Today, digital marketing would be incomplete without a presence on social media platforms.
Most people use social media platforms to stay in touch with friends and learn new things for many hours each day. Consequently, many businesses are taking advantage of social media to engage with a huge online audience.
Your brand needs to consider adopting a social media marketing strategy to succeed in business and beat the competition.
However, that can be easier said than done!
Social media marketing trends change quickly, and the types of promotion that worked effectively a few years ago may have become less effective in today's rapidly evolving environment.
As such, staying up-to-date with current social media trends and incorporating them into your marketing plan is a good idea.
Zeemo’s social advertising team recommends you keep an eye on the following social media marketing trends in 2022.
Tik Tok is no longer the new kid on the block.
TikTok's popularity will continue to rise, and brands must take it more seriously.
If your target audience is 35 or under, you should try using TikTok as a social media site. TikTok's meteoric rise has resulted in the app gaining more than 1 billion users worldwide.
TikTok is a social networking platform that attracts a lot of attention, with users in the United States spending up to 850 hours a month on the app, making it an increasingly important tool for marketers in 2022.
In the last year, TikTok has grown by leaps and bounds, and TikTok's functionalities are starting to make their way into Facebook products, which has Facebook nervous.
TikTok was the top-earning non-game app in 2021, with more than $110 million in revenue spent by users on the platform. This illustrates the app's potential to generate sales amongst young users for online marketers.
Several high-earning influencers have also helped TikTok's rise by signing lucrative sponsorship arrangements. Big and small brands are starting to pay attention to the platform's influencer marketing capabilities.
In the beginning, TikTok was not taken very seriously, with many believing it to be a temporary fad for teens who would soon lose interest.
However, many mainstream celebrities have since jumped on the TikTok bandwagon, making a lot of money. Companies are also beginning to realise that they can reach a much larger audience on TikTok than they could on Instagram or Facebook.
Even Small Brands Are Using Influencers To Promote
A recent trend in social media marketing has been to hire influencers. All indications point to this approach being very successful and becoming increasingly popular in the years to come.
Influencer marketing uses social media personalities with a large follower base to promote your products and services. As the name implies, influencers have the power to affect their followers' actions because their fans have already acquired a sense of trust and familiarity with them.
Influencers create personalised content and provide the opportunity to engage with more people from all walks of life. As a result, you can expect a faster expansion of your business.
Depending on your business, having social media influencers as part of your digital marketing plan could make perfect sense.
Outsourcing Social Media Marketing Is Becoming The Norm
Simply reacting to community comments and cultivating an engaged, happy online audience can be a full-time effort for businesses without a dedicated social media department.
Many businesses are beginning to outsource their Social Media Marketing to full-service creative agencies like Zeemo. Especially if they don't have the internal expertise, time and resources to create viral content, analyse social media analytics, coordinate brand messaging, and conduct advertising campaigns.
Outsourcing to a social media marketing agency to plan, design, implement, measure, and improve your social advertising campaigns for a fixed fee can also come in at significantly less cost than hiring a specialist team in-house.
Short-form Content Is On The Rise
Most digital marketers agree that you need a variety of top-quality original content for social media marketing campaigns to be successful. These can include videos, blogs, images, competitions and more.
If you have good social media content that is current and interesting to your target audience, you should expect an increase in the volume of free, unpaid traffic to your website.
There has been a long-held assumption in traditional media that the power of a piece of content to persuade is in its length, but with consumer attention spans becoming shorter, this is no longer the case.
Your social media marketing material must be as succinct as possible because extended content isn't going to draw in customers.
Customers want short-form content that is easy to consume on their smartphones while on the go. So creating brilliant bite-sized content is one of the best strategies to ensure more people engage with your brand in 2022.
Artificial Intelligence Is Making Customer Care Easier
Incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into your digital marketing strategy is another trend you should consider.
Programming machines and chatbots to emulate human actions and reasoning and responding to the concerns and queries of users can be a game-changer.
Using AI, businesses can drastically reduce the time their paid human staff take responding to everyday routine questions, leaving them to focus only on the most complex enquiries.
A chatbot is also available 24/7, so consumers can quickly get the answers outside your regular trading hours.
Social Commerce Is Taking Off
Through social media, it's easier than ever to locate a product or service. During the pandemic, companies raced to social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok to provide clients online access to their wares while their physical stores remained shuttered.
As a result of this new trend, social shopping (or social commerce) is growing three times faster than traditional eCommerce and is predicted to reach $1.2 trillion globally by 2025.
Thanks to the seamless integration efforts of these platforms, 2022 has seen customers able to pay for goods and services without ever leaving their social network apps. By 2025, social eCommerce revenue generated by Generation Z and Millennials will account for 62% of global social eCommerce revenue.
TikTok has partnered with Shopify; YouTube is looking to increase its in-video shoppable tags; Instagram has made massive improvements to its buying area within the app, and you can even shop on Pinterest now.
Brands looking to showcase their storefronts on social media need to put in more effort nowadays. It's no longer enough to rely on a single high-quality image; companies now need to have multiple pictures and keyword-rich descriptions for each product. Video is becoming especially vital, with the format's popularity growing across all audiences, as seen by the recent shift by younger consumers from Instagram to TikTok.
More Small Brands Are Advertising On YouTube
In 2022, advertising on YouTube is expected to reach new heights. The shift away from traditional linear TV and the rising cost of subscriptions for streaming services are driving more people to YouTube.
Alphabet, YouTube's parent company, brought in about $29 billion in advertising revenue last year, an increase of 46% over the previous year. The rise results from traditional TV advertisers, direct response ads, and brand advertising on the social media platform.
YouTube advertising Cost Per View (CPV) is still incredibly cheap, so even as a small brand, if you've got a strategic YouTube advertising approach with a channel that attracts subscribers and sales, you can quickly gain an advantage over your competitors.
Final Thoughts
As part of your digital marketing plan, social media promotions can help you develop your business more quickly.
The growing success of social media advertising can be attributed to the widespread use of sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok.
By staying up to date with and taking advantage of social media trends, you can engage with millions of people worldwide, increasing your brand's visibility and revenue in the long term.
If you need help creating a winning social media strategy, Zeemo's social media advertising team is ready to help.
