Our review of South Africa’s social media 2014 trends clearly shows that the country was on a high. This phenomenal performance sets the tone for social business in 2015; given that many socially connected brands are commercial brands, and they track and analyse online mentions that are translated into strategic insights.
Here are our 4 predictions for the new year.
2015 social business crystal ball
1. Social CRM
As more netizens join and become comfortable engaging on social networks, there will be increasing pressure on (or opportunity for) commercial brands to engage directly.
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RELATED POST: Is #HelloPeter being displaced by social CRM?
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Brands that do not bulk up on social CRM are going to be left behind.
Source: Accenture
2. In-housing of social media marketing services
In line with social CRM need, highly socially connected brands will be looking at incorporating currently outsourced social media marketing services into the broader business for better streamlining. Most of these brands will be coming from these top 5 industries:
Source: SocialBakers
3. Big data
With increase in social netizens and associated activity, and tracking technologies; the need for brands to start focusing more on extracting value from collected data has been heightened. In addition, the approach is going to be more integrated to ensure that all sources of data are fully optimised. We predict that there is going to be a move away from online analytics, to business intelligence analytics.
4. Content curation
With the ability to amass data, opportunities to curate content will follow.
The need for curation – as compared to generation – of content is increasing on one hand as brand marketers battle with original ideas, time and resources; and on another hand as there is an explosion of user-generated content (UGC). Curation technologies are also growing at an alarming rate as we speak, and have made this content marketing option a reality.
Many brands are already leveraging content curation opportunities. Here is our example, using Storify:
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Miss World: Top 5 Most Shared Photos for Miss South Africa
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2015 is going to be an interesting year for socially engaged brands in South Africa. We will be monitoring and analysing the trends as they unfold.
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