Social media is changing rapidly. We are going from a world of simply posting about our delicious meals, periscoping about our lives, to deducing that information to create more impactful and tailored messages. This wave will transform the way we think of social, and hopefully impact the world for the better. While some social networks are growing, others are starting to slow down, and some are even disappearing. So what’s next?! Though most of us are still focused on catching up to what’s current.
Here are my 3 predictions on the future of social media.
- Data, Data, Data: More users in the social space can only mean one thing – more opportunities for businesses to extract relevant data regarding their customers faster and easier. The opportunities are endless. Large businesses have a greater opportunity to connect with customers. Nonprofit organizations and governments can also benefit by predicting outbreaks based on social content that is posted by users on the ground. More data, conversations and content will also change the way we do business. Social channels will learn more about your targeted audiences and customers. Social selling will be the new trend as platforms continue to grow. I predict social selling will be brand’s top propriety in the next coming years.
“Social media will change how we do business, marketing and sales with the continued improvement of socials ads and open graph searches like search.twitter.com. Facebook will learn more about their users for ad targeting. Social selling via native ads and open searches on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin will be the new trend as these platforms grow in 2015. Community management and customer service will move to social as it’s a cost effective way to handle questions, support issues and delight customers with high transparency.” – Xavier Major, CEO of Popular Media Consulting, LLC via Business2Community.com.
- Wearable Technology: I predict wearables will completely replace mobile devices and social media will be hyper-accelerated Big Data. People have long been fascinated with the notion of people and machines becoming one. This emerging category of body-worn devices will become increasingly important. It’s still really early in the evolution of wearables, but already, there are hundreds of devices that monitor everything from steps and sleep to blood glucose. I predict the following four areas, over the next few years, will see their greatest impact.
- Data-Facilitated Care
- Personalized Wearables
- Active Coaching
- Gesture-Based Interfaces
“Companies like AiQ Clothing, Hexoskin and OMsignal are already paving the way with biometric garments that measure body vitals. Future wearables could be more hidden by adding a thin film inside your favorite jewelry to measure biometric data, activity levels and even let you know when you’ve been typing at a keyboard too long.” – The Future of Wearable Tech via WIRED
- Focus on Personality: Very soon I believe social media sites will focus heavily on the signup process-making sure users complete their profiles. This will allow marketers to tailor their targeted ads to a more refined and focused group of individuals.
“The future of social media will be hyper-personalized and location based. We are already seeing the emergence of technology like the Facebook Beacon that allows companies to push deals and alerts to nearby smartphones and it will soon be commonplace to be inundated with information related to the businesses in your proximity. Also, I predict personalization will continue to be perfected as companies collect more information on users and devices continue to be integrated. Amazon is already prompting shoppers based on past buying habits and I think we will see more companies leverage big data to better tailor their marketing messages to individual user groups.” – Quincy Smith, Inbound Marketing & Content at Uplift ROI via go-mashmobile.com
What are your predictions on the future of Social Media? Share them in the comment section below.