Today’s average daily time spent using social media is 2 hours and 27 minutes.

As digital marketers, it is crucial that we understand new trends as this allows us to embrace those that are most suitable for our brands.

What social media trends will carry over into 2022? And which ones will disappear? We got the deets in today’s Truelogic DX episode.

Podcast Transcription

Ant Sierra: Hello! Welcome to another episode of the Truelogic DX podcast. Today, we’ll be sharing the top social media trends to pay attention to this year. So, considering the talking point that we have for this episode, we are joined with the best people in the world, my teammates, the Truelogic social media team, and Herr and Jake.

JK Macapagal: Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Jake and here with me is our lovely head, Herr Reyes.

Herr Reyes: I’m Herr. I’ve been in the Truelogic social media team since 2018.

JK Macapagal: I started working with Truelogic last year, exactly March 1. So it takes me a year and a half working with you guys. It’s been a wonderful one year with Truelogic.

Ant Sierra: On this episode with the Truelogic DX podcast, we would like to enlighten our listeners to everything that’s happening in the social media sphere right now. So that’s why we are sharing our insights and knowledge when it comes to some of the trends.

What are the benefits of social media marketing?

Ant Sierra: First and foremost guys, I would like to listen to your thoughts on the importance of social media when it comes to brands in digital marketing in general. In your opinion, what do you think are the benefits, especially for upstart or enterprises?

Herr Reyes: For social media, we all know the Philippines is one of the most active users on Facebook. As a business, it just makes sense that you put your brand out there. It’s like putting out billboards. But the advantage of Facebook is you can actually choose the people who you want to reach. It’s more similar to TV commercials. You will choose a time slot. You will choose prime time when your ads will actually show up. So it’s the same thing with Facebook that you can choose what schedule, who are the people that you want to reach. It’s very customizable and it really helps to put your name out there.

And another thing that is good with social media marketing is from the name itself, it’s very social. So it involves word of mouth. If you put out content that is very shareable and people get to engage with it, get to share it with their friends, with their network, you can get a free promotion.

JK Macapagal: It’s important for brands. For example, the MSMEs. You have to have a Facebook or at least a social media marketing effort. Most people are 24/7 watching stuff on their smartphones these days and you’re missing out on like 90% of attention because we’re always looking at our phones.

And how are you going to sell an idea or whatever this you’re selling to people if you’re not where they are? I would like to cherry pick. No, I would like to take off from what Herr said and it’s hyper-targeted.

So think of it as how our primetime commercials work, how we used to do it back then. Tweak that into like 10 times precision and you can literally target the certain demographic or the certain leanings of your target audience.

So, you’re actually talking to the people you want to talk to, and there’s a higher chance, for example, they’d give you a lead or they’d give you the information that you want to take from them. You can serve better ads. So, it goes in the same train of thought like that it’s hyper-targeted, meaning you can talk to people whenever and wherever they are. That’s why you need to invest in social media if you want to succeed in the business that you’re engaging in.

Ant Sierra: I would like to bank on what you guys said now, let’s say one of the best things about the platform is your ability to be in direct communication with your audience now. So in terms of communication, especially for businesses, I think it’s safe to say that it’s more, real-time. Can we define it like that?

It’s more, more filtered. Most importantly, you get to save on money while you’re performing, reaching a lot of people. It’s one of the most cost effective platforms to build your digital marketing strategies.

Challenges of Using Social Media for Business

Ant Sierra: What are the challenges that businesses or brands in general find whenever they try to use social media as a tool?

Herr Reyes: I think for this one, I see that the most common misconception is that doing social media marketing is easy. But technically you can do it. Facebook makes it easy for you but doing it is different from doing it well.

There are so many stories that there will be a new client. And then when they come in, there’s going to be a horror story about, “Oh, I wasn’t happy with my Facebook marketing before because they are just wasting our money.” Some people think that we only push out many contents and ads without thinking the strategies through.

I guess that’s a challenge. Cause everyone thinks they can do it but they are not doing it the right way. And it’s hard for us to correct once it was set up wrongly. Basically, you’ll have to start over.

Ant Sierra: Especially if some people try to impose what they know about social media marketing to the other person who’s trying to do it. I think for me, that’s one of the most challenging parts of it.

JK Macapagal: Here’s this saying, in this game that I play, they say it’s easy to learn so you can easily get the hang of it pero it’s hard to master. It’s true that you can technically set up a Facebook marketing campaign. You can set up a Facebook page but if you’re doing it wrong, if you’re going at it blindly, then you don’t have any relevant strategy, you don’t have any data to bank on and you don’t listen to your customers.

You don’t try to level with them, like to see them eye-to-eye, you’re not going to go far. You are just lucky if you manage to go really far without any strategy. It is like a lottery, you are lucky if you get the perfect combination, if you win good for you but chances are, you’re not going to go far without any thought into it.

Herr Reyes: Another one, as a marketer, one of the challenges that we encounter is the ad policies. Facebook becomes stricter especially during the pandemic.

Once you mention a name of someone, Facebook is already flagging it as a social issue or a political issue, then they will get a lot of information about your business page. Another thing is, when it comes to the marketing side, this is a personal challenge. If you are connected in social media, it’s hard to log-off. Your profile is connected to your pages. And of course, if you are on break or leave, we wanted to log-off on our social media but we can’t.

How to get started with social media marketing?

1. Establish your goal on social media

Herr Reyes: I think the very first thing that you need to establish is what is your goal on social media? What do you want to achieve? Do you want it to act as your main marketing tool? Or is it going to support your website? It has to be clear cut, you cannot enter social media if you want awareness. I want conversions. I want leads. I want everything. Social media marketing, it can definitely do that, you have to have a strategy behind.

JK Macapagal: If you’re going in guns blazing, for example, you’re a relatively unknown brand or a figure then you suddenly invested in Facebook ads and you already started talking about this one, that one you’re jumping into the middle of things, where with people not knowing who you are then you expect them to respond na hey, I want your info, sign up this lead because we talked about this, putting yourself in their shoes. Who are you? Why are you targeting me? It’s a bit scary. If you think about it, you have all this power but you don’t utilize it carefully. So you’re just wasting your time and the time of your customers then you will get nothing in return.

2. Consider the industry of your business

Herr Reyes: So another thing to consider is the industry of your business. There are businesses or industries that take a lot of conversion time. For example, real estate. It doesn’t work if you see an ads condo for sale, I will already buy a condo right away, it doesn’t work that way. That’s something that you should consider when you do social media marketing. It takes time in building your audience, nurturing them, and then eventually having them convert. Even though the ads may have instant results, it still has to have that customer journey.

3. Build a genuine persona

JK Macapagal: Make it or break it. It’s one of the things you cannot fail based on my experience, because you cannot target your audience immediately. You can’t craft it perfectly over time. You refine your audience because that’s what we’ve been doing. So you have to remove certain targeting options because Facebook dictates that is not available. So you have to be always on your toes. You must be ready to adapt to whatever the client or Facebook or even the landscape requires you to do. Because if you don’t adapt, you will be left out and you’re not gonna get the most out of your budget. The right audience is key to any Facebook marketing strategy.

Herr Reyes: It’s important to create audience personas but it’s also important to scrap them if it doesn’t work. So, like Jake said, for Facebook specifically when we do targeting, once we get the audience, it’s the end of this. Targeting doesn’t end. Always check and review your audience. And, another thing is the audience that we’re reaching is not the same audience that the client wants to reach. So how do we reconcile that? We really have to adjust to whatever the data tells us so when we do ads, it’s not something that we set and then we forget. We continually optimize our ads, because the platform is always changing.

4. Be idealistic (sometimes)

Herr Reyes: When we are idealistic, it gives us more to work with in a sense that this is not the current target that we want to reach. So it’s something that we can play around as of now, and then we can show them the initial results. After that, we can compare that with even realistic data. And then we can adjust from there. I prefer it because it gives us freedom to experiment. In general, if you are new on social media, what we recommend is to go broad first. Start from being broad and then we narrow it down until you get the point that the audience you are currently reaching is a mix of the ideal and realistic.

Social Media Trends for 2022: What’s in and out?

1. Short form videos

JK Macapagal: Tiktok I think it’s going to be relevant for the next couple of years and actually it’s so impactful that we already have YouTube shorts and Facebook reels. It’s similar to how Instagram imitated Snapchat years ago. If they’re going to apply the same treatment, if not more, at least the same level of relevance with Tiktok because all of us have Facebook accounts, and eventually we can use Reels and it’s something similar to TikTok.

Herr Reyes: Tiktok makes it easier for content creators. That’s why, I think in the recent data, Tiktok is getting a lot of attraction in terms of users.

Ant Sierra: Since a lot of people right now, a lot of creators and amateur creators are using TikTok as a platform, how do you guys see the sharp incline in terms of using influencer marketing in a brand’s digital marketing strategy?

JK Macapagal: It’s quick entertainment that you thought you were only spending a minute on but later on you’ll realize that you are spending an hour scrolling videos. It’s going to be more and more relevant, because you just need your phone, a couple of videos, use good and trending music and there is a good chance that you get a lot of views and then you will become famous. It’s easier compared to other social media platforms, in line with influencer marketing.

There’s a certain influencer from Tiktok who uses her influence to rally behind her followers and direct their attention to her presidential bet. So I think there is a big potential to affect the influencer marketing site, overall digital strategy of a brand given you know how to use or utilize that person’s following and what type of audience. There’s some marketing influencers.

Ant Sierra: So my question is, should a brand in TikTok follow a certain trend, or should they be part of the over-saturated trend mindset, or should they just stick to their actual communication strategy?

Herr Reyes: This goes for all platforms that if there is something trending, as long as it relates to the brand, I think you can go for it. But if it’s too far in your branding, there are some trends that you can let go. For brands, the narrative should always be controlled by the brand.

2. E-commerce in Social Media

Herr Reyes: For e-commerce when it comes to Meta, it is a big help on how we sell. So on Facebook and Instagram, we encountered live online selling. So, it’s something I guess that is part of the evolution of social media towards video content. I think for all platforms, the trend is that video is the best content. Best in terms of the fact that the Facebook algorithm puts video first. They are really pushing for this post type that’s why we commonly see Reels on our news feeds.

That’s something very interesting that video becomes a content for online selling platforms. We expected the online stores, but livestream selling prevails.

Ant Sierra: We expected this because we have a Facebook marketplace? We expect that’s going to be the platform that will become popular in terms of e-commerce. But no, it’s live selling. It’s happening. And then all you need as an investment is any light, a tripod and 10 gallons of charisma.

Herr Reyes: Social media, again, it’s a part of our everyday lives. So, the more that users can see that the brand has personality, the more they gain the affinity for it. Marketplace is very impersonal, you only click the products. So, it works but it doesn’t work as compared to online shops who are selling through livestream. And then people can interact with the customers themselves. So it’s really effective because you can see that there’s a person behind the brand, there’s personality.

Ant Sierra: One of the important parts now in creating your social media persona is you know how to communicate with your authentic players. For brands, I think if there are businesses who are listening to this right now, it’s one of the key things that you should prioritize.

How would you communicate yourself? Who are you as a brand? How would you engage with your audience in an authentic way?

3. Social Media Crisis Plan

JK Macapagal: If you prepare for the worst-case scenario, when it happens, you won’t be that much bothered by it, because you’re prepared for it. So the same thing goes with social media that there’s a crisis management. You gauge what you need to do and if a scenario happens you already have a backup plan. So, it’s a fail safe kind of thing. It won’t hurt to have, if you’re growing a business that’s social media centric.

Herr Reyes: Social media is very accessible. So one misstep, a lot of things can happen. So it’s very important that you have a different plan just in case something doesn’t pan out, you have plan B, plan C.

Best Practices in Social Media

1. Know your objectives

Herr Reyes: Set a goal on what you want to achieve on social media.

2. Do ads

Herr Reyes: You must test them. One set of ads is not enough. So always test your ads.

3. Listen to your potential customers

Herr Reyes: The relationship between a business and the customer is not one-sided. And in social media, it’s one of the best ways for your customers to reach out to you. So it is good for you to use this platform to understand your client.

4. Video is king

JK Macapagal: At some point you need to have videos in your overall strategy. Video is king and based on my experience, it really can help in terms of engagement. So even if it’s not your main content for your brand, you should at least one or two videos for your monthly content plan.

5. Always update your audience

JK Macapagal: Your audience would know which ones are your final bread and butter, which ones are not performing so well, so you can update them and see if they are relevant in your business. So if they are irrelevant and you tried everything and it still doesn’t work, it’s time to say goodbye.

6. Be straightforward

Ant Sierra: People in social media don’t have time to interpret drama. And then you’re just going to sell one service. It’s not too much for the platform though. It’s good for being a thumb stopper, but we should be reminded that Facebook, well, social media in general, is still a sort of escapist platform. We go there to relate to people again. So being straightforward is key because aside from that, what I’ve said, the attention span of people on social media is short.

7. Avoid negative messages

Ant Sierra: You have to avoid negative themes or negative messages. Because immediately, if you put in negative themes on your material, whatever it is that you are trying to send, that negative theme would translate into negative engagement. So that one negative theme that you are trying to use for the sake of poking people might bite you in the butt, so that would be associated with your brand in the long run.

8. Develop a relatable and authentic brand persona

Ant Sierra: You are just not only putting a brand on social media. In my opinion, you are a person, people go to you for something, for a service or a product. And people on social media want someone that they could, one, trust. Two, approachable. Basic things that you find in someone you can find in a go-to person, or in Gen Z speak, as your constant.

Thank you everyone for listening to another episode with the Truelogic DX podcast. This is powered by Podmachine. If you wish to learn more about digital marketing, please check out www.truelogic.com.ph and our Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn accounts.