How Will Your Social Media Situation Look in One Year?

By Jennifer Dunn

Between all the other activities you must do every day as a business owner, keeping up with new and exciting trends probably isn’t the highest on your list. This can be especially true with latest social media bandwagons – you’re already on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. What else are you supposed to do?

Not keeping up with these trends, though, may actually be hurting your bottom line. While it may be a little obnoxious that web users bounce from social media site to social media site, you have to follow your customers. This involves learning what they’re both currently using and what’s up next.

Want a little help? Here are a few services to check out.

New Trends

Think video would work well with your business but don’t have a camera nor the time to spend editing something for YouTube? Then Vine is perfect for you. You may have seen these micro-videos around the web already as the Twitter owned service blew up pretty quickly after it was launched.

Vine works because it is super simple to use. After you download the app, you simply hold the screen to record video or just tap it to record a frame/picture. Your limit is 7 seconds, so be brief! Although it doesn’t seem like you can really get much in during that short amount of time, businesses have made some amazing things with Vine.

Another social media bandwagon you should hop on is Google Plus. “But wait,” you might ask. “I thought that ship had sailed?” Sure, that’s what the general consensus was…up until Google Plus passed Twitter as the #2 social media site. Now it’s apparent Plus is here to stay.

What’s there for your business? Besides yet another profile for you to fill out, make sure to take advantage of Hangouts. These video-based interactions are an amazing way to engage with your customers and fans in many different ways. For an example, look at what Major League Soccer has done with it.

Up and Comers

How often have you or someone you know used Facebook and exclaimed how annoyed you are with how complicated it’s become? You might use the service a little more if it wasn’t just so “busy” all the time. Between all the games, ads, and constant updates about what people ate for dinner it’s hard to actually do anything of substance.

This is why simplicity is going to be a factor in the future when it comes to social media. One service, Potluck, reduces social media to sharing cool stuff with your friends. You find a neat link, post it, and your friends (and their friends, their friends’ friends, etc.) can talk about it. That’s the extent of the site.

Even cooler, it’s a website now, but it’s actually designed to be a smartphone app. This means people waiting in line for coffee, bored at work, or taking a trip to the bathroom will be able to see the stuff your business account shares.

Also on the horizon is Ghost, a true blogging site. The creators used to work at WordPress and felt like the site was moving towards making websites rather than letting people blog. That’s why Ghost is designed to let writers hop on and go to town rather than spending hours making their blog look fabulous. If you’ve ever had trouble getting your great content out there because WordPress or BlogSpot left you feeling like a website designer, then a platform like Ghost could be the way of the blog future.

What social media trends have you spotted recently?