Social Media Trends and Predictions 2014

Social Media Trends and Predictions 2014

Predicting what the social media trends will be during 2014 can be a rather intimidating task – particularly because social media trends are nebulous and ever changing.  However social media experts – after some extensive study – suggest the following social media trends as likely for the forthcoming year:

Pinterest is well poised to re-emerge as a favorite social media platform.  If you are under-utilizing Pinterest for building your brand and creating an expanded customer base, you need to think anew and get active on Pinterest during 2014.

You will have to seriously focus on creating mobile apps that can drive traffic and increase brand awareness. You will have to exploit mobile marketing mediums that can drive business to an actual location. Mobile marketing is definitely the dominant factor for the year 2014 and you need to get on board lest you will be left behind.

It is abundantly clear that mobile commerce is growing at a tremendously rapid pace. This trend is not merely driven by adolescents but by all people doing hyper local searches. More and more everyday local shopping is done on mobile – books, clothes, gift items, toys etc.

Unless you wish to lose business to competitors during 2014, you must have a mobile optimized website.

Video advertising will be the order of the day during 2014 and sites like YouTube will find the magic way to make it work for every type of business. In fact, online video advertising has already begun to compete with traditional print and television advertising and succeeding in a big way.

With a host of new social networking platforms emerging every alternate day, it can be pretty difficult to determine exactly where to commit your time and resources. It is now amply clear that investment in SMM (Social Media Marketing) during 2014 will be an absolute necessity and not a luxury. More and more companies should be hiring SMM strategists or employ full-time social media managers.

Google+ is quickly gaining steam, and in fact, now has the second highest number with 340 million monthly users. All discerning business owners must quickly hitch on to Google Plus if they want their SMM efforts to succeed in a big way.

While Foursquare may lose steam in 2014, My Space will surprisingly grow – particularly with their radical makeover and re-branding efforts earlier this year.  LinkedIn will assuredly become a major player for B2B business during 2014.

Facebook and Twitter will continue their robust growth but they will have to innovate to compete with the growth of Google+ as well as image and video-based networks.

Your Turn:

What is your social media prediction for 2014 ? We’d love to hear your thoughts.