
When it comes to social media trends in Australia, staying up to date and fine-tuning your strategy won’t just help you reach your intended audience, it will make your time – and money – spent on social media networks go further.
With changes to the political landscape and user expectations, the way people engage online continues to evolve and change. Here are our five golden rules for leveraging social media for your brand or business:
- Go where your customers are. Facebook remains the most popular social media channel in Australia with approx. 22.7m users, while Instagram has approx 14.3m with a slightly younger and more female skew. If your focus is on B2B or business people are your key decision makers then consider LinkedIn, if you rely on images and visual storytelling then consider Instagram and Pinterest and of course video is key on TikTok, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) & YouTube. With increasing publicity from it’s owner Elon Musk, X (formerly Twitter) has approx 6m active users in Australia, although we are also seeing a growth in (the alternative platform) BlueSky which now has 20m global users.
- Social Media Trends and changing user behaviour:
– Meta has announced in early 2025 that they will cease fact checking and move to community notes. Controversy and misinformation rules on Facebook with stats showing that contentious posts drive clicks, leading to growing concern about increasing lawlessness, polarising content and trolling/nasty comments;
– Growing concerns about mental health and privacy are influencing user behaviour and are driving people (especially younger users) towards private messaging and closed groups;
– AI generated accounts and characters as well as AI generated interactions are being rolled out to help Meta compete with Snapchat and Tik Tok. It will become increasingly difficult to tell real profiles from AI profiles, and this may continue to have an impact on discerning genuine followers and engagement;
– Long form videos and more authentic content (unique images, speaking to camera) are being favoured by the ‘algorithm’ and pages and brands as they focus on building their core audience rather than mass reach;
– Users are moving towards passive content consumption, spending more time viewing videos and algorithmically suggested content (scrolling) rather than actively posting or engaging. - Invest in social media advertising, transparent arrangements with influencers or ambassadors and video content. Instagram is enhancing collaboration tools to better enable multiple users to co-create content, reflecting a trend towards community-driven engagement – and essentially elevating user-generated content. On both Facebook and Instagram, Video posts remain the most engaging content type, and we continue to see only a small portion of followers seeing any given organic (non-paid) post.
- Protect your brand. Ensure your page is Meta Verified to show a Verified Badge (blue tick), help protect against impersonation, and to access some Meta business support (AI). With reduced user confidence, changing rules of engagement and growing uncertainty, it’s crucial that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket! As Kirra Pendergast from Safe on Social advises, “the solution is to take control“. It’s never been more important to build the brand channels you own (such as your website & customer database)
- Implications and Tips:
– Focus on videos, reels and stories as they will continue to outperform other formats and avoid sharing content that is common across other pages;
– Actively encourage sign-ups and collect data to build your customer database and Owned assets. Ensure you capture any client conversations including from Messenger including contact details so that you have them: we have seen the growing issue of business losing access to their business page and all messages along with it;
– Consider how you want to position your brand and the environment it will be placed in. You may choose to disable comments to limit comments and criticisms or to leverage engagement and ‘shares’ to build reach. Remember that pages are consider ‘publishers’ and have been found to be legally responsible for defamatory comments posted on their page;
– Join community groups, industry associations, local pages and connect with complementary businesses where your audience is meeting and engaging;
– Test and Learn, trying different approaches and content to maximise impact and grow your brand;
– Invest in social media advertising, advertising content which resonates with your target audience and has a strong call to action.
The key is continual improvement and learning so that social media works for you, and not the other way round!