TRENDS IN SOCIAL MEDIA 2022

Events from the previous two years will have a big influence on how brands use social media to engage their audiences in 2022.Consumers have always been in charge of determining the value of your brand, but the pandemic has hastened their takeover and solidified their control for the years 2022 and beyond.In order to keep your plans on track, we’ve put together 4 social media trends to watch in the upcoming year.

An Increase in Nano and Micro Influencers

Digital communities today are more diverse, active, and influential in our daily lives than they have ever been. Social media is the best platform for creating and serving these groups.

As the tide on social media shifts away from flashy mega-influencers and toward smaller, more genuine groups, brands that strategically partner with creators are engaging with new audiences, earning their trust, and gaining cultural capital.

The expectations of consumers regarding influencer marketing have drastically changed. To promote your product in 2022, working with a celebrity influencer alone won’t be sufficient.

Only 4% of consumers say that celebrity endorsements alone will influence them to make a purchase, according to the ExpertVoice Consumer Trust Panel report.

Most consumers, however, rely on influencer content that:

• displays the value of the brand.
• demonstrates the use of the brand’s goods or services.
• outlines the best ways to utilize the products and services offered by the brand.

A key differentiator in determining whether they would trust a recommendation, according to the report, is having honest, approachable, and knowledgeable individuals make recommendations based on actual experience with the product.

Because they outperform their “more popular” counterparts with higher engagement rates, more devoted followers, and lower costs, brands are turning more and more to micro-influencers (10k–100k followers).

What this means for marketers: Regardless of your niche, you need to engage with creator communities to develop long-lasting client relationships, streamline content creation, and increase brand recognition and affinity.

Will TikTok monopolize the online community?

All social media platforms now support short-form video, including Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Pinterest Idea Pins. Short-form video is reportedly something LinkedIn is thinking about adding to its website.

Where does all of this innovation come from, then? TikTok is the one driving it.

Short-form videos consistently rank as our client’s best-performing organic and paid advertisement, especially those that feel more genuine and don’t appear to be typical advertisements, according to Chain Reaction’s social media team. And there’s a justification for it.

Consumer appetite for entertaining, engaging content online has become insatiable after a year in which millions of people were placed on lockdown. We have discovered ourselves with more free time and less positive content surrounding us. As a result, a lot of people now use social media to pass the time.

The type of content that users were flocked to on social media also changed, not just the amount of content that was available.

Due to the freedom of expression provided by TikTok’s distinctive video format, creators and their followers are able to interact more intimately and trustworthily. Now that TikTok has its own “Creator Marketplace,” marketers can assess their statistics and demographics to find the ideal creators to work with.

What this means for marketers is that as more people scroll endlessly through their feeds every second, the demand for snackable content is continuing to rise.  Marketers will reach a global audience if they comprehend this and create content with a platform-appropriate tone of voice. Brands must, however, make sure that all video and reel content benefits their audience and is cleverly integrated into their products.

Keep in mind that following unrelated trends without producing content that is consistent with your overall marketing goals won’t get you anywhere.

Social media marketing will advance in sophistication.

By the end of the year, third-party cookies will be completely gone thanks to Google’s plan to phase out cookie tracking by 2023, which means many marketers will need to adapt their strategies as social advertising changes.

Thankfully, there are many effective methods available for marketers to employ instead of third-party cookies. Examples include user-generated content, customized and targeted social media ads, and retargeting campaigns. Personalized and targeted social media ads, user-generated content, and retargeting campaigns.

Developing data-driven strategies using metrics to comprehend users’ interests and preferences on a deeper and more personal level could actually be an exciting opportunity for marketers in this situation.

Users can make purchases using social media platforms without switching between them.

What this means for marketers is that e-commerce won’t soon be replaced by social commerce. However, studying how your current and potential customers use these networks can give you insights into their attitudes and behaviors with regard to the experience.  Make your omnichannel strategy based on this data.