As marketers, we're always scanning the digital landscape for new opportunities to benefit from our customers' changing behaviors online. Social media marketing trends today, like the trends we see in many popular digital channels, are undergoing rapid transformation due to increased usage and user expectations.
This article looks at the top 5 social media marketing trends recommended by experts in the field. You will find trend analysis, examples, tools, and training recommendations to help you implement new innovations in your social media strategy.
We asked 5 digital marketing experts and the verdict is in - all our 5 social media marketing trends revolve around one very important theme:
Your customer
Now more than ever, effective social media marketing means doing right by your fans, advocates, and future customers. We've got 5 social media marketing trends to help you get it right.
Did you know 58.4% of the world's population uses social media?
That means 4.62 billion people around the world now use social media. Moreover, 424 million new users have come online within the last 12 months, and this growth is expected to continue.
Social media today is growing fast. It's not just the number of users, but also the amount of time they spend on social channels that has shot up. Today's average daily usage is 2 hours and 27 minutes, spread across 7.5 social media platforms.
Undoubtedly, there are plenty of opportunities for social media marketers to achieve their objectives in the next 12 months. You can find all the latest social media stats to inform your marketing strategy in our global social media statistics research summary 2022.
Looking for new marketing tools to strengthen your social media marketing strategy? Use the Smart Insights RACE Framework to inform each stage of your customers' experiences of your brand integrated across a 5-step marketing funnel:
Plan > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage
Our practical, actionable marketing structure empowers marketers and managers to use data and customer insights to inform their marketing activities, such as social media marketing for top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel customer journeys.
Deciding which social strategies to prioritize in your marketing mix depends a lot on your short-term and long-term objectives, as well as the resources you have available.
But, in a competitive social media landscape, it's imperative that you stay up to date with the latest trends and innovations, and make informed decisions to win your target markets.
That's why we've asked 5 experts to contribute their social media marketing trends for 2022.
Marketers and consumers alike have watched in 2020 and 2021 as big brands use their platforms to fight for the causes closest to their hearts.
In some cases, the link between the company and its corporate social responsibility is clear. For example, Toms' One for One was a pledge to donate one pair of shoes for every Toms purchase. It's catchy and easy to remember, and many contribute this philanthropical approach to the company's fast growth in the early 2000s.
However, in 2019, the company redeveloped its charitable giving and now opts for a more sophisticated approach, showing that brand values don't have to fit into a sound bite.
This new approach means Toms can give other appropriate donations, not just shoes, and has been well received by Toms' fans and critics alike.
Moreover, customers today are more informed on current social issues and our global responsibilities. When it comes to social media marketing trends today, it is not enough to promote social initiatives without fully following through, for example, you could be accused of 'greenwashing'.
It's not just the world of fashion being held to account. Global corporates around the world are supporting worthy causes with direct or indirect links to their product/services.
American Express sponsored the Coalition to Back Black Businesses, which partnered with Shopify to offer black-owned small businesses training and resources to promote themselves online.
Lots of small businesses have benefited from this scheme, enabling American Express to build grass-roots business relationships while showcasing their support for ethnic minority communities on a global scale.
The Starbucks Coffee And Farmer Equity program ranks potential Starbucks suppliers on economic transparency, social responsibility, environmental leadership, and quality.
Once approved, the suppliers must uphold C.A.F.E. practices to continue supplying Starbucks. Therefore, customers can feel assured their cup of coffee is supporting ethical best practice, as this tweet by Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson highlights.
Google has proudly been carbon neutral since 2007 and is keenly communicating its goal of being carbon-free by 2030. Since Google is primarily a service provider, creating small eco-friendly projects on-site, such as Google Gardens, is great physical evidence of the company's commitment to sustainability.
Plus, when in bloom, the gardens provide great bite-sized video content opportunities for advocates/employees to share.
As demonstrated by these successful examples above, communicating your brand values on social media is all about speaking to your customer and their values. This focus ensures you generate top social media campaigns that are authentic and engaging, as Rhian explains.
"The global pandemic has created a huge shift in how brands and consumers interact.
Accelerated digital maturity on both sides has led to a heightened awareness of social, community, and environmental values, with customers calling for organizations to take a stand on action-based priorities, and brands aligning their business values with consumer beliefs.
In 2022 we will see more sustainability storytelling, and meaningful connections with local networks, nonprofits, and philanthropic causes. These will be weaved into the value proposition, rather than as an add-on.
It will be these authentic connections at the core of the marketing strategy that will build engagement with hard-to-reach audiences and ultimately build true advocacy."
Rhian is a digital marketing and content specialist who has been working in e-commerce since 2005. She now works freelance to help businesses plan and create their digital content resources.
Rhian contributes regularly to Smart Insights, authoring Business Membership guides and blogs, as well as for her own business, Sparkly Content.
The message is clear, in 2022 brands are aligning business propositions with their customers' values, with big benefits for customers, partners, and staff. You can learn about idea generation and campaign messaging in our Learning Path below.
In 2022, we all know personalization can go a lot further than [FIRST NAME] and [JOB TITLE]. With increased social media usage across the board, savvy marketers can use behavioral data to dig deep and find out more about their customers. But how do you cultivate and leverage this data?
ActiveCampaign reports that quizzes with lead forms can average up to 55% opt-in rates. Plus, you can tailor your quiz to get all the information you want up-front (just don't make the quiz too long if you don't want to lose people).
Crucially, make sure you're offering them value for filling it in, to avoid friction further down the line. ActiveCampaign recommends enticing questions and suitable answers, linked to your business, such as:
Quizzes are great for actively questioning and qualifying leads. But there are other more common behaviors that could tell you just as much about your leads' wants and needs, without having to ask.
For example, Expandi has a tool that allows you to target LinkedIn members who have interacted with an individual post on social media. Depending on who you're looking to target, this could be a post addressing a particular pain point, a help article, or sector news.
With this level of insight, you can target individuals via InMail with hyper-personalized content focused on their situation.
Other similar behavioral identifiers you could use include:
Today's social media users are savvy enough to recognize basic name/job title personalization techniques. To truly stand out, you need a more sophisticated approach.
The best personalization may be undetectable to the end-user, other than recognizing that your content is relevant and helpful. So, invest your time in making sure you're sending the right content to the right customers.
We live in a digital world with an abundance of specialized digital marketing tools helping marketers attain personalization excellence.
Here are 3 examples of the kind of tools you could use for some social media personalization activities. If you've got other recommendations, let us know!
"I train marketers and business owners, primarily working in B2B, on how to turn their social media audiences into sales prospects.
Over the two years of the pandemic, I have noticed a marked increase in the number of LinkedIn connection requests I'm receiving (usually from people who are not relevant to me).
In 2022, the key to success is personalization. It no longer works to just target people with a particular job title. Keep drilling down.
If you want ROI from LinkedIn, there are 3 things you need to focus on:
If you try to appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody."
Danny is one of the UK’s top social media experts. He speaks frequently at conferences, trade events and seminars on how to utilize social media for customer acquisition.
Get to know your customer personas with our online training module 'Define Audience Personas'. In this 15 minute module, you'll uncover 10 features used to create a perfect persona and learn how to use different types of persona to achieve different marketing goals.
Define audience personas
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Learn how to develop a customer persona that can help you to target your marketing more effectively
Learn MoreIf you're looking for a cost-effective strategy to cut through the noise and get noticed by your target markets on social media in 2022, it's time to collaborate with your brand's fans and advocates. Use your social media strategy to fill your future customers' news feeds with user-generated content that sings about your brand.
Obviously, this method will only work if customers love your product. But, if you're struggling to find happy customers, maybe there are other elements of the marketing mix beyond promotion that would be more impactful for your marketing as a whole.
In Stackla's post-pandemic consumer shopping habits, 79% of respondents reported that UGC highly impacted their purchasing decisions. In fact, 58% left an eCommerce store without purchasing because the site didn’t contain any customer reviews or photos (64% of Gen Z).
By not investing in UCG, not only are you limiting your social reach, but you may also be losing website conversions. However, UCG is only effective if done right. So, make sure to check you aren't making any classic UCG mistakes either.
Top social media campaigns use UGC to tap into what excites their current and future customers to create authentic and share-worthy content that showcases your brand. Examples include:
LaCroix sends drinks to influencers who appeal to their target markets in return for on-brand visual content. Fans can also tag @lacroixwater to be featured on the brand's Instagram page, increasing their personal reach and potentially being included in further LaCroix/other giveaways.
The Instagram handle @cannon_photographers encourages users to upload their photography and tag #CannonPhotographers for a chance to be shared and promoted. More importantly, all the content generated by this tactic provides further social proof for Canon cameras.
Since 1987, the Nike slogan has been the cornerstone of the brand - not just on social media but across the entire Nike marketing mix. However, it does translate very easily to a hashtag, and many brand fans are taking advantage of this by tagging their own content to increase reach.
"Social media is as important as ever for businesses in 2022, but maintaining organic reach despite ever-declining visibility in the feed is a challenge. The solution is simple: Collaboration.
Instead of thinking of social media as a way to promote, re-imagine it as a way to develop relationships with the public, your fans, your customers, and, yes, even your employees.
Leverage the voices of others in these new mediums by trying to post as much user-generated content that is as relevant to your brand as possible.
In doing, so not only will your content needs be met, but you will also gain increased visibility and trust in your brand."
Neal Schaffer is an authority on helping innovative businesses digitally transform their marketing. Neal's latest book, The Age of Influence (HarperCollins Leadership), is a ground-breaking work redefining digital influence.
Any form of online PR done well has the power to transform your social media activity. But, as a high-risk activity, you'll want to properly inform yourself and your team before you launch. Learn the basics of user and influencer content management in our Learning Path below.
Influencer marketing
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Learn how to improve your process of influencer relationship management
Learn MoreDid you know your audience's attention span is now less than a goldfish?
Marketers today have up to 8 seconds to put across their key messages and entice further interaction on their social posts - and that's if the user doesn't just scroll right past (I've got tips on how to avoid this too).
So, how can you create social media content that cuts through the noise in 2022?
Marketing technology today enables marketers to communicate more creatively - using design, rather just copy, to get their point across efficiently and effectively.
Bite-sized content is not a new concept. However, we are continuing to see bite-sized trends from other channels such as email and web design sneaking into social media design, as the key platforms continue to develop their offerings.
This example from Maglr, an interactive marketing content platform, demonstrates how to make a paragraph of copy on a landing page more 'snackable'.
Here, imagery and interactive buttons help convey the information in an easy-to-read format. Conversely, this example, with 6 hover buttons, took me about 7 seconds to consume.
In 2022, we are all hopefully already beyond sharing paragraphs of copy on our social media channels. But the latest developments in social media technology, including interactive post formats and other disruptive social media trends today, lead the way for continuing omnichannel design development in marketing.
Judging by other channel successes, social media digital disruption is not a trend to take lightly in 2022.
On social media, you want to capture your audience's attention asap and encourage them to interact with your brand. As marketers, we already have access to simple paid and organic disruption techniques that work for a variety of messages/products. We'll look at examples of each.
In 2021, Meta honed their (paid) Facebook Instant Experiences (previous Canvas) templates to include:
In this lookbook example, users in your target audience are invited to hover over the item they're most interested in to find out the price and click through to the checkout if they're tempted.
The implications of lookbook for e-commerce businesses are huge - a frictionless in-app discovery and purchase funnel designed to disrupt mindless social scrolling and encourage more sales from your key social demographics.
In-post social media polls encourage users to vote on your post. Popular poll content includes asking users to vote for their favorite products or 'this or that' within the brand.
An added bonus of large polls like this is users can see how the majority voted. For users who agree with the majority vote, the 'social proof' element has been proven to trigger Oxytocin, a 'happy chemical', that can cause the user to feel warmer towards the brand.
Emoji react polls encourage audiences to interact using the emoticon responses at the bottom of your post. This example by LinkedIn contributor Dinesh Punni also serves as customer research informing his video content strategy.
As we know, social media platform algorithms favor posts that disrupt users from their typical scrolling behavior. Paid social algorithms reward engaging ads with higher impressions and a lower CPC, while high-interaction organic posts win increased reach.
How do you do that? Create social media experiences that truly disrupt your audiences' newsfeeds. Less focus on copy, more focus on key messages, strong imagery/video, and compelling CTAs.
Plus, as social media technology continues to develop, keep an eye out for new opportunities to evolve your digital disruption techniques, before your competitors do!
The long and short of it is this - marketers in 2022 looking for cost-effective social media marketing need to catch their audience's attention fast. Disrupt social media to increase both user engagement and your wider social media reach, for all the right reasons.
Finally, did you know effective social media distribution has omnichannel benefits to your brand beyond just your social media presence, like improved SEO? The message is loud and clear - customer-centric social media is a no-brainer for 2022.
Keep up to date with the latest developments in social media marketing with our dedicated advanced module. Smart Insights Members can access the equivalent modules for all key marketing channels including email and SEO developments, and learning how to utilize the latest developments in Google Analytics.
Learn the latest social media developments
Part of the Social media marketing Toolkit
Learn different options to support your continuous professional development and give your business an edge by keeping up-to-date with social media developments
Learn MoreDid you know 79% of marketers report buying paid social media advertising in 2021? When planning your social media budget for 2022, you need to consider all aspects of paid, owned, and earned media.
Tech Crunch's annual growth marketing experts survey includes a recommendation from Ammo to spend 20% of your budget on paid social media, highlighting benefits of paid social media such as testing messages and building up your audience online.
But which social media gives the best investment? Logical Media group give their top 6 social media formats for ROI:
As discussed above, Instant Experiences push the boundaries of our social media expectations by cultivating targeted, interactive, frictionless, shoppable content.
Meta Facebook Slideshow Ads allow you to upload 3-10 images that are used to create a short video ad that can be distrubted via Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger Ads. This is a great option for marketers with limited video resource.
Meta Instagram Shopping Ads let you ad product tags to your posts. Customers can purchase your items in-ap, reducing the friction of changing to a different channel mid-purchase.
Use targeted content to hone in on your target audience's pain points, offer them solutions, and entice them to complete your form on LinkedIn to find out more.
We've all seen those 1900 character plain text messages. But with the right targeting (paid InMail ads can be sent to connections and non-connections alike) this social media marketing trend can pay off big time for B2B lead gen.
Non-Skippable ads can be 5-20 seconds long, which gives you plenty of time to get your message across.
Since users must watch them to see their content, Logical Media Group recommend keeping the content 'light and personable so it doesn’t feel like you’re holding users hostage with spammy video ads'.
Crucially, these ad formats are content-heavy - focusing on imagery/design for 1-4, persuasive copy for the 5th, and bite-sized video for the 6th.
With paid media comes more opportunity for testing and targeting, enabling marketers to continue to hone their strategy using customer behavioral data and increase their social media ROI in 2022.
"Invest in paid media to reach your target audience and generate brand results.
Many marketers are still too reliant on using organic social media to promote their brands across different social channels.
This is despite the gradual decline in organic reach that we’ve seen since the early to mid-2010s on Facebook, and research showing that clicks do not drive meaningful brand results or sales.
Whether you work for a small start-up, a medium-sized agency, or a large brand, marketers must invest in paid media to reach both existing customers and future prospects.
One of Byron Sharp’s rules for brand growth is to continuously reach out to all buyers of the category. In order to do this, marketers must pay to reach their wider target audience and measure their efforts accurately to demonstrate results and justify future investment.
Failing to do so will limit your potential and leave your content lost in the social sea of noise!"
Gavin Llewellyn is a chartered marketer and senior digital marketer who specializes in social media, SEO and online strategy.
Paid social media is expensive to get wrong. Access quick practical marketing training to learn the benefits of investing in paid social adverts, and the factors that affect the response and return-on-investment from paid social ads.
Optimizing paid social media
Part of the Social media marketing Toolkit
Learn about the benefits of using paid social media and the options available increase return on investment
Learn MoreOur expert trends cover a wide range of options and highlight the importance of customer experience when planning your social media activities. Now more than ever, marketers and managers need to apply a strategic, data-driven approach to their planning.
If you're not sure where to start, why not find out more about Smart Insights membership? From social media marketing trends to digital marketing optimization - learn how to structure your next marketing plan to achieve your goals.
By Gabrielle Wright
Gabrielle Wright is the Smart Insights blog editor, managing the company's SEO and social media strategies. With specialisms in marketing for the pharmaceutical/healthcare industry, financial services, manufacturing, IT/high tech, brands and e-commerce, Gabrielle can generally be found in her home office in Sandiacre, with a cup of tea, reading and writing about marketing theory and its practical application in the global economy! You can connect with Gabrielle on LinkedIn.
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