11 Facebook Trends That Will Shape Your Strategy in 2024

Facebook isn’t dead, I promise. Besides being the most popular social media platform in the world, Facebook is still gaining new users, having recently surpassed 2 billion daily active users.

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.

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:

1. They’re entertaining
2. 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.

Need help repurposing content to be more entertaining or educational, or just want to create content in a fraction of the time? OwlyWriter AI can generate content ideas and captions in seconds, factoring in over 14 years of Hootsuite’s proprietary social media expertise.

Check out how OwlyWriter AI can boost your text post game in less than 60 seconds:

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.

7. Facebook is the most popular social platform to find local businesses

We all check out Google Maps to find businesses near us, right? Does it surprise you that just as many people use Facebook for the same thing? Yep, 51% of people use Google Maps and 49% use Facebook regularly to find local businesses.

Source: MarketingCharts

Besides people organically finding your Facebook Business Page in search results, Facebook offers several ad formats tailored to local businesses, including event promotion and ads designed to get people in-store.

To start promoting your business with Facebook ads, click Advertise at the top of your Facebook Page (or login to Meta Business Suite) and start a new ad campaign.

Choose Promote your business locally as your goal. (Psst: if you don’t see this option, make sure you’ve added your street address to your Facebook Page.)

Source: Facebook

Follow the prompts to set up ads targeting your local community.

Take action:

• Ensure you’ve added your street address to your Facebook Business Page to access local promotional tools, like ads.
• New to Facebook ads or marketing your business? No sweat, become a pro in no time with our (very) complete guide to Facebook marketing.

8. Facebook has the most reach after YouTube

Over two-thirds of U.S. adults (68%) use Facebook, which is second in quantity only to YouTube at 83%. Interestingly, Facebook also has the second-broadest coverage among all demographic groups, including age range, income, urban vs. rural location, and more.

Source: Pew Research

Long story short: pretty much everyone uses Facebook, and unlike on YouTube, you can post other content besides video to grow your following. Video is great, and so is YouTube, but the versatility of content formats on Facebook combined with its massive reach makes it a no brainer for brands… even in 2024.

Take action:

• Depending on the demographics of your audience, Facebook may be one of your main social media platforms or more of a “supporting role” social platform. Ensure you understand which it is by reviewing your analytics.
• If you’re looking to boost your video content, check out our top tips for making winning social media videos right now.

9. Facebook remains the most popular social commerce platform

Facebook took the top spot in a recent survey of over 30,000 consumers to ask which social platform they were most likely to make a purchase on. 27% of respondents said Facebook.

Other studies have shown rivals TikTok and Instagram nudging ahead by a few percentage points, but whichever source you trust most, the fact remains Facebook is in the top three of social commerce giants.

Social commerce popularity continues to rise, with $67 billion in sales in 2023 and that’s expected to surpass $100 billion in 2025.

Source: eMarketer

Previously, Facebook Shops drove much of this impact although changes to Shops in 2023 have switched the focus from storefronts to other features, like product tagging, shoppable ads, and Facebook Marketplace.

Source: Sephora on Facebook

Take action:

• Connect your Facebook Page and Instagram account and set up commerce features in Meta Business Suite.
• Showing a specific product in a photo or video? Make sure to tag it across Facebook and Instagram for easy online shopping.

10. Video continues to dominate social media, including Facebook

According to Mark Zuckerberg, watching videos “makes up more than half of what people do on Facebook.” In April 2024, Facebook unveiled their new video player which combines short-form video (like Reels), longform video, and livestreams in the same place and supports swiping back and forth to navigate videos.

It’s an easy to use, intuitive, full-screen experience. Personally, I like the slider which allows you to skip back and forward anywhere within the video, instead of having to watch the whole thing again.

The Video tab in the Facebook app looks mostly unchanged from the normal feed, but the new video player opens when you tap a video. Instead of having to exit that video to see another, you can now swipe back and forward within the player.

Take action:

• If you’re not already posting video on Facebook, let this be your sign to start now. Video is only going to continue to grow on many social platforms, including Facebook.

11. Meta verification comes to brands in 2024

Facebook and Instagram have offered those blue checks to creator accounts and individuals for awhile, but Meta verification has finally come for businesses in 2024! Currently, businesses meeting eligibility criteria in select countries can subscribe to Meta Verified and get that coveted blue check for $27.99 USD per month.

Becoming verified can help instil trust with your customers, help people find you on social media, and mitigate any potential negative brand impact of people trying to impersonate you.

While yet another subscription cost may not be the vibe right now, we say it’s worth it to protect your brand integrity and reassure your customers that you’re the real deal.

Take action:

• Check if Meta Verification is available in your country. You’ll need to sign up in the mobile app. Not available? Meta says they’re expanding access soon.

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