3 Digital Marketing Predictions for 2015

As a new year rolls in, so do trends and predictions in sectors and businesses. I have kept an eye on the biggest blogs, news sites and tech round-ups to invest my time and commitment in the areas I think will be big in 2015. Below is a short list of what companies, big and small, are focusing on in the coming months:

1) Listen and learn

It's not just about building audiences, but actually listening to what they are saying about your brand, about other brands, about competitors and about their daily lives, too. If you focused on your brand only, you'd miss out on what their real pain points are. What do they like doing? Where do they like going? How does your product/offering fit in with this?

Tools like Talkwalker, HubSpot and SimplyMeasured offer you the chance to really take a deeper look at what is actually happening online. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr have all invested in stronger search facilities as they are realising that people are using these social platforms as search engines.

This can also work to a brand's advantage - with choice keywords, filtering options and the chance to include/exclude accounts and terms, you can find out what your audience and people online are saying on a wider scale. And then use that to back up your content strategy, sales packs and marketing collateral to offer them the answer to their pain points.

2) Visuals

No one can deny the steep climb Pinterest and video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo have experienced over the past year. Not to mention newcomers to the scene like Vine, Instagram video and Snapchat who have rocketed in terms of users and views.

YouTube is the second most widely used search engine in the world.

That statement alone should be enough to make you think long and hard about your visual output, and what you can improve in 2015. Videos need to wow, they need to have an informative or entertaining angle, or sometimes, even both.

You might argue you don't have the resources nor the time - which is where platforms like Vine come in handy. 6 seconds. Your brief: make it count. Use visuals like your team at work, your product in use in different contexts. Show your audience you're creative and you're human; that's the easiest way to get people to buy into your product as they relate to the people behind the brand, too.

As for infographics, these can be crafted with your content and external sources. Sites like visua.ly will make them for you, if you're no design whizz. Or you can actually strip the idea of infographics straight back down and look to recent darling of the social media network, Canva, for some quick templates to bring your content to life in less than 10 minutes.

3) Partnerships

I think the way to pave stronger ties with audiences is to cross-promote, and I think this is something brands will be doing more of in 2015.

Finding a partner can really boost awareness of your brand, but also allow you to expand your horizons creatively, as well. You may find that one relationship leads to another relationships, and before you know it, you have a network of partners that work together on a particular topic, which strengthens your chances of reaching virality online or boosting your SEO.

Examples of strong relationships between brands can be seen with Converse, and new emerging artists. As they realised product-placement with celebrities was going to be too expensive (and frankly, too overdone), they chose to go down a different route. They contacted a studio and offered the artists who recorded there a pair of Converse. They shot videos, believe it or not. They built events around it. And it's a lasting partnership - the only sort of partnership function you should be seeking.

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I manage the social media team as part of the digital division at QS. We work with TopUniversities.com, TopMBA.com, our events teams, on the World University Rankings and Regional Rankings.

If you feel there is an opportunity for us to work together, please do get in touch: [email protected]