The social media forecast
For most of the country, winter 2014 remains long and drawn out with daffodils and tulips being sucker-punched through April by blasts of snow and frozen rain. Knowing that the snow was on its way didn’t take the bite out of the cold fronts that just kept coming, but it did, undoubtedly, helped us prepare.
Social media is the same way.
For those who haven’t grown up on-line – let’s say the 40-somethings on up – social media isn’t really natural. So, a forecast about what’s to come is helpful. It doesn’t necessarily take the bite out of the constantly changing social media forecast, but at least a look at what’s to come can help us prepare.
Social media is about real-time marketing with respect to on-line content, video and mobile. What makes it challenging for many in business is that, like the weather, social media lives in a constantly changing space. Add to the challenge its existence in a world of rapidly advancing technology and social media leaves many confused and wanting to ignore it in the hopes that it will go away or that other strategies will work. But you can’t ignore it and sustainably speaking the other will eventually stop having its traditional effect. Social media is here to stay. Here’s the hard truth: Either learn to embrace social media or start writing your exit strategy because a shutdown will be inevitable.
We get it: in social media’s naturally changing environment, keeping up can be a challenge; knowing where to invest media efforts can be overwhelming. Social media guru, Ted Rubin, a leading Social Marketing Strategist, Keynote Speaker and Brand Evangelist has some crystal ball suggestions on where to focus your social media attention in Q3 and Q4 of 2014. Before even reading his top 4 suggestions, here’s his bottom line: “Social media is part of the overall mix-not a separate line item any more… I think we’re going to see more and more companies wrapping everything they do in a social shell. Most importantly, I think you’ll see more brands blur the lines between marketing and customer service.”
Social media focus for Q3 & Q4, 2014:
- Short-form video: There is a shift toward short, concise videos. Video can say more in 15-seconds than photographs. Understanding the platforms such as Twitter’s Vine is important. Understanding how users consume the content is key to developing a strategy.
- Fandom: Within your overall customer base, there is a sub-culture of raving fans. They are the ones who will talk about you, post about you and promote your brand for you to their world. In other words, engage with your biggest fans and make them “part” of your marketing team. “Embrace the fandom,” says Rubin, who in 2009, Rubin started using the term, ROR, Return on Relationship (Return on Relationship, hashtag #RonR).
- Google +: While Facebook and Twitter have about 1.2 billion and 232 million monthly active users, respectively, Google + is fast becoming a popular social platform. “It’s integration with Google search results and Google Authorship makes it a no-brainer in 2014,” says Rubin who adds that being active on Google+, even a little bit, should improve the search engine optimization (SEO) for your business.
- Content writing for your audience: What you say on Twitter is going to be different than what you say on LinkedIn. Content marketing, while key to messaging from websites to collateral, takes on different forms in different social media venues. “I think the need to put out more content will become less important in favor of focusing on and creating content that’s contextually relevant to the social channels you’re using,” says Rubin. Brands should start asking themselves, “How are people using a particular social channel?” and “What makes a channel unique?” Then they will create contextually relevant content based on that insight,” suggests Rubin.
For more social media insights from Rubin check out his piece in Entrepreneur.
In Parts 3 and 4 of our social media blog:
Social Media Part 3: Rules of Engagement
Social Media Part 4: Do you have a social media strategy?
