The Latest Social Media Trends for Small Businesses

By Emily Raser, SBTDC Communications

If you thought 2024 was a wild year for social media marketing, 2025 is even more intense. With AI tools continuing to grow and an even greater demand for authenticity, it’s no wonder many business owners feel overwhelmed. Navigating how to integrate AI into your marketing workflow while still nailing your brand voice isn’t easy. This is a common challenge for small- to mid-sized business owners.

The good news? The core brand goals don’t really change; they just evolve with the landscape. So, let’s take a look at what we’re working with this year.

Top Goals for Brands in 2025:

Using AI to improve workflow but not replace user-generation
Creating authentic connections and brand experiences
Storytelling in meaningful ways; visual storytelling
Reflecting your brand through intelligent, value- and brand-led marketing
Increasing overall revenue and sales

Think about these goals and what changes you’d like to make to your strategy: How can you put these ideas into action?

Stay on Top of Your Brand

Most organizations know what their brand stands for—just look at your mission statement! But to curate the best marketing and branding presence, a business should review more than their mission and values. It’s important to pay close attention to what the data demonstrates and consider how best to improve their strategy based on those statistics.

If you’re looking for ways to improve your brand, start with delegating responsibility to someone on your team who can maintain it. Creating a brand kit (like this one from the SBTDC) with consistent logos, colors, typography, imagery guidelines, et cetera, is a really easy way to figure out what you want your brand to look and feel like, which should ultimately guide your business’s tone and how you show up on social media. If you don’t have someone who focuses on your brand/social media, make sure to find time to do it in your daily or weekly workflows. Remember, how you show up is how your business gains traction (good and bad).

It takes five to seven impressions for people to remember a brand, which means that the more your brand’s posts are consistent in color, typography, and iconography (imagery), the more likely your brand will be recognized (1). But recognition isn’t even the best part; consistent brand presentation across channels can increase revenue by up to twenty-three percent (1).

Other strategies for staying consistent include implementing a clear content approval process and planning ahead. Have multiple layers of individuals check copy and graphics for consistency and create a social media calendar with outgoing posts. Both of these strategies improve adherence to brand standards and ensure the quality and quantity of posts. You might also consider reusing or recycling content, as it helps maintain consistency while also adding variety to your material.

Intelligent, Value and Brand-Led Marketing

I just talked about the importance of creating and maintaining a brand, however, in order to capture audiences in 2025, content that is intelligent, value-driven, and brand-led is the way to go. For example, one of the SBTDC’s values is Impact, so we strive to deliver valuable, measurable client results. We show our impact on social media by posting regular client spotlights where we show off the various accomplishments of our awesome clients. And yes, it really can be as simple as that sometimes.

An easy way to implement intelligent content is creating posts that reflect the expertise in your business. Are you an owner of a woodworking company that creates custom kitchen cabinets? What tips or advice can you share with your audience that not only shows your knowledge and experience, but makes them want to contact you? And, more importantly, what values can you tie-in to show the authenticity of your brand.

One source (5) said that younger generations are influenced by brands who have a commitment to the environment or sustainability. If that is something your brand values and is ingrained in your everyday practices, why not advertise that? However, it’s important to keep in mind the authenticity piece here–even though sustainability might be appealing to a younger generation, if it is important to your business but is not necessarily part of your brand or your values, then try to find other ways to connect with your audience and target populations that won’t feel forced or inauthentic.

AI and Social Media Marketing

When it comes to AI, brands are using it. Even more so in 2025. Hubspot reports that AI tools have been a major differentiator in helping marketers connect with their audiences in the last year (5). A significant seventy-one percent of marketers who have used generative AI to create content said it performed better than content made without AI (2).

These points are intriguing, but it’s important to go back to one crucial question before engaging with AI in your marketing: How can you implement AI in ways that resonate with your business and your goals (think value- and brand-led content creation)?

Building an Authentic Social Media Presence

Sprout Social reveals that the second most significant area where consumers feel brands fall short on social media is in transparency about their business practices and values (4). Emphasizing transparency and authenticity enables brands to remain true to their core principles and foster deeper emotional connections with their audience. Therefore, prioritizing this aspect in your social media strategy is essential. Before we dive into strategies for brands aiming to enhance authenticity and transparency, consider these relevant statistics that can strengthen your approach:

Customer Loyalty: 89% of consumers stay loyal to brands that share their values, and 73% love a brand because of helpful customer service (1).
Transparency and Trust: 94% of customers are more likely to be loyal to a brand that offers complete transparency, and 39% would start using a brand if it provided full product transparency (1).
Emotional Connection: About 66% of consumers feel connected to a brand when they trust it (1), and 73% prefer personalized shopping experiences (3), indicating that emotional connections and personalization are key to customer retention.

Easy ways to improve authenticity

Show the behind the scenes. Share photos of employees at conferences, events, or just around the office! This helps your audience see the humanity behind your business.
Engage with your audience. Ask open-ended questions, respond to comments, run polls and contests, share user-generated content, host Q&A sessions.
Know your audience and follow their lead. Pay attention to what kinds of people follow you and how they engage with your brand. Follow their lead by posting the kind of content they like and engage with the most.

Following the 80/20 Rule

Another important piece to authenticity is following the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of your social media content should be engaging, educational, or entertaining, while only twenty percent should be promotional.

Consumers generally dislike excessive self-promotion from brands. In fact, thirty-six percent view “too much self-promotion” as a major deterrent in their perception of brands on social media (2). Moreover, fifty-six percent of consumers believe that brands should be more relatable (2). These statistics highlight the need not only for transparency and authenticity but also for a deeper understanding of what truly matters to your audience.

Use AI, but don’t forget that authenticity starts with you

Yes, AI is powerful and can streamline your workflow in a big way. But in a world where AI-generated content is quickly becoming the norm, user-generated content often stands out as the most effective way to convey authenticity. Think about it this way: if you want your audience to connect with you, the business owner, and get a sense of your family in your family-run business, what better way to share that voice and story than through content created by you in your voice? AI can help speed up the content creation process, but it doesn’t always capture the tone, personality, and heart that only you, the storyteller, can bring.

Capitalize on Storytelling

Last year I talked about how short-form videos are one of the best ways to connect with your current audience and reach new audiences. In 2024, Youtube took over as the most effective social media platform for brands, growing by seventy-nine percent year over year, overtaking both Facebook and Instagram (2).

In 2025, the top social media channels are Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok (5). Once again, the channels that are focused on the visual side of storytelling are the most popular. Brands need to be paying attention to the rise in popularity of these platforms in order to adapt and stay relevant.

Storytelling and showing off your brand through real accounts or heart-warming stories has always been an effective way to captivate an audience, and while visual storytelling (mainly video content) has become preferred amongst several generations, the main idea of authentic storytelling still remains. This means that if making regular videos doesn’t necessarily work for your brand, that’s okay. There are other ways to visually tell your story such as:

Quality social media graphics
High quality photography of you or your business’s employees working or photographs of your products and how they’re made
Bar graphs and charts to show data
Carousels (LinkedIn), Stories (Instagram/Facebook), or good ol’ infographics

Just remember that people like to hear the background of a brand, its stories, the people behind the scenes that make it work, and what keeps it running every day. I would highly recommend trying video-format storytelling, but if you’re a business owner that is new, any of the options above may work, just remember to be authentic and lean on your brand and your values as much as possible. When in doubt, use AI to help. But also remember that user-generated content can sometimes be the best way to really connect with your audience and using AI might just aid the brainstorming process.

Moving Forward

Social media marketing is always evolving, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to staying true to your brand. If you’re creating content that reflects your values, tells your story, adds real value to your audience, and showcases your business in a way that makes you proud, then you’re on the right track. Strong, authentic content is the foundation—everything else is just a bonus.

Sources:

The Latest Social Media Trends for Small Businesses (Updated for 2025)