What are the most Important trends in Social Media for Public Relations and Marketing in 2015? Explaining how the social media landscape will continue to change and how especially the public relations field needs to adapt.

1. Social Media Trends
Charmaine du Plessis
8 February 2015,
Pretoria, South Africa

2. Today’s Presentation
 Social Media Explosion
 Biggest Social Media Trends for Companies
 What some of these Trends mean for Public
Relations
 Required Skills for Public Relations Practitioners –
Social Media
All Images License: CC0
Public Domain

3. Social Media Explosion
 Constant rate of change – different from any other
medium – now mainstream.
 A quarter of the world’s population use social
media.
 Using social media for companies has become an
art – specialised skills are needed.
 No longer a luxury, but a necessity for companies.
 Social media channels now need to add value to
remain relevant to users.

4. Social Media Explosion
in South Africa
• Population: 49,004,031
• Active internet users: 6,800,000
• Internet Penetration: 13.90%
• Smartphone Penetration: 85.81%
• Tablet Penetration: 34.07 %
• Smart TV Penetration: 23.79 %
• Microblogging (in last 6 months): 48.85 %
• Manage a social network profile (in last 6
months): 81.07 %
Source: Universal McCann (2014)

5. Social Media Explosion
in South Africa
 South Africa has low internet penetration but high
social media adoption. It also adopts new social media
earlier than some other countries and is growing fast =
mobile phones (feature and smart phones).
 South Africans use social media to connect with friends,
for entertainment and to express emotions.
 63% Internet users have joined an online brand
community.
Source: Universal McCann & World Wide Wox (2014)

6. Social Media Explosion
in South Africa
SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK PENETRATION IN 2014
Facebook 11.8 million (8.8 million mobile
phone access)
Twitter 6.6 million (85% mobile phone
access)
YouTube 7.2 million
Instagram 1.1 million
Google Plus 466 000
World Wide Wox (2014;2015)

7. Social Media Explosion
in South Africa
SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK SA COMPANIES 2014
Facebook 95%
Twitter 92%
YouTube 58%
LinkedIn 28%
Pinterest 28%
World Wide Wox (2014; 2015)

8. Biggest Social Media Trends for
Companies
More Optimisation
 Emphasis on analysing metrics
to see what is working and not
- using real time data – more
customer insight.

9. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
Big Data
• Incredible growth and availability
of data = Social Mining.
• World is producing 2.5 exabytes
of data per day (exabyte = one
quintillion).
• Twitter has invested in Gnip
(social data company reselling
data) and Facebook in Presto
(open source distributed SQL
query engine).

10. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
More Anonymous Social
Networks
• Eg Snapchat, Secret, Whisper, Yik Yak and
Telegram – conversations not publicly
visible or self destruct.
• Facebook’s anonymous new chat app
Rooms or Facebook allowing users to
connect to Facebook directly via the
anonymous dark web service Tor.
• Snapchat: 700 million photos and 500
million stories shared per day.

11. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
Internet of Things
 Objects have connectivity.
 To be integrated more with social media -
smart devices collecting data (eg smart
watches).

12. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
More Integration into Live Events
 Customer interaction through live events
and social media
 Influence and engagement
 Event hashtag #
 Live streaming
 Community remain relevant even after
event.

13. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
Digital Platforms instead of merely
Social Networks
 Eg Facebook – has a website, apps connected
to it, but also enabling advertisers to use its
social graph and profile database to reach
users in other places.

14. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
More Concentration on Mobile
 Mobile friendly experience
 Different strategies for independent
devices.

15. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
Popularity of Micro-video Platforms
 Vine and Instagram – increasingly used for
campaigns.
 More successful platforms are those that use
imagery, messaging and video - thus more
visual elements in social.
 Social media posts should now be
augmented with a video, graph or picture to
stand out from the crowd.
 Also visual revolution in South Africa – video
will become more dominant medium.

16. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
Content, Content and More Content
 Creating, curating and sharing consistent
and relevant brand content tailor-made
for social media channels.
 Strategic Storytelling (also audiovisual).
 Building relationships.
 Creating awareness.
 Specialised skills.
 Content Strategy.
“One-size-fits-all content will become less and less
successful. Preparing an adaptive content strategy
is imperative for long-term success “- Jerod
Morris, Copyblogger Media

17. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
Social Media Influencers
 Collaboration with social media influencers but
lately also common users.

18. Biggest Social Media Trends
for Companies
S-commerce
 E-Commerce will integrate more with social
media eg beta testing buy buttons Twitter
and Facebook.

19. What do all these trends mean for PR?
Social media = multidisciplinary concept.
No real boundaries between PR and Marketing
in Social Media.

20. Social Media Trends and PR
Change in the PR mix = lines between PR and marketing
have blurred in online environment, but PR still has an
important role to play.
Although no more silos, PR practitioners increasingly
develop and manage social media dialogue (for example
company narratives).
Follows an integrated approach to develop the company’s
voice in social media.
Trend in corporate use of social media is that it is done by
the internal team and not outsourced.

21. Social Media Trends and PR
Social media create new opportunities for strategic
communicators to connect with their audiences – messages
can be shared directly with stakeholders.
Creates awareness, visibility and credibility (builds
reputation).
Strengthens relationships with all stakeholders.
PR 2.0 – companies also follow fans and followers =
stronger bonds because of interactivity.
More opportunity to engage stakeholders in social media
by sharing relevant company content = humanise the
company (brand).

22. Earned, Owned and Paid Media
PR uses three kinds of media = digital media strategy
1. Earned media = free media gained because of
promotional efforts (social media mentions, views,
shares, reposts, reviews, comments, subscribers). Also
driven by company content and search engine
optimisation.
2. Owned media = company content and company story
directly controlled by company. Company has become a
publisher (website, mobile site, blog, social media
channels).

23. Earned, Owned and Paid Media
3. Paid media = social media ads, pay per click (Google
Adwords), display ads, etc – can generate more earned
media and drive traffic to owned media.

24. Creating Content
Content creation is a technique to create company/brand
awareness and visibility in social media – drives social media
engagement.
Stakeholders need to be influenced in a subtle way by
pulling them to company content = content should be useful,
relevant, interesting, sharable, free and linked to narratives
about the company – thus add value to the lives of
stakeholders.
Sharing stories about the company on different platforms to
encourage conversations and word of mouth.
Content can showcase the company as an industry thought
leader.

25. Creating Content
Many interactions with brand/content not via website –
need to be on social media where the target audience are.
Content should form a large part of the company’s social
media strategy.
Company should identify relevant content that could be
created and shared eg blog posts, infographics, free
ebooks, whitepapers, videos, podcasts, case studies,
webinars, press release, interviews, testimonials, etc.
Visually appealing – no longer one post fit all media.

26. Optimising Content
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – content should also be
found through unpaid, organic (algorithm) searches via
search engines because of the search terms that the
stakeholders use (not only Google but also Bing, Yahoo).
Keywords NB for company blog posts.
Content typically created on company blog using relevant
industry key words – then link is shared to social media
channels.
Key word research and understanding online search
trends of stakeholders should be done before content is
created eg using Google keywords, WordTracker, Google.
trends.

27. Content Curation
Companies not only create content, they also curate and
share it = discovering, gathering and sharing digital content
about a specific topic.
Rule of thumb = sharing 80% curated content on social
media and 20% own created content.
Curated content should also engage stakeholders.
Various content curation tools (Curata, Pinterest, Storify,
Feedly, Pulse, Pocket, Flipboard etc).

28. Multi-channel Social Media Presence
Select social media channels that users engage in.
Company website/blog very important and should link to
social networking sites, videosharing, PowerPoint sharing,
bookmarking sites, photo sharing, wikis, etc.
Stakeholders need to find the company online through
social media as well as search engine searches.
All created and curated content should be syndicated
using widgets, feeds, tags, etc.
Aggregation = stay on top of social media updates in one
place (eg mention.net).

29. Multi-channel Social Media Presence
Many social media management or social media publisher
platforms to manage and integrate social media presence –
can post to multiple channels = tying it all together eg Tweet
Deck, Hootsuite, Buffer (social media aggregration – can also
display social media feed on website).
Company voice should still be heard, not only automated
messages.
LinkedIn is a professional networking site which now also
has a publishing platform for company updates – popular
social networking tool for PR – can create company page
Social media calendar.

30. Social Media Metrics
Basic metrics
How much exposure the company has achieved by using
social media eg how many fans, followers, website traffic,
how many links are pointing to the company website.
Advanced metrics
Success not about how many followers or fans, but the
quality of conversations with them
How many likes or retweets? Comments on blog posts?

31. Social Media Metrics
Engagement? How long do users spend reading content? Use
analytic tools. Rule of thumb for consumer engagement is
that bounce rate should be about 60%.
Return on Investment (ROI) = what is the goal? Brand
awareness, more traffic for the company website, more
customers, better search engine rankings, generating links
from other sites to the company website?
Social media not suitable for selling, but could be long-term
goal by means of better relationships.
Google analytics + Sharedcount (for blog traffic),
twitter analyser, bit.ly, Socialshares

32. Big Data and PR
Presents opportunity to find insights by integrating new and
emerging types of data and content that were previously
beyond reach.
How can PR use Big Data?
New way of telling company stories.
Adjust company messages and respond
to public trends.
Various Big Data analytics platforms
 eg Hadoop, Cloudera, Hortonworks.

33. Using Influencers
Who are the influencers? Interesting and relatable social media
users who address fans’ passions
They are passionate content creators
What can they do for the company?
Reach wider audience
Develop a community
Encourage action
Brand awareness
Drive app downloads

34. Using Influencers
Build loyalty
Use for crisis communication
Seen as cool, interesting, inspirational, talented, etc. Fans
trust them.
Can use for more engagement through influencer campaign
Where to find them? Twitter Grader, Muck Rack,
JournalistTweets
SA platform for influencer campaigns: Webfluential
Pinterest’s Influencer’s programme

35. PR Social Media Skills
PR practitioner of today has to:
understand the fundamentals of social media including
consumption and management.
understand the social media ecosystem.
be web savvy.
understand all the social media channels and be able to
select the best ones for the company voice.
continuously create company content and curate relevant
content for increased visibility.

36. PR Social Media Skills
know how to build relationships online and how to engage
with a community.
be able to write for social media (and be aware of sensitivity
and proper disclosure).
drive traffic to the company blog or website using social
media.
do social media monitoring and manage social media crisis
communication.
be able to create a social media strategy.
measure social media and company content traffic.

37. Thank you!