Top 15 Social Media Trends for Marketers in 2024

It’s not uncommon to think you’ve finally figured out how to drive the best results from a social platform when a new social media trend surfaces and pops your success bubble.

It’s why continually growing on social media is a tough nut to crack. But here’s the thing: while it’s challenging to grow on social media, it’s not hard to keep abreast of the rising trends and tap into them to engage your audience.

So what are some leading social media trends 2024 to be mindful of this year? We’ve got the list for you, alongside examples of how other brands leverage those trends. Here’s a summary, followed by the details:

1. Brands will tap into BeReal

2. Social commerce will come back to life

3. Social media will serve as a crisis management tool

4. Video will continue to dominate

5. More originality & less copy and paste

6. Social media will become more of a shopping avenue

7. Marketers will lean on social media to provide customer care

8. Artificial intelligence will play a bigger role

9. It’s all about UGC creators

10. Micro and nano influencers will rise above mega influencers

11. YouTube Shorts on the rise

12. Customers will use social media as a search engine

13. Businesses will spend more on TikTok ads

14. Rise of LinkedIn Creators

15. Audio marketing will become more mainstream

What are social media trends?

Social media trends are ideas that experts in the social space think are important, therefore, likely to dominate.

For example, not long ago, TikTok was new to the industry. However, seeing its potential and users’ warm reception, using it became a social media trend. More importantly, it fueled the rise of bite-size video content that even other social channels like Instagram adopted as part of their features.

Social media trends are typically fast-changing by nature, though. In fact, some might stay, while others only see a few hours of daylight before they fade into the background.

In general, however, their role is simple: to direct you where to focus your efforts and resources on social media. Remember: you don’t need to follow each trend. Of the social media marketing trends that’ll dominate in 2024, choose the ones that align with your brand and its target audience the most.

You can also use this list of social trends as a reference for conducting small tests to learn which trend is the most beneficial for your brand.

For instance, TikTok ads are expected to grow in 2024. While you don’t need to go into it (unless you want to), consider dedicating a small budget to see how effective the trend is for you and leverage it more based on the results your test delivers.

Unboxing social media trends for marketers in 2024

Now that we’re done with the basics, let’s move to the top 15 social media trends you should pay attention to in 2024:

1. Brands will tap into BeReal

Despite being a relatively new app, BeReal has quickly become a favorite for celebrating ‘authenticity.’ Created in 2019, the app already has 20 million daily active users and is actively trying to replace Instagram.

What makes it stand out, though? It balances reality and social media by encouraging people to post unedited, unfiltered pictures of themselves.

Brands are also jumping on the bandwagon, and, as with TikTok, the early entrants will definitely reap the most benefit in the long run.

One such brand that has joined the anti-Instagram platform is e.l.f cosmetics. The makeup giant shares untouched behind-the-scenes moments with its fans on the new app. It also offers discount codes and sneak peeks into upcoming products and events.

It’s still unclear whether BeReal will be the next TikTok or 2024’s Clubhouse, the app that enjoyed only momentary hype. Despite the uncertainty, BeReal’s potential continues to attract brands and customers.

Social commerce, the use of social media platforms to facilitate online sales, is expected to increase in popularity in 2024. As social media usage continues to grow and evolve, more businesses are leveraging these platforms to connect with consumers and drive sales.

With the rise of social media features such as Instagram shoppable posts, TikTok shoppable live streams, and Facebook marketplace, users can easily discover and purchase products without leaving the social media platform.

Here’s how Mango has set up its Instagram shop for user convenience!

instagram shop

Additionally, influencer marketing, where creators promote and even sell products through their social media channels, is also driving the growth of social commerce.

With the convenience and immediacy that social commerce offers, it is expected to become a major trend in 2024 as more and more consumers turn to social media to discover, research, and purchase products.

There’s typically an uproar on social media when brands mess up as customers hold them accountable for their behavior. And since the place of protest is social media, this is where marketers need to apologize too.

For example, take Balenciaga’s holiday collection in 2022 irked its audience. The inappropriate campaign that glorified child abuse suffered a severe backlash, with people speaking out on their social accounts using the #cancelbalenciaga hashtag. Influencers even posted videos of themselves burning or cutting up their Balenciaga products. Owing to the brand’s delayed response, the negative reaction continued.

Also Read: How to Positively Handle Negative Comments on Social Media?

Here’s a glimpse at TikToker, Alexis trashing her Balenciaga purchases:

Learn from this and craft a social media crisis management policy as part of your social media strategy in 2024.

A crisis can happen anytime, any day, unexpectedly. This is why it is a must to:

Focus on social listening. Track brand mentions and tags to discover what your customers say about you.
Respond quickly and sincerely to protect your brand’s reputation against severe damage.
Pause any scheduled posts that do not appear goofy, unaware, or unwilling to rectify the damage you’ve done — if it’s accidental.
Engage with harsh comments empathetically and positively.

4. Video will continue to dominate

2022 was a great year for video marketing. You’ll see the same trend continue in 2024.

In fact, 73% of marketers believe that video has become more essential for their business in the last year, according to 2022’s content marketing video survey.

This means your focus needs to be on creating more videos customized to each social platform’s specifications.

Moreover, with video-first platforms such as TikTok embracing social commerce, the importance of video marketing has only increased. Videos also serve as an authentic way to showcase your products and attract more buyers — making it an essential content format to invest in.

Also Read: How to Find Social Media Clients for Your Agency

But what type of videos should you focus on? Here’s a quick walkthrough:

Create bite-sized videos. Short videos hold attention and engage better; they are social media friendly and easily shareable.
Focus on user-generated video content. UGC in video format is uber-authentic, helping you win customers better.
Make educational videos. People hop onto social media to keep up-to-date and learn, which explains why educational content works well on video-based platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
Capture behind-the-scenes (BTS) moments in your videos. Again, BTS content is authentic and shows your brand’s human side, which helps you connect better with your target buyers.

As a bonus tip, ensure all your video content starts with an attention-grabbing hook. With so many videos to compete against, yours’ need to grab and hold attention, and only solid hooks can help you.

Check out how clothing brand Frank and Oak shares educational and BTS content on its Instagram. Here’s a reel in which it teaches its followers how to wash their winter outerwear:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkgTfeiNGoU/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY%3D

5. More originality & less copy and paste

Many social media users and creators have been guilty of copying and replicating popular trends and content to gain attention and followers. However, in 2024, there is a growing awareness of the importance of authenticity and originality and the negative effects of copying and pasting content. As a result, more and more users focus on creating unique and original content that reflects their personal style and perspective.

In addition, with the rise of AI and automation, the ability to detect and flag copied content has increased. Social media platforms have also implemented more strict policies against copy-pasting content, contributing to the trend of less copy and paste.

Overall, the trend towards less copy & paste is a positive development for social media. It encourages users to be more authentic and creative in their content creation and emphasizes the importance of being true to oneself.

Thanks to social media’s personalized shopping experience, users hop onto social media to find and buy products and services directly.

In fact, social commerce is on the rise as more and more social media platforms are introducing in-built purchase and payment features.

Sales through social media were at an estimated 992 billion US dollars in 2022 alone. And this value is predicted to increase to 2.9 trillion US dollars by 2026.

Related Read: Social Media for Ecommerce in 2024

So what can you do to provide a better social shopping experience in 2024? Here are some tips:

Hop on the social media channels your audience uses to promote your products.
Use high-quality, aesthetic images to showcase your products.
Streamline your in-app shopping experience by tagging products and writing clear product descriptions.
Test the customer journey to check for and solve any obstacles on each social channel.

Kylie Cosmetics is a good example here. The makeup brand offers an exceptional Instagram shopping experience with high-quality content and captions.

The pandemic encouraged ecommerce and made marketers realize the value of providing an exceptional social media customer experience.

Even though lockdown is now (thankfully) a part of history, customers still seek support via social media. In fact, 2 out of 3 customers use social media to ask questions in their purchase journey, as per a recent Emplifi study.

This highlights the need to improve customer care on social media. But know that customer care doesn’t revolve around being responsive in your DMs.

Rather, it involves helping customers with educational content about your product or service throughout their journey. Here’s how you can offer excellent customer care via social media:

Create, link, or pin social content that educates customers about your product.
Create a self-help content library that customers can easily access. For instance, on Instagram, you can create Story highlights about how to use your product. Or you can run a proactive support group related to your product on Facebook.
Engage with customers on social media throughout their buyer journey.
Have videos or web pages with informational material beforehand to offer them to customers when needed.
Use artificial intelligence to quickly respond to queries. You can also invest in a chatbot to quickly respond to questions customers frequently ask.
Offer a personalized experience for complicated queries.

Look at how the GoPro Facebook page has a chatbot as well as links to its other social pages to provide optimal customer care:

GoPro

8. Artificial intelligence will play a bigger role

Alexa may not have advanced much in the last few years, but artificial intelligence is evolving regarding social media.

AI is already helping social media platforms and managers do their jobs better and faster. For instance, LinkedIn uses AI to suggest jobs, and Facebook uses it for recognizing images. On the other hand, artificial intelligence also assists social media teams in scheduling and publishing posts, telling them the best times to post on different platforms.

This year AI will go a step further with apps drafting social media captions, analyzing social media performance, and finding which influencers are a good match.

More and more marketers will tap into AI to reduce workload and the time spent on social advertising and posting.

For example, video monetizing expert Molly Mahoney uses Jasper, an AI copywriting tool, to write video scripts for social media. These videos, in turn, help Molly’s clients make money from their social media video content.

9. It’s all about UGC creators

In 2023, creators of user-generated content (UGC) are shining as a social media trend. With the rise of platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube, more and more individuals are creating and sharing their own content online.

However, not all brands have a bank of user-generated content, nor do they have an in-house team capable of creating organic photos. This is where UGC creators come in.

These creators build large followings by producing creative, engaging, relatable content. They also monetize their content through brand partnerships, sponsored posts, and merchandise sales. Here’s Nikkie, a prime example of increasing UGC-created content.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CnNEUhYJAoU/?hl=en

Additionally, many UGC creators are using their platforms to raise awareness for important social and political issues, further highlighting the power and influence of UGC in today’s digital landscape.

10. Micro and nano influencers will rise above mega influencers

Influencer marketing has been a huge part of social media in recent years. However, now marketers realize that it’s not about having a huge budget to onboard mega influencers.

If anything, influencers with a humongous following tend to have a poor engagement rate. This is why marketers prefer to work with micro and nano influencers more and more.

These are influencers with a small but engaged following on social media. Typically, micro-influencers have between 10k to 50k followers, and nano-influencers have a following of less than 10k.

Thanks to the close-knit community that smaller influencers create, their impact is much stronger, even if results are slower to show. Customers also find them more trustworthy since they know these influencers better.

It’s why 2024 will see brands investing less in celebrities and more in influencers that their audience trusts.

Glossier is one example of a brand that collaborates with nano influencers. Look at this reel that it created with Diamond Marie, an influencer and model who currently has around 10k followers:

Glossier collaboration

11. YouTube Shorts on the rise

YouTube Shorts are short videos, up to 60 seconds long, created using a smartphone. They allow creators to easily and quickly produce engaging, shareable content that mobile audiences can easily consume.

Related Read: How To Upload YouTube Shorts?

One example of a creator who has successfully leveraged the power of YouTube Shorts is Casey Neistat, a well-known YouTuber experimenting with the format. He has produced various short-form videos, from vlogs and behind-the-scenes footage to short films and commercials.

Using YouTube Shorts, Casey has reached a wider audience and gained a significant following on the platform.

As YouTube Shorts become more popular, it’s expected that more and more creators will start using this format to produce short, shareable content that can be easily consumed on mobile devices.

If you haven’t already, you must divert your focus to social media SEO. Why? Because social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are slowly replacing traditional search engines, according to Google itself.

But exactly how are people using social media as a search engine? Here are three ways:

Folks are searching for local businesses using social media.
They’re learning new skills through social media.
And lastly, they’re shopping via social media.

This is why your business should have a solid social media SEO game. Now the question is, how can you optimize your social media accounts? We’ve got a few tips you can follow:

Make sure your username is the same on all platforms.
Write a profile bio with your main keyword, if possible.
Include a link to your website in your profile bio.
Use keywords in the captions of your posts.

See how Innocent Drinks has a matching profile, user name, and a complete bio that links to its website. You can do the same to optimize your social profiles.

13. Businesses will spend more on TikTok ads

TikTok has been rolling out features to make it easier for businesses to achieve their goals. Its 2022 update, for example, unveiled the Creative Center for creators and businesses that gives quick insights on trending hashtags, music, and more.

Of TikTok’s huge potential, marketers are willing to increase ad-spend on the video-first platform. In fact, eMarketer confirms TikTok’s ad revenue is forecasted to hit over $11 billion by 2024.

The best part is that TikTok is making ads unskippable with the help of Creator Licensing. With ads not appearing annoyingly and feeling more like typical content, viewers end up watching them for longer.

But what type of TikTok ads should you focus on creating in 2024? Keep this in mind: viewers want to see ads that feel like an extension of the content businesses post on TikTok.

What’s more, with consumers valuing authenticity, your ads must be more creative and relatable to your target audience. For posting more authentic ads, and that too under Creator Licensing, pairing with creators will become a must this year.

You can replicate what Clearly did with TikTok advertising — the eyewear brand created a branded hashtag challenge and boosted it as an ad. The campaign became a huge success as the brand paired up with influencers on the app and gave creative licenses to viewers who participated.

14. Rise of LinkedIn Creators

The rise of LinkedIn Creators has gained momentum in recent years and is expected to continue in 2024. LinkedIn Creators is a feature that allows users to create and share original content on the platform, such as articles, videos, and infographics.

Also Read 15 Linkedin Influencers Every Content Marketer Should Follow

This feature has become increasingly popular among professionals and businesses, allowing them to establish themselves as thought leaders in their respective industries and connect with other professionals on the platform.

One example of a LinkedIn Creator who has gained a significant following on the platform is Gary Vaynerchuk. He has consistently been among the top creators on the platform. He has used the feature to share insights and advice on various topics, such as marketing, entrepreneurship, and social media.

Gary Vaynerchuk

With over 2 million followers, Gary Vaynerchuk is a true example of how LinkedIn Creators can be used to establish themselves as an influencer and build a professional network.

Related Read: Best Time to Post on LinkedIn

15. Audio marketing will become more mainstream

Apart from video, marketers will also need to refine their audio marketing game in 2024.

After all, social media channels have become more receptive toward audio marketing by introducing audio-based features. For instance, Twitter has voice tweets, LinkedIn has Audio events, and Instagram has sounds for posts.

But how can you use audio as part of your social media content plan? Here are some ideas:

Make content on trending sounds for Instagram and Facebook reels and TikToks.
Create catchy custom or original sounds for your videos on TikTok and Instagram.
Have live audio conversations on Twitter Spaces.
Share audiograms for podcasts on Twitter and Instagram.

Here’s an example of how you can share an audiogram on social media:

Create a stronger social presence by following 2024’s social media trends

Like 2022, video marketing and influencer marketing will also grow this year. You’ll also need to focus on customer care, social media SEO, and social commerce. Beyond these trends, tap into audio marketing and TikTok advertising to create a more influential social presence.

A new trend we’ll see this year is using BeReal. The future of this app is not set in stone, so it’s hard to say whether it will be the next Instagram or 2024’s Clubhouse.

As you dive deeper into social media, apps that automate posting, analysis, chatting, and other tasks will only be more helpful.

We suggest giving ContentStudio a chance to improve your social media marketing. Use it to schedule posts for posting later and analyze your social media accounts and campaigns. Get started by signing up today and level up your social media performance.