by Lisa Mané, Head of Social Media, COI
No one can deny, especially as Mark Zuckerberg has been crowned Time Magazine’s person of the year, that social media in general and Facebook in particular have become mainstream, and in a cross-gererational way.
Some of our highlights of 2010 include the Old Spice and Tipex YouTube campaigns, The Social Network movie, UK hastags in general (e.g. #ashtag, #uksnow, #GE2010), and tv programme hashtags in particular (think BBC QT and Xfactor), and of course, our own sexworthtalkingabout FB actvity. In terms of data visualisation, we all love the map of the world through Facebook connections and the one inspired by that map using public data from data.gov.uk
But what do we predict for 2011? One general comment is that the rate of innovation in social media will begin to slow a little, so we may just see more of the same. Crowdsourced from across the organisation, here are COI’s top 11 predictions for 2011:
1. Greater integration of social across media, specifically increased use of hash tags and TV, as well as general blurring of lines between 1. communication and services and 2. messages and experiences.
2. The rise of social commerce – more virtual group buying opportunities and discounts, as well as bricks and mortar storefronts moving into Facebook to give the mix of shopping and social media to drive further sales and retention. But conversely…
3. As organisations become more social, they will be grappling with the issues of reputation management, security and privacy like never before. As we’ve seen social media being used in backlashes against corporations, this could force organisations to become more risk adverse and cautious with their social media activity.
4. Greater focus on social media for internal comms as organisations search for meaningful, valuable ways in which they can use tools effectively. Social media becomes part of the job description of the masses, not just a job title for the few. Which begs the question:
5. Will the term ‘social media’ lose it’s cache as organisations realise that it’s less smoke and mirrors and more common sense?
6. Listening is just one example of (4). Organisations dedicate resource to listening and measurement and try to figure out how what people are saying in social spaces can effectively be embeded into various functions across organisations. From a government perspective, the dirve for ‘more for less’ will put an emphasis on both end-to-end evaluation and real-time optimisation.
7. We also foresee more crowdsourcing across govenment to satisfy public appetite for digital participation and engagement
8. And while Facebook may reach 1 billion users,
9. and, hopefully, Twitter get serious (more bandwith, no more Fail Whale, advertising, UK sales team),
10. we may see more withdrawl into the off-line world as bloggers stop blogging, (it can be exhausting).
11. Finally, we predict that social media will be used to greater extent for prediction.
