Pay Attention to Me

Followers may come and go, but social networking is forever. What’s trending today may be old news tomorrow, and with all of the platform-to-platform changes, it’s hard to know what will best elevate your brand to the spotlight. Whether you’re a social media guru or novice, check out our roundup of today’s most influential social trends. Facebook via Mobile Upon its quarterly SEC filing, Facebook announced that for the foreseeable future, they expect more people to access the site via mobile than on personal computers. And according to research firm IDC, those who surf the web via their smartphones are set to outnumber wired internet users in the U.S. by 2015. Bearing this in mind, Zuckerberg and company recently launched Facebook Home, a user-interface layer for Android-compatible smartphones designed as a replacement for the existing home screen. With 500,000 downloads in the first week of its launch, the interface lets users easily view and interact with Facebook content without having to open the app or go to the site. Pinterest & Instagram While social media had primarily been associated with text-based content, image power took over in 2012, making it the year of Pinterest and Instagram.  This momentum continues to build in 2013, and intelligent brands are using imagery in creative ways to generate lively, fun and effective interaction. Facebook saw this potential when they purchased Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, enhancing the mobile app and garnering even more users. Additionally, Pinterest saw the highest increase in both audience size and in hours spent on the site of any social network across all devices. Perhaps even more impressive, a study published by The Harvard Business Review stated, “Pinterest users reported a surprisingly high correlation between pinning and subsequent purchasing: more than 1 in 5 Pinterest users has pinned an item that they later purchased,” going on to state that in the social world, this conversation rate is quite high. Thus, Pinterest shined a bright light on the effect shareable images have on purchasing power. Twitter & Vine With its approximate 1 billion users, Facebook might be the juggernaut of the social realm, but when it comes to live events, no network can contest with the brevity and immediacy of Twitter. See the Super Bowl, which churned out a record 24.1 million tweets (up from the previous year’s 13.7 million) or the 8.9 million tweets generated during the Oscars. Plus, Twitter’s recently launched mobile video app, Vine, has been the most talked about social platform of 2013. Just like Twitter, Vine places a limit on the length and size of the message that a user can share, allowing only six seconds of video, adding a unique twist on the medium (see socialfresh.com for a roundup of brands taking advantage of the application).