8 Social Media Trends for 2012

Social media continued to gain popularity in 2011 and will grow even more in 2012. If you haven’t caught the social media bug yet, 2012 may be your year! Below are some of the trends we expect to see in the next 12 months.

Happy connecting!

1. Google+ is the new kid on the block

The latest big idea from Google and major social network on the scene, Google will continue expanding Google+ in 2012 and plans to integrate the social network with many of their other properties such as SEO, Reader, AdWords, and YouTube.

Though most social media users still spend the majority of their time on Facebook currently, it’s a good idea to create personal profiles and business pages on Google+ now so that you’ll be one step ahead while interest in Google+ continues to grow. Furthermore good implementation of your Google+ page can produce search engine ranking benefits.

2. Facebook on it’s own timeline

While Google+ is giving Facebook a run for its money, Facebook is projected to reach 1 billion users in 2012 (via dreamgrow.com). We’ve seen major changes with Facebook since Google+ entered the scene, not least of which is Timeline. This new profile format encourages users to “live their lives via Facebook” and use the social network as a virtual scrapbook. Although introduced a year ago, timeline is yet to be implemented on all personal profiles. You still have a choice. However, to remain competitive in 2012, Facebook will be releasing Timeline for brand pages and introducing mobile ads. Additionally, Facebook’s 2011 purchase of Gowalla is expected to result in some 2012 enhancements to Timeline. (This links up with the Geolocation trend as described below.) Mobile meets local meets social meets viral.

3. Twitter keeps on tweeting

While 2011 was the year of the URL shortener, 2012 will be the year of advertising. We are used to seeing sponsored tweets, but expect to see increasingly prominent ads on Twitter this year.

Additionally in 2012, Twitter will continue to be an important part of the world news landscape. In 2011 we saw microblogging play a major role in sharing news about Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, and the 2012 presidential election will make Twitter usage even more mainstream.

4. Aggregators keep getting better: Buffer and Crowdbooster

While technology becomes more advanced across social media, Twitter aggregators are making excellent gains as well. Buffer, an aggregator that schedules your tweets based on when your followers are most likely to see them, is now offering ifttt (if this then that). The ifttt service allows you to specify an action (such as favoriting a tweet) that will then trigger another action (such as retweeting said favorited tweet). There are many combinations that can be used with this technology so it is definitely worth a try! Buffer also allows users to email tweets via your phone or iPad.

Crowdbooster, another scheduling tool, provides a chart with data regarding your most successful tweets. With impressions on one axis and retweets on another, you have the ability to view total reach of your tweets. Pretty cool!

Crowdbooster Chart

5. Pinterest – Yes, pin your interests!

Interest in Pinterest grew immensely in 2011. By allowing you to “pin your interests” with images you find online, Pinterest is blazing the trail for an even more image-centric social media landscape. Additionally, Pinterest is leading the way in the transition from long form curation (such as tweets) to push-button curation. Much more popular with women than men, because of it’s wide usage for planning weddings and looking at fashion, Pinterest is a niche network competing in some ways with the likes of Stumble Upon.

As Pinterest continues to gain steam in 2012, more and more brands will sign on as well. Expect to see more “Pin It” buttons next to the “Like” buttons you see across the web.

6. YouTube – the number 2 search engine

Using video to get the point across (whether you are an individual or a business) will become even more prevalent in 2012. With 4 billion daily views on YouTube, why not put yourself out there? YouTube videos are very sharable on practically every platform and 57% of internet users surveyed by Yahoo say they watch videos daily. People will be online to watch videos even more in 2012, so now is the time to get in the game.

7. Geolocation – “I am here, are you near?”

Social will be even more local in 2012 with services such as Foursquare expanding their offerings and geo-deals such as Scoutmob becoming more and more popular. Users can already add their location to tweets and Facebook posts, so expect to see more and more connection between location and social media in 2012.

8. Infographics

While certainly on the scene in 2010, infographics became even more ubiquitous in 2011. Practically anything can be expressed via infographics these days and soon visual.ly will be providing a service that lets you easily build your own infographics. There are already several such tools available.

Infographics will be used more and more to display data. It’s easier to learn from a colorful picture than three paragraphs of statistics, right?

We’ll be back soon with 2012 trends in search, so stay tuned!

In the meantime what are your thoughts about social media trends for 2012? Please add your comments. Thanks!

YouTube Power

Video can be a very effective way to inform your customers and potential customers about your product.

I recently consulted with a very interesting company called iConfident in San Francisco’s Northbeach neighborhood.  They create web-based software, which enables dentists and dental professionals to collaborate and communicate with great ease on things like dental implant parts.

I was working with them as part of a new venture with Click To Play Media and I was extremely impressed to learn of the success of a video produced by Click To Play Media, which has helped iConfident increase referrals by 70%.  By adding the video to their “tell-a-colleague” form, they found that 70% more doctors and dentists were likely to send the referral along to their colleagues for a free trial as opposed to when there was no video.  That is a huge difference.

So why is video so effective?  Because the moving image is the closest thing to real life.  If a video is well done, it can tell a story in a much shorter amount of time than it would take someone to read a description and it is easier to digest, because it is inherently entertaining and interesting.  If you think about it, with moving pictures and audio, you have a much richer experience and it is far easier to grasp the gist of the story or idea.  Since it’s more like You, you respond to it more quickly than plain text.

Click To Play Media captured testimonials of professionals using the product in a way that makes it easy for doctors who haven’t heard about the product understand the benefits and how iConfident can increase efficiency and save them money.

If you’re interested in creating a video for your company or product, please visit Click to Play Media and tell Anna you were referred by Susby.

Free Lunch

Today I started reading Chris Anderson’s free FREE: The Future of a Radical Price on my free Kindle for iPhone application. I’m not very far in the book yet, but am loving the fact that I have a whole book on my phone that I have with me wherever I go, that it was free, that it’s all about how offering products and services for free CAN be and often is a means to making money and everything about the whole experience is well… freeing!

sandwich

I have been telling students in my classes that there is such a thing as a free lunch for a while now, beginning with the introduction of podcasts. Offering knowledge and services for free is a great way to build goodwill, get yourself noticed and build your customer base. Google is a glaring example. And have you ever paid for using Wikipedia?

Chris Anderson also talks about Monty Python who were disgruntled by the fact that so many of their videos were being shown on YouTube without their permission. They decided to create their own channel of clips with much better quality and asked their fans to just buy their videos, DVDs and other merchandise. The result? After the three month experiment giving away the high quality clips, sales had increased 23,000 percent! Wow!

Dew-mocracy and Customer Engagement

@Jason_Pollock on Twitter posted a video introducing the Mountain Dew Box. It’s an exclusive box of several unmarked cans of different flavored Mountain Dew which they will be sending to an undisclosed number of participants in the Dew Box Campaign. To receive a Dew Box, contestants must send in a 2 minute video about why they are the best candidates for the taste testing job or just send an email explaining why.

Mountain Dew commissioned 50 artists to design the box and is will be using the artwork in the campaign as well. It’s a social media campaign and a creative way to engage customers in discovering the next new flavor of “Dew” and really involve brand and product fans.

The contest is short – starting on Friday, July 17th and ending on Tuesday, July 21st, so those “Doing-the -Dew-ers” are going to be drinking lots of @Mtn_Dew to get that video in this weekend.

Here’s Jason’s introduction:

And here’s the campaign landing page: DewLabs 12 Seconds Challenge. It looks like 12 Seconds, a new video sharing service (social video) is partnering with Moutain Dew. What a great way to increase exposure for 12 Seconds as well as do something fun and exciting for Dew drinkers.

No surprise that there’s a way to connect via a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and a Flickr gallery. But no MySpace? No link to Twitter from the DewLabs page? Interesting.

What dew yew think?

What is a Browser?

This is a fun inquiry into whether people really know what a browser is from Google. It’s incredible how ubiquitous the browser has become. People have the same kind of incomprehension about how the Internet really works as they do about electricity and phone service. “It works, I use it, I like it, but don’t ask me what it is.”

I also find it interesting that people love to be on video, and how few people know about Google’s Chrome.  Is this Google’s way of spreading the word?

How To Get Attention

  1. Do something different, be unique.
  2. Be funny, entertain me.
  3. Shock with your talent, your _____, your downright boldness, baby!
  4. Be real, be you and really show me who you are, because until you do, you’re just like everyone else and I’m tuning out.

When I first saw a funny flight safety announcement I was in awe at the creativity and courage it took the flight attendant to put on such a show, all in the name of flight safety, but guess what, people listened.  People heard the message instead of ignoring it as usual and people took off on that plane with a good understanding of how to be safe.

Check out this example and tell me you wouldn’t listen. The fact that it is a Southwest employee is interesting and that is something for another blog post (think case study) coming soon.

Well?