Social Media Trends In 2022

TikTok Will Continue to Grow & Brands Need to Take it Seriously

When you talk about social media, TikTok is a platform to consider if you’re not already using it. The rapid rise of TikTok has seen the app reach 1 billion users and counting.

TikTok has enormous engagement (U.S. users spend up to 850 hours a month on the platform) and offers individuals and brands the opportunity for their videos to go viral: no mean feat in the social media realm.

TikTok is a platform that marketers need to take seriously in 2022. TikTok’s growth over the last year has just been phenomenal. Facebook is certainly worried because so many of TikTok’s features are beginning to filter into Facebook products.

In terms of the platform’s revenue, TikTok was the top-earning non-game app in 2021 with more than $110 million spent by users. This just shows the earning potential of the app for marketers looking to drive sales amongst young consumers.

Social Commerce Will Become Seamless

It’s never been easier to find a product or service using social media. During the pandemic, brands flocked to Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to offer customers online shops to replace their brick-and-mortar counterparts.

It’s no surprise then to see that social shopping (or social commerce) is expected to reach $1.2 trillion globally by 2025 according to an Accenture study – a growth that’s three times faster than traditional ecommerce.

2022 is set to see the experience of social shopping evolve as platforms work behind the scenes to enable customer payments without leaving social media apps, creating a seamless customer experience. Gen Z and Millennials are predicted to be the biggest spenders as they will account for 62 percent of global social ecommerce revenue by 2025.

For example TikTok has partnered with Shopify, Instagram is making huge developments with their shopping area within the app, this means that social shopping is just set to become absolutely huge this year. YouTube is also looking at enhancing their shoppable tags within videos and you can shop on Pinterest.

YouTube Advertising Will Explode

YouTube is going to explode in terms of investment from advertising in 2022. I feel like it’s a sleeping giant, but I think that the move away from linear TV, fragmentation with subscriptions, and streaming services all means that more advertising spend is going to move to YouTube..

Last year YouTube’s global revenue (through its parent company Alphabet) grew to nearly $29 billion, up almost 46 percent from 2020. This level of revenue puts the social media platform on par with Netflix and is a result of the rise in more traditional TV advertisers on the channel, direct response ads, and brand advertising.