Date: 6th July, 2012
With new social media websites popping up every day, it’s difficult to know which ones will thrive and which are a waste of time. Facebook and Twitter are still the biggest names in social media, but do any of the newcomers have the power to rival the ‘big 2’? A recent Wall Street Journal Article reported that Facebook’s growth reached 5% in April this year, the company’s slowest growth ever, meaning new forms of social media may be having an impact. This month we’ve been thinking about how social media is developing and how you can use this rapidly changing world to help meet your business objectives…
Social media is growing and changing every day. It’s hard to keep up with every change in our favourite social media sites, let alone brand new sites and changes in how people and businesses are using them! However there seems to be general trends emerging. We are seeing an increase in specialised social media sites, especially multimedia. Instagram, Viddy and Tout are esssentially photo and video versions of twitter, where users can choose photos or 15 second video clips, edit them and post them to their followers with a caption. These allow users to show off their creative side – we’re thinking it could be great for creative businesses to showcase their creativity to likeminded users! Instagram went from 30 to 40 million new users in just 10 days back in April, suggesting these types of sites are expanding very quickly! It took facebook 4 years to reach 100 million, so Instagram is set to smash this record. However, all of these platforms still allow you to post your photos and videos to the ‘big two’ social media sites; facebook and twitter, so can these websites survive as stand alone forms of social media?
‘Geosocial media’ is also on the rise. This is sharing your location with others, or ‘checking in’, which can be done on a variety of sites such as Facebook and Foursquare. One new social media site, Color, takes this one step further in that it shares photos you post with those within a 150 metre radius. This could be a useful platform for businesses to share offers to those nearby, but is it a step too far in social media? This level of intrusiveness may put people off.
One thing’s for sure, people and businesses alike have to get more and more creative and take notice of current trends to stand out amongst the crowd on social media websites. Contact us if you want any more information about setting up your own social media strategy.
