Social Listening
The market is already full of third party software to help you manage your social media accounts. Without these you are likely to be driven mad checking all of your accounts at all hours, hunting for mentions, up votes and valuable comments.
Third party software such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck offer so much more than just that. Taking your social media data they create graphs, diagrams and reports which you can use to get to the bottom of your social media use. Use this data to see what works and what doesn’t so you can make adjustments for improving your marketing campaign.
Google+
Google’s Search plus Your World has the potential to change the face of SEO. With Google+ being it’s central component people are going to have to start using, if they’re not already, their G+ accounts. Combine this with Google’s other services and you have an impressive tool kit to publish and share all different types of content to grab your target audience’s attention.
Google are putting a lot of time and effort into this project now, so it is best to adopt early as possible as an SEO tool to make sure your search rankings aren’t affected negatively.
You can read more about Google’s new update in this article on how Search plus Your World has annoyed Twitter.
SoLoMo
The combination of social, local and mobile (SoLoMo) is going to take off further. Utilising the ever increasing number of smart phone users to drive sales and footfall is becoming more commonplace.
Apps such as Foursquare allow you to set up location based offers for customers on the move and provide a great method of getting yourself, literally, on the map. While popular subscription services such as Groupon are a great way to provide offers to a wide range of potential customers in a short space of time.
Content
Content Marketing has become an incredibly popular way of building your search result ranking. However, this did lead to a lot of shaky content solely created for the links. Google want to minimise this kind of content to improve its search quality.
This isn’t a bad thing; if you create high quality, knowledgeable and engaging content which has actual use to your audience you are likely to see positive effects on your ranking. Especially if it’s highly sharable, if that content goes viral you’ve hit a traffic gold mine.
Expect to see less emphasis to be put on figures such as number of fans; while it’s a great figure to show off how popular and trendy your brand may be, it doesn’t give you any real indication as to the quality of the fans and ROI.
More companies are actively advertising their Facebook pages and expect to see them use this to drive more customers into retail stores through specific offers and discounts. This is something that is not just limited to big companies; anyone can do it! These methods can be more accurately tracked and improved in later attempts.
Community
It’s time to take more of an active role in the community. Get involved in discussions and show off your expertise; if people are impressed with your knowledge it will help build your reputation as an expert in the field- something people definitely look for when looking for a service.
With Social Media and SEO changing it is even more important to stay up to date with the latest development. This is why Silicon Beach Training offers a wide range of expertly taught courses, including courses in Social Media Training and SEO Training.
