Author: Ben Cathers @bencathers
Co-Founder, Instantsocial.com

2010 was a banner year for social media. Many companies fully embraced social media and created award winning, roi increasing campaigns. Many other companies began to dip their toes into social media with promising results. And for the companies that haven’t started in social media, well, 2011 is when the market place will force their participation.

1. 2011 will be the year of "attempting" social media
   Many companies that have been on the cusp of starting a social media campaign will finally "go for it". View it the same as when websites became popular. You had the early adopters (who got the best .com names!), the laggards who built websites a few years later and then the people who realized they needed a website on their business card. The same will happen in social media. Companies will soon need to add a social media profile to their business card.
2. More companies will attempt to calculate a true ROI in social media, and will fail.
   Higher ups will demand to see an ROI – and will continue to under value the value of every social interaction on the web. There’s no way to say "every like is worth 50 cents to our company – therefore our social campaign’s budget of 100 dollars must generate X number of likes to be worthwhile". That type of thinking will simply fail to "wow" numbers oriented marketers. The social web isn’t numbers oriented. Its about the relationships you forge with your customers
3. Facebook will become the preferred social marketing platform
   Facebook’s growth is astronomical. They are continuously rolling out new tools to help measure/make analytics easier for marketing professionals. Companies such as Buddy Media will make it even easier for bigger brands to be fully engaged on facebook. It’s already the preferred platform – but this will further grow.
4. Twitter will continue to be more of a niche service
   More consumers will try twitter, and then abandon it after a few attempts. For those who "get" twitter, it will continue to serve as a viable information resource and allow them to interact with brands easier. For the rest of the social consuming public, they will be looking to Facebook and it’s user friendly UI/tools to interact with their favorite brands. (Shameless plug: Try InstantDash – it is free!)
5. Social media policies will be the norm
   Signing a social media policy will become almost as standard as any other pre-employment form. Companies will be taking an increased focus on how their employees use social media both at the office and outside of the office. New concerns about liability and a firm’s image will restrict certain types of behavior on employee’s social media practices, even outside of the office. For example – financial firms that are regulated will restrict how an employee can talk about certain securities or stock activity on personal social media accounts.

   "Social media style guides" will also gain traction as companies try to streamline their content postings on the social web.

6. "Social Media Manager" will be much more common on job listings
   Companies that are at least somewhat engaged in social media will eventually learn that managing a social media campaign is a full time commitment. With increased budgets from what was a generally good 2010 fiscal year and an increased paranoia for companies to "stay ahead of the curve" means this will be a great year for professionals in the social media field.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 8th, 2011 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.