Social Media Marketing Trends 2024

The following are the social media trends 2024 to watch out for:

Increased Use Of AI And ML

Will ML and AI give consumers more specialised and personalised experiences?

Well, there is no doubt that Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have become vital in our lives and have a huge impact on professional marketing. 

According to a survey, 63% of companies expect to increase or sustain the use of AI and ML in their business strategies. 

Let’s learn how these robots work. AI imitates human intelligence and uses it as a museum to perform intricate tasks and learn from them. At the same time, ML is an AI that uses algorithms to predict more accurate outcomes by using historical data to indicate new output values. 

For marketers, AI and mostly, machine learning play a huge role in identifying patterns and collecting data about user behaviours and preferences through:

• Predictive analytics
• Customer segmentation
• Sales forecasting 
• Email marketing
• Chatbots like ChatGPT, Tomme, etc.

Thanks to these technological advancements, manual techniques for deriving data about customers are now being replaced by machine learning. 

This allows marketers to develop new strategies and ideas to boost engagement and connect with target audiences. 

Thus, your question is now answered: AI and ML play a significant role in social marketing in a very personalised manner. Their role in the future will only increase.

Do you know that according to Salesforce, 51% of marketers already use artificial intelligence somehow? 

Now, it’s your turn to take your business horizons with AI and ML.

Programmatic Advertising

Imagine programmatic advertising, the revolutionary force in the social media revolution! Using clever automated technology enables you to purchase advertising space quickly instead of using conventional human procedures.

Traditionally, markets would have to partake in bidding, setting content, and picking the right time for a particular ad, but it’s no fun. 

Statistically, 91.1% of social ads consist of programmatic advertisements in just the US. 

However, with programmatic advertising, suitable algorithms and data insights are used to provide users with suitable ads at the right time and price. Marketers can be able to achieve the following campaign goals with such marketing systems:

• Brand awareness
• Conversations
• Budget limits
• Campaign restraints

Programmatic advertising gives marketers the highest profit return based on their campaign goals and constraints. The bright side of programmatic advertising is that it is highly efficient, saves time, has a broader reach, and produces high returns. 

However, it does have some flaws, such as countless bots, non-human traffic, and vendors who can be abusive, but the pros outweigh the cons.

Programmatic marketing is becoming an increasingly favoured advertising method. In fact, budgets for this advertising are expected to increase by more than $300 billion in the next four years.

Therefore, bid farewell to older times and welcome a new era of effective and flexible media buying.

Video Marketing 

Another feature that is becoming increasingly popular in social media updates is video marketing. This type of marketing presents content in video format to allow brands to promote their products and services better, engage with target audiences sufficiently, and increase brand awareness. 

Brands can use video advertising on various platforms like their website, social media, and public platforms (like YouTube).

Statista reported that about 8000 marketers concluded that pre-produced video was the leading method for engagement among social consumers. This was a method used by 81% of respondents. It has innumerable advantages, such as:

• It allows you to expand your audience.
• It is more captivating than picture ads, so it attracts more attention.
• It will enable a lot of room for creativity.
• Effectively allows you to promote your business, products, services, or message. 

Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR)

Do you know that the market has become more immersive with the introduction of new AR and VR technologies? 

AR and VR are part of Extended Reality (XR), which refers to all the real-virtual environments and interactions that computer technology forges. 

Augmented reality integrates real and computer-generated content to create an interactive 3D experience. By 2024, the number of people using AR will reach 1.73 billion. Isn’t that surprising?

Virtual reality, on the other hand, stimulates an entirely virtual 3D environment through computer modelling and simulation. 

You would obviously think that VR is 25% reality and 75% virtual, whereas the opposite is true of AR.

While VR systems are controlled by a computer system, for instance, VR goggles can be used for games, mental health therapy, and meditation. AR experiences, on the other hand, can be controlled even through smartphone access, such as Pokemon Go and Snapchat. 

Marketers see the potential of using XR in social marketing because XR is the backbone. It allows you a whole new experience with 3D products and services, such as implementation in home appliances, cars, high-end fashion, furniture, etc. 

XR encourages brands to make experiences like shopping, video games, etc., more immersive and interactive. 

The market for XR is growing rapidly. It is reported to be $125.2 billion in size by 2026. 

Therefore, you can use XR to introduce new products and services while promoting them creatively through AR and VR experiences. 

Social Commerce

Social media has become a massive part of our lives.

Whether you’re passing the time, studying, or shopping, almost everything can be done with your smartphone and internet access while lying down on your couch. 

Can you imagine that 81% of the US population shopped online in just 2022? Seeing this, marketers innately consider social media a powerful platform to advertise their brands and products. 

Advertisements like PPCs, video ads, sponsored ads, etc., have become widely blown across new social media platforms 2024, such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. Buying products and services has also become common through built-in functions in these apps. Benefits of social commerce include:

• SEO ranking increases
• Time-saving
• Brands can be more interactive
• Wide reach 

Among more than half of the young generation that uses trends in social media, 55% have claimed that they bought something through social media. 

Social commerce is a popular option for social marketing among marketers like you.

Voice Search and Optimization

Have you ever used incredible voice assistants like Siri or Alexa? They are one of the current social media trends.

You may need to learn that these can drastically change social marketing.

Virtual assistants and command systems like Siri, Alexa, Amazon Echo, etc., have made voice commerce popular for social media marketing.

Every day, people are relying more and more on voice commands to search for information, which is why marketers realise that they need to think beyond SEO keyword searches and instead focus on sentences or queries that people are more likely to look for about different products or services using voice search. 

Voice search is reasonably practical in social marketing, as 52% of people who own a smart speaker are updated about new deals and promotions for various companies and brands. 

Hence, voice commerce has become a prevalent topic for SEO optimization. It provides you with the following perks:

• Reduces the time customers take to decide on a product that can prove beneficial for businesses.
• Increases chances of growing your business and brand awareness.
• Boosts audience reach.
• It enables brands to collect customer data more efficiently and rapidly so they can customise their marketing options accordingly. 

According to the survey, 62% of people who use voice search bought items enabled by voice command. 

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics predicts prospective outcomes based on historical data. 

This uses AI, ML, and statistical models to find patterns that can best predict future events, trends, scenarios, and behaviour. 

Predictive analytics can be used in many cases, such as predicting cash flow for finances or preventing malfunctions. In the case of social marketing, predictive analytics helps assess the behaviour of the target audience.

By utilising historical data and content, marketers can predict what trends may be most popular and what content might produce the most engagement. It can allow marketers to: 

• Better plan campaigns 
• Certify their organisation 
• Increase efficiency
• Improves risk management 

This form of business analytics is quite renowned and widely used. Even in the future, its use will only increase. According to statistics, the global market size for this form of analytics has a predicted annual growth rate of 18.5% from 2023 to 2030. Also, remember that data ethics is a crucial part of the equation.

Let’s dive into the key factors that ensure ethical data practices:

• Businesses to be careful in the handling and maintenance of data, 
• responsibility, 
• Introduction of policies that are for customer welfare.
• Providing consumers with increased control over their data.
• Keeping data secure. 

Organisations should be held accountable in case of any mishandling or improper use of data