Social Media Predictions for 2012

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By: Manuel Cortez Senior Manager, Social Media Strategy

In the past year, we’ve watched social media explode from the, “how do we get into this?” to the “how are we not in this yet?!” phenomenon.  The future of social media is now. As an ever-changing landscape, marketers often struggle to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to social media messaging, tools, and metrics.  However, 2012 still holds an abundance of opportunities for businesses and marketers to grow with this evolving medium.  Here are my predictions of what to expect and focus on in the year ahead:

Focus on the Message, not the Tools (Engage or Be Left Behind!)

In social media, brands want to boost sales.  That’s the bottom line.  However, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re meeting your customers on their terms.  You’re meeting them in a place where they go to socialize with their family and friends—real people they want to hear from.  So you want to make sure you’re talking to them as a person, and not a billboard or banner ad. Your messages are your attempts to engage and help build a relationship with the consumer.  The wrong message has the potential to turn a loyal fan against you.

Youtube, Facebook, Twitter… these are all tools that will help you get the message across to your consumers, and like any tool, they come and go. Remember Myspace, Friendster, Ping- oh don’t remember that one? Exactly.  The only thing that should remain constant is a positive ongoing relationship.  You don’t want to be the fax machine salesman from the 90s, focusing too much on the technology, unable to adapt when a bigger and better medium comes along.  Brands will be focusing more on the engagement levels on their social network messages, rather than trying to build those massive followings.

If anything, always utilize an email list as effectively as possible. People bounce around social network sites, some even have multiple accounts on the same network, but they typically keep the same email accounts for a longer period of time. Even then, talk to your consumers as a friend.

Customer Relationship Management (Keep on Keeping them Happy)

Knowing your audience and keeping them happy sounds easy enough, right? Only if you have the listening tools in place. Knowing what your customer loves (and hates) about your brand will shape the way you create relevant content, at the relevant time, and in a relevant place.   Without relevancy, your brand will be left behind.  Think of it as a form of Social (Media) Darwinism.  Expect the unexpected and plan to leave enough room to react to a crisis situation or a late breaking event.  Happy customers may tell three friends, angry ones tell 3,000.

Social media is beginning to take shape as the great equalizer and will no longer be an afterthought in business strategies, but a fundamental core. Social media is a combination of advertising, customer service, and PR all in one.  Remember that consumers rule social because they have been empowered with a public venue which allows them to either voice their concerns or sing praise– and spread both.

Multi-Media Messages

A picture is worth a thousand words, and with Twitter only giving users 140 characters to work with, users and brands will be gravitating towards using multi-media (pictures and/or videos) to deliver their messages.  People scan messages in their feed, and multi-media posts help grab attention, and let’s be honest, it’s usually more entertaining than just reading text.  This is especially true now with the boom of applications like Instagram, Path, Tout, and Viddy— where people are beginning to get just as savvy in marketing themselves and the moments in their lives through their mobile devices. Brands need to be sure they’re right there with them. Be sure you’re in the mobile game so you don’t get left behind.  Which brings us to…

Mobile Takeover

We’ve all seen a late boom in smart phone technology.  Along with this technology comes the boom of being able to access everything via mobile devices. Plan to see a lot more integration of mobile platforms within brand strategies as smart phone technology progresses. With HTML 5, there will be a wave of web-based apps that may overcome the development of native apps, which can be restrictive and expensive when it comes to cross platform development.

Keeping Track of Everything (and Make it Actionable)

Last but not least, companies are interested in lifting the fog on Social Media ROI. When it comes to social media, it’s not solely about dollar amounts as much as it’s about generating leads/potential customers. This can be represented from share of online voice, customer satisfaction, engagement levels, and relationships.  Facebook has taken measures to focus more on engagement than simply building numbers, and with good reason.  People want positive experiences within their social networks, or else they’ll stop using them.

This is why Facebook uses its Edgerank algorithm to show users only the most engaging and relevant content. Keeping track of top-performing messages (posts with the most likes, comments, etc.) not only shows engagement levels, but guides brand objectives in the space, based on what people like and want to see more of. For this reason, there will be more of a need of real-time data analytics­. Instead of the traditional “looking back to see what worked” approach, brands will also have to start looking at “what’s working right now” in order to stay relevant and react appropriately when something is working.  Keeping track of social interactions is only half of the equation. Making sense of it, and translating your learning’s into actionable results is the end goal.

Do you have any other predictions for 2012 besides the above? Feel free to let me know in the comments!

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