2024 Social Media Trend Predictions
New year, new trends… and the Homies have you covered. 🤝 Read on for five social media trend predictions to keep top of mind in 2024!
SOCIAL MEDIA TREND #1: LONG-FORM VIDEO CONTENT
Move over, YouTube. Despite short-form video dominating the social media landscape these past couple of years, we’re beginning to see a shift back to long-form content.
TikTok recently released TikTok Creativity Program Beta, which rewards creators for qualified views on videos longer than one minute. You might be thinking: doesn’t TikTok already have a Creator Fund? Yes, but the Creativity Program Beta allows creators to earn up to 20x the amount previously offered by the Creator Fund just for making their content longer than one minute!
Why would TikTok care so much about long-form content, you ask? Well for one, it creates more ad placement options. Plus, the more time users spend in their app, the more ads it can push to them overall.
As we continue to see platforms push longer form content, we recommend hopping on the bandwagon sooner rather than later as platforms often reward early adopters of these initiatives (who remembers when our IG following grew 91.2% in just ONE quarter right after the launch of IG Reels?!). TikTok has also stated users now spend 50% of their time on content upwards of one minute long, and that likely is no coincidence (AKA TikTok’s algorithm knows what to prioritize).
SOCIAL MEDIA TREND #2: SOCIAL COMMERCE
While we’re on the topic of your For You Page, have you noticed an uptick in TikTok Shop-related content on your feed? This might give you some insight into another one of their priorities for 2024.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have been pushing in-app purchases big time lately and we’re here for it. Afterall, it’s “Marketing 101” to know that the more streamlined you can make the conversion process for buyers, the better. The reason being that the more complex the journey is, the more likely it is for users to drop off along the way to conversion. With in-platform checkout, discovery and purchase occur all in one place, so we recommend brands lean into this more in the new year.
“Recommend” is actually us putting it lightly… Instagram essentially won’t let brands have a choice come April 2024. Any IG Shops created prior to June 2023 are required to enable Checkout With Facebook and Instagram (as opposed to checkout with messaging or checkout on website, which they may currently have enabled) to prevent their shop from becoming inactive on April 24, 2024. According to Instagram, shops that do not make the switch will also lose access to features associated with their shop including “product tagging in posts and new custom and lookalike audiences derived from people who visited the shop.” Click here to learn how to change your checkout method in Commerce Manager.
SOCIAL MEDIA TREND #3: SEO KEYWORDS IN CONTENT
Make room, Pinterest! TikTok and Instagram will continue evolving into both social platforms AND search engines in 2024. According to a 2023 study, 75.78% of consumers have used social media to search for or discover new products and brands. Additionally, 82% of all generations actually prefer to search on social media over search engines.
To SEO optimize your content, start by finding keywords that your audience is searching for. Use the social platform’s search bar (or for Pinterest, use Pinterest Trends) to type in a base keyword and discover other keywords in the predictive text’s drop-down list. To show up as one of the top results for these search queries, you’ll want to start incorporating these keywords into your content as much as possible without keyword stuffing.
SOCIAL MEDIA TREND #4: COMMUNITY CULTIVATION
Over the past two years, we’ve watched as overly polished and filtered content fizzled out in popularity and low effort, less curated content gained momentum. This has resulted in spikes in behind-the-scenes content from brands, re-posting of user-generated content (UGC), and sharing of unfiltered photo dumps.
In Instagram’s 2024 Trend Talk Report, the platform shared that “Gen Z is all about prioritizing meaningful connections in 2024.” Similarly, in TikTok’s 2024 Trend Report, the platform encouraged “being bold enough to be vulnerable and letting audiences into the full process and story behind a brand.” Safe to say an emphasis on community building isn’t going anywhere in 2024. With authenticity and storytelling being at the forefront of content, challenge yourself to think like a marketer but act like a creative in the new year. Consider:
Partnering with influencers and creators for UGC
Incorporating tagged photos
Sharing BTS of your brand
Showing your teams’ faces more on the feed
Sharing both wins and “failures” (check out how DEUX’s transparency turned their flop into a win)
Emphasizing community management efforts
SOCIAL MEDIA TREND #5: THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
Being able to learn and adapt to new systems is crucial in the digital marketing world, but even more so with AI in the picture. The use of AI in digital marketing will only increase going forward, so a lack of flexibility or willingness to learn is going to make or break your social media strategy, creation process, and results. We know it can feel overwhelming, so don’t worry, we made a guide of the top AI tools for your marketing agency to experiment with in 2024, plus a FREE AI Prompt Cheatsheet.
We hope this blog post was insightful for you in discovering a few of our social media trend predictions for the year ahead! For more tips on how to succeed on social, be sure to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our digital marketing newsletter. Chat soon!
xx,
The Homies
