At a time when social media’s exact worth for most businesses continues to be hard to pin down, trying to comment on trends that will ‘make or break your business’ can sound like puffery.

And yet, the last couple of years have shown that dominance of social media can shape the destiny of the world’s largest democracies, swing elections (even when not aided by Russian interference) and change the world quite literally.

If it works for them, it just might work for you. It is therefore vital that you have the most updated maps of these ever-shifting but powerful forces. Here are the key drivers for the next few months:

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VIDEO (+ LIVE VIDEO)

While there is a lot of action and froth in video (and mobile data), and consumers are reeling from the unprecedented oversupply of high-end content, the trend is undeniable. Brands have absolutely no reason to stay on the sidelines. This is the year to go all in with your DVCs, webisodes, video podcasts, guides, unboxings, ‘virals’ – just do it. And do it now, because live video is another growing in-demand feature on Instagram. It is still a bit more complex to work with, so use sparingly.

NEW PLATFORMS: WHATSAPP AND MORE

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WhatsApp has become substantially more business-friendly, and even more change is around the corner. Ignore this behemoth at your own risk. It is time to look at all the presentations and plans you made for chatbots, Twitter, social CRM etc. because WhatsApp can be all those things and more.

Meanwhile, Twitter continues to attempt doing push-ups while still in the ICU. It is getting harder to justify this in a marketing plan (apart from scoring brownie points with a trend). Snapchat is still an edge-case for the cool kids, who now seem just as comfortable with Instagram. The one dark horse to put money on this year may be Reddit. The strong community moderation makes it a much easier place to hang out, the interface is getting better, and the Indian early-adopters have already seen some success stories emerge.

VOICE

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Indians traditionally do not like to speak to appliances – no voice mail, no answering machines, and definitely not those dreaded customer service voice portals. But Alexa and her counterparts are rapidly bringing us out of our shells. Formal opportunities for marketing are still emerging, but globally, brands have already started to guerrilla their way in. At the same time, listening to voice aka audio podcasts has grown from being a geek-and maven stronghold to a content form with legit commercial-grade numbers and mainstream hits. Not to be conflated with radio/digital radio, podcasts are a low-cost, high-engagement form of content. While the landscape is still relatively less crowded, it may be a good time to give a call to experts like IVM to evaluate opportunities.

NEW CONTENT FORMATS: STORIES

Even as we got used to the relaxed 280-character tweets that made things easier for content writers, we ran head-on into the ‘status update’ or ‘story’ (depending on which platform you were on). Disposable, time-limited updates that built for rapid consumption, restricted engagement and minimal intellectual overhead. This new weird creature, evolved from Snapchat, is here to stay on Instagram, on Facebook, and even WhatsApp. They are even selling ad inventory around it, for crying out loud. The challenge will be to rapidly create content for these, because it doesn’t fit into well-established content processes between clients and agencies. These stories need to be fresh, near real-time to be effective. Fortunately, you needn’t update this like clockwork, ‘sporadic’ and ‘irregular’ work just fine as posting intervals.

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SECURITY

While you may not have to worry about Russian operatives infiltrating your company just yet, you can’t afford to ignore the other risks that have exponentially increased: comment spam is just an irritant now, but things rapidly get more sinister with malicious code injections into your blogs, social media impersonation, and debilitating ransomware blockades. The challenge is that these issues are black-swan events for most businesses, so there are no processes to address them quickly and effectively, especially when they can often fall into the canyon between client responsibility and agency scope.

MOVEMENT

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Consumers are loving brands that take proactive stands and taking responsibility for improving the world. Burger King talking about net neutrality can’t have really sold many burgers, but it drew global respect for their gentle activism. Brands don’t have to grandstand, even small gestures like a no-creepiness ad targeting policy can build respect. The important thing is to do, not talk.

BEST PRACTICES AND PROCESSES

For a domain that goes through a sea-change every three months, benchmarking can be a moving goalpost. Recent structural changes like Facebook reducing organic reach for branded content may, ironically, help create a more stable world. As ‘hygiene’ posts lose their raison d’être, clients and businesses should consider how to best utilise their agency best. Here is a test structure for the coming future:

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• The agency becomes a content marketing brand custodian, handling ‘spikes’ and campaigns with analytics and listening, design/UX, plus media buying.

• Taking a page from classic B2B practices, hygiene content becomes an in-house deliverable – hire smart creators who haven’t yet hit fame levels (example, talent from the ATKT college creator community, or the talent house network). With such talent, casual content like Instagram stories become easier, with faster turnarounds and more depth.

• The corporate communication team can be the right strategic base for these.

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• Develop branded entertainment with publishers that have deep community roots (or sponsor it) and let it deploy from the creator/publisher pages rather than from your restricted reach brand pages.

The author is the co-founder of ATKT.in. The views expressed here are his own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.

Also Read :

Guest Column: Invest NOW in Indian TV industry

Guest column: Remarketing and its significance for brands

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