Few Social Media Predictions for 2014

As we all know, social media is the newest way to communicate and network. Social media marketing is a whole new revolution and slowly the traditional means of marketing are becoming obsolete. This fast and easy medium of communication, marketing and networking has made the world a smaller place. In this blog-post, we’ll be discussing about the some predictions made by experts in the world of social media.

There are new social media platforms which are being introduced from every corner, making it quite a task to understand which ones to be active on and which one works well for marketing your product/industry. As we’re moving towards the latter half of 2013, it is important to look ahead and know where social networking is heading and how we can be on board with it.

Investing in Social Media – A Necessity

Social media has become a ‘must have’ in most organisations today. Investing resources and time to develop a good social media team and strategy is critical for all businesses. Almost every business big and small conducts social media marketing (SMM) activities due to its impact in terms of lead generation, increased website traffic and revenue. Now a-days, companies prefer hiring social media strategists to carry out SMM activities rather than having their existing staff do the same.

Some of the few benefits of social media in short are as follows:

·         Improved Brand Awareness

·         Word-of-mouth advertising

·         Increased customer loyalty

·         Easier buyer-seller communication

·         Improved mass audience reach

·         Economical

·         Improved social signal

Increased Importance of Google+

Facebook is the most powerful social media tool but others are gaining momentum too. Google+ is going strong as well and has the second highest number of monthly users. Google+ is not just any other platform. It gives users to collect personal information and is proving to be a major part of Google’s strong scheme of SEO, social signals and providing a much more personalized search experience. Due to its vast usage and many advantages to users, social media experts are predicting Google+ to be one of the key components to Google’s search ranking algorithm by 2014 end.

The Success of Image and Video-based Social Media Sites

Sharing on social media sites is better with image and video -centric sites. We’ve all seen how good it is to share a videos /photographs with your audience rather than a text based content. Predictions tell that visual content has increasingly got more reach and will be a critical part of a social media content strategy. So, it is a good idea to give weightage to visual –centric sites such as Slideshare, Pinterest, Youtube and more.

LinkedIn – A boon for B2B business growth

LinkedIn will hold a steady position as one of the best social networking site for professionals. With its newest launch of the Influencers Program, LinkedIn is positioning itself as the largest sources of content creation for professionals. The advantages of LinkedIn are tremendous for B2B marketers.

Facebook and Twitter

Facebook and Twitter will continue to be massively successful. With the growing buzz about Google+, Facebook and Twitter surely have to be innovative to keep up with the growth of Google+ as well as the image and video based networks. 

If you want to be a successful marketer, its’ time to make the right choices and get ahead with a super social media strategy!

Keep a track on our upcoming blogs for many more discussions on some of the latest topics in the social media space!

All about Facebook Hashtags

Facebook recently introduced the hashtags feature to it. In this blog-post, we will be talking about how to use Facebook hashtags effectively for social media marketing.

The general function of a hashtag is to bring together communities of similar interests. However, the use of this feature differs slightly depending upon the social media platform. Facebook got this tool into action to bring common people, conversations and the buzz about various topics in the limelight. These hash-tagged topics could include movies, sports, events and so on. It helps people to be on the same page while talking about one common topic. Hash-tagging is the most organised and convenient way to monitor discussions on Facebook on such a huge scale. Hashtags also help people to indulge in conversations they are interested in. On Facebook, it works well for pages, posts, photographs, comments, status updates, etc. 

Some information on Facebook Hashtags   

·         Tap on the hashtags to get directed to its feed. You can even click on hashtags that are from different platforms such as Instagram. Read our blog on Instagram hashtags.

·         On Facebook, every hashtag has its own URL.

·         You can search for a particular hashtag in your Facebook search bar. This is possible even in your browser. For example: www.facebook.com/hashtag/abc (Replace ‘abc’ with the topic of your interest).

·         You could also compose posts from the hashtag feed and search and get results.

For Social Media Marketing

·         As mentioned above, each hashtag on Facebook has its own URL so you should aim to drive maximum traffic to that URL from other websites to create more discussions.

·         Use hashtags as much as possible to start conversations. Every hashtag will be united into its own status update box on Facebook.

·         Make sure your hashtags are relevant to your target audience or your industry.

·         Use this feature in trending topics related to your line of business.

·         Remember to use capitals to first letters of your tags to make it easy to read. Eg:- #FacebookHashtagsBlog

·         Restrict the number of hashtags per post. 1 to 2 tags is good enough.

·         Be aware hashtags privacy settings in Facebook.

Hashtags on Facebook are being used widely. Follow the above tips and enjoy this useful and easy social media feature! Keep reading our blogs for many more informative topics on social media.