The past year has seen some digital milestones, with social media, mobile and technology all showing growth. So which trends have particularly stood out in 2014?

After 2013 saw wearable tech break into the mainstream, 2014 has witnessed its growth and evolution. The announcement of Apple’s iWatch was arguably the biggest talking point since Google Glass back in 2012, and with it, showed that the trend for connected gear has not abated. The Jawbone Up is still popular as ever, while the Fitbit, Misfit, and Samsung’s Gear range are all competitors in this increasingly crowded space. In fact, Samsung’s wearable products are so sought after, the Christmas period is expected to generate around 100 million pounds in sales in the UK alone. Health and fitness monitoring and accessible connectivity have been the main selling points for wearable tech, with 80% of users citing these as their reasons for purchase, according to analysts at Gartner.

Mobile, and more specifically, mobile marketing, has been at the forefront of 2014, with brands enhancing their strategies in this area. Spend in this sector has doubled each year, with marketers spending $4.4 billion on mobile advertising in 2012, $8.5 billion in 2013, and as 2014 ends, this figure is projected to double again. We’ve seen brands upping native advertising, banner ads, media and video, with the top social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter prioritising features on their mobile apps. And with this, we’ve seen mobile optimisation become key for businesses, who have ensured their mobile sites and apps are user-friendly. This year, Google launched its Webmaster Tools feature, Mobile Usability, which started ranking optimised mobile sites more highly, meaning design and configuration for mobile devices was taken into greater consideration by businesses.

Content marketing is something brands have always strived to perfect, and this year was no exception. Innovative ways to create compelling content was a priority in 2014, with video and image-based campaigns aiming to captivate. This year, 4 out of 5 companies produced several online videos per month, while testing ideas such as augmented reality, interactive and tailored content saw success for global brands such as Coca-Cola and their #ShareaCoke campaign. Marketers increased the amount of quality content they produced on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, with 58% citing original written content as essential to their online efforts.

Social media has of course continued to dominate in 2014, with visual networks such as Instagram, Vine, Snapchat and Pinterest excelling. Instagram for instance, witnessed the greatest rise in active users this year, while Pinterest retained its 2013 title of fastest growing social network. Brands have continued to give even greater priority to their social media campaigns, moving away from traditional forms, and it has been visual platforms which have taken precedence. In some of the top social media campaigns this year, we’ve seen the likes of Oreo and Mashable experiment with Vine- the former creating their “snack hacks” videos, and the latter running Vine challenges. Meanwhile, Snapchat gained even further prominence when Audi and The Onion teamed up to produce the world’s first Snapchat campaign during the Super Bowl, which succeeded in generating one of the fastest-growing followings ever on the platform.

Which trends do you think have been synonymous with 2014? Do you think these will continue into the next year? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital, and share your comments on our Facebook page.