Digital activity in 2024 isn’t about being active on every platform. It’s being on the right platform for your audience. So, the best place to be is where your audience is consuming content. AND it’s okay to ditch X if it’s just a place you post for the sake of it and you don’t see a ROI.
Let’s take a look at how some platforms will thrive this year and how content will be a win for your brand.
TikTok
With its ongoing popularity, TikTok continues to grow, capturing the attention of users who are spending increasing amounts of time scrolling through their phones.
This year you’ll see more brands launching a TikTok account and experimenting with their content until they finally see what fits. With this platform’s success being built on content for entertainment, brands have to find their niche but also a way to add in some of that educational content without it being educational content!
TikTok is turning more and more into a search engine and becoming a top source for your trusty ‘how to’ videos on a variety of topics and a trusted source for brand reviews and feedback.
On top of that, it is also the highest engaging social media platform, allowing brands to build an online community and have the opportunity to learn more about them.
We all know TikTok for its short form video content, with every other platform following like sheep, but believe it or not TikTok is now testing longer video formats. AND news just in - they are now testing 30-minute videos!
Longer videos may make a comeback and we’ve actually already seen it. But it also depends on what you class as ‘long.’ We’re not talking about an hour-long YouTube video necessarily but over 10 minutes on TikTok is considered long!
Of course, Instagram isn’t going anywhere and boasts over 1.4 billion monthly active users and an estimated 500 million daily active users.
With such a large widespread audience, posting on Instagram is pretty much obvious but the algorithm really is favouring Reels more and more. But how can you just go viral… utilising trending audio will give you a boost. But also, the content itself is key - whether that’s polished or unpolished content. Instagram feeds always want to look pretty, so there’s still an option for both, but you need to find what fits your brand and how you want to communicate to your audiences. You need to create content your audience wants to see not what you think your audience wants to see.
Speaking of what the audience wants, over the last couple of years Instagram has launched both Broadcast channels and Threads as people were looking for a more ‘social’ way to chat to their community. They’re still active and people ARE using them but it’s not something you’re missing out on… yet.
Broadcast only works if you’re active, and when we say active, we mean you’ve got to keep people entertained and be consistent, or *user has left the chat*. Threads is a bit like Marmite, you either love it or hate it – it hasn’t really found a place yet. With Meta rolling out cross posting to Threads from Facebook this month, you may just end up seeing more of the same content you can see elsewhere. Double the scroll, half the entertainment.
This platform is no longer only about posting jobs, finding jobs, or complaining about jobs. Over the past few years it hass grown into a thriving, credible social channel. Users have now started posting more raw content inspired from their own experiences.
This shift towards authentic content is what everyone wants to consume on other platforms but now wanting it more on LinkedIn. Users are increasingly displaying their authenticity, addressing the challenges of multitasking, their thought leadership, prioritising mental health, and giving inspiration.
Therefore, the platform is transforming into a more personal space, featuring posts that take a little bit more of a risk on advice through different topics.
But how personal can you be when writing a post in such a way that you also keep your distance and remain professional? The balance is always the challenge.
What about the rest?
As we know there’s so many more platforms other than the obvious 👆.
The latest app, Bluesky, from Jack Dorsey (former CEO of Twitter/X) has users setting their own data usage rights, but other than that how different is it compared to Insta and Facebook? Not a lot, it just looks like Twitter. So why bother signing up right? Because there will always be something new, there will always be something more you can sit and scroll through.
Then you have apps like Lemon8, BeReal, Snapchat… the list goes on. There are so many opportunities you can get to reach your community online. It really comes down to the content you have, the community you want to interact with, how much time and resource you have, and of course your marketing budget! Believe it or not, some brands biggest campaigns and successes have happened by utilising Snapchat!
With so many new apps it’s sometimes hard to justify advertising, or even posting on new apps, until they evolve. Sometimes you have to keep throwing things at a wall until it sticks; in technical terms this is ‘test and learn.’
To sum up, it’s all about finding where your audience is and how you can entertain them to engage them. Sounds easy right? Oh, we wish it was. Digital and content strategies, including the right tactics will make you win and put your brand ahead of the game this year on social.
Test and learn your audience.
Create content that engages.
And it doesn’t stop here… there’s more to follow in Part Two about how content will rule 2024 in the digital world.
