For a look at some social media predictions for 2014, view the infographic below from Offerpop, a social media service company.
As Offerpop says: “Want to stay ahead of the curve in 2014? We’ve predicted the trends and technologies that will impact marketers this year. Check out our latest infographic, and learn how brands embrace new social media strategies to drive engagement and spark sales.”
This could not be more accurate. The three I strongly agree with for the new trends would be number 2, 4 and 5. Social media and cell phones’ abilities continue to grow everyday as well as the addiction they hold. They are hand held and extremely useful, not to mention all social media outputs can be accessed through them. I know, personally, I almost always have my phone on me when watching television, and I also use my phone for shopping and different discounts.
I would have to admit that the information from number one about consumers becoming the new marketers is a huge possibility. The reasons I say this are two fold: first, there is a near endless supply of users submitting photos to social media websites expressing (and often vividly showcasing) their enjoyment of the product (think: someone uploading the picture of them and their newly purchased electronic device to FaceBook or instagram.) This is, of course, possible because the photographers unknowingly hand over all creative rights to the photos they post to the site, who, at this point, is free to sell them to any marketing firm they choose, at any price, making a nifty profit on a minimal amount of work. The marketing firm also locks up quality photos of their products in realistic seeming situations to use at their leisure, likely at budget prices (quality photographers don’t work for free after all, especially when compared to buying the rights to some “random” photos on a social media site…) This seems to sufficiently describe the second reason I believe this will be taking a lot more prominence in the future: it appears to be a “win-win-not lose” situation, as the social media site gains revenue at very little cost by selling these photos or videos, and the marketing companies get cheap shots to use however they would like. The “not lose” aspect comes at the somewhat expense of the member of the social media site who uploads the photo. This is due to the fact that they could unknowingly have their pictures used without any compensation (as it states in the terms of use that no one seems to read) very legally. This isn’t technically a losing situation for them, as they didn’t intend to make a profit from the photos, and their original intention of posting the photo for free is absolutely accomplished. In essence, the whole situation of being able to do that for free is a winning situation enough for the member of the site, so they really shouldn’t complain anyway!
PS: The link that clicking on the photo brings you to is broken for some reason. I assume that it would have just been a page with only this info-graphic but for some reason it is telling me that it doesn’t exist..
I couldn’t agree more with the predictions of ways to market new materials for the year to come. Many companies are already taking to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to broadcast their products. You often can’t even watch a YouTube idea any more without being bombarded with an ad. BMW is in the midst of displaying ads on its “Infotainment Systems” in vehicles set to be released within the year. See link below
http://www.dailytech.com/BMW+Eyes+InCar+Ads+for+Its+Infotainment+Systems/article34202.htm
Nice link. Big ethical issues about this — just like usin Google Glass while driving. 🙂
From my point of view, all of this is so true! I’ve been a cashier for over four years and when I first started not a single person used their cellphones for coupons or their store bonus cards. Now, a day of work doesn’t go by without me scanning a mobile device screen! People even have their phones set up so that if I scan their screen then its equivalent to me scanning their credit card! Everything is going towards the mobile-social media route and its those companies that recognize this that will get a leg up on their competition. Additionally things such as the hashtag method is essentially a way for advertisers to get free advertising from their consumers- very smart.