According to a study from October 2021, 57.6% of the world’s population uses social media for an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes per day, making social media marketing a no-brainer to reach the masses. However, with new social media platforms being released all the time, and people’s social media usage habits constantly changing, keeping your strategy the same year after year will not be effective in your ability to continue to reach your audience and keep them engaged. Now that we’re heading into a new year, it’s a great time to look at recent social media trends so that you can begin incorporating them into next year’s marketing plan and make an even a bigger impact on your audience in 2022!
1. One word: TikTok.
You have probably heard about all the dancing challenges and other fads that are going around on TikTok, but you may not have heard about how crucial the platform has gotten for successful social media marketing. In fact, TikTok may be a better platform to invest your time and money in than Facebook! TikTok has a whopping 1 billion active users, which comprise 20.83% of total Internet users worldwide, and most of them use the platform on a regular basis. With the substantial growth in recent years, one may think that TikTok is simply a trend in and of itself, and that it will be a long-lost memory not far down the line. But the social media giant is proving to have lasting power, as it’s effectiveness at reaching millennials and Gen Z, both growing and significant consumer groups, has surpassed pretty much every other platform.
How you can get in on the trend: Take short, fun videos of your business! Video has long since reigned king as far as content marketing goes, so take the videos you may already be using on other social media channels, your commercials, a funny (yet appropriate) video from the office’s holiday party, etc., and get it uploaded!
2. Paid advertising use is increasing.
We’ve all seen the effect of major social networks cutting business’ organic reach over the last few years, making all that hard work that went into building your followers list feel useless. One way that many companies have fought back in order to remain relevant on social media? Paid ads. In 2021, social media generated almost $60 billion in ad spend, increasing 36% from 2020, with one-fifth of all ad dollars spent on social media marketing. The momentum on social media spending seems to be holding strong going into 2022, so if you’re wanting to beat out your competition on social media, it’s likely you’ll have to look at spending some ad dollars.
How you can get in on the trend: Simply look at your total ad spend budget and make social media a priority. This is particularly important for companies that receive a significant amount of traffic or revenue from social media, so digging into your website and social media analytics is also a must to determine just how important social media ads will be for your business’s continued success. You also want to analyze where your audience is at so you allocate your marketing dollars on relevant platforms.
3. Adapt to life after cookies.
In case you haven’t heard, Google is planning to phase out cookie tracking by 2023, which means advertisers are going to have to get more creative if they want to continue to target the right audience and not waste marketing dollars. Luckily, there are methods out there that will allow you to continue to collect invaluable customer data –retargeting campaigns, lookalike audiences, and Facebook lead ads, to name a few. With these methods, you won’t even miss third-party cookies because you’ll have a means of understanding your customer on a more personal level.
How you can get in on the trend: Gathering your potential customer’s data is priority #1 here, so any way you can do that will help you in future ad campaign targeting. Send polls to your existing customers, set up a lead campaign that allows you to collect email addresses, better utilize existing customer data – there are many methods that you can use, you just need to find what makes sense for your business.
Do you need help making an impact on social media? The experts at Midwest Marketing are here to help! Contact us today!
