For most of us, when we think social media, we think Facebook. However, as we’re all well aware things changed dramatically in 2014 with the world’s biggest social media platform.
From changes in the levels of reach, to changes to the way businesses went about advertising we saw Facebook changed dramatically. So, we at My Online Marketer thought who better to ask about the future of Facebook than a selection of esteemed marketers and social media professionals?
Q. Will Facebook be as popular to marketers in 12 months time as it is now?
A. Greg DiVilbiss(Partner)
I believe it will be more popular as targeting and retargeting gets refined even more. The ability to really hone in on the marketplace that will most likely be your customer and the ability to engage with those people who are interested in whatever it is that you are selling is unparalleled. So the combination of targeting and engagement will keep marketers zoned right into whatever Facebook is doing.
What I see is the biggest problem with Facebook is the young seem to have abandoned the platform for things like snapchat and Instagram. Now since Facebook owns Instagram if they can somehow integrate or learn why the teens have left in droves than that would increase the longevity even more. But when the teens get in that prime purchasing demographic than it could be a problem.
A. Jeffrey Romano(Founder & Blogger at WP LIghthouse)
Facebook will continue to be a massive marketing platform in 2015. However, I believe the shift in perception towards treating Facebook as an advertising platform, rather than a social media platform, will continue. 2015 will be the year in which we see a significant rise in importance attributed to expert Facebook ad managers. These ad experts specialize towards driving leads at a lower overall cost for both B2B and B2C businesses.
Local businesses who can’t afford hiring such experts will continue to lose faith with Facebook as they realize that the number of Facebook Page Likes they have is just a vanity metric. What matters is their ROI and this becomes easier to measure as they use ads. When they see a negative or low ROI, they will be more likely to prioritize other marketing methods instead.
A. CGGSOC
In a recent blog, I evaluated the changes that took place on Facebook 1st of the year. It certainly looks like Facebook popularity for business will wane because of those modifications. To continue using Facebook, people in business will have to focus on what is still working. Currently I am finding Shares can increase Reach. Therefore, creativity will be required to be effective. To persuade your fans to engage more often, especially by sharing. Will Facebook still be a magnet for business people in 12 months. Only time will tell. For now. I am not removing Facebook from my rotation, it just won’t be my focus. Twitter is my new focus.
A. Ledux
Facebook is becoming more mature as an advertising platform, adding better targeting and many more incredible functions, but it is also getting more strict as to who is allowed to advertise and what pages are allowed to be advertised. This is usually a bad thing for small marketers and a good thing for big marketers. So, in 12 months I guess it will be less popular to small marketers because it takes more effort to run a campaign. Also, as more big players are entering in the traffic cost is increasing. Also, not in favor for the small marketers.
Facebook fanpages are also not in favor for small marketers because as you know to get reach you need to promote your posts. If you are a big business that’s not a problem, but if you are a small marketer, then it’s pretty annoying.
A. KenS(Facebook’s Future)
If things stay the way they are now, I believe Facebook will suffer a bit at the hands of the other social networks. As Pinterest, Twitter, etc beef up their advertising programs they will take business from FB as there is only so much to go around and people are reporting better ROI on some of those other networks. I suspect that is very dependent on the type of product/service being marketed. For example, FB is a good venue for branding, but probably not as good for product sales. I don’t believe it will be the end of Facebook for marketers, especially as they begin to add programs to better compete, like the introduction of video.
A. Cleverpedia
I do not think it will be quite as popular. I think as other platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr really take hold (after all, Tumblr and Instagram were just rated the quickest growing platforms in a recent Pew study), people are going to rely on Facebook less and less, and marketers need to go where their audience is. Even if that means learning about the subculture of how to publish on Tumblr (very different from other networks) or starting a new social presence from basically zero. Don’t get me wrong — I’m sure Facebook will still be VERY important, probably still the most important. But I think that the value of the social networks is going to fracture, more power going to others.
A. Paul Manwaring (Paul @ IMH Blog)
I think many marketers will shift their efforts into content creation for entities they control (blogging, events etc). For many small businesses and bloggers can get better returns investing their resources elsewhere. It come’s to a point when you have to ask: Am I really getting anything back from Facebook. Do I realistically have enough resources to create and maintain a successful facebook marketing strategy. The answer is usually no, and I’d suggest to concentrate on producing quality content.
Paid marketing is the way to go in 2015 if you want to advertise something on Facebook it’s as simple as that
A. Brandon Schaefer(CEO )
The influential marketers and brands that are already established on Facebook right now will still rely heavily on it for their marketing efforts over the next 12 months. For the marketers and brands which currently don’t have an established foothold on Facebook, it’s going to be extremely difficult to gain any traction without paying a lot of money. Facebook is still a phenomenal network for marketers and businesses to continue to grow their brands, it’s just not going to be as easy at it was over the past couple years. Marketers and businesses need to find ways to get creative with their Facebook marketing campaigns ie: contests, giveaways, and such… to be successful.
A. Paul Shapiro(SEO Director at Catalyst, a WPP Agency)
As far as sophistication social advertising platforms are concerned, Facebook is king. It’s got the users as well. This isn’t going to be changing as soon as 12-months from now. Facebook is still where you should be spending for Social ads. The improvements to the Facebook platform are going to be something you’re going to want to leverage more and more. However, Facebook continues to wane as an Organic-Social investment. I’m predicting a Twitter resurgence in that 12-month period that might encroach on Facebook advertising spend. They’ve improved their advertising platform, allowing for more Facebook-style psychographic targeting and have released a video platform as well.
A. sef.caa.diz(BV Digital Marketing Director. H.I.M Founder. )
Facebook is an amazing place to aggregate and take in content.
A lot of marketers and brands find Facebook to be a great testing ground for headlines as well; however, we also see Facebook as unpredictable and even call it ‘the beach.’ This means people aren’t really looking to buy products on Facebook. People are on Facebook to hang out.
Also, Facebook always fine tunes their algorithm; leaving brands out in the cold. This turns off marketers who will look to other means of marketing. On the plus side, search engines use Facebook and other social media platforms as a way to rank content and brands.
A. Casey Markee(President, Media Wyse)
Facebook will be more popular to marketers in 2015 than ever before and that’s because of one word: Atlas. Atlas is Facebook’s Google Doubleclick Ad competitor that provides more behavior and user tracking data to advertisers than ever before.
Already, Atlas has changed how advertisers and marketers are using Facebook. For example, advertising holding company the Omicron Group is now using Atlas ad tags to “check the math” of their current campaigns with Google. They can use this data to refine targeting AND highlight discrepencies so they can choose to move client spend from Google to Facebook in 2015 and beyond.
A. SEO Doctor(Gareth James)
I believe Facebook will be even more popular with marketers a year from now. Not just in advertising but using graph search for research. As organic reach of posts diminishes, companies will be forced to pay to play. I think the big viral content based sites will need to find new ways to engage users and move away from pure clickbait.
Facebook’s news feed algorithm is continually tweaked to promote posts with strong engagement from likes, comments and shares. Sale type posts will not get a look in and marketers will need to be more creative moving away from text heavy posts. The use of well made videos will be be successful if marketers can find scaleable solutions.
A. Alyssa Gailey(Social Media Specialist)
The fate of Facebook in social media marketing is changing. Many marketers will continue to turn to this platform in the next 12 months and beyond because of the volume of users. The key to social media success on Facebook, is creating rich content, that is optimized and relevant, to share with your online audience. Additionally, marketers will need to facilitate engaging conversations wiht their audience to establish a relationship that will translate to all facets of their business, online and offline.
If these simple principles are followed by marketers over the next year, then I think the aanswer to the question is yes. Facebook is iconic for changing up the way businesses can use the platform. With the recent shift to rewarding less promotional content, social media marketing will begin to rely even more on content marketing and SEO principles.
To boost engagement on your Instagram account, consider implementing the following strategies:
Post high-quality content: Share visually appealing and engaging content that resonates with your target audience. Use high-resolution photos, well-edited videos, and compelling captions. Develop a consistent posting style and theme that reflects your brand and captivates your followers.
Use captions that encourage interaction: Craft captions that inspire your followers to engage with your posts. Ask questions, invite opinions, or encourage users to tag their friends. Make your captions relatable, informative, or entertaining to capture your audience's attention and encourage them to leave comments.
Engage with your audience: Actively respond to comments on your posts and take the time to engage with your followers. Like and reply to their comments, answer their questions, and show genuine interest in their thoughts. By engaging with your audience, you foster a sense of community and encourage them to continue interacting with your content.
Utilize Instagram Stories: Take advantage of Instagram Stories to share behind-the-scenes moments, updates, or exclusive content. Use interactive features like polls, quizzes, questions, or stickers to encourage your audience to engage with your Stories. Engaging Stories can lead to increased profile visits and engagement on your main feed.
Host giveaways or contests: Organize giveaways or contests that require users to engage with your content to participate. For example, ask them to like, comment, or share your post to enter. This strategy not only boosts engagement but also helps expand your reach as users share your content with their own followers.
Collaborate with influencers or other accounts: Partner with influencers or other accounts in your niche to collaborate on content or shoutouts. This can help expose your brand to a wider audience and increase engagement on your account.
Use hashtags strategically: Research and use relevant hashtags that are popular in your industry or niche. Hashtags help users discover your content and increase your chances of reaching a broader audience. Mix popular hashtags with more specific or niche ones to maximize exposure and attract engaged users.
Encourage user-generated content: Inspire your followers to create and share content related to your brand or products. You can do this by running contests or challenges that require users to post their own content and tag your account or use a specific hashtag. User-generated content fosters engagement and creates a sense of community around your brand.
Analyze your insights: Regularly review your Instagram Insights or use third-party analytics tools to understand which types of content perform best and drive the most engagement. Pay attention to metrics like reach, impressions, likes, comments, and saves to identify patterns and optimize your content strategy accordingly.
Be consistent and authentic: Consistently post quality content and engage with your audience authentically. Building a loyal and engaged following takes time and requires you to provide value, be genuine, and actively participate in conversations.
By implementing these strategies, you can boost engagement on your Instagram account and create a vibrant and interactive community around your brand. Remember that it takes time and effort, so be patient and continue to refine your approach based on what resonates best with your audience.
Q. I want to know what you think the future of the social media platform holds and what will be introduced this year
A. Greg DiVilbiss(Partner)
Well, I partially answered in the last question but. I think they will continue to create a more elegant interface, I believe they will some how figure out a way to further utilize the newsfeed for advertising. They could come up with some method to better get the posts that you want vs, the ones you do not. It is possible that they will try and integrate some kind of daily feed of top posts to an email address.
I suspect that they will try and purchase competitors like Ello and Tzu. Look for things geared towards younger users, maybe a “Facebook Family” for younger users. They must figure out how to be cool again in the eyes of the up and comers.
A. Jeffrey Romano(Founder & Blogger at WP LIghthouse)
Facebook has been testing implementing more call to action buttons on Pages. I think this will certainly be a development that many marketers will be paying close attention, especially if this can be combined with email signups, which are often one of the more important marketing-related metrics. Implementing in-built call-to-action buttons could help increase engagement which is interesting as although reach is being lowered, Facebook is trying to improve engagement. A smart move.
Another continuing development will be the rise of video. Facebook has been testing implementing playlists and other video-related features and so its clear that the social network wants to continue to seriously challenge YouTube. As time passes, more people will probably turn-off the auto-play feature, so Facebook will have to rely on continuous innovation to be the leader in Internet video. This is definately an exciting space to watch.
A. CGGSOC
Businesses will have to be more creative. Unless Facebook has other changes in the works for business pages, we may have hit an impasse. We have to face that this is what we have to deal with. Some may choose to opt out completely. I know there will be those few that have the persistence and creativity to find ways to continue to grow organically. I also think that your current Likes will seriously, negatively (if your numbers are small – like mine) affect this. Larger community fan pages will continue to grow because of the sheer number of people. What I would really love to see introduce is an app that facilitates shares.
A. ledux
It’s hard to say what they are going to come up with, but it better be good. If Facebook wants to maintain its huge market share it needs to innovate. Honestly, Facebook is becoming boring, people are reluctant to share stuff on Facebook, but it’s still a convenient social media site because everyone is on there.
Honestly, if something new and exciting happened to emerge it could get a huge market share off of Facebook. Snapchat is one of the candidates, but it’s still a rather small social network.
Anyways, if you’re on the top you need to keep coming up with new stuff to stay there and Facebook knows that. So, it’s very likely that there are going to be a lot of updates from Facebook this year,
A. Cleverpedia
As we have noticed over the past year or more, Facebook has really come into this place where they’ve realized THEY have the power of presenting your content to their audience… or NOT presenting it. Because all of that power is in their hands, they are going to throttle organic reach as much as possible. I do not think they will completely take away organic reach, but I think as time goes on it will be harder and harder to reach your audience without spending money. And even then, when you do spend money, there are so many low-quality fans on Facebook that your content could be presented to, I’m not sure it’s even worth that much value anymore to boost things.
A. Paul Manwaring (Paul @ IMH Blog)
I think it will laregly stay the same. Only 2 big things I see being introduced will be:
1) Even more advertising. Snapchat announced this week they’d start introducing ads on their network with prices starting at $750,000. Facebook are clamping down on organic reach and many marketers see their reach numbers dropping week-by-week.
2) S-commerce. Twitter have been testing ‘buy now’ call to actions in tweets from brands. I think we’ll see much more direct integration between brands and social media.
Largely from a users point of view it won’t change much. The giants will still be the biggest platforms and I can’t see them being overtaken any time soon.
The future of Facebook is going to be in paid advertising for marketers and businesses. I believe Facebook will continue to seperate out the social “friends and family” type of their business, from the “business marketing” side of their business. Facebook is going to continue to focus on improving the mobile experience, as well as offering ways to gather more information on your Facebook contacts ie: before you visit with a contact, all types of information will be delivered to your device with what the person your meeting with likes, or dislikes. Several companies are competing in this space, and I look for Facebook to acquire one of them in 2015.
A. Paul Shapiro(SEO Director at Catalyst, a WPP Agency)
The future of social media platforms is in data technology. We’re seeing new ways that people are leveraging social media as a source of big data and it seems that everyone is hopping on the machine bandwagon. I expect to see platforms with a more predictive feature-sets that help provide more useful recommendations and with a greater accuracy. This is also necessary as social media isn’t new anymore. It’s maturing and so are its users. Old social media campaigns that relied on the novelty factor still work, but less so. So what’s left? Ensuring social media content is the best possible match for our audience. For this type of information, we look to the data.
A. sef.caa.diz(BV Digital Marketing Director. H.I.M Founder. )
There’s a lot of speculation that innovation in social is over. The established brands exist today and there will be no other ‘revolution’ in social. Let’s remember that social media is great for real time. I think a lot of brands will look to social media and find ways to capitalize on real time to get exclusive or limited time products and services. It’s a great way to brand a product and get more eyeballs. The future of social media will be the social media of everything. Businesses will create their own social networks and keep everyone in one community to ultimately get together in person for marketing purposes — at least this is just the one avenue it can possibly travel.
A. Casey Markee(President, Media Wyse)
2015 is the year of SOLOMO (Social, Local, Mobile). Now that Google has introduced mobile-friendly tags in search AND is preparing to reward mobile-optimized sites with a slight ranking boost,the need for site owners to mobile optimize their social content has never been greater.
The big winner here is going to be Facebook which is already serving mobile content at a great frequency and engagement level than Twitter, Google+ or Linkedin is even close to reaching. Sites that focus on building up their Facebook presence, then using promoted posts and Facebook Ads to drive that content, are going to be more successful in 2015.
A. SEO Doctor(Gareth James)
Along with improving the mobile experience and rolling out smart publishing to brands, the area I’m watching is Facebook Search. Facebook really wants to get into search and compete with Google by keeping users on Facebook to do their searches. Facebook has huge amounts of information from posts and pages that can answer search queries, some of the statistics are staggering, 70 billions pieces of content shared each month, with users sharing around 2.5 Billion pieces of content each day.
On 8th December, Rousseau Kazi (facebook product manager) talked about the ability to search posts that have been shared with you more easily, moving away from simple people search.
“Every post is more or less an answer to a question you didn’t know was being asked.”
Interesting quotation in light of Google’s roll out of Knowledge Graph to answer search queries. This year will see further improvements in Facebook Search through the development of their natural language interface , where user search intent is understood and matched with information from the Facebook’s graph.
“Graph Search is one important pillar of Facebook in our mission to make the world more open and connected. We are only 1% complete, and we are looking forward to the rest of the journey!”
Searchers want questions answered, but who will provide the best answers? Facebook’s will undoubtedly be more personal.
A. Alyssa Gailey(Social Media Specialist)
Facebook isn’t a stranger of the out with the new, in with the old concept. They’re known for testing a new feature and then rolling it out across the entire platform or reverting to old components if it didn’t perform to the Facebook standard. What I think will be super important in the future of the Facebook platform is helping social media marketers discover the ROI of efforts in order to use the platform to its fullest potential; we’ve seen this with the recent release of the CTA buttons on brand pages.
In this new year, Facebook will really need to focus on honing in on the effectivness of its paid features, like advertising. There is a current study looking into the relevancy of click through rates for advertising campaigns. Some marketers can now sign up for the study where two groups are used to determine conversions, one group is shown the business’s ad and one is not. The outcome of this study will be imperative in determining how Facebook can help aid marketers to show the ROI of efforts and persuading marketers to invest more time, and money, into the platform.
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