3 Social Media Trends for 2014 and What They Mean for the HIV Community

Around this time each year, the media, blogs, and Twitter are full of predictions and trends for the new year. It can be a challenge to keep up with all the new developments and emerging tools.

Last Friday—as we do every week—I sat down with Michelle Samplin-Salgado, HIV.gov’s New Media Strategist, to discuss the basics about emerging new media tools, current new media trends, highlights from news reports and coverage about new media—and what they all mean for the HIV community. We call this “School.”

Starting today, we’ve decided to open up our “classroom” to you. Over the coming year, we’ll share what we’re reading, learning, and thinking. We hope you will find it helpful.

For our first school of 2014, we reviewed Mashable’s article, “3 Social Media Trends You Should Know AboutExit Disclaimer and discussed implications for the HIV/AIDS community. Here’s a peek into what we talked about...and what we learned:

• Trend #1: The Social Media Job Scene: Bigger and Better
• Trend #2: Beyond Facebook: The New Platforms on the Block
• Trend #3: Small Moments, Big Trends

Trend #1. The Social Media Job Scene: Bigger and Better

According to Business InsiderExit Disclaimer, there are six social media jobs that are going to explode in 2014: SEO Specialist, Social Media Strategist, Online Community Manager, Social Media Marketing Manager, Social Media Marketing Coordinator, and Blogger or Social Media Copywriter.What this could mean for the HIV community

While we’ve definitely seen changes over the years in how the HIV community uses new media, social media responsibilities often fall to an AIDS service organization’s (ASO) communications or outreach staff. As ASOs continue to expand their social media efforts (including monitoring and evaluation to see if and how those efforts are actually helping them meet their objectives), this could mean that they hire specialists who have experience in effectively using social media. It could also mean that they build the capacity of current staff who may have limited knowledge about new media.

Trend #2. Beyond Facebook: The New Platforms on the Block

ForbesExit Disclaimer outlined the top seven social media trends it predicts will dominate 2014. MySpace—a social networking site that was popular before Facebook and which has concentrated on music sharing—will make a comeback; Google+ will "become a major factor;" and there will be more “micro-video,” which is defined as a short, 6-15 second video message.

What this could mean for the HIV community

We’ve been reading for a while about MySpace’s comeback, though the site seems like it continues to concentrate on the music industry. However, we’ve seen more and more of Google+, from Hangouts to online learning communities. We made a commitment to explore Google+ this year, so we will continue to learn with you.

According to the Mashable article, “…making compelling short videos will be as important as writing in 140 characters.” That means it’s time to start learning how to share your messages using Vine’s 6-second videos and Instagram’s 3-15 second videos. CDC NPIN has already started using Vine. People are more likely to use microvideo with their phones—making videos that much easier to create and share.

Trend #3: Small Moments, Big Trends

PR Daily took a look at 10 social media moments in 2013 that it believes are precursors to major trends in 2014, including Oreo's tweet during the Super Bowl, Facebook’s decision to launch hashtags, and Pinterest's makeover.

What this could mean for the HIV communityOreo's live tweet and graphic when the lights went out during the Super Bowl (“You can still dunk in the dark) was a moment that we talked about, enviously, for the rest of the year. One of the reasons they were able to respond so quickly was because they had a team on-call during the game. At HIV.gov, we often have a point person charged with handling our social media presence during major national events, like the Superbowl—but in 2014 we are going to adopt a team approach to capitalize on getting our messages out. For example, we experimented with a hashtag campaign for last year’s #FacingAIDS for World AIDS Day. The HIV community could follow which hashtags are trending (on Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Facebook, and more) and then join the conversation that way.

What do you think? And what do they mean to you? Get started by joining the conversation below.