Summer 2014: Social Media Trends
Vine
The video sharing app has slowly but surely gained ground in the social media world. When Instagram launched its video sharing option, it looked like the days of Vine were numbered. However the platform’s six second videos kept bringing users back to the app. A number of brands, such as Dunkin Donuts, harnessed the app as a vehicle for their social commerce offering, launching a series of fast and engaging video based ads via the app. A combination of Vines user’s cleverness and the limited attention span of web users the app has enjoyed resounding success as a tool for online marketing. “Vines” can be easily shared through other social media platforms, such as Tumblr and Twitter. Recently the app has made browsing videos possible to members of the public, even those who do not have an account.
Facebook Locations
Facebook has been working hard to develop its location services and to make them an important feature of the platform. Foursquare has had success for a little while now and provides rewards to users for “checking-in” and viewing where their friends have visited. However there are a number of new competitors to the location-sharing field, such as Circle and Swarm. In the face of this Facebook have unveiled their “Nearby Friends” application, allowing users to share their location to friends in real time. Using this feature enables Facebook to create a database of the places which you have visited and check-ins are no longer a manual task.
Hashtags
Hashtags are here for the long-haul. As cross-platform integration widens, encompassing Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Google Plus and now even Facebook, hashtags have become an excellent vehicle to share content. Brands have championed the hashtag as a means of creating conversation around their offering. This is often through the creation of brand specific hashtags. Each day sees the rise and fall of new hashtags, it is unlikely that this summer will be any different.
Lifestyle Content
Increasingly social media marketing is less about selling products and more about informing users about what the brand represents. This method of selling a lifestyle as opposed to a product, makes the process of creating and implementing creative content much easier. Over the summer, users should expect brands to make use of a wide range of media types in their social media posts. A recent example which has enjoyed high levels of success is Urban Outfitter’s #MusicMondays blog posts. As part of this offering users are offered a free downloadable music playlist.
New Technology
Technological innovations continue to occur at break neck speed, take Google Glass and the Samsung Smart Watch as examples. Google recently tested the desirability of the new Google Glass by making it available to the general public for purchase for just one day. All models were sold out in a matter of hours.
InstaVideo
The success of Vine does not mean that Instagram’s offering “InstaVideo” has not being a success. With InstaVideo, users are able to create longer, edited videos to be uploaded, allowing brands and businesses to create lifestyle videos and ads for their pages. Instagram has come into its own as a platform and is competing with the other giants, proving itself an excellent platform for both marketing and content sharing.
Social Search
Platform’s Google Plus and Facebook have recently placed a far greater precedent on social search. As a result Facebook has recently made its new “grid” feature available. The feature enables users to search the platform around very specific criteria. Google Plus, on the other hand, have utilised both their +1 feature and search engine supremacy to grant Google Plus posts with higher rankings on searches.