5 Social Media Trends that were popular in 2021 and will be popular in 2022
As we know, social networks were created to connect people all over the world. It was mostly aimed at people who had hundreds and thousands of kilometers between each other. Soon, social media platforms acquired entertainment features, and in some years they became one of the main marketing tools.
Now, we spend more than half of our time on the Internet and social networks, especially on mobile devices. We live in mobile apps, so the average Internet user spends about 2.5 hours on social networks every day. At the moment, there are several major trends that began to develop in 2020 and will stay with us in the future. These trends have arisen due to the undying interest of users in social networks, which also became the driving force for innovative solutions with a long-term perspective.
Honesty and naturalness.
Nobody appreciates lies, so the audience feels falsehood a mile away. Nowadays, people try to broadcast honesty and openness, to show themselves without filters and masks. The fear of showing your weaknesses and mistakes was moved to the background.
One of the leading apps for honesty, naturalness, and openness is TikTok, which has launched many challenges, such as Better Days, Come Over (again), IAmWoman. These challenges showed that all of us are ordinary people with flaws, sometimes with weak willpower, and different opinions. They inspired millions of people to share their stories, and get support from strangers.
We live in the era of the development of social networks, where the most important trend in visual and textual content is being real, showing lively emotions, and capturing moments of non-stop life. In 2022, don’t forget about users’ demands because there are still too many perfect pictures on the Internet, but high-quality and sincere content will always be appreciated.
People buy stories.
Stories are unique and can affect people’s minds and hearts. It’s the art of turning ordinary presentations into a desirable experience, telling stories, and motivating people to buy products or services.
When was the last time your friend called you to tell you about new features on your phone? Most likely it was a long time ago, but we listen to stories every day and tell them to others. In the world of technology and social networks, everything happens too fast – we press a button, and our 10 or 500 friends get information about new events in a few seconds.
If we just show facts and figures to our audience, it will not convince them to buy your product or service. You must create stories around information that will be useful to your audience. When we know that something will be advertised to us, we close our ears and eyes, and we don’t even have 30 seconds to listen to the offer. At the same time, when we are told a fascinating story, we miraculously have even 30 minutes to listen to it.
Voice marketing.
Since voice assistants appear on social networks, a special marketing direction is developing. It will be aimed at working with voice assistants. This is evidenced by Bloomberg reports, which stated that voice messages from the Messenger app were listened to and decrypted (the messages had complete anonymity). This was done to check whether the transcripts generated by artificial intelligence correspond to sounding words and sentences.
Siri, Google Assistant, and others are becoming more popular because through communication with users they are trained and can help to solve more problems. Don’t forget about a wonderful new genre on social media – podcasts. For example, you go to work or lie on a couch, and you don’t want to waste your time. So, why not listen to useful information? There are already quite a lot of players in this market, but if we talk about the most famous ones, they are Youtube, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Mixcloud, Google Podcasts, Castbox, and Podster.
As users of social networks are getting used to perceiving the voice as the main source of information, and also using their own voice for these purposes, the stories described above also play an important role in the popularization of voice assistants.
Mini-content.
It is very difficult to capture the attention of a modern user, and most often he is interested in short, vivid videos from 15 to 60 seconds. This format of information consumption means that there is no need to think, concentrate and memorize. A person receives bright and quick flashes of pleasant emotions. TikTok provides users with the opportunity to relax, that’s why this resource is so popular. Also, anyone can use the simplest video editing programs without financial investments and create an attractive, interesting product out of an informational video.
Sometimes the problem is that TikTok is publicly available, and is full of low-quality content that is watched by the whole world. This is one of the reasons why the efforts of truly talented content makers are often underrated. Tiktok provides for the constant development of its content, so a user with something simple and uninteresting, but bright and colorful can even surpass a creative professional at the international level by chance.
Buying advertising from bloggers.
Advertising among bloggers became popular a long time ago, and now it is still a trend. Such ads increase the audience, bring income, but there is a problem in the market called “oversaturation”. Every second popular blogger integrates advertising into their content. There is nothing wrong or bad with this if it doesn’t affect the information component of advertising. When these two parts contrast sharply with each other, it causes dissonance in users’ minds, which provokes them to isolate themselves from annoying advertising by switching to something more harmonious.
Based on this, the popularity of microblogs is growing. The main advantage of such bloggers is a close connection with the audience. New small bloggers who have close relationships, can bring high profits, while bloggers with millions of followers give the advertiser low engagement. Therefore, it is more profitable to work with several microbloggers than to buy advertising from one big and well-known blogger.
Conclusion.
Social networks and social media marketing play an integral role in Internet marketing, so businesses need to follow trends and don’t miss changes or updates on social networks. Various trends can be used to compete with others, as with the help of unique, previously untested tools, companies can effectively attract a new audience or increase the loyalty of the existing one.
