2014 is going to be an exciting year for both small businesses and social media. For the previous years, social media has played a key role for small businesses to influence technologies and compete with bigger and branded companies. For this year, not all trends from 2013 will be rectified- others will continue making fads and some will absolutely fall. But there are universal trends you should keep in mind- frequent communication to the customers, strengthening relationships and obviously, sharing great quality contents.
Content serves as the soul of your website- as it is and forever will be.
Without further ado, here are the top 6 trends that will be making buzz in the social media and small businesses this year.
Age of mobile devices
We already have a clue last year that the use of mobile devices will soon be mainstream. The ‘soon’ we believed to be really soon is actually this year.
Therefore, it is an opportunity for marketers to build a responsive design and improve last year’s businessinteractions via their mobile platform. Setting this as a priority won’t be a disgrace on your business. If your community is small and you don’t have venture in the mobile platform yet, it’s better to act now than it’s too late. But first, you have to carefully set a plan on how your business should interact- in the most appealing wayto your customers facing their phones. Try building mobile apps or look for rooms in emails, SMS or any other ways to schedule communications to your customers via smartphone and portable devices.
Niche sites will create more impact
As social media giants Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter are getting harder to be found organically, niche sites will be more treasured this year in front of your customers. Aside from offering affordable advertising solutions, niche sites will also be highly targeted this year.
Blogging would still be the stepping stone of bigger businesses
Setting up blogs with unique, rich and usable contents and generating traffic to your site would still be the no.1 method in generating new leads. Small businesses who are almost confident in their niche site should start blogging immediately to acquire more new leads this year.
Goodbye Spammy contents
Last year, Google has been cracking down sites with spammy contents and Facebook is also pacing the same way to get rid of spams this year. If we put a little analysis to this, spammy contents will drive you nowhere this year especially that big sites are revved up in improvingtheir technologies to slap back content owners and their spammy contents back to their websites. Therefore, focus on being innovate this year by creating usable quality contents that can benefit your customers and avoid spam.
Plus for Google Plus
Although the giant social media received less crowd for the previous year, 2014 will entirely be a different year for them. With its multi- filtered search benefits plus increasing user base, your potential customers will surely be moving from their recently adored Facebook to Google Plus. So, move one step ahead of the game and start building your business account on G+. The giant is also currently developing technologies for +Post ads or promoted posts that will drive your contents to an even larger audience.
More success for Image- driven sites
Pinterest, Instagram, Twitpic and probably more image-centric sites will be rushing this year but this does not mean you have to bid goodbye to text contents. Instead, act like a coin and see the two sides of everything- associate your articles with meaningful images as a technique to match and optimize your web contents.
About the author
The author is an established social media marketing consultant. He’s been working closely with clients from across the globe who wish to get more meaningful results from their SEO efforts. Currently, he’s also an active blog author and a contributor in essayjedi.com
