2022 Social Media Trend Report

In the last year, over 70% of the US population was actively using social media platforms, and spent between seven minutes and two hours on average on their platforms of choice.

With new platforms and features being announced practically every week, brands have to stay on top of the most popular and useful ones for their audiences.

Fortunately, most of the trends regarding social media that we’re going to be seeing in the new year have already arrived before 2021 has even ended. That means right now is the best time for companies to start utilizing these trends in order to achieve success in the new year.

TikTok Marketing

In the last few years, many companies have focused all of their PR and marketing efforts on Instagram because of the platform’s fast rate of growth. Additionally, companies also benefited from a high return on investment (ROI) from Instagram.

However, this trend has been changing in the last few months, with TikTok surpassing 1 billion active users this year. It has turned into one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, and the number of users managed to increase by nearly 50% in only a year.

That’s why one of the biggest trends in 2022 is going to be brands focusing their PR and marketing efforts on TikTok.

Social Media E-Commerce

Another big trend in the coming year is going to be social media E-commerce, which has been greatly popularized during the pandemic. Companies can create entertaining and engaging video content across most social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, to allow consumers to make purchases directly on those platforms.

That’s why companies should be shifting to the latest video trends, and focusing on Instagram’s latest short video feature: Reels. Reels have proven to be incredibly beneficial in terms of marketing success for many brands as of late.

Micro-Influencers

While this isn’t the newest trend to emerge on social media platforms, using micro-influencers have remained an important marketing strategy for companies on social media platforms.

Businesses should recognize the power that comes with creators that have a smaller number of followers compared to big celebrities. Instead of creating a big influencer marketing budget to work with the biggest celebrities, businesses should focus on micro-influencers instead.

That’s because many people prefer to respond and engage with the influencers they can relate to most. Micro-influencers also have the strongest relationships with their followers compared to any other type of influencer.

Paid Ads

Companies that haven’t utilized the power of paid ads should learn how to do so as soon as possible, because according to research, the organic reach of social media posts has greatly decreased as of late.

That’s why companies will have to increase their paid ads budgets for social media platforms. The decline of organic reach has been well-documented by many companies in the last few years.

This is especially true of those companies that focus their promotional efforts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. This trend is going to continue in the coming year, which is why companies should start running paid social media ads and level up their branding.