It’s around this time of year that people start looking at the next 12 months (and beyond) and asking what’s the next big thing? It’s a fine question and one we enjoy speculating about but it ignores what’s staring us in the face: there’s already a lot out there. But are we using it well enough? What platforms should we know but don’t? With that in mind, here are my top five marketing tools.
1 Medium
Medium has been around since August 2012 but only in the past 12 months has it shown signs of being a thought-leadership platform that not only has professional writers, but prolific individuals and brand voices that can be curated into a powerful tool if used correctly. The beauty of Medium is the democratic nature by which posts get seen: everything is based on engagement for specific articles rather than author popularity. Blogging functionality recently added straight from both iOS and Android devices has made what once was cumbersome easy.
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New use: Could you find your next content writer? Could you create a group of industry experts and create something completely new? Could you crowd edit your next big piece of content?
2 The Grid
The Grid is a new way of displaying and dispersing your web content – in essence, a new way of thinking about creating a website and blogging that evolves with every piece of content you put up via proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms. Gone are templates, coding and to some extent design. In private beta right now, but launching soon, this platform has a lot of people interested in the larger picture behind its ethos. It’s certainly one to watch.
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New use: Create a hub where you curate information for customers, team members and others. Offer guest editorship to influencers or stakeholders and create something that adds value, challenges and confronts issues you face.
3 Flipboard
Flipboard is becoming well known in business circles with more than 70m members worldwide. While not the biggest platform, it is one of the best for content discovery, curation and user experience. Now that it has (finally) opened up a blogging element for magazine creators it’s friendlier to brands and content creators. New features such as embedding magazines and reading online make Flipboard easy to use, but its ad platform is the one to keep an eye on.
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New use: Could you create your annual report using Flipboard?
4 Slack
Slack is a real-time messaging tool that aims to do away with as much email as possible – it’s a sort-of mix between Twitter and Google Buzz. Its feed of information enables a team to more effectively communicate using chatroom-like “channels”. 1.1 million daily active users agree, and with Slack recently adding the Add to Slack bookmarklet, more growth and usage is expected, which is probably what’s driving the $2.8bn valuation. Best of all? Animated gifs work with Slack.
- New use: Customer service? Create a channel for innovation and use it to hack an idea in real time, use it to vote on ideas and have a channel for people to curate information on a specific topic with Slacklist (my favourite), SlackChats and ChitChats.
5 Swipe
One of the newest of the tools listed, Swipe does what it says on the tin but the name doesn’t give everything away. With a simple sending of a URL, Swipe enables the user to create a responsive presentation that acts more like a conversation. By utilising voting, questions and with slick upload and manipulation features the platform is getting good feedback.
- New use: Could this be your next annual general meeting? Could you remotely train your workers using Swipe? What about having customers vote on the latest products you should stock?
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