Do you know VR from AR? What’s your Chatbot and AI strategy? Who are your KOLs? Another year, another confusing list of initialisations and acronyms! To help you navigate the fast paced world of social media during 2017, the team at Kantar Media have identified 10 big trends you need to be aware of:
The big social media players are in the process of evolving their products from being fun and distracting to becoming a vital every day behaviour. Social networks are building momentum as big digital brands. And as fragmented as the landscape was, the time of consolidation has arrived.
GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) and mainstream media, like the New York Times, will all want a piece of the juicy virtual reality (VR) market in 2017. Brands will need to learn to adapt to this ‘ambient information environment.’
Push narratives are out and engaging experiences are in. Social media has become a true media and publisher in and of itself. The key to attracting, engaging and motivating your audience in 2017 is original content created exclusively for each platform. Simple!
Chatbot technology developed on messaging platforms will become much more prominent in 2017; however, chatbots can’t do it all. When targeting the “Dark Social World” (sharing which takes place in private), it is no longer the brands that initiate dialogue with their consumers, but users who initiate a dialogue with the brands. This forces brands to cultivate a more personalized human connection, while maintaining the privacy of their audience.
China has recently seen massive adoption of new Q&A services. Wildly popular “Ask Me Anything” sites like Fenda (分答) and Zhihu Live (知乎Live), allow anyone to ask celebrities anything. The West seems to be taking the same path. Traditional Q&A platforms like Quora and Jelly have been around for many years. But certain new entries into the market are more inspired by their Chinese counterparts. Tiptalk, like Fenda, pays celebs to text or video message with fans. While Wiselike, is a Q&A knowledge platform for professionals similar to Zhihu.
Brand identities have transformed. They are no longer just about your message, but about the collective experiences of the consumers and fans who follow your brand. But old marketing techniques are inadequate to achieve this type of connection. That’s why influencer marketing is set to shine in 2017 with trust as its biggest star of all.
“Social TV” marks the union of television and social media, whereby millions of people on social media share their TV experience with other viewers. 2017 will provide lots of opportunities (and ad revenue) to maximize Social TV and live streaming as brands, media owners and platform operators leverage the opportunities available to them in this expanding arena.
Voice queries are 30-times more likely to be action oriented than typed queries. Therefore, in 2017 we can expect this format to deliver tons of opportunities for capable brands.
Social commerce was a hot topic in 2016. But the “buy” button craze from a couple of years ago never lived up to expectations. Keep your eye on little Pinterest in 2017! It may seem like a quaint and unassuming little company (bravo to their marketing), but it may well become the new go-to platform for social commerce.
On 10th October 2016, Facebook announced the release of Workplace, its social collaboration tool kit that claims to compete with intranets and mailboxes by speeding up communication between employees. So, expect massive adoption of social communication tools and a revolution in the way we chat at work.
