Social media is an ever-changing medium. What is considered “in” one year may be obsolete by the next. Today, let's take a look at some of the 2024 top social media trends and how college stores can utilize them to better reach students.
2024 social media trends that college stores should try
Social media as a search engine
The younger generations are turning to social media to find products and recommendations over using search engines. Social media gives them the benefit of hearing product opinions from friends, family members and influencers. Additionally, they also are looking on social media to answer their questions and to find how-to videos.
To best utilize this trend, make sure your college store is using the keywords potential customers might use to find your merchandise or explanations for services they might not be familiar with (like buyback), wear your store’s merchandise in any photos or videos you post, and recruit student models for your marketing. Check out these ideas to engage students.
If your store has any how-to videos, this is a great time to share or re-share them on your social media platforms. If you don’t have video content, consider making a shorter (around 2 minutes) video explaining buyback, rental returns, or any other end-of-term questions that inevitably come up.
Social media shopping is here to stay
Social media shopping continues to engage customers and adds another sales revenue stream. Facebook and Instagram both provide simple social media shopping opportunities for customers and for small businesses to get their products in front of more people. This year, TikTok is also looking to offer shopping opportunities to users on its platform.
The reason why social media shopping is appealing to its audience is it is simple. Rather than a customer having to go directly to your site or click on a link, they can view the product they like and purchase it directly from the site they are already engaged with and trust. Check out this easy instructional post for how to set up Facebook and Instagram shopping.
Revitalize text-only posts
For the last several years, social media algorithms have prioritized posts featuring images over text-only updates. However, text-only seems to be attracting more attention and getting better engagement now. Not only are text-only posts engaging followers, but there has been a reemergence in daily active users on text-based social media platforms, such as X (formerly known as Twitter) as well as new platforms like Threads.
Text-only posts are simple. As your store works on its social media strategy and weekly posts, try to create a variety of posts to maximize engagement: text-only, photo, photo dump (multiple photos in a single post), and video content). Utilize the same content across platforms to help save time and reinforce your messaging. Find out how to create a college store retail marketing calendar.
