THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
What Top 20 Experts Think!
We asked 20 experts, 5 questions regarding the future of Social Media Marketing:
- What are the primary strategies you use to engage with your social media followers?
- Which are your favorite Social Media Marketing tools?
- What are your boldest predictions for The Future of Social Media Marketing?
- Which are the new social media platforms you expect will build momentum?
- Do you believe social media channels will increasingly become "pay-to-play" for marketers?
The future of Social Media Marketing according to Akia Garnett, Social Commentator and Media expert
Helping audiences feel connected to brands through virtual relationship building is key
Your primary engagement strategies?
The personal approach to brands, large or small, is what I subscribe to. Helping audiences feel connected to brands through virtual relationship building is key. Interactivity within the online community increases engagement and helps the brand?s voice appear connected to its communities.
Your favourite Social Media Marketing tools?
I?m a huge fan of twitter, and so pretty much any tool that allows me to dissect the data points on twitter works for me. Tweetreach is a great tool for gaining a high-level view of weekly interactivity. The number of analytical tools out there are endless, so it?s a matter of finding one that gives you the dashboard visually preferred. I will say that no tool should know more about your social presence than your own internal capability of measuring impact. Tools should confirm your suspicions, not uncover what you had no clue about.
Your biggest prediction for Social Media Marketing?
As I mentioned, there are too many tools out there, and new ones are being developed every hour. I suspect that the playing field will continue to level and that large content management aggregators will increase their power by offering more pay for airtime or exposure tactics, meaning, advertising options will decrease for modest budgets, but increase for bigger budgets.
Smaller players will move towards a more underground platform, making them less discoverable. What rises to the top, in my estimation, won?t be the best brands, but it will be the brands with the smartest marketers.
Smaller players will move towards a more underground platform, making them less discoverable. What rises to the top, in my estimation, won?t be the best brands, but it will be the brands with the smartest marketers.
The next up-and-coming social media platform?
I still believe in WhatsApp and Tango type platforms. I don?t think they?ve scratched the surface on their potential with those tools. As the world moves further into the virtual reality world, tools like Tango, especially, will become even more appealing, especially if they can build greater neutrality across operating systems.
Will SMM become increasingly pay-to-play?
Yes, and those that rise, again, won?t be the best brands, but the brands with the best marketers. Two completely different concepts altogether.
