5 Social Media Trends that non-Profits can take advantage of in 2022
by Josh Gaventa
Content Manager, 8original
There are lots of new and exciting innovations and developments that will be hitting our small screens this year. Hootsuite1 have a great breakdown, Twitter2 released a trends report and there are countless articles online on this issue.
We have broken down the five trends that we think non-profits can take advantage of in 2022.
- Start your Facebook group now!
- If you’re not on TikTok, get on it ASAP.
- Your 2022 goal should be to reach new audiences.
- Live Audio is going to be a thing.
- Posting good content often will be key.
1) Start your Facebook group now!
Organic reach for Facebook pages has been declining in recent years, and currently one in 19 of your page’s fans will see your content, which is around 5%3. Now is a good time to create or reinvigorate your Facebook group. Facebook recently released4 Insights for Facebook groups as a clear sign that they are promoting the notion that brands should be investing in community building via Facebook Groups.
Here are 3 examples of content for your Facebook group:
- Daily content like polls, questions and quotes are good ways to ask your group to interact with you. They don’t need to be ‘salesy’, have fun with it, let your community get to know you, your staff and vice versa you’ll get to know your audience.
- A weekly blog or vlog posted in the group would give your community a chance to see what you’re up to on a weekly basis. Like a newsletter, but something people actually read.
- Normal Facebook content – whatever you’d post on your Page could be posted in your group and might get more and better engagement.
Building a Facebook Group doesn’t need to be difficult, it’s about as difficult as creating content for a Page which you’re doing already. Take this opportunity to diversify your content to make it more personal, more fun, and likely more engaging.
If you keep up your current Facebook page behaviour, your audience probably won’t grow that much, and your engagement likely won’t increase too much either. In a year’s time you could have a group of dedicated community members who engage with your organisation on a daily or weekly basis.
Bonus:
You do need to promote that you have a Facebook Group, so make sure you let people know they can join it. Pro tip: You can now add links to Instagram stories, put the link there a few times a week with an engaging piece of content attached.
2) If you’re not on TikTok, get on it ASAP.
TikTok is an incredibly useful tool for organisations seeking to reach new audiences, particularly younger people. If that sounds like you, then it’s time to get over whatever issue you have with TikTok and get on it.
Ignoring TikTok in 2019 was a reasonable approach to take. It was young, it was mostly kids dancing and it wasn’t the mature social platform it is today.
Ignoring TikTok in 2022 is a big mistake, and one that isn’t necessary to make as TikTok content might be the easiest content to make.
Here are 3 examples of TikTok content you can make:
- Daily vlog content. Film yourselves in the office, or at home. Film your routine, a quick shot of your meetings, or even just get everyone in your team to wave! Put all the clips together, maybe add a voice-over or a fun song and post. Easy peasy.
- Show your whiteboard ability and film a quick explainer of your new initiative or go over an old one. Give your audience a reason to engage by teaching them something new.
- Show your personality. Does someone wear unique items of clothing? Does someone like to walk to work? Show them arriving or show their fun desk items and get them to explain it.
TikTok is about having fun, showing personality and being light-hearted.
There’s no need to have awkward videos of your CEO sitting behind a desk. Get your phone out and experiment.
The downsides could be that your major donors or friends think you look a little silly, but the major donors aren’t on TikTok so they won’t see it and your friends will get over it. The upside is that you reach a whole new audience of people who are younger than your typical demographic – pretty good!
Bonus:
Every TikTok can also be uploaded as an Instagram Reel. Pro tip: Don’t upload the TikTok video with the TikTok logo on it, create the same TikTok in reels directly.
3) Your 2022 goal should be to reach new audiences.
Gaining followers and then putting engaging content in front of them? That’s step one.
Social media platforms are creating features that will enable us to reach new audiences through organic reach algorithms in a way that we haven’t seen since early Facebook.
LinkedIn as a platform has excellent organic reach for B2B and B2C companies, and it is maturing in the way that Facebook did where users are communicating about more than just vacancies and skills endorsements. It is now very much a social platform.
Instagram Reels5 and TikTok6 are both ways to reach new audiences through organic reach. If you hashtag and put out consistent high-quality content, you’ll be amazed at the reach your content can have.
Communicating with new audiences doesn’t mean ignoring your existing audience as all the content you make will still be relevant to them.
Here are 3 ways you can reach new audiences on social media:
- LinkedIn content should be a key pillar of your social media strategy, and it shouldn’t just be ‘business related’ content. Show personality but with a slightly more business-like tone.
- Use TikTok as a way to explicitly speak to a new audience and use the best TikToks as Instagram reels.
- Use influencers and collaborations to gain access to new communities that are built around similar areas to your organisation.
4) Live Audio is going to be a thing.
Twitter Spaces could be what Clubhouse nearly was.
Twitter Spaces7 are where you can host a live conversation with your followers about your organisation.
Have you got a campaign coming up? Grab a few staff members, start a Twitter Space8, and ask a ‘celebrity’ friend of the organisation to join in.
Everyone who follows you, your staff members and that celebrity will be able to join.
Think of 10 people you’d like to have a conversation with, ask them to be part of a Twitter space and spend 10 weeks hosting a live conversation on a Tuesday morning called ‘Tuesday Talks with [our organisation]’ with a new guest each week.
Twitter Spaces is one example of how live content streaming is still going to be a major player in reaching new audiences and building community on social media. Instagram and Facebook lives, Twitch and YouTube lives are going to be massive players in 2022.
5) Posting good content often is going to be key.
Social media algorithms are a complicated business. Figuring out optimum times to post, best content to post and trying to ‘play’ the algorithm is not worth spending any time on.
All the platforms have always rewarded good quality content. If you post high quality images of people, or high-quality videos on the correct formats9 then your content has always done well.
If you post grainy, blurry images in the wrong formats or awkward videos with black lines on top as it’s in the wrong format, then your content will always have done badly.
A new trend for 2022 is that platforms are going to be rewarding a higher volume of high-quality content. It’s no longer just about being good, you need to be good more often.
Here are 3 ways that you can take advantage of this new trend:
- Develop a monthly/weekly content plan that you and your team can stick to. Be realistic but be ambitious. Have content that is native to each platform and its respective audience. Don’t have a one size fits all approach, it doesn’t.
- Instead of making a single 2min video, make four 30sec videos and post them as part of a series.
- Don’t be precious. Not everything you post has to be perfect. Don’t let perfect get in the way of good.
Here are a few of our personal favourite non-profits on Instagram. They might have a bigger budget than you, but most of their content is just good, wholesome, narrative driven and people (or dog) centred content.
Charity Water:
https://www.instagram.com/charitywater/
Dogs Trust:
https://www.instagram.com/dogstrust/
Pencils of Promise:
https://www.instagram.com/pencilsofpromise/
1https://www.hootsuite.com/research/social-trends
2https://marketing.twitter.com/en_gb/insights/the-conversation-twitter-trends-2021
3https://blog.hootsuite.com/organic-reach-declining/
4https://www.facebook.com/community/using-key-groups-tools/using-facebook-groupinsights/
5https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-reels-experiment/#Results
6https://www.tiktok.com/business/en-GB/blog/small-business-marketing-tiktok-ultimateguide
7https://media.twitter.com/en/articles/products/2021/twitter-spaces
8https://media.twitter.com/en/articles/how-to/2021/how-to-use-twitter-spaces
9https://influencermarketinghub.com/social-media-video-specs/
