9 Ways Social Media Marketing Will Change in 2014

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From the decline of Facebook use among teens to Twitter's IPO, if there is one thing we know for sure about social media, it's that few trends hold on for long — so marketers need to stay on their toes.

With that in mind, we asked nine successful entrepreneurs how they are planning on altering their social media marketing strategies in the next six months, based on their predictions for the new year. Here's what they had to say. 

1. Graphic software will rise.

 

Posts on Facebook with photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs than text-based posts, according to Kissmetrics. With the rise of Pinterest and Tumblr, it's going to become increasingly important to produce content in visual form, whether it is infographics, images with text overlay or pretty quote graphics. We'll be using more graphic software to turn our written content into visual content to make it more shareable on social media.
- Laura Pepper Wu, 30 Day Books 

2. Social won't be used for sales.
 

People love to buy, but they hate to be sold. Companies currently celebrating the most success in social media focus on engagement, nurturing relationships and sharing value through their social outreach. Customers and prospects will seek out companies offering value, entertainment, discounts, help and engagement.
- Charles Gaudet, Predictable Profits 

3. Automation will explode.
 

 A lot currently rides on the shoulders of social media marketers. They have to be on top of brand voice, any current company promotions or marketing campaigns, the tools they measure social media with, the various communities on the platforms, etc. It's a lot, and it's more varied than most people are capable of doing well. In 2014, we'll see a lot of automation of the tactics (think timing, platform, structure, etc.), so social media marketers can focus on the content and the genuine social interaction. Autonomics is being adopted now and will only explode as more technologies come online in 2014.
- Brennan White, Watchtower 

4. LinkedIn will become the most important publisher.
 

Imagine a publication with more than 100 million captive readers and writers, such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, all natively hooked into and targeted to a social network. LinkedIn will become a premium destination for industry news, and you need to take part in that ecosystem early and often. Publish original content, network among peers in groups and raise your profile now.
- Trevor Sumner, LocalVox 

5. Content will be bigger and better.
 

Simple messages and simple questions aren't enough anymore. To achieve a deeper connection with your customers, a company needs to engage on a deeper and more intelligent level. Short videos, infographics, quality imagery and polls are all ways to engage deeper. Companies need to look at the content they put out and ask themselves, "Is this shareable?" An example of a huge company that's doing this really well right now is Wal-Mart. Its content is smart and engaging, and the fan engagement is very high by comparison to its competitors. Also, companies need to focus on the fans they have and not the fans they want. If your message is always trying to reach out, you'll bore the fans that have chosen to connect with you.
- Andrew Howlett, Rain 

6. Social will need to stand out.
 

Social media has really started to mature. Therefore, it will be a lot harder to stand out. To win big in social media, you'll have to think outside the box and find ways to get your content to stand out in all the noise.
- Wade Foster, Zapier 

7. Social media campaigns will have to be paid.
 

 I assume that the most effective social media campaigns in 2014 will be paid. The key is learning how to use Facebook and Twitter's paid tools now so that you'll have an edge on the competition. For instance, are you using Facebook's advanced audience tool? It allows you to upload your email database and send specific response messages directly to your focused audience. Imagine being able to segment both email marketing and Facebook ads to your target audience. Facebook already offers these types of advanced tools, and they will become more mainstream in 2014. Similarly, Twitter is now public and has been making an aggressive push into paid advertising. If you are a brand and want to succeed on Twitter in 2014, get ready to pay for it.
- Kristopher Jones, ReferLocal.com 

8. Interactive content will trump static content.
 

Creating static content is too easy. In 2014, the bar will be raised on the type of content people choose to engage with. Expect to see content become more interactive (think software-like). The year 2013 was the year of "Top 10" lists. To get users to engage to the same degree in 2014 and subsequent years, publishers will need to make it increasingly engaging, and one effective way to do that is to make your content interactive.
- Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors 

9. Google+ will merge into the social scene.
 

As Google continues to merge its products, it’s becoming more and more important in the social media landscape. There are so many benefits to using Google+. It creates a strong community that allows you to use your brand and identify consumers who share an interest in your products. It also allows your brand to become more social with like-minded consumers. They provide like-minded consumers a platform to connect with one another.

This builds a strong community, which is a great way to get feedback on new and old products from real-time consumers.
- Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net

Scott GerberScott Gerber is a serial entrepreneur, author (Never Get a 'Real' Job), TV commentator and founder of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneur...More

10 Startups to Watch in 2014

 

If you only focus on the multi-billion dollar valuations of young companies like Pinterest, Uber and Snapchat, you might assume 2013 has been a very good year for tech startups. In reality, it has been more of a bittersweet year. 

Many early-stage companies struggled to raise a Series A rounds of funding, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the "Series A Crunch," which for some meant to fight for their survival. Meanwhile, several later-stage companies like Fab and Rdio laid off large portions of their staff to rein in costs.

Even so, plenty of promising startups raised funds and launched (or teased) exciting features this year in markets ranging from mobile payments to media. What's more, the success of Twitter's IPO has boosted investor interest in other social startups and may help revive the market for tech IPOs, which suffered after Facebook's troubled public offering in 2012.

We've rounded up a few notable startups that have the capital, talent or ideas — often all three — to succeed. Some may thrive for years, some may get acquired and some may go nowhere, but all will be worth watching.

1. Circa
Circa launched its iPhone app in late 2012 with the goal of rethinking the breaking news experience for the mobile era. This year, the startup proved that wasn't just an ambitious pitch. Circa poached Reuters' social media editor Anthony De Rosa to serve as editor in chief of a team that now includes 10 reporters. It also launched a new Android app and updates to its iPhone app which make it easier to find and track breaking news stories as they develop.

2. Level Money
It's not every day that a personal finance startup attracts a lot of buzz, but Level Money may be the exception. The San Francisco company was cofounded by Visa's former manager of global emerging products and aims to make it easier for users to budget on the go from their phones. Think Mint, but with a simpler design, boiled down to the essentials and targeted more toward younger users. The startup raised a $5 million round Series A round this year led by Kleiner Perkins, with investments from some big names in the finance industry including former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill.

3. Routehappy
If the mark of a good Internet startup is addressing a basic pain point among consumers, then Routehappy is certainly a startup worth watching. Routehappy, which launched its website out of beta in May, relies on a team of data experts to help travelers compare flights not just by price and times, but by seat types, amenities and perks. The startup has since raised $1.5 million in funding and launched a mobile app.

4. Flipboard
Flipboard has been around for a few years, but in 2013, the startup took three big steps towards achieving its full potential as a curation platform. The company gave users the option to create their own magazines, embraced ecommerce with the introduction of shoppable magazines and added support for Windows 8.1, meaning it is now available on all major mobile operating platforms. These efforts, combined with the additional $50 million it is reportedly close to raising, should help Flipboard continue to grow its user base and ramp up monetization.

5. Oyster
A year ago, the concept of e-book subscriptions was just that: a concept. But this year saw the launch of several notable e-book subscription ventures, including an offering from Scribd, the popular document scanning service, and Oyster, a younger startup that raised $3 million in 2012 from Founders Fund.

The two services offer a comparable number of books, but Oyster and its team that includes former Google employees has tried to differentiate itself with a gorgeous user interface like a modified version of Netflix. Both Scribd and Oyster believe that the e-book subscription market could be a multi-billion dollar opportunity just like movie or music subscriptions. If that proves to be even slightly true, expect to see more money and possibly some acquisitions in this space.

6. Uber
Uber has survived regulatory battles and the occasional bad headline to become a fixture in some of the biggest cities in the U.S. and abroad. In August, the ride sharing service announced raising a $258 million funding round led by Google Ventures to help expand into new markets and fight the inevitable legal battles. What makes Uber really worth watching though isn't just its success with the ride sharing model, but the hints from its CEO Travis Kalanick in recent months that the company may expand into other areas like same-day delivery, a hot space right now. In other words, Uber isn't just coming after taxi companies; it's coming after business like Amazon.

7. DataSift
It may not be the sexiest startup on this list, but Datasift finds itself in a space that is becoming increasingly high-profile thanks to Twitter's IPO: social data. Apple recently acquired Topsy, a social media analytics company, for more than $200 million. One day later, Datasift announced that it had raised another $42 million in a Series C round, bringing its total funding up to more than $70 million.

8. Clinkle
Clinkle will either go down as the next big thing in mobile payments or the next big bust, but either way, it will be big. The startup and its 22-year-old founder have raised more than $25 million in June and more big name investors continue to flock to the company. In late September, the company revealed that more than 100,000 people were on the wait list to use the app, even though no one really knows what it does. The app, which is rumored to use a high-frequency sound to process payments, is expected to roll out to more colleges in the coming months. Yet, the company also recently laid off a quarter of its staff, suggesting that there are some problems behind the scenes.

9. Circle
Before Bitcoin started to gain tons of press coverage and approach the $1,000 mark, some of the startups in the space were essentially homegrown operations. But now, some well-known VCs and tech founders are entering the space. Perhaps the most notable is Circle, a company founded by the man behind the Brightcove video platform. Circle raised a $9 million Series A round at the end of October and plans to develop services that make it easier for consumers and merchants to purchase and use digital currencies like Bitcoin. Expect to hear more about Circle in the coming year, assuming Bitcoin sticks around that long.

10. SmartThings
SmartThings is one of the leading startups in the Internet of Things space. The company provides tools to help users connect their homes to their smartphones, which would potentially shut the garage door remotely and send updates when the heat is on too high or when too much water is under the sink. SmartThings recently raised $12.5 million in Series A funding.

By Seth Fiegerman

Customer Experience Challenges and Trends Identified For 20146

 

This post is a continuation of my last blog, "Amazon Claims Top Spot: Customer Experience Trends For 2013". As part of our Global Leader Survey (GLS), Beyond Philosophy engages top executives in Customer Experience Management (CEM) to learn more about what their plans are for CEM in the coming year. We also want to identify trends and focus centers for the experts in our field. This year, our focus was on the more “mature” markets in the West, particularly the US and UK. 

When we chose our respondents, we focused on those with a high level of expertise and knowledge of Customer Experience Management level respondents. Our aim was to get a group of responses from experts in our field. Part of our survey was to learn from these experts what questions about CEM they would want answered.

What Did They Want to Know
What we learned is that by and large our respondents were interested in practical application of CEM to their organization. This is surprising to us since for years it has been to demonstrate an ROI for CEM programs. To be fair, the ROI issue was a close second. But this change implies a change in the perception of the importance of CEM. Perhaps the tide is turning from profit-focus to customer focus. This is good news for anyone who ever bought a good or service from any company ever. 

We also saw an increase in demand for how to improve the engagement of leadership in CEM. This implied a need for culture integration for many of our experts. It shows us that the why question about CE has been answered because our experts are moving towards the 'how' portion of the process. The good news is that if they actually implement the 'how' of CEM programs, they are likely to experience the ROI they are concerned about as well. 

Some other interesting stats were discovered in our survey. As we mentioned, most of our expert respondents believe in the importance of CEM. It averaged a 6 on scale of 1 to 7. We also saw that nearly 70% of them were going to invest more resources in CEM next year, at an average of about 33% more. The majority of the rest were going to keep their investment the same. Only 3% of them were planning a decrease. 

Key Challenges for CEM and Trends for 2014
Our experts told us what they identified as the biggest challenges for CEM in the coming year. For the first time, corporate culture was identified as the biggest challenge to our leaders, followed closely by the need to demonstrate an ROI. This further cements our findings that many organizations are moving from thinking that CEM might be important to knowing that it is and wanting to know how to improve it. 

Our experts also told us about the top trends for next year. The largest identified trend by nearly half of our respondents was Voice of the Customer (VOC) data collection and analysis. Social media and personalization, along with a few others, followed this leading trend. What we take from this is that digital is increasingly important to CEM channels and keeping these channels personal is a concern for our CEM leaders. 

I couldn’t agree more that your digital experience is critical moving forward. The new generation of consumers, the Millennials or Generation Y, has lead this migration to digital channels for CEM touch points. Generation X is quickly following and the Boomers are even dipping a toe in the digital channel pool. Our experts also identified the top CEM companies in our survey. The top three they chose were all digital companies: Amazon, Zappos and Apple. These companies have been extremely diligent about keeping their experience personal and digitally enabled.

To summarize the trends of CEM for 2013, we believe that companies are accepting that CEM is important focus for companies that want to succeed in the coming year. The biggest challenges our experts face are implementation and demonstrating ROI, which is a change from previous surveys. In addition, the emphasis on recording and analyzing the data from customers is a critical focus for most organizations that want to be customer centric in the coming year. Increasingly, this data collection and resulting integration will occur at digital channels. 

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world's first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four best-selling books and an engaging key-note speaker. Colin Shaw