As we enter the last quarter of 2023, business opportunities rise with more and more social occasions and celebrations coming our way, like Thanksgiving or Black Friday sales. There is hope if you have yet to be active with your social media or lack results.
Social media is the third most important thing for the new generation of the 21st century after air and water. As we look around, people are staring at their screens, whether on the road, eating, or even bathing.
Businesses have made it their priority to get on their screens for maximum results and optimal outcomes. 77% of companies use social media to reach customers. That means your competitors are doing it if you are not using it.
(Data Source Forbes)
ou use it regularly, it’s easy to assess the new trends, like using social media management tools like Adublisher, social listening, and TikToksuccess. This guide will share our research and data with you to fortify our social media strategy for better visibility.
Ten social media trends to look for as 2023 ends.
Education with entertainment “Edutainment”
Edutainment might be a new word for many people. It is a term used for creating educational content in a fun way to make the process exciting and intriguing. Kids channels first introduced it, but it can be seen used across social media platforms by adults.
Edutainment videos contain facts and information about different topics, like history, tech scams, financial insights, and tips about tools. Instead of boring people with long videos and lectures, creators use fun visuals and exciting tones to convey their message.
If you go online, you will see videos with titles, “look out for 5 scams in insurance”, “2 tips to make your iphone faster,” “things you didn’t know about Henry the 3rd,” and so on. Even if you have no relation with any of these questions, people are still interested in watching. The reason is the exciting thumbnails and graphics used to attract their attention.
TikTok will continue to shine.
TikTok has made a global impact, crossing 1 billion active users in such a short period. The short video-sharing platforms, with all of the negativity, have still managed to make a substantial impact on competitor platforms.
TikTok is introducing new features and innovations in their app, forcing other social media apps to do the same. TikTok videos paved the way for Instagram Reels and YouTube short videos.
Brands use TikTok ads feature to promote their products and services globally. Aiming to become the all-in-one app, TikTok offers a shop option allowing brands to sell their products directly to consumers.
(Data Source WashingtonPost)
US citizens spend more than 80 minutes on the app watching videos, which is way more than the competitors—making it inevitable for businesses to invest in the app for more sales and conversions.
Use of social media management tools
There are more than 100 social media platforms available online in 2023. Although people only use a few, managing a few social media platforms can be challenging, considering the complexity of social media marketing.
On average, one person bounces between 7 social media platforms. Creating compelling content catered to the specifications of each social media platform and publishing it at the right time is close to impossible.
Social media management tools like Adublisher were created to ease the process for marketers. This software has a social media scheduler to help marketing teams schedule posts on different social media platforms from a unified dashboard for maximum productivity.
In addition to post schedulers, you can benefit from Google Analytics and other cool features like bulk posting and RSS Feeds. Successful businesses and social media managers are using these tools for agility and maximum conversions to harness the full potential of social media.
The shorter the video, the higher the number of views
GenZ has the shortest attention span of 1.3 seconds compared to all other age demographics. Millennials are a bit higher between 8-12 seconds, but both age groups have strong filtering skills.
TikTok and Instagram utilized these statistics, introducing short videos, a trend followed by others. We all know videos are the most effective content, but short videos under 30 seconds work even better.
(Image Credit VidYard)
Statistics show that 58% of people watch a complete video if it’s under 60 seconds. Make your videos compact and filled with necessary and attractive data points to captivate the viewer and effectively convey the message.
Social Commerce is the key for businesses.
The main aim of social media marketing is to create brand awareness that leads to conversions and sales. Social commerce was introduced to unify the process and allow brands to educate viewers about their products and, if they are interested, sell them on the spot.
We have seen exponential growth in social commerce statistics as studies show it will reach 3 trillion dollars by 2026. Social commerce is a cost-effective and direct approach to sales, bridging the gap between brands and consumers.
(Data Source Statista)
Leading social media platforms offer shop features with built-in checkouts, minimizing checkout limitations in conventional ecommerce businesses. You can integrate your ecommerce outlets with your social storefront for unified catalog management.
Social media for customer service
Since people spend most of their free time on social media, using these platforms to engage with brands to voice their concerns and suggestions makes perfect sense. As a result, between 2021-2022, the number of people using social media for customer services increased by 110%.
Social media management tools are aiding the process by allowing brands to connect with consumers and promptly reply to their issues. Social media customer service is cost-effective and will enable brands to communicate with the owners instead of the support staff or management team.
Chatbots and AI are also on the rise in customer service to a timely response. 54% of customers favored brands that respond to inquiries on social media. To stay in the game, ensure you meet social media customer support needs, or you will lose customers.
Social listening to understand customers
Social listening can be described as social monitoring. It means looking out for what people say about you and your brand on social media. This technique is used to get insights about the impact of your products, services, campaigns, and marketing efforts and see where you stand in the market.
Modern social media marketing strategies are complex and require more than creating compelling and interactive content and checking for post engagements. Social listening measures your positive or negative effect on your consumer, whether you are moving forward or backward.
To use social listening, use unique branded keywords and key phrases, hashtags, and relevant mentions in campaigns to see the impact of your outreach on the end user.
Interactive content is on the rise.
Content gamification and interactiveness saw a staggering rise in the last few years, especially after the pandemic. People are getting fed up with consuming static content and want to be a part of the interactive gamified content.
Interactive content takes social media posts to another level by adding polls, quizzes, challenges, pop-ups, live shopping, and several other types to ensure the audience’s input. This type of content is an excellent way to create an impactful impression on the viewer, highlighting your brand in their minds.
Humanated experiences with employee advocacy
The best form of UGC comes from customers, but there is something people like just as much as BTS, Behind The Scenes. Employees making videos about the brand on the company premises portray a positive image of the brand.
With the rise of social consciousness, people buy from brands that understand their social responsibility, and your employees happily working and making videos promoting your products and work ethics can impact the end users’ decision-making.
You can also ask your employees to make content using your products, give honest opinions, and share that content with your hashtag on their social media platforms. By promoting their content, you can gain a lot of new prospects.
Bring Innovation to your social media strategy.
We have already mentioned the benefits and social impact of using social media management tools like Adublisher, offering post schedulers, analytics, and many other features to streamline social media management.
Forward passing teams and companies are using AR and VR in their social media game plan to gamify the process for their consumers. Bringing in an AI-powered Chatbot for timely and effective customer services, creating customer retention. Furthermore, social media listening tools are being deployed to ensure you can filter your brand’s impact from all social media clutter.
A word of advice.
Social media is constantly evolving, and it’s crucial for modern businesses to ensure they are familiar with the hot trends. Monitor the social media trends in your industry, see what people are talking about and what the buzz is all about, and use your interactive content to make a stand for your brand.
