What will be the big trends for Digital in 2023?

There’s never been a more exciting time to work in digital communications, as technology and culture accelerate the development of new and uncharted ways in which we can reach audiences at scale, with rich, engaging content. However, with this unprecedented atmosphere of change in the digital world, there’s a danger we could get carried away with new features and platforms which could as easily disappear as soon as they arrived (with apologies to anyone who still own NFTs). With that in mind, our experts in the Digital team here at Madano, have shared their key predictions for 2023, and offer their advice on how you could make them work for you.

Artificial intelligence could deliver higher quality and accuracy in its communication 

 Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been threatening the world for several years with its impending takeover, but the latest big developments are changing the game in how we use AI; from writing speeches, to generating new ideas, to suggesting shopping lists.

Although these generated responses have been available for a while, the latest outputs are much higher in quality, which begs the question, can AI help drive greater efficiency and productivity in the more creative arts of writing or software programming, as well as with what we’ve associated AI, such as the enhanced development of autonomous vehicles?

This year, more AI tools are being developed and proposing new ways of working in marketing and communications. We should embrace these tools and not see it as a threat to our profession, but manage it carefully. There remain questions on bias, ethics and accuracy but addressing these challenges now will enable us to work with machines in a more effective and integrated manner.

 It has the potential to speed up our jobs as copywriters or programmers, enabling us to do more great work in less time. We are the subject matter experts and can teach AI over time to learn from mistakes and the changes we make, but over time, we’ll see a new meaning of the term ‘hybrid working’ – one where we interact a lot closer with machines as part of our jobs.  

Vertical video will be the defining content format for social media

Inspired in no small part by the stratospheric rise in popularity of TikTok, other platforms have been quick to adopt formats that ape the central offer of this social juggernaut. As users continue to migrate to mobile-first for how they navigate social platforms, features such as YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels have risen massively in popularity, and even inspired Elon Musk to publicly ponder resurrecting Vine from the digital grave.

We’ve already seen more and more users produce channel-agnostic content in a square format that allows flexibility of execution, but increasingly the tide is turning away from “the grid” onto seamless flows of content. With the average user scrolling around 300ft a day (the equivalent of the Statue of Liberty!) content that feels native to this new way of engagement will have a better chance of success, and will soon dominate compared to less intuitive forms of browsing.

However, format can only get you so far. Whether you choose video or static content, vertical or horizontal, unless you provide good quality content that entertains, informs or engages your key audiences, it won’t matter. So while it is important to stay aware of format trends and new developments, making sure the content itself is good and relevant will always be crucial.

Augmented reality (AR) will continue to engage audiences beyond traditional social sharing

Like many of us, your social media feed was probably bombarded last month with friends, family and colleagues posting digitally-illustrated, and almost hyper-attractive, images of themselves as fairies, superheroes, and anime characters. This was all due to the trend lead by photo editing app, Lensa, and their ‘Magical Avatars’ tool, that uses machine learning and AR to create illustrated portraits based on users’ photos.

Augmented Reality, or the addition of digital elements over real-world views and experiences, is becoming one of the most popular ways audiences are enhancing their online experiences, through greater immersion into digital technology (like virtual and mixed reality).

So why are so many of us incapable of resisting seeing ourselves through an AR lens?

As we head towards a new internet revolution, commonly referred to as “Web 3”, users are seeking to engage with greater interactive experiences online, beyond the standard home feed scroll. We’ve seen immersive trends before, with the introduction of content formats like polls, quizzes, and live stories, and are also witnessing the rise of virtual reality experiences within the metaverse. With so much competition, apps are looking for unique ways to keep their users interested and most importantly, engaged. Along with social sharing apps, retail companies are also investing into AR technology to let consumers ‘try-before-you-buy’ items virtually before purchase, and key for marketers, companies are gathering consumer preference data through such AR tools.

Whether it’s seeing your face as a Disney princess or enabling AR for practical decision-making, this is a trend we can bet will stick around.

Voice-activated technology will dominate the ever-changing digital search landscape

Are you ready to give your keyboard a break and let your voice do the talking? Voice search has been making waves in the digital world and it's not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. The use of voice search on mobile devices alone continues to soar, with more than one in four people using voice assistants to carry out their daily search queries. By 2024, the number of digital voice assistants will reach an astronomical 8.4 billion, which is more than the world's population, and if that wasn't enough to convince you, the transactional value of purchases made through these devices is expected to reach a massive $19.4 billion by 2023, making it all the more important for businesses to take notice and adapt.

So, what’s behind this sudden surge in popularity? The answer is simple: convenience. With the rise of connected smart devices, consumers are looking for ways to make their lives easier. And what's more practical than finding what you're looking for with just your voice in about 5 seconds? The technology behind voice search is also rapidly improving. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and speech recognition, voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant are able to understand us even better and provide more accurate results to our complex queries.

But what does this mean for your business? It means that if you want to stay relevant and reach your target audiences, you need to start optimising for voice search. This includes, amongst other things, focusing on natural language optimisation by targeting long-tail, conversational keywords, adding FAQ schema markups, and making sure that your website is mobile-friendly.

By not optimising for voice search, you may miss out on a great deal of potential clients. The numbers speak for themselves; the trend of voice search is here to stay and is only set to grow in the future.

So with which of our predictions do you agree? Or perhaps disagree? If you’d like to know more about any of these topics or to discuss how you could use them to supercharge your digital strategy in 2023 make sure to reach out to our digital experts at [email protected] where we’d be happy to talk.