Looking into social media as a content marketing tool in 2015

It could easily be argued that social media is dominating the content marketing space in 2015.

Since the year began, the interwebs have witnessed flood of new apps and social services plus important updates from the big players. Viewed collectively, they’re driving demand for progressive content distribution and brands must take an innovative approach to content marketing. Let’s zero in on some of the latest developments.Facebook RiffFacebook Creative Labs announced the launch of Riff on 1^st April, and no it’s not an April Fool’s joke. Riff is a video-sharing app for iOS and Android devices that lets brands and people co-create video content. Here’s how it works. You create a short video, give it a topic or hashtag, then post it for friends to view and add their own clips. This growing collection of video clips is called a Riff, and it’s made available to friends of friends in Facebook. Clearly this is a space to watch. Apps like Riff supplement content creation for brand campaigns and could make content marketing cinch for brands – even the laggards.Embedded videoA week earlier, Facebook held its annual F8 Developer conference at which it announced a number of new features. The biggest one to impact content creation is a new video embedding function. It’s a potential threat to YouTube as brands can now embed a campaign video on a company page on Facebook without having to use YouTube. From an analytics perspective, it will be easier to track the social success of all your content – written posts, pics, video and advertising.Real-time commentsAnother function launched at F8 will have a huge impact on community management: the introduction of real-time comments. This mean when consumers interact with a company page they’ll no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. Instead, the conversation thread on a Facebook post will update in real-time, which will encourage more organic conversations between brands and consumers.DIY Facebook MessengerFacebook Messenger also received some attention, with developers now given access to the platform. This means companies have the ability to create their own version of messenger to communicate directly with people. This space will be watched with keen interest as it’s likely to spark more social innovation.Up, Twitter PeriscopeMeanwhile, Twitter has announced its latest development in the form of a live streaming app called Periscope. It follows the launch of Meerkat, a similar app, at this year’s SXSW festival. The benefit of apps like Periscope (and Meerkat, to a degree) is that marketers are able to create brand experiences that build relationships with customers by live-streaming content that’s searchable by hashtag. The primary difference between the two apps is Periscope appears to have a better user experience and features.Tidal wave?Finally, rapper Jay Z has launched the music streaming service, TIDAL. It’s arguably one of the biggest combined celebrity endorsements with the New York launch supported by Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Chris Martin, Deadmau5, Daft Punk, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J. Cole, Jay Z, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Usher.TIDAL is an artist-owned streaming service with 25 million tracks and 75,000 music videos, which Jay Z bought from Swedish tech company Aspiro earlier this year.The artists who own the streaming service claim they have started a “great movement” that will connect artists as a brand with their fans. However early reviews of the app talk about a poor user experience, note that it’s costly and the availability of bonus artist content on the site is of little interest to most music consumers.