Social media is a crucial aspect of a company’s online presence. Today, a company can easily connect to and tailor online messages, relationships with customers, partners, media, vendors, and employees while enhancing its search engine optimization and keyword ownership.
For JSA, making social media uptake predictions is easy. The JSA team has been monitoring the evolution of this medium from simple communications tool to a full-fledged self-promotion suite since social media’s inception. With business applications and customer social communications expectations on the rise, it’s easy to see why having an established social media strategy will be crucial to your success in 2013 and beyond.
Here are JSA’s top social media predictions for 2013:
1.) We will see a significant increase in companies using social media services to market their goods and services, recognizing the potential for sharing content and information and enhancing engagement with target audiences.
2.) Companies will continue to develop innovative means to embed promotions, advertising/commercials within its social media content as this type of branding replaces more disruptive and blatant forms of advertising. Social media allows companies to reach their customers with a form of branded ‘entertainment.’ This creative content provides the intended target market with information in which they have a genuine, real interest.
3.) Video will continue to solidify its role as one of the most crucial technologies in communications, conferencing, information-sharing and social media. The expected advances in mobile networks’ abilities to deliver high-speed, high-quality video streaming will enable improved video services for a variety of social media mobile applications. Not surprisingly, the proliferation of social media-enabled smart phones and tablets equipped with high resolution cameras and video applications will further prove the supremacy of video in social media interfaces.
4.) Businesses will become familiar with the benefits of social media and develop their own internal “social enterprises,” linking each staff member on both a personal and professional level. And for businesses in which their clients and/or partners can grow from networking with one another, many corporate social media networks will launch.
5.) Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook will continue to dominate social media, but other image-led platforms such as Pinterest and smaller, regional networking sites will expand.
6.) QR code usage will continue to rise. In 2012, we witnessed hundreds if not thousands of companies utilizing the QR code. And, paying homage to smartphones, more and more consumers are using them. QR codes are designed to give people more information about a company, or a running promotion, with a simple scan from their smartphone or other similar device.
Interested in learning more, and want to give your company a positive social voice and effective community engagement in 2013? Contact JSA today to learn more about our array of PR, marketing and event planning services.
