It’s impossible for anyone to stay on top of every new development in the marketing world throughout the year — especially when it comes to the quick-moving world of social media and technology — much less analyze how those updates can impact your business. The best way to stay sharp is to keep track of the major game-changers over time, and then focus on how those primary targets can affect your advertising strategies.
Here’s a helpful overview of the Top 3 changes in social media that occurred in the past year that you need to know about:
1. Facebook bought Instagram. At a whopping $1 billion, Facebook acquired the photo-sharing social media company in April 2012. Because a large base of its members was using Instagram to upload and share photos, Facebook saw the value in acquiring and managing the way that the two platforms engaged. Then, Facebook seamlessly and created correlating photo-viewing systems so that people would see Facebook as an optimal choice for photo storage and photo sharing. By merging two related brands and creating new ways for them to sync, fans had even better access to their favorite technology, and usage of both grew as a result. Whether your company uses Instagram or Facebook or both, understanding and taking advantage of how photos can be shared between the two — and boost traffic between dual accounts — should be a vital part of your social media strategy for 2013.
2. Twitter offered Tailored Trends. In June 2012, Twitter revolutionized the way that users can keep current with the most popular themes of the day. Instead of seeing trending topics in a sidebar on the 140-character social networking site, users were able to start seeing what topics were popular that pertained to their own interests and lifestyle. Loosely using geocentric information and data about who users “follow,” tailored trends are based on a non-disclosed algorithm. When marketing your business on Twitter, you can now aim for hitting a niche audience with targeted hashtags rather than trying to generate presence that’s big enough to light up the entire Twittersphere.
3. Twitter and LinkedIn Split. After Facebook bought Instagram (see No. 1), one later ramification was that Instagram and Twitter no longer synced. By making it impossible for Twitter users to take advantage of Instagram’s popular services, Facebook thought that it would dominate the photo-sharing stratosphere. Similarly, when Twitter and LinkedIn stopped cooperating in July, it meant that people could no longer automatically send tweets to LinkedIn from their Twitter accounts. However, LinkedIn still allows users to post to Twitter from its pages. So you can still tweet messages without leaving the LinkedIn platform, but you can no longer send messages to your LinkedIn account by using #in.