2014, The Progression of Social Media Marketing.

How Important is Social for 2014?

In 2014, social media marketing implementation strategies are expected to grow substantially. As it does, it becomes more important for us to arm ourselves with as much insight as possible into what this means for social media strategy, innovation, engagement and most importantly: ROI.

Before we dive in, there is a huge flaw in the current association with "social media marketing" that needs to go away. And that is, letting the term "social" restrict your use of these platforms to their full potential. In this blog, The Dirty Little Secret About Social Media, Howard Pyle talks about this issue and the negative connotation some Social Media Managers have expressed about their titles.

He says, "How can it be that social is the most powerful transformative force in modern business, yet social experts are desperate to demonstrate that they're bigger than what their job descriptions imply?"

Even if you are not currently involved with the social media aspect of marketing, it becomes more important to begin implementing social media strategies across multiple distribution channels, and using it to reinforce your messaging and better align your goals. Why?

"40% of smartphone owners check their social
media pages first thing when they wake up"
-socialnetworkingwatch.com

According to Google's blog: starting from 2011 and moving forward, social media shares will place much more weight on validity of content and search engine rankings than it has in the past. Hubspot, (an amazing hub for content marketers) says that, "when someone distributes your content [via social media], it makes your content relevant in the eyes of Google. Along with Hubspot, other companies have taken the lead in better understanding ways to optimize their social media pages.

Knowing the importance of shared social media content, the New York Times posted an article recently with research findings on how to get more shares in social media. The article explains that social media users want to create a positive image of themselves by sharing upbeat stories. In other words, positive social media pieces drive traffic while posts that elicit emotion, drives shares.

This means, that social media is so much more than generating random conversations and posting announcements.

The Movement in 2014

Visual Content

According to Forbes, social media marketing will become a necessity, especially as it becomes an even stronger pillar contributing to search engine optimization. The difference in 2014, is the expected shift to visual content over text. This includes images and the sharability of six-second micro videos. Jayson Demers (CEO of AudienceBloom) and many others predict a large growth in visual content platforms such as Slideshare, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram. The key to utilizing these sites properly will be 'keeping "sharability" top of mind in creating content for these platforms.

Dedicated Social Staff?

Forbes also predicts a shift of corporations moving from assigning social media marketing tasks to individual to creating a dedicated social manager, team or department. Although, many recent articles (from this month and last month Quartz Sept 2013 and CNN Fortune Oct 2013) have also talked about the death of the Social Media Manager title.

Influencer Growth

Thought leaders and Influencers. Connecting bloggers to brands is not only expected to grow in 2014, it is also expected to distribute differently. Instead of focusing on posting within their own blog, writers will utilize high profile sites to post and distribute their content. Businesses may spend less time creating content and more time reaching out to influencers to guest post, or ghost write. The reason influencers are on the rise? In 2014, exposure will be everything!



With all of these shifts combined, deeper content is expected to grow. Social media story telling is on the rise. An interesting stat in social growth, is the shift of social users. According to stats from www.stateofdigital.com, the middle aged group (45-54 years old) is the fastest growing segment in social media space. It may be wise to consider your target segments when communicating on these various platforms. And if you are targeting millennials under the age of 21, consider using image sharing sites like Instagram as these are expected to grow faster than others for this group specifically.