Top Social Media Trends for 2021 that will stay in 2022

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The time when we Social media managers everywhere start looking around to see which social media trends will lead the way in 2022. We have strategies to plan so this is vital. Will TikTok remain one of the top social media trend makers or will Instagram keep being a runner up for the social media trend master? Will organic engagement get any better if we use more videos? How about hosting live videos and chats – will this be necessary? That’s a lot of questions, but we are here for you!

We know that social media can grow and transform faster than an actual Transformer, which is why we prepared the answers for you. Furthermore, we have prepared the top 3 key social media trends that are here to stay in 2022, using various sources, including this useful Social Trends report for 2022.

Let’s roll our sleeves and dive deep into the social media trends that will stay with us in 2022:

1. TikTok will remain one of the most important social networks for marketing

TikTok grew immensely during the past two years. It became one of the most popular apps in September 2021 when it surpassed 1 billion users worldwide, and together with this, it also became the 7th most popular social network in the world, dethroning a lot of other market shareholders.

Why is TikTok’s growth such a big deal you may ask? Well, the app grew from 689 million users in January 2021 to 1 billion in September 2021 which is a 45% increase in less than a year. It’s huge! 

Just to bring a bit of data in the picture, in 2020 Instagram’s monthly active users grew at a rate of only 6%.

Although TikTok has grown so much a lot of businesses are still hesitant to invest time and effort in the network. Some of them feel like the audience is not the right mix and they may be right but you would never know if something is quite right until you try it. Furthermore, TikTok introduced tools like creator marketplace and business profiles, as well as ads manager. This will definitely be beneficial and help TikTok’s growth further.

What can You do?

As TikTok is still not flooded with lots of businesses promoting themselves, we recommend you try it out:

👉 Create an account for your brand and start being out there; 

👉 Explore TikTok to gather some ideas;

👉 Pinpoint basics for your TikTok marketing strategy;

2. Smaller networks will start dominating the market

You may be surprised by this. Various social media research sources show that end consumers are now much more interested in buying after seeing ads or content on smalled social media platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok.

For instance, TikTok commissioned a study, conducted by Kantar where it was evident that the end consumers believe that TikTok ads are more inspiring and enjoyable than ads on other platforms. Snapchat and Pinterest went on similar paths and the results were more or less the same. 

Why do we think that smaller social media networks will become more and more popular? Giants like Facebook and Instagram tend to be densely populated with all sorts of advertisers which cause ads fatigue in users. Moreover, advertisers will have a much better reach and overall visibility when using smaller platforms.

What Can You Do?

👉 Pay attention to some key platform metrics like your engagement rate for example and see which one looks best. Then you just need to invest more time and content into it. 

👉 Do your research to get inspired by some content ideas and see if you can improve your brand’s presence.

👉 Experiment with creating ads on different networks to see which works best for you.

3. Short-form video shall be the king. Long-form video content will only remain on YouTube

According to Vidyard, “60% of all videos published on the internet in 2020 were under 2 minutes long”.

Source: Vidyard

The stats above show the most successful and preferred video length on social media platforms. As expected, YouTube will remain the to-go platform for long-form videos. 

What you need to remember is that users will watch content which they find relatable, entertaining and engaging. Also stories, also known as disappearing content will not be as popular as they used to be. 

What Can You Do?

👉 Experiment with TikTok videos, especially if you want to increase your followers.

👉 Try out Reels, if you are planning to re-engage your existing audience.

👉 You just need to try and see what works best for your business. Do not forget to create content for each channel (i.e. do not just re-post your TikTok video to Instagram). 

What else should you consider?

– You should learn and invest in paid advertising

Why? Organic reach has been declining over the past few years, especially on Facebook and Instagram. This is mainly due to the high competition and flooded news feeds. 

During the pandemic, a lot of businesses reduced their advertising budgets because of the lower buyer interest and therefore low return on investment. To add to this, Apple also allowed users to opt out of Facebook ad tracking. This meant that a lot of advertisers had to reconsider their ad targeting and overall advertising strategy. 

Sounds a bit tough right? Then why can’t we just rely on organic? 

Advertising can indeed be a challenge, but with the right strategy, it will definitely work in your favour. Furthermore, the estimated average organic reach for Facebook is about 5% – 5.5%, meaning that if you do not put any paid budget behind your posts, you will only reach about 5% of your followers. This is really not enough, so we highly encourage you to include paid advertising in your digital marketing strategy.

This is it folks the top 3 social media trends that are here to stay in 2022. Stay tuned for more useful tips on how to manage your social media channels.