The popularity of the short-form video will continue to rise, and social SEO has the advantage over hashtags. Here’s a quick run through of what you need to know in social media 2023.

Hooked on Short-Form Video

TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts - these bite-sized, attention grabbing short-form videos are addictive… And easily shareable. Short-form video marketing generates the highest ROI, and the popularity of short-form video content will continue to rise in 2023. Half of users find videos longer than 1 minute to be “stressful”, and the sweet spot between 15-30 seconds tends to get more engagement, does better on SEO and has a higher retention rate. Microlearning, product teasers, user-generated content, and influencer ads are some of the biggest trends with branded videos which resemble organic “real” content faring much better than blatant video ads. Know your objective before developing a campaign strategy, invest in quality content, and always include a CTA. JanMar Agency can assist with developing a campaign strategy and has some great tips in our "Get Your Message in Motion with Short-Form Video" blog.

TikTok is Growing Like an Overfed Goldfish

Although TikTok still ranks behind both Facebook and Instagram in terms of popularity, TikTok’s 2022 growth rate was an astounding 215%, making it the fastest growing user network. Users spend an average of an hour and a half on the platform daily.

TikTok introduced several new features in 2022 which helped make it one of the most important social media marketing networks, and this year the platform released a handful of tools designed to help small businesses and creators “... target their desired communities and choose exactly how they can interact with their ads,” per a brand statement released in early February of 2023.

Profile Page CTA’s, Message Focused CTA’s, the ability to promote other’s content, and new targeting parameters offered through a feature called Promote which allows “...your video to be displayed as an ad for the time that you promote your video.”

A study by Neurons on behalf of TikTok finds that seeing an organic TikTok before a paid advertisement boosts brand recall by 27% - something to consider when developing your TikTok content strategy.

Reel ‘em in

With over 2 billion users a month and growing, Instagram is still the go-to platform for social media marketing. Over half of Instagram users use the platform to research products, and Reels marketing should be a part of any social media campaign strategy.

Reels have recommendation prioritization in the algorithm, and Reels editing features offer more creative options such as adding music and effects.

You can recycle short-form videos from other platforms to Instagram as long as you remove logos and watermarks from other platforms first.

BeReal has gained in popularity, but doesn’t currently offer any business features. Marketing on the platform can be tricky and brands need to make sure they are in-line with the concept of the platform. Users cannot “...use BeReal for advertising or commercial purposes to publish or facilitate the transmission of advertising and commercial solicitations.”

There are some brands who have established a presence on the platform, but you’ll need some good, creative storytelling to engage their user base.

# SocialSEOkeywords

Younger users are now using social media as their primary search engine, and a recent experiment by Hootsuite found that using keyword optimized captions instead of hashtags increased reach by 30% and doubled engagement. Are hashtags a thing of the past?

Not quite, but keywords will definitely get you better results.

Research and analysis on hashtags can help inform your keyword strategy, and in some instances, hashtags can be keywords by removing the hash.

Hashtags are used for finding content on social media platforms, are aimed at short term goals, and do not directly influence SEO.

Keywords are about search intent. They are used by your audience and bots to find relevant pages and information, increasing the chances of a post or page showing up in search engine results.

Incorporate keywords into all your social media: add keywords to your bio, add alt text keywords to your images, optimize your videos for search by using keywords in captions and saying those keywords out loud in your videos so that they are picked up by the captions.

If all this seems daunting, reach out to a professional. JanMar Agency can assist in the creation of a strong 2023 social media campaign throughout Galveston County and Harris County.