2011 is drawing to a close and with that naturally comes a new hype surrounding social media. So we’ll now have a go at identifying what 2012 is likely to bring in the social mediasphere.
An important development we saw in 2011 was that more than 50% of businesses increased their social media spending and more than 1/3 of CEOs said social media was high on their business agenda (Booz & Company and Buddy Media’s “Campaigns to Capabilities: Social Media and Marketing 2011” research).
Some things didn’t go as planned, however – Facebook’s location services (Places) did not really spark into life and has now evolved into a more sophisticated part of the status update. Will 2012 be the year of Google? Will Google+ stand toe-to-toe with Facebook or does it want to evolve into a highly complementary social search tool?
So while researching the web for this blog, the following topics kept on cropping up:
Social TV
More and more TV shows are including social media as part of the show’s make-up. The X-Factor now allows voting through Twitter. And Sky Sports’ Goals On Sunday has each presenter’s Twitter handle under their name encouraging interaction and questions throughout the show to ensure that the topics discussed have been suggested by the viewers. Keep an eye out for companies using Facebook or Twitter to gain leads for their business. If you are a brand, you might want to start promoting your Twitter and Facebook pages wherever you can and work social media leads into your game plan for 2012.
F-commerce
It was pushed back and forth for a while but now it’s safe to say that social media is here to stay in a business perspective. The figures quoted above are expected to grow significantly in 2012. Don’t be surprised if you see a lot more social commerce (f-commerce) sites as opposed to simply branded pages where you interact with your favourite brands. Fans will soon become consumers and the sooner you make the leap, the better. A tool like Hubspot allows you to create a form to capture social media data, ensuring you turn those ‘likes’ into leads very easily. People are spending more time on social media sites and less time on the actual web as everything they need can be found within sites such as Facebook.
Branded Content
A great example of branded content, which is a mash-up of advertising and entertainment, is Red Bull’s Art of Flight movie. It is essentially a snowboarding movie, backed by Red Bull and heavily endorsed with their brand logo. Nowhere in the film do they try to sell you any of their products but the association is so strong that if you love the film you’ll almost feel an instant connection to the brand. Branded content comes in many forms but video, audio, graphics and blogs will be the crème de la crème as brands offer the consumer something more meaningful than competitions and promotions. Your Facebook, Twitter and YouTube fans will love this and they can be tied into a lead generation funnel simply by subscribing to your platform.
Social Search
Social search does exactly what it says on the tin – it searches social media platforms just like search engines do the internet. What makes social media so good is that it’s full of opinions, ideas, and suggestions. With companies developing sites helping you share purchases with friends, or flag a holiday destination and ask for recommendations, social search is going to be a big player in 2012. Make sure you’re interacting with your leads. If they are social searching, make sure you are too.
Social gestures
Facebook’s now introduced frictionless sharing, whereby actions on the social network are automatically shared without you having to hit a button (for reference, check out the Guardian’s Facebook app where it tells your friends what you’ve read), 2012 will see more and more APIs based on social gestures. The ease of this function is there in the name – frictionless. You don’t have to do anything at all for this to move to your networks. Love it or hate it, frictionless sharing is here to stay.
Did we miss out any important trends that you think we should have covered? Let us know.
Image source: axzm1 on Flicker/Creative Commons
