What is the next trend in social media?
I love answering this question.
First thing’s first…it doesn’t matter. Unless you are one of the tiny, tiny , tiny, handful of companies that is effectively using social media already, and have exhausted your current activities, the next trend is irrelevant.
Unless you have a ridiculous budget to try every new gadget and toy, it doesn’t matter. What should really matter (and what I secretly hope is the next trend) is to get much better at what you’re already doing. Take some time, plan out what you are doing, analyze successes and failures, listen to your customers. Activate and train your employees, encourage them and guide them. Listen to your customers, get obsessed with helping them and delighting them.
Stop trend hunting and start getting good at the basics. You don’t need to learn a behind the back, off-the-backboard, alley-oop, if you can’t dribble the ball with both your left and right hands. Learn the fundamentals.
But just in case…
That answer probably left many of you reading this unsatisfied. You probably want something juicy. Well, here it goes, Zoltar will look into the crystal ball:
- A new network will come out, that does something, and everyone will get excited about it and start using it. Then a number of copycat sites and apps will emerge revealing a stunning new trend in social that you “can’t ignore.”
- Younger people will continue to run away from networks with older people (supervision) and the result will be a totally fragmented web, applications, sites and tools.
- Ads will show up on more and more sites, though the effectiveness of these ads at driving conversions will steadily decrease.
Other than that, the only trend to watch is the one that is relevant to YOUR business. Everything else is nonsense.