The last couple of years brought about a lot of change for marketing agencies. Some of them have had lasting effects on the marketing industries. Marketers today have had to adapt to a new way of life for the user, one that sees them finding and buying online, across more platforms, and with new creative formats to explore. If you want to keep up, you should take a look at our list of the top five social media marketing trends in 2022.
TikTok will keep rising
The explosive popularity of TikTok had a lot of people assuming the dance app was a passing fad, but we’re now a couple of years and a huge, larger demographic away from that point. TikTok is here to stay and it’s finally finding its feet. Creators and marketers are seeing the potential in the app, now just needing the app itself to keep up.
There are steps in that direction. TikTok is always releasing new marketing updates, perhaps testing out what is working. It has launched a less than stellar creator fund, but it’s a start, a desktop live-streaming platform for gamers, and endless information on what content gets clicks whether it’s branded or not.
TikTok, between its format and the nature of its content, also offers more opportunities for creative marketing. It has fundamentally changed how brands communicate with their relative demographics, and if TikTok were to disappear tomorrow, those ideals would still exist.
The social media retail space will expand
The recent but drastic changes inflicted on social media marketing trends are that users’ habits are not about to revert back now that lockdowns have eased. Social media users have gotten used to finding, whether organically or not, the items they want to buy, researching the brand on social media, and buying the item directly from the platform.
Instagram has been the platform to fully embrace this. Even if its sister company, Facebook, has implemented a lot of the same features, it has been best embraced by Instagram users. Instagram shops are popping up all over the site, controlled by businesses of various sizes and encouraged by Instagram’s features that make life very easy for the consumer.
As 2022 goes on, we can expect to see more of this. Not only are smaller platforms poised to encourage the retail boom, like Snapchat, TikTok, and Pinterest, but more businesses are expected to start using the platforms to reach a wider demographic in this accessible forum.
Small network budgets will go up
2020 and 2021 brought a lot of financial pressure. A lot of businesses had to adapt to massive global changes. A drastic upturn in cultural habits resulted in changes for a lot of businesses, and marketing budgets had to be really squeezed to get everything done.
One good point from this is that marketing agencies learned to diversify. Smaller platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest, and especially, TikTok, were having their moment, and all have taken steps to embrace more attention. The old way of focusing on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram has gone out, and marketers are paying attention to the demographics of smaller platforms and using them to reach these demographics. These are previously ignored communities, with very different interests. A Reddit user is likely to be a very different person from an A03 user, for example.
It makes sense to not only hit these demographics as they are relevant but also spread your marketing campaign across platforms that have just as many eyes but aren’t as oversaturated.
Shorter videos will surge
As outlined, TikTok did a lot for marketing, but nothing exists in a vacuum, and suddenly every massive platform was looking to incorporate short-form video content into their repertoire. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, and more have all embraced the shorter video format, allowing for more creative entertainment that keeps the user’s attention only as long as it needs it.
For marketers, this has meant getting creative with their content. 30 seconds isn’t going to allow you to talk for too long about the ingredients in a skincare product, and you aren’t going to keep a TikTok user’s attention that way when they have skits and pranks to get to, so marketers have started incorporating their brand in different ways into TikTok trends, whether that’s Duolingo’s sassy mascot performing skits, or ThePoolGuy’s cleaning process that taps into #oddlysatisfying territory.
The market volume will significantly increase
There is a rise in internet users around the world right now, which is bound to convert into a rise in social media users. But with so many brands filling the market, marketers will have to prepare for a fight for attention.
Marketers should make sure that their demographic is clearly outlined and is in fact being targeted at the right people. Aim to create high-quality content that keeps attention and spread it out amongst various platforms relevant to your audience. Keep an eye on social media marketing trends as they change to assure that you are adapting well.
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