Below are thoughts from two BRILLIANT people on the key social media trends from two years ago-and these factors are still key today in 2012. The info came from a thought stream that was created on a group I belong to on LinkedIN called “Intelligent Social Media”. (Notice the concept of “real time”, too.) I first published this on my “Tips For Realtors” blog, but in pulling it out of the “archives”, you can see that these concepts work for ANY small business owner, then and now.
(The picture is pure Hawaii; who needs to have those funky social images all the time?)
1. It’s becoming a real time world with trillions of devices connected to the Internet, so all marketing is becoming real time.
2. Everyone will learn social media is a tool to support a strategy NOT a strategy in itself
3. Social media tools and facilities can only make you look good, if you are good
4. Listening to employees, customers and suppliers will rule business
5. Social media needs to help me achieve my objectives more productively which means helping me be more valuable to others
6. There will be major advances in building trust in data, application and people online
7. Online groups and communities will only survive where real group and communities exist
8. Technologies that bring people closer together will prosper and technologies that automate people and come between people will fail.
9. Twitter will change quite dramatically – more news aggregator than personal chit-chat
10. LinkedIN will grow faster than most and bring ‘social’ to business
11. Proximity will add significant value to many applications and services
12. Twitter will help us help our ‘friends’ get access to important data, applications and people
For small companies Social Media is likely to become a priority in the near future:
Marketers, advertisers, business people who have been stuck on the facts, figures, mechanics, and metrics of management and marketing, will turn to the real value of Social Media – to provide immediate customer contact, customer engagement and customer interaction.
Like in traditional marketing, building a successful brand on-line depends on creating an emotional connection with the target audience. So, whatever new technologies, applications and services will be developed, two influence factors will play an important role: real-time marketing and marketing Emotional Quotient.
After all, Social Media, through its social interface component, was designed to enhance interpersonal communication.
(By Mioara Iacob, Marketing Director at Lexis Scoli de Limbi Straine.)
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