What can we expect from social media in 2024? And how can you stay ahead of the curve and keep your business top of mind for all your customers using social media this year? Okay. Why is it important for us to predict what might happen?  A few reasons. 



Well, first and foremost pride, I mean,  And we want a guess, right? Just for fun. Last year, I made my predictions for what I thought 20, 23 would hold. And for the most part they were bang on. So I'm pretty proud of that. And secondly, because if you can see the trends shifting and you're expecting them to shift, you're going to be the first one to notice when they do change. 

And that means you and your business are going to be quicker on the uptick to adapt to the changing trends and themes and content styles. On all these platforms  and when you're the first one to shift, you are leading the charge. You're rewarded by the algorithms. 

You're the person to watch. I have a few predictions. I think you're really going to, like, I also have predictions coming to you today from my audience. I asked my audience on Instagram, what they think the future holds. And honestly, they were some really good ideas there. I can't wait to shout them out and share them with you. But first I want to spend a second just recognizing from whence, we came.  You know, it's important around the new year to reflect on your year and reflect on what you've gone through and what got you to where you are. 

And I want to throw it back even farther because I was thinking the other day about when I first started managing social media accounts and the tools I had and how inferior they were to the tools that we have today. And it actually made me really thankful for how easy it is to create content now versus then. 

The first thing. That I was remembering was the scheduling tool that I used was called. nuMe U N U M. And it was so basic and it was like,  It was like magic that I was able to lay out what I wanted the Instagram feed to look like and have  a visual planner of what the feed would look like. 

And that was actually the only way that you could plan content and you could kind of drag the squares around to place them where you wanted to. And say, you've your captions on them as kind of a note? And then you would manually publish from there every day. So I always recommend batching and scheduling your content and automating as much of it as possible. 

Back then, automation was not an option. You weren't allowed to use it. There was no automation platforms that were approved by Instagram's API. Like there are today, meaning  Instagram didn't allow auto publishing. 

So even though some apps said that they could do it, they were kind of like hacking the code to be able to do it. So I would still batch and schedule all of  my client's content in advance, but I would have to manually post it every day. And when you have multiple posts and multiple clients, and this tiny little phone app on a poor functioning iPhone four or whatever,  It was quite a process and I'm glad that's done. 

We also didn't have Canva right now. It is so easy to make beautiful graphics, beautiful high level on brand graphics. And there were so many templates that you can just drag and drop. You don't even need graphic design skills to do these things. 

And back then I had to hire a graphic designer to make anything that I wanted. 

I would hire graphic designers or I would make, , graphics on , just the crappiest apps, like think paint.  That's what I had access to. I'm not a graphic designer by any means. So  I wasn't able to use  Photoshop and Adobe and , the professional level software that existed it's way beyond my scope. 

So. 

If I wanted something pretty, I had to pay somebody to make something pretty.

 Cut to today with programs like Canva and later you don't need fancy graphic design skills. 

Using the systems we use in my business, my team can create a month's worth of Canva graphics in a couple of hours, and then schedule them all in later to auto publish. And we don't even need to open that project again until it's time to make next month's content. It is so much faster. So much more efficient  Later by the way, later.com is my favorite. Content scheduling tool. It is so easy to use. It is drag and drop and it is linked in the show notes because I tell people to use it constantly and all my clients use it. All right. Let's get into the 2024 p predictions 



This one's kind of fun. 

 In marketing, there's this thing called gamification. And even if you've never heard of that term, I know you have experienced it and maybe we even love it as much as I do. Gamification is when brands make their marketing into a game. 

Think the McDonald's monopoly game, you have to pay to play. And you get your little monopoly stickers on every coffee, your burger that you get during monopoly, and it becomes a game and you're trying to win it while paying for more burgers to get more monopoly stickers. 





Instagram has been toying. I don't know if you notice with a lots of different gamification lately. 

So if you've hit certain benchmarks, like a thousand views on your reel,  is one of them, you get a little badge and it pops up and they'll give you badges for little accomplishments that you've made and they'll say, Hey, want to get to the next accomplishment. All you have to do is make more content. 

And if you go into your settings, you can actually see all the badges that you have. I have won and this makes us more excited to create more content.  



I predict a start, really leaning into this. Sometimes they test features and then they just kind of drop in disappear. But I think this one's going to stick and I think Tik TOK is going to copy them and then they're going to game-ify it as well. 

And I think that they might start giving us rewards. And I heard this through the grape vine and I haven't seen any formal evidence of it yet. I don't even know where I heard it, but.  I'm wondering if they start rewarding people for creating more content. 



Last year, Instagram was actually paying creators. I didn't have access to it up here in Canada, but a lot of my clients were starting to get small sums of money for their reels views. 

And then they discontinued that and then   they stopped offering it as far as I know. And I'm wondering if they're going to use this gamification to sort of replace that, or maybe reward you in more views for hitting certain benchmarks. Okay. So that's, that's. I know it's not fleshed out, but if anything, even close to that happens, you know, I'm going to say that I called it.   If you're sitting there and you're going well, Jenna, should I put all my eggs in the Instagram basket? Should I put all my eggs in the social media? What if social media just disappears one day? Maybe I'll go to my email list instead. And I'm saying that because I know like some creators and their specific messaging is. You don't own your social media following. 

So having an email list instead, and listen, that is so important, you know, and I can get behind that. Absolutely. Have an email list , have a social media following. And have an email list, but this year in Q3, Metta produced 34. Billion in net revenue. And I'm reading this from nasdaq.com. They had a gain of 23% over the last year or so. A company worth $34 billion. 

Isn't disappearing into the night quietly. I don't think we need to worry about these platforms. Disappearing.

  And want to jump over to a few of the predictions from my audience. @SuperSimpleMarketing says "AI usage will dramatically increase from chat GPT for idea creation to more specialized tools like cap cuts, AI avatars. We'll also see a lot more crappy AI content, but some great content too." 



And @PureMagicAmy says, "I think learning to distinguish AI generated content from human created content will be a huge focus for a lot of people using social media in 2024." Ooh, I love this.  No matter what AI is definitely going to show its face this year. I think the big place AI is going to show up is in the direct messages. 

I've already experienced some direct messages and some comments where it's clearly AI that is responding to me pretending to be users. So that's where I think it's really going to show its face. 

 

 This next prediction is a long one, but I love every second of it. It's from Alexis Underwood design studio. She says, "Ooh, I'm excited to hear what you've got to say. I'm predicting a strong trend toward more authentic, down to earth brands. I think the neutral colored luxury vibe brands that put off a very distant, cold and formal feel are on their way out. 



And buyers will be putting more emphasis on brand and people they find relatable. 

On another note, I'm really hoping we find a healthier balance between video and other content. Again. Coming from a video shy entrepreneur, LOL." 

 

Alexis. I couldn't agree with you more. I think relate-ability and authenticity is going to be absolutely massive in 20, 24 and beyond. And I'll tell you why. 



META itself has said what gen Z want most is relate-ability. 



We've even seen trends in photography styles over the last couple of years, getting more and more rugged and less polished when Instagram started, it was a place for perfection and everything had to be aesthetic and influencers were so perfect. And that is  old news. We don't want it anymore. Gen Z doesn't want it. 

Millennials don't want it. We just want to wear our messy buns and be done with it.  

And TIKTOK is  evidence of that trend, people moved over to Tik TOK because they want it to be more real. They wanted to be less polished and they were resisting what Instagram had become. And that got super popular. And now that trend is coming over toward Instagram. It's even coming into, I think, brand design, especially for entrepreneurs. 



People want relate-ability unpolished authenticity. 



 



You also mentioned you hope that the trend goes away from video. Here's my thoughts on that? I think in 2024, talking head videos are going to rule on Instagram and Instagram is going to  again, swing closer to Tik TOK style content. So as much as my audience loves B roll videos and quick and easy videos, I'm not sure those are going to last. 

They might be a, a passing trend. 

And entrepreneurs are going to want to get on camera speaking to their audience in shorter. Let's say like 35 to 90 Second videos. That said one of my predictions last year, which I don't even know if it counts as a prediction, because I also, like I tuned into the Zeit guys and I listened to what Meta's telling us, and I listened to what Adam Moseri posts on his account. , 



and I listened to what, you know, the powers that be over at Instagram are telling us and try and read between the lines. 

But in 2022, there were such a big trend toward videos that creators started getting annoyed because video is harder than photos and carousels and graphics for a lot of people. And it kind of left a lot of people feeling like Instagram wasn't for them to be posting content. Anymore. And so then Instagram came out and said, guess what? 

We're going to have a stronger focus on graphics and photos in 2023. And they followed through on that promise. And we noticed with our clients, graphics and carousels and photos still get plenty of distribution. You can still have a beautiful Instagram account without going on video, just using those things. 

And that's thanks to that change we saw last year. So now I think both will reign. They're going to continue letting us use carousels and graphics. Afix and photos. And stories  and I think the audience is craving more people speaking to camera.  Have you, or one of your friends, have you heard anyone complain about having to read the caption?  Here's another big indicator of that. I've seen so many people complain on social media about the type of reels. Where you just get like a hook and then it says you have to read the caption for the rest. And people are starting to really resent that format, but they want more information and more value. 

 

Actually to that point, @JenniferBReyes195 on Instagram. Her prediction is "long detailed click below will fade out. Viewers are getting savvy and it's just a way to get longer views." I agree with you, Jennifer, Jen  📍 to Jen.   All right. That's it for my 2024 predictions. I can't wait to see if I was right, but I also don't want time to go too fast. I don't want to wish away my year. This is going to be a good year for you and for me, I can feel it. Hey, if you have predictions you want to share, and you're listening to this on Spotify, leave a comment with your prediction and the next year, maybe we can revisit it and see if you were right. All right. That's all for me. Bye-bye.