Even if you don’t keep a close eye on the marketing industry, chances are you are still aware of some of the biggest digital marketing trends of 2023. In some ways, the word “trend” feels like it’s underselling the impact these changes have had on the industry. “Seismic shift” may be a better description.
Whatever you want to call them, these trends are really, really exciting. And at BeKonstructive Marketing, we’re really, really excited to talk about them. So that’s exactly what we did. Our team of Brisbane copywriters, social media managers, and lovers of all things digital marketing got together to share our insights on how these monumental trends have impacted the work we do for our clients in 2023, and how we predict it will continue to evolve in the future.
The Rise and Rise of AI
2023 will be remembered as the year in which artificial intelligence became mainstream, even though AI has been slowly integrating its way into our everyday lives for years now. It feels like the fast forward button has been pressed on that integration in 2023, especially with the massive uptake of users on the mega-popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT.
Here are some fun stats for you, sourced from the Visual Capitalist. It is the time it took popular online platforms to reach 100 million users, from the day of their launches.
- LinkedIn – 7 years, 11 months
- Twitter – 5 years, 5 months
- Facebook – 4 years, 6 months
- Instagram – 2 years, 6 months
- TikTok – 9 months
- ChatGPT – 2 months!
ChatGPT isn’t a fad. It isn’t the future. It’s one of the main players in the digital marketing space — right here, right now. And as a business who provides content marketing services in Brisbane and beyond, it’s important we don’t look at ChatGPT as competition, but as a collaborator or part of our toolbox.
Working with Our Pal, ChatGPT
No, the robots aren’t here to take over everything. In its current form, ChatGPT still doesn’t have human storytelling capacity to elicit complex emotions, sell experiences, or accomplish the more subtle art of narrative building on both the macro and micro level.
That doesn’t mean that ChatGPT doesn’t have its uses, and within the digital marketing space, we have found it to be revolutionary in a few key areas. We’ve found it to be an incredibly useful research tool, helping us find information and referring us to other sources that flesh out our knowledge of different topics for our clients.
We have also found its text generative capabilities to help streamline our drafting process. This isn’t to say that we get ChatGPT to write our content. But as a resource for bouncing ideas, editing our work, or developing new directions for our content, it has been quite valuable. And all of these tasks have now been condensed, freeing up more time for us to focus on executing high quality and personable marketing strategies for our clients.
Where to From Here?
There’s no denying that AI and ChatGPT have been some of the biggest marketing trends in 2023. But because their mainstream adoption has been so thorough and so quick, it’s hard to predict exactly how big an overall impact it will have, and how we should adapt.
One thing has become abundantly clear this year: businesses that only use ChatGPT to write their online content — without any human input — are going to be left behind. It’s more important than ever before for businesses to showcase their human element, as that’s going to attract audiences who are searching for that authenticity and individuality in their products and services.
It’s also still too early to predict how much AI-generated content is going to impact SEO services, but it’s likely that the Google algorithm will see an update that promotes pages with a strong human voice. As we provide Brisbane SEO services, we’ll be sure to keep a close eye on this and keep you all up to date as it develops.
The Shifting Social Media Landscape
At BeKonstructive, we provide high quality social media services in Brisbane and beyond. And throughout this year, we’ve noticed some big shifts, changes, and trends happening across the social media landscape.
More and more people are turning to social media for their news, brand recommendations, and online shopping, but not necessarily in the same places as where they once did. According to Hootsuite, Twitter has seen a change in demographic since its X rebranding, with an audience that is now nearly roughly 60% male (the largest gender gap of any major social media platform), and an overall user base that has dropped by 5% over the past 12 months.
Want some more stats? According to Oosga, there are now 8.1 million TikTok users in Australia, the majority of whom are between the ages of 18 and 34. This key demographic of consumers are flocking to TikTok to get more than just funny dance videos — although, those are still a good time. Tik Tok offers so much potential for businesses to get their brand out there and establish a human connection with their audience that is quick, engaging, and authentic. Regardless of the product or service you offer, if your brand is targeting that 18–34 year-old audience, a Tik Tok presence is a must.
LinkedIn’s New Algorithm
Tying back in with our discussion over AI chatbots and creating meaningful, unique content, LinkedIn has adjusted its algorithm to promote posts that do exactly that. The platform now checks to see if the content you are posting is:
- Relevant to your industry and/or profession;
- Highlights information that is new, informative, and not a simple regurgitation of existing content;
- And provides value to the people in your network.
So this means that if you’re not creating unique thought-leadership content that is of interest to your audience on LinkedIn, you’re not going to be seen.
It will be interesting to see if other social media platforms will follow suit with their own algorithm updates that promote unique content, while penalising those that don’t bring anything new to the table or rely too heavily on AI-generated copy.
Our Forecast for 2024 and Beyond
So, what about next year? It’s becoming clear that search engines and social media platforms alike will adapt their algorithms to weed out any content that is entirely or mostly written by AI chatbots. If your business’ website and/or social media channels are filled with content that has been created by AI, you probably want to reconsider this tactic. While it may be working for you now, there’s a strong chance that it won’t be a sustainable option in the near future, and could be detrimental to your rankings.
OpenAI – the company behind ChatGPT – have also released code that businesses can input into their website’s Robot.txt files to stop the chatbot from crawling their pages. Essentially, this means that you can stop ChatGPT from sourcing your website for information if you don’t want it to.
Again, the pros and cons of this aren’t currently clear. Some businesses may want to keep their content entirely to themselves and not have it shared by AI. But others may see it as another opportunity to spread their message/s to a wider audience.
Definitely watch this space.
Contact BeKonstructive Marketing
2023 has seen some of the biggest changes to the digital marketing landscape that we can remember. As always, at BeKonstructive Marketing, we will be staying on top of all these trends so we can deliver the best possible results for our clients in Brisbane and all around Australia.
If you are in need of our Brisbane digital marketing services, then contact us today!
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