With social media constantly changing – new apps, trends and unfavourable updates, the only sure thing with socials is that they are always changing…
Whether you’re an avid social media user or are a business wanting to stay on top of your social media game, these are our predictions for what’s to come on social media in 2023.
Twitter is dwindling
The back end of 2022 saw Twitter updates causing controversy, to say the least. One of the most memorable updates though was the verification ‘blue tick’ being up for purchase by literally anyone from the general public. This scandal saw people imitating being celebrities, brands and even Jesus! As you can imagine this update is hugely problematic for businesses especially, and in 2023 I think we are bound to see many more updates from Elon Musk, many of them I can imagine to go down like a lead balloon with users alike.
Bearing in mind Twitter’s chaotic 2022, we predict Twitter’s trajectory to be gradually downwards, eventually fizzling out in years to come. If you are a business using Twitter as one of your platforms and you find it is working well for you, by all means keep posting as you are, we would just recommend not to allocate huge budgets or huge efforts when considering Twitter in your 2023 strategies, due to its unpredictable nature.
TikTok continues to dominate
TikTok is going from strength to strength and its rise in popularity shows no signs of slowing down. Along with its growing community of active users, TikTok has also added features to keep them relevant, fresh and ahead of competitors. A super recent addition to the app is TikTok now, TikTok’s take on BeReal, where you have to post in the moment snaps of your day to be able to view other peoples TikTok nows. This addition shows TikTok is adamant to stay on top of trends and cater to their huge Gen Z audience.
TikTok is also becoming a leader in social commerce. In 2022 it introduced TikTok shop which is a new way of shopping directly through the app, making it unnecessary for people to exit tiktok to go and shop through a link on another site. TikTok shop allows creators and brands to show and sell their products directly through in-feed videos and ‘lives’, usually at highly discounted rates. Although these features are not that hot for the issue of consumerism – they have exploded in popularity with products being sold out at a rate of knots. With TikTok staying very much on top of trends, giving users even less of a reason to leave the app AND giving the consumers what they want before they even know they want it – we see TikTok completely taking over any other platform in 2023 (how sustainable this will be in years to come is another issue!
Short form video content is king
TikTok taking off as much as it has done in recent years, has seen other platforms following suit. Instagram has reels, YouTube has introduced ‘shorts’ and even Twitter is said to be pushing video content. Facebook is also pushing to be a video-first platform and often prioritises video assets. It is no doubt we will see this trend continue in 2023 and we predict there will be an even bigger shift towards video content, with networks making their apps optimised for video content and platforms that are seemingly jumping on the video bandwagon, begin to surrender (We’d be interested to see how LinkedIn could utlise video features – job adverts in video form anyone?).
If you’re trying to grow your brand awareness on social media and yield more engagement and you’re not incorporating vertical video clips under 15 seconds long, you’re missing out on an opportunity.
Candid is the new cool
For Gen Z especially, 2022 really saw the days of airbrushed, photo shoot worthy, ‘perfect’ pictures, phase out. We can see from the popularity of apps such as BeReal, Gen Z are much more into authentically showing their real lives, regardless of how aesthetically pleasing. We can also see this from the Instagram ‘dump’ trend, where a cluster of recent photos from users camera rolls will be posting that are usually not cohesive, usually include some blurry ‘candid’ images and putting the best picture of yourself first is a big no-no, any selfies should come much later in the carousel (Instagrams name for posting multiple pictures at once).
How can brands get involved, you may ask? Well, although posting candid photo dumps to Instagram probably wouldn’t make much sense for most brands, the general desire for more authenticity in brands themselves, their messaging and their campaigns is obvious. A great way for brands to gain the trust of consumers is with user generated content from their customers and micro/nano influencers.
Micro & Nano influencers overtake mega influencers
Nano influencers are social media influencers who have below 10k followers, micro influencers are followers with between 10-100k followers and mega influencers have over 1 million followers. For years influencer marketing has been a hugely profitable industry, with huge celebrities and influencers promoting products for huge fees. The likes of people like Kylie Jenner, Molly Mae and Zoe Sugg (to take it back a few years!) would influence their millions of followers purchasing decisions, and while they still have a big influence, a shift away from the mega-influencers has definitely been gradually occurring. I think with everyone having a greater understanding of influencer marketing in recent years, consumers have clocked on to just how much their favorite mega-infuclners are making for one sponsored post (sometimes 10’s, even 100’s of thousands of pounds!) which I think has planted seeds of doubt to just how genuine these opinions may be and also makes these people somewhat unrelatable to a big chunk of their audience.
Influencers with smaller audiences seem more relatable as they usually don’t do influencing full time so have ‘normal jobs’ with a more ‘normal’ amount of disposable income, also their small followings portray them as more of a peer to their audiences, rather than being famous. These factors make their recommendations usually seem much more genuine, much like a friend recommending a product.
Sustainability is here to stay
With Sustainability being arguably the hottest topic in marketing in recent years, we all know it’s important to consumers that companies do their bit for the planet. If your brand has no sustainable, ethical or ‘do good’ elements then you can expect customers to choose competitors who have a commitment to sustainability, over you.
Although sustainability is super important, especially in 2023, make sure you aren’t greenwashing. Read our blog post to find out what greenwashing is and how to avoid it.
If you’re looking for help with your social media, whether that be training, content creation, social media management or the creation of a social media strategy for your business, (check out some of the work we’ve done in our case studies section).
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