Introduction
As we head into the pink of 2023, a majority of the brands gear up to put more money into their marketing campaigns, especially across social media platforms. Social media never ceases to evolve, which makes the task of marketing all the more challenging. However, the challenge gives brands an opportunity to experiment and come up with conclusions that often become social media trends. In this extensive post, we will discuss some of the most lucrative social media marketing trends of 2023 that will also continue to disrupt in the coming years. So let’s cut to the chase and dive right in, shall we?
1. UGC attracts attention
User-Generated Content will make a huge dent in the world of content creation as brands invest more and more in authenticity and transparency. UGC is essentially content that customers create for brands promoting products and services. The content makes it easier for potential customers to choose the right products. No wonder 80 percent of customers consume UGC to make informed purchasing decisions. The best thing about using user-generated content is that the content doesn’t need any polishing or editing. The rawness of the content makes it more believable and influential. The advent of UGC creators will also lead to an increase in the number of nano influencers or creators across social media platforms.
2. Gated content dependency
Brands willing to create deeper connections with the audience, especially with their loyal customers, will shift towards gated content. Such content maintains a level of exclusivity and makes it easier for brands to extend “special care” to their customers. The trend has allowed brands to quit their dependency on suggested content. Instead, the creators can now own the content and use it on social media as per their requirements. The ownership makes them independent of the always-changing social media platforms. Not just that, creating gated content also opens the door to monetization as customers can pay for the exclusivity!
3. Social now a creator-first world
Experts believing apps like TikTok and Instagram are dying is quite ludicrous given such apps still have over 1B monthly active users. The reason behind such apps staying on top is the creator community that keeps pushing out more and more entertaining content. And the best thing is that Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube realize the power of creators. They have been releasing creator-specific features throughout 2022 and are expected to do so in 2023 too. Indeed, there has been a negative sentiment recently about social media applications. But the way these apps are empowering creators, it seems like social media will eventually become a creator-first world.
4. Podcasting budgets soar
Brands are investing more and more in podcasts as the stats show that the number of podcast listeners will grow to 504 million by 2024. Did you know that weekly podcast consumption has tripled in the last ten years? Well, this is the golden era of podcasting. And for a brand willing to invest in promising advertising avenues, podcasting makes for a perfect opportunity! The best thing about podcasts is that they are quite niche-specific. This allows brands to easily figure out the podcasts worth advertising on. Podcasts allow them to reach the right niche audience that will show interest in their products and services.
5. Augmented Reality goes mainstream
The AR market is projected to generate $70-75 billion in annual revenue in 2023. And social media platforms are quite wary of this fact, given how the technology is gaining momentum in the coming years. Facebook has made an initiative to launch its glasses this year with the goal of allowing users to use Facebook Smart Glasses to record memories without having to use their smartphones. The use of AR to create smart filters will continue to grow in 2023 as these give users access to technology that allows them to create their own filters.
6. Rise of YouTube Shorts
Short-form video content is already making noise on social media and after every social media network adopted the trend, YouTube has finally fallen in. Indeed, it took YouTube a long time to jump onto the short-form video trend. But, the recent results have been astoundingly huge. Since its launch, YouTube Shorts has been accumulating 30B views per day on average. YouTube Shorts has given many creators an opportunity to grow their channels as well as make the most of the upcoming monetization policies that prioritize Shorts. If you are good at creating short-form videos, you should certainly give YouTube Shorts a shot.
7. Copy-Paste trends will not work
In 2023, hopping on social media trends will have an entirely new meaning. If you watch the content being pushed on Instagram and TikTok, you will find that most of the videos have similar “trending audio.” Creators look for trending audio and make videos on them. This has rendered the content on these social media apps quite predictable and boring. In 2023, creators will have to come up with a more original content strategy to stand out. The push towards casual, off-the-cuff, no-frill storytelling will make these social media platforms more authentic. As copy-and-paste content will no longer garner attention or appreciation, brands will use trending audio to put a unique spin on their content.
8. Value > Selling
Modern-day customers are getting smarter. And with companies facing more and more competition online, they just can’t rely solely on promotional content. Customers are smart enough to see through the ads and choose brands that seem more reliable and authentic on social media. In 2023, brands will have to focus on creating more informative and valuable content and be less inclined towards pushing the fluff. We have already discussed the power of user-generated content. But that is just one form of content. Companies will have to use informative and more personal social media content to reduce the transparency between them and their customers. Helping customers make informed purchasing decisions is a highly reliable way of generating sales. Not just that, but this will help customers develop an emotional connection to the brands. The days of hard-selling on social media are coming to an end.
9. More social shopping ahead
The post-pandemic online shopping spree has had a huge impact on how customers valued social media. Instagram and Facebook have recently become increasingly popular shopping outlets. For example, online searches for the term “Instagram Shopping” have exploded by an astounding 378 percent in the past decade! The increase in social commerce buyers has been quite significant too — 25.2 percent! In 2023, the number of people shopping through social media is set to exceed 100 million. And social media applications are gearing up to facilitate a seamless and efficient shopping experience on their interface. Facebook Marketplace followed by Facebook Shops and Shops on Instagram gives us an idea of where the world of online shopping is headed.
10. Facebook will remain the social king
Facebook will remain the most used social media application on the internet. It has a whopping 2.9 billion active users as an average user spends almost an hour each day on the platform. Next on the list is YouTube which has garnered almost 35 billion total visitors in one month in 2022 as users spend about 40 minutes each day. Instagram and TikTok, although highly popular social media apps, were ranked fourth and seventh on the list. While no existing social media application has the audacity to fight with Facebook for user attention, there are several new social media platforms like Clubhouse surfacing in 2022. Still, brands will prefer advertising on Facebook due to its undisputed supremacy.
Final thoughts!
Social media is truly the internet’s “Wild Wild West” that never fails to surprise us. Indeed, its ability to continually evolve does overwhelm brands. But, at the same time, it opens several doors to improve marketing strategies and create new trends. It gives us the opportunity to experiment and figure out what works best. The social media marketing trends mentioned above are enough to make this year exciting for you. We suggest you pick the trends that can have an impact on your marketing campaigns and run with them. Most importantly, focus on creating unique, valuable, and entertaining content to gain significant social media exposure.
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