Top 5 Up and Coming Social Media Marketing Trends to Look Out For – 2022

By: Sarah Frate

As social media marketing (SMM) continues to grow, companies are constantly adapting their strategies and tactics to maximize consumer engagement. SMM provides companies with an extremely convenient and effective way to attract both new and existing customers.

The most commonly known SMM activities involve posting images, videos and text updates that promote audience engagement. However, the popularity and relevance of each activity are constantly changing and adapting. That’s why it’s important to constantly reevaluate your content mix.

As we all know, the one thing about trends is that they’re constantly changing. If you were to ask marketers a few years ago, no one would have predicted that Tik Tok engagement would vastly surpass Facebook or that QR codes would make a large comeback. That’s why I’ve compiled a list of SMM trends to keep an eye out for in 2022.

Tik Tok Marketing

In today’s social media world, Tik Tok is the most downloaded app on Android and IOS cellphones and other electronics, dramatically surpassing other social media platforms. The growth of this app has drastically increased since its emergence in 2016 and does not appear to be slowing down any time in the near future.

Key facts from Sprout Social:

1 billion active users monthly
90% of users go on the app daily
69% of American teenagers are on the app

Also, Tik Tok states that approximately 47% of the app’s users have purchased products seen on the platform. The company added that 67% of its users “agree that TikTok inspired them to shop even when they weren’t looking to do so.” Sprout Social

Looking at TikTok’s large audience base, marketers can use this platform in order to effectively increase their consumer engagement. For example, a company could collaborate with a well-known influencer to endorse their product/ service to their followers.

Creator economy

In our society today, the average consumer sees between 6,000 – 10,000 advertisements daily. Marketers can make their company stand out from the rest by having a creator endorse their good or service on their social media platform, where they most likely have a large fan base.

Social media creators/influencers have a huge impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions. Because of the extremely large creator economy, the industry is predicted to reach $13.8 billion (blog.hubspot.com). Marketers can use the size of this industry to their advantage by incorporating social media creators/influencers into their content strategies.

According to The Voice of Marketing, “content creators are mini agencies.”

Rise of social commerce

Another trend marketers should look out for this year is social commerce. This is the buying and selling of a good or service directly from a given social media site.

The Harris Poll conducted a survey with 250 business directors and over 1,000 American customers to gain a deeper insight into how they use social media platforms as well as how it can impact a company. Here’s what they found:

91% of the business directors surveyed predict that their organization’s budget allocated for social media marketing will increase by over 50% within the next three years.
77% of American consumers surveyed stated that they are more inclined to give a company their business if they have a positive experience with them on social media.
85% of business directors believe moving forward, that data collected from social media will soon become a central source of business intelligence for companies.

Additionally, the survey concluded that 80% of participating consumers believe that companies are able to create brand familiarity when they market their products or services on social media platforms.

Social media data is the new wave of digital evolution in the marketing world. As you can tell from this insight, the number of social commerce consumers has been on a steady uptick since 2019 and shows no sign of slowing down.

Social audio strategies

The appearance of audio within social media platforms is a relatively new, yet beneficial marketing tactic. Social audio is a type of social media that uses audio as its main source of communication. The most known form of social audio is podcasts which have become increasingly popular in the marketing world, but playlists are also increasing in popularity.

This newer strategy not only allows for active user participation but also provides a more in-depth explanation of the content being delivered that isn’t always supported in text.

The most popular social audio platform used today is Clubhouse, which has approx. 10 million users, both on IOS and Android electronic devices.Types of Social Media Content

This strategy has experienced a drastic increase in popularity since the early 2000s and is expected to continue its growth into 2022.

Livestream shopping and Ecommerce

Ecommerce, AKA internet/ electronic commerce, happens when a consumer buys or sells a good or service directly through the internet. The transfer of both data and money is required to carry out these online transactions

A type of ecommerce that is rapidly expanding in the marketplace today is livestream shopping through social media platforms. The decline of brick-and-mortar shopping has sparked the life of this trend since the pandemic outbreak. Sprout Social reports:

43% of Gen Z have purchased a good or service through social media platforms
49% of Millennials use social media platforms to shop
73% of corporations currently use social media platforms to sell their product/ service
79% of businesses plan to use livestream shopping by 2025

Shoppable content is extremely beneficial for companies to quickly expand their customer base and increase revenue.