Emerging Social Media Trends for 2010

2009 was a year of enormous growth in social media and in B2B marketing as well. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace competition. So what could it look like in 2010? Here are some of the near-term trends we can see for next year.

• Corporations Will Scale Up
  Over the next year more companies, from large corporations to the small businesses, will look for their social media niche. We hear this statement literally every day, "We’ve really got to put a plan in place for social media." Companies will put greater emphasis on social media as part of overall marketing and PR efforts and look to leverage social media technology to uncover cost savings, serve customers more effectively or just simply find out what people are saying about their product and services versus the competition.
  
  
• Social Media as Serious Play
  It’s no secret that people love to play games. During the coming year, we’ll see social media become more creative and participatory. There will be carrots for friendly competition. People will be rewarded in a game-like atmosphere. And businesses will look to incentivized activity within their internal or external networks.
  
  
• Enforcing Policies
  If the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might happen next year. From how to conduct yourself as an employee to what’s considered competition, it’s likely you’ll see something formalized about how the company views social media and your participation in it.
  
  
• Smartphones
  2010 will bode well for the sale of Smartphones. Companies will frown on their employees taking time for social media on workplace computers. So it’s likely that they’ll feed their addictions through the proliferation of new Smartphones. As a result, we’ll see more and better mobile versions of our favorite social media sites.
  
  
• Social Media Begins to Look Less Social
  With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could become more "exclusive" in terms of users becoming more selective. Not everyone will want to fit on someone’s newly created Twitter list and as networks begin to fill with noise, there may be an increase in user behavior such as 'hiding' the hyperactive updaters that appear in your Facebook news feed. It's not really less social, it is just filtering out the clutter.

These are just a few. If there are other trends that you see on the horizon – let us know.

Sources:
Vic Heman, DeCarolis Design & Marketing
David Armano, Harvard Business Publishing