As 2014 will be over very soon, it would be good to look at what 2015 hold for social media marketing.
Social media is developing at a rapid rate, so it’s worth taking a look at what direction it will be taking in 2015. We’ll begin our first prophecy with:
1. The Booming of Video Content
While video has become so popular across social media, this trend will be likely to gain a lot more traction in 2015. With the rise of video bloggers that have millions of YouTube subscribers, it won’t be surprising to see brands jumping on the video approach as well.
2. The Demise of Google+
2015 might be the time that Google says goodbye to its own social network for good. The prediction is supported with the fact that Vic Gundotra – Google’s Senior Vice President of Social – announced he was leaving the company back in April and Google killed Authorship back in August.
A lot of people spent time building their Google+ profiles in hopes that their content would appear higher in search results, yet now that Authorship’s been scrapped, it wouldn’t be surprising to see people migrating away from the network. It just a matter of time before Google ultimately opt to close the project.
3. More Premium Social
Anyone who manages a company’s social media will know that Facebook has been dramatically decreasing organic page reach in a bid to promote their paid advertising offering. This way, unless you’re a huge brand with a significant following, the only way to reach all of your fans is to get the premium service.
Following Facebook’s step, Pinterest released its Promoted Pins feature to more businesses in August and Twitter expanding their advertising offerings to include more specific mobile targeting. Businesses will more than likely boost their social media advertising efforts, as well as explore the possibility of hiring paid social media experts (we covered this in our digital job trends blog here).
4. The Year of Mobile
While this seems pretty obvious, there are many reasons to suggest that 2015 will see an even more dramatic increase in focus on mobile-first in terms of social media marketing and advertising. With Twitter developing its advertising platform and giving businesses the chance to target users by mobile network and users with new mobile devices, as well as buying mobile ad firm Tap Commerce back in July, it’s clear that social is leaning heavily towards mobile. With this in mind, it won’t be surprising to see teams in larger companies purely focused on mobile social media advertising.
5. More Data/Analytics
Several social media platforms have really upped their game when it comes to analytics and data on offer in 2014, so I would expect to see even smaller companies making more use of the information on offer to them in 2015. This comes after Pinterest released its incredibly detailed analytics dashboard back in June and Twitter announced that they’re experimenting with inbuilt analytics within tweets last month, so it’s clear that social media platforms are keen to share their data with their customers. This will have a knock-on effect on businesses who will use this information for more intelligent social media marketing.