All posts in “2012”

SMG's Best Blogs of 2012

December 21, 2012 / Comments Off on SMG's Best Blogs of 2012 / Posted in: Blog

As the end of 2012 approaches, Social Media Group has paused to take a look back at our most popular blog posts from the year, and we’ve shared them here so you can revisit old favourites or catch up on the classics you missed!

In our most popular blog of 2012 we have Maggie Fox’s wildly popular article titled, “Why Marketers Will Rule the World” where she discusses the impact big data will have on marketing.

Next up, we shared our thoughts on the current state of content marketing metrics in our article, “Paid, Earned and Owned are Dead”.

In her popular post, Wangari Kamande discusses “The Evolution of Social Media Measurement”. Noting our need to quantify and calculate the return on our investments, she analyzes and tracks the journey of social media measurement.

At number four, a post about our client SAP looks to the future of collaboration online.  Check out, “SAP’s Social Layer: Making Collaboration Real” to decide for yourself what the future looks like when integrating new technologies into large traditional business models.

At number five, Karly Gaffney opened up about her need to constantly be connected to social media in her post, “My Name is Karly, and I’m an Addict”.

Next in line, we have Wangari Kamande’s article, “Dealing with the “Unfriend”, “Unfollow” and “Unlike” Factor”, which explores the motivations we have to disconnect with brands and people in the social realm and effective tactics to prevent this.

At number seven, Maggie explores the idea that everything we do is marketing in her article, “Marketing isn’t dead, it’s everywhere”.  Even if you aren’t a marketer yourself, this is a must-read.

Pinned up at number eight, Karly Gaffney discusses the cross pollination of social media sites and tactics in her article titled, “Facebook Taking More Cues From Pinterest”.

At number nine, we have James Cooper’s talk from 2012’s Social Media Week, “Transmedia Storytelling: It’s Not Only For Fiction”.  Detailing the need for humans to share stories, he explores how this historical pastime translates into a modern world.

Coming in at number ten on our most popular blogs of 2012, is Michelle McCudden’s article, “Let’s Stop Saying Viral.” In this, she encourages us to stop using the term viral and consider the deeper meaning behind shareable content.

With many new challenges in sight for the New Year, there’s certainly pressure to stay ahead of the curve. The pace at which the social web is changing is increasing daily and the best way to stay ahead of the curve is to participate, collaborate, dig deeper into our data and share our stories with one another.

To find out more about Social Media Group and how we can help your company become a more social business, please contact us.

Top 9 Social Media Predictions and Trends for 2012

December 20, 2011 / Comments Off on Top 9 Social Media Predictions and Trends for 2012 / Posted in: Blog

As 2011 winds down and we prepare to kick off 2012, many digital soothsayers have peered into their crystal balls to predict the coming year in social media. We’ve searched far and wide to find what they have to say.

I used Scoop.it to curate and organize the findings.

Get the Scoop

Of the Scooped predictions and trends, here are my top 9 picks.

1. Content Marketing: Brands = Publishers.
2012 will see many businesses become content marketers, if they’re not already. They will become publishers and distributors of their own original content.

According to Social Media Explorer, “2012 is the year content marketing hits the social media trends list and the mainstream, because content marketing is now a concept that executives can finally sink their teeth into”.

2. Convergence: It’s All Coming Together.
Convergence, in the technological sense, is the merging of different technological systems to merge toward performing similar tasks. In the year to come, social media will increasingly converge with everyday life, marketing, technology and data.

As David Armano points out in his post on the Harvard Business Review, “trans-media” experiences, such as Coke’s and Domino’s, will increasingly be used in “bringing together real opinions from real people pulled from a digital source and displayed in the real world”.

3. Measurement and ROI: How Are We Really Performing
Companies will need to become better at measuring social media activities to achieve more integrated marketing campaigns in 2012, according to a recent report on eMarketer.

Metrics will go beyond counting impressions, subscribers and followers to new ways of measuring prospect conversion and revenue generation.

The ability to effectively measure social media ROI will aslo become essential for many companies in the coming year. In Adam Metz’ report on commpro.biz, he says we can expect to see more social platforms and social media management systems that will offer the ability to assess and maximize ROI.

4. Mobile: Social Media On The Go
As Mart Prööm reports on DreamGrow, social media will be used more and more on mobile devices in 2012. In turn, mobile apps will become more social. This surge in mobile will require brands to ensure their content is mobile and tablet friendly.

5. Social Corporate Budgets: More Dollars Makes Sense
A recent study by StrongMail projects that corporate social media budgets will grow in 2012. To date, most companies have been focused on experimentation and pilot projects in social media. Expect to see much larger portions of corporate budgets devoted to social media in the coming year.

6. Gamification: Playing To Win
Social gaming will begin to influence people’s behavior in the real world in the coming year.

“Game-like qualities are emerging within a number of social apps in your browser or mobile device. From levels, to leaderboards, to badges or points, rewards for participation abound. It’s likely that the trend will have to evolve given how [much] competition for our time and attention this gaming creates,” according to Armano in his post on Harvard Business Review.

7. Integration: Becoming Closely Knit
Companies will need to ramp up their efforts to integrate social media to into their corporate websites and email, especially where transactions occur. Coordinating messages and ensuring consistency across all social channels will be essential to a greater level of success in 2012.

In Angela Hausman’s post on Business 2 Community,  she states, “firms must move beyond simply adding share buttons on their email newsletters and print ads.  They need to fully integrate efforts across platforms, media, and functional groups”.

8. Influence: Who’s Who in Social Media
In 2012, brands will place greater emphasis on identifying who truly has influence within their markets, according to Social Media Explorer. The race among influence measurement platforms, such as Klout, Kred or PeerIndex, will continue as they strive to develop a system that will reward the top influencers in a given niche market.

9. Content Curation: Greater Than the Sum of All Parts
As businesses become publishers, it will make sense for them to curate the new and existing content related to their brands and their markets. Exclusively creating new content is demanding and daunting for many companies. Resorting to automation and aggregation results in a less than ideal user experience. Content curation can provide the best of both content creation and automation.

“Competitive advantage goes to companies who quickly figure out how to enable effective aggregation curation. Look for rapid innovation in this field’, as Beverly Macy puts it in her report on Huffington Post.

Take the Scoop that I created as an example: it exposed me to content that I might not otherwise have found and it gave me tools to organize and add value for end users.

Did I leave anything out? What do you think will be the top trends for social media in 2012?