It is the time to plan new year celebrations and also the time to predict the new trends in social media marketing which will dominate 2015.

The year 2014 was exciting. A totally unpredictable thing happened: a new social platform emerged that directly clashed with the industry behemoth: Facebook. The “Ello” platform (which is incidentally invite only) has instigated quite a stir. Dubbed by a few as the social network for hipsters, it provides a infinite advertisement free experience. It also promises not to sell user information to third parties.

It is believed that Ello will grow handsomely in 2015. This future growth is projected both in terms of engagement and also in numbers. This social media platform, needless to say, will be closely observed.

Trend #1: Facebook advertisement demand and pricing will increase considerably

It is public knowledge that the reach of Facebook post is decreasing significantly. It has now become a serious problem for business owners intending to use this platform for their marketing function. The steady decline when it comes to the reach has been termed Filtered Feed Problem.

As Facebook restricts the quantity of posts, fans will actually see, demand for the promoted posts and also advertisements increase. With this rising demand, increased pricing will also be seen. According to a number of industry sources, the Facebook ad pricing increased by 10 percent from 2013 to 2014. This trend will probably continue until 2015 as the reach of organic posts continues to decrease.

Trend #2: Business advertising model of Twitter will enjoy a massive increase in popularity

The move by Twitter to offer businesses an increased number of choices and flexibility when it comes to the manner and what is being paid in the light of advertising, an increasing number of medium and small sized businesses will alight the Twitter advertisement bandwagon. A newer fee structure permits businesses to make payment for a few performance centric actions and not just clicks or retweets.

These objective centric campaigns, that continues to be in the beta stage of development, will provide more flexibility in app installs, tweet engagements, website conversions or clicks, leads and new followers. These kind of campaigns will specifically appeal to the small business owners who will want to pay for the results and not simply for the brand visibility.

Trend #3: Google + will be an abject failure

It is clear that the Authorship experiment of Google has failed and the Google + brings no special value which Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn do not offer already. The platform is now swiftly descending into obscurity. According to industry watchers, Google + will, in the near future, be regarded as a platform, and not a product. This will end the competition it had with a variety of social networks like Twitter and Facebook

Trend #4: Instagram will gain importance in image centric social media marketing

There are no signs of Instagram slowing down. It has at present 300 million users every month and it has become the network which defines image-centric social media marketing. According to a report by Social Media Marketing Industry, about 42 percent of the marketers plan to raise the usage of this platform in 2015, as compared to about 38 percent in 2013. The emergence of in-feed video advertising will allow the marketers to exercise the option of making the payment to target 15 second length videos to users distinguished by country, gender and age. This new feature has been welcomed by marketers who wished to promote their services and products to the young and affluent users of Instagram.

Trend #5: LinkedIn will surge ahead in B2B social network segment

LinkedIn is already the choice of the B2B people and it will continue to remain so in 2015. In case of B2C marketers, LinkedIn is regarded as a comparatively minor player compared to Twitter and Facebook. For the B2B segment, the numbers say otherwise. As per the survey done by Social Media Examiner in 2014, about 88 percent of the B2B marketers are utilizing LinkedIn, as compared to 86 percent and 89 percent for Twitter and Facebook respectively. It is widely believed that LinkedIn will surpass Facebook for the B2B marketing in 2015.

It is estimated that in 2015, marketers will come to realize that distribution and publication are the two principal pillars of any content marketing strategy. Social media, as the marketers learn, construes the most effective technique of widening the visibility and reach of content. Due to this, social media will be viewed more as an “amplifier” for published content and not as content itself. Marketers must keep in mind that a distribution strategy for content is very important, even more than content itself.

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