Top 5 social media marketing trends to dominate 2015

Social media is present in many people’s everyday lives. In fact, there are many who cannot survive without it. Their first thought in the morning is to check the latest updates. This has led to a rise in the need for social media marketing. The following five are likely to dominate this coming year:

1. Ello

Ello is a new social media platform and looks set to go head to head with Facebook. It has deliberately taken a very anti-Facebook stance. It emphasizes the fact that it is ad free and that it will never sell its users details to another party. This new platform is currently by invite only. At present it may not offer the full level of tools that a Facebook user can enjoy but it is pushing an ethical stance far superior to Facebook’s. Despite this it has the potential to grow in 2015 and potentially mount a serious challenge to Facebook.

2. Facebook advertising

There’s no doubt that both the cost of this and the demand for this will increase during 2015. This has been a clever strategy on the part of Facebook. The continued weakening of the Facebook post has decreased its effectiveness as a marketing tool. Less posts available to users means that the demand for promoted posts and the ads that go on these pages will increase. This creates a bigger audience for these ads which will result in a bigger price tag and demand for one of these advertising spaces.

3. Twitter and business advertising

It is highly likely than many more businesses will join Twitter during 2015. This is because Twitter now offers much more control over how and what a business pays for in respect of their advertising. A new fee structure ensures businesses pay for performance based actions as opposed to clicks or re-tweets. This will be of particular benefit to the small business owner who can pay for results and not just to ensure brand awareness. The new campaigns will allow businesses to control re-tweets and replies, website clicks, conversions, app installs and new followers. It will be a much more powerful marketing tool.

4. Google+’s decline

Google+ offers nothing new compared to its main competitors – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Its competitors are already firmly established in their respective niches and Google+ is already in decline. This has been aided by the departure of Google+ chief Vic Gunotra in the beginning part of 2015. In addition to this, Tech Crunch has declared Google+ to be the walking dead. It is quite likely that before the year is out Google+ will simply be seen as a platform and not a product. This will mark the end of its competition with social media sites.

5. Instagram

Founded in 2010 it has grown from strength to strength year after year. It now has 200 million visitors a month. It is the predominant market force when it comes to image based social media marketing. Research suggests that nearly half of the marketers surveyed intend to increase their use of this platform during 2015. Instagram does have competition in the video marketing arena from Vine but it is likely i 2015 that as additional efforts are put into this area of the market Instagram will make significant advances at the expense of Vine. Instagram has also introduced ‘in-feed marketing’. This allows marketers to target an audience based on age, gender and location. This will be of great interest to those who are attempting to capture the young, affluent consumer.

This is the guest post by Jason Phillips and Parking Games 365!

Top 5 social media marketing trends to dominate 2015