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2023 Social Media Predictions

Jacob Cardwell
Jacob Cardwell

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And take a deep breath. You have made it through 2022 (nearly, at least). After a turbulent year of war, questionable Twitter buyouts and one of the best Eurovision in recent memory, we now have our eyes (and ears) set on the future.

Whilst we aren’t mystic meg, here to tell you your particular future (although we do host an in-house astrology expert ♈️), we can put our social-first brains together to compile a list of the must-know upcoming social trends. So, put your labcoats on and hop in the time machine because we are taking a brief trip to 2023.

Insider Tea ☕️:

A well-written blog post always has some great sources. So here are some of the Spin teams’ predictions around social in 2023 (trust us, we are experts 😉):

Max (Co-founder and CBO 🕶):
“We’ll no doubt find more brands exploring the halfway-house to the Metaverse by bringing sensory elements and further gamification to social.

With the increased demand for integrity and authenticity on social content, I can’t help but think there will be a moment of reflection on the vehicle itself that’s driving this.”

Sophie (Senior Content Creator 📸):
“Live shopping is going to take over! Think QVC for TikTok. Interactive, live content with influencers giving live, unfiltered, unedited product commentary. Honest, risky, but very effective.”

Emily (Senior Account Manager 🧠):
“With brands like McCain inserting themselves into the Metaverse through their latest campaign collaboration with Roblox, it’s only a matter of time before even more follow suit. Finding an original link to these exciting innovations within social will be a game changer for brands. Clearly, a standalone campaign doesn’t work, and those most native to the Metaverse aren’t impressed. This forward-thinking approach needs to be explored with a long-term strategy rather than a flash-in-the-pan campaign to win over the gaming community.”

Courtney (Account Manager 🪄):

“I can see parodies of social apps being created, my faves being Delayagram, Toebook, and BeFake being introduced into the mix. It’ll allow users to do the exact opposite of what you can do on the real version of the apps.”

(New Spin packages coming soon?)

Cherie (Mid-weight Creative Designer 🎨):

“The rising ‘curated chaos’ design style (@bigsexypizza, @sourpatchkids) of 2022 will continue into next year, with even less focus on clean aesthetics.

With Gen Z’s love for Y2K still prominent, there may be a rise in the older, nostalgic design trends of the early 2000s. Think magazine collages, WordArt ( :/ ) and 90’s digital computer graphics!”

Julian (Account Manager and Horoscope Expert ♎️):

“AR filters will be used for shopping. In fact, Snapchat has already started to experiment with this.

Shopping on social media will become a lot more common across more platforms. Twitter shop, maybe?

The short-form vs long-form content debate will die out. With TikTok allowing longer videos and YouTube introducing shorts, people will avoid prioritising a certain video length.”

Grace (Senior Paid Account Manager 💰):

“Audio and sounds will only become more prevalent for advertisers on social media in 2023. We’ve seen how TikTok transformed the music industry by turning old songs or unknown musicians into total chart-toppers. I think this will be even more important in the coming year.  With social advertising platforms such as Meta bringing out new ad enhancements, such as automatically adding music to your video ads, this can only signify how important audio will be for brands on social in 2023.”

Jacob (Copywriter✍️):

“In line with TikTok and BeReal, the push for honesty and authenticity will finally reach copy next year. After quite a brash and ballsy scene for copy in 2022, next year could be all about relatability throughout the copy. Imperfections, colloquialisms and honesty will become central.”

Now, onto the blog…

Personas are DEAD 🪦

We’ve all seen them. Time and time again, our brand decks have been filled to the brim with made-up individual personas. What do they like for breakfast, what do they watch on Netflix, and how do they spend their evening? Except, there’s a bit of a problem. In 2023, social brands will move further away from personas and target their broader brand communities.

Various social sites echo these through their developments, where Twitter Communities and Facebook groups have been the spaces where consumers treat product recommendations with the utmost sincerity and respect. Navigating these social communities will be critical in 2023. It will soon become less about individual influencers streaming content and more about the dialogue between all community members in these spaces (groups, comment sections, twitter threads etc.).

Here, we must focus on developing connections with communities by truly understanding online interactions – and acting quickly to join them. Good community management will be essential. These micro-communities may have smaller audiences, but they’re worth their weight in gold with high engagement rates.

Over here at Spin, we embed ‘community’ across every brand pillar and every post type to reach and cultivate loyal brand fans.

Listen VERY Carefully 👂

Can you hear that? That’s the sound of sonic marketing. But, no, we aren’t talking about the blue super-fast hedgehog; we are talking about the world of sounds and audio. From a focus on words (Twitter and Facebook) to images (Instagram and Snapchat) to the new epoch of sounds (Enter: TikTok), Social media sites have always played with the senses to keep the user glued to their timeline and engaged with the content produced.

So, how can brands utilise this? The sound stops the scroll in this world where content streams are omnipresent and infinite. Photos, stories, tweets, and videos are now a given, and producing content that activates multiple senses is essential. 88% of TikTok users said sound is crucial to the app’s experience.

From claiming a specific sound to creating your own (Users have used this TikTok sound across 10,400+ TikToks), sonic branding will surely pop off in 2023. So keep an ear out for it.

Live and Let Die 🎥:

With various platforms’ constant push for live affordances, such as Facebook Live, YouTube Live, TikTok Live, and Instagram Live, live video became more widely used throughout the year.

Not too dissimilar to the ancient practice of telemarketing, now anybody with a phone in their pocket can begin to record unprocessed, unedited and unfiltered live videos. Anybody can now start to communicate exciting developments to their audience, capture the excitement of a brand event and even begin to sell some of their products natively on Livestream.

By enabling online buyers to view their products in real time, this trend allows marketers to forge better bonds with their clients. Lives will be critical in 2023 for brands pushing for authenticity and relatability – as the risks of lives often outweigh the positives. And it’s precisely those unmediated risks that bring in waves of dedicated viewers.

(Here at Spin, we expect a more prominent announcement on Instagram live shopping sometime early in 2023.)

AR / VR has arrived (again?) 👾:

Every year AR makes its way onto the trends list. But this year is the time to start capitalising on this trend. With a big expected push from Facebook, who are making the ‘meta-verse’ their thing, we expect to see great metrics across the board on all things Augmented and Virtual Reality.

Potentially a scary space, this will all be about utilising filters, gaming, audio and virtual influencer marketing to push online spaces forward. So, with a potential market of $800bn, get ready to enter the 3D world with your followers.

Tip: 💡 Creating virtual representations of products is a great way to begin to prepare for this coming shift.

Sooooo… Twitter 🐦:

Yeah, so a lot has been going on at Twitter, even in the last few days. The manic and volatile social media has become even more unpredictable thanks to Elon Musk’s acquisition. After dissolving Twitter’s board of directors, the site is clearly heading in a new direction.

One thing we can begin to plan for is the introduction of subscriptions, which Musk has spoken about many times during the buying process. For example, Twitter could start to charge brands a monthly fee to access analytics and a blue tick.

This, combined with celebrities beginning to leave the platform, could signal an end to Twitter. Or, at least, Twitter as we know it. We’ll keep our eyes peeled on this one!

More Fragmentation? 🤔:

Admit it, we all love an underdog. And, after Bereal’s overnight success (and to some extent TikTok’s), who knows what the future holds regarding new platforms? New social media sites like BeReal are projected to appear in 2023 to break into a VERY crowded industry.

However, while new platforms arise yearly with lofty claims of ‘revolutionising social media as we know it’, they mostly remain niche sites. Nonetheless, keeping an eye on any recent advancements in the sector is critical! That’s what our blog is for, though, right?

Are you feeling a little bit lost? We don’t blame you, and we are here to help. Spin is an award-winning pure-play social media agency that combines the sharpest creative minds with the most innovative performance specialists.

If you'd like to know how Spin can help you, hit the button below to arrange a chat or set us a brief.
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Eligible creators will be able to search for relevant Ticketmaster events through the “add link” function before posting a video. They will then have the option to “add to video” which will display the Ticketmaster link to the event towards the bottom of the video once posted. Users will then be able to click on the link and, in a similar fashion to the Tiktok shop, will be taken to the Ticketmaster website in-app to continue browsing.

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Japanese multinational conglomerate Fujifilm has appointed Spin to carry out an ongoing strategic social media service to continue to drive and develop their growth to new audiences.

A brand that is world-renowned for their work in the realms of photography, optics and wider electronics. Headquartered in Japan and first established in 1934, Spin couldn’t be happier to partner with the brand and support their innovation across social with the intrinsic synergy from their image-focused products to the constant evolution of the platforms we use to share this very outcome.

Explore more from Fujifilm & Instax here:

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Spin is an award winning pure-play social media agency that combines the sharpest creative minds with the smartest performance specialists. For more information or to enquire about scaling your brand through social please email hello@spinbrands.com

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Instagram in The Age of Video

Things are changing… again (and again, and again).

Instagram has, rather ironically, faced widespread backlash from a static asset created by photographer @illumitati and shared by thousands, including the queen of lip kits (and chickens) Kylie Jenner. We all know the famous phrase ‘a picture can say 1000 words, but here we are seeing the defiant power of a picture when put in the hands of everyday users

Here’s a quick Spin-centric rundown of why this happened, what happened next and what this means for brands.

Why Now?

It’s simple really:

When we think of TikTok we think of short video clips.

When we think of YouTube we think of lengthy videos.

When we think of Twitter we think of sassy snippets.

When we think of Facebook we think of our mums.

And, when we think of Instagram we think of a feed of static images.

Not so fast! Early this year, Instagram began testing a brand new version of its app’s home feed that featured full-screen photographs and videos, similar to TikTok, and the response was very very loud. Users said the feed was cluttered, ugly and pushing for the primacy of video far too hard. This was no accident; this feed re-jig came hand in hand with other recent changes which include an increasingly algorithmic main feed, a push for TikTok-style “reels” videos, and the increasing presence of a remix function.

These changes have led to everyday users struggling to interact with their friends and family’s posts which get sucked down the bottom of the algorithm in favour of ads and (poorly) recommended posts, hand-curated by the algorithm.

Soon, the post by @illumitati began to spread like wildfire, with a whole app seemingly uniting behind a shared hatred for the new update. The post, overall, gained 2.2 million likes and 43k comments. And, eventually, the spreading of this post led to collective action – with a petition being signed over 300k times.

What may seem like a funny or playful post, could be disastrous for Instagram. Let’s not forget that when Kylie Jenner last talked smack about a social media app, the tweet reduced its market price by $1.3 BILLION (🪦 RIP Snapchat).

What’s Going on Now?

Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s CEO (aka the cause of many SMMs’ stress and anxiety), quickly responded to the widespread criticism with a video (lol) carefully doubling down on the controversial changes. He told his audience that Instagram would “continue to promote photographs,” but made sure to reiterate that: “over time, more and more of Instagram will become video.”

The reaction to this? Similar to this brilliant slack from a client:

What does this mean for brands?

It may seem like a lose-lose scenario, but fear not, here are some quick tips on how to ride this wave for social success:

Push for authenticity 🔥

Audiences are sick of their feeds appearing manufactured, ad-centric and controlled by the algorithm. Now, more than ever, producing authentic and engaging content is key. Show a little humanness with friendly faces or relatability. Gone are the days of a polished Instagram (whether that be in video or static format), so act like the best friend and not like the big brand.

Use (real) reel content 📹

Look, video isn’t going anywhere. So, it’s a perfect time to experiment with reel content and see what sticks. The likelihood is your reach will Skyrocket. Again, just keep it as authentic as possible.

Keep in mind what people want 🪧

Maybe it’s wouldn’t be a bad idea to play around with statics and see if you can hit the sweet spot of engagement: people are hungry for the return of pictures. Yes, your reach might drop, due to the ever-changing algorithm, but your audience will appreciate a feed made up of a variety of content. Don’t be a one-trick pony: have a content plan based on statics, Carousels, Reels AND Stories.

Virality is still a thing 🦠

It’s kind of crude, but the mass spreading of this post shows us that ‘things’ can still go viral. Don’t give up hope! Here is our go-to guide for all things viral.

Play it by ear 👂

Things are changing every day. New trends rise, and old social media sites fall. Algorithms change, but sometimes the users do not. A great social media presence requires A LOT of social listening, reading and knowledge. Keep up to date on everything social.

Or, what if we told you that there is a dream team of social media experts waiting to help you out with this confusing digital landscape? Experts in the algorithm AND the everyday user. We are here to help. Spin is an award-winning pure-play social media agency that combines the sharpest creative minds with the smartest performance specialists.

For more information or to enquire about scaling your brand through social please email hello@spinbrands.com

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