Facebook is seeing its inevitable decline beginning amongst teens with more leaving the social networking site every month.  Twitter’s newly launched IPO caused some waves amongst investors.  No matter how you look at it, social media trends (and trends in general) are by their very nature mercurial and prone to extremes.  This makes keeping tabs on social media a demanding task for marketers these days.

On that note, here are some thoughts to keep in mind during the coming year.

Graphics

Facebook posts with pictures almost always seem to do better than text-only posts, because it gives a greater chance for the content to be “impulse shared”.  A block of text is unlikely to be fully read, never mind shared, but an image is always glanced at.  Now, more than ever, Facebook is competing with Pinterest and Tumblr so it is important to remember to give content some visual appeal.  Infographics, or image macros are great for shareable posts that include some verbiage.

Social Won’t Be Used For Sales

Customers can always tell when a company cares more about themselves than engaging and nurturing relationships through social outreach.  Companies currently celebrating the most success in social media focus on these things, as well as sharing value through their social outreach. Customers and prospects will seek out companies offering value, entertainment, discounts, help and engagement.

Automation Will Explode

Social media marketers have a lot to deal with. They have to be on top of brand voice, current company promotions or campaigns, the tools they measure social media with, the various communities on the platforms, and a lot more.  For the most part, there’s just too much variation for one person to really become adept at it, but every year brings more automation to these tasks, and 2014 stands to be the year when Autonomics really come into their own.

LinkedIn could easily become the most important publisher

LinkedIn is quickly becoming a premium destination for industry news and it is important you become part of this network now and engage in it.  Grow your profile by publishing original content, and network with friends, acquaintances and coworkers in order to gain a firm foothold in this network.

Content will be bigger and better

Simple just isn’t in anymore.  Companies need to engage their customers in increasingly deeper and more educated ways to gain real connections with them, and short videos, pictures, and infographics are all great ways to do this.  All the content that companies put out nowadays needs to be “shareable”, or something the customer is excited about enough to share with his or her circles. Walmart is great example. Its content is smart and engaging, and the fan engagement is very high by comparison to its competitors. Another thing to remember is not to focus too much on gaining new fans so much that you alienate the ones you may already have. If your message is always trying to get out and bring in more, your current fans will be bored and leave.

Social Will Stand Out

Social media such a new thing anymore and it is getting harder to stand out and be different. To win big in social media, you'll have to think outside the box and find ways to get your content to stand out amongst all the contenders.

For more information on these and other tips for 2014, just head over here.