Social Media Practices to Expect in 2013

The New Year is a great time to make your Social Media Strategy more effective! Here are few social media practices for 2013 :

1. Define Social Media Guidelines and Best Practices: 

More and more brands have ended up shooting themselves in the foot in 2012 by making some embarrassing mistakes.  It’s clear that social media goof-ups can trigger negative incidents and and magnify them. A tarnished brand image is beyond repair.

That is why it is important to churn out and define best social media practices for your organization in 2013. Have a crisis plan in place for the rainy day.

Offer social media training to your employees to use it responsively, thus lowering the risk of mistakes. Your team should know what to say - what not to say - when to speak and when to shut up! How to apologize.

Brand guidelines should be clearly translated into social media guidelines. You must establish a clear policy and let it evolve gradually in reaction to situations as they arise.

2. Increase in Social Media budgets:

With the growing penetration of Social Media, marketing budgets will be higher for 2013 than 2012. Paid ads are not only becoming important for new lead generation but they also offer an attractive ROI.

After the Great Edge Rank Crisis of 2012, social networks are now showing marketers the greater value they can derive through combination of creating good content and promoting them through paid avenues.

Facebook will continue to grow its revenues in 2013. After all the Edge Rank Algorithm is in favor of paid content.

3. Be device indifferent to maximize reach.

Social Networks are becoming fragmented. Consumers use a variety of connected devices to access social media. Content is consumed on multiple mediums. There are countless differences within platforms, OSes, device versions, screen resolutions, etc. to comply all device models in the mobile industry. Thus it becomes important to generate platform agnostic content that is adaptive to the constantly mobile and web-based technologies.

Have a mobile strategy to ensure that consumers can access your site from your social media location regardless of whether they're using a computer, smartphone, or tablet.

4. Content will continue to remain the king:

Proactively subsume the creation of original content to your Social Media strategy. The new changes in Facebook's Edge Rank algorithm makes sure that the best content stays on the news feed.

Slowly other platforms too might adopt this strategy.  Investing in engaging and branded  content is the need of the hour. Brands will adopt story-telling and "advertainment" for their content marketing strategies this year.

5. Visual Content:

With an increase in improved built in cameras on multiple devices, user generated visual content is slowly becoming dominant. Visual content  has seen a 65% increase in engagement.

Instagram's explosive popularity is driving social sharing and engagement. Pinterest too generates more and more visual traffic.

Advances in mobile networks’ capabilities for carrying high-speed, high-quality video will also result in an increase in video content. Social TV will also evolve slowly.

2013 will surely see a visual content revolution!

6. The Rise of Social Search: 

Traditional search is becoming increasingly influenced by social signals.

Social aspect in the search result is increasing with a personalized and the human aspect adopted in the in search logarithm.

Companies and app developers have already started using the Facebook Open Graph that helps people tell stories about their lives with the apps they use. It is using behavioral data to power a social search engine.

Google itself has began incorporating Google Plus posts in search results.

7. Social E-commerce:

E-commerce too will adopt social technologies. With the introduction of new features like Facebook Gifts and Facebook offers, Facebook too will utilize its social graph and develop as a Social E-commerce marketplace.

Ecommerce portals will have to create a truly social experience for its customers.

8. Adopt Social Business:

Social technology must go beyond the agency mind-set and  extent to organizations. It will drive free flow of information and collective actions that boosts the creativity and productivity of employees. Adopting "Social" adds a significant value to the business, giving it a competitive edge.

Develop your social media strategy in 2013 such that it elevates you beyond your competition.

Social Media is evolving beyond technology! It is not about devices, it is about humans. The year 2013 will not be a year for B2C or B2B. Its is for P2P! (people to people). It will mark the shift from demographics to psycho graphics and behavior!

Where is your social media strategy headed in 2013?