4 Must-know Latest Social Media Marketing Trend in 2025

2025-11-21 32

Social Media Marketing Trends

Social media marketing simply is strategizing through social media to reach out to your customers and potential customers to fulfill your objective - awareness, persuasion, sales and retention. Social media marketing trends keep on changing over time. A marketer needs to stay updated on what’s trending to make the optimum use of it. According to Statista, Facebook is the biggest social media by number of active users followed by Instagram, Whatsapp, Youtube and Tiktok. So let's decode the SMM trends going on in there.

When you open social media today, everything seems very fast and loud. Scroll for a while and it's all about creators and brands trying to sell you a product and audiences reviewing them. In the race of fads and trends for social media marketing, some come and go and some stay to change the landscape.

With all these, social media marketing trends have become an integral part of branding without which it is almost impossible to stay connected and relevant to the audience today. It is absolutely non-negotiable for businesses on social media to stay updated with time to not lose that resonance with the audience.

To implement the trends that work best for your company, let’s explore what’s going on around social media.

What’s happening around Social media and how?

Trend 1 - Short Format Video

Short form videos are videos of 60 sec upto a few minutes and they are still ruling in 2025. With the decreasing attention span, consumers find it very difficult to sit through that long format video or read through that long caption unless the first few seconds not only grab their attention but also promise a greater value throughout.

People want to be impressed very quickly, else they have access to thousands of other options. All they need to do is scroll. 

What this implies for marketers is to be competitive and as interesting as possible when marketing the products or services. Do not go “Hi everyone, this is xyz product and this does this for you.” You will end up increasing your scroll through rate.

Capture your audience’s attention quickly in 3 to 5 seconds. Hop on to some creative trends, focus on storytelling, use sensorial marketing (appealing to audio visual), and stay authentic and relevant.

Trend 2 - Video Commerce and customer collaboration

Another social media trend in 2025 is video commerce. Social media is no more just a platform to upload pictures, it has also become a marketplace. Today, it is not about posting your product and describing. It is also not just about uploading your TVC there - yes that has been there on social media for a while. But what in 2025? “Selling your product through your video.”

Earlier it was about influencers marketing the products, but now it's more about them “using” the product. It's about taking consumers through the experience of buying and using the product. With CTA engraved in such videos, video commerce drives more conversion.

What else is winning is, the brand collaborations with the real customers instead of influencers for higher relevance.

This type of marketing generates higher impulsive buyings as these “shoppable videos” are engraved with not just traditional CTA, but direct buying links as well as direct orders.

Trend 3 - Artificial Intelligence and Automation

In a world of social media marketing trends, there is a powerful weapon that has started ruling all over social media 2025 - Artificial Intelligence (AI).

According to Hubspot, 72% of marketers say that social content created with AI performs better than content created without AI. And why not, when it creates much more attention, boosts engagement and turns clicks into conversion better!

Almost all social media are powered by AI with features such as content recommendation, generative AI, facial recognition, audio/visual generation, chatbots and virtual assistance, targeted advertising and many more.

Well, its not just the social media platforms giving you AI features, it's also the creators that have gotten smart with automated creative processes using various generative and tracking AI for social media.

In short, AI in social media is redefining how we scroll, post, connect and think. And the impact is not limited to organizations and creators, it extends to the audience too. With extensive personalization, AI curates intriguing content, suggests what to see next and refines their sensorial experience with enhanced audio visuals.

Trend 4 - Social Media as search engine

GenZ are shifting towards social media as their main search tool instead of search engines such as google. The shift is happening because of the differences in interface of search engines and social media.

Social media has such an interface that can grab more attention through its visuals while traditional search engines rely mostly on text only in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). Similarly, social media is a hub for authentic user generated content and people trust no one better than the actual consumers who they believe will give you honest reviews.

Besides, social media offers quicker up to date information. Overall, it gives an easier integration in terms of discovery, reviews and action.

This means that brands must develop an active presence and optimize social profiles in such a way that it drives consumers smoothly through the process of discovery to sales and loyalty.

Check out the social media marketing landscape in Nepal.

When did these social media trend shifts begin?

The trends of social media marketing keeps on changing but none of them happens overnight, it builds over years. The foundation for these trends were laid back in time as most of the groundwork for these trends had been laid down post 2010.

The short format video became popular during 2013 with Youtube vines but literally exploded with Tiktok during 2016. This format is here to stay and constantly evolve like it has now. With platforms like Tiktok, Youtube and Instagram, this format has become a must-do in 2025. That era habituated the audience to consume information in seconds.

Therefore came video commerce that started to surface in 2022 with influencer-led promotions, but it wasn’t until 2025 that short, shoppable videos with more buying experience and CTA focus started driving measurable sales.

Then during 2023-2024, AI became the bigger picture while it had quietly entered the picture in 2022, especially with generative AI such as Chatbot. It began with caption and content writing, to content audio visual creations and analytics. With this people became more familiar with artificial intelligence. Then began AI optimization for ad placement, prediction engagement and automation of repetitive tasks.

By 2025, AI, automation, and audience behavior merged into one ecosystem. Now almost all platforms leverage AI to know what users want to see and recommend them. when they’ll be most active, and what content will make them stop scrolling.

Where and how is it happening?

Let's break down which interesting Social Media Marketing trends are most popular in which of the social media platforms and how is the trend emerging.

1. Facebook

• Video commerce on facebook’s market place with video product-tagging.
• AI based personalized ad targeting and feed recommendation
• Facebook as search engines for local business query and review purpose
  
  

2. Instagram

• Short format video still rules with storytelling focus
• Shoppable Reels and in-app checkout features triggering impulsive buying
• AI integration for ad placement, story content and algorithm boosting engaging posts

• Instagram as a search engine for visual explorers and review hunters for businesses

3. YouTube

• YouTube shorts are growing rapidly through entertainment, short tutorials, product teasers etc.
• Shoppable links integrated to the description of video
• AI features in quality upscaling, auto-caption/ auto-dubbing and suggestions
• YouTube as a major search engine for “How to” tutorials and product reviews

4. TikTok

• Classic for short video focusing on quick storytelling and quick virality
• TikTok Shop allows users to purchase products directly from creator videos
• Tiktok’s AI For you page as the most loved extremely relevant content recommendation
• Tiktok as search engine for travel, food and other service reviews

Why these social media trends?

The reason why social media marketing trend keeps on changing is because the audiences' habits and needs also keep changing. With any kind of trends, the two things consumers need anyhow is speed and convenience. And the marketers need one more thing - efficiency. All the trends somehow add better value to these dimensions for consumers.

Everything comes from the audience's demand. With a reduced attention span, audiences want stories that entertain, inform and convince quickly, that's why shot-form video rules the scrolling.

Shopping habits have shifted. Consumers don’t want to see ads, they want to know how it is like to experience the product from the feeling to using it to post usage. Therefore, video commerce produces the buying experience pre-purchase.

AI has been powering social media marketing for some time now but they have come to the bigger picture recently. Brands do not want to waste time on manual creation, prediction, tracking and personalization. And audiences want better recommendations.

The audio and visual requirement for purchase decisions has grown so much that audiences prefer checking on social media rather than trusting the traditional advertisement.

So finally, the essence is that these social media marketing trends exist because today’s world runs on attention, authenticity and algorithms. Brands who understand this and adapt on a timely basis do not just reach, but survive in the long term and lead by creating every click into a connection.

Also read How Digtial Marketing is Transforming Business in Nepal.

Pedal

At Pedal advertising we believe in constantly moving ahead. And with these constantly evolving social media marketing trends, we keep ourselves updated so that we can assist your brand to

• Strategize smarter by understanding your business type, consumer behaviour and social media fit
• Blending technology and trend with imagination to produce content that is relevant and fulfills your branding objective
• Personalize user experience ensuring authenticity in branding experience

We do it with services such as Digital Marketing to Web Solutions, Creative Designs, Multi-Media Production, Content Creation, Campaign Development, Event Management, Public Relations & CSR Campaigns, Influential Marketing, and Business Research. With the best teams and blend of technology we have assisted brands like ABC noodles, Vatsalya, National IVF, Jagadamba Steels, Rhino 500D, Mastakala etc to reach new heights in marketing.

So Pedal is the ultimate solution for brands that want to grow with purpose and move ahead. To book your consultation, visit here.