Social Media in 2024

For many marketers, social media and the ever-increasing space it inhabits in our daily lives makes it challenging to switch gears between perusing LinkedIn looking for inspiration to drafting captions based on a technical project description. One way to help clean the slate of the so-so analytics and missed opportunities of last year is to be energized and inspired by what is to come this year in social media for your company. I’m looking forward to sharing more 2024 social media insights at the IPMI 2024 Leadership Summit in February.

Focused Storytelling

Deciding what to share on social media and when is often determined by a marketing plan or by an outside party, like a client or another department. There are several strategies that you can make part of your workflow, but starting at the beginning of a significant campaign or project and deciding what you would like to post and what that post will promote puts you in control. It also helps you when you have employees who simply send you something and ask you to post it, and you struggle with how to give them a “no” that won’t deter them from helping you in the future. If you have a plan mapped out, then you have the perfect response to anyone trying to do your job for you!

We often approach social media content by only identifying it by the original medium – blog, video, event photos, or a link to a job description. Instead, take the labels away and find the core story – a long-time client, a community project, an employee who will make an impact with their experience and skillset, and open it up to a full out campaign. This shift in labels will help take the blinders off when you are unsure how to use it best. When you have the core story, now you can start to be creative and go beyond a post.

Scheduling with Intention

Posting to social media is only effective if that content fits the purpose of that network. You don’t see many vacation videos on LinkedIn, and people aren’t often reading their latest peer-reviewed paper over Instagram Stories with a filter on their face. If you flipped those around, it makes sense. So, part of looking at your strategy for 2024 is to no longer just schedule one photo with a caption and send it to all your accounts at once with no care for the different audiences or networks that you are posting to. Now that you are seeing content in a new way, you can take a few minutes to tailor it to each network so that it fits the experience of the followers who are going to see the post.

Creating Content for Everyone

StudioID wrote about traditional marketing tactics making a comeback and said, “A complete content hub is home to a variety of content types. No one prospect is the same—different people consume content differently and prefer different formats. Visual learners will appreciate infographics and videos, while prospects who are further along in their buyer journey may be looking for more intensive content like whitepapers and downloadable guides. Meet the buyer where they are and produce a robust content hub, allowing them to match where they are in their journey with your content.” This is essential to letting anyone participate in the conversations around your business. Social media an equitable space where all of your customers expect to find you when they need you. Take the extra step to have fun, experiment with your messaging, and learn from your customers. It will reenergize your followers and open doors for new insight into what they want from your brand.

For any marketing team, the goal is always to give yourself time to think ahead and create a consistent routine of capturing content, analyzing your data, and scheduling a majority of your posts ahead of time so you know it is always working for you, even when you have other tasks to accomplish. ◆