Visual Contenting March 2016 | Page 11

TRENDS Other sites are coming up with other imaginative and dynamic way of presenting content to their targeted audiences. In-the-Moment and Virtual Reality Domination One of the primary attractions of social media is that users can get almost real-time and in-themoment updates from friends, personalities and brands that they follow. Users take videos or photos at an earlier time and then publish them a few minutes later for all their followers to see. Although this offers a more upto-date channel than the “latest news” from traditional media, it is still not real-time, and this is what users will look for in 2016. Live stream and in-the-moment updates will dominate the social media sphere, satisfying users’ ever-growing craving for immediacy. Periscope, a live streaming site recently acquired by Twitter, is leading the way with the live video broadcast feature that allows its users to take advantage of. Other sites are also catching on, like Snapchat and Instagram that both offer on-the-go, in-themoment update features. Visual Contenting This trend will not end with these in-the-moment update features alone but will move on to more sophisticated visual marketing technologies and development. At the forefront is Virtual Reality that is expected to finally go mainstream in 2016, offering marketers with new tools and facilities to compete for their targeted users’ attention. Search and Social Media For years, Google has dominated online search and has emerged as the most power tool for finding information about brands, products and services. The growing popularity of social media is slowly changing all that. As much as 80% of consumers are relying more on the opinion and advice of their peers and other consumers they associate with on sites like Facebook, Youtube, Yelp and Pinterest. This trend will continue on this path even more in 2016, with the search features on social media sites growing more and more powerful. Again, Facebook is at the forefront as it continues to work its way towards developing its own powerful search engine, which is made even more powerful through “M”, its own digital personal assistant. With such features, users need not leave the confines of this social network to find whatever they need online.