Brand Social Trend Report: Q4 2024

Content for your inner child, "long-form" Instagram carousels, casting based on talent (not influence), and lots more.

My most popular newsletter series is back. The Brand Social Trend Report: Q4 2024 is here! These are the social media trends that stuck out, the formats that took over, and the themes that felt inescapable in Q4. The report covers things like:

• Campaign casting based on talent, not influence

• Brands embracing their inner child

• The type of video format the Reels tab favored

• “Long-form” Instagram carousels

• Digital bits going offline

• Black “Friday” and Cyber “Monday” becoming meaningless

If this is your first time receiving one of these reports, hello and welcome! This isn’t your usual graphs and stats report. Think of this like the scribbled notepad version of the trends you’ll eventually end up seeing in all those graphs and stats reports in six months. It’s like getting early access. A little bit of science and a whole lot of gut—kind of how I approach social strategy in general.

You can find the Q3 2024 report here, Q2 2024 report here, and the Q1 2024 report here. Now let’s dive into the Q4 2024 report.