Things to Look out for with Social Media in 2022

We’re nearing the end of the first quarter of 2022 and now might be the time you’re starting to think about evaluating your marketing plans and making some changes for the rest of the year. One of the best ways to do that is by looking at what’s happening in social media marketing more widely, identifying those emerging trends and what might be declining in terms of strategy so you can tweak your plans accordingly.

In this blog, I want to run through some of the key things to look out for 2022 along with some statistics and insights to help you improve your social media marketing strategy this year.

Shopping via social media is getting easier

While it might be the case now that you share a post that links back to your online store, social media platforms are keen to keep their users on their website and are introducing “on platform shopping” as a result. With 130 million social media users engaging with shopping posts every month, you can see why!

• Instagram stores are allowing users to build online stores actually on Instagram with an “Instagram checkout” rolled out to US users already
• Pinterest introduced a shopping tab where users can browse and shop directly via “product pins”
• TikTok is currently testing TikTok shopping.

If you do sell products online, it’s worth taking a look at these platforms and what they’re currently offering their US users so you can start to think about things might work for your business when they release these services to the UK.

Video marketing is continuing to grow

For those of us that hate being in front of a camera this might not be the news you want to hear, but videos are still getting more engagement than other formats on Instagram; Twitter reports 10% more engagement with a video post and Pinterest reports a 240% increase year on year of organic video pin engagement.

The better news, is that shorter videos are generally performing best (the only exception to this is Facebook according to SocialBakers data). So, if you really hate the camera, keep it short and snappy, get your point across and you’ll still be able to benefit the video marketing trend while keeping your camera time to a minimum. You’ll be joining 85% of marketers who rate short-form videos as the most effective type of social media content.

Self-care social media is on the rise

An emerging trend over recent months is self-care content on social media, for influencers and for business accounts. More people are talking about mental health issues, self-care and sharing stories and tips to help others that might be in a similar position to them.

Being open is a good thing and I always recommend transparency with your marketing but also be aware that what you put out there on social media stays there (particularly on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn where you might post less often so they stick around for longer).  So only share what you’re comfortable sharing.

#NoFilter is an emerging trend to take note of

Talking about transparency with your marketing, brands and people are moving away from using filters in their social media marketing and are instead showing “real” images. This ties in with the mental health and self-care trend as more and more people are showing “warts and all” pictures of them on a bad day, when things go wrong, or what taking time out for self-care looks like for them.

However, it has been found that many posts using the #NoFilter hashtag have been caught in a lie, with filters and camera magic still being used behind the scenes. If you’re going to jump on an authenticity trend like this, make sure you are actually being authentic or could do your business reputation more harm than good.

Memes and gifs are still popular

If video marketing really isn’t your thing but you do want to improve the engagement with your posts, using memes and gifs is probably the way to go. They continue to be popular with social media audiences with Twitter finding that tweets with a Gif get 55% more engagement than those without.

You can easily make your own memes and gifs using your images with Canva Pro or an online meme/gif generator, so why not have some fun getting creative and give it a go?

LinkedIn is still delivering great results

LinkedIn actually grew over the pandemic, probably as a result of more employees having to work from home and using the platform to engage with their colleagues, and its algorithm is providing great results for those that use it.

The great thing about LinkedIn is that it can be used for discussion, networking and promoting what you do directly to other business owners and those with decision making powers in companies, making it ideal for B2B businesses to include in their social media marketing strategy.

If your business is B2C, TikTok might be the better platform for you. More brands are moving over to TikTok now it has over 1 billion active monthly users, and with the video trend continuing to rise their user base is only set to grow even bigger in 2022.

The creator economy is now worth over $100 billion

And it’s just getting started. Whether it’s YouTube channel creators, Instagram Influencers or those TikTok dancers – they’re popular with audiences and so social media platforms are investing heavily in creator marketplaces and tools to encourage more content to be created. You might be surprised to hear that even LinkedIn are getting in on the action!

If you’re interested in influencer marketing for your small business, have a read of my blog on the topic here.

YouTube is a good bet for most business owners looking to improve their marketing strategy. It’s the second largest search engine in the world, its all about the videos but they don’t have to be long, you can create “shorts” too, and on mobile devices alone, YouTube reaches more adults aged 18 to 24 than any TV network.

Is it the end for Twitter?

You might be surprised to hear that Twitter is ranked the 15^th most active social media platform around the world, compared with 3^rd place for Facebook and 4^th for Instagram. Although 42% of all registered users check their account several times a day, it’s possible that your audience are using other platforms more often right now.

Before you ditch Twitter completely, check in with your clients and do some research on your audience. Are they still using Twitter? If so, keep doing what you’re doing. If not, consider the alternatives that might get you better social media marketing results moving forwards.

I hope that you’ve found these trends and statistics as interesting as I do, and more importantly, that they’ve given you some food for thought about your current social media marketing plan and how you can improve it for the future.