{"id":72985,"date":"2015-01-14T10:40:22","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T09:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=72121"},"modified":"2015-01-14T10:40:22","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T10:40:22","slug":"4-social-media-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-2015-matt-webster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/4-social-media-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-2015-matt-webster\/","title":{"rendered":"4 social media trends to watch in 2015: Matt Webster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Webster<\/a>, co-founder and client services director of Media Bounty<\/a>, a digital marketing<\/b><\/b>\u00a0agency,\u00a0<\/b>shares his predictions for social media and consumer engagement in 2015.\u00a0<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

#1. Engagement<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In order to keep consumers engaged on social next year, it\u2019s crucial that marketers launch their social media activity at the right time, serving the right message to the right audience. This has, of course, always been the aim \u2013 but given the huge surge of activity in recent years it\u2019s now more important than ever to cut through all that noise.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the ever-increasing competition that will continue to present challenges in 2015; research has shown that consumer\u2019s brains are changing too, with the average adult attention span having reduced from a worrying 12 seconds in 2010 to a goldfish-esque 8 seconds last year. So it really has never been more important to deliver engaging social content with the ethos of right time\/right message\/right audience.<\/p>\n

#2. Video and mobile<\/b><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Video and mobile usage will continue on their exponential rise. The smartphone has become the \u2018first screen\u2019, and digital consumption in general finally overtook TV last year. In essence, this means that video is now the consumable content of choice, and that the smartphone has become the chosen platform on which to watch it.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, I think we\u2019ll see more video content being specially created for use across the social platforms. In doing so, it\u2019s important to consider that autoplay video in peoples\u2019 Facebook newsfeeds have approximately 3 seconds to get the attention of the smartphone user as their finger scrolls down \u2013 so that first 3 seconds better be engaging!<\/p>\n

I also predict that we\u2019ll see more video content hubs and portals on YouTube that direct people brand websites as well as to social channels.<\/p>\n

#3. Regaining traction and renewing previously successful formats<\/b><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Last year saw a growing number of highly successful campaigns across social media that embraced user generated content (UGC). The world\u2019s obsession with the selfie has been used by brands to encourage engagement and peer to peer advocacy, mainly through photo uploads. The amazing success of the Ice Bucket challenge has seen uploaded video become a valid way of tapping into UGC too. I think it\u2019s a fairly safe bet that UGC will continue to play an important role in campaigns throughout 2015.<\/p>\n

Other simple tweaks to pre-existing formats include making video work harder on the channels it\u2019s placed on. For example, adding an \u2018interactive\u2019 plate at the start of the film where you can choose from a selection of content. This is a great way of using material that\u2019s worked to date (such as the ever popular recipe video for example), but by offering the consumer a choice you\u2019re encouraging an extra level of engagement. If you go ahead and make the content episodic you\u2019re able to create a \u2018lean back\u2019 series that people can watch on their personal devices. Some online video of this type have in the past tended to be squeezed into blocks of 2 or 3 minutes, but it doesn\u2019t have to be that way going forward.<\/p>\n

#4. Consumer rewards<\/b><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Consumers will always engage with a brand via social media if they\u2019re offered an incentive that\u2019s relevant to them. But it\u2019s time to rethink what we mean by reward: it doesn\u2019t always have to be an experience, a product or a prize. Increasingly, consumers feel rewarded if they\u2019re being offered entertaining content \u2013 content that they want to share. That\u2019s a bit of a win:win situation!<\/p>\n

\u00a0You can follow Matt Webster on Twitter @MattWWebster<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Webster, co-founder and client services director of Media Bounty, a digital marketing\u00a0agency,\u00a0shares his predictions for social media and consumer engagement in 2015.\u00a0 #1. Engagement In order to keep consumers engaged on social next year, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":322,"featured_media":73050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1449],"tags":[77,97,405,1119,6017,6953,75],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}