Happy new year to our customers and clients alike! In order to supplement our outstanding Google accredited course on Mastering Digital Marketing in London, we have compiled some of the key social media trends for you to stay up to date on the current trends:
1. Reels Contribute to Overall Instagram Marketing Success
When incorporating more video content into your strategy, it is important to note that your audience’s attention span has gotten shorter and shorter over the years. The need for quick, exciting and new content has become more and more prevalent, so your Instagram marketing strategy needs to align with that by leveraging Instagram Reels and short entertaining videos.
Another valuable strategy to leverage as we head into 2022 is by creating ads out of your most popular organic reels or videos that perform well and generate a lot of engagement, you can turn them into an ad by simply downloading the reel from your Instagram account and then uploading that video to run as an ad. This allows you to reach new people and to reengage with your existing audience.
2. Facebook Ads Performance Is More Effective
Have you noticed something unusual happening with a lot of the on-platform Facebook ad experiences (lead generation ads, Messenger ads, etc)? They’re more effective than ever before.
Additionally, it’s becoming more apparent that 2022 is going to usher in a new era of even shorter attention spans. If you want to win, think short. You want videos that are easy to consume, highly informative, and as entertaining as possible. While some people may mock the rise of features like Reels and platforms like TikTok, make no mistake, short-form, educational, entertaining video is here to stay.
And not just in organic marketing, they also work really well within your ads. Pair your short-form videos with good old-fashioned storytelling and it’s a match made in heaven.
3. What’s Old Is New Again: Long-Form Content Retakes Center Stage
2021 demonstrated that the shorter the content, the better! It’s clear that 2021 was the year of short-form media. The explosion of TikTok, the wide-scale adoption of Instagram Reels, and the introduction of YouTube Shorts had us all focusing on 15-second messages.
However, there has been a subtle change happening across social platforms. TikTok has expanded to 3 minutes in length. Reels went to 60 seconds. These tiny little changes are the beginning of a pendulum swing back towards longer-form content.
Initiatives like Clubhouse spawned the dawn of long-form live audio. Twitter introduced Spaces. Facebook came out with Live Audio Rooms and fully supported podcasting. YouTube is also embracing podcasting. And let’s not forget about live video. Social commerce is a huge trend and you need long-form media to sell. Even Amazon has embraced live video!
5. Overall Customer Connection Is Vital
And finally, in 2022 and beyond, we believe that marketers will be challenged in an era of unintended consequences as we hopefully emerge out of the pandemic! A complex cocktail of new consumer behaviours will dramatically impact how we use the web and social media.
Here are a few examples. In many families, web-savvy teens took over the purchasing function for a family, as older members of families begin to develop eCommerce skills.
However having said that, it may take a decade to see the full impact of the pandemic on marketing. For this reason, it is a time to reconnect with customers, question all assumptions we had about what works, and be humble in the face of changes we are just beginning to understand.
If you are interested in learning more about the above, please do not hesitate to contact us about our Social Media Marketing course.