One way to keep your strategy fresh and engage with your audience in new and interesting ways is to understand the latest social media marketing trends and what you can expect this year. So we’ve put together:
- The top social media marketing trends for 2024.
- What these trends mean for your business.
- Quick tips to help you make each social media marketing trend work for your business.
Let’s get trending!
2024 social media marketing trends (with tips for your business!)
Use these eight social media marketing trends along with 25 tips to keep your business’s social media game going strong all year long:
- AI will shape social
- TikTok will become a bigger player
- Even more focus on influencer marketing
- Personalization will be a must
- Selling on social media will become commonplace
- Video will be key for your social media strategy
- There will be more focus on the user experience
- A diversified social strategy will be essential
AI will shape social
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is everywhere right now. People are using AI tools like ChatGPT for everything from writing social posts to generating social media images and videos.
So it’s no surprise that AI in social media is a huge trend to watch this year. Experts predict AI will not only impact the way social media platforms develop and deploy new features, but it will also impact creators, businesses, and users.
AI has already been big on social, with 75% of Gen Zers following virtual influencers (yes, it’s a thing!), and even more businesses already using AI to help with everything from content creation to scheduling and strategy optimization.
What this means for your business: AI opens up a world of potential opportunities to automate, improve, and help with your social media marketing strategy in 2024.
Tips for using AI in your social media marketing strategy
Here are some ways you can take advantage of AI for your social media strategy this year.
Help with social posts
Coming up with social media posts and Instagram captions can be a challenge. But with AI, you can plug in a few words and get suggestions for your posts. For instance, I asked Copy.AI to write some Instagram caption options for a picture of a team of employees celebrating Valentine’s Day, and here are a few I got:
While the post ideas you receive from AI may not be perfect, they can act as a helpful starting point or give you some ideas that might get the creative juices flowing.
Find the right time to post
Some social media scheduling tools include grids with the optimum time for your business to post to maximize engagement. This is done through AI. The AI uses machine learning to analyze when you’ve published posts, the amount of engagement each post received, and when it thinks you’ll have the best success with future posts.
Automate customer service
Another way you can use AI for social media in 2024 is by enabling automated responses for your Instagram and Facebook messages. You can set up automated responses to send during certain times, like when your business is closed, and direct users to specific resources or just let them know when they can expect a response. This also helps improve the customer experience—a win-win!
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TikTok will become a bigger player
TikTok has had an explosive trajectory. It hit 1 billion users in 2021 and was the number one downloaded app in the US for the fourth year in a row in 2023. And while the app’s users started primarily as Gen Zers, it’s now grown to encompass pretty much all age ranges—as well as businesses and brands both large and small.
This, coupled with TikTok’s advertising options, means TikTok is poised to continue dominating the social space in 2024.
And maybe not just social… Some users are even looking to TikTok as their search engine of choice. In fact, 40% of Gen Zers said they prefer using TikTok and Instagram to search instead of Google.
What this means for your business: With TikTok focusing more on catering to businesses and growing TikTok advertising in 2024, this is a channel you need to do some serious research on. If you’re already on TikTok, make the most of its high organic reach rate and identify the best time to post on TikTok for your audience.
TikTok tips for 2024
Use these TikTok marketing tips to make this social media trend work for you.
Decide whether or not TikTok is right for you
Just because it’s available and it’s popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for your business. TikTok requires constant video creation. Granted, TikTok videos can be simple, silly, and require little-to-no editing or expertise from your phone. But it can still be a time commitment. If you’re unsure how to make TikTok align with your brand or work for your business, or if you simply don’t have the time to create regular videos, you might want to consider testing TikTok advertising to see if it’s worth your time (and marketing budget).
Cross-promote your TikTok videos
With TikTok’s growing popularity, platforms like Instagram and YouTube have jumped on board the short-form video train. This gives you a great opportunity to take the videos you’re creating on TikTok and use them on your other social media channels—especially Instagram Reels. This can help you increase your reach and make sure your TikTok efforts don’t go unnoticed.
Take advantage of TikTok Creative Center
TikTok’s Creative Center is specifically for business owners to understand what resonates, what’s trending, and how to use TikTok to market and advertise their business. Creative Center includes top ads, what’s popular (including trending hashtags), and even a video editor to make creating TikTok videos easy.
Even more focus on influencer marketing
Between TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, influencers are everywhere—sharing a mix of curated, created, and sponsored content. And despite more consumers understanding the difference between an ad or sponsored post and an influencer’s un-paid opinion, 61% still trust influencer recommendations. That’s compared to just 38% who trust brand-created content.
That’s part of the reason influencer marketing was a $21.1 billion industry last year–up from $17 billion the year before.
What this means for your business: Influencer marketing is nothing new—and it can be a big win for your business if you can find the right influencer(s) to partner with. Influencer marketing has slowly been making its way into the small business marketing space in the form of micro-influencers and nano-influencers.
A micro-influencer is an influencer with fewer than 50,000 followers on social media, typically in some kind of niche. For example, there are local micro-influencers who focus on posting about community businesses, local happenings, and more, or micro-influencers focused on a specific topic like automotive, home services, etc.
A nano-influencer typically has less than 10,000 followers and is usually focused on a niche.
With so much saturation for influencers, many creators are making names for themselves by going niche and focusing on specific communities, interests, or causes, which opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for your business to reach a specific target audience if you partner with the right social media influencer.
Social media influencer marketing tips for 2024
Here are a few influencer marketing tips to help you get in on this social media marketing trend.
Encourage customers to tag you on social media
Your customers can act as mini influencers when they post about your business. It’s an easy way to get in front of their network—no matter how big or how small. Consider running Instagram giveaways and Facebook contests that encourage customers to tag you on social or share an image of your business.
Scout out a micro-influencer or nano-influencer
Identify a few micro-influencers or nano-influencers, either in your local area or in your niche, and reach out to understand what a partnership might look like. You’ll want your influencer’s audience to be comprised of people who might become your customers (this is where local can be key!).
To find the right social media influencer for your business, you could start with your current customers to see who might fall into the nano- or micro-influencer category. You can also find hashtags relevant to your industry or city on Instagram and TikTok to see who regularly creates content that people engage with.
Partner with a complementary business
Is there a local business in your area with a similar target market killing it on social media? While a business isn’t necessarily an influencer, you can use a similar strategy by partnering with that business to do social media swaps or by working out some kind of arrangement where they post about your business and you post about theirs. This can help you reach a new audience through the business and build a relationship with another local place!
Focus on the right influencer marketing metrics
Many businesses previously partnered with influencers based on their follower count alone. But this has evolved as some creators buy followers, which results in low engagement and not-so-great results. This is where working with a smaller influencer can be more beneficial, especially for a local business. Smaller influencers typically have more engaged communities—so your sponsored post may be seen by fewer people, but it might have increased engagement and action.
If you use influencer marketing as part of your 2024 social media marketing strategy, make sure to focus on the metrics that will move the needle for you—clicks to your website or on your product, increased followers for your own social pages, and more new customers or sales.
Personalization will be a must
Today, customers expect a level of personalization from the businesses they engage with. They’re already used to seeing personalized recommendations on social media based on their activity, interests, and location.
As someone who loves dogs and marketing, this suggested post tracks.
And while that doesn’t necessarily mean an Instagram or Facebook post dedicated to each customer, it does mean tailoring your content and your strategy to your audience. This isn’t a new social media marketing trend, but it is crucial as it can be the difference between building a flourishing (and revenue-driving) presence on social media or losing market share to the competition.
What this means for your business: It’s no longer enough to throw a post out there and hope for the best. With access to data and analytics about your audience on social media—as well as an understanding of who your target audience is—there’s no excuse not to cater your social media marketing strategy to your specific audience.
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Tips to personalize your social media marketing strategy in 2024
Use these tips to make this social media trend work for you.
Get clear on your target audience
If you don’t have a clear picture of your target audience, as well as the different types of personas within your audience, now is the time to really dig in and build that out. If you don’t know who you’re engaging with or posting for, your social media strategy won’t be successful. Use our tips to find your target audience, and consider using these customer feedback questions to gain even more insight.
Use social media analytics for even more insights
One of the wonderful things about social media is that most channels provide analytics that can give you a great idea of your existing audience, including demographic information, what posts they engage with, and even when to post for optimum engagement. Take advantage of this data to personalize your social media strategy to the people already interested in your business.
Here’s a screenshot of some of the data you can get from Facebook Insights.
Create content that resonates with your audience
Once you have a deeper understanding of who your target audience is and what types of content they resonate with, create content that speaks to them directly. This can include social media posts that address specific questions, educate on topics of interest, and get them excited to engage like a contest or silly social media holiday post.
Bonus tip: Make sure you know the best time to post on Instagram for your business so you can maximize engagement.
Selling on social media will become commonplace
Shoppable posts and ads on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook gained traction last year and will continue to grow, with projections saying shopping on social media will hit $1.2 TRILLION this year.
And while social commerce started as a big brand’s game, it’s becoming more and more commonplace for small businesses to drive new customers to purchase their products—many times, directly through the app (like with Instagram Shopping and TikTok Shop).
One of my favorite small businesses regularly uses shoppable posts on Instagram.
What this means for your business: If you sell a product and aren’t leveraging social commerce in some way, it might be time to look into this social media marketing trend to increase sales.
Tips to sell on social media in 2024
Use these tips to help your business sell with social media this year.
Set up an Instagram shop
Instagram is arguably the best place to try social selling. So if you’re considering hopping on this trend this year, then it’s important to set up your Instagram shop. To do this is simple, but first, you’ll want to make sure you meet Instagram’s Commerce Eligibility Requirements, which include having products for purchase on the website associated with your Instagram account. Get the full details to set up your shop on Instagram here.
Take pictures that stand out
In order to sell your products or promote them on social media, you’ll want to include images that stand out and really showcase what you have to offer. This might mean investing in some professional product photos or working with a designer to create some images you can share on social that will really entice users to purchase your items.
Show your products in use
Another great option here is sharing user-generated content of real customers using, wearing, or showing off your products. By making your customers the star of your shoppable posts, you can build trust and increase the chances users will check out your products. You can run a social media contest to try to collect these.
Bonus tip: Find out how to create a winning social media landing page to increase sales on social media.
Video will be key for your social media strategy
Video is not a new social media marketing trend, but the options available for video on social continue to evolve. It’s not enough to create videos, it’s also important to leverage video in the right ways to reach your social media goals.
What this means for your business: Considering the popularity of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, video marketing should be a key component of your strategy in 2024.
Video tips for social media marketing in 2024
Use these tips to create winning videos as part of this social media marketing strategy.
Follow the trends
Social media moves fast, and what’s trending in the world of short-form social media videos seems to move even faster. But staying on top of short-form video trends can bolster your social media video strategy and help you get in front of a new audience quicker. These trends can include challenges, trending sounds, or prompts. To find the right trends to adopt for your business, start with some TikTok trend discovery, see what could align with your business, and create your video quickly. Make sure only to jump on a trend when it makes sense for your business (and is appropriate for your brand!).
Feature real customers in videos
Your existing customers can help you take your social media videos to the next level. By featuring real customers speaking about your business, you can build trust and social proof, two key components people look for when trying to decide whether or not to work with a business. Reach out to some of your loyal customers to ask if they’d be willing to be featured in a social media video for your business this year.
Build a community through video
Social media is all about building a community, which can be a challenge for many businesses. But you can use video to build your community by crowd-sourcing questions to answer, topic suggestions, and people to feature in your videos. For example, you could ask your customers to submit questions for an upcoming video or ask what they want to see in your upcoming posts to get customer feedback.
There will be more focus on the user experience
As consumers continue expecting personalized experiences, fast load times, and easy buying journeys, the user experience on social media will be prioritized even more. While this mostly applies to the social media platforms themselves, it can also be impacted by your social media marketing strategy.
What this means for your business: With any type of marketing strategy you invest in, the focus should be on your audience and how you can create a seamless experience for them across all your channels.
Tips to improve the social media user experience in 2024
Use these tips to deliver a stellar user experience to your social media followers this year.
Make customer communication seamless
When a customer contacts you via social media, they don’t care that you may be in a different department than customer service or your sales team. To them, you’re the face of the business. So it’s important to respond and address communications in that way. No “we weren’t aware of that,” or “we don’t handle customer service complaints.” Communicate internally with your teams before responding or pass along their information and make sure someone follows up.
A botched response to customer service inquiries can lead to customer dissatisfaction or even negative reviews and comments.
Make your social media content accessible
In order to create a great user experience for all, it’s also important to incorporate social media accessibility. This means including accessible social media descriptions, like describing what is in your Instagram image, and adding video transcriptions.
Check your links and posts
If you’re asking users to take an action from your social media pages, make sure it’s an easy experience for them. This includes checking that links are working, that you’re not misleading them with inaccurate information, and that your site is easy to navigate on mobile, which is where most people are using social media.
A diversified social strategy will be essential
Facebook used to reign supreme when it came to social media and social media marketing. And while it’s still an extremely important channel, especially for advertising, this year, it will be more important than ever to make sure your business is active across social platforms. This includes TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and LinkedIn (especially for B2B businesses!).
What this means for your business: Beyond expanding your social media strategy to other channels, it’s going to be more important than ever to regularly audit your performance and make adjustments to your strategy as needed.
Tips to diversify your strategy in 2024
Use these tips to stay ahead of the curve this year.
Set clear social media goals
To determine the right social media strategy for your business this year, as well as the right mix of channels and approaches, it’s imperative that you create clear social media goals. Your goals may vary by platform and by paid vs. organic. But take some time to identify what success will look like for you on social this year.
Run social media advertising across channels
The best way to make sure your business is getting found is to run social media advertising. Social media advertising guarantees that you’ll get in front of a specific audience—no matter what’s going on with their feed. And this year, it’s time to look into social ads on not just Facebook and Instagram but also Snapchat and TikTok.
Post regularly
One way you can keep your business in front of your audience on social media and reach your goals is by keeping a regular posting schedule across platforms. The more regularly you post, the more chances you have of your audience seeing your posts. Consider creating a social media calendar and posting according to best practices per channel.
🚨 Looking for ideas for your social media calendar? Download our 2024 marketing calendar for monthly post ideas!
Keep your social media marketing trending in 2024
Understanding and applying tips from these top social media marketing trends can help your business stand out, increase engagement, and drive results from your social media pages in 2024. Want to learn more? Check out our local social media marketing course!
Here are the top 2024 social media marketing trends:
- AI will shape social
- TikTok will become a bigger player
- Even more focus on influencer marketing
- Personalization will be a must
- Selling on social media will become commonplace
- Video will be key for your social media strategy
- There will be more focus on the user experience
- AI will shape social
- A diversified social strategy will be essential
Want to know how your social media presence stacks up? Try our online presence and website grader here!
Need more 2024 marketing trends? We’ve got you covered:
- 8 Important Mobile Marketing Trends to Know for 2024
- 7 Must-Know Digital Marketing Trends for 2024
- 9 Email Marketing Trends That Will Deliver Growth in 2024
- The 5 Biggest Google Ads Trends for 2024 (+6 Predictions)
- 7 Content Marketing Trends You Need to Know in 2024 (+Tips to Prepare)
- AI Marketing Trends for 2024 & What They Mean for You
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- 9 Video Marketing Trends to Watch in 2024
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