My Social Media Marketing Predictions for the New Year

Welcome to maximize your social, practical and actionable advice on how your business can truly maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social author of the recently published book of the same name, and founder of maximize social business, Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, its Neal Schaffer, welcome to another episode of maximize your social and most importantly, welcome to the new year of 2014. Happy New Year, wherever you are in the world. I'm actually recording this on December 31, the last day of 2013. So I guess I'm cheating a little bit, but hopefully you won't mind. But it is a new year. And this podcast will be well might be my second first or second published podcast in 2014. So as what many people do at the beginning of the year, we begin to look ahead and see what are going to be the trends, what are going to be the new things, the old things, what should we be concentrating on visa vie our social media marketing our social business strategy in the next 12 months. So I wanted to share with you my thoughts. And as always, I always do podcasts before I write blog posts, so you'll be the first one to hear these, but you're not going to be the very, very first one to hear one of these. In all honesty, this podcast was actually driven or inspired by Social Media Examiner reaching out to me to ask for one of my tips, or one of my predictions for 2014, which probably by the time you hear this podcast will have already been published. But based on that I thought, you know, I see a few trends. And it was really that that sparked me to think about it, you know, I see a few trends that have emerged in the last quarter of 2013, that I think are gonna get stronger in 2014, that I think that really, no matter where you work, how big or small your business is, you should definitely have on your radar. So the first one I'm going to talk about is the one that is written up in the Social Media Examiner tip, which you should also be checking out as well is that employee advocacy will become a strategic initiative for more and more large companies. Now, companies are always looking outside corporate walls for brand advocates and social media. But many of your most passionate advocates are also those who have deep ties to your company. They're your employees. Each individual employee has influence in their own unique social network, their own professional and personal graph. So the more employees that can help share your social media messages. The broader reach a company can yield and social media. Think of it in simple terms. If you had a sales and marketing team of 10 employees, your social media messages could be shared by either your corporate account, or by your corporate account and potentially 10 More people that's like shared by 11 accounts, compared to one account, this exponential power of employee advocacy, especially on professional networking sites like LinkedIn, where professionals if it helps them establish their personal brand and has value to their network, it I think it's more appropriate than a Facebook is, is beginning to be realized by many. And I predict that employee advocacy will have a breakout year in 2014. You're gonna see me blogging more about it, I hope to do a webinar on it in q1. Yep, that's very soon about it as well. And I've been talking about it for a while as well on this podcast and off it. But I do see that creating a successful employee advocacy program. It has its challenges. But the evolution of both social business, as well as employee advocacy platforms and tools should progress this program forward in many companies in 2014. As I've mentioned before, maximize social business uses an employee advocacy platform called gaggle amp, there is also one that is very well known in the market called advocate that's two Ds, as well as one called ppl links. That's li n x. And I really actually hope to do webinars with all these companies to be able to introduce you all to this technology. So once again, be on the lookout on maximize social business, maximize your social for details on that. So let's go beyond that prediction that is published by Social Media Examiner to some more things that I think are going to happen. And I hate to talk about this social network having a breakout year or that social network having a breakout year. But I do believe in 2014 that Google Plus will finally win its respect from the social media marketing community, just as companies question why they should be on Twitter. And it wasn't that long ago, ladies and gentlemen, that many companies question that the same questions continue to be asked about Google Plus, once companies realize that Google Plus is not just a community, like other social networks, but it's also a social layer for all things. Google with many entry ways leading into Google Plus, it becomes an absolute no brainer to establish a presence on the site. Google Plus at the moment, does not allow campaigns, and is only just released advertising to a very few partners. Well, I should say, a very few partners using Google AdSense. So marketing and Google Plus will take a different form than what we're used to seeing on Facebook. But the abilities to use Hangouts to engage via video with other social media users, Cadbury is a great example of a company that leverages that the growing number of communities that exist on Google Plus the undoubted increase in users and activities. I talked about circle sharing all of this points to 2014. Finally being the breakout year for companies to get started on and truly engage daily in Google Plus. And if you're listening to this podcast, if you haven't created a Google Plus profile, I really highly suggest you do it. And I suggest Well, there's a few people I'd suggest you follow, I obviously suggest you follow myself on Google plus, that's https colon, slash, slash plus.google.com/neal Schaffer. And if you hit me up, there's some other great people that I can introduce you to as well. So let's move on to my other predictions. And I really do believe that this will be the year for for Google Plus. But moving on, and this is a concept that I talk a lot about it being underutilized and maximize your social. But my other prediction is that paid social becomes fully mainstream. You know, there's a paradigm here that companies have monthly budgets for SEO, they have monthly budgets for online advertising, yet, they don't want to advertise on social media because social media should be free. So while some companies still question as to why they need to pay for social media advertising, I think that Facebook's recent announcement, among other things made it clear that without paying to play your effectiveness in your social media marketing to rise above the noise will be limited. Social media was never free, due to the fact that an investment of time and resources was always needed, right. And if online ad budgets are available, it only makes sense to shift some of this money into social advertisements to help make your social program more effective, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn have all developed micro targeting options that allow you to deliver your message to only your most relevant target demographic, and experiments and advertising on Pinterest, Instagram, and the aforementioned Google Plus mean that similar advertising options might become available in 2014. On these new platforms, as well, I still believe paid social is one of the most underutilized aspects of social media marketing. But 2014 should see more companies utilizing paid advertising on more social networks, to help make sure above and beyond their legacy social media program, that they are found by relevant audiences throughout social media. My last and I'm gonna keep this to four predictions, you know, I like to keep my podcast short and sweet. My last prediction is going to be that companies will place more emphasis on content creation, as opposed to content curation, community management, or other forms of engagement. And before you start saying, oh, Neil, you're, you're not going to engage with other social media users what social media about before you, you know, before you throw the book at me, let me just have my say here at the end of the day, okay, it is unique, branded content, whether it be in the form of a blog post, a photo, a video, audio, presentation, or other medical format. It's these types of contents that become a shareable corporate asset in social media. So from Facebook's recent algorithm changes to the new Google Plus ads to SEL algorithms, unique content is the killer asset that will become all the more important for businesses in 2014. Together with the rise of content marketing, a content centric social media marketing strategy will become all the more important to help businesses rise above the noise, and be more effective in their social media practice. I hope all of this made sense. And I hope a lot of you as I read this, were nodding your heads. These are really trends that we've seen emerging, that I do think in 2014 will be sort of breakout years now. It's nothing revolutionary here. It's all about this evolution. And the evolution is caused by more and more people using the sites, using them in different ways, and the site's themselves maturing. So I hope that adds value to your social media marketing to your business's social media presence. And as always, in 2014. I look forward to all your ratings on iTunes, all of the questions you may have. And if there's any other way that I or perhaps someone to maximize social business can be of help to you. Please do reach out to me. I look forward to working together with you in 2014 In many ways, and together, discovering the many ways that we can all better leverage social media for our businesses. That's it for today. Everybody trying to keep it real. Make it a great day wherever you are in the world. And once again, happy New Year, and look forward to be talking to you a lot more and hopefully talking with you in 2014. Bye bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com Thanks for listening and have a great day.