Social media continues to grow and with it attracting larger and larger audiences worldwide. Businesses are constantly working on improving their presence across the major platforms and to figure out how to use them to gain extra online exposure. Companies across the globe within all sectors are looking towards 2014 and improving their current networks and ways in which to engage with them and drive sales. Another important part of 2014 and social media will be the overall marketing procedures businesses have and how to better merge platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook within current departments such as PR, sales / product development, customer feedback / experiences.
Businesses will also be looking towards more expectant growth from social media and looking at either employing dedicated staff members to cover management or outsourcing to professional expert agencies who are able to deliver proven results. Many companies will have current social media management campaigns yet with no real focus and even at times, with multiple people managing the same accounts handling matters and updates in very different ways and by different rules etc.
We will also see the need from companies to take advantage of the 24/7 access to consumers that social media platforms offer and research will be invested to discover best times to communicate with target audiences and the results their endeavors are having. As a whole, social media will take up a great part of a businesses digital marketing / marketing spending budget. There will also be a greater focus on security and the need to make sure that members of staff are kept within guidelines if running multiple business social media accounts.
What will 2014 mean for Social Media?
- Social Media marketing will be a real marketing necessity rather than an extra add on.
- Rise of micro updates. No longer will long text messages engage audiences, micro videos such as those from Vine will increase in popularity.
- LinkedIn will grow in popularity for business to business growth and for recruitment purposes.
- Google+ will finally become important and will sit as a must have for SEO ranking purposes.
- Measurement / Analytics will be more important, companies will need to see effect that social media marketing campaigns are having and have the ability to study results to decide what is working, where it is working and at what time.