Social Media in 2011, Trends & Tips

By Joel Black on 12/23/2010

As 2010 comes to a close and 2011, a new year brings new opportunities, we tend to look ahead and imagine what we can do in the coming weeks and months.  I am excited about the new year and can’t wait to get back from the traditional end of year family & friends get togethers.

So before I leave, I wanted to put together a short list of whats on the horizon for social media in 2011.

1. The most exciting on everyones list is location based services.  A couple hot buttons here are Facebook Places and Google Places.  The thoughts are, by using these services and checking into places , advertisers will be able to push their specials and deals to you at the very moment you need them.  Case in point, I was at Borders yesterday purchasing a book.  While standing in line, I found a 33% off coupon on my iPhone, in which they gladly accepted. Plus, the advertiser can track these coupons and better market to their real consumers, the ones in the store buying.

2. Video platforms are another that will be taking a leap in 2011.  Currently YouTube is already top of the list, and more are coming to the market such as Vimeo.  More and more companies are taking commercials to YouTube campaigns, and it also allows for the little guys like me to post commercials and video tutorials.  The video tutorials alone are huge, as issues that are common questions for our company, we can post video answers and tutorials for our clients.

3. Text campaigns are gaining in popularity and will likely continue to grow in 2011.  There are a couple companies like MessageBuzz out there now that will manage collecting and sending messages for you now.  Text campaigns are not a medium we currently use, but it is on my short list for 2011.  When we get started, I will be sure to blog about the process and results.

4. Facebook will still be popular in 2011 for businesses.  I blogged last week about their accidental release of the new business pages.  They have a ton of new features for business including tracking for your website that integrates with your Facebook tracking.  Meaning, users stay logged into Facebook, as you probably notice.  When you leave Facebook, and come back later, you dont have to log in again.  When your surfing other sites and they have the Facebook tracking installed, all that demographic information Facebook has is being stored in their Analytics system for the business owner to see.  And another piece I have been blogging about, Facebook “Likes” will be important for your website as they will be weighing in on search results and placement.

5. WordPress, Blogging & Content Creation will be the information and search results driver.  Companies that are creating new content on a regular basis will be the leaders in search traffic.  Wordpress will most likely be the main blogging platform, with many websites going to the WordPress platform for their entire website.  We are already seeing this toward the end of 2010, as more and more clients want their website to be built on WordPress.  Its search engine friendly, easy to update and comes with a boatload of plugins.

6. A new social platform from Google? Well, I have to end this with a little scandal.  Rumor is Google has a new social platform, although it keeps getting pushed back.  Its now tabled for March or April, but it’s top secrect so there is not much buzz about what it actually does.  Google is the search leader, so if it integrates a social platform within it search algorythm, it’s going to be a game changer.  So i’m excited to learn more about this in the months to come.

Point is here, who knows what 2011 will bring?  But with so many brilliant people and so many ideas, its bound to be another exciting year in the social and technology world.  If you have heard of some exciting news on the horizon for next year, or have some thoughts about the ones I mentioned, please tell.  Enjoy the rest of 2010 and may you have a exciting and successful 2011.

Tags: Social Networking