At the end of each year, I like to reflect on the last 12 months and think about what may lie ahead for the following year.

In our ever-changing, fast-paced world, a lot can happen in 12 months. How will social media platforms evolve? What trends might we see? What features will attract the highest levels of engagement? How will AI expand?

I’ve spent a lot of time recently speaking with people around, what’s going to happen in 2025, particularly how to leverage social media and branding for business growth.

I expect social media platforms will continue their dominance in the race for attention. I am also confident the major players will continue to introduce new features that help brands boost interaction and engagement. Brands will continue to rely on socials to help drive traffic to their websites. Influencers aren’t going anywhere just yet, so brands that can harness their popularity will do well. And, of course, AI will continue to expand and offer greater efficiency and innovation for business.

Based on the conversations I’ve been having and my predictions for the year ahead, I’ve identified five key growth hacks in social media and branding that I think will make the biggest difference in your practice and business growth in 2025.

Top 5 Social Media and Branding Practices for Business Growth in 2025

1. Focus on engagement

A number of businesses I have worked with who have thrived in social media marketing have realised that their success is at the peril of the algorithm. This often leads to brands falling over themselves to be seen. They end up focusing on chasing new customers all the time, as opposed to looking after their existing customer base.

Businesses that can engage and nurture their existing clients will create an experience where those customers will be retained. This will not only boost engagement, loyalty, and retention but should also lead to repeat customers, which, in turn, will lead to more business growth. In a noisy world where consumers are always looking for the ‘next thing’, loyal, long-term customers are worth their weight in gold.

Social media audiences love interactive content such as polls, questions and quizzes. Anything that can encourage your community to connect with your brand will be a win in the year ahead.

Jane in her white top and her earrings with a big smile

2. Harness personal branding for executive teams

Social media and branding are turning increasingly personal. Customers don’t just want to know about the products—they want to know about the people behind them. They want to be told that their values align, they want to hear about the brand’s social impact, and they love to see behind the scenes. Social media is the ideal platform for this type of content.

The reputation of an executive team has a huge impact on a brand. If people feel they can trust the leaders behind the brand, they are more likely to buy from them. Historically, Australian CEOs and executives have typically been shy of personal branding. But those organisations that have really high integrity in their executive team and can find a way to capitalise on that will be able to create a lot of trust in their brand. This will help them to position it well for the future create a real value proposition and a differentiator among their competitors.

3. Use business process outsourcing for efficiency

Business processing outsourcing, or BPO, allows brands to outsource specific tasks to highly skilled professionals. This not only saves time and money but can also lead to improved results in that particular area.

BPO is not just about administration anymore; it has evolved to encompass a really broad range of expertise. It also extends to social media content and branding. This allows social media experts to take control of your business’s social channels and use analytics and AI to capture your audience’s attention, improve engagement and ultimately drive traffic to your website.

Outsourcing social media can be a really effective hack for brands that don’t have anyone with that particular skillset working in-house. These professionals will also be able to use a range of metrics to analyse what is most effective for your unique audience. It is likely that the data we are able to analyse will also expand in the near future, meaning that new metrics will continue to develop. For this reason, it can help to engage dedicated social marketing strategists who can stay on top of any new developments.

4. Keep up to date on tech advancements

Social media platforms will continue to add new features as new tech becomes available. Being able to harness these innovations will help you differentiate yourself from your competitors and improve customer engagement.

AI is driving a lot of these new features, and AI optimisation will become increasingly important for brands. Doing things like creating posts that provide simple, clear answers to your most-asked questions, including bullet points and lists in your social media content, and using location tags, hashtags, and business categories can all help to make your content more likely to feature in AI-generated social searches.

5. Don’t forget the video!

Video content has also continued to dominate the social media landscape. A Wyzowl survey found that found that 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. Furthermore, 90% of video marketers said that video helped them increase brand awareness, and 86% said it helped them increase web traffic. Interestingly, 89% of consumers said they wanted to see more videos from brands.

Your best approach in 2025 will be to create short-form, entertaining video content for all your social media platforms. Experiment with various forms, such as behind-the-scenes clips, tutorials, etc. Engaging influencers can also help.

Jane smiling in front of her phone taking video.

Stay ahead of the pack

No doubt we’ll be in for another eventful year in social media and branding. But these business growth tips will help you stay ahead of the pack in 2025.

I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Top 5 Social Media and Branding Practices for Business Growth in 2025