5 Social Network Predictions for 2015
2015 is finally upon us, and that means more changes are in the works. Social media marketing best practices and approaches are written in pencil because nothing stays the same. Much of this is driven by how some of the top social platforms are evolving. Here are a few predictions of what we may see from them in 2015.
Pinterest become a major social ad player. Pinterest started rolling out Promoted Pins to all advertisers at the beginning of the year. This means any brand will be able to pay to promote its content on the platform people actively turn to for inspiration and purchase information. That’s exactly what sets Pinterest apart. People go to social networks to connect with people. They go to Pinterest to connect with things, ideas and places, which is why Pinterest will grow in social ad revenue dominance in 2015.
Social video becomes a primary battleground. For a long time YouTube has owned social video, but last year Facebook announced plans to give brands more tools to share their videos on the platform. In addition, it rolled out video ads. Facebook’s not alone when it comes to competing for the video market. Twitter has also shown signs of rolling out its own native video player. In 2015, YouTube will no longer be the default video platform, but it will still remain very powerful.
Twitter’s feed becomes algorithm-driven. There has been much speculation on Twitter’s feed following the lead of Facebook and becoming less a real-time feed and more of an algorithmically-generated feed of tweets you’re most likely to engage with. Twitter’s CFO essentially said it would happen. This probably won’t take hold right away though. Instead, Twitter will approach this bit-by-bit as it just launched a “while you were away” feature that curates the best tweets you missed since you last logged-in. All of this is in an effort to become more attractive to non-users. If Twitter does go full-algorithm, marketers will need to rethink their approaches.
Google+ fades away. Google has been slowly backing away from Google+. It actually removed the requirement to set up an account on Google+ from the Google account creation process. It’s not clear where Google+ will go, but it is clearly less of a priority for Google than it was before.
Instagram ads for all. Instagram has allowed advertising but to a limited degree. It’s not available for every brand, and Instagram is still involved in creative development. Perhaps we can expect to see some kind of self-service advertising rollout for Instagram that allows it find a balance between quality control and scale. However, Instagram may continue to maintain the status quo as it continues to build up its user base.