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As we enter the biggest year yet for social media content consumption, platforms across the board continue to evolve. But despite unforeseeable changes, a possible TikTok ban, and the tumultuous state of the world, according to our 2024 Content Marketing + Demand Gen Predictions survey,
71% of marketers predict that social media content (including short-form videos and static posts) will be the most successful format of the year.
With everyone doubling down on social, though, the landscape is starting to feel pretty flooded. And while actual people are posting less and less, “Brands have upped the ante, going all in and posting even more,” says springboard Editor-in-Chief Lauren Smith. “As someone with boots on the ground in the social media sphere, creating and overseeing content production, I know it takes up so much time. That’s why,
If you’re going to invest, make sure you’re investing correctly.”
What does that mean for your team in 2024? Let’s take a look at five tactics to keep in mind and guide your social marketing methods as the year unfolds.
Maintain Audience Trust, No Matter What
61% of people worry that business leaders are trying to mislead them by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.
To add insult to injury, 63% are wary of government leaders and 64% worry the same about journalists and reporters. With everything that’s going on online and IRL, like falsified calls from the president and deepfake ads from big stars and beloved brands, they have good reason to feel that way. In this particular year — with AI-generated content, fake news, and rampant misinformation — CMI’s Chief Strategy Officer Robert Rose says to expect a tipping point.
It’s going to be increasingly difficult for brands to leverage social media against the trust they’re trying to build.
While society may still be at stake, as a long-time industry leader in tech, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to quell concerns around AI. As a brand, they’ve been sure to use the new tech responsibly as they promote related products like Designer and Copilot (the company’s take on DALL-E and ChatGPT) as well as their brand new book, AI for Good (seen in the spot below).
With a fun and informative YouTube series that highlights the AI companion’s capabilities and similar content on Instagram that’s more suited to the platform, they’re making sure the message is consistent — another great way to build and maintain trust.
studioID Tip: Tread Very Carefully with GenAI
The lure of efficiency (re: cheap and fast content creation) may be strong, but not at the expense of quality content. In fact, according to our survey, using AI for design in particular was seen as the least effective use of the tech. Nevertheless, “we’re already seeing brands starting to leverage AI-generated content that’s just crap and posting it all over social media,” says Rose. “That’s going to be the kind of thing that gets brands into trouble this year…because
there’s a new level of distrust in what’s consumed.
🗳 Related Reading: Marketing in an Election Year: What You Need to Know and Consider
Implement a Short-Form Video Strategy
96% of consumers prefer to watch short-form video to learn about a product or service.
At studioID, we work with marketers trying to reach specific, niche industries. But even with a range of sky-high engagement stats, according to our EVP Jane Qin Medeiros, “One of the things I still see is that there aren’t enough folks who’ve simply operationalized their short-form video strategy.”
Across social, short-form video is a very important type of content that is really engaging…I encourage everyone to have that on lock in their marketing organizations.
HubSpot is a company that seems to have its ducks in a row when it comes to short-form video. Across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X, the brand deploys a steady stream of videos ranging from five-second loops to a minute or more, depending on the channel.
blog post, tweet, reel, tiktok, podcast, email — wait. breathe. You can reclaim your time (and reduce that workload) with Content Hub! our AI-powered content solution that helps you create and manage content for all your channels.
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— HubSpot (@HubSpot) April 4, 2024
Lately, most of the clips center around meme-ified workplace comedy designed to elicit laughs, but the brand goes on to utilize short-form video to achieve a variety of angles and goals beyond comic relief. Smart, especially considering the distinct audience segments they’re targeting on each platform.
studioID Tip: De-Silo Your Social Team
“There are so many channels that are now siloed in marketing and social media is one of the most prominent,” says Rose. “One of the real benefits of deploying a content marketing strategy is the coordination of a broader corporate narrative. So instead, start to
harness those people as great content creators, engagement experts, and influencers and use social media more as a place to coordinate your overall strategy.
🎥 Related Readings: 5 Short-Form Video Trends for Share-Worthy Content in 2024 + Brands Are ‘Pivoting to Video’ — and This Time, It’s Working
Drive Traffic to Owned Media + In-Person Events
45% of marketers say in-person experiences and events will be the most successful content format this year.
For brands, social media was once a place to build communities and interact with consumers. And while co-creating engagement with efforts like user-generated content can still be welcome and effective, things are different now.
Overall, what we’re seeing is this evolution of social media just becoming media and the social part evolving into other channels like direct messaging, private communities, and events.
The social is being pulled out of social media,” Rose explains. “It’s just becoming another mainstream media distribution network on which we consume the content that we want to see.”
And while our survey respondents continued to see both organic (54%) and paid (48%) social as the top ways to reach audiences across channels this year, more than ever, our goal as marketers remains the same: “driving people to our owned media properties to engage with us more deeply and become an addressable audience.”
studioID Tip: Find Where Your Audience Lives and Go There
Great content marketing, social or otherwise, can’t be done without understanding who you’re trying to reach, where they are, and how those people spend their time. As Medeiros reminds us, everyone has their habits and their preferences, the things they have to get done throughout the day, and the things that they enjoy. She advises: “When we think about social strategy, it still has to be incorporated into that larger picture:
Who is my audience? What does value mean for them? What engages them on the various channels on which they live?
🎫 Related Reading: After the Event: 4 Tactics to Convert Event Leads into Clients
Leverage Budget-Friendly, Lo-Fi Content
61% of marketers expect that their overall content marketing budgets will stay the same or decrease.
Businesses have long leveraged user-generated content and customer testimonials to bolster their video marketing efforts. But where highly polished, even cinematic-level productions were once becoming the norm, a new movement of ‘hyper-casual, homespun’ videos has swept in, largely due to the success of TikTok. Brands are riding the wave by shifting to a more handheld aesthetic with DIY graphics and self-taped clips often featuring employees rather than content partners or influencers.
This kind of content usually requires just one or a couple of people (tops!) to create, and the results get just as much engagement, if not more. In the somewhat meta clip above, Sprout Social gives a great example of such a video — while also explaining its many benefits, and how to nail the newly popular format. Why not take a roll call of charismatic, non-camera-shy employees and give a video like this a go?
studioID Tip: Don’t Sleep on LinkedIn
We’ve seen funny content making waves on LinkedIn, and with the right concept, simple graphics and videos can go a long way in engagement, too. Especially now that the platform’s testing out a new TikTok-inspired short-form video feed. With a focus on careers and professionalism, a no-frills approach has plenty of potential. But, remember: Lo-fi, static post, short-form video, or other, Smith says,
You’ve got to get right to the point off the bat, or else you’ll just fall by the wayside.
A Brief Note on Showing Before You Tell
The easiest analogy to understand this shift in approach is the recipe example. Before, a recipe video would follow a familiar flow: start with an introduction, discuss gathering up ingredients, and walk the audience through cooking the recipe step-by-step before proudly showing off the final dish at the end.
Now, it’s all about showing the final dish in all its glory at the start to catch attention before you tell. And often, the ‘telling’ isn’t even done with voice instruction. It’s done with on-video captions, soundtracked by a song, and characterized by quick, high-energy cuts and speed.
The thinking behind the recipe example can be applied to any subject matter. Flexing how your company builds robotics? Show the state-of-the-art, built-up robotics in action at the very start before you tell about the production process. Advertising a new makeup line? Show a perfectly painted face before you walk through the products and applications.
When there’s an endless drove of videos competing for consumer attention, you need to make the value of the story you’re about to tell immediately clear, or prepare to swiped away in favor for a video that does.
Tell More Engaging Stories
51% of marketers say platform changes like updates to algorithms and search methods represent their biggest roadblock.
As social platforms become less and less about community building and engagement, “they become more of a river instead of a lake,” Rose says, “flowing into owned media properties rather than pooling people and engaging them [within the platform].” This leads to even more oversaturated audiences and markets — another pain point for our respondents.
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Telling more engaging stories is the best way to combat these challenges, and the top content priority for 56% of the marketers we surveyed. Truly valuable, quality content gets noticed, no matter what — just like Workday’s rock star campaign.
studioID Tip: Focus on Quality Over Quantity This Year
Educate, inspire, and entertain in a way that makes sense for your unique brand — and your brand’s unique audience. And, as we’ve seen, that doesn’t always have to mean high-production value videos.
Instead, when creating content, Medeiros says the best way forward is to ask yourself: “Are these stories trustworthy? Are they valuable to the people we’re trying to reach? Do we know where those folks live? Don’t worry so much about quantity and putting a lot of stuff out there. Instead, as part of your social strategy as well as your overall content marketing strategy,
prioritize quality: the right stories on the right channels at the right time.
🤩 Related Reading: 4 Brands Upping the Ante on Creativity + Storytelling in 2024
