Social Media Trends Guide 2015

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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2015

A publication of

SOCIALMEDIA 2015TR

ENDS

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CONTENTS Welcome 3

Social Media Highlights of 2014 4

TREND 1: Using Creativity To Stand Out From The Crowd 6

- A Nod To Mad Men… 6

- #FirstWorldProblems 7

- #EndTheAwkward 8

TREND 2: Better Use Of Topicality – Leveraging News And Pop Culture 9

- The Great British Bake Off 10

- SME Jeweler Uses Pop Culture For Social Media Content 11

TREND 3: Promoting Great Content Via Paid Advertising 12

- Restricted Reach On Facebook 12

- Example: Small Charity Using Paid Promotion On Facebook 14

TREND 4: Utilising The Power Of Visual Content And Networks 15

- Quality, Unique Images And Social Media Content 15

- The Rise Of Pinterest And Instagram 17

Concluding Thoughts… 22

Improving Your Social Media In 2015 23

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WELCOMEMy new Social Media Trends Guide will help you to learn more about the dominant, best practice trends in social media marketing in 2015

It’s designed for communications, PR and marketing professionals to help learn about the ways brands, organisations and small businesses will be successfully using social media

The guide focusses on four main social trends for 2015 and each chapter contains lots of practical examples drawn from charities, ma jor brands and small businesses across UK and Ireland

I hope it helps you to think about ways you can improve your social media activity in 2015

Paul McGarrity

Director, Octave Digital

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Social Media Highlights Of 2014 There’s no doubt that the pace of change in social media is fast and furious Over the past two years shifting trends and habits on social media have created an environment where many marketers struggle to keep up There’s now a huge amount of media fragmentation online, especially on social media making it harder to reach and influence multiple audiences

But some things in media are timeless and 2014 confirmed some fundamental points about social media including:

1 Successful social content is a mix of news and entertainment – whether that’s breaking news, emotional stories, or unique

photos

2 Viral Social Media is still a powerful force for awareness and change

• Steven Sutton cancer campaign

• Nigerian Schoolgirls Kidnapping

3 Facebook and Twitter are becoming mainstream media channels for National Government

• President Obama announces Immigration Reform via The White House Facebook Page

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• UK Government Departments and Local Government invest more in social media

4 The risks on social media are alive and well as demonstrated by:

• Employees: from Guards at Buckingham Palace to PR bosses and Admin Assistants - fired for making ‘inappropriate’ tweets

• Politicians: From racist tweets to allegations of class snobbery – so many UK politicians had to ‘spend more time with their families’ after social media gaffes in 2014

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TREND 1: Using Creativity To Stand Out From The Crowd In 2015 the great social media campaigns are going to remind us much more of the traditional power of great creative content and campaigns. Smart charities, small businesses and major brands know that creative content that is different, emotionally appealing and challenging is the key to standing out in the newsfeeds of the social media communities they have built.

Let’s take a look at some great examples of creative social media campaigns from 2014...

A Nod To Mad Men….As any fans of the hit TV show Mad Men will recognise, Madison Avenue New York became the creative battleground for advertising in the 1960s The task of the real life Don Drapers’ was to craft emotionally compelling moments for their client’s brands Creativity was the constant It was the creative that always brought the brands to life by being challenging, topical and creating an emotional connection with people

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#FirstWorldProblems One campaign that really stood out for me last year was #FirstWorldProblems by Water Is Life, a US based charity They delivered a knock out campaign designed to create awareness and encourage donations to help them provide safe water to schools and villages in need

The campaign successfully flipped the popular hashtag #FirstWorldProblems which is popular with people making tongue in cheek complaints about their lives The emotional power came from people in impoverished countries such as Haiti reading out real-life tweets containing the #FirstWorldProblems hashtag

What I like about this campaign...• Tells a human story

• Has a strong emotional impact

• Makes people think about the issue

• Ties in with a topical meme

• Stands out in social media newsfeeds

You can watch the video ad and find out more about the background to the campaign by CLICKING HERE

mailto:http://www.adverblog.com/2013/04/28/hashtag-killer-flips-firstworldproblems-for-water-is-life/?subject=

http://www.adverblog.com/2013/04/28/hashtag-killer-flips-firstworldproblems-for-water-is-life/

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#EndTheAwkwardThe disability charity Scope also used a similar strategy aimed at challenging mind-sets and behaviours towards disabled people in the UK Scope created a compelling mix of short video stories by disabled people recounting awkward instances they had encountered in the workplace, when traveling and in relationships

Note the use of a memorable hashtag #EndTheAwkward and real-life human stories as one of the building blocks of the campaign – another trend we will see more of in social media campaigns this year

Why this creative campaign works….

“#EndTheAwkward uses real stories and experiences for powerful content that gets noticed. Because the campaign and content is compelling, people are much more likely to comment, engage and interact with it via social media. It also encourages people affected by the issues to speak up and share their experiences.”

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TREND 2: Better use of Topicality – Leveraging News And Pop CultureIn 2014 there were some great examples of smart, savvy brands using topicality to join in social media conversations. This year there will much more social media

content based on the conversations happening on the news, in TV drama,

film and pop culture.

What were the stories that grabbed your attention in 2014? The Bake Off Hipster Incident? Brazil’s World Cup trashing, The Oscars Selfie? Just as news, cultural stories and soap opera plotlines were the basis for many watercooler moments and news stories, so social media is an active platform for conversations around topics

There are lots of examples emerging of topicality being used effectively in social media – let’s look at a few in more detail

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The Great British Bake OffThe Great British Bake Off has risen to become of the most popular UK TV shows As any fan will tell you, the show pits amateur bakers against each other to test their prowess in creating flans, brownies, artisan breads and cupcakes

Mix in a race against time, unlikely sex symbols and conspiracies about a Baked Alaska, and you have a runaway hit!

Let’s take a closer look at how some clever brands and small businesses are dipping into the buzz around Bake Off as part of their social media marketing

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SME Jeweller Uses Pop Culture For Social Media Content It’s not just the big brands who are using topicality as the basis for social media content and conversations

Dublin–based jewellers Voltaire Diamonds are great at picking up on celebrity news topics linked to jewellery, engagements and weddings Whether it’s George Clooney’s engagement or the break-up of Rory McIlroy and Caroline Wozniacki, the business is very strong at joining in the conversation and engaging with their fans around topical news

Just look at how they get in on the story about a Dublin fireman who proposed after completing last year’s marathon.

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TREND 3: Promoting Great Content Via Paid Advertising Facebook now heavily restrict the volume of organic content from Facebook Pages. Other social media networks will follow suit including Twitter which is working to curb the excessive volume of ‘noise’ that add to a poor user experience.

To counteract this and help raise the visibility of quality content, I recommend you invest some of your marketing budget in paid promotion on social media.

Restricted Reach On Facebook Are you using Facebook for marketing and you have noticed a ma jor drop in the visibility and success of your Facebook Page? Well, you’re not alone In fact, the ma jority of Facebook Pages across the world have noticed huge drops in the visibility of their Page Posts Here’s a summary of the impact of Facebook’s changes:

• Organic posts from Pages are being restricted from appearing in personal profile newsfeeds

• So your Facebook posts are being seen by a much smaller percentage of your fans compared to 18 months ago

• The percentage of people who see your posts can be as low as 2 – 3%!

• Facebook reward Pages that have good quality content and generate engagement with users

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Here’s the results of research by eMarketer on the impact of Facebook’s changes:

The changes have two major consequences for Facebook marketers:

1 You need to invest more in the quality of your social media content

2 You should be investing more in paid social media content promotion

While many Facebook marketers cry foul over the recent changes, they are here to stay Smart brands need to adapt to a more competitive online environment and 2015 will see more use of social media advertising as brands seek to amplify their voice in a noisy social media world However, the big development from last year will be more creative use of content as the basis for that advertising

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Example: Small Charity Using Paid Promotion On FacebookHere’s an example of how Octave Digital helped a small charity raise its visibility by using social and video content promoted by Facebook paid promoted posts:

Paid post promotion ensured that the video content was highly visible on Facebook to the charity’s fans and connections of fans This in turn improved engagement with Facebook users including likes, comments and post shares However it is important to remember that good quality content should form the basis of paid promotion on Facebook

In this case the Post features a well-made, emotionally compelling video about disability hate crime.

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Trend 4: Utilising The Power Of Visual Content And NetworksThe old adage that ‘a picture tells a thousand words’ should be at the forefront of your mind when planning digital content in 2015. This year will see more thought, planning and creativity going into social media images. So think how you can bring your campaigns to life through different forms of visual content and use images to tell a story, create humour or a wow factor about your products.

Quality, Unique Images And Social Media ContentIf you were to compare internet and social media content from today with typical content from a few years ago, one trend would stand out – the rise of image based content Social media networks especially Facebook, place more emphasis on sharing images In fact, Facebook reveal that images get 50% more interactions than any other content

Smart marketers on Facebook place quality image content at the very heart of their social marketing When thinking of social media posts they will take care to accompany the post with good quality, often unique images Creating, sourcing and posting quality images should be a central part of your social media marketing

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Here’s a few examples of good use of images on social media…

Oreo blending product with the winter season and a worldwide fondness for penguins!

M&S showing a great food image and tapping into the national mood on New Year’s Day!

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The Rise of Pinterest and Instagram Indeed the importance of images has created new forms of social media networks Pinterest and Instagram are two of the main visual social media networks that have become very popular in the last year alone, and the networks will grow massively in the next 12 months

Don’t dismiss Pinterest and Instagram as niche social media channels if you have a strong visual dimension to your products or services (which is pretty much most businesses!), especially

if you operate in the travel, tourism, food, retail or fashion sectors

Pinterest has over 70 million users worldwide and Instagram passed the 300 million user mark in Dec 2014

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If you’re new to Pinterest and Instagram, here’s a quick overview of how they work and the marketing potential for each network

Pinterest is a visual pinboard that allows users to post and share image content. Users create collections of things they like – anything from fashion to travel - on ‘boards’. Users build up their boards by ‘pinning’ their own images and ‘re-pinning’ images by others.

Marketers can utilize Pinterest by bringing their brand to life via their own images and sharing aspirational and life-style based content.

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Instagram is a visual social media service that allows users to capture photos from a mobile device and share them on social media. They can then add a filter to help make the photo appear more unique and add hashtags to help the image be found by others.

Marketers can utilize Instagram by creating great quality lifestyle content that brings their brand to life online.

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So one of the key trends for marketers in 2015 will be smarter use of images in social media and brands starting to use networks such as Pinterest and Instagram more effectively

Let’s take a look at how more businesses are using visual social networks:

Whole Foods promote their brand on Pinterest by featuring quality images that reflect their audiences’ aspirations and interests Similar to other food brands and small businesses, they create boards based on seasons, themes and holidays

In the case of Whole Journeys, a new culinary tourism initiative, WholeFoods use a clever mix of travel, culture, cooking and food as the basis for boards and pins that will interest their audience and create brand recognition

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As a fashion retailer in a competitive market Reiss go the extra mile through a combination of brand engagement and user-generated content on Pinterest Reiss – Be Mine is a great example of encouraging people to interact with your brand and really gets how people use Pinterest

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Concluding Thoughts….I’ve focussed on a few of the most important social media trends over the next year If you are a marketer or a business owner you’ll certainly need to take account of these trends and integrate them into your social media marketing

Having worked with scores of businesses, organisations and charities during the past year – here’s some advice on digital and social media marketing that could help you in 2015:

• Social Media is a challenging competitive and noisy environment – marketers need to go the extra mile to stand out from the crowd and engage with people

• Be careful who you rely on to manage your social media marketing Interns and recent graduates are often a poor choice to be your voice on social networks

• Make sure you take time to understand the basics of digital marketing You need to know how digital marketing works, have a digital plan and understand how different digital tactics – from email to search – are used in different stages of the marketing journey

• Your Chief Executive and Directors need to understand the changing world of media, marketing and technology The average 9 year old has a higher digital quotient score (meaning their skill at using digital technologies such as apps, search engines and social media ) than the typical director or a company That’s scary!

• Keep up to date about the fast-changing world of digital and social media and develop the skills to succeed in this world Develop the skills yourself or hire someone knowledgeable to help you do it

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IMPROVING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2015 If you would like to bring your social media marketing to the next level in 2015 then get in contact I help clients to:

• Understand how you can improve your business and marketing via digital and social media

• Successfully run your digital and social media marketing activity for you

• Train your staff in using digital and social media effectively

Experience and Clients I’ve helped scores of businesses and organisations to improve their marketing and sales and to learn important skills in digital and social media marketing, including:

• Allstate NI

• The Arts Council of Northern Ireland

• Kelly Fuels

• Queen’s University Belfast

Are you a business owner or marketing manager keen to improve how you market online? Or perhaps seeking to gain digital and social media training for your staff?

Paul McGarrity Director, Octave Digital

Get in contact now by calling me on

02890 595907

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Social Media Trends Guide 2015