From Elon Musk purchasing Twitter, TikTok surpassing Instagram for fan growth while Reels interactions pulling ahead of TikTok, 2022 has been a crazy ride for social media managers and brands. With half of January behind us, adapting to writing 2023 instead of 2022, and starting partnerships with new clients – it is time to go over some trends for 2023 and start taking action.
- Video format continues to dominate
For years now, we have been hearing that videos are the number one content we should need to leverage. In 2023, this trend will continue with regular video content, especially with short-video formats.
Just as an example, a recent study has shown that the interaction counts for Instagram Reels were almost 40% higher than for traditional videos. Another short-format video with high results was seen on YouTube shorts where, according to Adweek, views on YouTube Shorts have generated an average of 30 billion views per day.
This statistic is important since it later on shows in the Adweek report that creators who posted on Shorts were able to attract more viewers to their long-form regular content and grow their number of subscribers on their channel.
All of the data show that short-form videos seem to keep users the most engaged, so it is expected that more and more social media platforms will keep pushing it onto your feed even more.
Hubspot has even predicted that short-form videos will most likely grow even further, and we predict it will, at the very least, maintain as important as in 2022.
Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022, by the end of the year had a Twitter poll on his profile asking users should Vine, the old video-based social media platform, be coming back, and by the results, we can see that users are interested in short video content platforms.
Also, not to forget to mention, in 2022 TikTok was a huge hit among users being the most promising video-only social media platform, which just goes on to prove the strength of video.
The good thing for agencies and brands is that it will be not only a matter of high-production video content but also the scrappy and genuine videos that we had the opportunity to see on TikTok.
- Authenticity is one of the crucial factors
As mentioned above, scrappy videos will have an advantage over high-production videos since users are more and more looking for genuine and authentic content, not just from influencers but from brands. To gain more honest followers and build a strong community, you should think twice before posting something that doesn’t resonate with your brand or is “too polished”.
One more interesting thing that happened in 2022 was regarding Instagram. Instagram was introducing many different features to become more appealing to GenZ when in fact while GenZ had revealed that they see Instagram as overly edited, fake, and highly curated content. This was the exact reason why GenZ is more attracted to TikTok and the authenticity of its creators, and by TikTok’s increase in the number of followers, we can definitely learn something from it.
Keep an eye on the “trend” of authenticity in 2023, which is something we can see other social media platforms enforcing, which was also proved by Mediatoolkit, Marketing Interactive, and many others.
- Social media platforms will become the “it” place for customer service
Ever since the lockdown, we have seen the rise of e-commerce on social media channels and people contacting brands through social media profiles about customer support. This trend has continued and is something we will only see develop even more in 2023.
A recent report showed that 2 out of 3 consumers prefer to use social media to contact the customer support team with additional questions while shopping or after to seek help. Supporting this was a report which stated that 86% of consumers were willing to leave a brand they trusted in case of two poor customer service experiences.
Even more important was a statement where, out of the customer surveyed, 52% expect brands to respond to customer service inquiries via digital channels within an hour, with 22% expressing a preference for social media.
With Instagram, Facebook, and even Pinterest enforcing not only online shopping but also live shopping, it is expected that social media platforms will start enhancing customer support with customer support software and educate their customer supports team not only about software but social media in general.
- Twitter pushes other social media channels to work
With Elon Musk buying Twitter in 2022, the future of this platform has been unpredictable. For brands all over the world and not just USA, the changes that happened on Twitter have created a clear conflict with their stated ideals, mission, and purpose.
Musk has announced that he would like to charge business users a monthly fee to use the app, enticing them with improved analytics features and insights. This does seem like a possibility since in 2020 Twitter removed a heap of analytics features and has never replaced them with third-party apps offering better analytics for the results of the platform.
For many brands, this will mean increased investment in and attention to the platforms that previously got deprioritized in favor of Twitter and Facebook. With the above stated, it would be no wonder if brands would switch their marketing efforts to LinkedIn, TikTok, and other platforms creating higher competition among brands.
- Augmented reality, Virtual reality, and many other realities ahead
E-commerce has been on social media platforms for years, reaching its peak during the pandemic and continuing to do so even in 2023.
Augmented reality effects enhance real-life visual content and alter the way it looks to make it stand out on social media. In many markets, it is still a rising trend on social media, with Facebook and Instagram integrating it more and more over time. At the moment, only several types of products and services are supported with AR, the technology has a high potential for both consumers and social media managers to better showcase clients’ products.
On the other hand, there is a different type of reality, the virtual one. Unlike AR, VR is not fast-moving. Both Facebook and YouTube have explored this option, Facebook with its Metaverse and YouTube with virtual reality offering different experiences. VR is expected to increase consumer experience and help brands showcase their products in 3D.
- TikTok – still a rising star
Over 40% of people on the TikTok platform are over 30 at the moment, which means that if your brand is still not present on TikTok – 2023 is the year to do it.
In the text above, I have mentioned the rise of short-format video and its high results, and not to forget that it is the heart of TikTok, so you should really be considering it.
If, however, you still have some worries, for any reason, that your content would be shown to users younger than 18 years old – we have some news for you. TikTok is introducing the option for short-form content creators to restrict their audiences to 18+ years; an option that was previously only available to Live creators.
According to TikTok: “We want to empower creators to direct their content to the most appropriate audience. That’s why we rolled out audience controls as a way for creators to restrict their content to accounts over 18 in LIVE earlier this year. We’ve started to bring our audience controls feature to creators of short-form videos and will expand the feature globally over the coming weeks.”
As the platform matures, its features are maturing not only for users but also for TikTok creators. In late 2022, the character count for descriptions rose to 2,200 characters which points to SEO functionality and a need to adjust your content strategy.
It was announced that TikTok will be rolling out a feature update that will allow anyone to send any user a direct message on TikTok, which is very similar to Instagram. This could potentially be a signal that TikTok could enroll DM automation developing the platform’s position as a place where marketers and business owners can convert leads and sales.
Across countries, TikTok has been rolling out Live Shopping which means that users should not even need to leave the app to purchase a product being a huge opportunity for product-based businesses.
When it comes to content creation, TikTok itself has announced its top 3 key trends marketers should watch out for and follow when creating their TikTok campaigns in 2023. The trends are actionable entertainment, making space for joy and community-building ideas, showing once again that TikTok is an entertainment-based platform with the most positive sentiment and the highest reach compared to other social media platforms.
Discover more about the opportunities TikTok offers to brands in our blog TikTok, from lip-syncing and dancing to a new home for brands from all industries.
3,2,1 go!
Social media changes are definitely not an easy thing to predict, being influenced by many other industry movements and world changes. However, following some of the user behavior in 2022 and over a longer period of time, it is safe to say that the above-listed trends are something to keep an eye on.
From video formats to switching your business to TikTok or implementing any other trend, our social media team is here to help you.
Whether you are interested in us running your account, conducting your social media strategy, or just taking a few hours of consultations with our experts – we would be more than thrilled to show you what makes us curious about being on social media in 2023, contact us here!
