Donna: As a small business owner using social media to market your business is a low cost or no cost tool to get your brand, your products and your services in front of your audience. But it's also a massive time suck and it's ever changing, which is super frustrating for a lot of small business owners, myself included.
Now following trends can be a great way to build your audience and get engagement, which of course is super important. And then we can use that to build trust and you'll get those conversions and those sales, but it can be hard to know which social media trends to pay attention to and which ones to ignore.
So I've done a little scratching around for you, and I've pulled together a list of social media trends, which are tipped to be the ones that will matter the most in 2022.
So before I get going with all of this stuff, it's really important to keep in mind that the only consistent thing about social media is that it will consistently change. So just like raising kids, you know, when you just get your head around what stage that they're in, it changes and it becomes something else.
And it is exactly the same with social media. So the trends that I'm going to outline in this episode have been predicted or earmarked to be the most dominant upcoming trends. But knowing that it's time relative. So I'm recording this episode of the podcast in early April, 2022, and things will absolutely change.
These trends will probably not be relevant this time next year. So I just want you to keep that in mind. Also before we get started, know that some of these will be great for you to jump on, but others may not. So depending on your business goals, depending on your audience and how effective you become at using these particular trends to your advantage would dictate the results that you'll get.
So I want you to be really clear in adopting these trends and if there's nothing else you hear, I want you to hear this. If you're multitasking, stop what you're doing and listen up for a second. Do not go chasing a trend without having a social media strategy or a plan. I hear it all the time about how much social media is a time suck for business owners.
And I agree. It absolutely can be. But even more so when you don't have a strategy or a plan that clearly identifies your objectives and the results that you're aiming for, please don't go throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it will stick. So with any of these trends before jumping in first, ensure that it aligns with your objectives and it works towards your goals and that you're tracking the results.
Now if you don't have a social media marketing strategy, you absolutely, 100% need one. And if you do want help with that, perhaps you should consider setting some time aside to join me for the three-day challenge that I'm facilitating in early may on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of May. That's where I'm going to be sharing my system for saving time on social media.
Which includes creating an annual social media plan. I teach you the strategy for creating social media content that is highly engaging and converting. And I give you a whole bunch of templates that will help you to create content quickly and effectively. I give you at least a 50 post ideas and 50 canvas templates for you to adapt easily and quickly.
And it's over three days. So each session is 45 minutes and the cost is only $27. So it's an absolute bargain. Now the link for you to join is in the show notes. It's donnahann.com/threedaychallenge. It's also in my Instagram bio. Now that being said, let's jump in the first social media trends.
Is tick-tock. Now this has been trending for a while and whilst people are still getting great results, mainly it's dominating because of the short form video content that it presents. That's been performing really, really well. Now, Tik Tok is said to be becoming the most important social media network for marketing.
And this is according to Hoot Suite it's had exponential growth when compared to other platforms and it's tipped to have brands flocking towards Tik Tok in the future. Now I've got to say for me, I lean towards the idea of having one horse and one us meaning that pick the platform, pick one platform that appeals to your audience, the most. And the one that you see the most engagement coming through and make that your main focus. Now, for me, it was Facebook, but now I'm leaning more towards Instagram because when I'm measuring my results, what I'm saying is the most organic growth for my audience is coming through Instagram. And it's where I get the most engagement from the people who are following me.
So I will stick with Instagram, but I will start to explore Tik Tok and start to develop some fluency in that app. Start to get familiar with it. I'm also going to go and grab myself and account handle for my business in Tik Tok, in case I do want to switch horses in the future, and I recommend that maybe you start to do the same now, how I currently use Tik Tok in my social media strategy at the moment.
Is that I use it for inspiration, for creating reels, which is going to segue beautifully into trend number two, which is creating reels as a form of content. Now, the benefit of reels is that unlike an organic story, perhaps, which typically lasts for 24 hours or an organic posts, which could be even less, a reel, typically has legs for around three weeks.
So while it may take longer to create a reel versus creating a story or a post, it has a longer lasting shelf life, and it can be seen as a bitter investment of your time. Now reels work so well because they're super entertaining. They also work well because it's quick, it's 15 seconds or 30 or 60 seconds at max.
It's super engaging for your audience and you can use them to educate your audience at the same time, too. Now, it doesn't have to be dancing and pointing. It can be informative whilst at the same time being humorous. And it also helps your audience to feel like they get to know your personality because at the end of the day, what we always need to remember with any marketing that we do within our businesses.
Is humans buy from humans. And so this is where reels can work really well in that it can help your audience to build trust and get to know your personality because it's video. But also you can throw in there a little bit of your humor, a little bit of educating people around your products and services. And it can be done in a really quick 15, 30 or 60 seconds for the end user for your audience to watch.
Now a strategy for growing your audience within using reels is to use trending audio. So when you watch a reel, you'll see down the bottom of the reel is, the title of the audio that's being used.
Now, if there's a little diagonal arrow, that means that particular audio is trending or super popular. So, what I would recommend that you do is click on that text, click on that title of the audio and save that audio and then use that audio to create your own reel. And this is where Tik Tok is really, really handy.
This is where I get that inspiration I was talking about before, because in Tik Tok. That's generally where the trending begins. So I use Tik Tok to discover the trending audio and then become the early adopter that brings that trending audio over to Instagram. And what will happen is you'll see your views and your engagement go up.
If you're using trending audio, now because the audio is trending, you'll also attract people that are not typically your ideal customer. So I want you to just be aware of that. You might say like heaps of growth in the number of views that you get on your reels, but just remember not all of those people are going to be your ideal customers.
So what I recommend to do around that is yes, use the audio, but make it really relevant to your specific, ideal customer or client so that they. Check out your profile after watching the reel and follow you, and then hopefully they're going to engage with you. And now the tip is that if someone does like your real or follows you after seeing your real.
Reach out and send them a DM. It's a really golden opportunity to start building a customer relationship. And it can be as simple as just sending them a DM to say, Hey, I saw that you liked my reel, thanks so much for that. Is there anything in particular that you're interested in knowing about what I do?
It can just be a really lovely way to start a conversation. And now the tip tip number three about trends is one type of post that's working really well at the moment is carousel posts. So this is where you have a series of social media tiles in one post. So these work really effectively in stories and also on your social media feed.
So I like to make these posts informative and educational. I like to give people something to learn. It could be facts about the creative process behind the product that you create, or the service that you offer. You'll see that I use these types of carousel posts for promoting my weekly podcast release. You might've seen that, you know, I use it in, for example, read tips to review and understand your social media results.
For you, it could be three tips to style your child in our autumn collection or three ways to make our Silicon baby products last longer, or three benefits to imaginative play with your little one. Obviously you need to make the content suit, whatever it is that you do within your business and is appealing to your audience.
But it's a really great way to get people engaging with your content. Another trend is using audio. So one of the reasons why podcasts have seen such a massive increase in popularity is because it's a convenient way to absorb information. So knowing that creating content that has an audio component.
For example, when I create a social media tile for my podcast, I'll often throw over a sample or a soundbite over the tile, like a taster. So maybe you could think of ways that you could use audio to enhance the experience for your audience too just be sure to always use captions when you're doing this to cover all bases.
Tip number five that I have for you. I'm speeding through this today. Maybe one that you want to go back and listen to twice because I am moving at a pretty quick pace today. But tip number five is shoppers will expect in the future to be able to buy your products directly on social media. So by 2025, it's been predicted that social comments.
Meaning selling products directly on social media. We'll be an $80 billion industry by 2025, which is incredible. Right. And you want to be a part of that. 81% of shoppers were already using social media to discover new brands and research products before the pandemic. So you can imagine how popular that is now.
So having those users check out in the same app makes so much sense rather than navigating to a website, being taken to another step and potentially by doing that, the potential for that to become a leak in your sales funnel. Whereas if we can make the customer journey as frictionless, as straightforward, as easy and as simple as possible.
But then being able to go through the checkout process in the same app, being that Facebook shop or an Instagram shop you'll to be able to reduce. The car abandonment, which we know most people use their mobile devices for shopping and their cart abandonment on mobile devices is super high. So you can start to mitigate that, that high risk of people abandoning their cart by removing a step.
Instead of them having to go to your website to make a purchase, they can do it directly through Facebook or Instagram. So can see the setting up a Facebook or an Instagram shop and then cure, rate it based on what you know of your customers and what they most like, or they buy the most of. So test today.
Measure the results over the next six months before going to the trouble of adding your whole inventory to a social commerce shop, just test and measure it. Just put the most popular items on there. And if people do want more, then they will jump across to your website. But just test that one out, because it really is tipped to be a huge area of growth and a massive trend for the coming year.
Now I did say I would have, I think I said I would have five tips for you, but I've got another one. Sorry. My last one that I'm going to leave you with today is paid ads. So, unfortunately with the decline in organic reach for organic posts. Thanks through out rhythms. You may want to consider learning how to market using paid ads.
This is second, I've got to point out, this is second to consistent organic marketing. So what I'm saying here is that if you don't already have consistency in your marketing strategy, then do that first as a matter of priority, right? You'll see a rise in organic brand awareness and engagement and sales.
If you have consistency with your social media marketing strategy. So do that first before investing in ads. What I want to point out here is that the average organic reach for a Facebook post is only 5.2% of your audience, which is why consistency is so important because if you're posting inconsistently, It's not going to have a great result because that post is only going to reach 5.2% of your audience.
So that's why you need to be creating organic posts. And also you need to be looking at doing things like short form video, stories, reels, that kind of stuff in combination with your standard posts so that you can broaden that audience. You can reach a wider audience, but if you already do consistent post.
And you already do things like stories and reels and lives, all of those things that you do and still your businesses feeling stagnant, or it's not really seeing the results that you want to be saying. First of all, just check that the content that you're creating is appealing to your ideal customer. If you've identified that it is that you're doing all the right things, then maybe consider exploring paid ads because that's where the platforms are wanting you to move to.
They want you to pay them money. They're not a charity. Social media is a business at the end of the day, but again, you don't want to be throwing spaghetti at the wall. So you do need to have a strategy. And you do need to get help to learn how to do paid ads. Otherwise it will be a waste of your money.
There is a bit of a science and a method to it. So don't just jump in there and just throw some money at it and cross your fingers and hope for the best. There are different ways that you can get help around this. You can invest in a done for you service, being that engage with a social media ad strategist that will set that up for you.
That can be the most expensive way of doing it. Another way of doing it is to perhaps enroll in a Facebook or a yeah, a Facebook ads course that you can teach yourself how to do it. So DIY sort of method. The other way, if you have no budget to be able to afford to do any kind of paid ads, what, at least in learning how to do them, obviously you're going to need some budget because it is a cost, but if you don't want to invest in learning how to do it, then the app for YouTube tutorials that you can follow along with.
Just make sure that they are recent because obviously we know social media changes all the time. And so does the methods that you need to follow for creating effective social media ads. So three different ways you can do that. You can do a done for you service, which is probably the most expensive. You can learn how to do it in a specific ads course, which is probably the one that I would recommend you do if you're at the beginning of your journey with this.
Oh, I'd go for the free option of YouTube tutorials. Just make sure they're still relevant. So in wrapping up today's episode, if you considering any of these trends, please make sure that it fits within your social media marketing strategy and it serves your marketing goals. It's really important. This is like, if you hear nothing from this podcast, hear this.
It's so important to make sure it's aligning to a strategy. So, so, so important. Otherwise it will become a massive time suck and you'll get frustrated by it. And it won't be a consistent marketing method for you when you're not seeing those results, you just give up on it. Right. So make sure it's part of a strategy first and foremost, then I would say.
Trade it as an experiment and like any good scientist test and measure your results, then you can do more of what works and less of what does. Now, if you want more social media tips this month being April, I'm centering all of my social media content around sharing tips and ideas and hacks for optimizing your social media content.
So make sure you're following me on social media. If you are following me on Instagram, which is probably the best place to follow me. Make sure you add me as one of your favorites. So in your profile settings, go to favorites and then add me there. And then this way you're not going to miss out on all the valuable content that I'm sharing every day across April.
And if you want even more, then join me for the three-day challenge. It's called saving time on social media. It's only $27. So it's totally affordable. It's over three days. So it's 45 minutes each day, which is totally manageable. And you'll learn my systems for creating social media content. That's going to convert and do it in a way that's going to save you time.
So if that's appealing to you, if you're interested in knowing more. There are more details. If you go to donnahann.com/threedaychallenge, you can get your ticket there. And then you can join me on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of May for saving time on social media and getting that strategy in place so that then you can start to explore the different social media trends and how to use them.
So, That's it from me today. Thank you so much for listening. It was a fast and furious episode. But I hope that you got a lot out of it and I'll catch you next week on the She's In Business podcast. Thanks for tunning in!
