How to Use Social Trends to Your Advantage
Trends have been with us our whole lives. It started in middle school, when the coolest thing to wear was a t-shirt emblazoned with your favorite overly fragmented store. But in 2022, what trends should you focus on to have the most success? Leave it to your trendsetting marketing experts at Matchstick Social to teach you how to use social trends to your advantage!
1. Video Trends
It’s 2022 and you don’t have video as a key part of your marketing strategy?! Well, times are changing and so should you! With the introduction (and MASSIVE popularity) of TikTok and Reels, video has quickly become a breakout trend in the marketing world.
Since 2018, the amount of people watching videos online has doubled and is predicted to continue rising. Video trends are an excellent way to showcase your business and brand to your current audience and potentially attract a new audience. TikTok and Reels have made it easy for companies to create their take on trends and relate it to what they do. Trends are fast to come and go with video, making it essential to stay on top of what’s popular and create right away! You can post your reaction to pop culture moments as they happen, recreate scenes with voiceovers from tv shows or movies, or participate in the latest dance trend.
The key stellar video for your business is authenticity. Feel free to try new things and jump in on new trends, but make sure it is still in line with your brand and audience. Users still want to see content that makes sense. The key to finding these trends is to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. As you’re scrolling, what do you find funny? What are you sending to your friends or family? The trends that resonate are the ones that become popular, so don’t overlook them! Not every trend works for your business, you can’t make fetch happen; you’re not Gretchen Weiners.
2. Design Trends
Today’s social media platforms started as visual apps, with the past few years showing the world how social media has morphed into a way to communicate and express ourselves in brand new ways! Copy isn’t the only way you can reach out to your audience; designs can be a great way to tell your brand’s story while staying relevant in the ever-changing world. Each year different trends evolve, with many coming and going and the lucky ones sticking around. Lately we’ve seen the resurgence of the Y2K Design trend with everything bright and bubbly dominating designs and fashion again. Now, it’s more important than ever to break out of your mold and try something new with your graphic designs.
With over 4.26 billion social media users (and growing by the second!), creating graphics that “stop the scroll” and resonate with your audience is more important than ever. Research has shown that you only have eight seconds to capture your audience’s attention on just one social media post or ad. Your audience is looking for new and unique things to catch their attention; they crave something new in their life! Design trends can incorporate new textures and patterns with your logo, ads, or other content. You can change your photography with a new flat lay background or even a lighting change. It can also be as simple as updating the typography on your content! With the creation of 3D printing, the popularity of 3D typography has grown as the best way to add more interest to a design. Authenticity has become another popular topic, which has led to authentic handwriting as a typography grabbing attention. Handwriting adds a genuine and personal feeling rather than the more rigid corporate feel of older typography. Keeping up with design trends can be as easy as taking notice of the fashion week trends; what patterns and colors are circulating in the fashion industry? You can also take notice of what other industry leaders are showcasing, like Anthropologie, which always seems to be on the cusp of the trends and properly incorporates them into their designs.
3. Pop Culture Trends
Pop culture is something that has been around since before the internet, but because of the internet, it has become far more accessible. Culture has become a leading topic thanks to the internet age; it doesn’t seem to be going anytime soon. Pop culture is a broad topic that has never shown a specific age demographic; all ages love to see what’s going on in the world and who they need to be keeping up with. Audiences want to see the brands they know and love paying attention to the same things, an easy way to win people over! When people are scrolling through social media, they want to see something that they resonate with and can humanize. The grammys were graced with the slap heard round the world, and created a moment that lent itself into a hilarious meme.
Duolingo is an excellent example of this, the educational company commented their own thoughts on viral TikTok. The audience immediately loved that Duolingo was, “just like them” and had their own thoughts and opinions. In turn, it gave the company more recognition and even a lot of media attention.
Paying attention to pop culture trends can also mean reacting fast when things are happening. When Instagram and Facebook crashed for almost an entire day in 2021, users took to Twitter to share their thoughts.The funnier the better, with Twitter itself posting and capitalizing on the large uptick in traffic on their app. You can be on the lookout when you’re sitting on the couch and watching the latest award show, keeping up with new tv shows that air, or simply scrolling through your own social media to find what’s trending and relatable!
The key is to strike early; the sooner you jump on a trend the sooner your audience will see and love it!
Do these sound like things you want to implement into your own marketing strategy? Then it’s time to let your experts at award-winning, Matchstick Social, help you create the best strategy to stay on trend and at the top of your audience’s mind!
