When it comes to social media marketing, tools and fads come and go in a heartbeat. What’s hot today, might not be hot tomorrow.
However, in 2014, we’re seeing some trends that won’t go away anytime soon. As truly useful tools rise to the top of the cluttered marketplace, brand marketers are gaining new abilities to drive real results via social media.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at what’s hot in social media marketing in 2014. Each of these trends has been growing for years, but finally, brand marketers and corporate leadership teams are prioritizing them and giving them more budget dollars.
1. Incentives
The days of “Like our Facebook Page” are over. The thrill of clicking the Like button disappeared well over a year ago. Today, people aren’t willing to tie themselves to a brand or company unless they get something in return. The promise of great content can be enough of an incentive to get some consumers to Like your Facebook Page or follow your brand on other social media channels, but there is a huge difference between “liking” and engaging.
Incentives work, not only in getting people to take the initial step to “like” your brand across social media channels, but also to engage with your brand. In other words, one time incentives aren’t enough. Incentives should be ongoing to build a new audience and to reward your existing audience. The latter is the part that brands are finally getting better at.
2. Mobile
Finally, brand marketers and corporate leaders are realizing that a “mobile-always” strategy is critical to ongoing success. Content and communications must work effectively or the rapidly growing (and dominating) mobile audience won’t give your brand a second chance. Simply applying an existing online marketing strategy to the mobile world doesn’t work.
3. Hyper-Targeting
Broadcasting and mass communications are taking a back seat to hyper-targeting. Whether brand marketers are pursuing hyper-local targeting strategies or laser-focused targeting based on demographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors, they’re all realizing that the power of social media marketing comes from building one-to-one relationships, not one-to-many relationships. Finding the right audience is an essential step to boosting brand awareness, recognition, sales, loyalty, and advocacy.
What social media marketing trends are you seeing in 2014? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: CaptureQueen licensed CC BY 2.0
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
Social media like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Flickr are becoming more and more important in our everyday lives. There are hundreds of millions of people using them everyday.
If you want your internet business success, you should get full use of it, otherwise you will be outdated.
You’re absolutely right about incentives. I always tell my clients that people want to know what you can do for them before they decide to engage, and hooking a potential customer is just easier when you give them some incentive.
Great read! Thanks :)