2016 is not a year of Meerkat. In 2015 we seen Meerkat and Periscope going head to head but Twitter bought Periscope. Recently Twitter announced that it’s going to embed Periscope within Twitter streams. Unfortunately Meerkat is going to find it very difficult to get good traction in 2016.

Ian Cleary,
Founder of RazorSocial.

2016 is not a year of relying too heavily on a single platform or social network to grow your business. When Facebook dropped organic reach, it created a lot of fall out. Brands who had spent millions building a following, could now only reach a handful of their fans. And bloggers who relied too much on Facebook lost almost all of their traffic overnight. The lesson here is to avoid “building on rented land”. Stop sending your readers to your social networks, encourage them to join your email list first. Then ask them to follow your social networks. It’s time to build an audience on your terms.

Adam Connell,
Founder of BloggingWizard.

2016 is not a year of static images, but moving pictures. Video and live streaming is what social media users are craving this year. It is all about telling stories by using platforms like Snapchat, Blab, Periscope, Youtube and Vine. Video viewing statistics on platforms like Facebook and Snapchat are mind-blowing at the moment with Youtube just getting stronger by the minute as we know. Beautiful images will always be important in any content strategy, but 2016 is the year of the ‘moving pictures’.

 Adel de Meyer,
Social Media Specialist & Entrepreneur.

2016 is not a year of automation on Twitter. In 2015 we saw a rise in auto likes, retweets, and DMs based on hashtags used in tweets. However, now if I add #sales into any tweet, I am guaranteed 10 new followers, and 5 likes. So what was once an automatic engagement tool, has now been already overused and is now much less valuable!

Mick Griffin,
Partner of Brand24.

2016 is not a year of “best time to tweet” pattern. The idea most likely to die. It assumes that everyone will look at your message.  Not true. It assumes that the best source of business is your existing followers. Also, quite likely untrue. The best time to tweet is whenever there is another person interested in what you are saying.

Tim Fargo,
CEO of Tweet Jukebox.

2016 is not a year of high quantity content creation. With the average American consuming more than 10 hours of content each day (it’s 9hrs+ in the UK) many people feel overwhelmed with the amount of content. It used to be seen as important (particularly for search engine rankings) to post very regular but lower value content instead of high value and detailed content.

Ian Anderson Gray,
Blogger & Founder of Seriously Social.

2016 is not a year of weak status updates on LinkedIn. Your status update on LinkedIn is your free professional billboard. Once per weekday, update your personal status with information, entertainment, interaction or a call to action. This is your chance to remind your connections that you exist!

Eve Mayer,
CEO of Social Media Delivered.

2016 is not a year of advertising on social channels and calling it “social marketing.” It is time to get real, get social, and get past the limited view of simply throwing up ads. Old marketing was dictation… new marketing is communication. It is time to change from “Convince & Convert” to “Converse & Convert”. You know what doesn’t work for a social media/marketing strategy… NOT BEING SOCIAL!

Ted Rubin,
Social Marketing Strategist & Keynote Speaker.

2016 is not a year of constant or stability. Public relations in 2016 will be a lot like it was in 2015. It will be characterised by change.

Stephen Waddington,
Partner & Chief Engagement Officer at Ketchum.

2016 is not a year of being a single channel marketer, believing that SEO is something you “do”, of trying to hire agencies to do social media, and believing that there are magic tricks in digital marketing.

Dennis Yu,
CTO of BlitzMetrics.

2016 is not a year of forgetting about your competitors. Our social media channels may be getting amazing results, but we sometimes put a bit too much faith in them when we don’t know how our competitors are doing. Nowadays, when the tools help you compare yourself with competitors (including paid communication), it’s just mandatory to do it on a regular basis.

Jan Zając,
CEO of Sotrender.

2016 is not a year of limiting your advertising budget. Paid  advertising  on  platforms  like  Facebook  and  Google  will continue to increase in popularity. The owners and shareholders of these online businesses provide a  certain  amount  of  free  functionality  but  continue  to  find  innovative  ways  to  charge  for  their services too. Well planned paid advertising campaigns can be extremely targeted which means more businesses  and  SEO  managers  like  myself  will  continue  to  pay  for  traffic, likes,   shares,   tweets  and other online paid advertising.

Lukasz Zelezny,
Head of Organic Acquisition at uSwitch.