Social Media Trends That May Dominate 2024
Social media is an ever-evolving landscape, and each year brings new trends and changes (as well as a fair share of challenges for us social media agencies!) With just a few months to go to 2024, we wanted to get ahead of the curve and make our predictions as to what trends will shift in the social media sphere – so we can start preparing for them!
Trend #1 – ‘Meta Verses’, VR And AR
Something that’s really exciting is the development of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) on social media. With Meta (formerly Facebook) leading the way, it’s thought that soon, users will be able to interact in shared virtual spaces and even attend virtual events. Is this something we need to think about in a social media strategy for 2024?
At the moment, the use of AR and VR on social media is still in its early days – however, ideas for virtual tours of our client’s show homes, and virtual conferences for some of the businesses we work with have already begun buzzing around our brains. Let’s see what happens next year.
Trend #2 – Long-Form Content Creation
Content creation (a service that we offer now at Source PR) has been growing for the past two years, especially when it comes to using Instagram Reels for businesses.
It’s not breaking news to say this should continue into 2024 and beyond, but something we think will make more of a comeback is long-form content shared through these platforms. Think: explanation videos, tips and tricks, even stories. Already we’ve seen creators racking up the views with this kind of content, and with maximum video lengths being extended to 10 minutes on TikTok, it’s not a crazy leap to make. Instagram are yet to follow suit, with their maximum video length still at 90 seconds – do we think they’ll make it longer?
It’s worth noting, though, that long-form content will only work for a certain type of client, and one that you know will have an engaged audience. For most B2C social strategies and with clients wanting far-reaching content, short, snappy videos work the best. 15-30 remains the optimum length by our book!
Trend #3 – AI… (Maybe!)
If you look up social media trends for 2024 now, it’s hard to get through a piece without AI being mentioned in some capacity. But are we worried it will take our jobs? Nah!
ChatGPT and other similar tools have certainly risen in popularity, and agencies have been trialling and testing them for a while now. Hardcore believers will say that AI can replace the person at the other end of the laptop, typing up social media content, but we think that will never happen.
Though clever, we don’t believe that AI can ever truly replace the human emotion and empathy that goes into social media management. Plus – we can’t see robots heading out to film your Reels and TikTok videos any time soon, can you?!
Trend #4 – Sharing Sustainable Initiatives
As the world grapples with more environmental issues by the year, we’d like to think we’ll see more businesses adopting and sharing eco-friendly practices and promoting sustainability.
We’re lucky enough to work with some great, pioneering businesses in the sector and also have clients that are open to our suggestions on how they can become greener and communicate it to the world too.
Trend #5 – Better Ephemeral Content
Content that is only around for 24 hours or less, also known as Ephemeral content, started with Snapchat but has been stolen by Stories. Including Instagram Stories in your social media strategy is not a new thing, but we think long may it continue into 2024 and beyond. We love collaborating with our clients to bring you ‘here and now’ content that goes on to Instagram Stories and actively promotes what a business is up to, or what they’re all about.
We hope to see more interactive elements and widgets introduced and think that ‘shoppable stories’ will become more prevalent as this feature moves out of infancy and is used more often by companies.
Trend #6 – Regulation And Accountability
And finally, as social media continues to influence society, we are all responsible for the content we put out there. Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) are doing a lot more to banish ‘fake news’, and in other news the ASA continues to put pressure on influencers to declare sponsorships and collaborations.
We think we’ll see more of this into 2024 and will continue to always make sure we’re following the latest guidelines and putting out genuine, authentic and honest content for our clients.
We hope this blog gave you some more progressive social media trends for 2024 than the usual ‘younger audiences’, ‘TikTok trends’ and ‘updated algorithms’ roundups. What do you think? What quirky trend do you think will dominate social media as we head to a new year? Always happy to chat on Twitter, you can reach me (Jess) directly at @jessicapardoePR.
