Saying that most people spend a sizable chunk of their days on social media wouldn’t be overstating the case. Social media has become ingrained in people’s routines and daily lives. Some people check their social media feeds as soon as they get up because they are so dependent on them.
Because social media is so crucial to consumers’ lives, businesses and marketers migrate to social networks in the hopes of communicating with their target customers.
However, social media is flooded with content, and there is ferocious competition. It could be challenging for you to stand out if you don’t have a clear social media marketing strategy.
Following the latest social media trends can complement your strategy and make you stand out from the crowd.
But with frequent changes in technology and algorithms, it gets difficult to keep up with the trends.
Those who jump on the trends at the correct time are the ones who get the most out of social media.
Here are the few trends which are gonna stay in 2023:
1. Interactive Ads Will Succeed
Extended reality technologies like AR and VR have opened up new opportunities for user participation.
Filters are a typical use for this technology. They can also be used to improve the purchasing experiences for customers of a business, for instance through interactive advertisements.
This type of advertising allows users to participate in the ad experience rather than blocking ads with ad blockers or ignoring them altogether.
If users are allowed to participate in such an “experience,” they are more inclined to interact with a particular brand or product.
In addition to getting more audience viewing time than traditional ads, interactive commercials can boost brand visibility.
2. Social media platforms will give way to gaming as a replacement
The gaming industry is anticipated to be worth $321 billion by 2026.
One reason for its success, according to Bartosz Skwarczek, co-founder and CEO of G2A.com, is that individuals are learning new methods to pass the time during lockdowns while preserving their social connections. The growing acceptance of AR and VR gaming is a key driver of the industry’s growth.
Even though it won’t soon replace social media, the gaming industry provides lots of opportunities for businesses to encourage social connection and community involvement.
Although nothing is clear just yet, it’s feasible that companies will begin to make use of the game industry’s capacity to foster social connection.
3. The Human Touch Will Be More Prominent In 2023
Brands Like Daniel Wellington and Dove encouraged their audiences to participate in their campaigns or create content featuring their brands.
User-generated content made waves in 2022. This trend is most likely to continue growing over the coming year as brands use the human touch to foster authenticity and increase engagement. Businesses are also using social listening software to track user generated content.
Read Also – What is Social Listening?
As brands become more interactive, audience involvement may start to take on a more “casual” tone.
Instead of the traditional meticulously manicured image that audiences are used to seeing, brands might start utilizing more conversational tones or taking action to make their image more approachable and accessible to their target demographic.
4. The Use of Nano- and Micro-Influencers in Marketing Will Spread
Influencer marketing is more than just using popular accounts on TikTok or Instagram.
Even though they may have a sizable fan base, their influence generally comes at a hefty cost, making it difficult for smaller firms to collaborate with them.
Additionally, it can be difficult to interact with them considering the size of their following.
Additionally, consumers of today are drawn to more authentic experiences and willing to interact with companies and influencers who provide both value and authenticity.
As a result, you can anticipate more brands collaborating with nano- and micro-influencers in the years to come.
Even though their audiences are often smaller, nano- and micro-influencers frequently have more engagement. Even though their audiences are often smaller, nano- and micro-influencers frequently have more engagement.
For instance, the average engagement rate for nano-influencers is 3.69%, which is higher than the average for macro-influencers.
As more firms are expected to choose a more “community-led strategy,” we may anticipate seeing nano- and micro-influencers take center stage in the upcoming years.
Read Also – 6 Business Analytics Trends 2023
5. Elimination of Third-Party Cookies Over Time
It’s anticipated that third-party cookies will start to disappear by 2023.
While third-party cookies enable marketers to provide their audience with more personalized experiences, they are coming under fire due to rising privacy concerns.
Additionally, customers are becoming increasingly upset with this problem and seeking a rapid fix.
What does this imply for social media platforms and brands?
You may anticipate the implementation of steps, such as the development of trustworthy first-party solutions, in the upcoming years.
Furthermore, as we anticipate that laws and regulations like the GDPR will continue to be adopted around the world, brands and social media platforms will need to prioritize customer privacy and transparency.
6. The social media platforms will be dominated by short-form and bite-sized content.
In the coming years, video content is expected to make up the majority of web content. This prediction is relevant given that 86% of businesses now use video as a marketing strategy.
However, quick and bite-sized content will be the main focus.
According to the same report, 73% of consumers prefer to watch a quick video to learn more about a good or service, so they can be effective tools for marketing and education in addition to perhaps boosting audience engagement.
Given that the average human attention span is presently 8.25 seconds, marketers may still increase engagement by leveraging bite-sized content, such as short-form films, with today’s audience.
Twitter has announced “Fleets,” a feature where tweets or videos disappear after 24 hours, similar to Snapchat Stories.
However, this does not suggest that brands should forgo quality when creating bite-sized content.
Despite audiences’ shorter attention spans, high-quality content still has the power to separate from the competition and hold their interest.
Read Also – Social Media Listening Tools for Competitor Analysis: A Complete Guide
7. The future of branding will be authenticity.
Consumer behavior is always changing, as is well known. Today’s consumers want authenticity from brands, and 86% of consumers believe that transparency is more crucial than ever.
In addition to openness, consumers increasingly demand that businesses foster real personal connections and create an emotional bond with their brands.
By enabling their executives to take a more active position on social media, brands may foster authenticity in several ways.
Transparency not only builds long-term trust but also encourages customers to stick with a brand even in times of adversity.
According to the same survey, millennial customers want firms to be more open on social media. For instance, 69% of them want a company’s CEO to have a “personal presence” on such platforms, and 71% believe that CEOs may have a good impact when they are open.
Additionally, brands are more likely to reap a variety of advantages, like enhanced brand reputation and increased sales, when they seek to forge more genuine connections with their audience.
8. Increasingly social customer experience
A greater emphasis on urgency is one of the long-term changes in behaviors and preferences cited by 75% of consumers as being caused by the pandemic.
Particularly when it comes to brand engagements, time is more valuable.
The current issue is that many brands are having trouble offering quick-delivery products. Supply chain problems affect several businesses, which is very frustrating for consumers.
Instead, brands should put the customer experience first. The idea is to offer assistance, details, or answers as quickly as you can, and social media makes it feasible for corporations to do just that.
Read Also – How Can Social Listening Improve the Customer Experience?
9. Marketing will be affected by predictive analytics
It’s not new to use predictive analytics. It has been utilized in credit scoring and underwriting for several years, employing massive data that has already been collected to forecast possible future events.
Predictive analytics will become more widely used by marketing and social media professionals. Big data can be swiftly and readily gathered from social listening, and now that AI skills have caught up, predictions may be made that are both accurate and worthwhile.
However, only 42% of marketers claim to have predictive analytics capabilities, despite the capability’s tremendous potential. By 2023, this is likely to change.
10. The metaverse rush will be worthwhile.
Last year, the concept of the metaverse—a fusion of virtual, augmented, and actual realities—became more widely known. Now, everyone wants to participate.
The notion is entering a vital phase and may suffer a format war with an $800 billion market potential. Similar to the rise and fall of VHS vs. Betamax or Blu-ray vs. HD DVD, some metaverses will begin to flourish while others are abandoned.
Some metaverses will flourish, while others will fail, depending on how consumers feel these new realities stack up against their expectations in the real world.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the trends that we covered, but there are a lot more trends that are there and that will come in, but everything doesn’t have to work for your business.
Some will do so, and some will not, but you need to experiment with all the trends and try them out. And we have given you some thought-starter trends to dive into the world of social media.
