2014: The Year Social Media Hits Puberty

It's nothing short of amazing how businesses have expanded, new industries have been created, and cottage industries have become multi-million (or billion) dollar integrations into the larger Borg-like entities of Google, Yahoo, and the like under the banner of social media. What makes it amazing is the fact that the segment is still defining itself, even as it grows beyond niche networking into an all-encompassing, integral piece of digital life. And it's just out of its diapers.

It's been both wonderful and frustrating to watch the evolution from the first implementation of MySpace to the current space of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+, just to name the biggies. But in the last year or so things have started to gel, to coalesce, to become more integrated. Instagram  and Pinterest gave way to picture sharing being integrated on every network. Then came Vine, and video sharing spread. Hashtags made the jump from Twitter to the socialverse at large. And then there's SnapChat, a whole new can of worms.

There's momentum now. The floundering is all but over, and the future will come quickly. So what can we look forward to in 2014? How should I know? I'm no psychic. I can make some educated guesses though, based on the trends and progressions of the past year (and insight from some thought leaders - hey, we all need input).

Facebook Will Slow Down

It's not rocket science, just normal business cycles and generational differences. Facebook has been on top of the social scene for years, but they're becoming mom and dad's social network. A recent article mentioned that in Europe teens won't even admit to having a Facebook profile, it's so uncool. Facebook surely will remain a top player, but watch for major growth from other sites to give competition in numbers. As a business, that means you can't keep clinging to Facebook as you only online presence. Time to branch out.

On the flip side, Twitter will grow this year. In the wake of a successful IPO and with revenues now urgent for shareholders' sake, look for new opportunities on the site.

Images and Videos Will Dominate

No, I didn't steal that headline from last year's article. I realize that pictures and videos are already the hottest thing on the web, but this year they won't lose any steam. The question is, will sites that are image-centric (Tumblr, Path, SlideShare) continue to grow, or will their functionality become obsolete as the Facebooks and Twitters of the web integrate images more and in new ways? If you haven't leveraged Vine or Instagram for video promotions in your company, this is the time to do it.

SnapChat will Shake Things Up

SnapChat may have inadvertently started a revolution this year. Even if the company were to go belly-up today, their model is one that is already sending reverberations of fear and hope throughout the internet. In the face of the most intrusive breach of personal privacy ever known in our country, if not the world (the NSA scandal, of course), SnapChat created the unthinkable, at least to a digital marketer: an erasable internet.

Unless they get squashed before the general public knows what they are and embraces the idea, it could spread like a virus in 2014. A good virus for you as a person, a deadly one for marketing a business online. Imagine no data to crunch in determining who does what online. Shooting in the dark, to put it mildly. Watch this development closely, because regardless of how it shakes out, I predict a big change coming in this area.

Finally, Google+

I've been saying it for at least two years, but this will be the year that Google+ goes mainstream. They've already quietly climbed to the number two spot behind Facebook for number of users, and they stand to gain from Facebook's likely losses this year. If you haven't read my reasonings for G+ domination before, here's the nutshell version.

G+ is simply an arm of Google search, which is the central piece of a gigantic empire. Google Docs, Maps, Drive, Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, and Android, just to name a few. They're all integrated, and they're all tied to the primary activity on the web: search (through Google). No other network can come close to even thinking about the reach Google has in the big picture. Your self-driving car will come from them. We'll all be wearing Google Glass in a few years. G+ will be our hub for all things online eventually. Wait and see. 

Bye-bye, Foursquare

The company may still be around for a while, but their usefulness has been expended now that location-based services have become ubiquitous across social networks and apps. Does anyone really check-in with Foursquare anymore? I thought everyone had already moved their check-in rituals to Facebook or G+, but I could be wrong.

The Free Lunch Ends

Perhaps the biggest impact to businesses when it comes to social media in 2014 will be money. Social media has long been considered the "free" way to market, although the good marketers have known for some time that budgets are necessary to have maximum impact. And why would you want less?

All of the top 100 non-celebrity Twitter accounts use targeted marketing to reach their audience according to one study, and that involves spending money. The same findings also revealed a fact that is almost sacrilegious to the social marketing gurus: targeted educational content distribution is more effective than conversations for building a following. So there.

In your social media marketing budget (because we already established that you need one, remember?), the top three considerations should be hiring a social media manager, purchasing advertising, and getting the right tools for the job. The best tool you can use is top-notch social media management software that will simplify much of the required work into generating some reports and making some tweaks in your system. It's like hiring three assistants for your manager, only much less expensive. 

10 Perfectly Crafted Facebook Status Updates for the Holiday Season

In the midst of last year’s holiday shopping madness, IBM’s Jay Henderson wrote a super detailed post on his company’s Smarter Planet blog about how social media affects holiday shopping. He concluded that social media isn’t just “another channel to have a personalized dialog with a consumer.”

The key to using social media for holiday marketing, he wrote, is motivating consumers to share their purchases, their experiences and their likes with their friends. And yet, as any business owner knows, it can be challenging to get news about your deal, your special event or your new product heard above all the rest of the online noise, especially during the holidays.

In that spirit, here are some ideas for well-crafted Facebook posts that your fans and followers will Like and want to share with their friends this season. 

1. A Post that Publicizes Your Sale & Reward Fans First

According to Forbes, 79 percent of consumers Like a brand on Facebook exclusively for offers, discounts and incentives, making Facebook one of the best places to advertise sales. A simple status update that highlights a sale can reach a large number of your business’s existing fans.

When crafting sale-related posts, think about why people have become fans of your business.For early access to sales? For access to monthly giveaways? Whatever the reason, use status updates to deliver offers that are special to your fans only. Kate Spade often offers Facebook fans early access to online sales.  The example below is seasonal -- from Halloween -- but you could easily do the same thing for any upcoming holiday.

2. A Post that Promotes Your Seasonal Products

The clothing brand J. Crew recently made headlines for posting its entire fall collection on its Pinterest Page, giving Pinterest users a first look at the brand’s new clothes and the opportunity place pre-orders.  They then used a Facebook status update to share their “November Style Guide” with their fans. This was a well-executed idea for how businesses can use social media to focus attention on new and/or soon-to-be-released products during the holidays.

In their post, J. Crew did two things right:

1. They created a feeling of exclusivity. Using the phrases “Get a first glance”  and “Before anyone else” made J.Crew’s fans feel like they were discovering something about the brand before anyone else. The takeaway here: Use your post to make fans feel like you’re letting them in on something special. Try this sort of update during the holidays to get more engagement on your updates.

2. They cross-promoted another important platform: Pinterest. When you use your most popular social channel (for J.Crew, it’s Facebook, where they have one million fans) to promote one of your other social channels, you often see a boost in followers on your lesser popular platform. The reason? Your fans are now aware that your brand is active on another platform! When fans see that your brand is posting unique, quality content on your other social accounts, they’ll want keep up with your brand on those platforms, too.

3. A Post that Drives Engagement and Crowdsources for Valuable Information

Don’t underestimate the power of visuals. A good image can effectively share a message and get people to react quickly, allowing your business to gather insightful data from followers. Such is the case with Everpurse’s status update featured below.

Without even reading the copy of the post, fans know what they should do: select their favorite design. Fill-in-the-blank posts on Facebook are generally effective and this is a visual version of that idea. Everpurse received more than 68 comments on their status update -- those 68 comments will no doubt influence their upcoming production decisions.

You can use the same principles of Everpurse’s status update to create Facebook posts that help your business get fast feedback from your fans this holiday season. Then use the data you collect to decide which items you should spend more of your promotion dollars on.

4. A Post that Gets Real Leads

Besides the audience-appropriate question and the mouthwatering photo, the small downtown- Reno restaurant SoDo has done two other smart things with their Facebook status update: They have a crystal clear call to action and share a link to a webpage where people can make a reservation.

If you own a restaurant or other reservation-based business, like a salon, try a similar post. In the post, link to a reservations webpage or create a reservations Facebook app (like this one)  so that Facebook users can make reservations directly from your brand’s Timeline profile.

According to Nation’s Restaurant News, in 2012, 14 million consumers were expected to go out to eat on Thanksgiving day. If your business is open on a major holiday, use a Facebook update to spread the word and bring in new leads, i.e., reservations!

5. A Post that Drives Foot Traffic to Your Store

Good storytelling skills are essential for social media success. On Facebook, try using status updates to tell a story that will motivate people to visit your brick and mortar business.

Hub Coffee Roasters, a small coffee shop promoting their new riverside location, for instance, used a compelling photo to convey the feeling of the season. And their post copy makes you want a cup of coffee, pronto! Despite having a small Facebook following of 2,500 fans, they garnered 57 “likes” and eight comments on their non-sponsored post. That’s what I call awesome engagement!

6. A Post to Promote Your Holiday Event

The holiday season is also known as “event” season. For businesses, there are open houses, promotional events and, of course, sales. Use a Facebook status update to promote your business’s holiday events this year. And take notes from the Gap!

In their latest holiday-event post, the Gap used hashtags (helpful for event attendees to use later), a call to action (“RSVP & join us”) and a link to a Facebook event page so users could RSVP. But here’s the biggest reason their status update excelled: The post’s photo is like an invitation and provides all the details for the event. This sort of design helps cut down on user questions and motivates them to put the event into their calendars right away because they have all the information they need.

7.  A Post to Incentivize Newsletter Signups

Businesses that want to drive sales through email marketing efforts this holiday season can use incentivized Facebook status updates to encourage users to sign up for the company newsletter. The brand Incase, a company that sells covers for technology products, does this really well.

Every week Incase hosts a giveaway and promotes it on their Facebook Page with simple, low-fuss status updates. Their fans love it!

During the holiday months, use your brand’s Facebook Page to try out this posting concept. It will drive engagement on your posts and allow your company to gather valuable information about your fans.

8. A Limited-Time-Only Promotion that Encourages Sharing

To encourage lots of sharing on status updates, make your business's post announcements time sensitive.

The Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, for instance, recently used one of their Timeline posts to share a one-day-only deal with their fans. And their fans (and their fans’ friends) shared the post a lot. The deal provided lots of value and it was eye-catching -- notice the bold red text bars.

Test posting a limited-time-only promotion on your brand’s Timeline this holiday season. And be strategic with which day you decide to host the deal. If Tuesday is a slow day for your business, post the deal on that day to get an extra surge of attention and sales.  

9. A Timeline Promotion

In August, Facebook announced changes to their promotion guidelines. According to their update, promotions can now be hosted on a Page’s Timeline through a status update. There are many types of Timeline Promotions businesses can run: “Comment to win,” “Like to win,” “Comment and Like to win,” etc.

Social media marketing analyst Sierra Tierra recently hosted a “Comment to win” Timeline promotion. This kind of promotion is great way to get insight from your Facebook fans.

If your business wants to host a low-fuss Facebook promotion this holiday season, do a Timeline promotion, like Sierra’s. And for more Timeline promotion/contest ideas, click here to check out this awesome list of thirty ideas from Inside Facebook.

10. A Post to Promote Your Facebook App  

One of the best ways to promote your Facebook app is to use a status update. The company Fitbit, which produces health-tracking fitness bracelets, uses Timeline posts to encourage their fans to check out their “Refer a Friend” app.   

This holiday season, if you have an app on your Facebook page that hosts a special promo code or is being used as a way to boost Page Likes use a post to drive app visitors (you can even fan-gate an app to show specific content to fans only) .

These are just a few examples of ways that brands can use Facebook updates to promote seasonal or holiday products and events. How do you tailor your status updates to reflect the season? What have you found to be the most effective?

Content Marketing Minds: Empowering the Ultimate Content Creation Team

Fellow content creators, let’s swallow a big honking reality pill together. The things customers say about our brand runs circles around the prose we produce.

According to Nielson research, 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a product when they hear about it from friends and family.

Got advocates?

Maybe you call them ambassadors, fans, or evangelists.  Call them what you will, but understand when people support your brand it means money. More advocates, more sales. And nothing scales quite like word of mouth. Even if you get just a small percentage to plug your products, the ripple effect can be immeasurable. 

When you win over customers and help them share your brand’s story: 

• Your programs get amplified.
• Advocates create content for you—for free.
• Anticipation for new products increases.
• Positive conversations spread across online media.
• Web traffic increases.
• You win new customers.

Where do you start?

Tap into those apt to become advocates.

The first phase of a brand advocacy program calls for finding your current friends—those who buy your products or tune into your communications. You want to identify the socially active set, especially those that express themselves passionately.

Launch your advocacy program to your fans first. Roll out a red carpet of sorts with special incentives to join the party. Engage your advocates via the medium where you found them. 

#CMMinds
Let's hash this stuff out together. Use #CMMinds anytime to make comments or counterpoints, add your ideas and ask questions. I'm listening. 

Promote the program.

Put the word out about your program.

• Use all of your owned channels that are appropriate: the company blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
• Email news about the program with links to more information.
• Feature it prominently on your website.
• Promote it in-store (if you can).
• Fold it into traditional media (direct mail, business cards, brochures).
• Spread the news via partners with a vested interest.

Tips for fueling the fire. 

Fifty years ago, Ernest Dichter, an Austrian-American psychologist and marketing expert known as the "father of motivational research" suggested customers share for four reasons: 

1. They love the brand.
2. It makes them look good/smart.
3. They want to help others.
4. They simply like the content.

Keep these tips top of mind to motivate potential advocates to share your brand story:

Make it easy—Increase the likelihood of earning word of mouth (or word of mouse) by making it ultra-simple. With your online efforts, ensure it takes just one click.

Provide a starting point—Give potential advocates a starting point such as a topic or theme. You might simply ask a question or make a suggestion such as “share a photo of your family using our product.”

Set them free—Encourage sharing and conversation, but avoid dictating the message. Advocates will be more willing to engage and more credible when you allow them to express themselves freely and in their own voice. 

Fun it—Your ambassadors will flock to the fun stuff, so engage them with images, video, and stories that are playful, lighthearted and whimsical.

Stay fresh—Keep creating new things. Try different ideas and let your customers know about them.

Offer variety—Different customers will consume and share different media, so don’t be a one-trick pony with your media tactics. Cover the gamut with images, video, offers, games, etc.

Recognize the players. 

Even though advocacy may come naturally, you’ll enjoy a longer and more fruitful relationship with your volunteer sales force when you recognize them.

A simple thank you tweet or Facebook update could be the right gesture to spread the love. However, you might take the idea further with special recognition programs on your website and in various media. 

Consider offering your active advocates exclusive access to content. You might invite them to participate in special programs. View new campaigns first. Cast votes. Enjoy savings.

Be creative with your recognition programs and the recognition itself is likely to foster word of mouth. Think about the rare instances where a company thanked you for your business in a special way. Chances are it became a story you share with friends.

A big bonus for small budgets. 

Content creators constantly cite a lack of time and money for creating quality content. Empower your customers to do it for you—and presto—the problem subsides. And, of course, your brand gets far more than more content; it gets more credible content.

Advocate content receives 10x more engagement than branded paid content.* 

…and… 

It receives 7x more engagement than content posted to brand owned channels.*

(*Source: Social Chorus eBook: Advocates as Content Creators)

When your brand advocates create and share content you’ll want to extend its reach by repurposing it across multiple channels, including: social media, your website, advertising, sponsored posts, and print.

Happy customers + talking customers = new customers.

According to Social Chorus, 90% of social media engagement is driven by 3% of your audience. Your challenge is to engage and inspire the passionate minority. Make them happy. Give them reasons to “talk” and the result will be new customers.

Mark Collier, social media strategist and author of “Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Social Media and Marketing Strategies that Turn Customers into Fans,” offers 10 tips for creating your ambassador program:

1. Spread the word internally and externally.
2. Do research to discover your brand advocates.
3. Start small and allow for organic growth of the program.
4. Offer exclusive memberships.
5. Connect with advocates and create ways for them to connect.
6. Reward them.
7. Give them direct access to your brand and people.
8. Create a feedback loop for them.
9. Give them tools to create amazing content.
10. Release control to the ambassadors.

In the informative infographic below, BzzAgent cites research from the University of Rhode Island and highlights the fact that brand advocates are prolific content creators. They write and share more than 2x as many online communications about brands. They’re 3x more likely to blog and are usually seen as a solid source of information by the people they communicate with.

In other words, brand advocates are the most powerful members of your content marketing dream team. 

[NOTE: CONTENT MARKETING CONTEST! Do you love Social Media Today? Do you read my posts regularly? Please help vote for "Content Marketing Isn't for Everybody"... as the top content marketing post of 2013 on @ShareBlochttp://www.sharebloc.com/posted_links/content_marketing_isnt_for_everybody ]

Content Marketing Minds is a weekly Social Media Today column written by Barry Feldman about content marketing at its best and its worst. Look for the future installments on Thursdays.