Well it’s the end of the year so like many of you I’m thinking a lot about what worked this year and what’s around the corner. Traditionally I write a blog post for epolitics about what I think are going to be the hot trends in social but here’s a bit of a sneak peak:

What’s going to be hot in 2015

Mobile- I don’t mean apps or responsive design...I mean really taking our audience’s content consumption habits into account as we create and build community on social media Shorter videos- Vines, hyperlapse Instagram and more…
Social giving- as people become more and more comfortable buying via social (think Twitter’s new Buy Card) I think we will start to see the trickle of social funding start to edge up Hashtags move more mainsteam as a way to connect online and offline communities

What’s not

Wanting the “next” Ice bucket challenge- hopefully by now the powers that be in our lives finally understand why that isn’t a worthy goal to set
Vanity metrics - maybe this one is more a prayer but a gal can dream right?

Also...as we enter 2015 I’m renewing my commitment to blogging more regularly...some of it will be at epolitics.com and some as part of Action Sprout’s Blog (disclosure: I am now working with Action Sprout officially to do some blogging and to conduct regular webinars on various aspects of Facebook strategy...the first of which will take place mid January- details to follow soon) so I will try to remember to include the links here in the newsletter every month. For December there was just one post I wrote: For Social Media Success Feed the Social Self - a written version of some of the points Michael Grenetz and I made during our session about Facebook at Rootscamp.

New Social Media Research Shows What People Expect From Brands
some good insight for brands but all is applicable in the political/advocacy world as well.

7 Reasons you should pay attention to Tumblr right now
I’ve always struggled a bit with Tumblr as an advocacy tool but this one gave me some new insights to mull over.

Breaking Tradition: Using Crowdsourcing as part of your Social Media Strategy
Crowdsourcing is an often underutilized advantage of having an engaged social community at your fingertips ready to help your organization get things done.

5 social networks to watch out for in 2015
I was surprised This wasn't on it and also surprised to find myself returning the question of how useful Quora could be.

Facebook New features for pages coming soon to a page near you! Not sure yet what exactly they are calling this but I happened to see it on a page a few months ago and I was just told it’s being rolled out to all pages...it’s a popup with a click to action but what’s hot is that it scrolls up and down the page with you til you click or click out of it. No details public yet that I’ve seen but I’m hoping (for obvious reasons) that you can customize that button to be something other than Like.

New emphasis on video with a redesign of the Video tab on a page...read this article for more details

Twitter Native video is coming to Twitter (no surprise given the popularity of Twitter owned Vine)...details here.

On Tuesday, January 20 I will be reprising our session from RootsCamp “The Facebook Algorithm Isn’t the Enemy” for Organizing 2.0 in New York City Tuesday, January 20 at 6pm at The Murphy Institute, CUNY located at 25 W. 43rd St.  

Organizing 2.0 they haven’t publicly announced the date yet so I won’t pre empt them but it’ll be this spring in New York City and is always a great conference to attend.

Netroots Nation 2015 To be held next year close to home in Phoenix, Arizona this is a don’t miss conference!

Reminder...take 30 seconds and spell check your Tweets...I bet Sephora wishes they had remembered to do so!

And just for the fun of it...here’s one list of the biggest fails for 2014...do you agree or disagree? What would you add to the list? Tweet me with #socialfail.

Beth