Hot Social Media Marketing Trends For 2022 Every Marketer Should Know

Hot Social Media Marketing Trends

Are you planning out your social media strategy for 2022? We’ve compiled the hottest and most popular trends in social media marketing this coming 2022, just for you!

Why Market In Social Media

You’re probably asking why you should focus on social media marketing and join almost 92% of marketers from various companies moving to different online platforms for marketing purposes. Well, here’s why:

1. Did you know that there are an estimated 4.2 billion social media users all over the world? Most of these people spend a chunk of their time browsing and engaging with various online content that piques their interest. You can take advantage of their increased online presence by going online and appearing where they are.
2. Engaging with your audience in social media humanizes your brand. When it comes to brands that they follow, people put a lot of value in authenticity, relatability, and being human. Social media allows you to showcase your brand story and create a sense of transparency between you and your audience. It helps you to connect with more dedicated and loyal followers.
3. Marketing in social media can help lower your marketing costs but still have great results. Based on a cross-channel analysis, social media marketing is a lot less expensive than traditional media at about $2.50 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). You can still make an impact and reach people by creating engaging and informative content for your target audience.

Hot Social Media Marketing Trends For 2022 Every Marketer Should Know

As marketers, keeping up with the trends is important in crafting and refining your marketing plans. And with social media usage continuing to take over, you have to keep up to speed with what’s hot and what’s not. Here are some of the hot social media marketing trends we curated for you:

#1 Social Commerce

As mentioned above, there’s been a massive rise in social media usage recently. With online shopping already a thing, it made sense for most brands to allow their customers to purchase products right where they’re being promoted – on social media.

This is proving to be a very effective tactic as US retail sales predictions for the next couple of years are on a steady upward trend. The rapid growth of social selling or social commerce has prompted social networks to integrate in-app shopping features and improve upon said features.

One of the most popular social media platforms, especially in social commerce, is Instagram. According to a survey by Meta, 87% of Instagram users were encouraged to take action after seeing product information on their feed. Almost half of those decided to make a purchase either online or offline.

#2 Bite-sized Video Content

Although people are spending more time on social media, with an average attention span of about 8 seconds, they’re spending less time engaging with long-form posts. This is why bite-sized content is becoming more and more popular.

Back then, long-form video contents were the thing, as shown by the popularity of YouTube, IGTV, and Facebook Watch. But when Stories were introduced, it was warmly received by users using the new feature.

Now with TikTok becoming huge, short-form video content has just solidified its place in the list of social media trends to watch out for. With the launch of new advertising and marketing features on the platform, 67% of marketers now plan to invest in TikTok this 2022.

Investing in video content for your social media marketing strategies will help you generate leads, and 84% of marketers can attest to that.

#3 Personalized Marketing

When trying to appeal to consumers, one of the best ways is to create marketing content tailored to the persona of your target. By using data available online and new tech on the market, you can create laser-targeted ad campaigns to connect with potential customers.

By using your user data, you’ll be able to categorize them by persona or behavior and create ads that will appeal to them the most. You can create multiple campaigns with different tones of voice for the copy and visual assets to fit the various profiles of your consumers.

Make use of the tons of available online tools for writing personalized copy, content and campaign management, banner generation, and graphic design. Turn your ads into a conversation with the customer and present them a call to action that they can’t say no to.

#4 Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is here to stay for the next couple of years. As many many of you know, not many people trust product recommendations from celebrities. Only 4% of consumers do.

Consumers prefer honest recommendations from well-respected peers or individuals with real-life experience with a product. This shifts the marketers’ focus from influencers with big follower bases to micro-influencers.

Later’s marketing report shows that engagement rates for influencers with 25k followers and below get the most engagement. More often than not, these micro-influencers can connect with their audience on a more personal level. This creates a tight-knit and dedicated community of niche audiences.

When diving into influencer marketing, make sure to choose the right influencer in the right niche for your brand. If you implement it properly, it can drive up your engagement and leads, which in turn increases conversion rates.

As it stands, influencer marketing will soon stop being a trend and turn into a pillar marketing tactic. Wise up and get into it as early as now.

#5 User-Generated Content

Whether it’s product reviews or casual social media posts, user-generated content is one of the best ways to build customer trust. As you know, people respond better to recommendations from peers and friends with experience of the product they’re recommending

What better way to solve that than featuring photos, posts, or stories from your existing customers? Social proof strengthens your brand’s trustworthiness. 93% of marketers confirm that consumers prefer and trust content by other people more than they trust original brand content.

If you still don’t believe in the power of UGC, you’ll be surprised to know that UGC photos have an 81% higher conversion rate than brand content. It even increases return visitors to the brands’ websites by about 20%.

User-generated content can add a lot of value to your content plans, so try to invest more time and effort in sourcing good quality UGC. After all, recurring customers are vital, and when they keep coming, they become the best brand ambassadors for you. So keep their trust!

#6 Content Visualization

A study has shown that 91% of consumers prefer interactive visual content to traditional formats since they’re much easier to remember than written content. It’s been proven that posts with images get double the engagement compared to text posts.

With technology on the rise, interactive and engaging visualization solutions are becoming more possible, and many marketers are taking advantage of it. Emerging technologies like Augmented Reality are a great way to help consumers visualize and interact with your product before purchasing it.

Other visualization options can include creating infographics, designing creative publication materials, ad and banner generation tools, graphic design solutions, and more. Presenting your data into visual format can also help greatly when properly executed. Utilize visualization tools and solutions to produce engaging visual content for great ROI.

#7 Social Responsibility

Authenticity matters a great deal for consumers regarding the products they buy and the brands they follow. Brands are shifting more focus into their advocacies, making everything more diverse, inclusive, and sustainable.

The global impact of 2020-2021 events has resulted in more responsible consumerism. Customers are more receptive to brands that share their social impact. 77% of consumers buy from brands that do. These brands that portray a meaningful and impactful image outperform the stock market by a staggering 134%.

Consumers nowadays are even quick to boycott brands that are revealed to be unethical and contribute negatively to socio-political issues. This may not guarantee an immediate high ROI, but building a better brand image and taking social responsibility is overall a better solution for your company, both in consumer and employee relations.

Inclusivity goes a long way. Show your support in making a positive social impact through your brand’s social media channels to help build customer trust and support.

#8 Paid Advertising

You’re probably already aware of the continuous decline of organic reach in most social platforms. This makes paid advertising an integral part of your social media strategy – always partnered with organic tactics.

Many businesses recently spent less on paid advertisements because of the effects of the pandemic on their revenue. This caused huge stress on returns and current advertising budgets to achieve higher conversions.

Facebook posts only reach an average organic reach of 5.2%, which means that only a small portion of your followers will see your posts if you don’t pay for boosts. You and almost every marketer will have to spend money promoting your social media posts.

Be careful with ad copywriting and banner generation for your paid social advertisements. Taking notes from the abovementioned trends, remember that consumers prefer a more personalized approach when you market your brand to them. Learn to target your audience correctly and use the built-in tools for each social platform that you use.

#9 Market Locally

Geolocation services have been rising recently and will continue to do so in the coming year. Search engines and websites are getting better at showing user suggested businesses based on location data, and marketers are using these.

9 in 10 marketers revealed that location-based advertising had increased their sales and customer engagement. Location data is not just used for personalization anymore but has become part of campaign strategies.

Brands create tailored content based on location data to reach out to communities in specific geographic areas. This opens up opportunities for local customer engagement, on-location promotions, event pop-ups, and even collaboration with another local business.

Geotagging your posts and campaigns appropriately can help you target customers within an area with specific marketing messages. And since it’s been established that location-based marketing is hugely influential, utilizing geolocation and technology solutions can help you lessen your marketing expenditure on paid advertising and marketing tactics.

Look for ways that your brand can utilize hyperlocal marketing tactics and location-based services like geofencing to create a more sound social marketing strategy.

Takeaway

With the year coming to an end, there are a lot of things to expect in the coming one. The trends listed here are just some things to watch out for in social media marketing.

Overall, the most popular social media marketing trends for the next year will mostly center around catering to the ever-changing consumer preferences, hyper-targeted marketing, creating a remarkable customer experience, and building a more personal relationship between brands and consumers.

Marketing continues to evolve, and cross-department collaboration will happen much more often. Working with other departments and activating employees to contribute to your social media marketing plan will open up a lot of opportunities for you and your brand.

As marketers, the main thing to remember is that innovating with the times should be one of your number one priorities. Be flexible enough to change your directions to create the best social media marketing plan suited for your brand.

Author’s Bio:

Shelly Solis is one of the co-founders of SaaSLaunchr.com, a newly launched growth marketing partner for SaaS. She was formerly a content consultant, helping a SaaS business increase their organic traffic to 400,000/month in just 4 months.

Shelly is now dedicated to SEO and guest posting services for SaaS.