all offer sales solutions. Integration and customer experience will be improved to become more and more native, integrating perfectly with social networks.

Trend #3: Creating connected and sustainable online communities

Brands plan to grow their online communities through social media. On popular social platforms, the “Communities” function has appeared, notably on Twitter with the recent “Twitter Communities” created on the model of Facebook groups. The feature is also under development on the WhatsApp side.

Digital communities are growing more and more. Their strengths are multiple. First, they allow brands to connect with new audiences by offering them exclusive access to their products or services, gain their trust and thus improve their notoriety.

However, creating an online community takes effort and thought. In this quest, content is king. It's about creating content with high added value (but not only that!) in order to attract your targets, retain your customers, and engage them in the long term alongside you. You must be “top of mind” in their minds, depending on the sector of activity in which you work.

In today's connected world, building a strong online community is essential to ensure the sustainability of your business. Digital is no longer an option!

Trend #4: influencer marketing

An influencer marketing strategy is built through social networks. The idea is to capitalize on the audience and notoriety of an influencer to highlight a product or service. The pandemic itself has boosted the impact of this marketing concept which has become a new way for companies and brands to reach their targets, and to allow them to identify themselves thanks to (more or less) strong personalities.

In 2022, authenticity is emerging as the biggest trend in influencer marketing. Influencers are now increasingly looking to understand and align with the values ​​of the company or brand for which they work.

Note that Internet users tend to listen more to the opinions of people they know or at least those they trust. They are influenced by the opinions and comments of their friends, family, colleagues, but also by influential people on social networks. This is why more and more companies are relying on customer reviews to improve customer confidence in their products or services.

Trend #5: the omnipresence of videos

In recent years, the content offered on different social platforms has evolved significantly. The key word: innovation. Today, Internet users' expectations are different and push them to consume ever more personalized content adapted to their needs. From now on, we must offer specific, authentic and local content for each audience. Video is a very good way to engage Internet users (shares, comments, etc.). Video is a fun format, like snack content, which is very adapted to today's new lifestyles.

Note that video is the preferred format for marketers in 2021, and this trend is confirmed in 2022! However, user attention tends to decline more and more, which is why it is essential to create short, or even ultra-short, videos. This trend partly explains the success of Tiktok, which requires videos to be made between 15 and 60 seconds maximum. Social networks have understood this well, and today offer Reels on Instagram, Shorts on YouTube, or even Tiktok on TikTok.

To stay in the race for engagement on social networks, it is essential for any brand and company to follow the key trends on these different social platforms. So, what do you think will be the new trends in 2023?

Sources:

• Moderator Blog

• Meta media

• Dynamic mag

• Hubspot

• Swello

• Facelift