With over 5 billion users, social media has become the knight in shining armor for businesses to skyrocket their web traffic and revenue. Hence, almost every online business is jumping on the social media bandwagon left and right. To build relationships and maintain loyalty with social media users, brands should develop meticulous strategies on how to best use social media.
However, in the years ahead, it is important for brands to be proactive about emerging trends and continually refine approaches that appeal more to changing customer tastes. The secret lies in producing actionable content marketing material that can support value-driven engagement while embracing fresh formats such as short-form video and utilizing data to sense why their communities are acting peculiarly. This article looks into some of the top social media engagement strategies in 2024 through which businesses can maximize their impacts and increase sales in the new year.
Concentrate on Premier Platforms
Brands must choose wisely when it comes to what platform they will use on social media next year because not all platforms are meant for them. According to Buffer's report on social media usage in 2024, Facebook has the most monthly active users (MAUs) at 3.05 billion; following closely behind it is YouTube with 2.5 billion MAUs, WhatsApp with 2.78 billion MAUs, and Instagram with 2 billion MAUs.
Consumer brands will experience a similar rate of growth in 2024 on Instagram and TikTok, with their focus on short-form vertical video and Stories making them perfect for creatives and visually-oriented content. Those who engage more on LinkedIn and Twitter will see more results because LinkedIn has been proven to be good for professional networking, thought leadership, and community involvement by B2B brands.
The key is being highly strategic rather than spreading efforts and resources too thin across too many platforms. Research your audience personas to determine 1-3 core platforms to prioritize, while maintaining a presence on relevant secondary channels.
Adopt Immersive Content Formats
To attract the attention of customers, companies should produce social media content that is interactive as well as immersive. Ephemeral content such as Instagram or Snapchat stories that disappear after 24 hours are increasing rapidly according to Later. This means that these platforms can be used by brands to create an impression of rarity or urgency.
Short-form vertical video will continue its dominance, with platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels leading the way. As noted in
Hootsuite's 2024 social media trend predictions, video content overall generates 12x more shares than images and texts. Vertical videos aligned to mobile usage tend to have higher engagement.
Interactive elements like polls, quizzes and AR filters are also gaining popularity. These motivate social media users to actively participate with branded content. Rather than passive consumption, brands can drive higher engagement by incorporating interactive elements that provide value and entertainment.
Embrace Authenticity
In an era of social media fatigue, consumers long for real brand interactions, and transparency. In order to reach their audience in 2024, Forbes says that companies must have a real presence on social media.
Begin by embracing your brand voice across social platforms with a consistent tone that resonates with your values and personality. As this LinkedIn article explains, it’s not enough to just produce authentic content; rather it means promoting user-generated content that tells real customer stories.
Posting behind-the-scenes photos and videos gives followers an inside look while making your brand more relatable. Additionally, promptly responding to comments, questions, and concerns shows you truly care about conversations with your community.
Enable your employees to be brand advocates by giving them guidance on best practices for social media usage. When they share their authentic experiences, it humanizes your brand. The key is to keep it real - avoid overly polished, scripted content in favor of transparency.
Leverage Data and AI
Brands should take advantage of data and AI to enhance their social media strategies by 2024. Your top-performing content and engagement can give you good insights through analytics.
Review platform analytics to identify which types of content resonate most with your audience. Look at metrics like reach, engagement rate, clicks, and conversions to guide your content creation and community management.
AI tools can further enhance your social media efforts through automation and personalization. AI excels at understanding social conversations at scale, as this article explains: What Is Artificial Intelligence for Social Media?
AI can help with scheduling optimal times to post, responding to common questions, moderating comments, and targeting ads. Used strategically, it allows brands to scale community engagement efficiently.
However, AI shouldn't completely replace the human touch. Brands should focus on using it to complement organic, meaningful interactions. According to this source, AI can aid in brainstorming ideas and content strategies: The Role of AI in social media management
With a balanced approach, leveraging data and AI allows brands to learn from experience, streamline workflows, and deliver more relevant experiences - ultimately driving growth and engagement.
Proactive Community Growth
Growing your community in a strategic, proactive way is crucial for brands in 2024. This involves a combination of paid advertising and organic community-building tactics. According to Forbes, some effective ways to grow your community organically are; being responsive to users, breaking stereotypes, empowering users, and engaging followers genuinely.
Paid ads could strategically target new members of your community as well as expose the content in front of fresh eyes. This, combined with organic engagement, helps ensure that new followers become loyal, long-term community members. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, using relevant hashtags in posts provides a great way of reaching the right people who will be interested in reading your content without any interruption or disturbance.
Influencer marketing will continue to play a major role in community growth in 2024. Partnering with influencers who align with your brand provides access to their engaged followers. The key is to ensure influencer partnerships feel authentic and collaborative, with a focus on user-generated content. This helps humanize the brand and leverages the creativity of the community itself.
While growing your audience is important, retaining and engaging existing followers is equally crucial. Responding to comments and questions, acknowledging user contributions, and providing value through content, offers, or events helps build a loyal community. The goal should be crafting durable relationships and interactions that feel meaningful, not merely transactional.
Refined Workflows
Streamlining social media workflows will be critical for effective management in 2024. Brands should focus on unifying platforms and tools to simplify collaboration and get content approved and published faster.
Consolidating multiple standalone tools into a centralized social media management system with built-in scheduling and approval workflows can help teams work more efficiently. Platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social are adding more project management and workflow features to allow seamless content production.
Clearly defined approval workflows ensure brand standards and compliance. Marketing teams can set up workflows tailored to their internal processes, with automatic routing to appropriate reviewers and sign-offs before content publishing.
The usage of workflow templates, content libraries, and collaboration tools can further streamline the planning and creation of social content. AI assistants and smart scheduling will help teams save time on routine community management tasks.
By refining social media workflows and platforms in 2024, brands can achieve greater efficiency, consistency, and performance across their growing social presence.
Measure Performance
Measuring the results of your social media strategy through key metrics and benchmarks is crucial for optimization in 2024. Brands should closely monitor metrics like reach, engagement rate, sentiment, and conversion rate to gauge performance.
According to HubSpot, some of the most important metrics to track regularly include social media followers, engagement rate, click-through rate to website, and sales influenced by social media. Brands should also measure sentiment by analyzing comments and reactions to understand how audiences perceive content.
Establishing industry benchmarks helps put your metrics into perspective. For example, an engagement rate over 2% on Facebook may seem low, but could be above average for your sector. Regularly comparing metrics to past performance, competitors, and industry standards helps identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
The key is then optimizing based on the data. If a specific type of content generates more positive sentiment, produce more of that content. If the click-through rate on Tuesdays is twice as high as on other days, schedule more content for that day. Let data guide creative, scheduling, spending, and platform choices to maximize results.
Manage Platform Updates
As social platforms frequently introduce algorithm changes, new features, and policy updates, brands must stay nimble and adaptable in 2024. Keeping up with the latest platform developments is crucial for optimizing content and engagement.
For example, in July 2024, Twitter rolled out several major updates, including sharing ad revenue with creators and allowing users to remove followers without blocking them. Monitoring feature changes like these and adapting content strategies accordingly will be key.
Similarly, brands should follow algorithm changes on leading platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. As creators respond to algorithm shifts with new formats and content types, brands must also evolve their approaches to avoid declines in organic reach.
Lastly, policy updates around areas like branded content disclosure should be reviewed regularly. Complying with the latest platform rules and norms will ensure brands avoid issues.
Conclusion
Embracing authenticity and interacting meaningfully with one's community will be key for brands looking to maximize social media engagement. Proactively growing your audience using paid ads and influencers, while refining workflows through data and AI, will create a comprehensive approach.
Curating quality content keeps the audience interested and entertained through valuable experiences. Monitoring analytics provides actionable insights to optimize social campaigns. Ultimately, forward-thinking social media strategies will allow brands to craft captivating digital experiences that authentically engage their chosen audiences.
