With social behemoths like Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram coming to maturity, and with established sites like Facebook and Twitter likely to release interesting new updates and features in an effort to stay ahead of their fierce competitors, 2014 is going to be an exciting year for social media users, individuals as well as businesses and organizations. Here are some interesting social media predictions for 2014.
Smaller businesses and organizations with rely more than ever on social media as a content marketing tool.
Many small businesses and organizations have embraced social media this year, and the trend will continue next year. Apart from Facebook and Twitter, the adoption of LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest will substantially increase.
Social media marketing will become for most brands as important as SEO.
While brands will continued to try to generate more traffic from search engines through SEO, they will also create more high-quality content for social media channels and becoming more involved in connecting with their fans and followers, in an effort to get them to click and share their links and follow their calls to action.
More people and brands will start using Google+ seriously.
With 300 million monthly visitors, Google+ has surpassed Twitter in this respect, being second only to Facebook. The convenient integration with the SERP, Gmail, and other Google products, and the potential impact that using Google+ can have on a site’s search ranking are the main reasons why users flock to it.
More businesses will offer a social media customer service.
Fans and followers are becoming bolder and bolder, asking more and more questions on the social pages of their favorite brands. Companies know that if they don’t respond they will acquire a negative reputation in no time. Job openings in social media customer service will considerably increase, as many medium and large companies active on social sites will hire at least one social media support person.
Social media ads usage and revenues will soar.
After Facebook has introduced its successful ads platform, including video ads, all the other social networks have followed or are following suit: Twitter Promoted Tweets/Accounts, Instagram Promoted Photos/Videos, Pinterest Promoted Pins, Foursquare Ads, to name only a few. Not sure where to start? Here’s a comparison between Facebook and Twitter ads.
More brands and individuals will use professional graphic design services and SEO services for enhancing their social pages.
Social networks as marketing platforms are becoming increasingly competitive, and brands as well as individuals like artists or bloggers will try hard to craft beautiful, compelling pages, enlisting the help of professional web designers and SEO experts.
More businesses will understand the value of their fans and seek to reward them through regular contests, special offers, discount codes, free downloads, and other goodies.
Businesses who thrive on social media are already doing this, offering their fans rewards in return for marketing their brand by liking and sharing their content and commenting on their pages.
Finally, social media optimization for mobile users is also going to become more important. It will be interesting to see what social sites will do to increase their appeal for mobile users, the fastest-growing and most exciting group of web users globally.
Image Credit: [Flickr/Manofaste]
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