Social Media Predictions for 2012
As we enter the new year, it’s a good time to review the outlook for social media marketing. These media channels—blogs, social networks, product reviews, and all the other myriad ways consumers can share, comment, and interact with brands and with each other—are still fairly new to the marketing toolkit, and continuing their explosive growth. According to Neilsen, one quarter of the time spent online by U.S. consumers in 2011 went to social activities, like blogs and social networks. So, what’s likely to come along for social media marketing in 2012? Let us count the ways…
Retail/social integration
Retailers were not necessarily the fastest adopters of social media, but by now they have come fully up the learning curve. We predict more, and deeper, integration of social media into the entire selling and buying process in 2012. Already there are signs of innovative use of social media in retail, both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce:
- “Social login,” whereby consumers can fill out shopping cart information at e-commerce sites or join in-store loyalty programs via their existing social network registration on Facebook or Twitter. Faster and easier for consumers means higher conversions, fewer abandons, and more repeat orders. Plus, merchants get access to a richer data profile on customers, for ongoing segmentation and communications.
- QR codes posted throughout a store—Macy’s is all over this—which deliver information and special offers related to the products on display nearby.
- eBay and Facebook have teamed up to enable buying right out of a Facebook account. Facebook’s new mobile platform will drive more social commerce, and its Open Graph language will allow users to share their activities with friends in real time, which inevitably leads to smoother, more interactive purchasing based on friends’ recommendations.
More and better analytics and measurement
As social media moves from an exciting experiment to a serious, ongoing part of the marketing mix, measurement tools and practices need to keep up. We can no longer be satisfied by such fuzzy metrics as gross number of “visits” and “likes.” The CMO Club reported data suggesting that companies were moving rapidly from 2010 to 2011 toward harder metrics like conversion and sales.
Table: Last year, marketers moved from activity-based metrics like page views, and toward results-based metrics like conversions and revenue.
| Metrics used by CMOs worldwide | 2010 | 2011 |
| Number of fan/members | 59.4% | 62.9% |
| Number of positive customer mentions | 52.6% | 62.9% |
| Number of page views | 53.9% | 43.4% |
| Conversion | 32.6% | 65.7% |
| Revenue | 29.1% | 49.7% |
| Reduced returns | 12% | 16% |
| Do not track metrics | 18.2% | 6.9% |
Source: Bazaarvoice and The CMO Club report, “CMOs on Social Marketing Plans for 2011”
Already, social media is under the direct control of the CEO in 12% of companies, according to the State of Social Media 2011 report. The year 2012 will surely bring more disciplined practices on the part of marketers, and more powerful automation tools to analyze results.
Full integration into the customer experience mix
In the early days, practitioners of digital marketing and e-commerce were organized in silos, often reporting to an IT function, and walled off in their own little area. This led to such snafus as customers ordering online but being frustrated by the inability to make returns at the store.
With time, companies have understood that, from the customer perspective, a brand is a brand, and that all customer touchpoints need to be managed as an integrated whole. So digital marketers are increasingly integrated with the rest of marketing, at both companies and agencies alike. This is where we need to go with social media marketers, and let’s hope that 2012 is the year when this imperative is achieved.
One outcome is likely to be a continued growth in the complexity of brand use of social media to communicate and learn about customer needs. Instead of a single brand voice emanating from the marketing department, companies will add other voices via Twitter and Facebook, representing customer service, merchandising, accounts receivable, and anywhere else the customer touches.
More competition, clutter, consumer choice
As marketers get better using existing social media tools, they need to gear up for more tools and more functionality in 2012. Google+, the challenger to Facebook launched in 2011, already has 26 million users, 72% of whom are male. Twitter just added photo and video sharing functions, and a redesign, that make it much closer to Facebook.
But FB is predicted to reach 1 billion users in 2012, adding its own new features for advertisers and users alike—not to mention a rumored IPO that would value the company at $100 billion.
More targeted social media strategies will continue to emerge. For example, Sears introduced a social media program to reach Latino shoppers, with Facebook.com/SearsLatino and @SearsLatino.
The social media sandbox is getting more crowded, and marketers must keep up with the changes.
The death of social media. It’s just digital.
The biggest development in 2012—or soon thereafter—will be the demise of social media as its own thing, and the understanding among marketers that all digital media—and all marketing—is in fact social. As Freddy Laker, director of digital strategy at Sapient, wisely wishes, “I hope we’re not talking about social media in 2012, and we just call everything digital media again.”