Digital Trends 2015

Digital Trends 2015

Introduction
This 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 communications
and how they affect 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.

Digital Trends 2015

Page 8
Page 12

Page 16

Page 8
Enterprise Social Media
Matt Owen, Head of Social, Econsultancy.
Page 12
Digital Futures
Paul Dwyer, Senior Lecturer, University of Westminster.
Page 16
How print media will use digital and social media
Jane Bird, Freelance journalist specialising in technology and
regular contributor to the Financial Times and The Economist.

Digital Trends 2015

Executive summary

Executive summary
One of the big drivers for online communications according to
Professor Andy Miah, University of West of Scotland, is the capture
and usage of big data. The more data you require today, the more
affective you will be at understanding the trajectories within your
industry in the future.
The use of this data and the way it helps the transition to an
increasingly digital world is giving businesses the opportunity to
promote themselves and their values to a much wider audience.
Mariann Hardey, Durham Business School, says that a good
social media campaign requires a company to create content that
encourages the audience to share. The right content strategy,
written with the audience in mind, will resonate with customers and
will help endear the business to the audience, encouraging brand
reinforcement and helping establish long-term relationships.
Digital and social media hits the spot when its relevant, informative
and involves personalisation, conversation and inspiration. Matt
Owens from Econsultancy calls for increased departmental
integration between sales and marketing to communicate directly
with users. He believes it is vital for communications teams to work
closely with their front-line facing colleagues to develop collateral
for the web that is informative, accessible and more crucially, up
to date, topical and credible. According to Professor Andy Miah,
if you get the content right, then an organisations reputational
growth can translate into lead generation and significantly
contribute to the bottom line.

Digital Trends 2015

Page 20

Page 24

Page 20
Thinking scale and niche: Business predictions
for digital and social media
Mariann Hardey, Lecturer in Marketing,
Durham University Business School.
Page 24
Whats next for social media?
Professor Andy Miah, University of West Scotland.

Digital Trends 2015

Executive summary

While the digital world opens doors, its 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 mustnt 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.
Its 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.

Digital Trends 2015

Enterprise Social Media

Matt Owen, Head of Social, Econsultancy.

Enterprise social media has been with us for less than a decade, but has created massive
disruption, redefining 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 Facebook
and 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 Id like to share my thoughts on what we can
expect in the next few years.

Native advertising
As platforms strive towards monetisation, the idea that social is free will vanish. Businesses will
focus 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. Were 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.

Digital Trends 2015

Article

Avatar An image or username used to represent a persons profile on social

networks and forums.

Breadcrumbs A projection showing the exact whereabouts the user

is currently on a website.

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 qualified 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 well see more tailored monitoring of individual conversations
and a focus on lead-generation.

Organisational change
Businesses 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.

Advocacy
Finally well 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.
Its 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 find
real value and make big wins in the future.

Digital Trends 2015

Comments

Keeping abreast of whats 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 to
monitor 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 dont
get looked at if you cannot work across
smartphones and tablets.

Adrian Stahl, Marketing Manager, BLP Insurance

Our business model is the provision of high quality face to face financial 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 are
at home, work or play.

Stephen Knight, Digital Marketing Specialist, St. Jamess Place Wealth Management

10

Digital Trends 2015

Digital Trends 2015

11

Digital Futures
Paul Dwyer, Senior Lecturer, University of Westminster.

We are all curators now

Compared 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 PPAs 2014 Publishing Futures report) suggests that the logic
of 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 specific 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 findable web channels, which are content rich, well designed
and 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 finding
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 briefly, heard speak or know through another connection.

12

Digital Trends 2015

Black 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.

Article

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.

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 find 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

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

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

Digital Trends 2015

13

Infographic

What fuels a Tweets

engagement?

35%

Photos average a 35% boost in Retweets

28%

16%

Hashtag

19%

17%

Digit

Quote

Video URL

Photo URL

Snapchat more popular than

Twitter among US Millennials
Most popular social media apps among Americans aged 18-34 (% of smartphone users)
75.6%
43.1%
32.9%
23.8%
18.0%
17.99%
10.7%
6.3%

14

Digital Trends 2015

Comments

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 tothe 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 analysedeffectively to achieve the business
objective.

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

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 its 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 marketing
colleagues 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

Digital Trends 2015

15

How print media will

use digital and social media
Jane Bird, Freelance journalist specialising in technology
and regular contributor to the Financial Times
and The Economist.

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 dont 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 benefit traditional media too, with facilities
such 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 first
with the news, successful print publications will be more accurate, factual, and establish themselves
as more trustworthy sources.

Instagram An online photo sharing website, that allows you to upload photos
taken on a smart phone or camera, edit them with digital filters and then post
them to social media websites.

16

Digital Trends 2015

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.

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 where
people have come to regard information as free. However nice the paper and clever the technology,
traditional publications wont survive if customers are not prepared to pay. Print media must rise to
the challenge or die.

Digital Trends 2015

17

Comments

A strong digital presence is a vital sales tool in the professional services arena
as 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 find video
content receives four times more hits than text as its 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

,,

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

18

Digital Trends 2015

Digital Trends 2015

19

Thinking scale and niche:

Business predictions for
digital and social media
Mariann Hardey, Lecturer in Marketing,
Durham University Business School.

How to proliferate with participation

Some 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 traffic 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 to
position 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 profile on at least one
SNS and to connect to 44.6 million UK adults (87%) who used the internet in the first 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 Centers 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 traffic on social platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.

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

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

20

Digital Trends 2015

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 Memes to generate leads.
Pinterest A website which enables the user to collate ideas and pictures in an organised
fashion on a board. Used by businesses to share ideas or communicate key messages.

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 social
impact, and to who. The community news website BuzzFeeds 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 defined 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.

Digital Trends 2015

21

Infographic

Surrounded by screens?
% of respondents* agreeing theyre constantly looking at sceens these days.

78%

China

71%

UK
US

67%

Brazil

64%
60%

Russia

59%

Japan

57%

Germany

49%

South Korea

47%

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

22

Digital Trends 2015

39%

Native advertising Advertising that fits in with a consumer context.

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

Digital Trends 2015

23

Whats next for

social media?
Professor Andy Miah, University of West Scotland.

Predicting the future is a risky business, but our ability to foresee whats 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 Germanys World Cup win in Brazil would draw the most social
interactions 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 whats next for social media, the first thing to do is make sure your
company is engaged with some form of listening to keep track of developments in digital technology.
The significance 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 efficiencies or achieving competitive
advantage. Listening and sharing must become central to your organisations values, as they are
fast becoming the expectation of digital citizens. Already, todays 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.
Selfie A picture taken of the self, usually from a smart phone in order to upload
to a social media website.

24

Digital Trends 2015

Article

Its 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 film
archive Path, which just released 85,000 films 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, its also important to think about where innovation
occurs within your social media strategy. Having the strategy alone wont 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. Dont just leave this to your marketing team; dont just think of this as marketing.
Social media flourishes 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 confident persona as an
organisation and staying in touch with the latest trends.
@andymiah

Future Trends in Social Media

1-5 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).

T
 he Internet of Things becomes pervasive (for example, your refrigerator tells your
supermarket provider when you are running out of food and automates delivery).

E
 verything 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).

B
 ioDigital 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.
Digital Trends 2015

25

Sentiment Refers to the attitude of user comments related to a brand in an online context.
Social media monitoring often measures sentiment.

26

Digital Trends 2015

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).

Digital Trends 2015

27

Broadgate Mainland Public Relations

15 Basinghall Street
London EC2V 5BR
T: +44 (0)20 7726 6111
Email: contact@broadgatemainland.com

28

Digital Trends 2015