As we begin 2010 there are a few interesting trends to monitor in the arena of social
media marketing and some things you may want to consider doing right away to stay on top.
The trends this year indicate that many companies will begin putting significantly more effort into their social media marketing advertising both in terms of financial and people resources.
Internal data analyst positions dedicated to working with social media analytics will increase as well as outsourced data analysis help. You are also likely to see or be part of discussions around the need for real time web staffing and whether or not that web staffing should be 24hr.round the clock service.
Another mantra for 2010 is clean out the clutter! Like mainstream social clubs, internet social websites may move towards greater exclusivity. Let's take facbook. We all know how many new friend invites we receive on a daily basis. Do you have friends that post continually? Do you sometimes wish they would take it easy for awhile or just go away. Well, perhaps you have already joined the trend to make your lists more exclusive and hide content from users so you aren't bombarded by a lot of "noise" in which you have no interest.
More and more companies will be looking to uncover cost savings or serve customers more effectively through leveraging social technology. Although there are relatively few big companies that have scaled up social initiatives you can expect to see social marketing grow exponentially. With this growth in social media marketing efforts your company will probably come out with a social media policy. You can expect policies that specify how you conduct yourself as an employee engaged in the use of social media to what they consider competition in the world of social media. At any rate, you can expect to see more companies provide guidelines and rules about how they perceive social media and their expectations regarding employee participation in social media.
2010 means mobile, mobile mobile! Up to 70% of organizations currently ban social networks from the work environment. However, sales of smartphones are sharply on the rise. Employees will no doubt expand their use of mobile devices to "stay connected" and feed their social media addictions. Coffee breaks will continue to morph into social media breaks away from the desk.
With an app for just about anything network sharing will also continue to grow and expand. The bright side-less email! Now you can share your news directly on the network and skip the email chains. Since many websites already support this functionality it's likely that we will see an increase in user behavior as it becomes more and more mainstream for people to share with networks what they used to do with e-mail lists. No doubt content providers will eager to help distribute news any way they choose.