ONE: The rise of AI

AI tools for social media are making things faster and easier. Things like: 

Surfer SEO is a content optimisation platform that helps users boost the rankings of their web pages and posts on Google.

Notion AI is a productivity tool that uses AI like a personal assistant, helping you with market research, analysing data, and generating content and insights.

Opus Clip can edit long videos into content for social media and add captions to make content quickly accessible.

ChatGPT you can create a CustomGPT to write copy in your tone of voice.

Canva is constantly adding new AI tools to help with content creation, including voice enhancement for videos, image background removal, animation and image creation. 

Notta is a note-taking tool that can transcribe video and audio recordings and provide a summary with timestamps that link to the exact part of the recording, allowing you to easily reference the relevant sections without having to sift through the entire audio. 

Watch out for: 

1. Only using ChatGPT to write all of your captions. Authenticity is critical in social and people can spot GPT-written copy a mile away. Make sure your captions still have your human tone and voice!

2. Security settings for machine learning. As the social platforms develop tools, they will be using your data to teach the tools. Check your security settings on all of the platforms to make sure you’re comfortable with AI using your data to learn – or not.

Here’s how you can check LinkedIn: 

> Select ‘Settings and Privacy’

> Select ‘Data Privacy’

> Toggle off “Data for Generative AI Improvement”

 

TWO: Trump and the social media giants

Just as TikTok was banned in America and Americans had 12 hours of TikTok blackout – the lights were turned back on. Trump assured that it would be able to continue under his presidency. 

This, along with Musk and Zuckerberg pledging their support for Trump has many people worried about political interference with social media. 

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced major changes to the moderation tools, loosening up the protections and moving to a “community notes” moderation system like X. They also got rid of their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programmes, a concerning move which has worried existing staff.

This will have a major impact on the protections and harm of certain groups online. 

If you’re a business/org, we recommend checking your profanity filters to provide protection to your audiences. And we recommend reporting and then blocking harmful content and people. 

THREE: Choosing social platforms

After the moderation changes from the major platforms, we expect to see some people move off social media platforms altogether. As with all changes on the platforms, people consider whether they need to be on that channel. We’ve seen many Twitter (X) users move to BlueSky and major changes in the way people use their Facebook accounts. We also saw American TikTok “refugees” flock to RedNote with the threat of TikTok being shut down.

In Aotearoa, we’ve seen Kiwis move to community groups on Facebook and we think this will continue.

BlueSky is still only being used by a niche group but we will continue to monitor it and its application as a channel.

RedNote is one to watch, with the Americans flocking to it and discovering new Chinese friends and a fun platform.

YouTube remains our largest and least problematic channel – a great option if you have interesting video content or something to teach people.

 

FOUR: Bold colours and format changes 

Finally, design. The Pantone colour of the year is PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse and Pinterest predicts the trend for 2025 will include bold and expressive colours. Try out a few of these in your social media posts! 

Instagram has switched from square to the longer portrait shape for images which will likely be adapted across other platforms. Social media assets will need to be optimised to this new size and it may be a good time to review the look of your grid. Instagram has switched from square (1:1 ratio) to the longer portrait shape (4:5 ratio) for images which will likely be adapted across other platforms. Social media assets will need to be optimised to this new size and it may be a good time to review the look of your grid.

Quick tip, you can adjust the profile view back to square by doing this:  

  1. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner
  2. Select Adjust preview
  3. Choose to fit or fill the screen
  4. Select a background colour
  5. Tap Done to save

Upcoming changes for Instagram include moving highlights into its own tab on your profile (like reels). They are also testing being able to edit your grid.

 

 

Be sure to keep an eye out for these changes, here is a statement from the head of Instagram about these changes:

“We’re also looking to move highlights into the grid and add them as a tab. Highlights are a great way to showcase your favorite stories, but they are visually complicated and push your grid down. In order to maintain creator control we’re building a tool so you can re-order your entire grid and make it whatever you want. And as a bonus, we’re adding the ability to post directly to your grid, in case you want to bypass feed entirely.”