1. Content Experimentation Trends:
The Creative Disruption Trend: Social teams ditch brand consistency to push creative boundaries
The Outbound Engagement Trend: Brands drop in on creators’ comments to pick up new audiences
2. Social Listening Trends:
The Social Performance Trend: Listening launches social pros into their performance marketing era
The Micro-Virality Trend: Social listening refines the art of trendjacking
3. AI Trends:
The AI Content Trend: Generative AI is off probation and officially on the team
The AI Strategy Trend: Social media strategists get a new thought partner
The Creative Disruption Trend
Social teams ditch brand consistency to push creative boundaries
With new creative opportunities brought about by social platforms, we’re seeing more and more organizations loosen the reins, toss the traditional marketing playbooks aside, and prioritize entertainment on social media.
What’s interesting about this new creative precedent is its implications on brand consistency — or rather, inconsistency.
Adventurous teams are testing out such distinct voices and personas on social that their content barely resembles their brand personality on other marketing channels.
And these brands aren’t just getting away with it — they’re getting celebrated for it (and driving results). Social marketers who consistently post creative content are more likely to say they have a ‘very positive’ impact on the business than those who post creative content less frequently — a sign that their efforts are paying off.
After all, social media is the perfect playground for pushing creativity further, a place where even the most buttoned-up brands can have a little fun.
In 2025, more organizations will step outside their creative comfort zone and test content that pushes beyond their brand guidelines to capture and delight audiences.
Brands drop in on creators’ comments to pick up new audiences
These days, you can scroll down to the comments section of almost any social post and find a brand or two chiming in on the conversation.
These outbound engagements (brands commenting on other people’s posts) are picking up steam. But the smartest brands are strategically commenting on creator content, which helps them cultivate community while also putting their brand in front of new audiences.
Popping off in the comments may seem simple, but it needs to be approached as strategically as everything else you do on social media.
According to our partner, global social media agency , there are two critical factors that drive success for outbound engagements: timeliness and length.
Engagements decrease dramatically if you comment on an original post that’s more than 24 hours old. As for comment length, keep it short — but not too short. Comments between 10 and 99 characters drive the most engagement; anything more or anything less, including emoji-only comments, are a total bust.
But beware: Outbound engagements as a marketing and social selling strategy are gaining momentum, so creators might get choosy with their replies, avoiding brands that could compromise their authenticity and credibility.
2. Social Listening Trends
The Social Performance Trend
Listening launches social pros into their performance marketing era
Unlike performance marketing, which has a crystal clear connection to revenue, social media marketing has remained notoriously difficult to connect to ROI (a.k.a. the numbers that prove business success and win investment from leadership).
However, we’ve seen more social marketers reporting increased confidence in their ability to prove ROI — and it’s not from tracking “vanity metrics” such as likes, shares, and follows. This year, we saw that confidence reach its highest point among social pros who use one specific tactic: social listening.
Social listening refines the art of trendjacking
Remember when going viral was the be-all and end-all of social media success? These days, though, social marketers know better (for the most part). Chasing random and fleeting moments of virality is both ineffective and inauthentic — and nothing kills a trend faster than the inevitable dogpiling of brands. So it’s no shock that conversations around ‘going viral’ have become increasingly negative over the last year.
3. AI Trends
The AI Content Trend
Generative AI is off probation and officially on the team
When we released last year’s report, social marketers were just starting to experiment with ChatGPT and a limited number of other AI tools — if their organization let them. At the same time, they were concerned about what AI could mean for their future as social media managers.
Today, AI is considered a major asset. In fact, 69% of marketers now see that can create job opportunities. And social marketers are adopting countless generative AI tools to help with creativity and impact.
Most notably, use of generative AI for social media content creation has shot way up.
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