POV you have entered 2024 and all the new trends, updates, algorithms, and more about the social media world are beginning to overwhelm you. I am here to be sure this does not happen to you. In this blog, I am going to dive deep into what is next in the social media world as we quickly approach 2024.
But first, take a deep breath, think about your social media goals for 2024, and visualize success! I will walk you through some best practices that will help you crush your 2024 goals as well as some predictions based on statistics. Let’s go!
1. Text-only posts are the sleeper hit of the year (X remains on top)
While the shakeup at X seems to have stabilized in recent months, the uncertainty at the platform did give plenty of other text-based apps an opportunity to eat up some market share in 2023.
Mastodon, for example, has 1.7 million monthly active users. The Jack Dorsey-funded Bluesky Social is invite-only (exclusive!) but boasts over 1 million active users.
And then there’s Meta’s Threads app. It exploded out of the gate in July 2023, reaching more than 44 million daily active users in record time.
No matter what happens at X, text-based social apps aren’t going anywhere. And text-only posts, even on platforms that aren’t considered text-forward, are far from over.
To-do list:
- Secure your usernames on Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads, even if you don’t have time to invest in them yet.
- Look for opportunities to repurpose your text-only content on other platforms (i.e., reposting your Tweets on Instagram).
- Don’t delete your X account yet or reduce the number of times you tweet each week (if you’re feeling fatigued, you can speed up Tweet writing with AI).
- Polish your X marketing strategy and keep a close eye on whether your audience continues to engage on the platform with SproutSocial Analytics.
2. Social platforms will become the hottest new search engines
If you want real insights from real people, Google search results don’t always do the trick. But you know where you can reliably find a wealth of advice from actual humans? That’s right: social media. In 2024 and beyond, social media channels represent the biggest threat to traditional search engines.
TikTok is now integrating Google search results into its in-app results, and the platform has added robust search tools like Keyword Insights to its Creative Center.
Plus, recent surveys suggest that social media platforms are the second most popular way for Gen Z to research their shopping decisions. It looks like Google is right to worry about TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram encroaching on its territory.
To-do list:
- Continue to use social SEO and keyword research to build out your content calendars. Start creating content that answers common questions in your niche. Educational content is far more likely to show in search results, even months after posting.
- Incorporate social SEO as a component of your strategy, but don’t make it your primary focus.
3. Engagement will move from feeds to DMs
The one thing you don’t see much of on social feeds anymore is organic, uncurated posts from friends and family. There are many reasons for this shift. But the fact that personal updates don’t live in plain sight doesn’t mean they’ve completely disappeared from the social media landscape.
To-do list:
- Encourage your audience to DM you with questions and feedback.
- Get your social team ready to handle customer service inquiries. Give them tools that will help them keep track of and easily answer social messages from all your accounts across networks.
- Set up automated responses for simple, frequently asked questions and the times of day when your team is offline.
- Use UTMs to track (at least some of) the traffic you get from DM shares.
- If your organization uses social media to share timely content, news, or important PSAs, consider starting an Instagram Broadcast Channel. (Note: At the moment, the feature is only available to users with Creator accounts. Keep an eye on Adam Mosseri’s own Broadcast Channel for updates.)
Every business wants to expand its reach, but if you’ve ever tried to buy followers or likes, you know the results can be… disappointing. Especially when you have to prove how those investments have paid off.
Comments, likes, and followers can all be faked. Views and impressions are easily inflated. But there’s one engagement signal that’s much harder to game: shares.
Unlike comments, likes, followers, or views, shares represent actual value. When someone shares your content in Stories, DMs, or off-platform, you know they’re willing to vouch for you to their own audience.
Don’t get me wrong: comments and likes are still valuable engagement signals. But if you design your content to be shared, the likes and comments will still follow. The reverse isn’t always true.
Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X have either made share counts public or are testing doing just that — and if that’s not a nod to their importance, I don’t know what is.
If you want to make sure your content gets shared more in 2024, start by looking at what’s already working. (Hint: SproutSocial analytics makes this part pretty easy.) What has your audience responded well to in the past, and how can you make more of that?
To-do list:
- Get really clear on who you’re making content for and what they care about.
- Investigate your top-shared posts using a tool like SproutSocial. What made them so successful? How can you repeat those wins?
- Before you post new content, run it through a shareability test like Karten’s. If your target audience isn’t likely to share your post, what can you adjust to hook them?
- Start paying attention to shares in your regular marketing reports.
5. Telegram may become the next super app
Messaging apps like Telegram are in such a sweet position to skyrocket next year. The privacy-focused chat platform has over 800 million monthly active users and gets around 2.5 million new sign-ups per day. (Seeing the dollar signs yet?)
What was once an app for sending secure messages to friends now has many enticing social features. And the platform continues to add more, which is why I think it’s in a strong position to become one of the next super apps.
Some current Telegram features include:
- Group chats (up to 1,000 users), secret chats, and video chats
- Support for media, links, files, music, and voice in chats
- Stories that let you share photos and videos for a limited duration
- Broadcast channels for sending out messages to large audiences
- Payment bots to send money between buyers and sellers
- Telegram Passport for secure personal identification verification
- Sponsored messaging via the Telegram Ad Platform
The app added an advertising platform in 2021, which allows brands to send sponsored messages to channels with 1,000+ subscribers. Businesses might want to consider integrating Telegram into their paid strategies and striking while the iron is hot on this platform.
To-do list:
- Government agencies, in particular, might consider following Zelensky’s lead and creating broadcast channels on the app to keep citizens informed with less risk.
- Cross-promote your broadcast channel (with links) to your audience on your other social media networks.
- Sign up for the Telegram Ad Platform and experiment with sponsored messaging.
6. TikTok will continue to be the birthplace of video trends
You know those TikTok jokes about Reels being the place where trends go to die? The notion is that social media trends start making rounds on Reels after they surface — and sometimes even get old — on TikTok.
But let me be clear: Even if Reels are a bit behind on shiny new trends, they’re still a very relevant (and continuously growing) format, and your brand should definitely be making them.
That said, the TikTok to Reels trend pipeline is real.
TikTok’s demographic skews younger than Instagram’s, and the platform is always a couple of steps ahead of its Meta-owned rival in terms of editing features, filters, and audio clips. It’s also, by nature, more creative and “unhinged” than Instagram.
All this means that, for now, TikTok is likely to remain the mothership of short video trends — and keeping an eye on it will help you stay ahead of your Instagram-focused competitors.
To-do list:
- Scroll! Your For You page is full of content trends waiting to be discovered.
- Take note of how brands are participating in trends and how their audiences are reacting to it.
- Fold the ideas that seem the most relevant to your business and social goals into your content calendar — and start testing!
- If you are in a highly regulated industry (or are not ready to start filming and posting quite yet), keep a burner account to stay informed, but don’t worry about posting.
7. Social media marketers will become best friends with AI
Is ChatGPT coming for your job? Do you need to rebrand yourself as a prompt engineer? Is AI-written content good enough, kind of ok, or absolute hot garbage?
The jury of LinkedIn thought leaders is still out, but we’ve got some answers.
Generative AI is a super valuable tool for savvy marketers. It won’t take your job (unless you’re really bad at it). It will make it easier, and it will help you get better results faster.
And there’s solid proof to back up. A recent experiment was done where a human writer competed against ChatGPT on X (formerly Twitter). The results were interesting — ChatGPT generated more engagement, but the human-written captions got more impressions. You probably see where I am going with this: Humans and AI work great as a team.
AI can help you get words on the page faster, brainstorm ideas, and create many variants of a specific message for testing. But social media managers are still the brains behind it all.
Tools like ChatGPT will allow you to spend more time thinking about your goals, interacting with your social audience, testing new tactics, measuring your results, and so on.
Simply put, AI will help you become a more strategic social marketer.
To-do list:
- Spend some time playing with AI tools like ChatGPT. A small time investment now will save you tons of time in the future.
- Try AI tools like WriteSonic & AdCreative– to get content done at rapid pace.
8. You won’t ignore YouTube Shorts anymore
Remember when YouTube Shorts first launched in 2021? Many dismissed it as another “TikTok clone” and went back to creating content for the networks they were familiar with.
If we could, we’d go back to those not-too-distant days and give ourselves a good shake. Because YouTube Shorts is more than just a flash in the pan.
According to Google Trends, American interest in YouTube Shorts (generally a reliable indicator of business interest in the platform) has increased by more than 500% since 2021.
Users who’ve stuck with the platform are seeing big gains. But if you’re not using Shorts yet, there’s still time to get on board.
If you already have a YouTube channel, Shorts could be a huge opportunity to connect with a new audience. (And if you’re already making TikToks or Instagram Reels, you’ve got a library of short-form video content just waiting to be repurposed.)
You can even link your Shorts to any related YouTube video: long, Short, public or private. It’s a great tactic to drive up subscribers on the platform that’s already considered one of the most creator-friendly around.
In Short (sorry), if you’ve been waiting for a push to get on YouTube Shorts, consider this your official friendly shove.
To-do list:
- If you don’t already have one, secure your YouTube channel.
- Start watching YouTube Shorts so you can get a sense of what’s popular on the platform.
- Sketch out the basics of your Shorts marketing strategy.
- Repurpose your existing short-form videos (TikToks, Reels) that have performed well on other platforms.
I’ve compiled research from several different sources to bring you the most data-backed predictions:
- Social Trends Report, plus these industry breakdowns:
- Social Trends in Government
- Social Trends in Healthcare
- Social Trends in Higher Education
- Social Trends in Financial Services
- Pew Research
- eMarketer
- Google Trends
- Statista
- And more!
