The McGuinness Media & Marketing team is focused on the top ways to make and enrich relationships and reach high engagement and meaningful connections in our social media strategies in 2025.
That’s why we’re highlighting the top ten social media trends digital marketers need to know this year.
For the 20th edition of The Sprout Social Index™, the platform surveyed over 4,000 consumers, 900 social practitioners, and 300 marketing leaders across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.
Trend 1: Video is Still #1
Video content continues to dominate the digital landscape in 2025 because it makes accessibility to new information quick and easy.
Here’s why video is essential for us at McGuinness Media & Marketing:
High engagement rates
Platforms like Instagram and TikTok prioritize video in their algorithms, making it easier for marketers to reach audiences.
Cross-Generational Appeal
Whether it’s Gen Z bingeing Reels or Boomers exploring YouTube tutorials, video resonates across age groups.
Versatility
Video fits seamlessly across email campaigns, websites, social media, and even digital ads, offering a truly multi-channel approach.
TikTok rapidly emerged as a dominant platform for short-form videos; however, a new trend is on the horizon — longer videos. Although the future of TikTok is uncertain in the United States, it will stay popular internationally.
The app, beloved across generations with everything from dancing tutorials to life hacks, initially gained popularity through easily digestible 15-second clips, perfect for quick bursts of entertainment.
Over time, the platform extended the maximum video length to 60 seconds, allowing creators to develop more comprehensive content while maintaining brevity. The platform then took another significant leap by enabling three-minute videos. This evolution demonstrates the platform’s adaptability and its commitment to meeting the diverse needs of its users.
Following the gradual shift toward longer content, especially on an app as influential as TikTok, can offer valuable insights and opportunities to marketing professionals, content creators, and consumers alike.
Trend 2: Brands Must Prioritize Cultural Fluency
Social media consumers in 2025 are flocking to screens big and small to keep up with what’s new, what’s trending, and what’s interesting — brands that want to thrive and stay ahead of trends must build cultural fluency.
According to data from Sprout, 90% of consumers use social media to keep up with trends and cultural moments, even more than TV and streaming services, talking to friends and family, and other digital media.
As a first step, work on understanding your key audience beyond demographics.
Demographics like age or gender are useful but rarely tell the whole story. Double down on psychographic data and social behavior insights to uncover cultural preferences, values, and motivators that drive your target audience’s decisions.
Brands may also consider investing in local partnerships. Experts, creators, or agencies can provide firsthand insights and help tailor campaigns that land authentically in their region.
Your branding doesn’t need to radically change, but it should pivot to meet local nuances. Adapting your brand for a global audience while retaining brand integrity may include visual design; colors, images, and symbols can have drastically different meanings in different cultures
Consumers want to see themselves reflected in the brands they support. Go beyond on-paper diversity and tell stories that feel real, empowering, and relatable to specific audiences.
Trend 3: Strong brand storytelling and engagement are audience must-haves
Brand storytelling is imperative in 2025 — people don’t connect with logos, they connect with other people. A well-thought-out story fosters an emotional bond between your brand and your audience by humanizing your business.
The competition is tough — but a memorable story makes your brand stand out. Amidst crowded marketplaces, your unique storytelling sets your offerings apart.
For instance, Apple’s marketing isn’t just about technology; it’s about creating tools to empower creativity and innovation. Their narrative consistently communicates this, elevating them above competitors.
Sharpened storytelling skills are imperative across the world of digital marketing, including engagement. When people hear a touching story, our brains release oxytocin, a chemical that boosts connection and empathy. Couple that with platforms where interaction is key, and you have a recipe for boosting clicks, shares, and comments.
A narrative that reflects your audience’s experiences will resonate deeply. For example, Glossier’s user-driven storytelling, by encouraging customers to share their beauty journeys, fosters a sense of “I see myself in this.”
Storytelling invites valuable discussions. Nike’s “You Can’t Stop Us” campaign masterfully combines compelling stories of resilience with stunning visuals. It wasn’t just about selling apparel — it invited viewers to engage with the idea of unity and determination, sparking millions of shares globally.
Trend 4: The Creator Economy Evolves
The creator economy is booming in 2025. With over 200 million creators worldwide and counting, we’re witnessing a monumental shift in how individuals make a living and how brands communicate with their audiences
If you’re a content creator or digital marketer, understanding the nuances and opportunities within the creator economy is essential.
Gone are the days when only those with expensive equipment or industry connections could create content. In 2025, anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can begin their journey. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube prioritize user-generated content, making it easier to gain visibility.
Creator-Friendly Platforms
YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have become essential tools for creators to share content, grow audiences, and monetize. Each of these platforms is also investing heavily in creator-friendly features, such as TikTok’s Creator Fund, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels bonuses. This financial support incentivizes creators to produce more content and expand their reach.
Over the past decade, audiences have grown tired of traditional ads and crave authentic connections with brands. Creators bridge this gap by providing relatable, engaging content that resonates on a personal level.
Creators in 2025 have access to multiple revenue streams, ensuring financial stability and scalability. These include sponsorships, subscriptions like Patreon, merch sales, affiliate marketing, ad revenue, and live-stream tipping. Diversified income has made content creation not only viable but potentially lucrative full-time work for millions.
Trend 5: Take Advantage of Artificial Intelligence as a Solution to Creative Burnout
Every content creator or marketer feels stuck sometimes. It’s that struggle to find inspiration, meet deadlines, and continually churn out engaging content — all while maintaining high-quality standards.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), once seen as a futuristic novelty, has emerged as a powerful solution for overcoming creative fatigue. From brainstorming ideas to finishing the finer details, AI can be your creative co-pilot, bringing efficiency, inspiration, and a fresh perspective to your workflows.
By leveraging AI platforms, professionals can automate repetitive processes, innovate more effectively, and reignite their imagination.
Using AI to spark the creative process can include generating cohesive drafts from unorganized thoughts, alternatives for repetitive phrases, scanning for passive-voice and other unfavorable issues, as well as double checking spelling and grammar.
Creative burnout isn’t always about writer’s block — but AI is here to help you with both in 2025.
Trend 6: Optimize Social Media Search
Businesses like McGuinness Media & Marketing, content creators, and brand marketers are all competing to be discovered on social media. This year is shaping up to be one of the most innovative years for social media search, with platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and even Pinterest leading in visual and search-first algorithms.
The way we search for information has changed drastically in a short time — younger generations like Gen Z are increasingly using social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram over traditional search engines like Google.
One way to optimize your social media search in 2025 is to strategically place keywords in captions and tags.
Keywords aren’t just for Google rankings anymore. Social media algorithms prioritize keywords in captions, hashtags, and descriptions. Identify high-impact keywords relevant to your niche using tools like TikTok’s Trends or Meta’s keyword suggestions.
Place your primary keyword early in your caption for better visibility and mix primary and secondary keywords naturally into the text.
Hashtags function as searchable keywords that categorize your posts. While the days of flooding a caption with hashtags are over, choosing a mix of high-traffic and niche-specific hashtags is essential for discoverability in 2025.
Businesses can establish themselves in their social media search by incorporating branded hashtags to build identity, #McGuinnessMedia, for example.
The same applies for video content when it comes to titles, captions, on-screen text, and viewer engagement. Add keywords into video titles, use captions or subtitles, and choose a visually appealing thumbnail to grab attention.
Trend 7: Niche Online Communities Meet IRL
Social media sets the stage for subcultures to come together and thrive; niche communities will expand in many ways in 2025.
Over the last decade, digital platforms have successfully connected like-minded individuals — even those separated by thousands of miles — into flourishing niche communities. Think cinematic debate groups, sneaker resale collectives, or knitting fanatics swapping designs.
Recently, an increasing number of these communities are organizing IRL meetups, conferences, pop-up events, and workshops.
Codes on screens can only go so far in building real, lasting relationships. Meeting face-to-face adds a layer of authenticity and trust that online-only interactions often lack.
While online spaces are undeniably powerful, they sometimes feel intangible or overly curated. Meeting IRL bridges that gap, as it humanizes both personalities and brands. People are more likely to build trust when they can interact authentically in person.
For creators, this is particularly critical. Your followers already resonate with your online persona; IRL events give them a deeper emotional connection to who you are behind the camera or screen.
Shared experiences further solidify community ties. Whether it’s a movie night, a conference, or a casual meetup, the sense of participating in something special leaves attendees feeling valued and connected.
Consider the rise of board game cafés. Communities that initially traded tips and collections in online forums found immense joy in organizing game nights at cafés, turning fleeting interactions into enduring friendships.
Trend 8: Quality in Product, Commerce, and Customer Care Above All
There’s only one thing better than original content and engagement: quality product and services. According to Sprout, 63% of consumers say their favorite brands on social media have quality products or services.
For content creators and digital marketers, prioritizing quality isn’t just about making a good impression. It’s about creating lasting relationships, boosting brand loyalty, and standing out in a saturated market.
Your product is the heart of your business. No amount of clever marketing or eye-catching ads can salvage a product that underperforms or fails to meet customer expectations. Quality in your product isn’t just about durability (though that’s important). It also includes:
Functionality
How well does your product solve the problem it promises to? Does it deliver what it says on the box?
Design
Is your product easy to use? Does it offer an intuitive experience that makes customers’ lives easier?
Consistency
Does every unit or version perform as well as another? Consistency ensures your customers get what they expect every single time.
Once your product quality is secure, the next layer of importance is the experience your customer has shopping with you — whether it’s online or offline. A clunky e-commerce platform or poor experience can derail even the most high-quality products.
Your customers and clients are your most valuable asset. After the sale, their experience with your brand hinges on the quality of care you provide.
Trend 9: Emerging Networks Bring New Opportunities
Mainstream platforms can feel crowded, dominated by well-established accounts and endlessly competing algorithms. It’s hard to stand out.
Emerging networks, by contrast, offer creators and marketers more breathing room.
For instance, jumping on Clubhouse during the early days not only gave marketers more visibility but allowed them to reach a highly engaged, conversational audience with impactful results.
Every emerging platform brings with it at least some novelty in audience composition. From gamers to designers or language learners, these platforms often cater to distinct, passionate communities. This makes them ideal for testing highly targeted campaigns or unique content styles.
For example, Lemon8, an up-and-coming photo-sharing app, has become popular among younger audiences interested in lifestyle and travel. Its specific aesthetic focus presents fresh opportunities for brands and creators to target this demographic with niche content.
Emerging networks often attract attention due to the new content formats they introduce.
Whether it’s the raw, authentic-style posts of BeReal or the AR-enhanced visuals on TikTok spinoffs, jumping into these environments allows you to flex your storytelling muscles and experiment with diverse types of engagement.
Trend 10: Social Data Remains Crucial
Social data has become a foundation for brands, content creators, and marketers navigating today’s digital ecosystems.
With shifting algorithms, evolving privacy laws, and the rise of alternative data streams, you might wonder — will social data hold the same importance in 2025? The answer is overwhelmingly yes.
While social data has immense potential, maximizing its effectiveness requires a strategic approach. Here’s how McGuinness Media & Marketing plans to stay ahead of it:
- Choose the Right Tools: The sheer volume of social data can feel overwhelming, but the right tools can make sense of it. Platforms, like Sprout, collect and analyze social data, offering digestible reports that highlight emerging trends, audience behavior, and competitor benchmarks.
- Focus on the Metrics That Matter: Vanity metrics including likes or follower counts are useful for understanding visibility, but don’t tell the full story. Instead, focus on actionable KPIs like click-through rates, share rates, or customer acquisition.
- Integrate Data Across Channels: Integrating data across multiple channels allows you to see the bigger picture. For instance, what works well on Instagram might also inform your X strategy or highlight unique LinkedIn post opportunities.
- Pair Data with Creativity: Social data can tell you what your audience wants, but creativity determines how you deliver it. Striking visuals, clever copy, or unexpected angles are perfect complements to the insights you pull from social data.
- Test, Learn, Optimize: Marketing is iterative—what works today might falter tomorrow. After launching campaigns informed by social data, monitor their performance continuously.
Trends come and go at lightning speed across social media platforms. What’s viral this month could be irrelevant next month. By analyzing social data, marketers can detect trending hashtags, topics, and content types in real time.
Conclusion
These ten tips offer insight into what’s in store for 2025, but this year is sure to bring many more social media trends.
The demand for video, like usual, will only increase. From AI-powered editing tools to virtual reality and interactive videos, the technology enabling video creation and consumption is advancing rapidly.
Videos — especially with audio — create a synchronous emotional experience through storytelling.
Storytelling remains the core of compelling video content. Instead of focusing solely on promoting your product or services, focus on the why behind what you do to connect emotionally with viewers.
Your clients and customers want to feel like you “get” them. When they feel seen, heard, and represented, they’re more likely to become loyal advocates for your brand.
Brands that excel this year are not just selling products and providing services: they are inviting consumers into experiences, beliefs, and communities worth being part of.
Follow MMM for more!
Follow the McGuinness Media & Marketing team on social @mcguinnessmedia for more insights from our award-winning team making BIG waves in the smallest state!