Social Media can be a confusing, challenging area for a small business to participate in, simply because it tends to change so quickly. However, if you take note of these emerging trends, you can get ahead of the curve and grab customers' attention through effective application of the trends.

Content Marketing is King

The new search algorithm, "Hummingbird," is Google's new search recipe to sort through billions of web pages out there to return the best answers possible. The new algorithm is meant to better identify the right results for conversational search, which attempts to take all the words of a search into consideration instead of just focusing on a few keywords. This just means that Google search is being fine-tuned to deliver better results based on the way we naturally speak.

Consumer as Content Marketer

In addition to the new algorithm, I believe that consumers themselves will provide data for content marketing. If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you saw multiple ads with users' amateur video clips melded into the professionally-produced ads. Smart businesses understand that when a consumer posts something on the web, it is typically seen by 150 people with no out-of-pocket expense for the business. This is referral marketing!

Marketing to Multiple Screens

Multiple-Screen content marketing will continue to increase. By 2017, 87% of internet device sales will be smartphones and tablets, according to Forbes. 90% of consumers in the USA own a mobile gadgets, 57% of which are internet-capable. On top of that, 44% of TV viewers use a second screen half the time they watch TV and 88% of marketers believe that multi-screen integration will become increasingly important over the next three years.

Because of this, social media will continue to become more important as it get wrapped into SEO, resulting in blended social media strategies to emphasize content marketing and drive organic search results.

Social Media Sales

Social media will continue to increase in importance as purchases are driven directly from social media. 74% of consumers now rely on social networks to guide their purchases, with 47.1 million users are expected to use mobile coupons in 2014, according to Business Insider.

Images Attract

Effective social media marketing will also require more than good content marketing and SEO. Images attract and hold attention more effectively than text. Sites like Pinterest and Buzzfeed attest to this, in addition to the immense popularity of <a href="http://www.infographicdesignteam.com/infographic-facebook-facts.html">infographics like this</a>. You've most likely proven this yourself as you scroll through your Facebook homepage. The stories with the pictures grab your attention first, don't they?

You should also be sure to label images with relevant file names and ALT tags to strengthen your SEO.

What does this mean for me?

As a small business owner, you should consider how to leverage your current situation to capitalize on these trends. Working with Advance Funds Network, you may be able to strategically retain the capital needed to consider contracting out for effective content mobile marketing strategies while you work on your Unique Selling Proposition.

Whatever you do, don't sit on the sidelines...get in the game!