Social Media in 2014
Our Predictions of what’s hot in 2014.
- Reports are that mobile will overtake desktop usage somewhere between this year and 2015. Mobile optimisation will be crucial moving forward.
- Google will continue to drive traffic to the Google+ platform and reward those that interact by boosting rankings. ‘Promoted Posts’ have been introduced to help get content to a wider audience.
- The biggest focus for every marketeer at the moment should be engaging content. We heard it throughout 2013 and it remains top of agendas. Businesses will need to focus budget on creating great, shareable content. Blogging, meaningful interactions with customers and informative, timely updates will all be essential in 2014.
- This year will see a focus on visual content – videos, images, photos will be key in 2014. Posts and ads will become increasingly shorter and more punchy as social media moves to a new ‘quick to consume’ approach.
- Social advertising will continue to grow and develop during 2014, ROI will be track-able through further improvement to analytics. Promoted Posts, Tweets, Pins and videos will all be a fixture in 2014.
- The hashtag has now been adopted by Facebook and so looks here to stay, will the hashtag appear on advertising this year to drive traffic to specific campaigns?
- Will more niche platforms emerge as the likes of Facebook and Twitter become increasingly busier? Will people look for an alternative such as Snapchat in order to be heard?
2013 saw phenomenal changes in how businesses use social media and how social media strives to evolve at a spiralling pace, this is set to continue throughout 2014.
Mobile, Mobile, Mobile.
Get wise and optimise.
As we discussed way back in February last year with numbers accessing the internet via mobile devices rapidly increasing, it is becoming essential for businesses to optimise their website, in order to keep a competitive edge. So the design should be responsive, resolving to whatever size screen it’s being displayed on. 48% of Facebook’s daily users only access it on mobile phones.
Key for 2014 will be thinking about how people are interacting with your organisation via mobile phones and sharing content via social media. 2013 was called “The Year of Responsive Web Design” by Mashable, and we predict that small businesses will continue to focus on this during 2014.
35% of all search engine traffic is expected to take place from a mobile device this year and reports state that mobile will overtake desktop usage somewhere between this year and 2015. In fact in Q1 2013 tablets exceeded traditional desktop devices for conversion rates for the first time, this suggests that people are increasingly moving towards buying on tablets.
Mobile search advertising is expected to grow by 76% this year and mobile banner ads by a huge 100%. Many users already ‘check-in’ to promote their location, 2014 is therefore likely to see more location based advertising, based on users real-time locations.
The year to get visual
There has been a shift during the latter part of 2013 towards more visuals being shared on social media compared to text or posts.
Stats show that photo posts receive 53% more likes on Facebook than posts without. Tweets with images on Twitter received 18% more clicks than Tweets without and more importantly 150% more re-tweets.
2013 has seen an increased use of Instagram and Pinterest and interestingly many young/teen users have turned away from Facebook to the app Snapchat. Snapchat messages, photos and videos are a snapshot of a moment or conversation and disappear after a few seconds. Facebook attempted to acquire Snapchat during 2013 for $3 billion, clearly seeing this as an emerging competitor having found a niche in the market. The spontaneity and excitement of Snapchat is proving new and appealing and could be one to watch in 2014.
Video network Vine appeared in January 2013 and already has over 40 million registered users. Instagram bought out its video updates to simplify the production of videos on a mobile.
Facebook and Twitter are also responding to the trend of more visual content, with Twitter introducing Twitter Cards which enable you to attach images to Tweets and Facebook continuing to move towards more image-based content with the rule no more than 20% of a Facebook ad image containing text. We’re predicting therefore that 2014 will see visuals within social media on a sharp increase.
With the introduction of the app Flipboard (approx. 85 million users), users can now create their own magazines and even statistics are increasingly presented in the more visual format of Infographics.
If we had to name 5 focus points for your social media strategy for 2014 here they are:
- Focus budget on producing engaging content – and share it. Facebook is favouring quality content in their Newsfeed, LinkedIn introduced LinkedIn Pulse to integrate more outside content ensuring sharing of news/blogs increased on their platform. Social media will need to be on the agenda of each business area within an organisation in order to produce well rounded, insightful, creative content.
- Consider how customers are viewing your website, it will need to be mobile compatible to ensure calls to action are clear and accessible from mobile devices.
- More show and less tell – 2014 will become increasingly visual so look to incorporate images, photos and videos to social media updates. Lengthy posts will become old hat, keep updates short and punchy to support the move towards viewing updates on mobile devices.
- If you haven’t already, join Google+ and create circles for sharing content, this will help boost Google rankings as Google continue to drive traffic to this platform.
- Look into Social Pay Per Click advertising (see our December blog post) advances in this area will be inevitable during 2014.
Happy New Year from Front Page Advantage. If you would like support to detox your social media accounts and get them on track give us a call today.