Trends in Social Media

Social media is here to stay. It’s proven itself not only as the modern way we communicate with one another, but it is also seen as an indispensible business and marketing tool. As social media develops and evolves, watching for and predicting trends becomes increasingly important. Accurate predictions of social media trends and keeping up with those trends can be a proposition that greatly affects a business’s bottom line.

Past Predictions, Current Trends

An article at Social Media Explorer written in November of 2010 listed five trends for social media for 2011. These trends included consumer content curation, niche location, gamification and social gaming, QR codes and social commerce. As it turns out, these predictions were especially prescient as these trends have indeed developed or continued so far throughout 2011:

• Content curation. With more businesses appearing in social media outlets than ever before, consumers are deluged by content. In response to this, consumers are carefully selecting what messages will make it through. If a business wants to make it through the weeding out process, its content needs to be especially relevant, engaging, and above all, useful.
• Niche location. More and more, location based services (LBS) are being used by consumers who own smart phones to find the best deals and bargains as they are out and about. Applications focused on a specific niche, such as dining or shopping, are particularly useful both for businesses and their target consumers.
• Gamification and social gaming. Zynga’s wildly successful game platforms have proved that gaming and social networking get on like wildfire. However, the importance of linking products and branding with games cannot be overlooked. Gamification, turning marketing into a game experience, plays into human nature and lures customers in with the promise – and delivery – of fun.
• QR codes. Flip through any magazine or current print media and more than likely you’ll see a QR (Quick Response) code. With smart phone usage in the rise, QR codes are a creative way to link offline and online marketing campaigns.
• Social commerce. Sites like Groupon and LivingSocial have harnessed social buying power. Additionally, more and more businesses have opened electronic storefronts through social media outlets such as Facebook.

 Additionally, more and more businesses are using social media for customer service. A recent article by Simon Jones noted that Travelocity conducts the majority of its customer service on Twitter and that, in the span of two months, 70 customer service cases were resolved through social media.

Predictions for 2012

This year’s trends will continue through 2012 with a few new twists and additions.

• Search engine relevance. Earlier this year, Business2Community.com featured an article on social media trends which reported that social interactions are now searchable. Clicking the “Like” button on Facebook or the “+1” button on Google+ can actually increase relevance and page rankings, resulting in more personalized search results.
• Friends as filters. The concept of our friends’ “likes” affecting search engine results is continued with observations from Edward Boches, Chief Innovation Officer at Mullen. Because of the need for content curation due to an overload of content, more and more consumers are relying and will continue to rely on the recommendations and suggestions of friends to help filter content.
• Interoffice communication. Social media isn’t only for communication between businesses and consumers. According to a recent article in BusinessNewsDaily.com, more and more businesses are utilizing social media to disseminate to and share information among employees.

Your Predictions

What social media trends do you see developing? What trends would you like to see, and which would you prefer not to? Please add your thoughts to the comments section below.