Can you guess how much time people are spending browsing through multiple social media platforms these days? It’s 14 minutes on average!

On top of that, about 4.48 billion social media users have been recorded recently. Since many people are active on social media today, businesses are exploring and employing the power of social media to create brand awareness and engage with their target customers. If your company’s seeking to stay updated with the latest trends and meet the customer’s wants in 2022 and beyond, here are a few social media tactics for you to consider. Check out 8 social media trends for 2022 and beyond!

8 Social Media Trends To Look Out For In The Coming Years

1. Short-form video content is growing

In numerous instances, posts that include videos are performing much better on social media platforms compared to ordinary posts with a static photo. For example, several Instagram videos tend to receive 2x more engagement compared to posts with photos. 

Source: backlinko.com

Another study outlines that about 82 percent of the content published in 2022 will incorporate videos. Speaking of videos, TikTok is a popular video-centric platform that primarily focuses on short-form videos. And in order to compete with Tiktok, Instagram had introduced Instagram Reels in 2020.  

The average time you’re likely to spend on a social media video is 8 seconds, which is why social media platforms are promoting bite-size content in the form of ephemeral and short-form videos. While Twitter introduced Fleets, a feature that’s quite similar to Snapchat, Youtube rolled out YouTube Shorts to compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels. 

Short-form videos are going to be one of the major social media trends for 2022.

2. More augmented reality options

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have already acquired a lot of popularity since the past few years. Furthermore, Augmented Reality is projected to generate annual revenue of a minimum $70 billion by 2023. 

Social media platforms like Instagram leverage AR by incorporating it in their filters while also letting you customize and curate your own filters. Since users only interact with filters for about 75 seconds, brands are coming up with innovative filters of their own to spread brand awareness and engage with their followers. 

Source: appinfusion.co.uk

3. Growing utilization of user-generated content

If your business is seeking to market their product or service through various social media platforms, you should leverage user-generated content and make it an integral part of your marketing strategies. Brands creating user-generated content tend to have users spend 90 percent more time on social media channels and websites. 

Furthermore, images that are user-generated have 81 percent more chances of being converted. Besides, you wouldn’t even have to spend on other forms of advertising since user-generated content is more affordable and costs less. Moreover, Instagram and Facebook are far ahead in terms of user-generated content, which is why it’s very likely for other social media platforms to incorporate the same. 

Source: wootclub.com

4. Video-first strategy on the rise

Instagram suddenly shifting to a video-first strategy took several users by surprise during the pandemic. By introducing Instagram reels, the platform provided users with an opportunity to curate quality content and keep people entertained while they quarantine at home. 

Brands are further utilizing IGTV videos to promote products, share detailed product reviews and more, and it will be surely continued as one of social media trends in 2022. Social media users using the live streaming feature further encounter a 25 percent growth rate compared to photos and videos. 

The video-first strategy is also implemented by SaaS companies to curate product tours for increasing customer retention. Additionally, some businesses also leverage walkthrough software to educate and guide employees with software and tools that are necessary for their job roles. 

5. Social Media emerges as a Shopping Platform

Due to the pandemic, people couldn’t visit offline stores and that’s where social commerce came in handy. Instead of having to go outside to visit stores, you could shop on multiple social media platforms conveniently, from the comforts of your home. 

This is precisely why there’s been a 25.2 percent increase in social commerce buyers across the US. Since many of us use Facebook and Instagram’s marketplace to shop online, these two social media platforms are leading the social commerce industry.

While 70 percent of shoppers browse through Instagram to discover products, Facebook introduced Facebook Shops in 2020 to create a secure and authentic marketplace for buyers and sellers. Product-oriented businesses are running multiple campaigns on Facebook to generate leads. 

And since analyzing social media campaign results is crucial, these businesses should rely on external social media analytical apps, like for example, the Sotrender Ads app for accurate, and detailed insights informing them about the conversion rates or spent.

We can also see some social media platforms steering in the direction of introducing unique features to enable conversational marketing. For example, Facebook uses Facebook Messenger as a medium of communication between businesses and customers with about 2 billion messages being already exchanged. 

Source: shopify.com

6. Social media decentralization

Independently browsing the web, apart from various centralized bodies imposing restrictions on the operations, social media decentralization gives the user hassle-free control and liberty to various communities over the internet.

The users have access to create, post, or share anything over the decentralized networks without the fear of being monitored or getting moderation alerts in case of breaking the rules and regulations. Moreover, businesses and individuals can use social media to promote various business, political or social campaigns.

The decentralization, however, will be a lot more extreme and harder to control when the drawbacks are to be focused on. For example, keeping track of any suspicious or criminal activity would be nearly impossible if no one monitored or overlooked the operations. 

The exploitation of personal data, server breaching, cyber security, and anonymous threatening would be the biggest challenges after social media decentralization. 

7. Communities will develop and take control

Information regarding any topic, issue, or a certain event, spreads from one person to another, building a stronger communal base and contributions towards research drives and campaigns. Furthermore, being democratic, communities give the platform to raise individual voices against or in favor of different aspects. 

Source: backlinko.com

This way, correlation of approaches and participation is more likely to build trust and fruitful data accomplishments. 

8. Social apps will develop as cookies get crunched

Taking an approach towards eliminating third-party cookies and other website trackers, Google has been continuously developing privacy tools. However, implementing various algorithms to monitor users’ browsing behaviors, third-party cookies are a risk to inefficiently and unnecessarily exploit the data to the marketers.  

After announcing third-party cookies shutting down, Google has estimated website growth and efficiency by 95%. Thus, making social media platforms more effective and fruitful operations taking place over time on applications. 

Source: openli.com

Social media trends for 2022 – bottom line 

Keeping up with the trends and targeting the audience via various modern approaches is crucial for every business. The interaction model on the web has directly and indirectly given the analytics to the marketers and businesses to formulate their steps on producing and promoting their products.

From a technical perspective, the company’s growth is assured to the maximum extent if the customer’s personalized needs and demands for services and products are made available. Thus, social media is an effective tool that businesses can use to execute operations efficiently to survive long term in the market.