11 Facebook Trends That Will Shape Your Strategy in 2024
But things change, and there are a LOT of new Facebook trends in 2024. Is AI replacing everyone? Is getting organic reach any easier? What new features should you invest time in?
Keep reading for answers to those Qs and all the top Facebook trends marketers need to know this year.
Get our 2024 Social Trends report, and dig into the juicy data that’ll help you reach your goals in 2024—which is shaping up to be social’s best year yet.
The 11 most important Facebook trends for 2024
1. Facebook launches Meta AI
Is Facebook trying to be our “everything” platform? Meta just launched Meta AI, engineered with their custom Meta Llama 3 language model. Available as of April 2024 across the U.S. and 12 other countries, Meta AI can help users find a restaurant nearby, clarify study questions, get sightseeing suggestions for vacation, and even generate images, like in this demo by Mark Zuckerberg:
Meta AI is built into the Facebook mobile app where the search “hourglass” icon used to be. It’s also available across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.
And, you can use Meta AI on the web in this very ChatGPT-like interface:
Source: Meta AI
Okay, but why?
Making Meta AI open-source and integrated deeply into Meta’s app suite could have something to do with a comment Mark Zuckerberg made last year about Meta’s investments into AI research: “I think that there’s an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful,” Zuckerberg said in a May 2023 shareholder earnings call.
Whether you love or hate AI, it’s now so mainstream, you’ve got to pay attention as a marketer (and, ideally, a human being too).
Meta AI not available yet in your country or language? Hold tight: Meta promises more regions and languages are coming.
Take action:
* Experiment with Meta AI! Picture how your audience may use it.
* Currently, image generation is available in the U.S. only, but expect this to expand soon. See how you can use Meta AI, along with your other AI tools, to help create content faster.
2. It’s easier than ever to run Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are second only to Google in terms of market share and revenue, making up 18% of global digital advertising revenues. The majority of both B2B and B2C marketers also rank Facebook as the social platform with the highest ROI.
With the launch of Facebook Advantage+ ad campaigns (more on that in a bit) and simplified objectives, it’s easier than ever to get started with Facebook ads. Meta used to offer 11 different ad objectives and as of January 2024, has streamlined them into six ad objectives:
* Awareness
* Traffic
* Engagement
* Leads
* App Promotion
* Sales
This update doesn’t remove any potential reach from before, it just consolidates several overlapping objectives together and allows Facebook’s AI ad targeting to function better.
Despite a common opinion that “Facebook is dead for brands,” it’s far from it. While Pinterest and X (Twitter) have seen an 11% and 7% reduction respectively in the number of brands on their platforms, Facebook has only declined by 1%… In other words, holding steady.
In contrast, brands on TikTok have jumped 16%. Why does this matter for ads? Because with so many more brands jumping over to TikTok, it’s even harder to capture your audience and stand out over there.
With Facebook ads’ proven ROI track record, you get the best of both worlds: no increased competition on the world’s largest social platform. Meaning a higher chance of reaching your target audience.
Take action:
* Wondering when is the right time to start experimenting with Facebook ads? Ask yourself these questions.
* Ensure your Facebook ads strategy aligns with your overall Facebook and social media marketing strategy.
3. AI-powered Facebook Ad targeting brings big savings
Facebook now offers AI-enhanced ad targeting, known as Advantage+ campaigns. Besides being simple to set up for Facebook ads beginners, Advantage+ also offers substantial cost savings for veteran users, like:
* Lowering cost per purchase as much as 68%
* An average 17% decrease in cost per conversion
* An average 26% decrease in cost per acquisition
Mark Zuckerberg recently said, “Moving forward, a major goal will be building the most popular and most advanced AI products and services.”
He continued, “If we succeed, everyone who uses our services will have a world-class AI assistant to help get things done, every creator will have an AI that their community can engage with, every business will have an AI that their customers can interact with to buy goods and get support, and every developer will have a state-of-the-art open source model to build with.”
Seeing as how 78% of marketers say having the right tools to execute their strategies is their top challenge, Zuckerberg could be onto something.
Source: MarketingCharts
To try an Advantage+ campaign, create a new ad in Meta Ads Manager by choosing one of the six objectives mentioned above, then continue with the recommended settings option.
You’ll still have the option to tweak things if you like, or keep it simple and let Facebook’s AI wizardry optimize your ad performance.
Take action:
* New to Facebook ads? Experiment with a few Advantage+ campaigns and let AI do the heavy lifting to find your people.
* Unsure whether to try Reels ads, carousel ads, standard image ads? Grab all the Facebook ad sizes you need to know. Try out at least a few placements for a well-rounded campaign.
4. The Metaverse is taking off?
Meta continues to invest in their Meta Quest family of products aimed at making the metaverse — A.K.A. adding augmented and artificial reality components into the real world — a reality. Meta recently announced the launch of Meta Horizon OS open-source, an operating system developers can build mixed reality apps on.
In other words, opening up development to third parties for the first time.
Meta views the metaverse as a place where, “[…] people’s identities, avatars, social graphs and friend groups can move with them across virtual spaces, and developers can integrate these social features into their apps.”
Most people aren’t meeting up with friends in mixed reality spaces… yet. But Metavenvisions this for the future: “Because this social layer is made to bridge multiple platforms, people can spend time together in virtual spaces that exist across mixed reality, mobile and desktop devices.”
Sounds futuristic, but these types of interactions are already commonplace in gaming, which is more popular than ever with Gen Z. 33% of Gen Z spends between 6 and 15 hours per week gaming, and 8% spend more than 20 hours gaming per week.
Will Gen Z make hanging out in the metaverse cool? Time will tell.
Take action:
* While you may not be planning to build a metaverse app, consider how this gradual move to blending virtual and “real” reality together could impact your marketing, or lead to partnerships with mixed reality developers.
5. Facebook Marketplace is the new default
‘90s kids, remember when looking for a used car or video game always meant Craigslist? These days, Facebook Marketplace has taken over as the default local buy-and-sell source with 55% of Americans and about one in three people around the world using it.
So what does that mean for your business? It’s not just for selling an old toaster anymore.
For one, it’s free to list products on Facebook Marketplace.
For another, you can use Facebook Commerce to automatically upload your product catalog and show products across Marketplace.
Plus, use your Facebook Business Page to run ads on Marketplace too, either for your local business, or sell products and services from anywhere.
Take action:
* Since Marketplace is specially powerful for local businesses, try listing your products or services on Marketplace, or running ads.
* If you sell online, connect your e-commerce platform with Facebook Commerce to enable easy listing creation in Marketplace.
6. Text posts get big engagement
A Facebook text post with 270,000 organic reach? In this decade?!
It’s true. While X (Twitter) may still be the most popular platform for text-only content with approximately 540 million users, Facebook pulls in some pretty hot engagement stats.
The best text posts are engaging for one of two main reasons:
* They’re entertaining
* They’re educational
That doesn’t mean make every other post a joke or a lecture, but it does mean each text post needs to offer value and invite engagement. Being entertaining or educational are the two most popular ways to achieve that.
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Take action:
* Try repurposing your top text posts on X (Twitter) or LinkedIn as Facebook text posts.
* Or, dress up those text posts for visual platforms by adding them into simple graphic templates for Instagram/other platforms.
* Run an experiment! Test text posts vs. graphic vs. video posts and see which gets the most engagement on your Facebook Page.
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