By Aaron Huckett
As we celebrate the end of 2016, the Publicasity Digital team are already looking to the future and have selected the key trends that will be shaping the way both consumers and brands will be using social media in 2017:
Augmented Reality’s Time to Shine?
The technology has been around for years and we can pretty much assure you it has been on the ‘digital trends’ list for a while. However, it looks like 2017 may finally be the year that this starts to dominate the marketing industry. With the popularity of Pokemon Go!, brands can no longer ignore this as a fad for uber geeks. Brands with physical stores are likely to be interested in the proximity-based offers element of AR / VR and travel brands will lap up the possibility to fully showcase what is on offer in their destinations.
However, to caveat this, we are still in the very early stages of the technology (on a consumer level) so whilst it may not be a dominating trend, it will be one that will be tested widely in the industry.
The Rise of Live Streaming
The most imminent and emerging trend is the growth of live video streaming. This dominated the latter part of 2016 and will only continue to rise in popularity. Media outlets, such as the Mail Online, are calling for great stories and features that would work for their daily live streaming. Most days there is an article about a situation caught ‘live’ and shared, such as the recent Victoria Secrets debacle.
For brands, live streaming gives the potential to release engaging content, conduct marketing around an event or even team up with influencers to feature latest product. With the priority that Facebook gives to video and the reduced organic reach, we should see brands experimenting with this new format in 2017.
Expiring Content
If there was an award for the most talked about social media network of the year, we are pretty sure it would be Snapchat. Not only has this network sky-rocketed in terms of users and popularity, but it has also transformed the way both consumers and other social networks consume content. It has brought-back the ‘in-the-moment’ and live element of social and has introduced vertical videos into the mainstream. It has even forced it’s competitors into developing similar tech (Instagram Stories anyone?).
For 2017, we believe the ‘disappearing’ or ‘expiring’ content is going to become ever more popularity – especially for brands who need are happy to publish content without having to go-through hurdles of approvals.
Increased Personalisation
There is a lot of content out there. There are a lot of people out there. There is so much choice for the reader that if you don’t personalise and focus on a specific target, your content is much less likely to resonate with consumers.
Personalisation is going to become more and more niche – and it needs to if you want to reach your key consumers. It is no longer about targeting everyone who likes coffee. It is about targeting those who have been in your coffee shop, considered to buy your coffee brand, or are simply walking past at that very moment…
Dark Social
The term refers to social sharing that is impossible to track, or is “dark.”
Dark social is sharing that takes place over email, SMS, or instant message. Because visitors are being forwarded the exact URL for the page they are visiting, these shares appear to be the same as direct traffic.
In 2017, many marketers are looking to re-evaluate the way they are perceiving their direct traffic by identifying and segregating dark social traffic in their analytics platform. Currently, there is no way of doing this, but likely this will change in the months to come…
The End of Twitter?
Twitter isn’t doing so hot.
We are suffering Twitter-fatigue.
Twitter built itself on fast, bite-sized updates, but this leads to a barrage of both incoming and outgoing tweets. This was novel and exciting at first, but now users are starting to crave something different—bigger, more detailed, more interesting pieces of content.
This is a big consideration for content development in 2017.
Brands Get Cut-Throat
Every year, new social media platforms emerge to try and disrupt the status quo or find their place among the heavy-hitters of the social media world – but brands can’t always jump on the bandwagon
In 2017, we’ll see more of a trend toward refinement; rather than spending equal effort on five different platforms, more businesses will find one platform that works especially well for them, and narrow their focus on it