The Social Media Marketing Trends to Follow In 2024!

Social media marketing is a very dynamic marketing field. Each year, new trends emerge and change what we once thought never would. Some social media platforms die while new ones are born. This may seem scary, but you shouldn’t worry – things aren’t really that unpredictable.

The Social Media Marketing Trends to Follow In 2024!

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at what social media marketing trends you should follow in 2024 .

1. TikTok will rule.

TikTok has been around for six years, and no one can deny its growing popularity. Research from 2022 suggests that TikTok counts over 750 million users worldwide, which is 100 million more than in 2021!

Now, many didn’t believe anyone other than teens would find their way to this app. But, TikTok showed them wrong. According to Statista, most of the content creators on TikTok are aged between 18 and 25 years old.

This probably has something to do with the features TikTok released, like long-form videos (inspired by YouTube), TikTok Stories (inspired by Instagram), and TikTok Now (inspired by BeReal). All this shows that this social media platform aims to become a „super app.“ And quite frankly, all signs point to their success.

So, it’s time to grab an account handle for your brand and sketch out your TikTok marketing strategy.

2. Watch out for the new app – BeReal.

BeReal is a new app that prompts its users to post an unedited photo per day to a group of friends. Each time someone posts a photo two minutes after the notification, there’s a mark that states how late they were with it.

People love this app because it reminds them of the early days of social media when users would post photos to show their friends what they were up to.

BeReal doesn’t have any features for businesses yet and limits its users to 500 friends, so you can’t use your standard marketing strategy there. But, TikTok and Instagram clearly think it has potential since they both released the dual camera feature clones.

We advise you to create a profile and become familiar with how this app works. You never know what might come next.

3. Influencer marketing is here to stay.

Influencers are people who can affect someone’s purchasing decisions because of the relationship they’ve built with their audience.

Research shows that 61% of users are likely to trust recommendations from a friend, family member, or influencer on social platforms, while only 38% will trust recommendations from a brand on social media. Because of that, brands have been relying more on influencer marketing, especially micro-influencers.

Unlike regular influencers, micro-influencers don’t have a social media presence as large as celebrities. They typically have a much smaller audience and promote only products that align with their niche.

For instance, food bloggers will only promote spices or utensils, while book bloggers will only talk about authors or specific books.

Either way, people are more inclined to trust them, so make sure to use this kind of marketing wisely.

4. Brands will offer more personalization.

Nobody likes it when an ad pops up on their screen, especially if it’s a completely irrelevant one. This is why brands and many social media agencies in Chicago constantly try to personalize the user’s experience and provide them with what they want to see on their feed.

The good news is that this isn’t difficult at all: just look into your metrics and find the necessary information about your audience: their location, age, language, and behavior. Also, look at the number of clicks, comments, and shares your content receives, as well as its reach, impressions, follower count, and profile visits.

This is the only way you’ll be able to show the right ads to the right people at the right time.

5. Short-form vertical videos will continue to thrive.

TikTok might be the first platform to feature short-form videos, but it is no longer the only one. Instagram and Facebook also have their own versions of short-form videos – Reels. Even YouTube has introduced short-form videos called YT Shorts.

All these platforms are pushing short-form videos over long-form content. For instance, all videos on Instagram are now Reels. They are also heavily prioritized by the algorithm, which is why many social media marketers opt for Reels instead of other types of content.

While users love these kinds of videos, creating them is pretty challenging, and not everyone has the same talent. We advise opening up your Reels tab on IG or visiting TikTok to get comfortable with short-form videos. Keep a close eye on what’s going viral and try to recreate it.

6. Clubhouse will probably die.

Two years ago, during the pandemic, people were looking for new entertainment platforms. This was when Clubhouse emerged with its social audio concept.

They promised to strengthen human connections, believing that the intonation and emotion conveyed through voice would allow people to pick up on nuance and form stronger relationships with others.

Now, they weren’t entirely wrong – their social audio concept performed well with niche audiences, but it didn’t find a broader audience. Furthermore, platforms like Twitter used Clubhouse’s concept with their existing audience, and Clubhouse just couldn’t match it.

Because of this, we believe Clubhouse will die, and you should find an alternative to it.

7. LinkedIn is turning more personal.

If you go to your LinkedIn feed, you’ll notice that this platform no longer offers only job opportunities but also different types of content. Photos of parents with their kids, as well as posts on breastfeeding and similar topics, have all found their place on LinkedIn.

We believe this has something to do with other platforms. It’s pretty difficult to find your spot-on Instagram these days, especially because everyone is trying the same thing. Because of that, many creators think LinkedIn is the perfect opportunity to grab attention.

Now, quite a lot of users on this platform are bitter about that and state that LinkedIn should be used solely for professional purposes. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include LinkedIn in your social media strategy.

8. Think Social SEO instead of hashtags.

A couple of years ago, content creators used hashtags to describe the content they created. In time, social media platforms dedicated more attention to building better search engines that rely on SEO to determine content relevancy.

This means that SEO no longer applies solely to Google, Bing, and similar search engines but also to social media platforms.

So, rather than slapping hashtags into your copy when you’re finished with your post, use keyword research to check what people are interested in at the moment. Also, don’t forget to optimize your bio and captions, as well as add alt-text to images.

9. Closed captioning is a must.

Did you know that 69% of people watch videos on silent in public places? Most of the time, they were in a quiet place, didn’t have earphones, or were waiting in line. As you can see, it’s not only people hard of hearing that use captions.

In fact, 80% of people who use captions can have no problems with their hearing.

We believe there are a couple of reasons you should use closed captioning.

First, it keeps people watching videos to the end and allows you to optimize your content for keywords and gain better visibility. Accessibility is also very important because people with hearing difficulties have no other choice than to scroll past content that has no captions.

At last, captioning is super easy now that there are auto-captioning features and tools, so why wouldn’t you do it?

Final Words on Social Media Marketing Trends

Keeping up with the trends is important, but don’t spread yourself too thin. If your social media marketing team isn’t large enough to cover all of these trends, pick out a couple of them and do them right.

After all, not everything is about trends. You also need consistency in your branding to make things work.