The Biggest Social Media Trends Right Now

The best social media trends this year

What if I told you that social media has changed forever, and it’s never going back? That’s right, my friend. And if you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, marketer, or creator, then.

You have every right to be concerned. What started as a slow drip and how the social platform started changing and favoring certain kinds of content over others has turned into a full-blown flood that’s drowning everything that doesn’t align with this new style of content and its path. And it’s leaving a lot of people scared and confused and not sure what they should do in order to get social media to work for them. Now, some people are fighting back with words.

Others are taking to Google in order to try to figure out what’s going on. Some are starting petitions in order to try to gather enough signatures to convince the social media giants to change the way they operate.

Some, in what may be the most ironic example of all are, simply posting their complaints about social media on social media, which is proof that social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. At least for now, it’s the best option we have. But that’s not the point of this article.

The point of this article is to help you recognize and capitalize on the productive use of the biggest social media opportunity available to you right now. Let me tell you exactly what those are and how you can use them to reinvent and reinvigorate your entire social media marketing.

Let’s talk about video vitamins. Video vitamins are those small value-packed video clips that deliver a ton of value in a short period of time and have the potential to rack up hundreds of thousands, even millions of views, right from your very first one.

This is because the social media platforms and the algorithms behind them have clued into the fact that video vitamins are content that your audience wants, and the people get what the people want. Because the social media platforms know that the key to keeping their billion-dollar empires running is keeping people active engaged and as addicted to their platforms as possible.

Now, to the average person, these video vitamins are usually referred to by their more commonly known names Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, or TikToks. But video vitamins are so much more than that. Oh, so much more. These aren’t just silly dances on TikTok or people ranting on Facebook.

Do you know what really grinds my gears? Or short clips taken from longer YouTube videos. Because video vitamins have a strategy behind them: a series of emotional and psychological hot buttons that you want to push and a style and a pace that you want to adhere to, at least if you want to give your content any chance of success. Not to mention, video vitamins are not only good for the audience that you’re creating them for, but they’re also good for you as the creator of them.

As this content helps build trust and authority, goodwill is better than any text or image-based content could ever hope to be. That said, there are a few dangerous mistakes that you need to be aware of and avoid at all costs. That is if you don’t want your video vitamins to completely repel and gross out your audience. Banana-flavored vitamins? But I’ll talk more about those mistakes and how you can avoid them later in the article. For now, let’s dive into video vitamin strategy.

When it comes to the content and what subjects, topics, and styles work best with these kinds of videos, there are a ton of options available, including doing a before and after video, sharing a secret hack, doing a blog-style video, answering common questions, giving advice, creating a how-to or tutorial style video, sharing a fun fact, or hopping on whatever the latest trend is in your industry.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy here, and you’re going to have to find the overlap between the kinds of content you enjoy creating and the kinds of content your audience wants to see. My best advice is to start with whatever one you want and then try another. That said, there is a non-negotiable element here when it comes to structuring your short-form content that you need to pay special attention to.

That has to do with the way that people consume these videos and how to design them to be as interesting, engaging, and even addicting as possible. See, here’s the deal. When it comes to creating short-form video content, time is not on your side. I’ll talk more about this when I go over some of the biggest mistakes that you want to avoid. But for now. Just know that when it comes to video vitamin content, less really is more. For example, if you have a video idea on the top three tips for how to do something, well, try to cut it down to one per video. If you have a story to share or to tell, well, cut it down to just the bullet points or just the main takeaway lesson.

Or if you’re creating a how-to or tutorial-style video, then stick to just the basic high-level steps and save the in-depth explanation for a longer form video later down the road. But most importantly of all, you want to pay special attention to these three different sections of each and every single short-form video you create. Part one is the first three seconds.

This is where you need to hit them with your hook, your promise, a shocking statement, or the value that they’re going to get through the rest of the short-form video. For example, this pen does something that no other pen can do, or going to college is the single worst investment that you could ever make.

This is the main body of your content. Here, your goal is to just keep the good stuff coming, making sure that it’s clear, short, and as concise as possible. Do your best to try to cut it or trim out any unnecessary words thoughts or ideas. Again, the goal here is to try to give as much value as is humanly possible in 15 or 30 seconds. I see most short-form videos go so wrong by hinting or giving away the fact that the end of the video is coming. For example, ending with something like, so to wrap it all up or in conclusion or all right, well, I guess that’s it. Next, here’s a piece of advice that you probably haven’t heard before, but it’s definitely something that you’re going to want to start doing when you’re creating your content. And that is you’re going to want to start filming your videos horizontally, not vertically. Aren’t we going to be posting our video vitamins as Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikToks, which are all vertical video platforms? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just hold my phone or camera vertically to make things easier?

It’s a good thought. By the way. Thanks. But there are a few reasons why shooting vertically isn’t actually the best plan. First off, short-form vertical video content on Reels, Shorts, and TikTok are all 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels high, which gives you a high-definition vertical video.

But most phones and cameras nowadays are capable of shooting in 4K, which provides around four times more resolution than 1080p. This is cool because it means that you can shoot your video horizontally in 4K, crop in on the center part, and still end up with the max allowed resolution of a 1080p video.

To do this, all you need to do is go to your phone or camera settings, turn on 4K, and then enable either grid or thirds grid, which is going to help show you what’s going to appear in and out of the frame.

What this means for you is that for no extra work, you now have a horizontal and a vertical video, which means you can use either or both however you like. This also acts as a social media insurance policy, as even though vertical video is the main thing right now, that doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be.

It’s nice to have the option to crop your video in whatever way is going to work best for you. For example, way back in the day in 2017, I remember Buffer publishing an article showing how square format video was delivering the best results of all.

So things change. The other thing you can do to make it easier to create better short, form, vertical videos is to essentially film longer-form videos with the idea and the intention of taking the best parts out later to use as shorts or creating a string or series of short-form videos with the intention of re-recording them all later as a longer form video.

But the best advice of all to really capitalize on this opportunity right now is to spend just a few minutes thinking through and planning your short-form content strategy.