Sjef Kerkhofs, Managing Director of social media agency Daily Dialogues, shares his views on the 7 social media trends of 2022.
What a year 2021 has been in terms of social media. The evolution of "human agency," in which the big tech platforms put the user increasingly in control due to outside and governmental pressures, has been even faster than I expected. Add up the number of lawsuits, hearings and privacy and security interventions by the big tech giants, it is staggering. In this article, I share 7 key developments and social media trends for 2022.
Almost a year ago, my previous article on social media trends came online on Frankwatching. Unlike the approach you were used to from me the previous years, it was not a list of (mostly) technical developments, but was completely user-centric. Last year's article was mainly about social media trends.
Already we can see that 2022 will again be largely dominated by the privacy and security debate. There is no turning back. Marketers must come to accept that the world of advertising has simply changed rigorously.
Virtually every commercially active company I've talked to in the past 6 months has seen huge changes in their online campaign results. Especially lower down the commercial funnel, toward conversions. Painful perhaps, we as online marketers were no doubt spoiled the previous years. But simultaneously a socially good development that requires next level creativity from the online marketing craft. I therefore see it as positive and challenging.
2022, like 2021 already was, is going to be another eventful year. The world of online marketing is moving like never before. Let's take a look ahead at some of the upcoming developments in the field of social media. Of course, this overview is by no means complete and is not meant to be, so please supplement the social media trends below with your own insights.
1. Creators call the shots
War for talent? War for creators! More than ever before, creators hold the power. Social media platforms are made or cracked by the extent to which creators provide the platform with unique content. Almost every party in the market has set up creator funds last year, to entice creators and influencers. Simultaneously, more and more new features are being launched that allow these creators to make money from their content.
2. Targeting goes back to basics, but in a new look
With the disappearance of third-party data and the increased degree of control from the consumer over her own data, we are actually going back to the core a bit within online advertising; targeting based on demographics, based on interest profiles and based on behavior within the relevant social media platform.
The big players obviously see this too, and are now busy further optimizing targeting capabilities based on their own data to offer marketers new/expanded opportunities to reach the right audience. For example, Snapchat recently announced new (automated) ad targeting features. And Facebook is also betting more on features such as automated targeting expansion.
3. Social commerce is once again taking off
With more and more brands running up against the limits of their last-click conversion model on Google, social commerce is a very interesting development. Why? First, because social media was booming in times of corona, and with it the number of consumers making purchases via social media. Second, because social media is highly scalable due to its huge user numbers and wealth of data. Google Ads in particular assume pull marketing; very sharp in terms of cost per conversion, but limited in terms of scalability. Social media platforms can scale quickly and far with look-a-like audiences and their push-oriented approach, for example. And, third, social media contains the unique ability to link inspiration to commerce. Conclusion: social commerce features will also be flying around our ears next year.
4. TikTok the new scapegoat
As in 2021, I expect little spectacle between the giants. The landscape seems pretty crystallized and it is increasingly difficult for entrants to reach critical mass. TikTok will undoubtedly continue to grow and Facebook will find it increasingly difficult among certain audiences, but that's about it.
What is interesting, though, is whether emerging platforms such as Reddit and Twitch can really compete/remain with the big ones. In recent years, Facebook was invariably the scapegoat in the tech industry because of its size, obviously not always unfairly so. But we see very clearly in recent months that Zuckerberg has got another scapegoat on his side. Whether he is happy about it, we can doubt, but the world has found in TikTok a new tech scapegoat against whom lawsuits are piling up.
5. Fight against fake news turns to discussion of censorship
While we certainly need not feel sorry for the Mark Zuckerbergs and Evan Spiegels of this world, they are not always to be envied either. Whereas virtually the entire world has been asking them for years to exercise more control over the content that appears on their platforms (hate content, fake news), they are currently being targeted once again, but this time for allegedly practicing too much and unwarranted censorship.
Has the fight against fake news gone too far? Are social media platforms going too far? If a German judge is to be believed, at least in the case of YouTube, they are. The main social debate underlying this, however, is the extent to which a social media giant with global power can decide for itself which content is "right" or "wrong. That very point frightens many people, as commercial parties thereby determine the worldview of the average consumer. Next year, this discussion will only grow stronger.
6. Voice is here to stay on social media
The "winner" of 2021 was undoubtedly TikTok. For a while it looked like Clubhouse would be the big winner. The voice-oriented social app came in with a bang, but then still failed to fully live up to its promise. That's the downside of being an entrant in a market where there are a number of enormously powerful players. The power lies with the masses; when they decide to copy features from new entrants, they quickly gain the upper hand.
And yet Clubhouse has started a huge movement, they should be given credit for that. MIT technology review wrote about it earlier this year. Every major player in the social media landscape launched voice features at breakneck speed last year. This development cannot be reversed; voice is now an indispensable part of social media. Podcasting was already booming, this is only amplified by the new voice features of all social channels. Voice content has become mainstream.
7. AR & VR transform social media into metaverse
2021 was the year we were able to get our first real look at "the future of the Internet. Obviously, it won't change overnight, but the "experts" agree; the future of the digital world is called Metaverse. What...? The idea is that people are not made to look at small flat screens, but that the ever wider adoption of AR and VR are going to create a virtual digital world in which we are all active. A digital projection of the real world. One that many experts believe will create an economy even greater than that of today's Internet. Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier this year that Facebook will become a metaverse company, and reinforced that with the launch of Horizon. It may all still sound a bit futuristic, but we've thought so many times in recent years.
Both on the technical front (targeting capabilities, AR, VR) and on the content front (the power of creators), a lot is about to happen in 2022. And what about the social process around privacy, security and censorship? Or the economic impact of social commerce and the metaverse. In short, it's going to be another tremendously interesting year that I look forward to with great anticipation. We will meet again in November 2022 to look back on social media trends and also look ahead to another interesting year, no doubt.