How to Succeed on Social Media in 2022

1. Selling Through Social Channels

The pandemic caused increased rates of social media consumption, which has now fuelled a move towards social commerce. This is one trend that shows no sign of slowing down.

Over four-fifths of shoppers research their potential purchases over social media. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to ensure customers can purchase directly from the apps they are already using and get rid of the extra step of navigating to an external website.

Each additional step a customer needs to make before buying a product may result in them losing attention and not following through with the sale. Social commerce removes this friction from the customer journey, whilst enabling you to target the products that will be most attractive to your audience.

2. Use Video Content

Video marketing is nothing new, but in the last year, we have seen it become integral to brand content strategies. With the huge popularity of TikTok, which grew 173% in 2020, and Instagram both embracing a move towards video content, the importance of high-quality video content will continue to increase in 2022.

Short-form videos tend to do particularly well on fast-paced social media channels, with over 39% of businesses already using this style of content to promote and sell their service and product offering, with one-third even commenting that it provides a better ROI than their own websites.

Not only do videos perform better and receive better engagement, but they are also easy to adapt across different social media channels, as they are highly versatile. 2022 will only see more and more brands balance using video trends and features, whilst still providing value to their target audiences.

3. Organic Reach Vs Paid Advertising

The average organic reach of a Facebook post sits at 5%. Whilst Apple’s new update even enables users to opt-out of Facebook tracking. Due to these factors more and more companies are facing the decline of organic reach.

In 2022, we will see a need to amplify content with paid advertising in order to effectively reach your target audience. With social media click-through rates and costs-per-click still better than many other forms of paid media, businesses will undoubtedly benefit from allocating some of their marketing spend towards paid advertising.

However, remember organic content should still not be neglected, as it is highly important for building brand awareness and engagement, with many companies now choosing a location-based approach to their online marketing strategies to attract customers in the local area and establish awareness.

4. The Year of Social Audio

2022 saw the huge rise of the drop-in audio app, Clubhouse, which now has millions of users. Twitter then followed in the same footsteps and launched its own social audio platform, Twitter Spaces. This new type of content is set to be hugely popular in 2022.

Social audio is different from podcasts, as it is a real-time conversation, which listeners can even participate in, whilst presenting an exciting new way for companies to develop new forms of thought leadership content.

Social audio provides intimacy and authenticity, as there is no script, whilst also offering brands a way to directly engage with their potential customers. This new iteration of conversational marketing is a brilliant way to perosnalise the customer journey, building trust and credibility as you go.

Although social audio platforms are very new, their popularity cannot be denied. Brands that get this new medium right will have huge potential to become market leaders in these emerging spaces.