From AI-generated content to what experts are predicting is the decline of short-form media, here are the top 2024 social media trends to keep an eye on:
Twitter, now known as X
Last year, Elon Musk gave the public a shock as he announced the rebranding of Twitter to ‘X’. While Musk claimed he wants to branch out of the text-based feature, according to Hootsuite, X still remains as the top text-based social platform. In fact, a Hubspot study shows that X still entertains an average of 253 million users daily.
While there is still a lot of fog around what X’s next move and platform updates are, it looks like brands shouldn’t abandon the text platform just yet.
We all know Instagram focused on reels and Instagram Stories in 2023, and while these are still Instagram’s top priorities, a few new platform updates have gotten more traction from its audience this year.
Who knew that a new sharing feature on Instagram Stories can drive a fresh source of engagement on the app? Instagram’s ‘Add yours’ sticker has garnered a lot of love from its users. The beauty of the feature is that it can be used by the public with just one tap, and is featured on its Stories—one of Instagram’s most used features. Even brands can take part in the feature, showcasing products and/or content while encouraging its community to join in.
Speaking of Instagram Stories, brands shouldn’t shy away from advertising on Instagram Stories over Instagram’s other advertising options. According to Hootsuite, 500 million users can be reached with Instagram Story ads, as half a billion engage on this Stories daily.
But is Instagram Stories really the #1 spot to make some noise? According to a study by Social Insider, Instagram is still pushing Reels as its top best-performing content. In fact in 2023 alone, their study shows that there is a 57.4% increase in Reels usage. This is also great news for smaller brands, as it seems Reels garner the most saves from users. (Better make most of ‘Save this video’ CTAs!).
While notifications may be buzzing on the feed forefront, users’ DMs may have also been busy lately. Instagram’s Broadcast Channel feature has opened doors for brands and content creators to engage with audience. While broadcast channels are a limited form of interaction—with only the host being able to send messages to the community, users can still engage with chat reactions and answering polls. The more ‘private’ channel allows a more intimate community base and can be a great way not only for brands and creators to talk to their audience, but a way to cross-promote content.
TikTok
From one social app pushing out short-form video content to another—a 2024 social platform update isn’t complete without TikTok.
A lot of question marks around the engagement on TikTok loomed around during 2023, but according to Forbes, TikTok still remains one of the top platforms used on social media. In fact, Forbes cites Dr. Dustin York, associate professor of communication at Maryville University, saying that brands will depend heavily on TikTok to drive GenZ search. In fact, Business Insider claims that 40% of GenZ already uses TikTok as its primary search engine over Google. This means for brands, sharpening the SEO keywords when posting content and maximizing captions and hashtags to make sure their content displays top search for any related topic searches.
Speaking of content calendars, while TikTok is known for its short-form snappy content, long form content may be just be reentering the video scene. But TikTok isn’t exactly about to be the next YouTube, according to Later, TikTok is veering away from the 15-30 second video content. Sprout claims that TikTok has been steadily moving towards longer form content, from 1-minute videos, to 10-minute videos, and recently introducing 30-minute videos—Even encouraging users to create horizontal video content.
Since long-form content is on the rise, there’s a tug of war between ‘Facetime-like’ content and ‘Non-linear’ content as content idea suggestions. Later shares take ‘Facetime’ content as popular among its audience, creating ‘deeper connections’. Facetime content basically means having a creator or even a brand representative talk directly to the camera as if talking to somebody on a video call. On the other hand, ‘Non-linear’ content seems to also be getting great traction as creators tend to put the ‘end at the start’ of the TikToks. This means using the highlight or result portion of a TikTok as its 3-5 second hook in order to stop users on their tracks.
Aside from TikTok videos however, it seems like the short-form platform is taking a cue from Instagram as they are heavily promoting content using their new carousel feature. Though this feature has been around for a while, it seems TikTok has really been encouraging to use its photo slideshows all the more. Similar to Instagram, this feature allows users to post a collection of photos in a slide, while being able to add text to each text and picking trending audios to go with it. In fact, for most users, TikTok even provides prompts explaining how their content will perform better if they consider carousels over videos.
