During 2012 the corporate
world, has taken Social Media into the communication strategy and have started
to collaborate with their costumers, surveys indicates[1] that 72% of top management, will work much more
with collaboration and social media in 2013. Is this just a statement that
corporate companies want to express or can the consumer expect a much stronger
engagement from the top management?
In 2013 we must expect to
handle Social Media on two levels – the Strategic corporate level and the Personal level, this will be the trends.
Starting with the Strategic corporate
level the most spoken subjects is;
·
Mobile social
media usage.
·
Social Media
grows as a marketing tool.
·
Big Data gets
a lot more manageable
Turning to the Personal Level we must expect to see
some more critical voices telling us that Social Media can have a flipside
which is not all that beautiful. The backside of Social Media is described as:
·
Social Media
could harm your self-esteem
·
Social Media
is bad for your blood pressure
·
Online is not
a substitute for offline
Social Media at the
Strategic level
As mentioned above there
are 3 most spoken subjects that corporate has to take into consideration in
2013, as they will affect their strategic decisions.
The first
mentioned is Mobil social media usage,
the first prediction is that mobile internet users will overtake the wired
internet users in USA by 2015 and this shift is expected to go much faster on
social platforms. This will give an advantage to networks engaging on “The go
easy and visual platforms” like Instagram. This will again force the
traditional networks to be able to better differentiate their desktop and
mobile experiences. In other words providers of mobile interfaces must have
more streamlined and fast-loading interfaces, while also being able to take
fully advantage of GPS and exchanging information by touching smart phones.
Then we have the field of gaining revenue from using the mobile devices as
advertising options. The Achilles heel is to squeeze ads into the small Mobile screens and make costumers read these without
deleting them before they are read.
Secondly
we will see a further increase of using social
media as a marketing tool.
To solve the above
mentioned mobile revenue puzzle, social networks will strive to implement new
social ad models. Today we have the banner and interruption ads which is
something costumers dislike and therefore eventually will decline. Costumers
want a proper content and they want to have “user generated content “and
therefore a new innovative style of offerings will appear such as Promoted
Tweets and Sponsored Stories. This is what marketing people refer to as native
advertising. A definition of Native advertising is an ad strategy that
allows brands to promote their content into the endemic experience of a site in
a non interruptive, integrated way. Some costumers will resent
this kind of intrusion into their home streams, but native ads enables brands
and companies to interact with their costumers on their own turf and on their
own conditions. This is an idea that ads and content can be interchangeable and
therefore will be able to start collaboration among companies and costumers on
their home field. The concept of native ads is used by companies in sending
Tweets to followers from the company social media channels. Another tool is the
available social - analytical software which can identify which are the most
read tweets the company are sending out. This gives the company the possibility
to selectively amplify the best of the bunch of Tweets and then turning the
best tweets into Promoted Tweets. The
strategy is simple turning content into ads and herby reaching an even larger
audience.
The third strategic objective is the use of Big
Data. Big Data appears in the media
world still as a buzzword but as it gets more manageable, Big Data will be an
advantage for companies. Social Media has provided companies both access and
volumes of information and data about costumers buying behavior on an
aggregated level. The challenge with these huge amounts of Data is how
companies can turn the information into a manageable strategy towards the
costumers so the companies can take advantage of the data. A survey made by Oracle states that 93% of the CEO in North
America believes that they are losing revenue by not leveraging
the Data available to them properly. What is needed is better social media
analyzing tools and software that are capable to processing the huge amounts of
data flowing in from social media and link it to other touch points consumers
have with the company and brand. Big Data will in the future, give us the
ability to track multiple social statistics in real time from tweets, Likes and
even Instagrams to customer sentiment. This will lead to improved customer
service and predict future buying patterns and collaboration can be increased
between company and customer.
Social Media at the
personal level
The strategic level of
Social Media trends 2013 could be seen as some what predictable. We the
customers, consumers are living in a technological driven world where devices
are produced to increase our productivity and some even say our life quality.
But who are looking into the more
personal level of Social Media and how it affects our personal well being.
Most companies will not accept that the there are consequences in working in a
social driven world and environment. Most companies will not accept that they
have a responsibility for their employee’s personal level of interacting and
collaborating on the Social Media.
Who will take into
consideration that social media could
harm your self-esteem?
While evidence for Social Media Anxiety Disorder is not
proven and largely anecdotal an UK
study[2]
from fall 2012, found that 50% of Social
Media users have found that their participation on social networks has had an
overall negative effect on their lives. Some of the participants have even
mentioned that the more time they spent online the bigger possibility is there
for harming their self-esteem. The
reason for poor self-esteem may be due to the increasing numbers of false
portrayed images people are putting on the net to exaggerate their profiles and
be more valuable towards employers among others. This comparison of profiles is
one of the biggest blows to people’s self-esteem. The funny stuff is that Facebook
has estimated that there are approximately 42 million profiles which are faked,
where people have exaggerated or are lying about themselves in their profile.
So before you start
feeling a less valuable person continue to be honest on your profile and secure
that you update with facts not fiction – the last one will be discovered in an
interview.
The second personal level indication is that social
media is bad for your blood pressure. Social Media is by some described as
a hotbed of bad behavior in the way of using the language and grammar and the
way that users are bragging and faking to appear more likable towards the
world. If you find yourself getting unduly irritated by all this exaggerating
and lying then turn to other places on the Social network which appears more
trust worthy. It is not worse to exaggerate your blood pressure.
The third personal level indication is Online is
not a substitute of Offline. When
participants in surveys are asked if they have missed any important life
moments by being captured in their quest of being social, 25% of the survey
respondents say they have missed important life moments. Some will even mention
that with the ubiquity of communications technology in our daily lives it can
be easy to convince one self that “online life” directly correlates to your
“offline life” and that having a face to face dialog with a good friend can be
replaced by an online chat you will be wrong. Just remember you can not make
the online attempts to get a job you have to secure that you work offline as
well otherwise you will miss opportunities.
Reflection
Can we expect the above
mentioned of 2013 Social Media! We are
working in a world in crisis, where it should be possible to gain a closer
collaboration with the costumers- some says that the social technologies will revolutionize the social media collaboration in 2013. What is
most important for me both looking on the strategy and the personal level you
as an individual has to take into consideration, as in all other aspects of
life, make a full stop and think what good can the social media do to you and
what is the disadvantages of the communication form. There is nothing which are
just black and white and you should not say that you have to start to direct
your energy elsewhere just because there is obstacles in using and
communicating on Social Media.
