SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS
Our 2022 predictions
The past couple of years have been pretty...hectic to put it mildly. But if there's one thing that this pandemic has taught us, is that social media isn't going anywhere. In fact, its role in connecting people has exponentially grown into a mainstream culture of influence, opinions, creativity and inspirations.
We are gradually shifting from pure community management where timely scheduling and responsiveness where the key elements of a good social media strategy, to a more compelling approach where creativity and emotions define the existential purpose of why we should communicate on social media in the first place.
Bottomline: the landscape is changing, brands are starting to realize that connecting with your audience on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter requires innovation and foresight rather than hard selling. 2022/2023 will be an incredibly exciting time to assess these developments and we are convinced that SMM will become into an actual digital craft.
Here are below our top 5 predictions of how social media marketing will be evolving in the next couple of years.
5 SOCIAL MEDIA PREDICTIONS
SOCIAL COMMERCE
SNACKABLE VIDEOS
FACEBOOK ALGORITHM 2.0
NICHE
INFLUENCE
B2B SOCIAL MARKETING
1. Niche Influence Will Go Big
Influencer marketing has been around for years now, so much that 93% of brands are including some form of influence tactics within their social media strategy today. That might be because nearly 3 out 4 teens trust key opinions leaders more than traditional advertising or simply because it's much more relatable and engaging.
But at the end of the day, we're seeing a big shift in the way influencers are leveraged to connect with an audience. Exit big-time celebrities, welcome micro and nano-influencers, basically your friend who has slightly more followers than you and create great content about what he actually loves. In other words: niche influencers.
Many platforms from TikTok to Instagram have started understanding the potential of local creators and have rolled out dedicated platforms for these upcoming influencers to create compelling content and collaborate with brands seeking for more genuine (...and affordable) content.
It's not a numbers game anymore but a battle driven by quality content and organic engagement. At Garçon! we've been working with niche influencers for years and have even started our own community KinKlub where our favorite local foodies, food-savvy peeps get to discover new restaurants and rave about it.
Garçon! for SOHO Pizza Bangkok
2. Attention-Grabbing Short Videos Will Thrive
Garçon! for Taco Bell Thailand
Blame it on TikTok or thank Instagram Reels for this, but whether you're into this format or not, short clips are the expected norm now. Incredibly addictive because easily digestible with a captivating storytelling, it's also a powerful ally when it comes to driving sales online.
Social users have notoriously a short attention span and allocate it to content that make them raise an eyebrow. So short videos are the perfect answer to selflessly connect with an audience as this "snackable content" can easily be used to highlight products and raise brand awareness. TikTok, where short videos are the only available format, is now considered to be the social media platform with the highest engagement rate per post.
Short videos allow bottomless creativity as the main challenge is to say more with less time. This usually leads to fun trends and innovative content. High video production costs used to be prohibiting for lots of young brands but now these new formats, often shot through a smartphone, enable anyone and everyone to create animated content.
3. Social Commerce Will Take Over
Well it's all in the title. Social commerce is the practice of selling directly through social media. Basically, the whole journey from product discovery to purchasing is managed within a single social media platform.
The idea is to keep prospects within a closed ecosystem without having to send them on a third-party channel (website, marketplace...) to pursue their customer experience at the risk of losing them on the way.
Platforms like Instagram Shop lean heavily on this, allowing their users to spot a new product and shop it with just a few taps.
With the rise of new selling practices such as Live Selling where brands stream live what they are selling and take orders on the spot, social commerce has become a way to simplify the customer experience to its finest: meet a product, like a product, shop the product.
Expected to hit a lofty 875$ billion in 2022 in th U.S. only, social commerce has a big future ahead, especially when considering that 81% of Instagram users say they're using the platform to research new products and services...
Garçon! for Koko ritual
4. Posting Less Will Mean More
Remember the days where when brands where posting 2 or 3 times per day?! Well, we do, and it was hectic.
Thankfully, the ways to connect with an audience (understand = oversaturating the space with somewhat irrelevant content just to hope users will see you and think about you) have evolved and today we're actually going in the complete opposite direction.
Social media users' time is precious so brands better make the most of it. It has been proven that the more brands post on social media, the bigger the drop in engagement is:
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On average, moving from 0.5 to 1.5 posts per day equates to a 19% reduction in engagement per post
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When we move from 1.5 to 2.5 posts per day, the further loss is 9%
Instead brands should focus more on curating content that actually match their audience's values and interests and if this means posting less, well then even better.
Since 2018, the Facebook algorithm prioritizes posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions so ultimately content that trigger actions, meaning brands need to focus on leveling up their post engagement (quality) rather than frequency (quantity).
This has been pushed even further in 2021 when Facebook tweaked their algorithm to now predict what an audience is more likely to engage with based on their history. Theoretically this could mean that if a brand keeps engaging a user, that user will keep seeing content from that brand. BUT, if the user start finding the content too frequent or repetitive and stops engaging, then the brand might lose that user for good. So: quality over quantity.
5. B2B Social Media Marketing Will Soar
Social media marketing has always been associated with a customer-centric experience. However, industrial brands are now also turning to social media when it comes to furthering their connections with business clients but also in some cases, to get in the spotlight and show final customers what they are capable of.
Often overlooked, B2B social media marketing has been growing consistently to a point where companies do not limit themselves to networking-oriented platforms such as LinkedIn but are preempting the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even TikTok to showcase their technical skills and bring a much-needed dose of innovation in their marketing strategy.
It's worth noting that nearly 1 out of 2 millennials would rather not interact with a sales rep within a B2B context. Thus social media comes in handy to facilitate business relationships too.
Today, roughly 20% of our agency portfolio is made of B2B accounts, for whom we generate tactical awareness as well as shareable content, ROI-focused ad campaigns and even influencer marketing when deemed relevant. Check out one our latest case study for Formica Thailand, the world's leading laminate manufacturer to discover a sample of a successful B2B strategy.
BRAND EXPERIENCES
