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Embracing Authenticity: The Future of Social Media Marketing in 2024

• Nicole Harlow: Entrepreneur, Designer, Yoga Teacher, Lifehacker + Author

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Ever wondered how to boost your social media strategy for 2024? What if we told you that it's not about chasing vanity metrics but about authenticity and engagement? We're peeling back the curtain on the forecasted social media trends for 2024, placing the emphasis squarely on authenticity and community building. Let's take a voyage together through the rapidly evolving digital landscape, where influencers give way to personal brands, and vanity metrics lose their shine to the warmth of genuine engagement.

In the audio journey, we go a step further to elucidate how podcasts could be your golden ticket to revenue growth, especially in the health sector. Not just that, we also throw light on the necessary steps you should undertake to polish your social media profiles for the upcoming year. Whether it's the need for a succinct bio or the power of on-brand highlights, we've got you covered. So, get ready to embolden your social media strategy and elevate your brand to astounding heights, and remember, authenticity is your new best friend!

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I run three award-winning marketing / automations, branding & podcast production agencies for wellness brands, health-based businesses, health clinics and clinician entrepreneurs

Follow on Instagram @brandbetterco.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, thanks for joining me on Wealthy Wellness Biz. I'm your host, nicole Harlow, and today we are talking about social media trends predictions for 2024. So I think you should probably, if I were you, I would be bookmarking this episode, bookmarking this live broadcast, if you're watching live, and come back to it, because I know that the next couple weeks I'm recording this on December 12th the next couple of weeks are probably going to be like crazy, with like eggnog and family stuff, and I know that right now is probably not the time that you are going to be sitting down and recording a lot of content for next year. But I want you to just be here with me in this conversation and just kind of start thinking about the trends for next year, start thinking about ways that you might want to adapt your content, but you definitely want to definitely going to want to come back to this one after the new year. So just make sure that you got to save somewhere. So I've got four predictions for next year that I'm going to go into, and so we'll go through them one by one, and then I have a couple little like homework pieces that I think will help supercharge your social media for 2024. So, as always, I got my handy dandy notes with me.

Speaker 1:

Number one social media trend for 2024. And this is a big one. I'm putting this one first because I'm excited about this one. Number one is I predict that there is going to be more of a trend back to personal brands versus influencers. What's a distinction? I think that social media users ie your clients, your customers, your potential customers are kind of burnout on this idea of influencers. So these are these like million followers, you know, tons of likes, tons of shares, tons of comments and there's a little bit of like, I guess, jaded feeling really around the concept of an influencer, or being an influencer or following influencers or kind of giving a crap about what an influencer has to say. But at the same time, in that there's kind of this like I think for 2024, we're going to see more of a grassroots brand coming back to more of a personal brand which is just like you are the face of your business. So rather than being like this influencer, we're talking more kind of small communities, peak behind the scenes of the life. But these are more than the personal brand. I think the distinction is that the content feels more organic, it feels more real. It feels like an authentic behind the scenes of your life right Versus an influencer who has, like you know, 10 different brand deals where they're like hey, let me tell you about my you know my smoothie that I'm making with this, like specific protein powder.

Speaker 1:

That I'm not saying that brand sponsorships are a bad thing from a business perspective, but from an authenticity and a connection, I think that our audiences are a bit burnout by the influencer relationship, influencer and brand relationship. So I think that what's going to be really important to showcase your own personal brand you know to do. I think for me, what goes alongside that is the feeling that your audience they want to see behind the scenes of your life, they want to get a little peek behind the curtain, they want to know. In some ways, they kind of want to work with you because they want to be a little more like you. So, whether that's how you are as a business owner, if you're a business to business or a service provider, if you are in the health space, so a health-based business, which a lot of our clients and our customers are, so if you're a health coach, functional medicine, naturopathic doc, etc. What I want to see is I want to be a little more like you. So I think part of that is being able to really walk your talk in terms of showcasing the lifestyle, showcasing the health, so any kind of results that you're looking to get for your clients. I want you to be able to show some of that. So what are you asking your clients to do on a regular? I think some of your social media content should be you doing that. So if you're asking your clients and your customers to get your patients to get in a sauna, in a cold shower, to exercise, to eat a certain way, part of your personal brand whether that's a clinic or whether you're a solopreneur is to actually showcase yourself doing those things too, and so I think sometimes we feel like our content has to be completely educational all the time.

Speaker 1:

And I'm saying in 2024, make sure that at least a good portion of your content is also some lifestyle, some behind the scenes and some opportunity for people to actually see you and your team behind the scenes doing the things that you were asking your patients or your clients to do too. So that's number one. Number one is a move towards more personal branding and the importance of personal branding versus wanting to be an influencer or wanting to have an influencer status, which actually leads me to my social media trend for 2024. Number two, which is vanity metrics versus community. So what do I mean by that? I mean we're kind of over the days of vanity, likes and followers and shares and we want to spend 2024 really focusing on building community. So what would that look like? That would look like less about likes and more about saves. What does that tell me? If somebody is saving one of my posts, it means that it's. It's not that they just like it, it means that it's high value and it's something that they want to come back to later and that really helps the algorithm to push your content out to more people. So more rather than just emojis in the comments, more thoughtful comments, right, and part of that is us doing the work of outbound engagement and finding other you know, similar business owners, similar communities where we can actually go in and, instead of just liking things, we can actually do deeper comments have that build a better relationship, and so that's one of the things I'd love to see more, not only of our clients, but also just anybody listening and paying attention just on social media in general a move away from vanity metrics and into real community, real engagement.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of talk around influencers who have a million followers and they launched, like. I think there's somebody I can't I'm blanking on the name right now, but there was somebody who had like a million followers and they couldn't even sell like 30 T-shirts when they did a launch, right. And so bigger is not always better, bigger audience is not always better. More likes is not always better. We want to cultivate community. You know and it reminds me of something, and this is a decade plus old but there was the editor of, founder and editor of Wired Magazine, kevin Kelly. He had this thing back in the day around 1,000 true fans, that you could build a really successful business with 100,. You know, you can build a successful business with a hundred true fans and you can build a really successful business with 1,000 true fans. And so I like thinking about that around social media, right, and like.

Speaker 1:

I know it sounds maybe kind of icky to think about people as fans. We can think about them as you know collaborators, community followers, potential customers, clients, any of that humans is what we all are. But I like to think about, as we're building our clients, social media channels, that we're thinking about this concept of like 100 or 1,000 true fans, right? 100 people that really like the work that you do. That's great. You know A hundred people who are commenting on your posts, that show up for what you're doing, that get excited when you post a reel, that get excited to open your newsletter.

Speaker 1:

You know, I think about this a lot. I know today we're talking about social media, but there's only a few people that I actually open up their mailing lists and there's a few people that every time they send an email to the mailing list, I open it up and I sometimes ask myself why is that? You know, it's good to kind of reverse engineer and say why do I open up this newsletter? And generally it's because it's valuable and it's entertaining, and there's a little bit and the person who's sending it of me kind of fan girling, like wanting to be more like that person, and not in every respect. Usually it's in the way that they conduct their business, their values, the way they create. But you know, I invite you to think about social media, think about your mailing list, things like that. Like what do you open consistently? Is there anybody out there that you like, every time you see their email come in, you actually like read it and you enjoy it. You won't want to unsubscribe.

Speaker 1:

And then the same thing with social media are their channels that when you see something that they post, you want to hop on and read it. You want to find yourself saving a lot of their posts because there's a lot of quality information, that's. You know, we've a lot of good information out there that we can tease out and repurpose for our own business around community building and also content creation too. So number two, vanity metrics versus community. Number three is kind of a catchall, but it's a trend around copywriting. So this is a trend that I'm predicting for 2024. That's indirect response to 2023. So in 2023, we saw the rise of chat chapt and ai and jasper and a lot of content creators that make it a lot of ai content creation tools. That makes it easy for us to just kind of pop on and get some social media copy. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Speaker 1:

So this is not like this is not a judgment on that at all and in fact I like using chat chpt as a kind of a surrogate strategist for the business, so I like asking it strategy questions. I like helping, having it's help, you know, creating a content strategy, but also like content ideas, things like that. So I'm not anti, you know, hopping on chat chpt, especially when I want to brainstorm some ideas. I find it to be a very helpful addition to our team, right, if some? In some ways, I feel like we've added another strategist to our team because we can do that kind of back and forth. Like you know, this is a client's ideal customer avatar. Would they like this? What would you know? What do you think this content is something that would appeal to this type of person? So use it that way.

Speaker 1:

But in this prediction, this is more around the actual writing the captions there. Since the rise of chat chpt, it's easy to see a lot of like, kind of samey samey captions. Right, you see a lot of emojis. This is like just use chat chpt out of the box and say I'm a functional medicine provider. I need to have, you know, 30 different social media captions about XYZ. There is, there's a certain kind of like AI language that, once you know the system, is pretty easy to pick up so you can kind of see like who's using AI for their social media and who's not. Now, like I said, I'm not against using AI and if it gets you quicker, if it gets you quicker content, if it gets you out there posting and putting your message out there, more power to you, and so I fully support that. But I would hope and this is my, you know, my piece of homework is to go through, and if you're using chat, chpt to create captions the text captions for your Instagram posts, for example, or for your reels, I would love to see you customizing them, you know, 20 to 30% and adding in your own personality.

Speaker 1:

Because my point for number three around copywriting is, in 2024, I think that the brands that will really stand out are gonna have a very clear brand voice. They're not just gonna be like grabbing, like you know, chat, gpt, ai written content and then putting it out there without throwing in some recognizable brand, the brand secret sauce, right, whether that's humor, whether it's wittiness, whether it's research, you know whether it's just a tone of voice or all these ways that we can make our brand distinct. You know, is it specific emojis that you use? Is it, you know, specific terms of phrase that you use? I think, yeah, I think, for my number three that it is.

Speaker 1:

We're definitely going to see a lot more intentional copywriting and a lot more intentional brand building, right, and so how do you distinguish yourself in a sea of other people doing the same thing? It's going to be, you know, the strength of your copy, but it's also going to be the strength of your brand voice too. So, marrying those two, play around with AI tools, don't be afraid to, you know, get some help and getting some words on on the page. That can be. The hardest thing is just getting out there and having some ideas, and you know. So, work in tandem with AI around, like strategizing brand ideas for your content, but make sure that you're going back and you're, you know, doesn't sound like me Is there is there, you know, 20% of an upgrade that I could add here. That adds my personality, because that is going to help distinguish you from this feeling of like kind of AI sameness that is pretty rampant among social media right now.

Speaker 1:

So a last but not least, number four is my last social media trend here is that content, especially reels, carousels, but even going live as well, but I mean specifically around like reels and carousels for Instagram and TikTok as well. There were going to see more of a move to things that you can't Google, right? So I think the last few years there's been a real push around content that is educational, right, like four tips to do this, five tips to do that. I think that definitely has a place and it really does have a place if you're just getting started with a new channel because you want to establish authority and expertise around I know my topic right. So five you know branding mistakes that you're making four reasons why you need to hire a brand age branding agency.

Speaker 1:

This was content that was pivotal for us when we were first getting started. You know, to establish ourselves as a branding company, right, and I know we've added on podcasting and social media since then. But when we first got started, it was, you know what, kind of establishing content around your expertise, and so that can be listicles and that can be some education. But I think in 2024, especially if you've been in social media, if you've been on a channel for a few years now and you're not just getting started, I think there's a real push towards things that you can't Google, so things that aren't just educational. So I've got a little list here, you know. For me that includes things like thought leadership, opinions behind the scenes, showing someone how you specifically did it right.

Speaker 1:

So, instead of being like, here are five sleep tips, what are your five sleep tips and how do you actually use them in your kind of behind the scenes day to day right? So one of them is I use, you know, red light glasses, blue light, blackened glasses. Well, this is what they look like. This is the brand that I like to use. Here's a little reel of it of me actually using these as I'm getting ready for bed and then also just kind of this goes along with opinions, but just like the rationale for why you think something. So it really you can see that like all four of these kind of like blend together around personality, authenticity. Why would someone want to learn from you specifically?

Speaker 1:

So for number four, it's not enough to just have five generic tips. What we want is and these proportions can be like 10 to 15% but like, how are you infusing your own personality into that storyline as well and creating a storyline around it? So it's not just like, okay, anybody can Google five sleep tips. There's probably a billion blogs about that. What makes your perspective unique and sometimes part of that perspective is just because it's coming from you. So how can you let your audience in more? So here are my five top tips, but here's why. Here's how I like to use it. Here is how some of our clients have gotten results with using a weighted blanket or magnesium before bed, so you can start to see how you can take what would be generally just very generic content and make it more personalized. So that's my four, just to kind of recap social media trend predictions for 2024.

Speaker 1:

Number one is a move back to personal branding versus influencer. Number two is giving up vanity metrics versus community. And number three is intentional copywriting, even working in partnership with AI, but making sure that everything has like a really sparkling personality that is indicative of your brand. And number four is creating content around things that you can't easily Google. So that's more personality driven and it's also more opinion based thought leadership. Something establishes why someone would want to learn with you and from you.

Speaker 1:

So I promise in the beginning that I'd have a little bit of homework for you for this episode, and there's three things that I want you to look over between now and the end of the year and get ready to update them for 2024. These are simple things, but they're really easy to look over, even for myself. I'm using this. I like to teach what I'm going through, so I had a look at our Instagram the other day and I found a couple of these that I was like, ooh, I need to update that. So I should share that with you, if you do. Number one is your bio. So I want you to look over your bio, see if it's still relevant. Mine wasn't. I needed to add you know how do you guys production and social media. I had been a while since I cleaned up my bio, so I want you to look through your bio. Make sure that that still feels appropriate, that there's keywords about what you do and then a very clear opportunity for people to like find out how to work with you.

Speaker 1:

Number two is to go to your link tree or whatever you're using to collate the links and make sure that those links are still relevant. I had some things on there that I wasn't selling anymore. I had a couple of things that were lead magnets that led to offers that I didn't really want to push anymore, and so I want you to kind of delete things that don't need to be on there anymore and add anything that's new, any new offers, any new lead magnets, quizzes, funnels, entry points, anything like that. And then I want you to think about the hierarchy of how the link tree is set up, and I want your discovery calls and your paid offers more towards the front, towards the top. I don't want the freebies to be right on the top. I actually want the freebies to be a little bit more buried, because I think when you have too many links and there's too many freebies, it's really kind of distills the message and people don't know where to go next. So I want that like discovery call and your paid offer to be like right there, gotta grab some water real quick.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and number three is I want you to look at your highlights. If you have highlights, I want to make sure that they're on brand, see if there's anything new you want to add to highlights. See if there's any highlights that you want to delete because they're kind of old, old client testimonials, they're going to old programs that you don't have anymore. So just go through your highlights, have a plan for maybe making some new highlights, maybe refresh the highlight covers, just so there's a little something a little bit different. And then I want you to think moving forward, to make sure that your highlights have links in them too, so it's not just some information from stories, but there's actually something for people to do there too. And if you don't have any highlights, I want you to go to your Instagram. There will be like a bar underneath of your bio and the link. That's a place where you can add highlights. The highlights come from your stories and if you start looking and researching other companies, you can check out our brand better co highlights, which I actually have on my list to refresh those too, so you can check those out. And, yeah, so I would go through your highlights.

Speaker 1:

So those are my three pieces of homework between now and the end of the year. I want you to go to your Instagram and this is applies to other social media as well, so it's doesn't, but we're on Instagram, so that makes sense. I want you to look at your bio. Make sure that that is fresh and up, that it's super relevant for what you do right now and who you want to work with. I want you to refresh your link tree. I want you to get rid of anything on there that is a dead funnel. That isn't something that you want to prioritize. That isn't something that you're selling, and I want you to reorganize your link tree and make sure that the paid offer and your discovery call are towards the top. I don't want them buried at the bottom. And then the last thing is I want you to go through your highlights and just get rid of anything that isn't relevant to what you're selling anymore. If you don't have highlights, I want you to get on that and make sure that you have highlights between now and January. That's your homework. And yeah, no, this has been really, really awesome.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for spending this time with me here today for social media trend predictions for 2024. Like I said, feel free to bookmark this or, if you're listening to this as a podcast after the live recording, save it, because I know you're not going to want to really dig into this information until the new year, and that's totally fine, but show up in 2024 with these four predictions ready to go, really excited to create content in the new year. I'm going to see you here next week on Tuesday, so if you want to head over to my profile and click on the bell so you get notified when I go live, that would be awesome and I will talk to you soon. Have a great day. Yay, you made it to the end of the episode.

Speaker 1:

Here are some things that you can do to keep this party going. You can hire our team to work with our branding agency, social media management or podcast production team. You can find all of this information down in the show notes. You can subscribe to the podcast, leave a review or follow us on social media at brand better Co.

Speaker 1:

Also, if you're interested in digging deeper into how a podcast can help you add six figures of revenue to your business in the next 12 months, I would love to invite you to join our latest free masterclass using the link in the show notes. It's called Wellness Clients on Demand podcasting for your health-based business. We also have another on-demand masterclass that's free, called Confidence, to be seen as the face of your wellness business. This is great. If you know that you need to hop on social media, but you don't want to be learning any of the dances or anything that feels really inauthentic. This is a great masterclass for you. One other thing that you can do to work with us is to join our profitable wellness podcast program, and you'll find the link also down below. Have a great day and I will see you on the next episode. Bye now.