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The Future of Social Media: A 2010 Blog Series

posted by Nick Cifuentes @ Monday, January 25, 2010 - 10:00 AM

As we now have buried our eyes & minds into a very exciting 2010, the focus on social media marketing will be ever growing. In fact, from this point on, I believe we are going to see a number of changes in marketing strategies, on and offline.

If you think closely, the world’s operating system is morphing. In the past, you have had a number of “closed” model marketing systems that prevented the singular idea that social media describes: collective interaction. In past years, marketing strategies have lived within specific business models and relied on “closed” channels to disseminate the message. For example, a newspaper would advertise a static ad, a direct-mail message would take a matter of days to make even a single impression. Once that message was delivered, the channel relied on a number of “closed” systems to tie into the medium properly, and the need to pause and wait for participation was often days, weeks, even months depending on the type and length of the campaign.

In today’s world, the operating system is being revamped, what took days, now takes seconds, and together this process of marketing evolution is pushing today’s marketing programs into an “open” system. This “open” system allows for instant connections with the customer, while the opportunity for response, collaboration, sharing, and growth increase tremendously.

Fundamental Shift

While this shift in marketing systems is underway, this “closed” to “open” environment is going to expand further beyond business into our everyday lives. Obviously, as marketers, we think of this in relevancy to the delivery of a message, in some manner. But, as time expands and social media begins to consume users’ lives online, the idea of an “open” system will fall into a number of funnels, including media and content, advertising, business solutions, education, legal environments, lifestyle, entertainment, love, religion, sex, etc...

And as this shift into an “open” system expands, a number of brands and individuals will be wary of moving so quickly into such an environment. A system like this is cluttered with a number of worries, such as “out of control”, “chaotic”, “risky”, or “feeling of being unsafe”.

This inescapable feeling of being in “risk” is common among brands, but learning to trust the system will be the hardest step to overcome starting in 2010 and moving beyond. If relating this change in marketing ethics to social media, the door must be swung open to attain any success. To what level you remain “open”, your business growth will be directly related.

Social Media: 5 Years Into the Future

12-18 Months: Social Media is CRM

As social media slowly becomes a part of everyone’s daily web interaction, this reality and change in systems means that YOU, your brand, must adjust and focus on agility instead of just optimization when it comes to integrating social media into your marketing programs. And as this becomes more of a reality, Social Media CRM systems are becoming a necessity, rather than option as more users begin to take part in social media and recognize your brand.

In the next 12-18 months, brands will work to close the gap on effectively managing dialogue with the market in terms of:

sharing information
fast-tracking problems
responding to questions

Both internally and externally with customers, prospects, employees, other stakeholders, and the public.

Social Media monitoring devices such as Radian6, Visible Technologies, Buzzlogic, TNS Cymfony, Trackur, and other social media monitoring tools allow you to keep a finger to the pulse of your brand and see real-time data as social media mentions take place.

12-18 Months: Digital Jet Lag Goes Into Red Alert

As information already within social media is becoming clogged, expect a massive increase in the next 12-18 months with the uptick in both users and social media popularity. Because of this, expect filtering and curation to become a huge business. When it comes to finding methods to cull the information being pushed into the social networks and allow users to sort through it more efficiently, a step toward contextualizing and connecting with the ‘right’ information will step into the forefront with a number of new tools, platforms and systems to help control this excessive amount of content.

To be continued...

This post is part one of a continuous series that will be posted throughout the rest of January and February. Here is a sneak peek to some of the topics that I will be covering:

• Resistance to Change Ends?
• Privacy will become a MUST for Users
• Real-time, Social Mobile: Feedback, Rating, Comments, Tagging
• Uprising in Automated Social Agents
• Socially Augmented Reality
• FREE Access to a Global Network
• Social “Books”
• Smarter Social Advertising: Mobile, Online
• The End of One-Way Communications
• Social Advertising Budgets Explode
• The Extreme Reputation Economy
• The Importance of Social Capital
• The Global Social Brain

Labels: Brand Awareness, Social Media Marketing