Ogle Wizardry: Our 2025 Guide to Social Media Mastery!

Hello 2025! Another year of crazy digital marketing trends in 2024 saw the acceleration of AI use in business, X completely shutting itself down, and the introduction of its brand-new rival, Bluesky. But what can we expect for 2025 when it comes to Content Strategy, especially for Social Media posts? Ogle has done its research to help curate the best advice for your business in 2025 for Social media strategy and content strategy. On top of this, we have an extra special gift for you!

Organic Vs Paid - Who Wins in 2025?

As businesses review their targets and goals for the year ahead, we guarantee questions are going to be raised about the hole burnt through spending money on paid social media campaigns! Many businesses, especially small businesses on a budget, struggle with social media advertising costs, with pricing exceeding £8,000 a month in some cases. In most instances, the running costs of these paid ad campaigns do not provide adequate lead generation or return on investment. This can be a big problem and poses the question “How do you create a winning social media strategy in 2025?”.

So, are paid social media marketing campaigns delivering a positive ROI for your business? It’s important to understand that, firstly, your social media ads are competing directly with your competitors’ ads for limited ad space. This means if you and your competitors are all investing similar social media advertising costs and targeting the same audiences without a unique and distinct content strategy, you risk blending into the noise. The lack of differentiation means search engines will profit from your spending while your social media ad spend keeps increasing and yields little to no lead generation or brand awareness. It’s time to stop throwing money at the problem and start implementing a more concise brand-forward strategy that focuses on organic content to help your brand grow and implement targeted paid ad campaigns when necessary. 

In a crowded digital marketplace, simply competing for the same audience isn't enough. The content you produce needs to be more captivating. More engaging content that resonates with your audience can see more ROI, and your ad spend decreases because your content is connecting to the right people without you even trying! By developing compelling social media ad content and focusing on your brand awareness, you can significantly improve your chances of attracting your ideal customer. Improving your organic content can significantly decrease your ad spend and produce better results for ROI than you did spending more money.

So what is the best way to optimise your content? Firstly, you need to stop trying to sell your business. This is an unconventional approach, but today’s market allows consumers to have many different options for the same product, which means your product that is the same as 500 others needs to stand out. We can’t all be the cheapest or be made of the most ergonomic material because many small businesses don’t have the budget for this to make economic sense. You need to sell to either the lifestyle improvements your product or service provides or sell the ideology of the type of people who buy your product. 

For example, if I am a business that sells hiking boots, instead of highlighting the technical specs of hiking boots, I'm going to paint a picture of the adventure they enable. By associating your brand with the hiker's lifestyle, you tap into their values, which is way more powerful than simply selling a product.

Adopting this perspective means focusing on a well-rounded content mix. Photography, graphics, and video all play a vital role in building your brand, but short-form video content will be particularly effective in 2025.

Video Content is Stronger, but not on its own

Short-form video content has surged in popularity as a way to connect with audiences since 2020 and has become an integral part of content marketing and brand strategy. 60% of viewers watch 41%-80% of short-form videos making the average watch length 8.25 seconds which means you have to get your message out there fast. The old thirty-second elevator pitch is gone, but how do you pitch your whole business in seven seconds?

You can’t. Simply put, one seven-second video won’t ever be able to fully explain how your business is better than your competitors. This means you will need to create different videos to tell people about your business. Storytelling is a crucial part of building your brand reputation and how you stand above the rest. You can do this in many ways. You can create a series of videos dedicated to talking through each of your services, you can create characters that interact with your business to highlight its quality of service. You can create a video that is simply dedicated to answering frequently asked questions that will help potential customers speed up the buying process. Whatever you can, you must create videos.

But how do you create so many videos? Many small businesses simply don't have the time to make all these videos! This is where helpful AI tools can come in handy. Once you have identified what types of videos are going to best suit your business, you don't need to film multiple seven-second videos, you can use online AI technology to take longer videos that will cut them down into a series of shorter videos which are easier to post. Platforms such as Visla can help to take those longer formats and create a series of ready-to-go videos, which you can learn to make in as little as 20 minutes. 

Your video content will help to draw attention, but it cannot be made alone. Your video content should be supplemented with complimenting graphics and picture content to help solidify your positioning. Picture and video content are great to help educate and inform viewers as well as help showcase work. But what do I do with these different content formats? Well, another controversial piece of advice that leads back to our “don’t sell your product” content type; Create repelling content that helps steer away people you don't want to work with.

But isn't creating content that repels people counterintuitive? In some ways yes, but small businesses don’t have time for time-wasters or people who can’t make their minds up on purchasing. Businesses need customers who want to invest in their products and services so creating content that clearly shows your expectations of your desired customer will attract more of them to your business.

These types of content need to create a buzz around your business and make you stand out as a thought leader, which will make people trust you more. As people are making buying decisions based on how brands reflect on them instead of functionality, how your business presents itself needs to be at the forefront of how you create your content for marketing purposes.

Authenticity - Have a voice, be real!

Millennials and Gen Z have revolutionised how we purchase goods and services. According to Chris Marr - Founder of CMA, around 70% of buying decisions are made online before first contact with the vendor. But how can a buying decision be made before seeing a product?

We live in a highly influenced global economy. Millennials and Gen Z have grown up with the internet boom, and increased exposure to buying options has created fatigue and a growing disinterest in persistent advertising of the early 2000s. Because there are so many options, buyers want decisions fast, and instead of listening to the business as to why their product is the best (which comes off as biased), consumers will take the lead from word-of-mouth recommendations from their favourite celebrities, friends, families and social media influencers. 

The Influencer boom has changed how businesses approach their prospective customers. You need to sell the lifestyle of the item or service you provide, and with the right endorsement, you’re on to a winner! While hiring influencers to help with brand exposure will help your business grow, Influencers can be a big expense and smaller businesses may not have the budget for this. So how can you achieve the same results as using an influencer?

Many people think you need to have expensive camera equipment, studio staff and a well-rehearsed script to create social media videos for your business. We can tell you that is a load of nonsense! Influencers create videos on the go, on their way to work, in their bedrooms, or just with their smartphones. This ‘no filters’ approach to content creation resonates with Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha who feel more connected to real businesses with real people. Consumers want to feel like they are a part of the brand and these ‘off the cuff’ videos feel similar to a video call you might have with a friend who has news on the newest and biggest secret they have to tell you about. 

Whilst promoting your brand is a good start, your brand needs to have substance and grit. By taking a look at your business's core values, you can identify social topics your brand can speak about on social media. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are big movers and shakers in social justice online and will be attracted to brands that support local and international causes such as aid relief, activism and awareness. By associating your brand with social issues, you stand out in a more impactful way to your potential audience, who can begin to relate to your brand's values and beliefs without having to post about it consistently. Be bold and remember your brand is a reflection of you, so make sure to make sure your brand stands for what you believe in!

B2B Vs B2C what content type works best for which?

Content should be carefully considered when planning how you present yourself to your prospective audience. B2B (Business to business) and B2C (Business to Customer) customers have very different wants and pain points, which you need to consider when creating social content. When planning your content strategy, you need to consider if what you are creating is appropriate for your audience and if it will help to position you in a positive perception. 

B2C customers are your general public customers, think of them as the people who will buy your product if you have a shop. They come in, browse, and purchase either through their research or your recommendation and leave happy with their purchase and might recommend you to a friend. Because there are a lot of options and competition around, your strategy needs to be bold, daring and eye-catching. A lot of disruptive marketing techniques can help such as online quizzes, UGC (User Generated Campaigns), Augmented Reality Advertising (AR), and anything that makes the customer the centre of the experience to engage and tell your story to them.

B2C customers are interested in creativity, uniqueness and agility in the product or service you deliver, it has to enrich their lives for them to want to interact with it, so your content strategy should incorporate how you do so. However, trends and market patterns shift and what might be a great campaign today may not be as effective tomorrow, your strategies will need to grow, and evolve with time to remain relevant to your audience. This takes time and money to achieve and needs to be seriously considered. Your B2C market is usually also a lot broader so you need to make sure you can appeal to many different audiences to maximise your chances of success which also takes time to get accurate results.

B2B customers are more likely to be thought leaders in a specific market, looking for a long-term solution to an ongoing problem. These audience types are more critical and will be looking for the best value for money when it comes to services. This is where more long-form content is helpful to position yourself as an expert in the field with content such as blogs, white papers, and long-form videos that demonstrate your knowledge.

B2B customers are not as interested in overt creative approaches and want simplicity in resolving their issues. B2B-specific content should directly acknowledge and provide a solution to problems with direct call to action (CTA’s) to encourage prospective clients to contact your business. B2B marketing has a reputation for being quite stuffy and rigid but more companies are realising that breaking this mould is helping to carve new identities in their industries that help them to stand out.

While these tips and tricks sound easy in practice, many businesses will find them hard to implement due to time and money restrictions. Ogle has flexible and affordable plans that allow small businesses and freelancers to have access to these strategies and be managed by Ogle at a reasonable rate!

If you are looking to transform your digital marketing strategy for 2025, contact Ogle today!

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