Now we’re a month into the new year, it’s a great time to look ahead and make sure your marketing is fit for the next eleven months. To help you with that, we wanted to share our insights and tips (and most importantly how to use them effectively) to keep you ahead of the competition on social media in 2024.
Video Content
Without meaning to sound like a broken record, video is still the content social media users are engaging with the most. So it should absolutely be a part of your strategy this year.
However, it’s not the only content format on some platforms. On Instagram and LinkedIn you can share content in the form of a carousel, and we’ve seen the performance of this format improve significantly over the last few months. It’s important to feed social media algorithms with multiple content formats to give your page the most opportunity to reach your audience, so with this in mind, yes you should absolutely use video content, but don’t let the carousel be forgotten!
Trending Sounds
Using trending sounds is a strategy most frequently adopted on Instagram and TikTok. You can add any music and sounds over the video you’re uploading, however adding trending sounds to your content can increase the reach, even reaching new audiences on social media.
Trending sound is a great tool for growing social media profiles and helping the algorithms understand who is likely to engage with your content. However, just adding any old trending sound to your content is never the best option – your social media channels are a huge part of your digital shopfront, so it’s vital they accurately reflect your brand look and tone of voice. The sound you use on content is going to be reflective of your brand, so you have to make sure it aligns with your brand.
So look through trending sounds on each platform and make a note of the ones that align with your brand. It doesn’t matter if they’ve not got the highest number of uses, what is most important is that it’s trending. Then look at who else has used it. If it’s being played over content that’s similar to yours or in the same industry it’s probably a pretty good fit, as it’ll mean people viewing content with this sound are predominantly engaging with content in your industry.
YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts have been around for a while now. As the name suggests, they allow YouTube users to create short videos that align with the content styles we typically see on TikTok and Instagram. appealing to social users with short-form content engagement behaviours. And now YouTube has made it even easier to create YouTube Shorts, with an added in platform feature that allows you to repurpose existing long-form videos on your page. This is a great time saving hack when you already have long-form content ready to go.
Personalised Content
Personalised content continues to be one of your biggest opportunities as we move deeper into 2024. To do this well you really need to know your existing customers. They are one of your biggest assets and monitoring their behaviour lets you identify ways you can talk directly and personally to other people on social media just like them. So, look at your customer list, see what traits and behaviours you can identify, even ask them to answer a few questions to help you. Then use this information to inform your social media content strategy.
AI: It’s Here To Stay
Whether we like it or not, AI is a part of the digital marketing world, so let’s make sure we’re using it to our advantage! There’s been adoption of AI in some way or another on most social platforms and relevant tools. Many of these features are useful tools for idea generation and time saving. However, it’s a case of ‘proceed with caution’ when it comes to trusting AI with your marketing. Your unique brand and subsequent tone of voice isn’t something a machine can do better than the human brain, so it’s crucial you avoid a copy and paste job from the AI tool straight to your social media feed. Use it for inspiration by all means, but then adapt it, using your brand guidelines for messaging, values and tone of voice, to ensure it feels authentically you (and not like every other social media user who is using the exact same AI tool!).
Staying ahead of social media trends and platform updates is really important to make the most of opportunities and to get the edge over your competitors. Follow us and we’ll keep you up to date with the latest trends, plus give you the secrets on how you can use them effectively.