2 min read

5 Social Media Trends to Look for in 2013

TURNER Admin : December 11, 2012

Assuming the world does not end on December 21, 2012, let's look at predictions of what will be the big social media trends in 2013 1. Competition Gone are the days of social networks playing nice with each other. As we've seen this week with Twitter and Instagram cutting ties, each channel will be pursuing larger market share and proprietary functionality across community management, photo services and search. Why use someone else's service when you can create your own? While this might sound great, in the past we've seen the best results come from teams working together to create the best user experience. Let's not bring up the iPhone/Google Maps meltdown of 2012. 2. IRL Crossover So you've got a captive audience in your social channels, now what? In 2013 we'll see brands finally understanding that the social user is savvy and understands their value as a cog in the marketing machine. With this, brands will need to step up their games and develop engaging, sharable, real life experiences that lend themselves to social sharing rather than expecting their followers to share content simply because they're fans of the brands. This real life engagement will result in strong brand advocacy and even stronger retainment of followers/fans and monetary conversions. 3. Aggressive Ties to Bottom Line Becoming the golden child of the marketing, advertising and public relations worlds, social media now has to be held accountable to hard results like the rest of brand marketing tactics. Gone are the days where direct sales can be completely ignored in favor of engagement. The truth is, social media allows for both qualitative and quantitative results and is a powerful direct to consumer platform. 2013 will see more demand for ties to a bottom line in sales and e-marketing database growth in addition to the long-time goal of building loyal, engaged communities. 4. Brand Storytelling This seems obvious and something every brand would naturally be doing on social media channels, but it's sadly missing from many brands' social media strategies. Skipping to the sexy community growth and engagement metrics, the less measurable tactic of brand storytelling has been pushed aside while trying to catch up with the latest platform, the most buzz worthy contest or industry-hailed campaign. Social media channels are brand-owned and a place where the outbound message is completely determined by the brand. These outlets are one of the few places where a company can say exactly what it wants, align itself with exactly the right consumer perception, and dictate the future of the brand directly to the consumer buying the end product. Pretty powerful and pretty important in distinguishing your 140 characters from your competitor’s. 5. Integration Across Teams Everyone's a social media specialist, ninja, guru, evangelists, and numerous other vague tittles. Gone are the days where social media is a specialty area for the 20-something generation to flaunt in front of CEOs and Brand Managers for big pay checks. With social media skills becoming part of everyday life across multiple generations, social strategy, implementation and measurement is now becoming integrated across every team touching a brand; the sales team is looking for online referral drivers and added value to third party retailers, the advertising team is now allocating dollars to spends on Twitter, Facebook and PPC promotions, and the PR team is cross promoting stories, pitching topics for tweets and creating sharable content. Even HR is on the game, using social channels and social campaign success as a driver for recruitment. As a social media rockstar, it's now time for you to think 360 or move over while your killer hashtag skills are left in the dust.

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