Social Media Trends Business Should be Ready to Embrace in 2022
“Success is when persistence meets preparation.” – Sherrilyn Kenyon, Writer
Over the last 10 years or so, social media as a whole has gone from a humorous and light-hearted thing in the world of business, to a substantial vehicle of communication. Fair to say that it has taken on a transformative role in the world of marketing, advertising and even day-to-day business operations for many companies. While the readily available audience and easily accessible platforms offer brands a multitude of ways to reach customers, the smartest businesses leverage these platforms by way of social media trends.
They keep an eye on the latest happenings and tap into those events on these platforms. This information is used to gear audiences towards digital marketing campaigns, driving awareness and so on. Given how popular social media has become in recent years, especially amongst businesses, the competition is high. This means that you need to know what’s going to happen before it does. In this article, we give you a glimpse into what the future of social media trends might be in 2022 and maybe even beyond.
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ToggleThe Rise of YouTube Shorts
In September of 2020, YouTube, the video hosting platform, released a feature that you might be familiar with by now – YouTube Shorts. It began its first round of beta testing in India. After a successful run in India, the app feature was fully released in the US in March of 2021 with a cumulative 6.5 billion daily views on average! A few months later, it went worldwide and has remained a top contender with the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels.
YouTube Shorts enable the user to produce short-form videos with features such as video segmenting, and in-app recording, giving their visuals musical overlays. The length of the videos can be around 60 seconds or less and here’s the kicker, they do not disappear like Instagram Reels or Stories.
Now the question is: Why is it such a boon for brands to leverage? Well, let’s think about that for a moment. When we think of platforms like TikTok, it caters to a very niche audience. Some brands might have a harder time catering to the younger consumers there or grabbing their attention as a business. YouTube on the other hand shares that same popularity but thanks to the varied content genres on there, it invites and caters to a much more diverse audience, including the ones on TikTok. So, establishing a connection through Shorts might be much more efficient.
Another factor to consider is the fact that YouTube Shorts don’t disappear as we mentioned earlier. This gives permanency to the content. This grows the long-term YouTube awareness amongst audiences.
You need to think beyond data if you want to success with Social Media.
Creativity Is the Way Forward with Social Media
As a business, one of your main priorities is to make sure that you generate leads, get new clients and continue to grow. As such, social media plays a huge role in your arsenal of tools for progress. It helps businesses engage and communicate with a diverse audience. With so much competition in the market and all those brands out there, getting noticed requires unique content beyond anything else.
This can be a time-consuming and investment-heavy process if you want to make a difference. However, despite the hard work, it is worth it. Unique content on social platforms makes people want to engage and learn more.
The only way to get truly unique content that aligns with the latest social media trends is to focus on simple aspects of your business. Don’t be afraid to experiment and do some beta testing with content before you go all out. Most importantly, get insight into your target audience. Find out what they like and want to see more of. Align these expectations with your strategy and step outside of your comfort zone when producing content!
“Confidence comes from being prepared.” – John Wooden, American Basketball Coach
The Move to Social Media Advertising
Did you ever notice how social media trends took a drastic turn ever since the pandemic hit? Before the pandemic, around 2019 or so, businesses were still relying heavily on getting traffic through media such as Google Ads and getting a high SERP ranking. Very few used social media as a major wing of operations. The same was more or less true for consumers. During the lockdown, however, things shifted.
Consumers moved more and more towards accessing businesses, products and services in more directed methods. A good example of this is Facebook Marketplace. It gave customers a more direct line of connection with the actual product page of the business instead of having to scour Google search results hoping to find the right company. This is around the same time that businesses noticed this social media trend and invested more time and capital into building their presence on social media platforms.
It’s enough to just be where the customers are, you have to drive demand and get them to come to you. This is essentially what those select few brands did when Facebook Marketplace was in its infancy of gaining popularity. It brings us back to our previous point – you need to get creative and see how your business can specialize or be unique in terms of an online presence amidst the ocean of brands that populate social platforms. Regardless of how you do it, moving in this direction is ultimately a step in the right direction.
You cannot rely on a single social platform if you want to succeed.
Platform Diversity Is a Must
Your social media strategy can be the most creative one out there, but it only gains true effectiveness when it is diversified across different platforms. Having a presence on multiple social media apps is the only way to build your following and gain traction in terms of growth. We aren’t suggesting you have to make an account under every platform out there, that would be unrealistic when it comes to maintaining a content flow, especially if you lack the bandwidth to do so.
Having said that, you should consider having a presence on a handful of major platforms like YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and maybe even WhatsApp. The aim is to reach a diverse demographic. Given that different platforms cater to different core demographics, you need to diversify to get the best results.