Top Social Media Trends for 2024
It’s no surprise—just as it is every year, or even month—there’s a new wave of social media trends to watch out for. While it may still be very early in 2024, there is already a list of promising trends marketers predict could be what drives engagement and traffic to social platforms.
From AI-generated content to what experts are predicting is the decline of short-form media, here are the top 2024 social media trends to keep an eye on:
Twitter, now known as X
Last year, Elon Musk gave the public a shock as he announced the rebranding of Twitter to ‘X’. While Musk claimed he wants to branch out of the text-based feature, according to Hootsuite, X still remains as the top text-based social platform. In fact, a Hubspot study shows that X still entertains an average of 253 million users daily.
While there is still a lot of fog around what X’s next move and platform updates are, it looks like brands shouldn’t abandon the text platform just yet.
We all know Instagram focused on reels and Instagram Stories in 2023, and while these are still Instagram’s top priorities, a few new platform updates have gotten more traction from its audience this year.
Who knew that a new sharing feature on Instagram Stories can drive a fresh source of engagement on the app? Instagram’s ‘Add yours’ sticker has garnered a lot of love from its users. The beauty of the feature is that it can be used by the public with just one tap, and is featured on its Stories—one of Instagram’s most used features. Even brands can take part in the feature, showcasing products and/or content while encouraging its community to join in.
Speaking of Instagram Stories, brands shouldn’t shy away from advertising on Instagram Stories over Instagram’s other advertising options. According to Hootsuite, 500 million users can be reached with Instagram Story ads, as half a billion engage on this Stories daily.
But is Instagram Stories really the #1 spot to make some noise? According to a study by Social Insider, Instagram is still pushing Reels as its top best-performing content. In fact in 2023 alone, their study shows that there is a 57.4% increase in Reels usage. This is also great news for smaller brands, as it seems Reels garner the most saves from users. (Better make most of ‘Save this video’ CTAs!).
While notifications may be buzzing on the feed forefront, users’ DMs may have also been busy lately. Instagram’s Broadcast Channel feature has opened doors for brands and content creators to engage with audience. While broadcast channels are a limited form of interaction—with only the host being able to send messages to the community, users can still engage with chat reactions and answering polls. The more ‘private’ channel allows a more intimate community base and can be a great way not only for brands and creators to talk to their audience, but a way to cross-promote content.
TikTok
From one social app pushing out short-form video content to another—a 2024 social platform update isn’t complete without TikTok.
A lot of question marks around the engagement on TikTok loomed around during 2023, but according to Forbes, TikTok still remains one of the top platforms used on social media. In fact, Forbes cites Dr. Dustin York, associate professor of communication at Maryville University, saying that brands will depend heavily on TikTok to drive GenZ search. In fact, Business Insider claims that 40% of GenZ already uses TikTok as its primary search engine over Google. This means for brands, sharpening the SEO keywords when posting content and maximizing captions and hashtags to make sure their content displays top search for any related topic searches.
Speaking of content calendars, while TikTok is known for its short-form snappy content, long form content may be just be reentering the video scene. But TikTok isn’t exactly about to be the next YouTube, according to Later, TikTok is veering away from the 15-30 second video content. Sprout claims that TikTok has been steadily moving towards longer form content, from 1-minute videos, to 10-minute videos, and recently introducing 30-minute videos—Even encouraging users to create horizontal video content.
Since long-form content is on the rise, there’s a tug of war between ‘Facetime-like’ content and ‘Non-linear’ content as content idea suggestions. Later shares take ‘Facetime’ content as popular among its audience, creating ‘deeper connections’. Facetime content basically means having a creator or even a brand representative talk directly to the camera as if talking to somebody on a video call. On the other hand, ‘Non-linear’ content seems to also be getting great traction as creators tend to put the ‘end at the start’ of the TikToks. This means using the highlight or result portion of a TikTok as its 3-5 second hook in order to stop users on their tracks.
Aside from TikTok videos however, it seems like the short-form platform is taking a cue from Instagram as they are heavily promoting content using their new carousel feature. Though this feature has been around for a while, it seems TikTok has really been encouraging to use its photo slideshows all the more. Similar to Instagram, this feature allows users to post a collection of photos in a slide, while being able to add text to each text and picking trending audios to go with it. In fact, for most users, TikTok even provides prompts explaining how their content will perform better if they consider carousels over videos.
YouTube
Just as Instagram and TikTok battle it out for short-form video content, YouTube Shorts isn’t dying down anytime soon. According to TastyEdits, YouTube shorts has garnered more active users last year, from 1.5 billion active users to 2 billion active users.
However, there’s more than one way of garnering traffic on YouTube, as the platform encourages engagement through several methods—these include video live streams, community posts, polls, and in-member spaces.
If creators and brands are not available to shoot live, they can continue to make most out of YouTube’s premiere feature where they can upload pre-recorded and edited content but still chat with users real-time.
Announcements on the other hand can be made through YouTube existing community tab, where creators and brands can post text-content and/or create polls for users. It’s a great way to see active users, and the audience’s overall voice.
Last year, LinkedIn made an announcement that it will deprioritize personal content and keep the platform professional. According to Entrepreneur.com, LinkedIn is giving more importance to content that share “knowledge and advice”. Entrepreneur shares that to achieve this, posts wherein a user focuses on a specific subject area, has perspective, and has meaningful interactions and comments fall under the type of professional posts LinkedIn is looking for.
However, while professionals with personal accounts have to veer towards professional posts, brands with business accounts seem to have more freedom. According to Sprout, brands can give playful content a go as it gives “brand personality”. This can range from hopping on meme-culture, and figuring out the perfect balance of professionalism and brand tone.
Facebook may not be the #1 platform for video content, but the social platform isn’t shying away from pushing Facebook reels to its audience. In fact, according to Hootsuite, Reel plays on Facebook doubled last year. This encourages brands to consider placing their advertisement on reels, and not just on timeline posts.
With so much content being pumped out daily, AI is definitely a hot topic when it comes to assisting in team processes and creating content. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced early last year that Meta is drawing focus on creating generative AI tools to help people in a variety of ways.
A study by Hubspot suggests that 58% of marketers are already using generative AI to create some form of content on social media—may it be through copy writing or other creative pieces. Though despite the convenience AI can bring, brands still need to make sure that the machine-learning capabilities of AI doesn’t overshadow its true brand voice and essence, making sure to double-check a content’s impact and overall tonality.
As means of producing content may find a short cut, brands and creators can also look at other means of communicating with their audience. Aside from Facebook Reels, Facebook groups are also a popular place to create interactions. While Facebook groups have been around for a long time, peer to peer suggestions is still a very effective form of marketing, according to Search Engine Journal, online buyers are still big on reviews as a whopping 99.9% of shoppers read a review before considering a purchase. While 49% of online shoppers trust recommendations from loved ones. This makes peer recommendations and authentic reviews among community members all the more sacred. Fostering a community through Facebook groups can be a great place to start or further promote.
Jumping on the next social media trend can definitely feel like a rat race, but with the right tools, research, and a social media strategy in place, brands and creators can have a clearer direction on where to take their content and attention to this 2024.
It’s important to remember though that while trends help abundantly in driving traffic, being able to create content that speaks true to a brand’s voice should also be equally important. As authenticity and brand personality remains a timeless trait, and one the audience can resonate with too.
Let WOWebsites help boost your social media game in 2024. Email us at info@wowebsites.com.
