From branding on TikTok to Short-Form Videos, here are 10 rising social media trends to look out for in 2022!
Please raise your hand if you use social media!? Pfft. Who doesn’t right?
As technology continues to revolutionize the 21st Century, we are becoming ever more capable of reaching out to people all over the world. And… with just a click of a finger.
Social media is an umbrella term for any digital technology that allows users to communicate, share and upload content online. It serves as an essential tool in our lives and its growth has only just begun. It’s through social media that we form our connections online, communicate to friends, family and loved ones, binge entertainment and meaningfully enjoy every moment in life.
Whether you’re a business, influencer or individual looking to gain traction, it’s essential that you use the growing trends on social media to your advantage.
- TikTok – The spotlight for brands
- The new face of UGC Marketing
- Social Commerce will enhance our shopping experience
- The Creator Economy will boom
- Live videos will skyrocket
- The rise of Influencer Marketing
- Extended Reality – The future of tomorrow
- Short-form videos are here to stay
- The Metaverse goes mainstream
- The future of AI-powered customer service
- TikTok – The Spotlight for Brands
With over 1 billion monthly active users, TikTok remains a fierce competitor that every social media platform should look out for. Its’ incredible growth has made it the fastest growing social media network ever and is predicted to reach 755 million monthly users by 2022.
With many brands realising the large potential of the TikTok market, many are tapping into the enjoyment and quirky atmosphere that the platform offers. Brands like Vivo who’ve campaigned their smartphone – Vivo 51 in Pakistan, have gone viral on TikTok after its #VivoY51Style popped off amongst the youth and accumulated a whopping 2.5 billion views in just 15 days. But TikTok offers more.
As 60% of TikTok users are Gen Zers, brands are taking advantage of the young trendsetting demographic. With the introduction of the TikTok creator marketplace, a marketplace consisting of many TikTok profiles, brands are offered valuable insight into their demographics, making it the perfect marketplace for finding ideal creators for their marketing campaigns.
As TikTok continues to grow, it will become an app for anyone and everyone.
- The New Face of UGC Marketing
As the pandemic emphasises the importance of mental health, many small brands have used user-generated content (UGC) to spread the message. Take Tentsile, a tent and hammock brand that continues to use aesthetically pleasing Instagram photos from many of its customers to advertise its products. But the importance of UGC marketing goes beyond customer experiences.
In surveying 2042 consumers across the U.S, U.K and Australia, 83% of consumers want more authentic shopping experiences and 70% believes it’s essential for brands to provide personalised experiences. 79% of those surveyed agree that UGC is detrimental to their purchasing decisions.
As many Gen Zers and millennials use social media platforms to purchase products and services, companies and brands have pivoted on UGC to ensure customers follow through with a purchase. The footwear company, Crocs had its fair share of success on TikTok after its branded hashtag #croctok created an influx of UGC, offering valuable content for both marketing purposes and customer interest. UGC is becoming ever more effective in drawing target audiences and building the momentum for more successful social media campaigns.
- Social Commerce Will Enhance Our Shopping Experience
Social commerce is also known as social shopping is a subset of e-commerce where shopping – from product discovery to purchase support is done on social media. With Gen Zers and millennials leading up to two-thirds of global commercial sales, it’s not a bad option to invest in social commerce. Speaking of investing, 49% of brands plan to invest more in social commerce in 2022, calling for brands to consider integrating social media and shopping to makes sales more interesting and to bring people together.
Take Facebook, the world’s most popular social media platform with over 2.8 billion monthly active users whose social commerce strategy has scaled to unstoppable heights. The company’s implementation of its marketplace in 2016 continues to exponentially reach a larger community globally, with over 725 million users seeing ads across the platform’s social commerce offerings each month.
But Facebook continues to expand its social commerce features, introducing shops and the ability to use Instagram in app-checkout as well as new capabilities for Livestream product selling. As social commerce continues to grow, it will offer greater tools in addressing the quick and effective route of shopping every customer wants.
Social commerce is here to stay.
- The Creator Economy Will Boom
With the creator economy now worth over $100 billion, many social media platforms are introducing new tools, marketplaces, and greater monetization features – like Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest. As social media platforms transform into a more streamlined
e-commerce environment, it makes sense that content creators will drive the future of content creation, providing engagement, building communities, and emphasizing the importance of collaboration with brands. Have a craving for quality content? Don’t worry, this is what more than 50 million content creators are set up to do this year.
But it’s not just us that need accessible content. As content creation grows, many brands have latched on to the idea of influencer marketing and are paying top content creators with established audiences to advertise their products and services. With platforms like Twitch and Patreon implementing new monetisation features, content creation is becoming ever more convenient and valuable.
Creators are expanding their social media platforms, as fan bases bandwagon across to follow them on various social outlets, allowing them to get paid from more versatile venues. But what makes the creator economy so prestigious is the huge growth it offers. I think we can all agree that the content creators are here to stay.
- Live Videos Will Skyrocket
You’ve put up with the lockdowns, limited your exposure outside and kept in contact with friends and family online. But it just isn’t enough. With live streaming videos, the entertainment, connection, and information are all in your hands. With the video streaming market expected to reach $224 Billion by 2028, live streaming is becoming incredibly central to our daily lives. It offers us an accessible way of consuming content and encourages interactions that keep the community connected. With the number of social media Livestream viewers increasing by 130% last year during the pandemic, it’s clear that we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.
More brands and businesses will use live streams to engage with their audience in real-time providing greater levels of engagement without any obstructions or filters. In fact, according to a survey conducted by Livestream, 80% of respondents said they’d rather watch a live video from a brand than read a blog. As more brands rethink their content creation strategy with a focus on live streaming, companies will be able to connect with their audience better, increase their brand awareness and increase sales.
For example, Twitch, a popular video streaming platform has introduced new monetisation features, offering greater options for affiliate marketing and allowing brand collaborations with twitch streamers to drive sales and promote steamers in return. Whether or not live streaming will diminish over the decade, we can all be promised that it will continue to serve as an essential tool in our everyday lives.
- The Rise of Influencer Marketing
Whether you’re a small business looking to build an audience or a brand looking to advertise your products efficiently, influencer marketing has become a mind-blowingly large industry that anyone can turn to. With the industry predicted to reach $16.4 Billion in 2022, it’s no doubt that influencers are in great demand, and will continue to be so for decades to come. But brands are especially affected by the growth, as influencer marketing offers a greater potential for audiences reaching out and following the brand themselves.
As influencers continue to pick on sounding more genuine in advertising and through satisfactory recurring experiences with products and services, they become more credible and so does the brand. In a recent study conducted, 47% of people said they listen to influencers when buying a product indicating the impact influencer marketing can have on purchasing decisions. But it’s not just the effect it has on branding that sells the story. It’s the large-scale reach that inevitably touches every demographic.
From the younger generations seeing branded toys to teenagers fantasying about the new technology gadgets to older adults and elderly hearing about or seeing more conventional approaches to addressing work-balances and pain aches, influencer marketing is a powerful tool that will reign the marketing industry for years to come.
- Extended Reality – The Future of Tomorrow
As we traverse through the digital era, we’re approached with immersive technology that will transform the 21stcentury. The combination of virtual and physical worlds (extended reality) including Augmented and Virtual Reality will offer greater experiences in our everyday lives and help us meet our growing demand is becoming more technology geared.
With the VR and AR market expected to reach $209 billion by 2022, it’s not surprising that many large social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok are implementing and diversifying into new means of innovative technology.
For example, Instagram’s AR functionality for ads allows users to try on products from selected brands. This strategic use of AR means customers are more likely to purchase the product online as they can preview what the product would look like in real life without accessing them in-store. As more brands use this feature to influence purchasing decisions, digital marketing tactics like AR previews, AR filters, and AR and VR technology will become ever more prominent. It won’t be long before AR and VR based social media campaigns will be used in the consumer market, prompting increases in sales and consumer confidence.
- Short-Form Videos Are Here to Stay
From 5 second clips of sensational memes to classical skits and everything in between, short-form videos are revolutionizing the way we access the content. Surely, two-minute educational videos aren’t useful?
Well, think again. Short-form videos are becoming more popular because they’re short, straight to the point, and rememberable. Well, more rememberable for our 8-second attention span than a 3-hour video at least.
As short-form video consumption continues to increase exponentially, the call for greater consumable content brings an increase in entertainment such as memes, niche-based topics, and even serious controversial issues. But it doesn’t stop there. Short-form videos are popular pretty much everywhere. From Instagram reels to TikTok clips, they account for 25% of all internet traffic.
Brands can continue to advertise their marketing campaigns through short-form videos, making them more transparent and accessible to audiences. As the number of smartphones is predicted to reach 2 billion globally by 2022, it makes sense that short videos are most accessible on hand-held devices due to convenience. Short-form videos will continue to live up to its legacy and stand behind the motto, “any video under a minute or two is always a memorable one”.
- The Metaverse Goes Mainstream
The Metaverse refers to the idea of a virtual world, where users can interact with a variety of environments. It’s explorable through immersive technologies such as Augmented and Virtual Reality. The Metaverse is likely to become mainstream by the coming years, as large corporate companies like Facebook and Microsoft focus on strategies that will bring virtual world dominance.
Facebook already has offered new means of virtual technology through its products; however, the competition is only getting real. With Microsoft announcing its ‘Teams’ meeting app would offer capabilities for users to turn themselves into avatars. This sparked a rivalry between the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who later rebranded his company as Meta with a central focus on virtual worlds.
But the Metaverse will serve as more than just a creative powerhouse as the birth of new digital entities will be introduced and such technology is predicted to offer greater interactions that will build our social networks. While the Metaverse is in its early stages of development, it’s essential to build a more creative and versatile form of social media. Something we can all agree on.
- The Future Of AI-Powered Customer Service
The pandemic has made us consider the importance of investing in newer technologies. As customers transform their shopping behaviours digitally, many companies have shifted their entire operations online, placing a greater focus on improving their technology.
As we approach 2022, the need to maximise customer satisfaction has landed companies the duty to refine their online customer service strategy, and even introduce newer technologies like Artificial Intelligence. But barebones AI is useless. By personalising AI, companies can become more aware of the customer’s demands on a deeper level. Here’s how:
- By recommending products that are relevant to a customer’s purchase history
- By sending notifications for scheduled purchases
- By automating emails so customers can stay up to date with the company/business
But the use of AI in customer service is more than just a few features. Chatbots are an AI tool that has been around for a while. Their increase in popularity allows companies to automate processes on their websites and social media platforms, offering interactions with customers through a variety of ways including:
- Offering recommendations
- Answering questions
- Varying their responses through machine learning
As technology advances, the use of AI in customer service will be an essential facet that will transform the experiences we have when need to file that support ticket online.
Conclusion
Let’s take a moment to consider where we’re heading. With greater demands for new technology that will revolutionize our Metaverse experience to more convenient shopping online, it’s clear that social media trends are here to stay for many generations to come.
And while new trends can be overwhelming, it offers opportunities for trial and error where we can connect globally in just one click.
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