Top Social Media Marketing Trends in 2024

Over the last decade, the world has experienced dramatic changes in the users’ digital behavior, especially social media users. With the growth in social media users from 1.7 billion to 4.76 billion, that’s nearly tripled, accompanied by the changes in the way users use social channels.

Nowadays, social media is considered the biggest source of the latest news by 44% of Millennials. Nine out of ten social media users who visit nearly seven social channels every month trust the social media platforms that have a sizeable online community of active users.

Emerging trends follow the changes in users’ social content consumption behavior and new technologies. It necessitates social media marketers to step in with changes to keep the business growing socially. Social media marketing companies help businesses to take an edge with their up-to-date knowledge about state-of-the-art social media trends and changing users’ preferences.

Through this blog, we intend to help provide information on the latest and upcoming social media trends. These SM trends will help to transform your business socially and take it to the next level.

10 Trends That Will Shape Social Media Marketing in 2024

User-generated content takes the driver’s seat

User-generated content (UGC) is an emerging social media trend that involves feedback or reviews posted by users on social channels. It’s a powerful and influential way to engage new users looking for business offerings and impact their purchase decisions. It improves authenticity as new users consider the UGC as more genuine and trustable content.

Businesses can generate UGC inexpensively across various social media marketing platforms as satisfied and happy users willingly share their reviews regarding products/services received. Also, brands can request users to share their reviews along with images and videos that make business offerings go viral and improve brand visibility which ultimately helps to online reputation management.

Short content will gain traction

The shrinking attention span of social media users gives rise to short content creation trends that you have commonly observed on Instagram stories, TikTok, and YouTube channels. It involves designing and sharing concise, bite-sized content creatively in a few seconds that’s quick and easy to digest. Say YouTube shorts generate nearly 50 billion views every day.

In a world filled with information and distraction, short content is a great way for businesses and brands to tell stories and improve user engagement rates. Improved accessibility and mobile-friendliness provide advertising opportunities for businesses with chances of success. Live streaming on SM platforms like- Instagram and Facebook provides real-time interaction with the audience; that’s the best time to increase conversion.

Long-form content will make a comeback

There is a fact that short-form content has been the showstopper for quite some time now. Whether it is the explosion of TikTok or the wide-scale adoption of Instagram Reels, content creators across platforms were concentrating on short content.

But there will be one of the biggest changes in social media marketing trends in 2024 as long-form content is set to make a comeback. We have seen TikTok has expanded to three minutes in length and Instagram Reels went up to 60 seconds.

In addition, Clubhouse has introduced long-form live audio, Facebook has come out with fully supporting podcasting. Moreover, there has been a significant increase in the number of consumers of long-form written content as well.

As people across the globe are looking for more detailed content, the realm of long-form video, audio as well as written content is bound to rise in 2024 and beyond.

LinkedIn still works

LinkedIn is a social channel with more than 900 million users that’s known for driving organic traffic is getting more popularity with feature upgrades. It allows professionals and thought leaders to publish articles, posts, images, and videos related to their industries and expertise, which further helps establish thought leadership. LinkedIn scheduling tool is used for planning and posting content automatically.

Businesses can leverage the platform for branding, marketing, and promotion in various ways. The support for video content and live streaming allows businesses to share interviews, webinars, and other video-based content that expands the opportunities for networking. The global reach professionally is good for business health.

AI is becoming mainstream

The far-reaching impact of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) trend is now realized across most of the social media platforms that social media marketing experts use strategically. AI is helping with the creation of personalized content recommendations on social channels that facilitate sending tailored content to users based on their behavior.

AI-driven effects on Instagram and Snapchat are popular and engage users at scale. The ability to analyze user sentiment and emotions in content helps businesses gauge customer satisfaction and sentiment about their products and services. The assistance in targeting ads for specific demographics and user segments allows businesses to reach the right audience with more relevant content.

Storytelling is vital

Storytelling turned out to be an effective approach to conveying a brand message, engaging the audience, and emotionally connecting with them. Narrating the brand story through social media platforms makes the brand unforgettable as the narrative progresses and encourages users to return to a platform to view updates, thereby fostering a sense of continuity.

With an inclusive approach, the story regarding events allows users to share their perspectives, interactive experiences, and voices that unearth underrepresented voices and stories.

Adding CTAs to the stories will help in increasing leads and conversion.

Audio-Visual content is integral

One of the enduring social media trends 2024 in SMM helps marketers stay in sync with the users’ growing preferences for audio-visual content. Social media users are looking for both audio and visual elements, such as videos (92.8% of users watching any video), live streams (29.7% of users), podcasts (21.2% of users globally listening), and interactive visual content that they can enjoy while doing daily chores.

As per Datareportal videos 92.8% of users watch any video, 29.7% of users live streaming services, and 21.2% of users globally listen.

Businesses are complementing AV content with visual ads that help maximize users’ attention and increase engagement. When visual search is incorporated, users can easily search for products and information by using images.

Rise of chatbots

Businesses are transforming the way users interact with the brand through instant, personalized interactions facilitated by chatbots, which improves user engagement. The chatbots are pre-trained with algorithms that can access petabytes of data stored in silos, get insights out of the data, and connect the dots to offer virtual assistance and support to the users surpassing human capability.

Automated engagement, improved customer service, and personalization increases lead generation. Besides, they help with events, webinars, and conference promotions by providing information, registration details, and reminders to users. Social media giants such as Facebook is also using chatbot-powered messaging app like- Facebook Messenger to connect with users.

Influencer marketing gaining an edge

Influencer marketing is growing in prominence with its capability to connect businesses with its target users as users trust the recommendations of influencers they follow. Partnering with influencers who have expertise in the niche industry helps businesses connect with a larger user base that is highly focused and interested in brand offerings.

Improved product credibility with influencer endorsements fosters users’ connection with the brand on a personal level. It directly impacts social commerce on various social channels. The impact of influencer campaigns through various metrics, including engagement, reach, conversions, and ROI, are measured by the businesses.

Social media influencers provide a human touch to the marketing strategy as people follow them, and thus the targeted audience can be readily engaged with the product.

Word of mouth Marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing is a result of building concrete social media communities, and this, too, is going to be one of the evergreen trends of social media marketing

Moreover, word-of-mouth publicity will raise the goodwill of the organization along with the strategies applied by the social media management companies. It will provide the dual benefit of increasing the market presence and enhancing the market position of the business organization.

Social commerce getting a facelift

Social media marketing is a great strategy for businesses because it is a great way to boost leads, conversion, and ROI; and social commerce is one of the trends that helps with them. The integrated e-commerce solutions allow businesses to set up and manage their online stores directly on the platform. The latest social media trend provides the ability to browse and buy products right on social media platforms without switching to the original website, making social commerce popular.

The payment gateway integration makes the checkout seamless. Besides, uploading shoppable posts, where products are tagged and linked to e-commerce pages, allows users to purchase by clicking on the products they see in the posts.

Social Media as Customer Service

Customer service is a vital component in any business, but as far as future social media marketing trends are concerned, it is offering a lot more. Social media helps in addressing the challenges related to customer service effectively.

However social media marketing service providers can help the organization in this aspect, as social media platforms are a better method for the customer to communicate what they actually need.

Statistically speaking, over 25% of the customers have used social media platforms to share their queries related to the product. And around 23% of them believe that social media platforms are the best method to have a 24-hour connection (one-on-one) with the business organization.

Triggering sustainable customer engagement, social media marketing companies have all the qualities to hold and increase engagement with time.

Since social media is very convenient, organizations and startups are focusing on every social media platform that attracts their targeted audience and are doing impeccable things to woo them.

Augmented Reality creates its impact

AR technology opens new avenues for businesses when leveraged in social media marketing innovatively. For example, AR filters and lenses on Snapchat and Instagram add interactive elements to content that help with product promotion and improve user engagement. Creating interactive AR ads enables users to engage with ads by tapping, swiping, or interacting with AR elements.

Offline businesses improve user reach with SMM services, wherein location-based AR experience integration allows users to access AR promotions when they are near a specific location or landmark. The support for AR experiences by social platforms allows brands to interact with users in an immersive way.

Voice search is influential

With technology progress, users’ approach to searching and accessing content has changed. Social media marketing can keep up with this evolving need by embracing the voice search trend. That’s why social media marketing agency helps optimizing content in a form that matches the way users speak and answer questions in a natural language format. It has a positive effect on SEO as it makes the content discoverable.

Businesses can optimize social pages for voice commerce and offer shopping options through voice search option that allows users to browse and purchase using voice-activated devices such as Google Home, Amazon Echo, and others.

Memefied social media

A study found that memes are popular amongst 13-35 year olds. Nearly 30% of them send memes every day. Memes started to blow off some steam and blossomed into full-blown social media marketing predictions.

Memes are expected to play an important role in the digital marketing campaigns of brands in the future as they will aid the brands in reaching out to their customers better.

To effectively use this SMM trend and engage with customers through memes, the brands should take the following actions –

Engaging with the meme community

To boost the virality of their content, businesses should focus on connecting with popular meme communities.

Share user-generated memes

By sharing user-generated content and giving credit for the content to the content creators, businesses can build stronger brand connections.

Be aware of what is posted online

An innocent meme Pepe, the Frog, caused a lot of trouble for Wendy’s. This was because the character was associated with the Alt-right movement and people took offense to this gesture from Wendy’s.

Always be on the right side of the law

Memes can cause uproar and many countries have formulated laws to bring memes under the legal net. That’s why before publishing any meme, it is important to make sure that no rules are broken.

Prepared for social success with the latest trends?

The social media landscape is continuously evolving. You cannot specify the day, week, or month when you experience the change. In fact, the changes in the form of new social media trends help businesses to innovate social marketing strategies and stay on the top of the users’ minds. Look at these top social media marketing trends and find out how they can help your business improve online marketing plans and create a major breakthrough.

All the best!