Quote of the day.

Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2016

2016 is set to be another big year for the ever-changing digital landscape – with more channels changing or becoming a vital part of the marketing mix. Just last week, for example, Facebook announced an interesting move towards expanding its Messenger platform to businesses, despite the fact it has been quelling organic business reach in the news feed for some time now.

With that said, here are the main digital marketing trends to focus on over the next 12 months:

Mobile

The number of users accessing the internet via mobile devices continued to rise above desktop in 2015 - and to highlight just how much these stats are predicted to rise year on year, in April Google implemented ‘mobilegeddon’ an algorithm update that favours mobile friendly and responsive websites.

For 2016 mobile will be a key focus within the digital marketing arena, where a lot can be learnt about user behaviour from Google’s ‘micro-moments’: the identification of the complex consumer journey for mobile devices.

The STATS

• You can increase unaided brand awareness by 46% simply by showing up in mobile search results
   
• 51% of Smartphone users have discovered a new brand, product or service when searching via their mobile
   
• 30% of all online shopping purchases now happen on mobile phones

Content will still rein as King

In 2016 content will still rein as King and brands will and should continue to develop effective content marketing strategies that really engage their target audiences.

A key focus for 2016 should be to ensure all created content is fully optimised with relevant keywords, whilst appealing directly to targeted web users. Ultimately your content may read brilliantly, but if it fails to engage and attract web visitors it is of no real value.

The STATS

• Posting content with an image on social media is likely to increase engagement. A study found that tweets with images received 150% more retweets than those without.
  
  
• Only 28% of content sharing happens through social media – the remaining 72% happens via email and other private communication methods.
  
  
• According to a study, content shared on Thursdays has the longest link lifespan

Data is there for the taking

Marketers now have access to more personal data than ever before. If you haven’t sat down and really analysed this, 2016 is definitely the year to do it. Understand exactly where your main target audience is located, their gender, their age range and how they engage with your product or service - and then use this to create a marketing strategy that really appeals to your stakeholders, whilst driving results.

The STATS

• Social media insights can support your overarching social strategy, highlighting exactly what type of content, posted at which times, drives the best results
  
  
• The amount of data stored online is set to be 44 times larger in 2020 than in 2009
  
  
• Without the use of online data, marketers would struggle to create a full picture of who their target audience is, and what makes them tick.
• 
  

Video goes viral

Dubbed as the future of content marketing by many, video provides an engaging, informative and shareable platform to promote your brand, message or content in an easy-to-digest format. Its growing popularity has even been felt by social media channels like Facebook, which reported earlier in the year twice as many users now watch videos via the platform.

Video will continue to grow in popularity for 2016 and should be a focal point of all digital marketing campaigns. If created with some innovation and pushed across all relevant channels (based on analytical data of course!), you will be guaranteed great results.

The STATS

• YouTube receives one billion unique visitors each and every month
  
  
• 64% of Smartphone users prefer to watch a YouTube video as opposed to undertaking research or read a product manual.
  
  
• By 2017 it is predicted that video will account for 69% of consumer internet traffic

Source : http://bit.ly/1PbbXMl

5 TRENDS THAT WILL CHANGE HOW COMPANIES USE SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2016

SA LOOK AHEAD AT THE SOCIAL TRENDS

THAT ARE FAST RESHAPING HOW COMPANIES DO BUSINESS.

There are now more than 2 billion active social media users worldwide, and that sum is growing at a brisk clip of 25% each year. Businesses haven't failed to noticed the runaway expansion of social media. Nine out of 10 U.S. companies are now active on social networks. The same overwhelming percentage of those are reporting seeing increased exposure as a result, and more than half say their social media efforts are boosting sales.

So what’s in store for 2016? Here’s a look at five trends that appear set to change how businesses use social media in the year ahead.

1. SOCIAL NETWORKS STORM THE WORKPLACE

For years now, we’ve been promised that a new generation of internal social networks—for use within companies by employees—will put a swift death to email. No more hunting through your inbox for information. No more endless reply-all threads from hell. And yet email has lumbered on.

But maybe not for long. Slack has proven a game-changer. Its intuitive interface, built around themed chat rooms and searchable archives, has propelled it to more than 1.25 million active business users in just two years' time, from the team at NASA to the team at your local coffee shop. And Slack already has a sizable cohort of competitors going after a piece of the pie.

Meanwhile, Facebook at Work is currently in trial mode with select companies, and itmay soon be opened up to general use in the coming year as a freemium tool. Considering that much of the world is already on Facebook, expect adoption to soar once Facebook at Work finally becomes available.

2. COMPANIES TURN TO EMPLOYEES FOR AMPLIFICATION

Nearly 80% of businesses now have a dedicated social media team. But many still struggle to reach an audience. 2016 will see companies turn increasingly to an underused resource in the effort to get the word out: their own employees. Employee social advocacy programs, which encourage staff to share updates about the business on their own social media accounts, have grown by 191% since 2013 and are due to take off in the year ahead.

When done right, the payoff can be impressive; companies not only expand their social media reach dramatically, they also get measurably better results. Content shared by employees, by one recent measure, gets eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels. A new generation of tools to facilitate employee sharing  should help this approach go mainstream in 2016.

3. COMPANIES WADE INTO SOCIAL MESSAGING

Here’s an eye-opener: There are nearly 4 billion global active users of messaging apps, from WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to WeChat and Kik. In fact, the top five apps in the world in terms of frequency of use are all messaging apps. Users are popping them open more often than even Facebook or Instagram.

What does this mean for companies?

So far, not much. Messaging remains largely in the murky realm that's come to be known as "dark social." Right now,

 it’s kind of a mystery as to what type of content is being shared among messaging app users and how that affects web traffic and "conversions." Intrepid brands from Hellman’s to Absolut to HBO—are testing the waters, but by and large messaging’s huge potential remains untapped.

Still, 2016 may well be the year that analytics and insights become more readily available, allowing companies to develop full-fledged strategies around social messaging. All the major social platforms now have messaging components, and it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to make that data available to businesses for marketing purposes.

In the meantime, messaging is already emerging as a key channel for one-on-one social customer service. Twitter lifted its 140-character limit and follow requirements on direct messages earlier this year with customer support in mind, and Facebook Messenger has been busy piloting customer service features of its own

4. SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING HITS ITS STRIDE

Haven’t noticed the exponential increase in ads on your social media feeds? That probably means they’re working. In contrast to old-fashioned banner ads, the new generation of "native" social media ads like sponsored posts on Facebook and Instagram and promoted tweets on Twitter look and act a lot like normal updates from friends and followers. They’re also targeted with increasing precision. Advertisers are now able to drill down not just by age and gender, but by interests, location, company affiliation, role, and more. So the ads you get are probably the ones you actually want to see.

For all those reasons, companies ramped up social media advertising in 2015, with spending increasing 33.5% to nearly $24 billion—a figure that's all the more impressive, because just a few years ago that number was $0.

Expect to see those trends continue. By 2017, social media ads may account for a full 16% of all digital ad spend globally. Fueling the growth is a host of new tools that let small businesses design and pay for social media ads in a few clicks, simplifying a process that was once the exclusive domain of high-priced media buyers.

5. SOCIAL VIDEO EATS THE WORLD

In case you missed it, social video is exploding. Last year, Facebook more than doubled its daily video views to 8 billion, reportedly overtaking YouTube. Twitter launched native video of its own in 2015, while Snapchat now reports 6 billion daily video views in its own right. In total, adult users now consume a total of 66 minutes of online video each and every day.

Expect that total to climb to lofty new heights in 2016. Facebook is preparing to roll out features like Suggested Videos and maybe even a dedicated video feed, andSnapchat Stories are growing ever more popular and feature-rich. Little wonder that70% of companies now say video is the most effective tool in their online marketing belts, and two out of three businesses expect it to dominate their strategy going forward.

Despite these stats, many companies are still reluctant to get into the social video game for one reason: The cost of professionally shot video can be prohibitively expensive. But alternatives are multiplying. Shorter formats, from eight-second Vines to 15-second Instagram videos, not to mention streaming video like Periscope and Meerkat, offer a hassle-free entrance into the arena. Meanwhile, crowdsourcing campaigns and tools are gaining popularity as a way for companies to create and share video content.

The biggest trend of all for 2016, however, hardly requires a crystal ball to see. Around the world, social media is quickly becoming standard operating procedure at companies. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other networks have fundamentally changed how companies reach and interact with customers, offer products and services, communicate with employees, and—in a nutshell—do business. And that wave hasn’t even begun to crest.

Source : http://bit.ly/1RRrJOU

5 Pinterest Demographics Facts Marketers Should Know

Last week Pinterest announced that they have reached a whopping 100 million monthly active users. To put that into perspective these are the most recent user stats for other popular social media networks:

While Pinterest may not be the most popular social network , it is amongst the top 5 in the world. Pinterest is also the biggest social site being predominantly used by women.

Some marketers ignore its importance because their business is not targeted toward the female demographic. This is a big mistake. The social network has grown in popularity amongst other demographics, and is proving a valuable resource in many industries.

Here are 5 reasons to monitor Pinterest demographics so you can make an educated decision on whether Pinterest data is important for your market research:

Fact #1: Men Are Now Pinterest’s Fastest-Growing Demographic

In November 2014 Pinterest announced that men were their fastest-growing demographic. In fact, in emerging markets sign ups are an even gender split of 50% men and 50% women. (Techcrunch)

Fact #2: Pinterest Attracts Users From All Income Levels

In 2014 there was a significant increase in Pinterest users whose income levels were below $30,000 and above $75,000. The easy-to-use social media platform caters to people of all income levels. (PEW Research Center)

Fact #3: Pinterest User Numbers Have Doubled Since 2012

We  Pinterest had hit a 100 million user milestone. But did you know that in 2013 they had only 70 million? Alongside Instagram, Pinterest has doubled its usage since 2012, and now counts 31% of online adults amongst its user base.

Fact #4: Half of Pinterest’s Users Are International

According to an article published by Venture Beat, 45% of Pinterest users come from outside of the United States.

Fact #5: Popularity Boom Amongst Older Generation

Pinterest is extremely popular amongst young people. 34% of online 18-29 year olds, and 28% of 30-49 year olds use Pinterest. But it is the older generation of internet users who have most recently taken to using Pinterest. Between 2013 and 2014 Pinterest saw a growth of 14% in users aged 50-64. This places Pinterest behind just Facebook and LinkedIn for social media usage within the 50-64 year age group.

Want to know more about Pinterest?

Knowing Pinterest demographics gives you the power to target the right market during advertising campaigns. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1FLrNwo

10 Big Data Predictions

As organizations complete the latest wave of big data projects, plenty of opportunities and challenges remain. For a reality check, here International Data Corp.’s top 10 near-term and long-term predictions for the big data market.

1. Big Demand for Visual Tools

“Visual data discovery tools will be growing 2.5 times faster than rest of the business intelligence (BI) market. By 2018, investing in this enabler of end-user self service will become a requirement for all enterprises,” IDC said.

2. Cloud Big Data Analytics Takes Off

“Over the next five years spending on cloud-based Big Data and analytics (BDA) solutions will grow three times faster than spending for on-premise solutions. Hybrid on/off premise deployments will become a requirement,” IDC indicated.

3. Big Data Staff Shortages Remain

“Shortage of skilled staff will persist. In the U.S. alone there will be 181,000 deep analytics roles in 2018 and five times that many positions requiring related skills in data management and interpretation,” IDC predicted.

4. Unified Data Platform Architectures Take Hold

“By 2017 unified data platform architecture will become the foundation of BDA strategy. The unification will occur across information management, analysis, and search technology,” IDC stated

.

5. Machine Learning Comes of Age

“Growth in applications incorporating advanced and predictive analytics, including machine learning,” is accelerating this year. “These apps will grow 65% faster than apps without predictive functionality,” IDC said.

6. External Data Gains Budget

“70% of large organizations already purchase external data and 100% will do so by 2019. In parallel more organizations will begin to monetize their data by selling them or providing value-added content,” IDC estimated.

7. Data Streams Come of Age

“Adoption of technology to continuously analyze streams of events” is accelerating this year as it is “applied to Internet of Things (IoT) analytics, which is expected to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30%,” IDC stated.

8. Decision Management Platforms Gain Attention

“Decision management platforms will expand at a CAGR of 60% through 2019 in response to the need for greater consistency in decision making and decision making process knowledge retention,” IDC said.

9. Rich Media Gets Analyzed

“Rich media (video, audio, image) analytics will at least triple in 2015 and emerge as the key driver for BDA technology investment,” IDC stated

10. Think About This

“By 2018 half of all consumers will interact with services based on cognitive computing on a regular basis,” IDC concluded.

Source : http://bit.ly/1KJiejx