Social media trends can be hard to keep on top of, especially if you are short on marketing time and budget. It can be difficult to know what, when and where to post let alone staying on top of the latest trends and features.
So, Blue Bee thought we would give you a quick rundown on what we have found to be the most important new features, the hottest social media trends and a few things you can probably start moving away from.
What’s new?
AI
AI is infiltrating itself into every walk of life, and social media is no exception. The use of AI generated content in social media is increasing at an alarming rate – one recent study by Hootsuite has shown that an increase of 318% in organisations intending on using AI for customer support this year.
Shying away from using AI wouldn’t be prudent, however, careful strategy needs to be exercised. As we will explore further, authenticity is becoming more important. However, don’t fear using it for planning, ideas, and timesaving.
Social as Search
More and more, younger people are using social media platforms as a search tool, so much so Tik Tok has started integrating Google search results!
As with normal SEO, keywords are key to making sure your content can be found efficiently on social media. If you can get it right and keep it relevant, content can appear on social search indefinitely. A quick win is to use social posts to answer some frequently asked questions, or more educational content like ‘how to’s’ or ‘top tips’.
Content & community, over followers
This one may sound a bit unusual, but having loads of followers may not be as beneficial to your brand and your social media strategy as you think.
Using engaging and authentic content, to build up a stronger and more concentrated community helps to streamline your strategy and focus on an audience that is genuinely interested in your brand, services or product. This in turn helps to generate social shares, which has become the new word of mouth, and it’s an amazingly efficient way to build up your brand and audience.
What’s hot?
Authenticity is key
The rise in artificially generated content has led to an increase in the importance of the ‘human voice’ in social media. Although using social media to push sales and engagement is important, not every post needs to do so.
Don’t be afraid to give a peek behind the scenes, introduce the team, or post about something that’s not strictly related to your brand or product. Having a more authentic, human voice helps to instil an image of honesty and trustworthiness that more curated posts can’t.
Video still reigns supreme
As we all know video content, especially short form, has reigned supreme in recent times, with advent of Tik Tok taking the world by storm. And this trend isn’t going anywhere, as it’s widely considered the most engaging type of content and it is a great way of connecting with your audience.
However, recent trends show that longer form video is making a strong comeback. Tik Tok is experimenting with extending the video length on the platform to up to 30 minutes!
So, the long and short of it (excuse the pun) is to keep doing the short form content in your day-to-day strategy but consider producing something a bit longer to help with storytelling and educating a captive audience.
Using social media for customer service
This goes hand in hand with the first point in this section. Social media channels are becoming increasingly valuable when it comes to customer support. No one likes being on hold for an eternity or waiting days on end for a reply to an email, so engaging directly and quickly with you customers via social media will help to improve your image as a responsive and caring brand.
On top of this, you will learn more about your audience and potential pain points by hearing concerns and observing behaviours.
What’s not so hot?
BeReal … be gone?
BeReal came in pretty hot last year, and with over 73 million active users at its peak it looked as though it was here to stay. The real-time selfie app appeared a to be a fun and spontaneous platform to the more manicured feeds of Instagram etc. However, the number of users has dropped off dramatically recently.
So, our advice is, if you haven’t already integrated BeReal into your social media strategy, don’t stress. It’s best to focus on the platforms that currently work best for you and keep an eye out for the next new app on the block.
Don’t obsess about hashtags
We are by no means saying that hashtags are dead, but their importance and relevance is definitely on the wane. Their use on Facebook and Pinterest has become almost completely redundant, and even on Instagram the ways that people find content has evolved to make it easier without using them.
However, they are still used for finding posts on a specific subject and can help increase organic reach, but they don’t need to be as much of a priority as in the past.
Ignore those old follower ‘hacks’
In the past there were several tricks and ‘hacks’ to try and increase your number of followers and engagement on your page – these have now become a lot less effective.
Tactics like ‘follow for follow’, engagement pods and just out-and-out paying for followers really aren’t the way forward. Social media algorithms have become too clever. It’s much more effective to build an audience organically with the quality of your content. This takes more time, but it will result in you reaching the right people and building up a more engaged community.
Making sure you are using social media to its fullest, is a powerful and cost-effective way to market your business or your product, so staying in the loop on the latest functions that work and those that don’t is important.
How can Blue Bee help?
Choosing Blue Bee as your digital marketing agency means the pressure of keeping up to date with the latest social media trends is taken away from you and left to our expert marketing team. Our social media marketing services ensure that you have a consistent voice across your platforms and is tailored to achieve engagement with your target audience.
