Even as we write this piece Earth shattering events are taking place in the social media space. Events that have the potential of changing how we search, communicate, market and advertise in the future – events that are no less than game changers, events that are forcing a paradigm shift, no less.
For one, people around the world are increasingly using multiple devices – laptops, mobiles, tablets et all to access the social media. The shift towards the handhelds is getting more and more pronounced and it will no longer be enough to have a presence in the net – the presence has to be customized for the handhelds. The “galaxy” will indeed be in the hands in the near future.
The second thing that is happening is the way search engines are being optimized. Gone are the days of placing carefully selected key words to bait the search engines to jazz up your rankings. State of the art Engines will increasingly gauge, along with key words and meta tags, the social presence and popularity quotient. What is the kind of a fan following do you have? How many times do you get re-twitted? What is the size of your connections? How active are you in engaging your connections in conversations will all be counted before you get that coveted place in the ranking sun.
The third emerging trend will involve the employees as ambassadors in the social networking pace. They will be used to engage potential and current customers in conversations and corporates will utilse their contacts to spread out more effectively in the social media space. Instead of restricting employee usage of company bandwidth for personal networking, employers will actually encourage employees to reach out and use them to communicate efficiently and effectively.
As an adjunct to this the other tectonic shift in the mindsets that will take place will see more and more companies ditching promotional sales pitches and using employees as ambassadors and working towards building customer trust. This will have a profound impact on the content as the winners will provide “relevant” content that is of value to the searcher as opposed to stuffing their platforms with “Im the best” kind of innuendoes. Company websites and other platforms in the social media will also increasingly seek greater emotional connect with customers and the content will become much more warm and personal as opposed to jargon based dishes of cold facts and figures that sought to portray a “holier than thou” attitude.
However, the biggest shift will come in the use of pictures and videos as communication tools in the social space. The old adage, “ a picture is worth a thousand words” will come back to haunt communicators as in these days of “skim readers” a picture will certainly be able to attract and arrest attentions far better than the written words. Videos, especially the you tube led ditty’s will gain in importance by leaps and bounds as more and more communication packages will come replete with imbedded video messages.
Companies will also realise that there is more to social media than facebook and many will venture out into what till today, is unchartered territory. The predictable facebook response I feel will be to integrate more features like the ones offered by linked in and other platforms to retain its position as the prime mover offering a single window of solutions.
Some say that the traditional media has already conceded the first goal by incorporating barcodes so send the seekers to the virtual space. But this doesn’t mean that we are about to witness a kind of “Empire Strikes Back” reaction from the traditional media. Nor is this the time to write its obituary. On the contrary, the traditional media will get increasingly wired and integrated with the social media with both working as complements to each other.
These are indeed exciting times. Everybody out there is a potential marketer of your products, including the buyers. If this aint multi tasking, what is?