We’re cruising right through 2022, and as the year progresses our social media team continues to keep their eyes on the trends. From platform updates and features to brand personality and mental health — our team breaks down what these trends mean for your B2B brand.
Instagram’s “Add Yours” Sticker
Everybody loves to show off their accomplishments. Whether it’s something they cooked, a picture of their pet doing a trick, or a goal they’ve finally achieved. Instagram users can enjoy the satisfaction of receiving praise for what they share on Instagram Stories with the new “Add Yours” sticker. This feature is a great way to gain engagement on your Instagram Story as it lets other users interact with each other’s stories.
Do you ever want to see the cutest photos of your followers’ puppies? Simply post your favorite puppy picture and post it on your Instagram Story with the “Add Yours” sticker, then ask your followers to show you the cutest photo of their puppy. If a follower wants to show off a photo, they can simply interact and click the “Add Yours” icon to share a photo.
Whether it's for puppies or fun holidays, the "Add Yours" sticker provides B2B companies an opportunity to create or tap into topics and trending conversations that their audiences are engaging with that are relevant to their brand. The "Add Yours” sticker can create a domino effect that can bring a lot of engagement, interaction, and fun to your Instagram profile.
TikTok Advertising
TikTok has come a long way since the early days of Gen Z dancing to music. While initially dominated by teens and young adults, by March 2021 TikTok's users between the ages of 10 and 29 dropped below 50%. The platform continues to appeal to a wider age range, and an algorithm will curate a “For You Page” that can target almost any niche interest or hobby.
Advertising on TikTok includes five options:
Boosting a previously posted video in-feed, similar to a Facebook boost.
Brand takeover ad, which will fill the entire mobile screen for a few seconds when the app is opened before changing into a video.
Top view ads that occupy the first in-feed post after three seconds. They show up to 60 seconds of full-screen video with auto-play and sound.
Branded Hashtag ads involve user-generated videos posted with the defined hashtag. These ads will show up at the top of the discovery page, and clicking on the hashtag will take users to a collection of videos that are using the same hashtag.
Branded effect ads are similar to using a Snapchat filter, and can run for up to 10 days at a time.
These options have the following campaign objectives:
driving traffic to a website
increasing app installs
growing online sales
attracting new sales leads.
Regardless of the objective, the best-performing ads are short, include sound, and have the authentic feel that you find in the TikTok feed.
TikTok is growing in popularity with B2B marketers and can offer a unique way to reach an audience without the need to have a large following since the videos are ranked individually, independent from the profile. Authenticity is key when advertising on TikTok. Using this ad platform is a great way to evoke emotion with your brand and build trust with your audience.
NFTs in Social Media
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are digital assets that have become popular in mainstream media as graphics, but can also be used to represent tangible items like artwork and real estate. They are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and cannot be replicated. In social media, NFTs have made an appearance on popular channels like Twitter through profile images, and their use in Facebook and Instagram is not far behind. So why are they popular on social media? NFTs attach ownership onto a digital asset, so they provide other functions that help connect your brand to your product offering, such as attaching membership to exclusive offers.
The market instability of NFTs is a factor for the average B2B marketer that may be considering this strategy. However, keeping in mind the transformation of the internet, it’s an evolution still worth following. In the short term, social media giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are looking to use NFTs to leverage NFT communities on their platforms. In the long term, NFTs can bridge the gap between your business’s existence on social and the metaverse, a virtual universe of social connection. Just as e-commerce is booming on social media, social giants like Meta are hoping to make the metaverse a new social universe of ecommerce, using NFTs as digital assets for trading rather than simply tokens for digital art ownership and bragging rights.
Mental Health Awareness When Working in Social Media
Over the past few years, mental health has been at the forefront of conversations, especially among social media marketers. With the always-on mentality of social media, it was recently found that 90% of creators have experienced burnout and 71% have considered quitting social media altogether. Americans spent an average of 1,300 hours on social media last year, and because of this, marketers are feeling the pressure to produce more content.
What can you do as a social media marketer to avoid burnout and focus on mental health? Get in the habit of doing activities to help avoid burnout.
Disconnect after work. Take time for yourself away from your phone. Read a book, cook, take a walk, or anything else that will bring joy.
Set app timers. It’s easy to grab your phone and scroll through social platforms even after working with them all day. Setting timers on your phone for your apps lets you check in without overdoing it.
Connect with coworkers or friends about social media burnout. One of the most comforting things is knowing you're not alone. Reach out to your coworkers or friends to chat about some of the struggles you’re experiencing and swap tips on keeping mental health top of mind.
Brands Are People Too
Since the start of the pandemic, there's been a surge in brands on social media breaking away from the professional norm to form “personalities.” With users having spent so much time indoors and longing for human connection, brands have responded with authentic, humanized voices — some even characterized as sassy and unhinged.
Duolingo is one of the brands on TikTok shocking the internet with a terrifying oversized mascot costume and a Dua Lipa obsession. On Twitter, some brands seem to have no filter: Wendy’s and Burger King stay on top of trends and current events to stay relatable while adding a little bit of sass.
While your brand probably doesn’t need to run and purchase an oversized mascot costume, these results show that users are increasingly interested in seeing more genuine, off-the-cuff content from brands. Depending on your audience, here are a few activities your brand could try:
Incorporating “day in the life” content about employees.
Utilizing relevant TikTok or Reel trends that relate to your company.
Quoting popular sound bites or trends as captions.
Monopolizing on trending meme formats (things like Astrology, Spiderman Meme, etc.).
Ready to take another look at your social media strategy? Partner with us today and get started.
By Two Rivers Marketing