RussWilding

Helping businesses build their online presence

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Social Media in 2014

As we near the end of 2013 its time to take a look towards your social media strategy for 2014, if you’ve not already got this in place then you should certainly be looking in to it now.

Taking a quick look back over the last 12 months there have been a number of changes to the big players within the social media world. Facebook has increased both it’s turnover and profit through an increase in ads, Twitter has seen a flotation of their own while Google has updated its algorithms with “Hummingbird” putting more emphasis on Google+ and conversational search.

So what can we expect in 2014

Behind the top players other platforms are jostling for position and looking to increase their market share. Pinterest is a good example of this, they have seen their user numbers increase to over 70million of which around 80% are female. If your business is image orientated then Pinterest is certainly worth investigating, allowing users to “Pin” images of your products is a great way of increasing your exposure.

Platforms such as Foursquare now with 40 million users are struggling to gain a foot hold and expand outside of the US, near field technology is helping but with only 1.5million business pages it could be difficult times ahead.

Instagram look set to increase their 150 million active users over the next 12 months as more and more people take up this style of content sharing while we’re on the move. Mobile devises have made it much easier to snap and share where we are and what we’re doing.

Much will stay the same when it comes to the main players, Twitter, Google and Facebook will still be around this time next year that’s for sure. The main change for the end user will be the number of adverts they are exposed too, following flotation’s Facebook and Twitter will be looking to give their shareholders as return on their investment, the only way for them to achieve this is through adverts. Twitter have already rolled out the “Promoted Tweets” in the UK and Ireland and you can be certain that other territories will follow in the coming year.

Google’s recent Hummingbird update should see a greater push towards conversational search in 2014, its worth checking your search ranking if you haven’t done so in the last couple of months to see if the new algorithm has had any significant effect on your ranking. That said if you’ve not noticed a drop in site traffic then you should be ok.

One of the biggest changes in the coming year will be video content, both in terms of its volume and relevance. YouTube have changed their comments section which now linked directly to your Google+ account, (if you didn’t know Google owns Youtube) making both the video content and the comments more relevant. It’s also had an effect on the number of trolls making derogatory and inflammatory comments which of course is a step in the right direction.

Mobile is set to overtake desktop for access to the internet in 2014 in the UK, more and more of us are actively searching while we are on the move and sites will need to embrace this change. Social media accounts for a large percentage of this usage and its more important than ever to let your customers access your content and allow them the ability to share it while they’re on the move.

Hashtag’s are here to stay whether you like it or not, these small seemingly insignificant little characters are now the main drive behind social search. Adding these allows users to find your content when searching for specific keywords or phrases.

One to watch

Mobli – The platform has seen some big investment over the last six months and is now looking to take on Instagram. As Mobli themselves put is “Mobli is a real-time visual media platform made up of subject-based and geo-based (hashtag, location) channels as well as individual accounts.”http://www.mobli.com/

The return of MySpace

Myspace has had a turbulent time over the last few years, now it’s on the raise again with the backing from the likes of Justin Timberlake. Following its redesign and re-launch earlier this year 2014 could see MySpace increase its user numbers once again and continue its recovery.

What are your expectations for 2014, what platforms are you planning to use?

If you’re looking to build a social strategy or want advice on how to get the most from social media email me here or complete the contact form.

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Helping businesses develop their online presence 

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Creating a solution for a non-existent problem

I read with interest earlier this week that a ‘Smart email system’ has receive a large amount of funding from a Crowdfunding website. It’s claimed that the system will automatically categorise received emails in order of importance which on the face of it this seems like a great idea, but I was left wondering just how this could work.

What’s currently on offer?

I use both Gmail and Outlook for my emails. Google has for a while now introduced ‘Categories’ which filter incoming emails by type, while Outlook allows you to set ‘Rules’ and ‘Alerts’ which again filter your email to where you want them. Other email provider offer similar levels of filters which allow you to organise your email the way you want them.

Currently my Google Categories are set to Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and have to ability to add additional categories should I wish to do so. While the primary category receives my main emails I check the others sporadically throughout the day, not because I’m expecting anything specific to arrive but because sometime emails that are important to me go into one of the other categories.

What’s new?

The new product which has been developed by Fantoo is “offering relief to workers that waste hours wading through messages”, now I’m not sure how much time people waste looking through emails each day but I wouldn't have thought it would be much. If it is then I suggest you may not be managing your time correctly.

Fantoo co-founder Jordon Fantaay said “It’s come to a point where people receive so many emails at work that it affects productivity. Fantoo will help people to improve their performance – for instance by not emailing colleagues who are busy, or guiding people to email which are important and need responding to”.

Hmmm where to start with that, firstly not emailing colleagues who are busy. I would be worried if my colleagues ever had a time where they not busy, does this mean I’ll never be able to send them my ‘important’ email which need their input before a deadline, it would appear so.

Secondly how will the system know what’s important to me unless I tell, (which I can currently do to a point with my current email providers) using algorithm’s for this will work to a point but it can’t possibly work 100% of the time. Spam would also continue to be a problem as senders would now add keywords to make their emails seem important. An email account that filters spam correctly, now there’s a though!!

I like technology and people who create solutions to problems, unfortunately this seem to be another product which has been created to find a problem and not fix one.

Do you think differently? Do you spend a large amount of time each day looking through unwanted email? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Follow me on twitter @russwilding

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London Eye looking splendid in Green