As people eat, sleep, and breathe social media, the amount of content and number of brands actively posting has also exploded. 

Every social media platform has become extremely business-centric. So it is quite easy for your content to get lost in the ocean of posts, stories, and videos online. 

Customers’ preferred content on social media also changes in a blink. What is popular today is no longer popular tomorrow. So how can brands ensure customers check, engage with, and appreciate their content on an ongoing basis?

Social media marketing for brands is more than the dream of creating viral content. It is about staying relevant, leveraging the algorithms, and creating content that converts. 

And understanding social media trends is essential to all these goals. Why? Read on to know more. 

The Impact of Social Media trends

Social media is a maze that has the cheese of revenue at the end of it. It has many tricky turns and a lot of dead ends, but you have to persevere like nothing else. If you can understand trends and create content that is trendy and relevant to your branding, then this journey becomes a lot easier.

But why are trends so important in social media marketing? 

Our attention spans are constantly reducing. As we scroll endlessly and switch between the many social media apps on our phones, the information we retain for a longer period keeps reducing. 

So unless you can show up constantly on your customers’ feed, brand recall is going to take a hit. And how do you manage to be on everyone’s feed across all social media platforms? 

By following trends. Because trendy content gets shared, engaged with, and replicated constantly. So if you are chasing likes, shares, and exposure in the crowded social media world, trends are the solutions you seek. 

But it is not as easy as it seems. While jumping on a trending topic to stay in the limelight for a day may work temporarily, you need more for the long haul. 

You have to figure the trends in content creation, engagement, marketing, and distribution to shine throughout the year. 

And that is precisely why the Kimp team brings you the best of 2022 social media trends. In this blog, we will detail these trends and share high-impact ideas for your brand to leverage these social media trends.

Let’s dive right in.

2022 Social Media Trends: 8 High-Impact Ideas for your Brand 

In the following section, the Kimp team brings you high-performing and actionable ideas for your brand’s social media marketing strategy. By understanding the pulse of the industry, you can plan and execute your content accordingly. No more experiments or guessing. We have the list of ideas right here for you.

1) Interactive content marketing 

Social media has grown beyond just a platform to share updates about your brand. If static informative posts are all you are creating, then chances are your reach is taking a serious hit. A good social media marketing strategy has interactive content interspersed with informative content. Its impact on engagement metrics has made it one of the top 2022 social media trends.

So what is interactive marketing? Interactive content marketing involves creating content with the sole aim of creating engagement/interaction from your customers on these social media platforms. The interaction makes this content memorable and improves your brand awareness. And customers love it. In fact, one survey tells us that 91% of the audience actively looks for interactive content on social media. 

You can create:

• Gamified content 
• Quizzes
• Contests
• Giveaways 
• Surveys
• Q/A sessions, and more for this trend

While you can use these content ideas for your brand to understand consumer sentiment, propel brand loyalty, and more, they can also function effectively as clickbait. Yes, that’s right. Since customers are actively looking for these content forms, you can entice them to your profile/brand via these ideas.

Kimp Tip: The key to correctly using interactive content marketing as clickbait is to ensure people notice it. Go visual while promoting interactive content on social media. Design attractive thumbnails for videos, cover images for carousel posts or use emojis in your newsletter subject lines. If people click, you are golden. So leverage visual marketing to get that click.

Looking for ideas to turn your interactive content into attraction magnets? Work with the Kimp Graphics + Video teams for engaging social media designs.

2) Short video content

The latest research on attention spans tells us we are at a meager 8.25 seconds now. In 2020, it was 12 seconds, which was not so much, to begin with. With reducing attention spans being a major concern for everyone, marketers are especially in a fix. Thankfully, content and social media trends have grown to accommodate this change. Yes, we are speaking about the short-form video content ruling all social media platforms. 

We know that this is not a new trend, but it is not going anywhere. And all social media moguls have understood this and have made substantial investments in growing this content form on their platforms.

Twitter is debuting a new video look and looking to shift the focus to short videos. Instagram already has a TikTok competitive feature – Instagram Reels. And now the numbers are telling us that videos are receiving 2x engagement on this platform compared to photos. Not to be left behind, YouTube has also launched YouTube Shorts and is clocking 15 billion views every day.

What all these anecdotes and statistics are telling you is that the time to embrace video content was yesterday. So the sooner you incorporate short video content into your social media strategy, the better. 

While we often see video production as a hard task, it is still achievable. Check the guides from Kimp Video on traditional and faceless Instagram reels for inspiration to ace this 2022 social media trend.

3) Social commerce 

Remember when ecommerce was a big deal, and people touted it to revolutionize the retail industry? Well, lo-and-behold, there is a new kid on the block, and it is social commerce. Yes, you guessed it right. 

These are the little shops on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok too. You can now shop from your favorite small businesses directly on social media. And this is a very promising 2022 social media trend because it eliminates the need to have a separate ecommerce website for these upcoming brands. For large brands, it is one more avenue to capitalize on. 

Your social media profiles and every content piece (video, image, Stories) on them is a potential sales catalog, helping you convert your audience into paying customers.

“Social is the new interface of commerce and the backbone of the new customer experience for 2022 and far beyond.” – Étienne Mérineau, Founder, Heyday by Hootsuite 

Given how every product on social media will become shoppable, it is time to focus on the production quality of your social media images. Brands need to ensure that every image carries the proper branding designs, right from logos, brand name representation, design style, or filter (if applicable). 

If you are planning to launch shops across different social media platforms, consistency needs focus too.

4) Omnichannel social media presence 

Another growing trend and one that is here to stay for a long time is having an omnichannel presence. There are over ten social media platforms that hold most of the world’s social media audience. And for effective coverage of their diverse user base, brands cannot rely on just one or two social media platforms.

Each platform has a unique audience base and has a specific content niche. An omnichannel presence ensures that brands can distribute their content across social media, newsletters, and blogs. This improves brand awareness, brand visibility, consistent user experience, and higher conversion rates as well. And this applies to having a presence on multiple social media channels, too. 

In fact, a survey shows us that when brands use over three channels (with automation), they achieve a 3.5x engagement rate, a 250% jump in purchase frequency, a 13% increase in average order value, and a 90% higher customer retention. 

Now, you may think that while the numbers are very promising, it is a lot of work. How do you create content consistently on four or more channels? 

The fact is, creating an omnichannel presence is more about distribution than creation. You can achieve consistency on these platforms by repurposing content based on your respective target audience, platform specifications, and marketing intent.

Looking to create social media content to build an omnichannel presence in 2022? Sign up for the Kimp Graphics + Video plans for a hassle-free design experience. 

5) Targeted content creation 

The recent iOS update and Google’s talk of eliminating cookies can change the way brands leverage social media tools to target customers. But we still expect targeted content creation to be a leading social media trend in 2022. 

So how do you combat these issues? 

Well, with the analytic tools at your disposal and your ongoing knowledge about your target audience. With just these steps, you can ensure that your content hits the mark every time for your customers. 

Another important point to remember while creating targeted content is that each social media platform has unique characteristics. And this extends to the primary audience on these platforms as well. For example, women outrank men on Pinterest. Instagram and YouTube have a majority of Millenials and Gen Z user base, LinkedIn and Twitter are the best platforms for HNI and B2B marketing.

Understanding the audience on each platform helps you create targeted but consistent content in your quest for an omnichannel presence as well. 

As social media is increasingly becoming visual with dominance on photos and videos, understanding how design styles change with different audience segments is also important. Here is a quick guide on that.

6) Inclusive and accessible content 

We know that graphic design dominates social media today. Design is everything on these platforms and plays a vital role in shaping brand perception in the market. An emerging 2022 social media trend is the increasing focus on inclusive and accessible content.

By adopting an inclusive marketing strategy, you can adequately represent your entire customer base in your content. This will encourage more of your customers to interact, engage, and understand your messaging. 

Seeing themselves represented in the public eye is important for everyone. As a brand battling it out in today’s competitive landscape, you cannot afford to ignore any section of your audience base.

Creating inclusive and accessible content also earns you respect from one of the most influential customer segments – Gen Z. 

So what can you do?

• Use images, illustrations, and visual representations from people of all walks of life, gender, color, and size. 
• Include Alt text on your images for the visually impaired to access your content with ease 
• Add closed captioning to all your video content 

Want to revamp your visual assets to make them inclusive and accessible in 2022? The Kimp team is here for you. Our Kimp Graphics + Video plan can help you achieve this for a flat monthly fee. 

7) LinkedIn for B2B marketing 

We hear a lot about D2C marketing, but people often consider B2B to be its non-glamorous cousin. But this 2022 social media trend will change that. B2B marketing is about to get a lot more serious and creative with the incoming changes on LinkedIn. And LInkedIn is of course the largest B2B platform. 

LinkedIn was a major help for many looking for jobs, resources, and more professional help during the pandemic. But it is now becoming more than a recruiting platform. LinkedIn recently launched a creator program and also acquired the how-to video platform Jumprope. The platform has a high engagement rate and is now pushing creators to come up with informative content. 

The recent acquisition will propel LinkedIn as the go-to platform for informative and professional content for all your B2B marketing plans. So, it is time to take B2B seriously and creatively as well. 

LinkedIn too sees higher engagement rates on native video and carousel posts. So put your thinking hats on and get started. 

8) User-generated content 

We spoke of how social media platforms are growing beyond an update sharing platform. Here, engagement is the most important metric, and if you want to truly improve that, pay attention to this next 2022 social media trend.

It’s not an entirely new trend, but we’re about to see it hit new levels. User-generated content seems to be the single biggest reason for most brands’ success on social media. Brands have been able to generate 20% higher return visitors and a 90% increase in time spent on their websites via UGC. 

All you have to do is share images and videos from your users with a little branding on your social media handles. Your conversion rate will propel higher than you can imagine. The best part is you can share this across channels and formats – feed, stories, videos, Reels, and blogs as well. Turn your customers into ambassadors and let the magic happen. 

Step up your Social Media game in 2022 with Kimp 

Want 2022 to be the year where your social media profiles surpass your expectations? Looking to create a stellar visual identity on your favorite platforms or improve your conversion rates? Well-designed social media content can help you achieve all this. 

And good design is easier to come by when you have a professional and talented design team to back you up. Just like the Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video teams. What more? We offer unlimited graphic and video design services at a flat monthly fee. 

So all the benefits of a stellar design team but at a rate you will be happy about.

Sign up for the free trial now and get designing!