Facebook Advertising will take off
This year Facebook saw their advertiser base triple! Facebook ads today remind me of Google AdWords in 2001 with low CPC’s on topics and segments many marketers will want to reach. Facebook Ads will become the close “cousin” of Google AdWords
Mobile Marketing
New applications enabled by social media such as Location Based Services (LBS) have arrived and give context to mobile marketing – you will see more of these applications enabled by your Social Graph become more important in the next year. For BtoB Marketers you might begin to experiment with Location Based Services especially at live events.
Social will leave Marketing
This year Marketing “got” social media but next year is the year it starts to transform the rest of your BtoB organization from Product Development and R&D, to Billing and Finance, to HR and Recruiting, to Customer Service and the Contact Center. Social is a process that has the power to transform an entire organization.
Corporate Websites will become less important
As every company gets more experienced with Social Media you will see more consumption of content off of the corporate website in places like Facebook, YouTube, and relevant Communities and Forums. The corporate website, or Home page, will be the place where you go to get just the more official product or service related content.
Lead Generation tools must combine with Social Media tools
Right now there are tools for everything that relate to the business website, including tools to track leads that are being nurtured. This will change. It is impossible to optimize based on each of these silos – Marketers need tools with social media built in so we can optimize effectively. Calling all entrepreneurs. There is a huge opportunity here that some company needs to fill fast.
Listening tools will also get much stronger
Another tool opportunity is for listening tools to do better sentiment analysis and routing of the real opportunities both positive and negative directly to the sources in the organization. The routing is key and having done this manually all year - it is just not a scalable model.
How to handle Advocates will become more important
Business needs a place to put their advocates to harness and energize them when their is something cool to talk about. This will increasingly become a challenge for most marketers. Having spoken recently to Pepsi, HBO, RIM, Warners Bros, and American Express about their challenges in this space – BtoB or BtoC this is an area where they want to focus on next year.
MicroVideo shops will start popping up
You are going to see many small video shops popping up. Young college students that are fluent in Video or creative types from ad agencies that might be out of a job can and will start up solo practioners video shops and bring the cost down for marketers.
Businesses will demand Intelligence not Social Media
You will see vendors announce tools that deliver intelligence from social media right where it is contextually needed - SalesForce.com provided a glimpse of thie with the introduction of their new product Chatter. This is an early indication of the need for more contextually related Social Media data that can provide the type of intelligence that the business demands.
Facebook will surpass Google for the #1 site online
Whether you know it our not Facebook has been inching closer to the #1 spot this year beating out Yahoo for the #2 spot in November (according to Alexa.com). The delta for #1 with Google is just 14 Million visits per month (18 Million if you ask Compete.com) which is nothing in the grand scheme of things!
Prediction: You will see Facebook surpass Google by Valentines day 2010. Mark it down people ;-)
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