Ever since they first breached the mainstream, it was clear that social media platforms will leave a huge imprint on our society as a whole. Being a place where people come to hang out and exchange opinions with like-minded people, social media also immediately positioned itself as one of the main marketing outlets which is the title they still hold to this very date.

According to a recent survey, 77% of marketers said that social media marketing was effective for their company which paints a good picture of how relevant this channel is.

Keeping that in mind, though, the social media landscape is not static and experiences tectonic changes with each passing year. Being able to successfully leverage its potential requires that you know what lies ahead.

Let us take then a brief look into the future of social media marketing.

More proactive social media interaction

The outbreak of COVID-19 altered the way we do business in a number of ways that is hard to grasp. One of the most important outcomes of the global pandemic was the fact that most companies were deprived of an opportunity to engage in direct marketing and meet their customers face-to-face. Social media presented itself as the next best thing so, instead of traditional content release strategies, we have seen a much greater number of two-way interactions where brands directly responded to clients’ needs. This practice remains new standards even now when are gradually leaving the pandemic behind.

New customer care strategies

The fact that people are spending more and more time on social media coupled with the new dynamic in B2C interactions we have just described above presented new opportunities but also new challenges in terms of social media customer care handling. This is mostly the reason due to fact that social media sites are no longer places where people reach out to companies but rather a platform for handing out complaints, responding to inquiries, issuing refunds, and countless other CR tasks. This new set of activities and new role as prime customer care platform is causing a major overhaul of social media strategies.

Digital lifestyle gaining even greater relevance

As we mentioned in the introduction, social media play a tremendous role in modern lifestyle. What is interesting to note, though, is that this trend is showing no signs of hitting any sort of plateau and the constant influx of new contenders only makes the social relevance of these websites stronger and demand for greater volumes of more varied content increasingly pronounced. And this trend, in turn, made hiring a professional social media agency for managing this increasingly demanding issue a common practice rather than an exception. Ever-growing consumer demand always required a more professional marketing approach.

Major cuts in marketing budgets

It is not that big of a secret that the present-day world is experiencing a great number of serious challenges that are causing companies to rethink some of their all-guns-blazing strategies and take a couple of steps back. According to some studies, 96% of businesses fear possible recession so they are considering the option of cutting their marketing budgets down. These budget cuts, however, will cause the same companies to double down on the channels they decide to keep using, and keeping the major relevance of social media sites as marketing platforms the competition will become quite heated there.

Social commerce keeps gaining more traction

The social media arena has, by now, become a very potent marketing environment and a starting point for millions of transactions. There is no way the social media owners would let all that money slip through their fingers without taking their cut on the whole matter. So, we keep seeing new attempts at integrating social commerce components developing across all relevant social media outlets. Even though these attempts still make only a fraction of the ecommerce market, we see no scenario where the social media sites will fold. So, expect to see new investments in this field further down the road.

Focus on building engagement communities

Last but not least, we would like to point out that, with the social media marketing arena becoming so dense, competitive, and content-heavy, getting attention and scoring one-hit wins will become very hard. So, instead of resorting to pay-to-win strategies, the brands will have to take a more patient, long-term route and earn their relevance by building engaged social media communities. Granted, this approach takes much more time, effort, and resources but the brands that manage to position themselves as the place where people gather to meet, socialize, and exchange opinions will have no problem reaping the benefits.

We hope these few examples gave you a general idea about the social media marketing sector will be moving by the end of 2022 and beyond. Keep an eye on these trends. As time goes by, social media shows no signs of slowing down or losing audience so it will keep serving as a very powerful outlet for marketers all around the world. So, the best way to leverage this channel is to see what’s brewing on the horizon and make some educated and proactive steps before the competitors do. The suggestions we gave you should push you in the right direction.