2024 Summer social media trends for your business!
But don’t let that pressure get to you! Social media is a fun and lively world filled with wonderful people, excellent humour, and fantastic opportunities. So if you’ve yet to find much traction with your business’s social media accounts, try some of these fresh tips to get things moving, and watch yourself have some fun while you do it!
Top tip: The number one way to master social media is to be consistent with posting. Trying one of the following trends and then not posting for two weeks sadly won’t reap you the rewards of virality or more followers.
It’s better to regularly space out your posts, giving yourself enough time to make good content that will resonate with your target market. And keep posting and improving. Slow and steady traction is better than none!
Stuck on which social media platform your business should be on? Read our blog on the best social media for business.
This season's number one trend? You, loud and laughing!
The first thing we’re noticing when we look at what’s going on with social media right now is that serious, formal, dark, and edgy are all out. What’s setting the world alight right now leans towards the personal, light, friendly and funny.
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So what does this mean for you? Well, when you’re posting to your social media channels, try to keep things relaxed and (a little) less formal than usual. Make jokes, and don’t be afraid to be yourself. Engage with meme culture with short clips that people might find entertaining, whether that’s re-enacting something relatable that happened on-site, captioning yourself in a funny situation, or syncing a short-viral clip that segues into you talking about your store.
In short, bring your more human side to your business, and show it online, and you’ll be sure to get the thumbs up from today’s social media audience.
Want to grow your social media? SEO isn’t just for Google
If you’ve been trying to grow your business online and on social media, one of the phrases you may have encountered is “SEO optimization”. SEO practices elevate your business above the competition online, making you more likely to be spotted by searchers on platforms such as Google.
BUT, while Google is still king of the search engines, if a good portion of your market is in the younger age categories, you may want to think about optimizing your social media posts to get trending. A recent study by Adobe found that 64% of Gen Z have used TikTok as a search engine, creating a fantastic opportunity for businesses that are quick to get ahead on social media SEO practice.
While Google is packed with optimised web-pages, many social media platforms (while undeniably overflowing with content) is not quite so competitive when it comes to optimization.
Here’s where to start:
- Create a document! It’s useful to have a document that includes your social SEO research in one place. You’ll need to update it as trends change, but it’s useful to find related keywords and phrases related to your content pillars.
- Completely fill out your social media profile. This includes using industry/brand keywords, specifying your location and adding a link to your website. Your profile should provide context for human visitors and the bots that return search results.
- Know your target audience. Use the Facebook Audience Insights tool to research demographics, interests and behaviors of your target audience.
- Find your keywords. Use platform-specific keyword research using tools like Google Analytics, Google Trends, and Hootsuite Insights. You should also use each platform’s search bar or trending hashtags to identify relevant keywords for your social content - just start by typing in a keyword in the search bar, and you’ll see suggested keyword phrases you may want to add to your existing keyword list. You can also look at popular hashtags and words being used in social media groups related to your niche to help define which keywords to use.
Note: It’s important to tailor keywords to the platform. For example, LinkedIn will likely use more formal phrases compared to Instagram.
Top tip: Don’t want to use overly-generic hashtags, like #explorepage, or irrelevant keywords. Doing the research will mean you’re finding keywords to use that your audience is searching for.
- Start integrating keywords into your posts. Use relevant keywords in your hashtags as well as your post captions. It helps your contne tbe found by users actively searching for related topics.
- Add alt-text and subtitles to videos. Yes, this takes a bit of extra work per post, but adding this content to your videos makes it more accessible and more searchable. This is most used on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
- Add location tags. This is really beneficial for businesses with a physical presence, as tagging your location in posts will improve your visibility in local searches.
Engage in your niche!
Like, comment and engage with posts and accounts that are related to your niche. This helps the social media platform understand what niche your account fits into. Plus it can help build your engagement, which is another very important popularity ranking signal on social media platforms. Start the content climb with collaborative creation!
While your followers no doubt love to see your face in their feed, why limit yourself? Collaboration is a 2024 must, creating a more diverse and interesting channel for your followers while tightening the bonds between your company and your customers, partners, suppliers and other associates.
Make sure you keep posts relevant to your customers as well as tonally palatable (You can be fun and professional, but you want your channel to have a consistent personality in line with your brand).
Not sure how you can collaborate on social media? Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Sharing memes, reels, and videos from other channels you follow to your story livens up your content with relevant material from other channels without you having to do more than hit “share”.
- Direct message other relevant creators and associates and invite them to partner with you in competitions. Sharing your bases and growing each others following.
- Invite fans, followers, and customers into your content, not just boosting engagement but creating stronger ties with your customer base. Encourage them to remix your TikToks by adding their commentary to your video, or tagging you in stories that you can re-share.
We don’t just talk the talk here at Epos Now. If you’re not already engaging with us, start sharing your thoughts and tagging us in your social media posts by following our channels 👍. You can find us on:
Less is more. Raw production styles keep things real
Have you been spending hours pouring over video editors, adjusting lighting, contrast, cutting and clipping, trying to get your videos just right? If so, we might be about to make you very happy by saving you a lot of time. 😄
Production is out. The real reels are in. What your followers seem to want at the moment is raw, unedited content straight from camera to feed. So drop the tools though maybe keep the make-up because the camera isn’t going to be doing the work for the rest of 2024, you will.
When you make your next videos, try to show yourself in all your authentic glory, and this isn’t just about visual-style; your audience want your real thoughts. Audiences in 2024 are more switched on than ever, and can spot the fake, the phony, and the truth. So be prepared to go on record with honest opinions and to give your followers the behind-the-scenes action.
It may feel like a sacrifice to some, but the numbers don’t lie! Speak your truth! 📣
The US-TikTok question - Are you Insta-ready?
The United States of America could be banning TikTok from app stores from January 2025 unless Chinese parent company ByteDance finds a buyer. This could mean a HUGE change for the social media world. With the US being so influential around the world (and being such a large portion of both TikTok’s influencers and audience) even this successful platform could struggle to bounce back from this ruling 👩⚖️.
While the ban is not certain to come into place, with both a sale or a successful lawsuit being possible resolutions to this ruling, it’s important to be ready for the possibility that from 2025, TikTok will quickly disappear from the US market.
That means that while canny businesses will have built up a following on this popular platform, it’s important to build your presence elsewhere. The natural alternative to TikTok is Instagram, the second most popular channel for younger generations and one many are already using. So make sure you’ve set yourself up on Instagram if you haven’t already. However, it may be that a new TikTok successor emerges in the coming months, so keep your eyes peeled to get ahead if one should arrive on the scene.
Like this article? Take a look at our resources page for other social media tips and tricks and other handy business guides.