Most Popular Social Media Trends for 2026
Social media never, ever stays the same. It is a fast environment and is constantly shifting like sand beneath our feet. In recent years, it has seen a huge change in terms of the content that is most often featured. With the rise of AI’s influence on these platforms, users and marketers alike are being faced with decisions on how to proceed. There have been more concerns than ever regarding safety, trust, general regulations, and accountability on these platforms. The team at Lyv Marketing is always adapting to the current trends in social media and following them to create success for our clients. In this blog, we will walk through some key social media trends we expect to be big this year.
Community-First Platforms Continue to Grow
To counter the sudden onset of AI-generated content, a lot of social media platform users are searching for more authentic content. Because trust is becoming harder to gain from people, it is likely to become a trend in 2026 to be more human and authentic. On top of this, actually connecting with your audience is a great way to stay on top of this and gain/retain the trust of your audience. This is why we are continuing to see people turn to different forms of social media. User-Generated content, better known in the marketing space as UGC, is used on product pages and websites to show regular customers what the product might look like in action on someone like them.
Social media platforms continue to build out their broadcast channels as a place that people can connect with each other and have conversations amongst themselves. It is important for brands to prioritize community and give their audience what they’re looking for. It is more beneficial in the long run to have a smaller number of engaged members of your community than a larger number of people that aren’t really interested.
Ad Creative Distinguishes Your Brand
Ad creative is the best way for brands to stand out amongst their competitors and become more singular in the space. Recently, we’ve been seeing a lot of artificial intelligence in creative spaces and while it may seem useful for small teams to save time, the best place to let your authenticity shine through is in your creative efforts. This can be done by creating variants of your creative and figuring out what works the best for each campaign.
Creator and Influencer Collaboration
The influencer and digital creator space has only continued to grow in the last five years. While influence online seems like an easy thing to achieve from an outside perspective, it isn’t as simple as you may think. Not only do you have to find your corner of the internet, you have to find a creator that wants to work with you and promote your product to their audience. Below are some of the best strategies for navigating the creator/influencer landscape:
Know what your key audience is and what your goals are.
Do some research on what creators fit both of these things.
Use data and communities to see what content does well and what is best for your brand.
Social Searching: What it Is and How it Can Help You
Social searching means that people are gravitating more toward social media platforms to look for information they need instead of traditional search engines. This changes the landscape for a lot of marketers and what their strategies will look like moving forward. This new method of searching means that it will help you to have your product or brand show up when people are searching on social media as well as on search engines. Below are a few tactics that can be used on social media to enhance your search result standings.
Captions with a lot of relevant key words.
Explaining your product or service and why people might want/need it.
Answering commonly asked questions about your product/service.
Taking advantage of short-form content.
BTS Content and Humanizing Your Brand
As stated above and for most of this year, people want to feel like they can relate to you and your brand. A great way to do this is to create more BTS, or behind-the-scenes, content for your customers to see. This can be an easy way to appeal to your customers and give them a closer look at what it is you and your team do all day. Some of these types of videos include, employee intros, closer looks into things that are coming soon, or even just showing them the way something is made or done step-by-step. These can be incredibly easy to create and can help you a lot with your audience in the long run. You might even learn more about them in the process!
Takeaway: Be What Your Audience Needs
This year, a lot of the current and predicted trends center around appealing to your audience with your humanity. If you really take a second to think about it, this is not a difficult thing to do. In fact, brands have been doing it longer than social media has even been around. With all of the technology at our fingertips, it can be so easy to forget what brought us here in the first place. When planning your campaigns and allocating your budget for the rest of the year, keep in mind what your audience wants to see and center your efforts and your content around it. Listen to them, show them what they want to see, and what makes your brand flourish. If you are looking for a team to take over these efforts for you this year, look no further than Lyv Marketing! Send us an email at hello@lyvmarketing.com, give us a call at (814) 419-493, or fill out the form on our website!
