Implementing new social media tools and making technical changes to your online presence can have a serious positive or negative impact to your business.

In this article we explore 7 technology trends that may have a significant impact to your business that you need to be aware of.

1.  Google Redefining itself

Google is going through a radical transformation on how it gathers information and how it delivers results.

With a Social Media Strategy it’s really important to consider where Google is going.  Google wants to deliver the best results and is seeking out great content and people of authority.

Although building spammy links from various sites can still work, it is not advisable and increasingly Google will find and penalize these sites.

So be very careful with your strategy for Google.  Be very careful who you employ to help you move up the ranking in Google.  They need to be strong in SEO, technology and social media, and have a great reputation and a strong relationships with a relevant audience.

There was a British Sitcom called ‘Only Fools and Horses’ and the main character was a very dodgy dealer.  These are the type of people to avoid in the SEO Industry.

Action:  If you want to understand more about SEO read the Advanced Guide to SEO produced by Neil Patel and Brian Dean.

2.  Mobile will get hotter!

It’s very difficult to ignore the fact that more and more of your potential customers use a mobile device to access your services.  But, most companies do not have a mobile site?  Yes, I know.  It makes no sense.

At least 20% of all your traffic is from a mobile site so if you do not have a mobile enabled site you are not providing a good service to your clients.

You have 2 main options:

a). Build a responsive design – This means you have one website with the same content but it automatically adjusts to suit the device your visitor use.

b). Mobile site – This can look a lot different, and generally simpler, than your traditional site.

Action: Read this article about supporting mobile.

3.  Lean Startup will be the norm

The technology community goes through trends the same as other industries.  One big trend is ‘Lean Startup’.  This means that they don’t spend a year in a dark room building a product until it’s perfection.

They build, release, get feedback and then build again.

This is great for them because they develop functionality based on feedback.

But it’s not good for you.

What happens is that you have a product full of bugs and lacking in features when it’s at an early stage.

Action:  Don’t ever install a 1.0 version of a product!

4. More Saas Companies will run out of money!

A lot of products you buy will be paid for on a monthly subscription.

This suits you as there isn’t a large amount of money due up front.

The product company also gets recurring revenue that increases each month providing they can keep growing customers quicker than they loose them.

But the problem is with the vast majority of these startups is that the more they grow the higher their costs are so it takes many years to get to profitability.

So you have to be careful of investing in tools for startups that don’t have strong funding.  A lot of them will go out of business.

Action: Do more due dilligence on any product you are investing in.

5. More networks, your audience is spread

Recently Hootsuite raised $165 million.  Social Media Management Tools are essential for managing your social media presence.  There are now more social networks with your audience spread across many of them.

Operating on each platform is too time consuming so you need some help.

You will see more networks but what we’ll get better at, through new social media technology, is building content assets and distributing those assets to the relevant platforms in the right format.

Action: Spend time making sure you pick a social media tool that supports where your audience is engaging.  This may be on many platforms.

6.  A lot more acquisitions

Big companies move slowly and social media moves the speed of lightning.  Big companies have very little innovation.

I read an article to-day about a CIO role needing to be Chief Innovation Officer not Chief Information Officer.  That’s ok if you have a CMO – Content Marketing Officer.

So we’re seeing a lot of acquisitions going on in this space and we’ll continue to see that.  The biggest acquisitions over the last year was SalesForce buying Buddy Media for $689 million and Oracle buying Vitrue for $300 million.  Not bad eh?

Action:  Buy stock!

7. Lots more Tools

The amount of new social media technology and tools that is being launched is constantly growing.

Companies want one tool to do everything, but because the functionality required is so broad for this it’s not going to work.  If companies try to develop a new social media tool that covers too much functionality, they will not have the depth for individual components.

So you will see companies still using multiple tools, however, there will be an open standard developed over time that will help tools inter-operate with each other.

I like the direction that the reporting tool SumAll is taking.  They are going for depth in relation to analytics.  That’s all they do and try to incorporate as many platforms as possible.  Their user interface is not there yet but when they sort this out and complete development it will be a powerful tool

Action:  Follow Razorsocial to find out the best tools in the market!!!

Summary

Social media tools and technology will continue to evolve.  It’s important to keep on top of these trends and do your necessary research and evaluation of any tools you are going to use.  Without doing your research you may run into issues in the future.  The best tool may not always be the one to implement!

I’d love to hear your opinion.  What new social media technology trends have I missed?  How do you handle these changes?