21012 Trends to Watch in Social Media

< Continued from page 1
Six Key Areas to Watch Social Media in 2012

Mobile Devices and Apps -- Mobile devices continue to be the most important frontier for media right now, so you should expect on-the-go social media apps and services to evolve in dynamic, startling ways in 2012. With a majority of Americans predicted to own smart phones within the next year or two, mobile social networking will almost certainly change the ways people behave and businesses operate.
All kinds of new mobile social networking apps will pop up this year, grabbing attention like last year's Oink, the mobile rating system that lets people rate specific items such as burgers and Caesar salads. It's hard to say which new apps might grow as popular as, say, the Path mobile social network did in 2011. Look for mobile commerce to make news with plenty of new social features, too, especially as digital payments systems like Google Wallet proliferate and near-field communication (NFC) technology springs out of the labs and into the real world.

For more predictions, CNet offers commentary about NFC and mobile social media for 2012.

Social TV -- Both Web video and television programming will get more "social" as the two continue to converge and add social networking features. Last year, traditional TV shows ramped up their use social media in creative ways, especially the integration of tweets and hashtags on TV broadcasts to integrate Twitter dialogue into live shows.
This year likely will see Google's YouTube, which recently underwent a makeover to become more TV-friendly, add more social networking features, too. And while it remains unclear if Apple Computer will bring a long-rumored television product to market any time soon, you can bet that whatever Apple is working on in the way of new Internet TV products will be highly social.

Already, at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, social TV emerged as a major theme, with TV companies scrambling to integrate social networking into their products. DirecTV, for example, made waves by talking about its new Facebook TV feature that makes it easy for TV viewers to post what they are watching live to Facebook and comment about TV shows in real time on Facebook.

Some think social media has the potential to revive TV and save it from the economic devastation that hit newspapers, but that seems like a stretch. To read more about how social TV evolved last year, check out this ReadWriteWeb article on trends in the socialization of TV and video.

Social Marketing -- Key trends to watch in social media marketing are almost all continuations of 2011 themes. One is Twitter's 2011 makeover, which was designed to help advertisers use the messaging system to spread their brands and reach potential customers. As a result, you can bank on marketers using the revamped Twitter in new ways.
Another ongoing trend will be content marketing, or how large companies and small businesses alike increasingly create their own content online, bypassing traditional media to tell stories and communicate directly with customers. Social media is fueling this trend, which remains in its early stages.

Another safe bet for social marketing this year will be the increasing sophistication of social metrics as analytical tools that measure the results of social media campaigns grow cheaper and more robust. Some commentators think these data analysis and monitoring tools, which are mostly still used by big business, will become more widely available to everyone as their price drops and power increases.

The Social Media Examiner asked some marketing professional to prognosticate on the future of social marketing; those predictions are here.
Labor and Staffing for Social Media -- Labor issues likely will take the spotlight again, highlighting how businesses are struggling internally and externally with best practices for using social media. Legal issues over who "owns" or manages social media contacts and accounts when workers communicate on behalf of employers likely will make more headlines, as social media ownership did last year. Also likely to grab attention are the increasing tensions and wrangling between marketing, advertising, customer relations and public relations departments over which has primary responsibility for various social media functions.
That's related to another growing issue -- the many new job types being created inside companies for people who manage social media. We're all familiar with chief marketing officers and chief technology officers, but chief social officers are an entirely new creature that has yet to come into its own. This could be the year for social media jobs to become ubiquitous in corporate America.
Presidential Politics -- Already, commentators are asking if social media campaigns could overshadow traditional TV ad blitzes on the presidential campaign trail this year. That's a tough call, but it's a no-brainer that social media will make surprising news this year as presidential campaigns use social media to spin their messages and sway voters. All the major social networks already have participated in some way, by teaming with traditional news organizations, for example, to allow social networking during presidential debates or by inviting candidates to be interviewed live on social media channels.
Facebook IPO -- Facebook plans to sell stock to the public late this year in what is widely expected to be one of the biggest, most media-hyped IPOs in a long time. Like Google, Facebook is a veritable money machine, thanks to its vast audience and popularity with advertisers. So there's a chance the Facebook IPO could provide coattails for other social startups, perhaps fueling a fresh round of social networking innovation. No doubt it will have an impact on the social media investment strategy for many on Wall Street.
In addition to becoming a publicly traded company, Facebook likely will continue adding features and functionality as it tries to implement its strategy of becoming your lifebook, the place where you manage and memorialize your entire life. Look for the release of the long-planned Facebook Phone, which could integrate Facebook's networking app even more tightly into the Android operating system than Twitter did on Apple's iPhone iOS this year. And since the world's largest social network never sits still, perhaps the safest bet for Facebook is that it will surprise everyone again this year.