Social Media trends for 2014 – What should enterprises expect?

Social media as a communication form has changed completely the interaction between people and organizations.  Social media has lifted the communication from the few –to- many over to the many-to-many.  The communication has moved from “we tell you” to  “Tell each other” and we as enterprise will listen to your conversation. Enterprises will collect the Big data to “paint” a picture of your purchase behaviour and your “Likes” in your conversation to be able to sell you what you need. Having a social media strategy has suddenly become a necessity if the enterprise wants to succeed.

But being social continues to mature and the various buying segments will change and mature – you will properly see that target groups will be younger and demand more from you as an enterprise both in terms of price and performance and ethics.

“A picture says more than thousand words”

The famous phrase “One picture is worth a thousand words” is quit actual as the younger generation are requesting a more visual experience on the Social Media. The Social Media App Instagram.com is a brilliant example of how you use pictures to show your world of food, clothing and travel among other things. You can choose to follow a magazine a designer who will show his or her world in a visual stile using pictures when it is on Instagram.com. Another possibility is, you can ad your own video on YouTube and upload your own mobile phone video production in a few minutes.  This visual way of expressing one self is true of younger generations who are the future customers, which put a pressure on enterprise organizations to change their practices and embrace the visual experience. According to Apu Gupta the co-founder of Curalate.com; Enterprises need to find tools, which can measure and understand imagery and visual cues are most likely to be successful in leveraging Social.

“You need to be quick in responding to your customers and witty as well”

Social is often a live interaction between customers and enterprises, where the enterprise company need to be quick in responding to comments on their products and actions with knowledge and witty, using Twitter to do it short and precise. It is a must but can be a challenge for an enterprise company to respond to costumers and events in real time and herby use this concept to their competitive advantage.  Brands known for using this strategy is Old Spice with the witty and Caricature Old Spice man. This brand story went into a communication between the actor and brand been asked by costumers everything from wedding to when the next video will appear. The case of Old Spice tells us that enterprises need to be constantly monitoring social channels to respond to any customer or make the most out of a given situation. 

“Quality over quantity and an ethic touch”

It is important in all communication to have a high quality instead of a big quantity – WHY!! – obvious you need to send a clear and simple message to costumers which spot on in a collaborative way state the message in a clear context and content. Look at the most successful enterprises in modern time all with out any doubt have had a clear and relevant message to their costumers. Relevant messages addressed to me with a clear content and context will have my doled attention, and a higher possible rate of purchase. The social web needs to be a platform for sharing quality content and context to engage interested users.  And then you can not as an enterprise start cheating with your quality to increase your quantity. On top of your quality you need to be able to appear as an ethical correct thinking and acting enterprise company - this is an expectation from costumers.

Collaboration is everything

Collaboration is everything when we are talking Social Media. Collaboration is both the nightmare for the enterprise and a Hugh advantage. The nightmare appears when and if the conversations among costumers turn into a negative dialog where the offering from the enterprise is scowled instead of being praised for the value created to costumers. The Hugh advantage for the enterprise comes when social collaboration turns into the praising and positive conversation among costumers and their friends and herby is marketing and driving sales for the enterprise. There is a trend in social collaboration where costumers are interested in asking trusted “friends” for advice about products and services before purchasing anything. The strategy for the enterprise is to create value into the collaboration to secure a praising of the enterprise products and services among costumers “trusted friends”.

User generated content is the soul of Social media

Social Media has the ability to bring different people together often because a user has generated content, which appears to have the interest of another person. User generated content is the soul of Social Media, and enterprise should embrace it and provide customers with the space to interact with each other. For the enterprise company it is about listening to your customers and make sure that you will host the forum where the conversation takes place. It is a matter of grapping the conversation and be able to apply the knowledge of the conversation into the brand of the enterprise. This will give you as an enterprise a competitive advantage. An example where an enterprise company could use their costumers input and conversation is the chocolate producer Tom´s. In December they produce a Christmas chocolate calendar for children. Apparently a lot of parents have experience that when the children opened December 4^th there was no chocolate inside the box – some parents was very angry in their social media communication towards Tom´s chocolate due to sad children who did not have their expectations fulfilled. The Marketing director from Tom´s had to answer the angry parents. He had the possibility to send the costumers some chocolate and whish them a merry Christmas and herby show how Tom´s protect their brand towards mistakes in production. Tom´s are living of having happy costumers. User generated content suddenly have a power addressing several other of the enterprise costumers. Enterprises have to react and respond and use the content to secure future mistakes.

The conclusion of the above trends for 2014 keep the pressure for the enterprise organizations to continually addressing the issue of Social care and expand the delivery of customer service over the social channels. Customers expect enterprise companies to use the social media as an extension of service delivery.

Merry Christmas and happy Social Media year

Will the use of Social media be jeopardized by NSA surveillance?

During the latest month NSA has been exposed in systematic surveillance of conversation on Social Media and other cloud based forums. A former NSA analytic Mr Snowden has exposed this systematic surveillance. This exposure has given Enterprises a wake up-call that US surveillance is not about national security for the United States, but in general of industrial espionage on enterprise companies outside USA. 
The most embarrassing case is without any doubt the interception of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. But significant companies with an interest in the U.S. domestic market has undoubtedly not been listed in the systematic monitoring by the NSA. How do we as nations, individuals and companies relate us to systematically monitoring of our social media footprint. Or, are there, far more important issues that we as individuals need still in this new monitoring reality to take care of?  The relevant questions to ask here is perhaps:
Are we creating an information society, in which every Social Media conversation, cell phone photograph or other record of personal behaviour is transmitted not to police but to the world at large?
Do we want to jepodize our democraticaly right to speak and express our opinion with-out beeing afraid of some organizations will monitorize us ?

Do we want to chill behavior and spech with the fear that an unpopular comment or embarassing slip will call forth vituperative criticism and perhaps even adversely affect careers or reputations?

Do we need to constantly monitor what we say or do in restaurants, at sporting events, on public sidewalks or even private parties ?

This is worth to have a national and global debate about to secure that our new social independence – the conversation many to many  - will be able to continue freely. Everybody who are using the social media must start introducing a self-criticism, which does not create limitations in our use of social media but ensure that we become more worthwhile in the use of the medium. This debate of how we are using social media needs to be as much about our culture as of our law.


There are no doubt, that a constant surveillance will jeopardize how enterprise organizations will use Social Media in the future. The competitive advantage of beeing an american company,with an inteligence services, who are producing vital information which could be used by homeland industry, could develop the competitive advantage for the americans knowing what their European and Asian competitor are doing in the same field of work. As a privat person we must be aware of how we behave on the social media platform to secure our intrigity and independence to have the ability of free speech on the www.