Social content is the “new” king

Content has become mainstream as the foundation and cornerstone of social media marketing effort. Google has significantly changed the game by adding the social signals of the “+1” button with its Google+ platform as an important part of determining what content to serve up and how it is indexed so it appears higher in search results.

Expect to see more content marketing tools, tactics and strategies that accept the fact that social, search and content are increasingly integrated and intertwined.

Content is still king but the shiny social media toys distracted us for a while from the importance of building content rich multi-media digital assets.

6 Social Media Trends You Should Not Ignore in 2013

What significant social media events happened?

Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion and then went public. The question is, will Instagram survive the embrace of its owner and benefactor or will it be its demise. That question is yet to be answered but removing part of its access to Twitter and also announcing new terms of use that was a PR disaster are maybe signs that Facebook could stuff it up.

Pinterest became the darling of the social media set, especially the ladies and fashionistas. Twitter continued to grow after being welcomed into the Apple fold with its inclusion in the mobile operating system on its iPhones.

Google+ continued to grow and with 5 billion “+1″ buttons being clicked on every day and with over 400 million users its success makes Google’s investment of over half a billion dollars in the social network platform look like a good decision.