Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #11 - easy to implement digital marketing ideas straight through your metaphorical letterbox.

I hope you’ve had a good week.

I’ve just finished decking the halls and wishing glad tidings to all men. I hope you’re also behaving suitably Christmassy. 🎅🏻

Anyway, 2024 is only 24 days away and YOU STILL HAVEN’T FINALISED YOUR 2024 SOCIAL STRATEGY. Don’t worry, I’ve got you…

👉 By the way, if you’ve missed previous newsletters you’ll find them here.

📩 And if you’ve been forwarded this email you can subscribe here.

Social Media Trends in 2024

It’s our job to stay on top of social media.

We produce a lot of content for a lot of accounts, and that gives us a big picture view of what’s happening across platforms.

Here are 5 trends we’re seeing, that will save you some pain if you add them in the mix of your 2024 social strategy. 

Never Get Back With Your X 🙅🏻‍♂️

Whether Elon will fix it or destroy it is unclear.

Maybe he’ll be distracted by going into space or taking over the world.

Either way we’ve seen sustained drops in performance for brands on X/Twitter.

While waiting to see what happens, it’s worth securing your username on Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads. I personally can’t see them taking off, but you should secure your real estate just in case. 🏡

Then I’d recommend two things:

1. Completely deprioritise X from your brand’s strategy, KPIs and objectives.

2. Experiment with growing a personal account, connected to your brand. Personal accounts, such as for you, your CEO or other key staff, seem to still have traction.

Dip that toe in TikTok (finally) 📆

Short video content isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and the average age of TikTok users is increasing all of the time.

Chances are you haven’t really dabbled that much with TikTok, so here’s what I’d recommend in 2024:

1. Set up a brand account and a personal account (if you haven’t already).

2. Post any IG Reels or YouTube shorts you create directly to your brand’s TikTok - chances are they won’t take off, but you never know.

3. With your personal account follow as many of your brand’s competitors and relevant accounts in their industry.

4. Spend Q1 of 2024 studying their content and approach. Look at what works and what doesn’t.

5. Spend Q2 of 2024 creating a content plan based on best practice, and ideas you’ve gathered from your competitor research

6. Launch that content plan in Q3, and measure Q3 & Q4 performance.

If you’ve never dabbled with TikTok, this will put you in a strong position for 2025.

Don’t be afraid of having 12 months with no expectations, just learning and improving.

Longer videos work (sometimes) 📼 

People are increasingly using social media to kill time.

So, while short videos will keep being a thing, shifts on a few platforms suggest there is still an appetite for long(ish) content. 

I finished a video on TikTok last week and didn’t realise I’d been watching it for 8 minutes.

Audiences want entertainment. So, if the content is long but valuable and high quality, give them what they want.

Instagram Reels can now be up to 15 minutes long, TikTok are trialling longer videos too and X allows uploads up to two hours long (for paid users at least). We’ve tested adding 1 hour video podcasts to X and performance was OK.

If longer videos are a better fit for your business, just remember to add the all-important time stamps.

Better to have people skip sections than move on entirely to whatever sparkly thumbnail grabs their attention. 

Say goodbye to carousels 🎠

Before you panic, the carousel feature isn’t going anywhere.

But carousels are so 2018.

Instead, try a ‘photo dump’. 

Next time you’re nosing around Instagram you’ll see that users are ‘dumping’ photos left, right and centre. 

“So what?” You might ask. Well, imagine you’re on a team development day, a shoot for a new campaign, or have just got some images back from a photographer.

A photo dump can deliver a lot of visual information quickly and in an engaging way. 

They are amongst the best performing format on Instagram, with more reach than Reels or solo posts. 

Get creative - what does a photo dump look like in your context?

YouTube shorts are here to stay 🎬

It’s time to add YouTube to your social strategy.

YouTube Shorts launched in 2021.

To many, it just looked like they were trying to worm their way into the TikTok space.

I wasn’t convinced it would last. 

But two years on, there are 2 billion active users on Shorts. 

I think I was wrong.

If you post content to YouTube, it’s not too late to get in on the action.

You can use the AI tools like OPUS to repurpose existing content, or just share portrait videos you’ve made for Reels. 

There we go.

Good luck for the new year, and if you have any questions about making the most of 2024, you know where we are…

✌️

What we’re looking at 👀 and listening to 👂

🎧 The Christmas tunes are out! Buble, John Legend, Sufjan Stevens and Mariah have all made it to the party.

📺 We’re all pretty much watching A Muppet Christmas Carol on repeat, right? 🐸 That movie taught me so much…

Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍