The Social Media Year 2024: Developments and Findings

1. Social First Everything

The growing influence of social media is changing culture and commerce alike. The average person today spends 2 hours and 20 minutes a day on social media. 35% of Generation Z (born 1997-2012) even scroll for more than four hours a day.

Battenhall therefore recommends that successful brands focus their PR efforts primarily on social media. “Social-first” is the name of this approach, in which social media not only dominate the dissemination of information and linguistic communication, but also create interactive user experiences that enable brands to put campaigns in the hands of the community (social-first-information, social-first-language, social-first-experience).

Brands that want to align their strategy “social-first” need to put social media at the center of their user experience. To remain relevant, content must evolve beyond advertising, engage audiences emotionally, speak their language, and provide shareable value. In doing so, companies must shed the corporate identity suit and fully engage in an authentic exchange with their stakeholders.

“Knowing your audience, how they speak, and what the’ll respond to best, is the sweet spot on social media”.

2. Social Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is having an increasingly growing influence on creative business models: in 2024, it not only delivered higher efficiency in content creation (48%), but also improved content quality (52%).

In social media, AI can be used in various areas:

• AI for personalized content: Algorithms learn from the consumer behavior of users and can play out relevant content in a more targeted manner.
• AI in content moderation and user protection: “Thrive” is an AI-powered initiative that helps platforms like Meta and TikTok quickly remove harmful content.
• AI tools for creatives and advertisers: Many platforms are using AI to create new ways to create content.
• AI in research and analysis behavior: OpenAI’s ChatGPT can process complex queries more efficiently than humans, predicting a role of AI in future research and user analytics.

Generative AI can generate personalized responses based on data, creating a human-like interaction. This creates new content such as texts, images, music, audio files, and videos. To take advantage of AI in 2025 in social media marketing, Battenhall recommends the following:

• Redefine metrics: AI can help better understand audience behavior by analyzing posts by interaction types and goals. Instead of focusing only on engagement rates, companies should develop more specific success metrics.
• Community management with real sentiment: AI-powered sentiment analysis enables a deeper understanding of user reactions and helps drive valuable conversations instead of just looking at engagement numbers.
• Leverage generative AI in a targeted manner: From intelligent search analytics to TikTok trend forecasting, AI-powered tools offer new opportunities for data-driven content strategies, market analysis, and creative processes.

3. Community and Culture

Today, community management in social media goes beyond handling requests and campaigns. In order to build a successful brand identity, it is essential to be present and to react to and benefit from current trends through playful interactions with the community. This also requires courage on the part of companies.

Social platforms allow brands to empower their communities by engaging authentically, capitalizing on cultural moments, and collaborating with creators. Because trends are flexible, fast, and short-lived, brands need to be willing to allow for uncertainty.

In the future, community management will no longer be just about moderation and customer service – it’s about defining a brand’s voice in the cultural zeitgeist. Successful brands will be those that are willing to allow humor, interact authentically and reflect the cultural values of their followers. 75% of Gen Z would end their relationship with brands whose advertising campaigns are perceived as racist or homophobic. This underlines the importance of value-based marketing for younger target groups.

4. Dark Social

The term “dark social” was coined in 2012 and refers to social media content that is not publicly available. This includes activities in private messengers, closed social media channels, groups and emails.

A little more than a decade later, 95% of all online content is found on Dark Social. This shift from public to private sharing can be can be attributed in part to the stress and anxiety caused by the Pressure for perfection in social media arises. Dark social includes platforms such as Discord, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Telegram or Reddit. Battenhall’s insights show that the number of shares via dark social platforms is growing and is therefore becoming more and more relevant for brands.

Many brands have already set up private broadcast channels through which they can connect with their communities. In order for followers to be motivated to join such channels beyond public profiles, companies need to make the content shared there even more personal and appreciative.

5. Social Sorting

The use of large social networks and new platforms is influenced by radical changes. Users are rethinking their decisions: Which networks should they use? How to use them? Who do you follow? Brands face similar choices: Where should ad spend be spent? Which platforms pose a problem for a brand’s reputation? And which networks have priority for community building?

The rapid decline (X-odus) of X (formerly Twitter) in 2024 has already Effects shown: Users are looking for alternatives in platforms such as Threads, Bluesky or Butterflies.

This reorganization of networks creates space for new communities, and Threads has particularly benefited from this in recent months. Tech journalist Casey Newton, whose tech newsletter Platformer has over 100,000 subscribers, recently wrote: “In the long term, I expect Threads to prevail over X, and all reporters who still post on X will eventually wish they had built their audience on threads when that was still was easier.”