Is AI here to stay? Should you park one or more of your platforms in favor of committing to platforms with positive ROI? And should you start investing more resources into building your community instead of your brand? This blog explores the latest trends in social media and provides actionable insights for marketers to adapt and (hopefully) thrive in the increasingly competitive social media space.

Short-form dominance

Short-form videos have been winning the game of attention for a sustained period of time, with TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube leading the charge with their bite-sized videos. Marketers that haven’t adopted the practice of short-form content creation need to focus on creating concise, impactful videos that deliver value quickly. Leveraging tools like Creatify, a marketing video maker, can help produce high-quality short videos efficiently, in bulk and at scale. According to Adobe, YouTube Shorts received 27% more views and 70% more likes than longer videos, highlighting the effectiveness of this format. If you’re not sure where to start with short-form content, make use of longer videos that you have produced, use AI tools to chop and multiply the original file into dozens of short variations. There’s no excuse to duck short-form video.

AI-generated content and digital avatars

AI is literally transforming the way marketers produce their videos. If you’re not using AI tools, you are at risk of falling behind competitors that are leveraging those tools; furthermore, those tools are learning - and fast. For businesses, AI can streamline and support the marketing process, including scripting, editing, and acting, making it easier to create high-quality content quickly and cost-effectively. In fact, Creatify can do all the above with a simple product URL from Amazon. Here’s a little more info on how.

Are you not entertained!?

Engaging, entertaining content remains the cornerstone of successful social media marketing. Audiences are more likely to share and interact with content that is fun and engaging, driving higher social ROI. Marketers should focus on creating content that entertains while delivering their brand message. There is no limit to how ludicrous you can be. Look at RyanAir, DuoLingo, and KFC. They create bizarre, trending, borderline non-sensical content that, no pun intended, lands every time. Look at this as an example:

Platform commitment over ubiquity

Marketers have been taught to ensure a presence where your actual and/or potential audience are active. So what if you’re committing time and energy to Instagram, TikTok, and X, for example, because your research indicates that your target audience are active there, but X has been reported negative ROI for some time. Insights from Hootsuite indicate a shift. Rather than spreading efforts thin across all platforms, brands are increasingly focusing on those that deliver the best ROI. This shift means committing to platforms that work and dropping those with little to no return.

Sorry X, it was just a hypothetical example.

Marketers should analyze which platforms are driving the most engagement and conversions for and concentrate their efforts there.

TikTok as a search engine

TikTok is fast becoming a powerful search engine, especially for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. This demographic particularly are using TikTok to discover new brands. Marketers therefore need to optimize their content for search by using relevant keywords and hashtags. Here’s 6 ways to make your content more discoverable on TikTok Creating content that answers common questions or provides valuable information can help brands tap into this search behavior. Type a keyword into the search bar to see what questions people are asking in the search engine.

Social commerce

Another reason to never leave your sofa!

2024 is seeing more plaforms integrate and iterate shopping directly into their channels, making it easier (too easy?) for users to purchase products without leaving the app. In fact, according to research by Accenture, the social commerce market is growing by 25% annually and will be worth $1.2 trillion by 2025.

Platforms like Instagram and TikTok offer features that allow users to shop directly from videos, and savvy marketers should utilize shoppable to drive sales directly from their social media content. Reach the masses with your creative original content; target audience segments with shoppable posts, and rejoice as both work symbiotically.

This trend is crucial for brands looking to capitalize on the growing intersection of social media and e-commerce, so get integrating!

Build your community first!

Building a community around a brand is as important as traditional brand building. Engaging with the audience through DMs, live streams, collaborative posts, and video replies fosters loyalty, helps retention, and… wait for it… builds a community.

Encouraging user-generated content and creating spaces for your community to connect with each other and you/the brand can lead to higher engagement rates and stronger brand loyalty. Community-building efforts are essential for creating a loyal customer base and driving long-term success. Interestingly, a paper published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour entitled The roles of brand community and community engagement in building brand trust on social media, the authors suggest that interactive experiences between consumers and brands improves consumption.

Conclusion

By understanding and adapting to these 2024 social media trends, marketers can stay ahead of the curve and effectively engage their audiences. Embracing short-form video, leveraging AI, focusing on entertaining content, committing to high-ROI platforms, optimizing for TikTok search, integrating social commerce, and building strong communities are essential strategies for success heading into 2025.