How Social Media Marketing Looks in 2015

Five years ago, Facebook had introduced its now-iconic ‘Like’ button and MySpace was still popular. Since then, social media underwent rapid development and has grown into a huge and worldwide phenomenon with 2.46 million posts being made on Facebook every minute, 104 thousand images being taken on Snapchat and 1,730,000, 000 users who have uploaded about 20,000 pictures on Tumblr. These figures are expected to increase every year substantially and show how influential social media has become in terms of how people engage and communicate with each other as well as how business and commerce is done. Social media is used by about 97% of the marketers and 92% have acknowledged that importance and effectiveness of this tool for their businesses. Following are the trends and highlights that will be part of social media in 2015: 1- Content marketing is going to get more social. The power of content marketing is dependent on not just creating the ideal content, but also how the content is distributed to the targeted audiences.2- Real time social marketing is highly important. By observing and responding promptly to the needs of the target audience, marketers and business owners will be able to promote better engagements, which can increase conversions and sales.3- Audio and video are important elements of social content. They have become powerful tools like other digital marketing channels, which can lead to better responses through better engagement.4- There is also steady shit to social media on mobile. Experts have predicted that about 1 billion people will use their mobile gadgets for accessing social media on mobile. Therefore, it is logical for businesses to start focusing on mobile social media to make the most of it.5- Paid social media advertising will also continue to rise. Daniel Neubauer, the CEO of Internet Marketing Company Red Ram Media, says "The natural or organic reach of a regular Facebook post is around 0.073%. Businesses should give some thought to paid social media advertising if they want to get more mileage from their social media efforts".6- Social media wallets will be used for payment. Mobile usage has seen a phenomenal rise due to which prominent online tech players like Apple and PayPal have been driven to action for taking advantage of the mobile payment space.7- Social media commerce is also on the rise. Twitter, Facebook and soon other social media platforms will exploit commerce with ‘buy’ buttons that will be fully functional soon.8- It has been predicated by experts from Gartner and other research firms that businesses will use social media in a more smarter and analytical manner.9- Social media is also gaining importance in the business-to-business marketing arena. Facebook has an 89% usage rate and LinkedIn is close behind with an 88% usage rate by marketers.10- New social networks are also rising such as Ello, which are promising to provide users with a social network that’s free of ads and will not sell important user data to third parties. These trends should be kept in mind by marketers when designing social media strategies for 2015.