After being listed as number five on Fast Company’s Most innovated social media company of 2017, Taco Bell is making a way for itself by focusing on the customers for product development and research. To reach customers in a more personal sense, Taco Bell has been using social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram to review customers complaints, ideas, and creativity. “Instead of sitting behind glass and listening to a focus group, we now have access to 20 million consumers and can be inspired by them and connect with them and have real relationships with them (Lacy, L. (2016, November)”.

Sports brings people together. It moves and inspires people in ways that can sometimes be hard to explain. The sacrifice can never be put into words or understood unless you’ve personally gone through it yourself. But yet, regardless of your participation or not, sports can bring a nation together. It can bring us to our knees and can instil a sense of pride. The raw talent, incredible dedication and sheer passion of watching someone give it their all is a great indicator that sport is much more than the result at the end of a race or a game, it tells the story of the incredible team behind-the-scenes that helps a team or individual propel to greatness.

Social media for business purposes has been a main staple of marketing for many years now. As each new trend and each new platform is released, companies have scrambled to be at the forefront. Over the years we have seen many success stories and many disasters come of social media, but the fact is it isn’t going to go away. Truth be told, social media advertising budgets have doubled over the past 2 years and ad spending has ballooned to roughly $35 billion this year, according to Hootsuite. The future of social media will likely require marketers to rethink their current strategy. The move toward instant, in the moment news feeds, augmented reality, and posts that will disappear after 24 hours are changing the way we view social media. Businesses will have to become adept at following these trends if they want to stay in the game.

Nowadays social media marketing has become incredibly important for businesses all sizes. One reason behind marketers’ attention to social media is technology: new platforms, networks and apps. Another reason are people, who use social media to create, publish and share content. The same people are consumers, who share their thoughts about their experiences and are looking for new ones. So what does the future hold for the world of social media?

Sephora has made a global presence in the last few decades in the cosmetic industry. Founded in France 1970, by Dominique Mandonnaud, which was then sold to LVMH in 1997. The company had quickly evolved with retail stores expansions and a wider variety of products. Sephora offers a large range of products such as fragrance, makeup, skincare, hair products, and accessories. In the last few years Sephora has taken a massive transition into digital retailing as the company uses social media as a main platform to expand the brand.

On February 4, 2005, YouTube started a revolution by giving us a seemingly endless stream of content, on demand. You could watch videos by celebrities, tutorials by up-and-comers, or movie trailers released by studios. Over the years, videos continue to be released, creating new stars and streams of content from global contributors. But no more is YouTube the only major player in the game. With over a billion users generating billions of views and hundreds of thousands of hours of content watched, it is only natural that other players would want to capitalize on this captive and attentive audience. Social media giants Facebook and Twitter are getting in on the action by promoting real-time engagement video capability aimed at engaging the attention of global audiences.

While no one can actually predict the future, we can use past knowledge and current trends to guess what might happen. Social Media is no different. In a podcast with the Social Media Examiner, Rohit Bhargava discusses his book, Non Obvious. He considers “a trend to be an observation about the accelerating present. That means there are signs of something already happening that will become more important”.1 A great example to review is Spectacles by Snap Inc. This new gadget considers past, current and futuristic trends. Snap uses a medium that all people are familiar with wearing (sunglasses) to capture quick videos for social sharing. Snapchat (its former name) already recognized that capturing video upright is more intuitive because people hold mobile phones that way. Snapchat was a trendsetter when it made upright videos acceptable.2 Spectacles operate via Bluetooth and load video content to your mobile device. Their creation of circular video (which captures both vertical and horizontal orientations simultaneously) is very innovative. When the viewer plays the video on a mobile device they can rotate it in any direction and it will display accordingly. Videos for entertainment and information are here to stay and they will inevitably carry us forward. Whether we’re watching live camera feeds around the world, funny YouTube videos or Tasty how-to food clips, we’re validating this trend for the future.

In April 2013 Lowe’s launched their extremely successful “Fix in Six” campaign on Vine. With Lowe’s being the second largest home improvement retailer in the world it seems appropriate that their Vine campaign is a variety of six second videos that gives tips for home improvement. Since the campaign began in 2013, Lowe’s has created and shared 115 vines that have generated over 65 million views.

No matter which social media platform I’m on, there it is…. No matter which conversation I join, someone brings it up…. Turn on the news and there is again… Pokémon GO. Pokémon GO is officially the biggest mobile game in the United States, with 21 million active daily users.1 According to Wikipedia it is a free-to-play location-based augmented reality mobile game developed by Niantic and published by The Pokémon Company. It was released in July 2016 for iOS and Android devices. The game allows players to capture, train, and battle virtual creatures, called Pokémon, who appear on device screens as though in the real world. It makes use of the GPS and camera of compatible devices. Although it is free-to-play, the game supports in-app purchases of additional gameplay items. An optional companion Bluetooth wearable device, the Pokémon GO Plus, is planned for future release, and it will alert users when Pokémon are nearby.2

At this point, many people are likely using Snapchat just for fun. Business Insider reported in Summer 2015 that nearly half of the app’s users were under the age of 24 years old (while only 19 percent of Twitter users, and 16 percent of Facebook’s are of the same age demographic). That’s huge! So Snapchat possesses a massive chunk of the 18 to 24 year old age group, and while right now, many of those people are using it to share videos of their dogs, clips from the big concert, or shots using the face swap lens…at some point one could see them wanting more.  

Whether it has been with a talking chihuahua, or jamming Doritos into all parts of Tex-Mex fast food, Taco Bell has taken a thinking outside the box approach to marketing and advertising for years – long before social media was really a thing. Though, of course, they’d say they’re “thinking outside the bun.” Taco Bell thrives on the bizarre, the unconventional, and the uncommon. They’re all of these descriptions and more! – Wrapped in a Cool Ranch Doritos shell and smothered in sour cream, salsa and gooey, orange, plastic-y cheese. While marketing is a subject that is relatively difficult to go too crazy with, on the surface, Taco Bell manages to find a way to go against the grain here as well. While the 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report shows that many corporations have low interest in utilizing Snapchat in their marketing at this point, Taco Bell is embracing the platform and using it really effectively.

Transparency is a funny thing. To successfully engage customers, it’s an important subject for organizations in today’s marketplace. Yet, how does a company walk the line between reflecting an image of transparency, while still being able to function successfully without ‘giving it all away’? For the Baltimore Ravens, it’s an ability to appear transparent to the consumer, by appealing to the emotional side. Football teams can have the unique advantage of extremely passionate customers. Sure, it helps if the team performs better and the players are easily ‘marketable’ to the audience, but football is a game for passionate people, with strong feelings to their respective teams.