Many people have been predicting what social media marketing will be like for 2010, we here at SMCpros have put together some thoughts of our own on what to expect for the New Year. Here are what the employees had to say about what they saw coming for the online world next year:

Mitchell Hislop:

• Businesses will learn that they need to leverage the internet with more than just a static website.
• Humans will experience a shift in how they naturally communicate.
• Companies will become more transparent.
• We will see several networks close their doors, get sold, or merge with other networks.
• We will see legislation passed regarding social media.
• There will be a greater connection between social media and IRL events.
• Twitter will be fully mainstream, not just a joke.
• Either LinkedIn will cement itself as a top network, or a new startup will round out the “Big 3″.
• There will be major discoveries in the way humans interact with data and the internet.
• We will discover even more than we already know about social media. I am of the opinion that there is no way we are using its full potential, and am constantly searching for what these full potential are.

Joel Feder:

• The term “Social Media” might transform into something else.
• SEO will become less important as search engines become more sophisticated.
• Google Analytics will be much more advanced.
• Twitter will evolve and add more features.
• Twitter will become highly profitable.
• Foursquare will either evolve or die out.
• Gowalla will burn out.
• Facebook will continue to make more changes and users will find fault.
• Traditional advertising will fall even lower on people’s priority lists.
• Twitter applications (Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, etc) will become more advanced.
• We will see more cross pollination between platforms/sites.
• Apple will release a new iPhone and also a new tablet. They both will sell like hotcakes.

Adam Maikkula:

• Businesses will begin to adopt social media as a complement to their existing business initiatives.
• Social media will begin to be seen as a necessity rather than a “what kind of ROI do I get?” conversation.
• The ROI discussion will fade as businesses realize that social media was built to be social…Why do you think individuals started using these sites in the first place; let alone the early adopters who happened to be (guess what) college students who like to socialize.
• Platforms evolved because of the millions of people who wanted to be social outside of their immediate environment – just like AOL Instant Messenger was big when I was in high school.

It wasn’t until businesses saw the potential energy lying dormant within all of these virtual places that they started trying to make social media adapt to business, but it should be business that adapts to social media.  No intelligent business would ever walk into a movie theater or a play and start shouting with a bullhorn all their great specials, promos, or how awesome they are. That would not be appropriate…They would, however, figure out how to adapt to the environment (platform) by leveraging the resources available to them (think running a traditional ad on the screen before the movie, or product placement within the actual movie).

My primary point here is that it all comes down to the social aspects of social media.  Those who lack social skills will have a hard time fully leveraging these products.

My projection for 2010 is that business will learn to adapt to social media in order to avoid polarizing themselves from the users who are at the heart of the sites.

Tim Barsness:

• LinkedIn will become useful.
• Twitter will earn money.
• Interoperability between big players (FB/TW/LI) will increase.
• Tweetdeck will become web based.

Sarah Shehata:

• Facebook will continue to upgrade their platform and add more features.
• LinkedIn will be used on an even more professional level by businesses. The direction it is heading in is not necessarily advertising their services/products, but rather more along the lines of building brand awareness and showing their level of expertise within their industry.
• Twitter will be used as a live tool for instant questions, answers and quick research.
• A new platform will compete against the current ‘big 3′ social media platforms.

Tyler Olson:

• Twitter will start charging for upgraded accounts.
• Geo-location social media tools will begin going mainstream towards the end of the year.
• ROI track ability applications and integration will increase significantly.
• SMCpros starts rocking to a whole new level!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Mitchell Hislop

Other posts by Mitchell Hislop / Connect with Mitchell on: