It’s the end of another year and you know what that means—predictions of what’s to come in 2025.
Hot topics in social media include AI (both generative content and platform-integrated tools), video, personal branding, and which platforms are going to perform best.
Starting with the elephant in the room, AI, many of us anticipate that generated content will overwhelm many users by the end of 2025. Because of the availability of free tools and integrations literally everywhere, it’s easy to understand if we all feel a little more crave for authentic, human-made content.
One of my predictions about AI tools is that the free tiers will either continue to be increasingly limited (whether that is by credits or access to information) and paid tiers will evolve. Because of the “paid tiers” thing, I think we’ll soon have various AI specialists who have access to (and deeper knowledge of) the tools. Eventually we’ll get into regulations and whether using AI is considered a gray or black hat approach to marketing and other work.
Video will continue to increase in popularity (and in juice from the algorithms) as video content is extremely engageable and tools are super accessible now. Also, as Reels are the main driver of engagement on Instagram, and they compete with the likes of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, I think it’s a safe bet to see more, not less video in the coming year.
One addition to this is I think we’ll start to see interactive video, which will require user input of some sort (think quizzes or shopping that requires an action).
I also think that:
Facebook will remain the largest platform (although it’s dried out so much that people hardly even talk about how dry it’s getting anymore).
Organic reach will continue to drop on platforms that offer advertising and/or incentives for content creators to monetize.
“Free” accounts will start being limited in more obvious ways. For example, videos you can post or watch may be limited in resolution compared to paid tiers, or analytics might be less accessible.
And I would not be surprised if Google Business Profiles were to become more “social” whether that allows likes, comments, and shares on updates, YouTube Shorts to be posted directly to them, or even start showing ads.
As we go forward, let’s watch out for fake accounts, scams, and bots together. Use strong passwords, set your 2FA’s, and always be suspicious online.