Social Media Expert Emily-Rose Hills Shares The Top Social Media Trends To Watch In 2022.

Emily Rose Hills is one of Australia’s leading social media experts, having led some of the worlds best social media teams including at THE  ICONIC.

She breaks down her top social media trends to watch out for in 2022: 

Short-form video

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that short, engaging content that instantly grabs your attention is critical on social media; this has always been the case. However, this is becoming more extreme, with shorter form content dominating social platforms. A few years ago, we all thought long-form video content was the way forward with the launch of Facebook Watch and IGTV. However, since TikTok’s arrival, the other social media networks have followed suit with Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Video content should already be a part of your social media strategy, but are you investing in 10-minute videos that no one is watching? If so, consider cutting down the content and focusing on short and sweet videos.

For anyone that wants to create long-form video content, I recommend going live on Instagram or Tik Tok in 2022. 

More-In platform purchases 

Social media has always been a helpful discovery tool for brands. However, social commerce has seen significant growth in recent years, primarily thanks to the pandemic, and it’s now at a stage where customers almost expect to be able to purchase on the platform. 

From a conversion perspective, having the chance to make a purchase straight after finding the product on social media is a no brainer.

Making potential customers navigate to a website is just an extra step where they have the opportunity to fall out of the conversion funnel. If you sell products online at all, it’s worth setting up a shop on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest in 2022. 

The continued rise of Tik Tok 

 The platform has exploded over the past year, so its growth doesn’t look like slowing any time soon. In September this year, TikTok celebrated hitting 1 billion monthly active users, making it the 7th largest social platform, and if you remove messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Wechat), the 4th biggest. Businesses can advertise on TikTok, which is an excellent way to get new users and prospects to see your brand. I would recommend testing TikTok advertising in 2022. 

Social advertising will evolve

New privacy regulations like the iOS update and the pending removal of cookies have reduced the data used in artificial intelligence. In addition, with Google planning to phase out third-party cookies by 2023, brands will start adapting their social advertising in the build-up to the death of cookies over the next year. 

Thankfully, several advertising options don’t rely on third-party cookies, so all is not lost; it’s just a case of fine-tuning your activity accordingly. 

Of course, third party cookies have always been a crucial part of any strategy, but this does provide an excellent opportunity to get stuck into the data truly. Get to know your audience better in 2022  by diving into metrics around interests and preferences.

You will start to understand your customers on a personal level, which will help you build more engaged communities on social.     

Influencer marketing continues to grow

Influencer marketing is set to reach $13.8 billion in 2021 and continue to grow. Influencer campaigns inherently provide context and relevance since the influencer is endorsing the product. Brands are becoming more creative with telling their brand stories using influencers; this will only continue to expand into 2022. I believe brands will make the shift to focusing primarily on YouTube for Influencer marketing due to the platform having higher trust than Instagram.