12/23

Social marketing trends, predictions and new skills

Andreana "Addy" Drencheva

In the past few weeks the interwebs were flooded with social media and social marketing trends and predictions for 2011. (Let me Google that for you, if you haven’t seen one of the 837467382904 posts on the topic.) What will happen in the social media space in 2011? A lot of exciting things: from average users experiencing social media schizophrenia which will lead to increased consumer content curation, to brands acting more like media companies, to the move from slacktivism to hyper citizen activism, to full integration, although that was a prediction for 2009 and 2010 and still hasn’t happened. Maybe.

But what do all these predictions mean for advertising agencies? What do they mean for people who have social marketing in their titles or college graduates trying to get a job as social media something something?

The traditional requirements for that position still remain relevant. We must (yes, I did say must) know the difference between social media and social marketing. We all should be self-motivated, innovative, business savvy and strategic content creators and curators. But with the changes that have occurred in the past year, we, and the agencies that hire us, should strive for more.

Besides knowing the tools and their capabilities, social marketing managers should also know how people use these tools. We think that everyone is a social butterfly and people engage with strangers on Twitter just because that is what we do. Let’s quit projecting and learn how exactly clients’ audiences use these tools. We should examine how people engage with brands online, which is a very different behavior from how they engage with their niche communities.

We should continue our search for the right measurement systems and approaches. We’ve talked about going beyond clicks, RTs, likes, etc. Let’s refocus from measuring social activity to measuring the success of an integrated effort. Instead of having a social marketing measurement report, we should have measurement reports that give the numbers as they relate to a business goal: sales, awareness, etc. even if that means measuring offline.

Since even ordinary people will get fatigue from social media, everyone would be much pickier about the content we consume, which makes quality content more important than ever. Utilitainment will be a responsibility of every social/community manager and that means we will have to produce valuable (valuable for our clients’ audiences, not for us or for the clients) content for each selected platform. Regardless of the format, content strategy that leads engaging and involving content will be a must. Let’s put our efforts in mastering content strategy instead of producing content just to say we are publishers or media companies.

Most importantly, we should become even better at teaching. Teaching everyone: from clients to account people to creatives to planners. If we do our job well, we will be obsolute in a year or two because social media should be everyone’s job. Instead of having social media managers, gurus, strategists, etc, we should just have community managers. The New York Times eliminating its social media editor position is a good thing. And the same should be true for agencies, even if that means that I won’t have a job.

Scary? Yes! Exciting? Even more so!

What will you change in 2011? How will all trends and predictions change your job, responsibilities and skills?

P.S. Happy holidays!

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http://twitter.com/TalkingJed Jacquelyn Dahlgren

Happy Holidays back at you. It is always an exciting time when you evovle into a “thoughtful” phase – a phase when it finally feels that people are putting down their “have to have it” weapons and are ready to talk peace and strategy. I relate it to decorating a home – when you first move in you force things into place because – well, people generally say you should have some furniture! and a few photos or a throw rug already! I might even bring in a decorator under the pressure. But it’s the next time around – a few years later after you know the house, how the light shines in, how you entertain in the space, the traffic patterns – that’s when you can do your best work. It becomes less a project of decorating and more a complement to living.
- http://twitter.com/addy_dren Andreana Drencheva
  
  I was going to say “Isn’t this the best time of the year to be thoughtful and reflective,” and just when that thought crossed my mind, I realized that shouldn’t be the case. There isn’t a better time to reflect on achievements and goals than NOW. It doesn’t matter if it is at the end of the year/decade, on the last Monday of the decade, or on July 27.
  
  As always, I love your metaphor
Sue Spaight

Great post, Addy. I consciously avoid all prediction posts like the plague. Except yours, because it is concise and right to the point

I completely agree with all your points. Perhaps we could sum it up by saying THE BAR IS ONLY GOING TO GET HIGHER. Which IS an exciting challenge indeed.

As you point out, with social media fatigue only increasing it’s only going to get harder to get people engaged. So yes, content that people care about it still king.

And, beyond that, for clients, “engagement” is not enough anyway, so measures like clicks, RTs, likes, even numbers of fans and followers become increasingly meaningless over time if they are not seeing any value deeper in the sales funnel/on the other side. Truly the onus is on agencies to be able to prove the value.

Social media is mature enough now that it’s getting more REAL, and we’re having to KEEP IT more real. Which, IMHO, is always a good thing.
- http://twitter.com/addy_dren Andreana Drencheva
  
  With a risk to become one of those people who write prediction posts, I would say that there is an interesting shift in consumers’ preferences for branded content. I am a big fan of utilitainment — content that is entertaining and valuable for the audience, however, most attempts for such content miserably fail and the content usually turns into just entertainment. But there is already enough entertainment online (36h of content uploaded on YouTube every minute, or a number close to that). What people expect from brands today, and this trend will become stronger in 2011, is helpful content: give people the information they need as quickly and easily as possible.
  
  I also think that entertainment offline is a huge opportunity for brands. They can provide opportunities to their audiences to have fun with friends and experience the brand in a new way. Hence we are seeing a flood of 3D and 4D map projections everywhere. How does that relate to social media? Here: http://www.jigsawllc.com/2010/09/30/the-easiest-way-to-harness-the-social-graph/
  
  Yes, the bar will get even higher and that is an incredible opportunity for those who invest enough resources to stand out in a sea of mediocre attempts.