We Are Social’s Top 10 Blog Posts in 2023
It’s been another busy year in social media. As always, we’ve been hard at work keeping our 65,000 blog subscribers from all over the word updated with the latest news, trends, platform updates and more. As the year draws to a close, we’re sharing our top 10 best read blogs of the year (Lemon8 anyone?!) to see what captured our readers’ attention in 2023.
Kicking off the top 10 is our Future of Influence series. We explored the subject with a three-part blog and event programme in August, with perspectives from our Global CSO Mobbie Nazir, UK Head of Research & Insight Paul Greenwood, Singapore Senior Planner Agalia Tan and US VP of Influencer Marketing Gigi Ouf. Download our report (for free!) at the link above.
9/ How we used ChatGPT to create the A.Idea hotline
Take one old-school red phone and one exciting new technology and what do you get? The A.Idea hotline! With ChatGPT becoming prolific in early 2023, our team in London created a phone that allows anyone to pick it up, give a brief to ChatGPT, and hear the response back in real time.
8/ Global trends shaping marketing in 2023
Trends predictions are fun and no one notices if you were right… right?! At the start of each year, our global leadership team shares their predictions for what’s going to be big in social over the year. In January they called out the rise of TikTok, AI, social search and more. Were they on the money? Take a look and judge for yourself.
7/ The power of play: Gen Z’s cure to loneliness
Gen Z has been labelled ‘The Lonely Generation’ – can video games become the unexpected remedy for this isolation? Lorenzo Perosino, Strategist at We Are Social Netherlands, explained why games have become a safe space for Gen Z to connect, and what brands need to know about it.
6/ Why social is the new search for Gen Z
Roughly half of the world’s social media users say that they actively visit social platforms to learn more about brands and to see their content. In this blog, EU Regional Lead Ottavio Nava set out the case for why social is the new search for younger generations, examining the impact of platforms like TikTok and technologies like AI.
While it might feel like a lifetime ago that we were talking about Lemon8, it was actually only in April. While the platform was on everyone’s minds, we shared an overview of what it was about: content style, creator presence and brand activity.
4/ Rethinking Value During a Cost of Living Crisis
How is the cost of living crisis playing out on social, and how should marketers respond? This was the theme of our report, Rethinking Value During a Cost of Living Crisis, that launched back in May. In this blog, our Head of Research & Insight, Paul Greenwood, gave an overview of the new ways people are expressing value in the current economic climate, and shared key insights from our data partner Statista Q.
Back in February, cultural insights queen Mira Kopolovic (now our Global Head of Cultural Insights) took a look back at the content and moments that shaped 2022, and shared some informed future-gazing on where social was heading. From the rise of surreal content to people focusing on small wins, she called out some of the behaviours that have permeated our feeds over the last year.
Coming in at number 2 is our trends report, Think Forward: The Social Reckoning, released in November. The 2024 edition is jam packed with the latest cultural trends and how they’re playing out on social. Read about how digital natives are embracing ‘Mischief Mode’ to hack the internet, or how characters, communities, and behaviours born on the internet are moving seamlessly into IRL worlds in ‘Offline Internet’. Get ready for the world of social in 2024!
1/ Digital 2023
We have a winner! Over the last 12 months our amazing reports, compiled by Simon Kemp, have had more than 20 million views, downloads or references – they’re an invaluable free resource for millions of marketers all around the world. Stay tuned to our blog for Digital 2024, coming at the end of January, for the latest digital and social data and more of Simon’s expert analysis.
Thank you to these brilliant minds and to all our amazing contributors in 2023 – we look forward to sharing more insights with you in 2024.