Today in Digital Marketing - What 2023 Holds for Social Media Platforms

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Tod chats with Andrew Hutchinson from SocialMediaToday.com about his predictions for social media next year. Be sure to read his piece 32 Predictions for Social Media Marketing in 2023.✅ Follow Tod on Social Media   (LinkedIn, Mastodon, TikTok, etc.) 📰 Get the Newsletter: Click Here (daily or weekly)✨ GO PREMIUM! ✨ ✓ Ad-free episodes ✓ Story links in show notes ✓ Deep-dive weekend editions ✓ Better audio quality ✓ Live event replays ✓ Audio chapters ✓ Earlier release time ✓ Exclusive marketing discounts ✓ and more!Check it out: todayindigital.com/premiumfeed 🤝 Join our Slack: todayindigital.com/slack✉️ Contact Us: Email or Send Voicemail⚾ Pitch Us a Story: Fill in this form📈 Reach Marketers: Book Ad🗞️ Classified Ads: Book Now🙂 Share: Tweet About Us • Rate and Review🎤 Follow: LinkedIn • TikTok • FB Page/Group------------------------------------🎒UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and Courses Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate Producer: Steph Gunn. Ad Coordination: RedCircle. Production Coordinator: Sarah Guild. Theme Composer: Mark Blevis. Music rights: Source AudioSome links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What a tumultuous year so far. Tumultuous? Traumatizing? One of those. It certainly feels like as we head into 2023, there are a lot more uncertainties. Entire platforms are changing dramatically. The global economy is at or near a recession. But we still have ads to buy, campaigns to develop regardless. So I thought today, for our final week-long series of Deep Dive episodes, we would look at tomorrow, what the next year might have for us, specifically

on the social media platforms that we work on. So to help me with that, I'm joined by Andrew Hutchinson. Andrew is the head of content and social media at socialmediatoday.com. If social platforms are your jam, his website has the fastest coverage than anywhere as far as I can tell. He's an award-winning blogger and author and occasionally advises clients on social business strategy. He joins me now from his home in Canberra, Australia. Andrew, welcome. Hello, Todd. How are you? I'm well. We're chatting because you wrote what I thought was an outstanding piece back at the end of October called 32 predictions for social media marketing in 2023. And I wanted to have you on to touch on some of them. So I want to go through the six platforms. And then we'll start with the granddaddy of them all, I think,

Facebook. Where do you think Facebook will be in 2023 in terms of both their AI and then also the sort of like content recommendations that they seem to be more or less obsessed with these days? Yeah, I mean, they've pretty much clearly said said that like there's going to be more and more ai recommended content i mean tiktok has led the way on that in terms of showing people more stuff from profiles they don't necessarily follow because that gives them more capacity to show you stuff that's more engaging rather than enclosed to your only your friendship group and your social graph so i facebook is desperate to try and get as much attention as possible. I feel like at one stage, they were more sort of like, yeah, but we're moving towards the metaverse anyway. So, I'm not really worried. They didn't seem as worried about

people migrating to TikTok and other platforms, but I think they realized that they'll also need those people to merge across from Facebook and Instagram into their metaverse space. So, it's become a bigger focus, especially because younger users are switching off of Facebook so readily these days. It's one of the least popular social platforms, I think, amongst younger users. So, yes, I suspect that they will squeeze in more of those recommendations,

which users haven't been overly impressed with. On Instagram in particular, there was a big backlash, especially from celebrities saying all these things are coming you know from from profiles that i don't follow um but i think they feel like if they can get those recommendations right even if people don't necessarily like it they'll start clicking on those anyway and the engagement will increase regardless so and you sort of do you see that like when you're looking through there is a reel that comes up and you're like i'm interested in seeing that and then you've just contributed to their engage you've just done what you're you know you sort of you feel like, oh, I'm interested in seeing that. And then you've just contributed to their engagement. You've just done what you, you know, you sort of, you feel like you don't

like about it. You've just contributed to it. So I think that's what the way they view it is that like, well, even if you say you don't like it, your actions show that you do. So we're going to show you more of this stuff. So yes, I definitely think that's the way they're going to go. I recognize I'm childish for doing this, but I try my hardest not to tap on reels, not to tap on YouTube shorts, because I don't want to give them the metric i don't i just like like let's just we can all be different things you know we don't all have to be the same thing that's exactly it as i say like they show you stuff and there's something there and you're like i don't want to click on that but i do like there was an example the other day was

like um someone goes to the met gala wearing some and it's like who cares about this yes i want to see it of course i'm gonna i still want to see it but it's like i don't know why some, and it's like, who cares about this? Yes, I want to see it. Of course, I'm going to, I still want to see it, but it's like, I don't know why. Yeah. It's, it's sort of, yeah, that's why you're contributing to it. And I exactly the same. I see it and I'm like, do I contribute to this? And do I then tell the algorithm that I'm interested in this and see more of this stuff when I don't really want to see it, but I also do want to see this. Yeah. So I mean, that's exactly it. Even if people say, well, we don't like this, well, your actions are showing that you do. So yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, I mean, one of the prime. Even if people say, well, we don't like this, it's like, well, your actions are showing that you do. So yeah. Yeah.

And, and, you know, I mean, one of the, the, the prime differences, and this is something that I think culturally Instagram, Instagram and Facebook have to sort of wrestle with is that TikTok, even though they're trying desperately to copy them, TikTok's whole MO is completely different. Like their, their raison d'etre is literally just, we want to entertain you for a little while. Whereas Facebook and Instagram, I feel have, are still locked into their kind of their their raison d'etre is literally just, we want to entertain you for a little while. Whereas Facebook and Instagram, I feel,

are still locked into their kind of their original MO, which was to be a connector with friends and family. And they're having a hard, at least I think, they're having a hard time shedding that, deciding whether they should shed that and focus on, like, where do you see sort of the friends and family focus for the Facebook? Let's talk about Facebook in particular here. Yeah, I mean, that's been their bread and butter for a long time is that we connect people.

We connect you to your social graph and it's become a utility for that reason. It's become a compelling app or a sort of necessary app for some people from their Facebook groups. And they're getting notifications about birthdays and major events. It's become essential for some people to log into Facebook. And I think people still are logging into Facebook, which I think is what their metrics are sort of confusing about their metrics is their monthly active user stats are still getting higher and still increasing. It's like, yeah, but that doesn't say they're spending that much time in the app.

They just log on every day because they want to get those updates from their friends and family. So I think there's a variance between time spent and logging in. I think Facebook is definitely still doing very well on people logging in, but I think that they will recognize that that is their key strength. You're right in terms of TikTok pitches itself as an entertainment app. They don't say they're a social app at all. And Facebook or Meta in general has been saying that more sharing is switching to DMs. So, now people are using the feed to find content that they is switching to DMs. So now people are using the feed to find content that they can share to DMs and they're trying to lean into that. But yeah,

I do think that they will eventually start to highlight more of your stuff from friends and family because that's their key differentiator. And if they can keep you engaged in that and then lead you into finding other content, I think they'll revert their focus back to that at some stage just to highlight, this is the stuff you come to Facebook for. It's really important. And here's some other stuff you might like. And I think that's probably a better approach for them to move into rather than just shoving stuff in your face.

I think you're right. You know, I haven't been on Facebook or Instagram for, I think, about a year and a half now. It's not any kind of like political statements. I'm not anti-Facebook or anti-Meta or anti-Zuckerberg or anything. It's just that there are so many account closures that happen, accounts being stopped, banned, because of no reason, you know, the bots, the enforcement bots just think that you've said something wrong or something like that. And as an agency owner, I can't take that risk. So I had to leave Facebook because the their autobots were so bad, I couldn't take the risk of me posting something

completely random, a photo of a goat, and then them saying, well, stop uploading sexual content. We banned it. It was a goat. There's been a big shift away from sharing. I think that's the big thing. When Facebook originally came out, it was all about friends and family. It was all about posting stuff to your mates and whatever and saying, yep, here's a cool thing I'm doing. And people just got sick of it, I think. people are just like over it and there's also all the controversies about your old social media posts uncovering something unsavory about your past or whatever you've seen celebrity scandals and then there's the political stuff where people it's really divisive and i think that most people are just like i'm just not interested in that and so that's why sharing has shifted to dm so yeah and where do you see the

metaverse or at least zuckerberg's version fitting in here? Is there going to be some sort of integration, do you think, in 2023 between the Facebook platform and this sort of, you know, arm that seems to be kind of attached to the being? Yeah. I mean, avatars are the obvious link between the two. Pushing more usage of your avatar to start communicating through avatars. So the sort of templates for the metaverse they're talking about are games like Fortnite and Minecraft and Roblox where kids are interacting as their avatars. They're communicating with each other and then you dress them in different clothes and things like that. Exclusive items that you

could only get through in-game achievements and things like that, which signifies that you're important for that reason. And that's how they're going to sort of try and merge us towards that metaverse by pushing more of these avatars and saying, look, you can use your avatar to communicate. And hopefully as that becomes a more habitual behavior that leads people into like, oh, well, here's another way you can use your avatar in VR, or they're also integrating the metaverse into other spaces where you can in AR and even in Facebook itself, where you'll be able to log in and interact with people in VR or using it in different ways. And you'll sort of start merging towards that metaverse experience through avatar usage. So, you've already seen that with them pushing 3D avatars into Facebook and Instagram as well.

But yeah, you'll see more of that, I think, where there's going to be like, you should be using your avatar for this. Or here's another way you can use your your avatar and here's other things you can do with your avatar creation that are going to align you towards that shift kind of reminds me of what xbox does with theirs you can have on xbox uh you know you've got a an avatar of yourself it's fairly plain you can go to their avatar shop and buy clothing for it a lot of the clothing is free because they're promotional items you know there'll be like lots of assassin's's Creed gear because that's a very popular game in Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft wants to promote the game, but there's also stuff you can buy.

And I'm not ashamed to admit that I bought a unicorn for 99 cents with real money because I wanted my avatar, dammit, to be riding a unicorn. I thought it was hilarious. And so, you know, as much as we try to get away from this thing, you know, sometimes it can be somewhat compelling,

which is sort of peculiar. So that's Facebook. The other side, of course, there are other tentacles out there. There's WhatsApp. There's certainly Instagram. Where do you see their, you know, we talked about AI-recommended content on Facebook.

Are we going to see the same on Instagram, do you think, next year? Yeah, I mean, again, the same thing. They've said that they're definitely going to move towards that, even though there has been that backlash to their initial push to get more content in. And right now, your Instagram feed, to me, feels pretty messy. You go on there and there's old posts and posts from profiles you don't follow. And it feels a bit all over the place. But Adam Masseri, who's the head of Instagram, has said that their system's

not good enough yet and they are working to improve it. But I think, yeah, TikTok has shown the way. And again, it's that shift towards entertainment as opposed to social connection it used to be that their big advantage was that you connect with all your friends and you can engage with all your friends but now uh social media apps have transformed from that type of usage and more towards replacing pretty much every other type of media and taking up more of your time by replacing every other type of media and now up more of your time by replacing every other type of media and entertainment is what people are going to them for so i think they see those in medicis there's an inevitable shift and there's not much they can do about it so they're moving more towards showing you more entertaining stuff and that means um showing you stuff from profiles

that you don't follow that are getting lots of likes and lots of engagement in the in the hopes that you'll click through and exactly as we said you'll see it and you might be like well i don't follow this and i don't like it. But if you click on it, then you're like, well, your actions are telling you that you do. So I think you'll find that overall the metrics would show that more people are engaging with it even if they say they don't like it. A lot of people who listen to the podcast, of course, run ads.

A lot of people run ads on Instagram. It still does perform for some campaign objectives. And Instagram, since it is mostly a mobile application as opposed to Facebook, which is, you know, used somewhat, I mean, a lot on mobile, but also has a fairly significant desktop component to it. Because Instagram is on smartphones for the most part, it lends itself to smartphone technology like augmented reality and so forth. Next year, where do you see ads playing a role here like will we be getting an integration of ar and advertising in the same way that like snapchat have been very successful in doing will they become more interactive do you think next year yeah i suspect so and there's obviously meta's developing their own ar glasses and we

don't know what's happening with those when they'll'll necessarily be coming out. There's a lot of component delays and things like that because of the global shipping problems and supply chain issues. So I think they don't know for sure when they're going to come out, but eventually they're going to start moving towards that AR integration. We've already seen that with NFTs and they're trying to sort of move into NFTs and newer technologies on Instagram. I think that's their best vector to sort of reach younger and trending sort of topics is to introduce some of those things there. So I think, yeah, you'll get more interactive type posts on Instagram, more AR aligned posts.

I think they're going to push more and more in that direction and more and more of a technological direction. And you've seen that in their recent creator week activation, they had the top creators and there was a whole section on Web3 creators. So they're definitely trying to find ways to align with those tech trends and keep in touch with all of them in case they become bigger things like NFTs in themselves. I'm not sure if digital art in itself is ever going to become a huge thing apart from a niche interest. And definitely there's a huge level of niche interest in that but I think digital goods and digital items will become much bigger things as we say in the metaverse when you're buying clothes for your avatars or you're buying items for your

avatars all of these items are going to be 3d items that you can show display in AR and I think Instagram will be the perfect vehicle for that you know I I worry about the direction of Instagram because it has become such a Frankenstein sort of app without any, I think, without any sort of real direction. I mean, when it first started, it was fine. It was a photo thing. And then Snapchat came out with stories. Zuckerberg actually tried to buy Snapchat. They told him to pound rock. So he just copied it. And that's how we have Instagram stories, which became successful. YouTube then started to get a lot more attention. So they slapped on, they created IGTV and slapped that on. Now, you know, we're seeing TikTok and Reels kind of being slapped onto it.

I worry that that app has been, and NFTs and Web3 technology, you know, it's sort of, it feels to me like they're always just sort of chasing whatever is really popular. And they're always like three or four months behind. Do you get that feeling or am I just bitter yeah you're right they always are like adding in the next thing and trying to latch on to the next trend but you're exactly right it worked really well with stories they overtook snapchat and basically killed snapchat's growth for a period before snapchat refocused and changed uh switched more towards private sharing and sort of put more focus on that now they're growing again but uh that's exactly right. It works for them. That's why they keep doing it. Like, again, as much as people might be like, well, it's kind of cheap and crappy that they copy

Reels. Like, well, Reels are getting lots and lots of engagement and it's driving more engagement on Instagram. Like I think it was 20% of time spent on Instagram is now it's been in Reels. Like it's getting bigger and bigger. So they do it because it works. But that's a lever that they can control, isn't it, when you think about it? And YouTube did the same thing when Shorts came out. YouTube was like, we've got 6 billion views of Shorts now. Well, of course you do. You've put it at the top shelf of your app.

Don't these platforms, they can control to a large extent whether engagement goes up or not by choosing how to focus on it in the app. That's true, yeah. But they wouldn't be able to show that continuously. Like if people were turning off, that wouldn't work for them either. Right? So if they were showing more and more reels to you and people weren't watching them, then they would be losing engagement. So it works to their favor to copy these things.

Like as much as it's happened over and over again, every time you look at it and it's like, it works. Like replicating them is not even so much about beating them out but it's about stopping people from drifting to other apps if you need to build a whole new social network in tiktok why would you bother when you can stay here and you can do see the same stuff and you can do the same thing and you've already got your network here you can share it amongst your friends they're already on instagram so it's also a negating tactic to stop people going away and yeah it obviously works it clearly is helping them retain at least some level of usage even though tiktok usage continues to rise um i think all of those copies are still helping them but there is a significant concern that instagram is becoming

too cluttered uh which they've repeatedly said yes it is and they keep scaling back reducing you know removing igtv and removing those other elements and trying to streamline video back so they add all these things in then they go oh we've added too much and they bring them all back and then they'll add more stuff in and then they'll bring it all back and they just sort of keep sort of trying i mean they did the same thing was messenger remember when they had messenger bots and then they had games and messenger and then they had all these different things that they thought that this was going to be the new what uh the new wechat for the western world because we chat so huge in china they were like if we can bring in all these apps it's going to be amazing and then within six months six months, they were like, yeah, no one likes this. They just want to send messages

to each other and they scaled it all back again. And now it's all simplified and brought back into the interline again. So yeah, it's a matter of testing and pushing out and you're right. They can control how much engagement they get. They can push that as much as possible. And the stats might show that more people are clicking on it and then they might be like, actually, it's getting too crowded and they bring it all back. So yeah. Another area of focus that they have been trying, well, I mean, not just them, but all of the platforms, you know, Pinterest included, TikTok included, that is very popular overseas in China in particular, that all of these platforms have struggled to get their North American users on board with is live shopping or live shopping streams. Where do you think Instagram will be next year in that space? I mean, Facebook's to scale back their live shopping ambitions. So they've said we're not really pushing it there. I mean, they're trying to cut costs as much as possible anyway. So

that wasn't really working for them. But on Instagram, they're still pushing it. There's obviously, it's doing big business in China. It's doing big business in Asian economies that live shopping is huge. I think it's like three times the size of the American e-commerce industry alone. So like it's so big that they see the dollar signs and they're like, we need to make this work. TikTok's trying to make it work.

Instagram, of course, is going to stay with it because like, well, if they're going to make it work, then we need to make it work. And of course, then you've got YouTube and Pinterest and they're all looking at it going, well, if it does work, if it catches on, we want to make sure we're on top of that as well. So, they're all trying to find ways to make it work. I'm not sure that it's going to catch on.

It doesn't seem to have caught on much at all. But there is some creators on TikTok in particular who are making money from live streams in America. So, there is ways to do it. I'm just- I'm not sure that it sort of aligns with how Western shoppers shop, I guess. I don't know that they really are looking to, like, do that impulse buy thing. I don't think it sort of has the same compulsion that it seems to have in some regions, but definitely, they're all going to stick with it. And because it could potentially, if it blows up, it's worth so much to them. And it gives them so many opportunities to give creators a chance to make more money by monetizing their live streams and things like that that uh yeah it's it's such a big opportunity that they'll keep pushing it and keep trying it

um i would say yeah by mid next year you'll have a much better idea as to whether that's going to become a thing or whether they're going to start to really be like yeah this is not working there are other social planner uh social platforms that are not on the meta banner, one of which is Pinterest, which still is always the dark horse in my mind. Pinterest and Snapchat both kind of, you know, you don't hear a lot from them necessarily, but they're still plugging away and getting attention, getting ad dollars, media buy budgets, and so on. And one of the things that I've noticed about Pinterest is that as the growth curve in North America begins to slow, a lot of these platforms look overseas for sort of expansion internationally. Do you think that's where next year Pinterest will end up being or are they still working North America?

Yeah, I mean, Pinterest has lots more opportunities overseas. Their average revenue per user is like six or eight times higher in America than it is anywhere else. And they haven't even released Pinterest ads in every region yet. They just released them in Latin American countries this year. So, there's still so much opportunity to build on that business, the overseas business. Like most of Pinterest audiences outside of the US, but they make almost all of their money in the US. So, yeah, I think there's so much opportunity for Pinterest to capitalize on that and make more money from those users. It's just a matter of introducing ads and introducing more of their monetization systems into those areas to squeeze more dollars

out of those people. One of the areas that you pointed to for Pinterest that you thought next year would have some attention or some work put behind it is refined search and discovery there talk a bit more about that well the new chief of pinterest is uh bill ready who comes from google he was in charge of google's commerce elements so of course he's going to be more aligned with search and discovery and that's what pinterest has been aligned with for a long time a lot of their like it's surprising how well pinterest has developed their search and discovery engines even ahead of google at times because they'll release something and then a couple of months later, Google will go, oh, and now here's addition to our Google shopping platform, which is exactly the same as what Pinterest released already. So they're actually hitting above their weight in that regard. They're actually really good at sort of matching things up and getting key users to click more stuff and showing them more relevant stuff.

So they're going to keep pushing on that. They know what Google's recipe is for their shopping platform now because they've got a Google chief in there. That's going to be a real big push for them is to try, how can we maximize discovery? How can we get more and more people coming to Pinterest to find stuff? How can we make sure all of our shopping listings are giving them more options than what they're going to get elsewhere from your extreme artisan type retailers that can't be found anywhere else to big stores. So you've got a real full comparison in terms of price, in terms of size and all that sort of stuff and you can get it all on Pinterest.

I think they're just trying to build out the best shopping platform they can and yeah, Search and Discovery is where they've succeeded so far. Where is Pinterest in terms of augmented reality? They have been developing their furniture scanning and they've obviously got makeup and sunglasses. Like makeup and sunglasses are obviously the easier ones because you've got the elements can already scan those parts of your face and they can sort of match those up pretty easily.

But Pinterest is advancing its systems in scanning in furniture and I think that's going to be a big opportunity for them as well is scanning in. We're looking at that's going to be a big opportunity for them as well, is scanning in. We're looking at how it would look in your house. So you can place an AR item in your house and see how it'll look. Because of the LiDAR scanners in the new Apple phones that have got much better systems for scaling how they look in real life, that gives them a lot of opportunity to be able to place digital items.

And yeah, Pinterest is already advancing along that path. I think the next thing for them will be trying to help retailers scan in their items, give them easier ways to scan in their items in AR so you can then show those items to users and have them display them in their house and see what they'll look like so they can facilitate sales through that way. I mean, that's the big flaw of e-commerce

is that you can't see how it'll actually look and you can't feel it so the closer they can get to that the better and it seems like pinterest is making some pretty big advances on that front i think they'll again they're hitting above their weight in a lot of these things and i think that's another area where they're going to sort of lead the way to some degree um in terms of placement of furniture in you know in your real world through AR. And then likely add products, of course, for we filthy digital marketers to take that technology and exploit it, I assume. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're still working on ways to improve the product ingestion, catalog ingestion system so they can get as many retailers or many products listed on their

platforms as possible. So the easier they can make that, the same with AR, the easier they can they can make it to scan things in i mean there is ar apps at the moment where you can scan in objects but they're pretty hit and miss the same as if you scan your face in on nba 2k or something it's like yeah it sort of looks like you but not really yeah um yeah it's the same with yeah with the items like you try you try to scan them in they're a bit uh a bit all over the place but they are improving and i suspect that pinterest is going to be one of the leaders in making that better. And then, yeah, converting that over to how valuable that will be for brands in order to maximize their revenue. I have to say the technology even today is phenomenal. My wife and I bought a rug on Amazon.

And before we bought it, it had one of those scanning, you know, using the LiDAR camera, and it placed the rug right in front of our sliding glass door out to our deck. And it looked great. And I took a screenshot of it on my phone. We bought it. Rug comes in, you know, a week later, whatever. I put the rug down, I take a photograph of the real rug there. And the two are almost indistinguishable. Like it is so hard to tell. Like that technology, I've always been impressed, certainly in the last year is how far along that's come. Yeah, and the easier they can make it for retailers,

the better for them, obviously. There's going to be more stuff listed. There's going to be more opportunities for them to showcase that stuff. So I think that's the big thing is simplifying it as much as possible, making apps and systems that are like, we're making it as easy as possible for you to upload all of your stuff to our system. And then the better their listings are, the more retailers are going to jump on, the more products they've got to list. And again, it goes back to that search and discovery, the more stuff they've got to show you.

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going back years now, you point out, but they still don't tell us the actual numbers. No, and they report total members, not total users. So it's like, that doesn't really mean anything. Of course, lots of people are going to sign up over time. If any platform listed how many profiles have been created, it'd be amazing. It'd be mind blowing. It's always going up, but it's like, yeah,

but how many people are actually using it? But LinkedIn doesn't have to report that because they're under Microsoft. So they're not under any obligation to be transparent about the detail of what their operations are so um yeah they get away with it but yeah record levels of engagement always record always always always and and to be fair it probably has been in the last quarter as well i mean i'm sure that they are going to report big numbers as a result of twitter's thing but let's talk about next year where you see

linkedin being and uh you know one of the things that i thought was interesting was sort of improved video connection tool sets what is that yeah i mean they've been adding more video in like the same as every platform video does better on linkedin than pretty much every other type of uh of post and they've been adding more systems in to be able to capitalize on that so So adding in more meeting tools, virtual meeting tools, trying to tap into the Zoom sort of push, and they added in like direct meetings from DMs so you can video call via DMs and things like that. So I think they're going to put more and more of that stuff in and try and replace more of that personal interaction.

I mean, especially with the work from home push, there's a bigger need for people to connect via video and sort of connect them up quickly and easily. And LinkedIn being the professional platform, especially between job seekers, it's going to be a real opportunity for them to put in more video tools to be like, look, you can connect straight away through LinkedIn.

You don't have to go to other apps. Stick with us for all your professional needs and you can go through this way. So they've already added them into their events tools with their live streaming has been integrated into events. And as I say, their DM tool where you can connect via video. There's also the videos on profiles. So your headshot can now be animated and answering questions about yourself. I think that's where they're going to move more towards putting more of those video connection tools in to make it much

easier for you to connect via video, to connect to someone face-to-face straight away. So especially for questions about job queries, I think it's going to be a big advantage for them to be able to connect people up as much as possible. And, you know, if you're asking someone, they just go, hey, jump on a video call and you can go straight away. So they've sort of got a lot of that infrastructure in place at the moment,

but I think there's going to be a much bigger push to get more video in there. And on top of that, there's also, I think, going to be more of a push to get more creators publishing video on LinkedIn and even, I suspect, a LinkedIn video tab where you can go and they're going to look to tap into that sort of tiktok style engagement maybe even a full screen video tab where you can go through and see video content more and more video content from creators because like every other

platform they know that creators are the ones who bring their audience in so they want to try and capitalize on that as much as possible give them as many tools as possible to keep posting so you keep more people coming through and they did have a stories like product for a while it didn't last longer they killed it off pretty quick and now we're seeing sort of bits and pieces of it in in in the photo um technology that they've got do you think we'll see that come back in any sort of form? No. They had tried LinkedIn stories for, I think it was only active for like eight months, I think in the actual app. But before that, it was active on college campuses for a long time. There was like a LinkedIn stories just for college campuses. And so they had that going for ages. So they've got a long line of,

a lot of data to suggest whether it's going to work or not. And I'm guessing it obviously didn't work. So, you know, I think like there's obviously a lot of supporting infrastructures required for that as well. And I think it's just not worth them investing in that as a product when there's so many other opportunities for them to connect in a way that's more aligned with their use case that I just don't think Stories really functions for LinkedIn. Yeah. What about audio?

Well, audio, I think LinkedIn has the biggest opportunity in terms of audio. Like Clubhouse, that Clubhouse trend that sort of rose up really quickly and then died out. I think LinkedIn could capitalize on that significantly by connecting up professionals. Like if you had live audio rooms within your niche or within your industry, that is a really big opportunity. I think if you can make connections through them with people in your sector, then I think that's also a big opportunity for LinkedIn. So I suspect that they'll make a bigger push on audio as well. They've already got audio rooms and they've already started to roll them out.

But the same, like LinkedIn as always is sort of behind the times. They get there when they get there and they're sort of slowly rolling these things out. But yeah, I suspect that there's a lot of opportunity in audio for LinkedIn. So I do think they'll probably explore that a bit more and you'll get a lot more audio rooms and maybe even those indicators you get in every other app where it's at the top

saying this is an audio room that's happening now. I mean, discovery has always been a big problem on LinkedIn. It's hard to find live stuff in particular. There's not really a highlight for it. It's just sort of you look across it or you look in the right tabs and you have to sort of know where to go. So I think that'll be another thing for them. If they want to really capitalize on their engagement,

it'll be like showcasing that this live stream is happening now, this audio room is happening now, and getting more people to click across and get into them. So that may also relate, I think, to like reforming the app a little bit and trying to put more of those notifications up front and highlighting them more in separate tabs or whatever, just to sort of maximize that engagement and keep those record levels of engagement flowing. I have always been surprised that

they hadn't rolled out a Clubhouse clone. I mean, Twitter was quick too with Twitter spaces, not quick too, but Twitter eventually did. I'm surprised they didn't, especially when you consider LinkedIn Learning, which used to be called lynda.com, which is their giant library of courses. You could see really easily them kind of bolting on a, you know, clubhouse like audio live room kind of thing at the end of every of every course. And then like maybe that that lecturer has office hours once a week or something as part of that. It does seem like it's it's a missed opportunity. The other thing that that's always sort of made me confused about LinkedIn is, you know, you mentioned they have been slow to kind of iterate, which is absolutely true. And one of the things that

they've kind of left to grow a little bit of UI mold is the feed itself. Like the feed and the user interface hasn't changed. Do you think that they'll be moving toward a different presentation in 2023? Are we going to stick with what they've always done? Yeah, it's been a long time. It's been about seven years since they've done any significant revamp of the feed. And as I say, with all these different engagement options, and you're right, they do actually have audio rooms.

They just haven't really, they haven't released it to everyone and they haven't sort of pushed it enough to sort of make you aware of it. But as was noted, like discovery is problematic. Like you can't find anything on LinkedIn. Like it's sort of the feed is all over the place. Like you can't find anything on LinkedIn. Like it's sort of the feed is all over the place. Sometimes you get posts from three weeks ago and you're like, oh, someone's got a new job. I know they posted that a month ago. So, it's sort of like there's a few things they need to change.

And I suspect that they'll revamp the feed a little bit. I'm not exactly sure how they'll do it. But I do think every app is thinking about full screen video and full screen format and how you sort of capitalize on that i mean that's obviously a trend that's coming from younger users as those users come through that's going to be an expectation and habitual sort of thing they're going to be looking for so um yeah i think every app is thinking about how they present their video and linkedin with audio and video i think has opportunity to potentially create new tabs and new notifications that will maximize engagement if they can if you can show you that those are happening like if i was on linkedin and it said here is a social media marketing room and todd and new notifications that will maximize engagement. If you can show you that those are happening,

like if I was on LinkedIn and it said, here is a social media marketing room and Todd is in here talking about, oh, I might tune in and check it out, but you don't get those notifications. Like there's not enough of that to sort of maximize engagement. So even though LinkedIn is seeing more, I think that's what they're looking to.

And as you say, especially with the Twitter sort of migration and Twitter's real-time sort of feed, I think if they really want to maximize anyone coming across, real-time is what they need to sort of tap into. It's so true. You know, I have a hard time finding my own posts on LinkedIn. I literally, I go to my profile. I look for, you know, near the top of the screen. It's not there. I go to activity. It's like my books and my certificates. Like, where am I? I still have a hard time finding just that. So yeah, hopefully there'll be some UI changes.

All right, a couple left. Let's talk about TikTok briefly. Certainly it was the golden child in 2022. Where do you think TikTok is going to end up next year? Yeah, TikTok is obviously growing exponentially. It's still getting bigger and bigger. I think that their biggest thing, their biggest opportunity is based on what they've done in China, which is-commerce e-commerce is like their biggest revenue intake in doyin which is

the chinese version i think that's how you pronounce it that's the chinese version of tiktok and um yeah it makes them heaps of money so of course they're looking for ways to integrate e-commerce and in doyin you've got shops uh that like it's all focused on e-commerce there's shops everywhere there's ways to buy things there's live stream on one side of the app and there's shops on the other side of the app and they're going to integrate more and more of that stuff and try and maximize the sort of engagement they have to try and get people to buy more stuff and that's that's the biggest push from them is going to be getting them to buy more things they've been trying to push that for a long time

as you say it hasn't really caught on say, it hasn't really caught on. Live stream shopping hasn't really caught on, but it's already such a massive thing in Douyin that I suspect that's where they're going to go. It'll be interesting to see how they manage that because I would think it's a very, it would have to be a very careful introduction of that into the feed.

People are so used to it just being entertaining and every, you know, whatever sixth or tenth video is an ad. It'll be interesting to watch how North American users in particular. Yeah, I mean, the advantage that we have with TikTok is that Doyin's been around for five years before it. So we know what they're going to do because you can look at Doyin and see all the stuff that's already in there. So if you've got access to it or you've got someone who uses it, you can sort of look at it and go, oh, you can look at doyen and see all the stuff that's already in there so if you if you've got access to it or you've got someone who's you know who uses it you can sort of look at and go oh you can see where they're sort of heading uh already so i mean it's it's fairly obvious that they're going to try and copy that stuff and it makes perfect sense that's how they

made the most money exactly how they integrate it um is harder because as we say western audiences are a lot different to uh the chinese audience where like their the habits or the usage habits that happen in china and just don't replicate. Like, as we said with Messenger already, that just hasn't could have come across like messaging apps in China are like essential utilities. Yeah, you do everything through your messaging apps. It hasn't really translated.

And we even saw Elon Musk saying this recently saying, oh, we can make Twitter into this. And it's like, yeah, everyone's tried that. Like it just doesn't work. For whatever reason, those trends don't always translate. And there might be a way that they've just approached it wrong. And maybe there is some way that they can integrate it differently. But yeah, it's how you actually place that in the feed, exactly as you say, to sort of transform your sort of habitual usage behaviors from just scrolling through videos. Like,

how do you get people to extend that to live stream shopping or to going to shops and buying stuff and with so much captive attention there's plenty of opportunity to do it and they've experimented as i say they've experimented with these things for six years so they know the best way to integrate them that's why tiktok always seems like they're ahead of the game it's like oh they've introduced this new feature and it's already refined it's like yeah because it's been around for five years like they've they're ahead of the game in that regard because they literally are ahead of the game. They've already done it all before. So yeah, there'll be ways,

like you'll see them slowly start to push more shops and things in there. But yeah, definitely you're going to have more buying opportunities within TikTok. And that brings us to Snapchat. And I've always been interested or amused when I've had conversations with people that are not necessarily in our industry.

And I bring up Snapchat and they'll say, oh, that was really popular a while back. You know, I don't really hear much about it. And yet when you actually look at their numbers, look at their user base, look at the pace at which they're putting stuff out, they're out there. They're doing like they've actually, as you mentioned quite a bit earlier ago, they've turned things around fairly quickly. And I think the area that they're most known for, at least from a technological point of view, are their augmented reality tools, their glasses. They had a drone out there for a while. Where do you see Snapchat?

Let's talk specifically about not content. We'll talk content in a moment, but about augmented reality. Where do you see that being uh next year yeah i mean the same as pinterest hits above its weight in search snapchat hits above its weight in ar as much as you've got apple and meta developing their own ar uh glasses and their own applications it's like snapchat continuously beats them to it like if you see an ar trend that comes from a filter it's from snapchat almost every single one comes from snapchat no one's no one even close to beating their numbers that in terms of hits that they get through their filters, whether it's the anime lens or the old person lens or whatever it is,

they all come from Snapchat. So, they're constantly leading the way. And part of that is technological and getting the right people to develop, but they've just got a really good nous and really good sense of what their audience is going to engage with. And they've had that forever, obviously, which is why it was so valuable to Facebook, which is why they tried to buy them. But yeah, they constantly lead the way, even though they shouldn't, even though it's like they have nowhere near as much money or resources, they continuously are able to lead it. there is models that are people have in the wild people do have these ar glasses and they are using them like developers and partners creator partners and things like that that are wearing snapchat glasses already i think they're very close to being released i think they're probably closer than what i've seen from the other ones meta is still pretty much internal uh internal prototypes apple's the same but snapchat seems very close to sort of releasing their actual ar

experience and they look weird they're futuristic sort of sharp type lenses and stuff but um they're promoting those experiences on the spectacles twitter account all the time there's constantly like videos of people doing things in these ar glasses and they already have the production systems in place they've got they produce their spectacles in China and they've got a distribution flow for Spectacles already. It seems like it's closer than what I think people expect for them to release AR glasses. And I do think they're going to beat the other ones to it. But the other aspect of that that I think is interesting is that Snap has continuously partnered with Apple on AR elements. When Apple releases something in their iPhone, they showcase it by showing a Snapchat lens, right? And it's like there's a sort of subtle partnership between the

two. And I think there's a good chance. I've been saying this for a couple of years because I don't have any internal insight. I don't know anyone who would be involved in it, but I suspect that there's some level of partnership and it would be potentially beneficial for Apple to partner with Snapchat if they were going to release AR glasses and they release a group project of sorts. And yeah, that would enable them to capitalize on that and get ahead of meta by releasing these AR glasses before anyone else can. If they have the sort of backing of Apple aligned with the iPhone and then they've got the glasses, I think that would be a really big advance that I think is actually closer, as I say, than people expect. So that's technology, that's hardware,

that's partnerships. The last piece of the puzzle usually is around content. And you had mentioned that you thought they would be pushing more into kind of a sports area next year. Tell us about that. Yeah, I mean, Snapchat's been trying to appeal to all users of late, which isn't something they've never tried to do before. It's always been like we're a young people's app, young people use our app, and they've never seemed too concerned about trying to appeal to older users. I'm not sure whether they consciously considered that, like, maybe they just thought, well, once our users get older, they'll just keep using Snapchat, so they never needed to worry about it, or whether it was just more like, no, we're just focused on younger audiences. But now they realize they need to appeal to older audiences as well, especially as their audience ages up. If they're still a young app and people are moving off to other apps, then it's like, well, that's no good for them. So recently, they've already got content partnerships with the NBA and the NFL and the MLB. And they recently announced one with La Liga in Europe. And I suspect that that's going to be a big focus for them. If they can get more exclusive sports content and get more older users in through sports, I think that would be a way for

them to rope in more older users or keep those users around for longer that might switch off to other apps. If they've got compelling sports content and they can combine that with the map, or they can combine that with AR elements and things like that. I think that could be a unique value add that they could incorporate. And they could also, you know, partner with sports betting apps through their Snap minis and things like that. They could also give you the live sort of bets and things like that you could do straight through the app, potentially. Like, I think there's a lot of avenues that they could use

that is probably the best way for them to keep older users around for longer. Yeah. You know, I always tell people who are in digital marketing who have not had Snapchat on their phone in the last year or two or three or whatever to install it on their phone and look at the Discover tab in particular. Don't worry about texting people, sending snaps. Look at the Discover tab. There's actual really high-quality content there in series,

like little TV shows. Granted, they're only 10-minute shows, but compelling and something that I think attention span-wise, Instagram would kill for. Yeah. And the interesting thing from that perspective is that Snap has aligned itself with shorter attention spans. Our attention spans are shorter. People don't want to watch half an hour programs anymore. So Snap's Discover shows tend to be much shorter, like 10 minutes. And so you can watch a series of 10-minute episodes and that sort of ropes a lot more users in. It gets a lot more younger viewers in. Again, if it's looking to appeal to older users,

that's not necessarily the same thing. But if it's aligning with that usage behaviour and that sort of shorter attention span, it feels like that could be the future of TV or episodic TV to a degree. People get sick of, especially with TikTok, because TikTok's so quick and so rapid, it ruins your attention span. So if you try to watch a movie, it just makes it harder and harder. So if they can sort of get that move towards that shorter attention span or

shorter episodic TV shows, I think that could be still a compelling thing for them to get more people in and get more people to spend more time in the app. Andrew, I think that in 20 years from now, when marketers look back at 2022, they will generally perceive it to have been kind of a meh year all around, the economy being what it is, the slowdown in media buying and so on. What do you think 2023 will look like when we look back at it, say 10, 20 years from now? I mean, it's a sort of inflection point to some degree. I mean, you've got all these different um technological innovations coming at once that aren't here yet so there's lots of like oh what's coming next but also we're still doing what we always do right so they're still all the

same apps and still the same platforms but we're talking about nfts and we're talking about web3 and we're talking about the metaverse and those like they're not here and there's no tangible thing to sort of go to like you can't log on to vr and be like oh yeah this is what it's like because even if you can access horizon worlds which not everyone can it's not what it's going to be like so it's we're still a long way from what the true vision will be so it feels like a transitional year uh which makes sense in terms of the economic impacts as well. Like there's just a lot of like, it feels like anticipation. It feels like now there's not much happening, but we all know that something's changing.

We all know that things are all in the works and all the things that we're seeing are just, it feels a lot of pedestrian stuff. It feels like a lot of like, yeah, we're going through the motions on a lot of these things, but we all know that this is, we're moving to the next stage. So that's almost like also what sort of a concern that twitter is sort of going through its transition now in that users are already considering what other options are going to be available so if you're

pushing them in that direction it's like well they're just going to look harder and they're the people are going to be developing these other apps that's like well now they've got more motivation to develop and the same is with apple increasing their app prices and their fees and stuff it's like if you're pushing apps if you're increasing your fees on uh was it boosts on facebook now they're going to charge a 30 tax on boosts on facebook it's like well now developers and they're going to look for alternative options so we're already exploring web 3 and all these other things this is just going to make them you know it's so exacerbate development of those things so it feels like right

now it's sort of like the um big tech providers that we know not on the way out definitely by far you know they've got a long way to go but it sort of feels like we're in a shift at the moment it feels like we're in a period of change in general but in terms of digital marketing specifically it feels like there's things that are starting to develop where it feels like something new is going to come along soon that's going to sort of be significant. I don't know what that is. I don't know what's coming next. I don't know that the metaverse is yet. Metaverse still feels like a long way off, but it feels like there's something in between that that's going to change how we view things and change usage habits. And I think that's coming at some stage. I don't know what it is yet though. Lots to think about. Andrew, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it.

Cool. Thank you for having me. Andrew Hutchinson is head of content and social media at socialmediatoday.com, which is where you can read his full piece. Search for 32 predictions for social media marketing in 2023. It was published on October 31st. And that will do it for the week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn, production coordinator Sarah Guild, music licensing by Source Audio, ad coordination by Red Circle.

And you know, not many people know this, but our theme composer, Mark Blevis, is one of the world's foremost experts on podcast extras, like the one you're listening to right now. In fact, just the other day, he suggested that I scrap the credits I have now and just go simpler. Something like this, he said,

Luther croons. Sly's the original originator. James screams. Marvin was the only innovator. But nothing can compare. Nothing can compare when Smokey sings. I'm Todd Mathen. Have a restful weekend, friends.

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