We have only just reached the halfway point of 2025, and it is already shaping up to be a busy and exciting year in the world of social media. Social media continues to transform the way that SMEs interact with their customers, and keeping up to date with these changes is important for businesses to remain competitive and relevant. There are several innovations that are shaping social media this year, with all the leading platforms adopting new technologies and interfaces, and users subtly shifting how they engage with content. Let’s look at the key social media trends business owners should watch out for this year to maximise engagement and ROI.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the biggest story in digital marketing over the past couple of years, with a growing influence on all leading social media platforms. Throughout 2025, AI has continued to fundamentally reshape the capabilities of social media, from smarter content recommendations to more sophisticated analysis of audience behaviour. For business owners, these AI-powered tools provide new ways to connect with and understand their customers. For example:
LinkedIn and Facebook have led the field by employing advanced AI algorithms to help personalise user experiences on the platform, so that posts and advertisements are delivered to the most relevant audience segments. For instance, Facebook’s AI-driven news feed algorithm is now better at tailing content to user interests, with a positive uptick in engagement. On LinkedIn, meanwhile, a sophisticated AI system now powers its People You May Know feature, recommends job postings, and tailors feed content, increasing post engagement and visibility for business pages. Both platforms have also upgraded their generative AI capabilities to make the tools more responsive and natural-sounding.
AI has become central to advanced ad targeting on social media, with platforms offering machine learning-powered audience segments based on user activity and purchasing behaviours. A good example of this is Facebook’s Lookalike Audience tool, which uses AI to identify new high-potential customers based on your current customer data, while LinkedIn’s advertising platform also uses predictive targeting to reach the users most likely to convert. This is one of the reasons that, we suspect, 65% of marketing leaders say that they intend to increase their investment in AI and automation tools over the course of 2025.
AI-driven insights are also invaluable for optimising business social media content strategies. For instance, Instagram uses machine learning to suggest optimal posting times and hashtags, allowing users to improve their reach and engagement rates. Similarly, HubSpot’s content strategy tools use its AI engine to recommend relevant topics, assess performance, and help businesses adapt more quickly to trends on social media. For SMEs, therefore, embracing AI tools can enable more efficient social media campaigns with better results, even for businesses with limited resources.
Video has always been a popular choice of content on social media, and has been steadily overtaking other forms of content in terms of engagement and reach, but 2025 is set to be the year when video content becomes non-negotiable. Many platforms now prioritise video content on their search algorithms, making it a vital tool for engagement and visibility for businesses. Within this larger trend are several interesting developments:
Influenced by the popularity of TikTok, short-form videos have become extremely popular on social media, with Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts transforming the way that users consume content. These bite-sized videos are perfect for capturing attention and delivering key messages quickly, and businesses can use this trend to showcase their products, explain services, and provide quick tips to their target audiences.
Live videos are another growing trend, as customers crave direct face-to-face human interaction through digital channels. Platforms such as LinkedIn and Instagram have enhanced their live streaming tools accordingly, introducing new overlays, Q&A features, and polls. Businesses can now use these features to deliver live tutorials and webinars, answer customer questions, and promote new products and campaigns, injecting greater authenticity and transparency into social media marketing.
For resource-conscious businesses, re-purposing long-form webinars and videos into snippets or adapting content for short-form use can save time while also keeping the content pipeline fresh.
Social media has, historically, been a channel for engagement and driving traffic to the business website. However, social commerce is rapidly transforming social media into a core sales channel in its own right for many businesses. The growth of social commerce, in which transactions are completed directly on social platforms, has made the buyer journey more convenient for B2C businesses and their customers, boosting conversions and minimising friction at the checkout.
Instagram’s Shoppable Posts and Stories allow companies to tag products directly into images and videos, in order to drive one-click purchases without customers having to leave the app. Similarly, Facebook Shops enables users to build full digital shopfronts with integrated shopping features that sync across Facebook and Instagram (both owned by parent company Meta). Product Pins on Pinterest can also be linked directly to purchase pages, with recent features such as the Pinterest Shopping Spotlight helping businesses to curate product recommendations for their customers.
For more information about social media marketing, trends, and best practices, please download a free copy of our Social Media For Business Guide by clicking here.