There are some really interesting trends down the line in 2023 for social media. In fact, it’s an area of marketing that will see significant change and brands need to keep up to have a presence and use the platforms effectively. 

TikTok continues to evolve and dominate

TikTok has become a big player in the social media marketing realm. And that’s not set to change in 2023. TikTok generated $4.6 billion in 2021, a 142 percent increase year-on-year with 1.8 billion monthly active users predicted by the end of 2022 reported The Business of Apps. 

It’s not just for consumers or creators that TikTok is making inroads. The platform is focusing on usability for businesses and improving targeting options for advertising which will make it a bigger and better platform for brands in 2023. 

“One of the things that we’re gonna see from TikTok next year is the simplicity around business tools. They’ve already been making waves in improving the usability for businesses around their ads dashboard. I’ve been looking at some of the new targeting options they’ve launched for their ads, which are brilliant,” says Alison Battisby, a social media consultant with Avocado Social.

Decentralizing social media to create a ‘super app’

The changes at Twitter have shone a lens on the vulnerability of social media platforms. Customers are moving away from wanting to engage with billionaire-led platforms and instead have control over their content and data. 

Battisby thinks that “we are moving towards a need for the decentralization of social networks. Some of the new and exciting platforms that we’re seeing include Mastodon, which is seeing a huge amount of downloads over the last couple of weeks. And it’s an interesting tool because it is built by the masses.” 

Other apps are in the works like BlueSky, which is being developed by Twitter’s ex-CEO, Jack Dorsey. More an infrastructure than a platform, the company describes it as “a new foundation for social networking which gives creators independence from platforms, developers the freedom to build, and users a choice in their experience.”

The ‘creator economy’ will grow and change

As brand awareness becomes more of a focus on social media (as opposed to pure lead generation), marketers need to find creators that have a voice and fan base (small or otherwise). 

It can be a challenge for brands to create content that engages customers in a time-starved world. That’s where content creators come in and that doesn’t mean high-level influencers. It can mean employees, customers, or even subject matter experts in a niche area. 

“Since COVID we’ve seen a new social media culture that focuses not on the number of followers, but on the content itself, in this era of what they’re calling ‘recommended media’. I believe this pushes brands even more to work with influencers and content creators,” says Neal Schaffer, social media leader, and author.

The emergence of content creator funds on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch means there’s an incentive for creators to put time into creating content a brand could take advantage of. 

“30% of 18 to 24-year-olds and 40% of 25 to 34-year-olds consider themselves content creators ”HubSpot’s 2022 State of Consumer Trends report