Simon Heyes
Co-founder and Director of Social at 8 Million Stories
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social needs to become more human
5
Social media is all about connections and relationships between
users. Many brands are still scared to put faces behind their brand logo. But why? At the end of the day, people interact with people. The more ‘human’ a brand is, the easier the connections can be, making social media much more engaging. Are brands championing their internal ambassadors: those across social media? This is an important area to consider in 2016 and beyond.
‘Buy now’ buttons 6
Social platforms have been trying to monetise themselves for the last
few years, without much success. Pinterest launched Buyable Pins in June 2015, which was a big step forward, but Facebook and Twitter have tried, toiled and failed thus far. Will 2016 be the year that social media makes a breakthrough in ecommerce transactions? Quite possibly – especially since, according
PerformanceIN.com, mobile transactions are due to increase by 68 per cent in 2016.
Social ad revolution: more formats, more ad-blocking
7
The mobile ad-blocking revolution is almost here. Ad-blocking software is
already present on iOS devices and, as The Next
Web.com reported recently, Android has followed suit. That sent shockwaves through the publishing industry, but it presents a
huge opportunity for social ads. Facebook is doing brilliantly, Twitter needs to up its game, and expect to see new ad formats – particularly around video and interactive content – in 2016.
Speed up the web 8
There has been a big push by Facebook and Google to speed up the web over
the last 18 months. Facebook introduced Instant Articles in May 2015, and Google isn’t far behind, pushing their AMP pages heavily at the tail end of 2015 and rolling out in 2016. These pages are designed to load immediately on mobile devices, regardless of device type or signal strength. Combined with mobile ad-blocking (Samsung found that pages load an average of 51 per cent faster with ads
another favourite tool that lets users schedule posts across most platforms, and optimise the timing of the scheduling based on previous post engagement data. Expect more types of automation to head to social media management in 2016.
10
Many brands use bloggers, celebrities and
infancy, but it shows the power of and service coverage, as brands more of their target audience. Expect this to boom in 2016, but hopefully with some sensible
Many brands are still scared to put faces behind their logo
blocked on mobile devices), brands should be prepared to see a big push towards speeding up the web across social media platforms in 2016.
More automation 9
There are more and more tools appearing on the market that help to
automate social activities. The basic tools schedule posts. But tools such as Narrow (
narrow.io) Twitter, follow them, favourite their Tweets and engage with them. Creepy? Some might say so.
regulations and industry pricing standards eventually introduced. to brands. But they are also a form of advertising, and should be taken seriously as their social reach and engagement levels grow.
8ms.com
■
65 annual sourc e guide 2016
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
