New Social Media Technology

Social media brands have to be on their toes staying up-to-date with the latest developments and strategically investing resources into technology trends that are likely to be embraced by the customer.

5 new trends in social media technology for 2015-2016 are:

Social Media Commerce- SCommerce

A budding trend is to link social media and eCommerce, allowing users to purchase on networking sites. This seems logical enough with the massive growth in both social media and eCommerce. One would assume that a collaborative effort between the two industries can yield very positive results for marketers, presenting a ready made sales channel to grab customers.

However, it can be potentially hazardous to marry the two, as social media is essentially about building relationships and customers may be averse to the commercial play. Both Twitter and Facebook are testing the “Buy” CTA buttons.

Integrating Social Advertising

Social advertising technology trends will continue to evolve in 2015. In addition to new and enhanced social advertising channels, there is a trend to integrate brand databases and omnichannel (i.e., cross channels done well) strategies for sophisticated customer targeting.

Auto-play video ads on Facebook and a variety of Twitter cards are recent examples. In addition to brand new social advertising channels, ways to firmly integrate social advertising with a brand’s database and omnichannel strategies for sophisticated and contextual targeting are key areas in development.

If you build your social advertising on rich and accurate behavioural data stemming from website, email, apps etc., and if you closely interlink it with your other channels, you switch on social advertising with endless opportunities. The better integrated with other marketing vehicles, the more relevant your social advertising, and the less users will feel commercialized.

Mobile Technology Trends

Advancements in geofencing and geotargeting will enable retailers to put mobile and owned mobile apps at the core of their marketing activities, reaching their customers with timely and highly contextual messages on a 1:1 basis.

Social websites and apps are among the most popular use of cell phones. An optimized web and social media will soon become the standard, accompanied by geo-targeted, real-time content.

Social Video

Social video is evolving at a fast and furious pace with higher audience demand being a key component. First, audio-visual storytelling is emotionally engaging, so sharing a story and displaying your products with beautifully crafted messages is compelling to the audience. Make user generated content part of your marketing strategy. Vine, Instagram, Snapchat are popular social video apps. More recently, the Market app that works with Twitter to bring live-streaming video to the social network is creating a buzz in the social media industry.

Agile Marketing

The goals of Agile Marketing are to improve the speed, predictability, speed, transparency, and adaptability to change in the marketing function.

Agile marketing is not only about going viral – it’s about relevant content at the perfectly right time and immediate reactions to external influences with real-time marketing. It relies on the monitoring of trends, both on a large and a small, audience-targeted scale, throughout the day.