Top 5 strategic trends for social media marketing in 2024 | MarTech

The digital marketing ecosystem is full of trends that flicker and fizzle faster than your Instagram stories. Mention Vine to a Gen Z colleague and see what happens.

It takes a discerning marketer to know where his brand should invest time and resources. Here’s a look at the top social media opportunities where brands will confidently see momentum in 2024.

1. Artificial intelligence as an employee

2023 claimed to be the year of AI, but few marketers did more than play with tools from the early editions. 2024 is poised to be the year that AI is put to work in the right way, especially on social media.

Behind the scenes

More and more brands will use AI to streamline their operations and strengthen analytics. Machine learning algorithms analyze vast amounts of first-party data and can provide actionable insights to improve segmentation and personalization. This is especially important because 2024 will herald the final death of third-party cookies.

Predictive behavior analysis, sentiment analysis, and influencer discovery are ways a marketer can use AI to develop a social media strategy that prioritizes a highly customized and relevant audience experience.

Creative collaboration

With these insights, creative teams benefit from time and cost savings by using generative AI to:

• Suggest compelling captions.
• Generate custom brand images.
• Reuse the best performing messages.
• Create new collateral based on popular topics or competitor activities.

The key word here is ‘suggest’. Content teams aren’t going anywhere. Your audience can still sense the difference between real, human communication and bot-written prose.

From digital greeting cards to a massive takeover in the Las Vegas Sphere, Coca-Cola led the early adoption of generative AI for public marketing in 2023. The first brand to work directly with OpenAI, the beverage giant partnered with Bain and WPP, demonstrating how brilliant work integrating AI technology into an integrated team approach.

Your new customer service representative

Finally, expect chatbots to expand the messaging side of social platforms as brands look to provide personalized, real-time interactions to customers who want support.

While AI can certainly deliver efficiencies in social marketing, there are considerations for maintaining trust with your audience. Authenticity and privacy are top-of-mind concerns across demographics – not to mention the complications associated with plagiarism, misinformation and bias. Understand how your audience perceives AI. Before making AI solutions public, engage general counsel and possibly a diversity panel.

Dig deeper: 6 ways to use generative AI for your marketing

2. Social commerce will dominate retail

With features like in-app purchases, store tags, and integrated payment options, social media platforms are taking over the role of primary shopping destination.

It makes sense because social shopping involves the entire consumer decision-making process in a closed circuit.

Complete funnel solution

Social commerce eliminates stages of browsing and clicks to checkout, ultimately reducing friction points. Improvements in augmented reality and virtual reality allow users to evaluate products on sightwhich reduces purchasing uncertainty.

Brands can receive real-time feedback on the products and purchasing experiences directly from a highly targeted audience, without the costs of surveys or focus groups. They can also build stickiness by inviting loyal customers to participate in product development. Within this loop, purchases can be more than a transaction; they can propel relationships forward.

Metaplatforms deliver the highest ROI, according to HubSpot’s Marketing Trends report. However, choose the right platform based on your target audience. Zarafor example, knows that TikTok is where its Gen Z clientele looks for the latest fashion trends and launched the TikTop Shop late last year.

3. Store it on a reel

Short videos and ephemeral content are here to stay

Interestingly, short videos and ephemeral content are the primary focus for branded content creators, not because they attract attention, but because they maintain the user’s interaction with their device.

In 2024, the goal is to seamlessly integrate your brand into the digital lives of your audience in an informal and human way. Use behind-the-scenes, testimonials, Ask Me Anything (AMA), and polls from your customers and within the company to deliver bite-sized, real, and relatable content.

Micro-brand ambassadors rule

In case you haven’t noticed yet, authenticity, connection and human engagement will become the top audience requirements for brand interactions in 2024. Who better to give a product recommendation than a trusted friend or neighbor? Celebrity endorsements have lost their traction, which means we need to work with ‘nano-influencers’ and leverage user-generated content to promote your brand.

Kraft Heinz wins by using leverage user-generated content (UGC) and nano-influencers to promote existing core products and new product launches. The CPG brand successfully places its products in the context of real households across the continent, building trust and relevance with their primary buyers.

Dig Deeper: Navigating the Maker Economy: Strategies for Brands and Marketing Teams

4. Social search optimization

TikTok and Instagram have dethroned Google favorite search engine for Gen Z. So if you want to reach new eyes in the 18-34 demographic, you need to optimize your brand for discoverability on social platforms.

Less used to be more, but in 2024, you should pay attention to including high-traffic keywords and descriptive metadata in your social posts to improve your brand’s visibility.

Swipe left to engage

Engagement also impacts social search results. Schedule your posts around the time when your audience is most likely to engage with them.

Ask them questions: Stickers and polls allow your audience to effortlessly interact with your posts to increase engagement. But the easiest question of all is a simple swipe. Use carousel posts to showcase your compelling new AI or user-generated content to increase engagement metrics.

Humor or passions

This is not new information: reposts are worth their weight in gold. The more pages link to your content, the higher your brand will rank in search results. Timely lists, infographics, how-tos, videos and memes are all shareable formats you can incorporate into your plan, but more important in 2024 is tone.

Appeal to your audience’s humanity with humor or a gentle tug on the heartstrings (nostalgia is in again). And always use compelling calls to action that inspire your audience to share.

Dig deeper: 5 reasons why marketers should consider TikTok for B2B

5. Loud and proud company values

In the age of AI and VR, where concerns about disinformation and privacy exist, authenticity is the word of the day. The public expects their favorite brands to make their values ​​public and consistently demonstrate adherence to those values.

If you haven’t already, focus on your brand’s core issues and make sure they permeate your internal culture and your social media strategy. Inside-out authenticity promotes credibility, trust and positive regard among both consumers and future talent.

Buffer, a social media marketing platform, has built its reputation on transparency, openly sharing salaries and company milestones, and advocating for transparency in social media marketing. They don’t have to be all things to all marketers, but they know they want to lead the way in technology transparency.

Technology evolves, but it does not replace the human desire for authentic connection. Simplify your social media approach: Prioritize meaningful, personal interactions using AI and leverage the intelligence and influence of your audience for success in 2024.

Dig deeper: B2B social media sweet spots: what works and what doesn’t