bm digital trends brochure 2014

8/18/2019 BM Digital Trends Brochure 2014

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Digital Trends 2015


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2 Digital Trends 2015


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3Digital Trends 2015

IntroductionThis is the sixth annual Digital Trends Report prepared

by Broadgate Mainland.

In a departure from previous years we have evolved

the report by inviting academic and business social and

digital media commentators to assess the most important

developments in the world of digital communicationsand how they aect corporate communications now

and in the future.

One of the greatest challenges companies face is keeping up

with the speed of change in social and digital media and how

to adapt communications programmes accordingly.

Not every development will be suitable or necessary for

companies to embrace but as this report clearly highlights,

building the right foundations in terms of content, tone and

style will be crucial to success.


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Enterprise Social Media

Matt Owen, Head of Social, Econsultancy.

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Digital Futures

Paul Dwyer, Senior Lecturer, University of Westminster.

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How print media will use digital and social media

Jane Bird, Freelance journalist specialising in technology andregular contributor to the Financial Times and The Economist.


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Thinking scale and niche: Business predictionsfor digital and social media

Mariann Hardey, Lecturer in Marketing,Durham University Business School.

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What’s next for social media?

Professor Andy Miah, University of West Scotland.


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While the digital world opens doors, it’s no secret that with such

a public platform businesses can expect to receive a level of

negativity from customers and the general public that can pose

a reputational threat. Monitoring tools are vital for being able to

react swiftly to any criticism. If the response is managed with the

right tone and not too defensively, it can provide an opportunity to

engage with a wider audience.

According to Dr Paul Dwyer, University of Westminster, we are all

‘social curators’ now. Companies need to become aggregators

of information, planning their websites to provide their target

audiences with content relevant to their needs. The key is the

‘social’ bit not the technology.

Jane Bird, technology journalist, reminds us that we mustn’t forget

those readers who often engage in debate and conversation

helping to develop stories and providing valuable insights which are

integral to the reputation of the brand.

It’s an exciting time to be involved in digital, with content and

customer relationships taking centre stage. While advances in

technology ensure that the digital world changes rapidly, the old

adage that ‘content is king’ will still be around for many years to

come. Mariann Hardey sums it up when she says that content,

with the right tone and personality, will always be crucial to,

“allow the audience to bond, relate and share.” The essence of

good communications.

Executive summary


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Native advertising As platforms strive towards monetisation, the idea that social is ‘free’ will vanish. Businesses willfocus on native advertising and this will inform strategy. Distinct disciplines will be created as ‘social’

separates from ‘media’.

This has interesting implications for agencies, with community management and customer service

moving in-house, they will return to their classic roles, creating more overtly commercial content.

This also raises questions about authenticity and integrity. These qualities will need to be embraced

by businesses if they are to compete.

Niche networks and curated content‘Interest-focused’ networks like Instagram have become popular by doing one thing particularly well.

This will continue, driving changes in user behaviour. We’re already seeing younger users abandon

Facebook for ephemeral networks and messaging apps such as WhatsApp, SnapChat and Line,

whose compartmentalised functions allow users increased control over their data.

Ad budgets will be restructured to accommodate this development. As understanding of ROI

evolves, this may eventually affect wider PPC spend. Networks such as Pinterest and Reddit, where

discussion can be delineated by subject will continue to grow. Brands with limited resources will

turn to these platforms, while Facebook and Google+ become hosting hubs for content, particularly

images and micro-video.

Enterprise social media has been with us for less than a decade, but has created massive

disruption, redening the way we communicate with customers.

It has proven to be an outlier, the vanguard of a new focus in business, and marketing

in particular. Where once ‘The Big Idea’ ruled, we now focus on iteration, agility,

and becoming ‘customer-centric’.

When we think about digital and social media, we tend to focus on platforms like Facebookand Twitter. While these are important, they are only tools enabling businesses to deliver

content and services. Their own evolution is a mirror of wider changes.

Predicting the future is always a risk, but I’d like to share my thoughts on what we can

expect in the next few years.

Matt Owen, Head of Social, Econsultancy.

Enterprise Social Media


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Integrated measurement The rise of universal analytics and drive for accurate attribution will mean social becomes more

measurable, though conversely returns will be more aligned to wider marketing and sales initiatives.

The push for qualied ROI will see social split by discipline, with different metrics applied to social

customer service and retention, PR and advertising.

There will still be focus on ‘buzz’, but we’ll see more tailored monitoring of individual conversations

and a focus on lead-generation.

Organisational changeBusinesses will focus on governance with digital training as standard, with an empowered workforce

creating trust among customers. This will drive increased departmental integration as sales and

marketing communicate directly with users.

Social will also take a more important role in business intelligence as product-focused teams evolve

around data.

AdvocacyFinally we’ll see our efforts pay off as individual employees develop customer relationships and

advocacy. Social will continue to act as the ‘glue’ between channels that provide useful, genuine

customer experiences. Businesses that ‘get social right’ will be the ones that concentrate on

personal interactions, rather than just being the ‘Voice Of The Brand’, and service will differentiate

leaders from those paying lip-service.

With the growth of channels and networks, it will be challenging to be everywhere, so businesses will

be forced to behave in a way that endears them to customers, through deep, valuable content and

long-term relationships, concentrating on increasing lifetime customer value.

It’s an exciting time to be involved in digital, with content and customer relationships taking centre

stage. While technology and platforms may change, I believe that this is where businesses will nd

real value and make big wins in the future.

Article

Avatar An image or username used to represent a person’s prole on social

networks and forums.

Breadcrumbs A projection showing the exact whereabouts the user

is currently on a website.


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Keeping abreast of what’s happening in real

time is absolutely key for managing our brand

reputation. Social media is integrated into our

marketing and communications activity and

we use the full range of monitoring services tomonitor BLP and industry news or developments.

We always react swiftly – whether a reputational

threat, an ideal opportunity for us to comment or

make contact for a face to face meeting.

“We have a responsive website and emails

are smartphone friendly. As you would expect

since we work insure new constructions and

developments and on building sites you don’t

get looked at if you cannot work acrosssmartphones and tablets.

Adrian Stahl, Marketing Manager, BLP Insurance

“

”

Our business model is the provision of high quality face to face nancial advice so

we have invested considerably in creating an extensive suite of apps and content

that empower our partners to provide that. Wealth management is a complicated

business and making content and information digital and accessible remotely and

through smartphones and tablets is a natural development for us. We have an

integrated content management programme that connects to Partners’ websites

to allow clients access to topical information and insights from wherever they areat home, work or play.

Stephen Knight, Digital Marketing Specialist, St. James’s Place Wealth Management

“

”

Comments


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We are all curators nowCompared to the lack of digital business drive among national newspapers, the trade press has

generally been considered something of a success in retaining its role as gatekeeper to a target

audience.

But a look at recent data (such as the PPA’s 2014 Publishing Futures report) suggests that the logicof digital disruption has also affected trade and business publishers. The list of titles to go online-only

in recent years – Accountancy Age, Personnel Today, Computing – demonstrates how far publishing

models, and reading habits, have changed. In this new world of publishing, how can businesses and

PRs negotiate these more complex relationships between content, journalists and audiences?

First, businesses have to deal with the on-demand world. As audiences have become used to

searching for specic content on-demand, so former print publishers are becoming content

aggregators. Reed Business Information, which used to publish more than a hundred print titles,

now draws three quarters of its revenue from subscriptions to digital services like Business Insight. In

this on-demand world audiences need ndable web channels, which are content rich, well designedand search engine optimized. In-house PRs can also adopt the aggregator model – planning their

websites to provide targeted audiences with on-demand access to data, news, comment and

advice, video and even live streaming.

Secondly, relationships with traditional journalists will change radically. Journalism based on exclusive

content will continue to make occasional, but huge, impacts– think of Nick Davies, the investigative

journalist who uncovered the News of the World phone-hacking affair. But as digitisation increases

the amount of content available – at an exponential rate – audiences want guidance in nding

relevant, quality content and in understanding what it means. Rather than a traditional journalism,

we can think of this as expert curation, a combination of the eclectic tastes of someone like the late

John Peel and the penetrating insights of Robert Peston. To reach audiences who want expertly

curated content, the best route for the PR is via their traditional close relationships with journalists

covering similar ‘beats’.

Connections Distinct from facebook ‘friends,’ LinkedIn uses a term to donate

persons that users met briey, heard speak or know through another connection.

Paul Dwyer, Senior Lecturer, University of Westminster.

Digital Futures


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Finally, much of the information we now consume comes via recommendation – links to content we

receive from people we know or from people we meet via social or professional networks on social

media. We can think of this process as social curation – our professional community acts as the

gatekeeper, selecting and interpreting content relevant to our needs. There is every indication that

audiences nd this form of social curation as important a guide to content as the expert curation of

the traditional journalist.

Businesses need to understand and engage with the processes of social curation in their

professional networks across a range of platforms. And the key is the ‘social’ bit, not the technology.

The important thing is not technical ability but the natural social skills of most PR professionals.

Imagine the web as a big post-conference party, with different groups chatting about different topics.

Most PRs are naturals at joining and engaging in such conversations, and often at reading the group

dynamics to identify the ‘movers and shakers’. The key to a social curation strategy is engaging with

social media in the same way.

Dr Paul Dwyer is a former journalist, and is a member of the Centre for Social Media Research,

University of Westminster

http://www.westminster.ac.uk/csmr

ArticleBlack hat SEO Enacting unethical methods in order to receive more interest on a

website, to improve website rankings, such as using doorway pages, or long lists

of unnecessary keywords.

Bounce rate Term used to represent the number of people that enter a website,

only to leave it again, rather than click on another page within the site.

Embed Including a video or outsourced post, to an email or website, in order to

increase marketing capabilities. Often increases click-through rates (CTR).


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What fuels a Tweet’sengagement?Photos average a 35% boost in Retweets

Hashtag

16%

Digit

17%

Quote

19%

Video URL

28%

Photo URL

35%

Infographic

Snapchat more popular thanTwitter among US MillennialsMost popular social media apps among Americans aged 18-34 (% of smartphone users)

43.1%

75.6%

32.9%

23.8%

18.0%

17.99%

10.7%

6.3%


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Comments

Media centres on company websites need to be increasingly interactive and

deliver a corporate information resource not only for the media but also the

public at large. Lines of audience on the web are becoming increasingly blurred

and companies need to develop a content strategy to satisfy a web audience

who are hungry for information. The more information you give, the more they

want – it’s a virtuous circle.

“PR people are well equipped to manage the digital and social media

engagement process as they are used to dealing with the media who operate

on a real time basis. But they need to work closely with their marketingcolleagues to develop collateral to ensure the web content is informative,

accessible and up to date.

Susan Rivers, Vice President Marketing and Corporate Affairs, BNY Mellon

“

”

The days when blanket digital advertising was an

effective marketing tool are long gone. Advances in

digital technologies allow marketing campaigns to be

personalised down to the level of individual messages.

“Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy and

leave buying decisions to the very last moment. Digital

marketing needs to react accordingly and ensure that

data is analysed effectively to achieve the business

objective.

“

”Ed Luck, Sales & Marketing Director, The University of Law


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Online media can offer news that is fast, customised to individual preferences,

and interactive, engaging readers and experts in electronic conversation.

Small wonder traditional print publications look under threat.

While print media have experienced huge retrenchments in recent years, and some have died or

moved online, newsstands are still heavily stacked with publications. One reason is that, from glossy

magazines to broadsheet newspapers, people enjoy the tactile feel of paper. They like being able to

fold back the pages or roll up a magazine to carry.

Moreover, photos look better printed on high quality paper. People buy newspapers and magazines

to keep on a coffee table, shelf or by the loo. They don’t want to bother about batteries or potential

electrocution when reading in the bath.

Of course, electronic devices will improve with advances in technology, for example, pliable plastic

screens and holograms. But technological progress will benet traditional media too, with facilitiessuch as personalisation enabling people to print newspapers or magazines customised for them on

the spot.

Journalists and publishers are learning how to exploit digital and social media to their advantage.

They are using websites, smartphone apps and Twitter feeds to access new audiences and promote

their content. The boundaries between paper and electronic media are blurring.

While online is a great way to get to your audience quickly, it is not the ideal medium for detail and

depth. Newspapers will survive by delivering well-researched background stories with better analysis

and perspectives on breaking news than their digital counterparts. Liberated from the need to be rst

with the news, successful print publications will be more accurate, factual, and establish themselvesas more trustworthy sources.

How print media willuse digital and social mediaJane Bird, Freelance journalist specialising in technologyand regular contributor to the Financial Times

and The Economist.

Instagram An online photo sharing website, that allows you to upload photos

taken on a smart phone or camera, edit them with digital lters and then post

them to social media websites.


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Print journalists will become better at providing content in multiple formats, video-recording

interviews, putting them on YouTube, ripping the audio and sharing it through iTunes. They will post

them as blogs, send them to magazines to be printed alongside associated news stories or features,

and even feed the content into books or documentaries.

By exploiting technologies such as blogs, forums, email and social networks, print publications

can involve readers in discussion, ideally with the author and experts quoted in the original article.

Readers often contribute to developing stories and provide valuable insights.

Local newspapers will survive by building on their strengths and extending their coverage online to

become more community oriented. Every town and city is different, with local content ranging from

births, marriages and deaths to sports results, political activities and police arrests. Such coverage

creates a market for local advertising and other ways of generating revenue, including events,

sponsorship and joining forces with small and medium-sized businesses in the area.

High quality journalism is expensive, and national print media will also need to generate revenue

in the digital world. One way is to give people who buy a print publication free access to the same

content online. Another approach is to attract subscriptions – not easy in an environment wherepeople have come to regard information as free. However nice the paper and clever the technology,

traditional publications won’t survive if customers are not prepared to pay. Print media must rise to

the challenge or die.

Article

Facetime Live video footage of users who are connected via smart phones.

Used in businesses for long distance conferences.

Google Hangout An instant messaging service combined with video chat, similar

to Facebook messaging. This has been used extensively by B2B brands and

corporates.


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Using our chief executive on social and digital media platforms has enabled us to build our

company prole and give the brand a voice and personality.

Social and digital media has been a useful channel for us. Using commentary and

industry insight through recent press coverage, we are able to post links which help us to

communicate and celebrate our expertise and successes and engage with our clients.

Lesley Unger, Product Development, City Financial

Comments

A strong digital presence is a vital sales tool in the professional services arenaas savvy companies increasingly use the web to search for suitable providers

to outsource their business services.

“The majority of our direct marketing programmes are now digitally based, driving

clients to our website, with a sector and sub-sector focus to make messages

relevant and informative, generating strong conversion rates. We nd video

content receives four times more hits than text as it’s not only mobile-friendly,

but provides increased engagement with the expert.

“Social media is important for general awareness and, once its starts to

drive sales in the consumer sector, I expect the trend will cross over into

the B2B world.

John Gibbs, Director of Marketing, Moore Stephens

‘‘

,,

,,‘‘


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Thinking scale and niche:Business predictions for

digital and social mediaMariann Hardey, Lecturer in Marketing,Durham University Business School.

How to proliferate with participationSome of the most successful social media campaigns have had a niche audience and involved

those with whom content had the most impact. When it comes to the best tools for social media

and digital marketing to make that impact; Communication, Connection and Engagement (CCE) are

key to targeting the consumer. But for success, it is crucial to anticipate how content will allow the

audience to bond, relate and share. This is not just about scale, but the relevant optimisation

of content.

Today most social trafc is from mobile. Consumers are now the ‘super-sharers’, likely to be one

of the 556 million global users who own a smartphone and/or tablet and access content on Social

Network Sites (SNSs) like Facebook on a daily basis. If content does not work on mobile, the

guarantee is low impact and limited consumer engagement. To ensure a successful social media

campaign the utilisation of share tools and targeting of social platforms should be designed toposition the audience closer to content, and ultimately to encourage them to share.

In the last three years there has been a considerable shift in not only how, but who businesses

should target. Social media has engaged 73% of adults in the US who have a prole on at least one

SNS and to connect to 44.6 million UK adults (87%) who used the internet in the rst quarter of 2014

(an increase of 1.1 million since the same period the previous year). Suddenly growth is not amongst

the millenials. Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reports the fastest growing

proportion of social media users are women aged 30-49 years, and they also make up more than

80% of trafc on social platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.

Hashtag A word or unspaced phrase prexed with a hashtag to highlight a trend.

Used extensively in B2B to search for relevant posts or messages as a group.


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To enhance their social media business strategy every company should implement monitoring and

data-analytics tools. The key to success is comprehensive measurement. Every item of content

should be analysed to understand how it spreads from initial ‘seed views’ to mature scalable ‘socialimpact’, and to who. The community news website BuzzFeed’s method of optimisation is based on

the viral-rank rule of three - meaning they expect one story to reach three times as many people via

social media. The type of delivery has importance, but it is the velocity of shares that characterises

the social-web era.

The force propelling content is dened as the collective interest of consumers who think content is

worth engagement. Like their supershare audience, on the social web businesses have an important

voice. The clear delineation between neutral content and branded advertising has changed in tenor

with ‘native advertising’ that is emerging as a convincing, but often grating force (there are numerous

hi-jacked branded #hashtag campaigns on Twitter for example). Ultimately business should be

cautious about irritating consumers by jamming social media and have a clear strategy that can be

effectively scaled to service consumer needs.

Article

Meme A repeatedly shared image used by social media users to convey a thought, idea or

joke. A typical meme contains text above and below an image; the same image can be used

over and over with different text. Some B2B brands try to use Meme’s to generate leads.

Pinterest A website which enables the user to collate ideas and pictures in an organisedfashion on a ‘board’. Used by businesses to share ideas or communicate key messages.


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Infographic

Surrounded by screens?% of respondents* agreeing they’re “constantly looking at sceens” these days.

78%

71%

67%

64%

60%

59%

57%

49%

47%

39%

*based on a survey among 9,000 respondents aged 16-64 (18-64 in the U.S.)

China

UK

US

Brazil

Russia

Japan

Germany

South Korea

France

Spain


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Native advertising Advertising that ts in with a consumer context.

The advertisement follows a similar form and theme to the site on which it is placed.


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Predicting the future is a risky business, but our ability to foresee what’s coming next is an

important part of our capacity to plan for the future and remain competitive. This is especially

challenging in the rapidly changing world of social media.

Who would have thought that Germany’s World Cup win in Brazil would draw the most socialinteractions ever, with 618,725 tweets a minute, or that a South Korean pop music video would

become the most watched video on YouTube ever, with nearly two billion views? Who would have

imagined that a simple search engine, Google, would eventually become a driver in all kinds of

innovation, from autonomous vehicles to wearable technology?

However, while certainty about the future may be too much to expect, we are becoming more

equipped at making sense of trends and one of the reasons for this is social media itself.

So, if you want to discover what’s next for social media, the rst thing to do is make sure your

company is engaged with some form of listening to keep track of developments in digital technology.

The signicance of this cannot be overestimated. As the volume of big data grows exponentially,the uses to which it will be put is also growing. For example, one recent project from the USA

analyses past news coverage as a way of predicting future news events. The more data you acquire

today, the more effective you will be at understanding trajectories within your industry in the future.

However, the reason to do this is broader than just making efciencies or achieving competitive

advantage. Listening and sharing must become central to your organisation’s values, as they are

fast becoming the expectation of digital citizens. Already, today’s companies can expect individuals

to complain about service failures in public via social media, rather than privately calling a customer

support line. This reality requires a response that is based on values, requiring greater transparency

and a demonstrable presence within the public domain that goes beyond simply marketing or brand

protection.

News feed A data format that employs updated content frequently. For example

on Facebook or Twitter, the news feed is updated consistently.

Selfe A picture taken of the self, usually from a smart phone in order to upload

to a social media website.

What’s next forsocial media?Professor Andy Miah, University of West Scotland.


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Article

It’s also worth considering what your business can offer for free, as an increasing amount of services

have some degree of freemium model built into them. A good example of this is from the British lm

archive Pathé, which just released 85,000 lms on YouTube, free to view. Giving something away for

free is important to your customers, because they also do this; social media relies on people taking

time out of their day to share something, which belongs to somebody else. So, if you are not leading

by example, you can expect less love back in return from your community.

Once you have these principles in place, it’s also important to think about where innovation

occurs within your social media strategy. Having the strategy alone won’t ensure that you remain

competitive. Instead, rather than just invest into platforms that already have prominence, set up

an informal horizon scanning group, whose job is to playfully explore new forms of social media

experiences. Don’t just leave this to your marketing team; don’t just think of this as marketing.

Social media ourishes when it involves personalsation, conversation, and inspiration. Get these

messages right and your reputational growth can translate into bottom line achievements. Being

seen as a business with these values will go a long way to building a condent persona as an

organisation and staying in touch with the latest trends.

@andymiah

Future Trends in Social Media1-5 years

• Big data becomes a core driver of mainstream news (and also market decisions).

• Mobile apps become the dominant vehicle of content consumption (make sure your

website is responsive, or, even better, stop designing just websites).

• Discovery replaces search as the principle mode of obtaining information (instead

of looking for something, it comes to us).

5-10 years

• Wearable technology becomes the norm and the interface with digital technology

changes as a result (Google Glass is just the beginning).

• The Internet of Things becomes pervasive (for example, your refrigerator tells your

supermarket provider when you are running out of food and automates delivery).

• Everything everywhere. Social media integration across all screen experiences,

from cinema to health services (cloud computing becomes the dominant mode

of accessing and backing up our lives).

10-15 years

• Smart cities become powered by machine learning systems (a prototype of which

may be the CRISEES platform, which aggregates social media data to respond to

emergencies).

• BioDigital Architecture shapes our urban world (buildings live, breathe, store,

and generate power for a digital infrastructure).

• Gesture interfaces replace touch screens as the dominant mode of digital interactions.


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Sentiment Refers to the attitude of user comments related to a brand in an online context.

Social media monitoring often measures ‘sentiment’.


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Tag cloud A visual representation for textual data. Tags may be single words or short

phrases, multi coloured and different sizes (generally bigger for more importance).


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Broadgate Mainland Public Relations15 Basinghall StreetLondon EC2V 5BR

T: +44 (0)20 7726 6111

Email: [email protected]

bm digital trends brochure 2014

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