Social media marketers will be challenged to learn new marketing practices in 2015. Photo credit: sandeep pamnami
Not surprisingly, digital marketing continues to evolve quickly. Google updates its algorithm often to adjust its search engine results, new social media networks continue to emerge, and major social media platforms seem to operate under a dictum of continuous change (though not always improvement).
Here are some major trends experts expect in digital marketing during 2015 together with ideas on how social media marketers can respond.
Social and SEO merge. Social media will become more important for search engine results, as Google takes into account an organization’s social media standing. The result: SEO will work hand-in-hand with content marketing and social media. Social media marketers will need to learn more about their organization’s search engine strategy and communicate more closely with SEO experts. The marketers will need to relay social media information to their organization’s SEO experts.
Video. More brands will produce their own videos in response to the growing consumer interest. Video blogging, or vlogging, may challenge blogging as a content marketing strategy. Companies will either produce videos internally or work with video bloggers (vloggers) in exchange for reviews and exposure. Some vloggers will become online celebrities and gain major influence in niche topics.
Content marketing. Facebook’s new News Feed algorithm favors content that’s relevant to readers. That means successful marketers will create a content marketing strategy for Facebook — if they haven’t already — and create timely, useful content that meets Facebook users’ interests. Marketers who already excel at creating content will have an advantage. They can repurpose content from their blog to feature it on their Facebook Page and dedicate it to other purposes.
Mobile. Considering the rapid growth in mobile devices and the increased use for searching, shopping and social media, websites need to be mobile-friendly to attract increased traffic. Mobile phone Internet user penetration worldwide will reach 52.4 percent this year, according to statista.
Optimizing websites for mobile should be top priority. Social media managers must be involved in those website improvements to make sure all their content including text, graphics, animations and video displays correctly on the wide assortment of mobile devices.
Twitter search. Twitter recently released a new, more powerful Twitter search engine. That means social media marketers should pay more attention to keywords, hashtags, images and links so their Tweets show up higher in Twitter’s search engine results.
Social media data. Social media data will increasingly guide marketing decisions. More and more marketers will collect social media data through social media monitoring tools and analyze the data to help direct marketing decisions and improve marketing campaigns.
More testing. Marketers will test more aspects of digital marketing programs. Testing website layouts, landing pages and email copy helps improve traffic, increase conversions and improve the user experience. Digital marketers will also increasingly test different versions of social media ads to identify the most productive version.
Emerging networks. Many social media marketers will need to become familiar with smaller networks that are becoming more popular. In addition to Instagram and Snap Chat, new networks include Ello which claims to provide an ad-free social network that will not sell vital user data to third parties, Yik Yak which focuses on anonymous post exchanges by people who are nearby each other, and Tsu which offers revenue sharing on popular posts.
Bottom Line: Social media will challenge marketers in 2015 to master a new set of marketing practices and social media networks. Marketers must anticipate the changes, establish social media goals, set priorities and make the necessary investments to best capitalize on the evolution of social media. In many cases, the innovators and early adopters will gain competitive advantage.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
Thanks for posting William. Indeed, it is important to know how marketers can respond in social media trends.