The good news is that mobile marketing is not all that complex.

Here are five things you can do to get started in mobile marketing. Once you’ve mastered the steps below, you’ll see that mobile marketing is a great way to open up new revenue streams for your business.

Ready to get started?

#1: Set up your mobile website

This is actually easier than you might think. One option is to use the automated systems offered by many companies. They essentially take your existing website content and auto-format it for a mobile screen.

WordPress has some plugins that do a pretty good job of this and GoDaddy has an automated system that does it, too. But for the best user experience, I recommend you focus on one of the options outlined below.

Your mobile home page should have a clean and simple design. On the left is the standard 60 Second Marketer home page seen on a smart phone. On the right is the mobile version of the site.

Option number two is to use one of the many plug-and-play platforms offered online. These companies actually create a separate mobile website that is completely independent from your regular website.

Just Google “How to set up a mobile website” and you’ll find a number of companies doing this. There are some good organizations offering these plug-and-play systems, but there are also some real losers, so do your research before you choose a company to work with.

Mobicanvas.com, GetGoMobi.com and Onswipe.com all seem to have good solid platforms to work from.

You can build and manage your website quickly and easily!

A third option is to add a simple line of code onto your existing home page that “sniffs out” the screen size of the person visiting your site.

If the person visiting your site has a screen that’s more than 600 pixels wide, they’re probably coming from a PC and are directed to your regular site. If the screen is smaller than 600 pixels, they’re probably coming from a mobile device and will be redirected to pages designed for a smartphone screen.

Out of these three options, the third option is the best approach. Just ask your web designer to do a search for “mobile website redirect code” and they’ll find plenty of options like this one on CSS-Tricks.com.

Redirects are a critical step in ensuring your website is search-engine friendly.

#2: Claim your business on location-based platforms

You should claim your business on location-based platforms like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places, especially if you have a brick-and-mortar location.

Claiming your business just means that you’re raising your hand to these services and saying, “I’m an official representative of XYZ business and want to be listed on your platform.” Claiming your business is similar to calling up the phone company to get a free listing in the Yellow Pages, only now you’re reaching out to these location-based services instead of Ma Bell.

Once you’ve claimed your business, you can start using these platforms to run mobile promotions. For example, Chili’s ran a promotion where everyone who “checked in” to their locations using Foursquare got free cheese dip.

Better still, Chili’s improved on the promotion by making it so that anybody who checked in at another store within 200 yards of Chili’s got the same offer. Yup, you heard right—if you checked in at the florist next door, you got a digital coupon for free cheese dip at the Chili’s a few steps away. Brilliant!

Users can unlock the free appetizer coupon at participating restaurants by checking in at Chili's through Foursquare.

#3: Immerse yourself

You can’t fully understand mobile marketing until you use mobile marketing. So when you get through reading this article, grab your smartphone and mess around with it—check in on Foursquare, buy some shoes using the Zappos app, do a voice search using Google Voice Search—just get comfortable with all your smartphone’s nooks and crannies.

The Google Voice Search App lets you speak your queries without pushing any buttons, and also lets you do local searches without specifying your location. Faster web search with fewer keystrokes.

When you’re ready to take a deeper dive into your smartphone, download the Starbucks mobile payment app and use it to pay for your next cup of coffee. That way, you can look even cooler than the guy who ordered the “double whipped mocha Frappuccino with a twist of whatever to go.”

You can pay for your Starbucks drink using the Starbucks Card Mobile app!

The more you use mobile media, the more you’ll see that it’s really not all that complex. It’s just the newest marketing channel in a long line of marketing channels introduced throughout the last several decades.

Tip: For smartphone overachievers: 1) Download LinkedIn to your smartphone, 2) enable your Bluetooth function and 3) open up the LinkedIn application. In the LinkedIn app, you’ll notice an icon with two people shaking hands called “In Person.”

Find someone in your office who has LinkedIn installed on their smartphone, then “bump” your phones together. Ding! You’ve just used Bluetooth to exchange your LinkedIn profile without having to type a word.

LinkedIn's app allows you to bump smartphones to exchange information.

#4: Run a mobile ad campaign.

A mobile ad campaign is great for all kinds of companies, but particularly good for companies that have brick-and-mortar locations. After all, if you own a restaurant, wouldn’t you want to have an ad pop up when someone searches for “restaurants near my house”?

Mobile ad campaigns can be bought on a cost-per-click basis, a cost-per-thousand basis or a cost-per-acquisition basis.

Sound confusing? Don’t worry—just visit any of the most popular mobile advertising platforms (like Millennial Media, iAd from Apple or AdMob from Google) and they’ll walk you through the distinctions and how to use the services.

AdMob provides innovative solutions for brand and performance advertisers, effective distribution for app developers and revenue opportunities for mobile site owners.

#5: Scan a QR Code.

QR Codes are those little barcode-like squares that are popping up all over the place. For an in-depth introduction to QR Codes, you can check out How QR Codes Can Grow Your Business.

QR Codes (or their closely related cousins EZ Codes, Microsoft Tags, SPARQCodes, etc.) can be scanned by smartphones. Once scanned, they drive you through to mobile web pages that offer discount coupons, bonus content, special offers or some other additional content.

Looking for a QR Code to scan? Glad you asked. Just scan the QR Code below and it’ll drive you through to a post called “100 Top Mobile Media Applications.” It outlines all of the most important mobile media applications you’ll want to be familiar with.

Bottom Line

By now, you’re probably realizing that mobile media really isn’t that complex. It’s just like social media or email marketing or organic search, the only difference is that the delivery mechanism is a smartphone or a tablet computer instead of a PC.

These are just five of the ways you can kickstart your use of mobile marketing. I’m sure there are dozens more.

What are your thoughts? What mobile marketing tools have you tried out that you’d like to share with our readers? Leave your comments in the box below.

Two brand-new studies by HubSpot and Edison Research provide fresh insights on these important questions. Consider these five findings as you enhance your social media and blogging strategies.

#1: More frequent blog posts bring greater traffic and leads

C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley like to say that starting a blog is like having a baby. You can’t put it back and you have to keep feeding it. The question is how often do you need to feed your blog to get real results?

HubSpot found in their 2011 State of Inbound Marketing report that a vast majority of bloggers post once per week, with a significant 29% only posting monthly or less.

No matter how nutritious the food is, no doctor would recommend feeding a baby weekly or less. Mike Stelzner acknowledges that most content only has a shelf life of around 72 hours. Read about this in his new book Launch.

As it turns out, businesses seeing significant growth have also discovered they need to feed their blogs more frequently.

There’s a strong correlation between how frequently a blog posts and the amount of traffic generated. In fact, businesses that post daily will generate 5 times more traffic than those that post weekly or less.

The likelihood of acquiring a customer through your blog increases significantly the more frequently you post. Note that posting multiple times per day gets 15% greater results than just posting daily. Of course, you need to understand your audience’s appetite for content before you start posting multiple times per day.

While getting one customer through your blog is great, it will be far better when you start seeing consistent leads. HubSpot found blogs that post daily generate 4 times more leads than those that post weekly or less.

#2: A steady library of blog posts grew leads and traffic better

Over time, a well-fed blog will outperform other blogs. This is evidenced by the impact of blog size on traffic and lead generation. (Note: By blog size, I don’t mean the size of the company, but the number of blog posts accumulated over time.)

HubSpot found that blogs that have accumulated at least 51 posts see 53% more traffic than blogs with 20 to 50 posts. Additionally, blogs with more than 100 posts see 3 times the traffic, while those with over 200 posts see nearly 4.5 times the results. (Special thanks to Melissa Miller of HubSpot for this exclusive graphic.)

The size of your blog will also affect your monthly leads. Your business will profoundly benefit if you accumulate at least 52 blog posts.

#3: More Twitter followers = more leads

As Elijah Young reminded us last month, all Twitter followers aren’t created equal. So, if you have 1,000 spam accounts following you, there won’t be much measurable benefit to your business. But don’t let that excuse you from trying to grow your following. You may be missing out on some real results!

HubSpot found that businesses with over 1,000 followers saw 6 times more traffic than businesses with 25 or fewer followers.

Additionally, those businesses with over 1,000 followers saw 5 times more leads than those with 1 to 25 followers.

You may have questions about the value of a Twitter strategy, but know that 20 million Americans are on Twitter (half between the ages of 18 and 34, according to Edison Research) and these are the people more likely to influence public opinion about your brand than the other 90% of the population.

#4: Bigger Facebook fanbases mean better results

Edison Research recently found that Facebook is the one social media site that people allow to influence their buying decisions, with 24% listing it as their first choice. Of course, it’s not Facebook itself but the people on Facebook who influence those decisions. That’s why it’s so important to grow a strong and active fanbase.

HubSpot found that the size of your Facebook reach has significant impact on your traffic and leads. For instance, businesses able to grow a fanbase of 501 to 1,000 fans have 3.5 times more traffic than those with 1 to 25 fans. Moreover, businesses with over 1,000 fans had 22 times more traffic.

Additionally, the size of your Facebook fanbase will dramatically impact how many leads you receive. Businesses with 501 to 1,000 fans saw 4 times as many leads as those with 1 to 25 fans and businesses with over 1,000 fans saw 12 times more leads.

#5: Social demographics are growing

Tom Webster of Edison Research recently published a study that gives some fresh insight into how Americans are using social media.

In the Social Media Marketing Industry Report, we made the claim that social media has gone mainstream. Edison’s report proves it. They discovered that 52% of Americans over the age of 12 have at least one social media account and 51% of all Americans are on Facebook.

What’s more significant is that 46 million Americans are on social media sites multiple times per day. These are the influencers and potential clients we all want to reach.

These habitual social networkers tend to be young and female. In fact, 68% of these active networkers are between the ages of 12 and 34. Depending on your product or service, this information could help you better target your customers online.

The last thing to note about frequent social networkers is that they’re nearly twice as likely to be using mobile devices. Make sure to see what it’s like for your customers to engage you on their mobile devices.

Habitual social networkers are also 50% more likely to access social networks via their mobile phones.

Go generate some leads!

In many ways, this research confirms what many experts have been saying, but now you can see the reasons in black and white. If you want to generate leads through social media, try blogging more frequently and growing your reach—all with an understanding of your target audience.

For some great ideas on how to generate leads through social media, refer to Debbie Hemley’s article, 26 Ways to Use Social Media to Generate Leads.

What do you think? I’d love to hear what you think about this research. Leave your comments in the box below.

What’s New This Week?

Facebook Deals Go Local: Businesses can now offer discounts to their local markets through Facebook Deals. And Facebook will be publishing these Deals stories in the Facebook feeds of your customers. This new service puts Facebook into direct competition with Groupon.

Local Deals start out initially in Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, San Francisco and San Diego.

Google Docs Introduces Threaded Discussions: Google has enhanced the discussion features on newly created Google Docs. Each comment now has a timestamp and profile picture. You can edit comments, hide them from the original document and reopen them. You can add someone to a discussion with an @mention. “For example, typing @eddy@altostrat.com in a discussion will send a notification email to Eddy with the text of your comment.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zmOYziFKZw

Twitter Makes Your Account More Secure: You now have the option of always using a secure HTTPS service when accessing your account through Twitter.com and the official Twitter applications for the iPhone and iPad. “Using HTTPS for your favorite Internet services is particularly important when using them over unsecured WiFi connections.”

Under the Settings tab of your Twitter account, you can now choose to view all of your tweets through a secured URL.

Twitter Celebrates 5 Years of Tweets: Twitter released the latest Twitter statistics on their 5th birthday. The past year has seen a 182% increase in mobile users. Check out the other stats here.

On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first Tweet. Last month there was an average of 140 million tweets sent per day.

Here’s another social media tool worth a look.

Wishpond: A shopping engine to search local stores and find the best deals in town. You can Make a Wish on a product you like, and Wishpond will alert you when the price drops, find similar products that match your desired price and send you personalized deals from nearby stores that will match that price. Wishpond was also recently in the news for their participation in Crowdbeacon.

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And don’t miss this:

Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit 2011: Check out the largest online social media conference! Help your business grow with social media.

Watch this video as Michael Stelzner shares his story.

What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.

Be sure to watch this edition of Social Media Examiner TV with our host Mari Smith.

In this episode, Mari introduces you to the concept of curating content and how it can help your business. And Mari also reviews 8 content curation tools to help you find the best information for your business.

Share your feedback, see the show notes and discover how you can be part of a future show below!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mKJQuREIHw

Here are the content curation tools Mari reviews on this video:

#1: Google Alerts

Use Google Alerts to get notifications of your important keywords. Mari also explains how to use Google Alerts for reputation management with vanity searches.

Set up Google Alerts for keywords relevant to your business.

#2: Google Reader

Subscribe to blogs in your Google Reader for better social media management.

#3: Facebook Friend Lists for Better Facebook News Feeds

Get more control over your Facebook news feed with Facebook Friend Lists. Mari shares a great tip on how to make a Facebook Friend List with your favorite fan pages for better content curation thanks to a filtered view of your news feed.

Create Friend Lists of your favorite fan pages on Facebook to filter your news feed for quick content curation.

#4: Twitter Lists

Mari shares how you can create Twitter Lists to curate information from people who consistently share great content on Twitter.

Create lists of your favorite news sources on Twitter.

#5: HootSuite

You can use HootSuite with multiple social media profiles to make it easier to share the valuable content you find online. Mari gives you some great tips to get the most out of this social media tool.

HootSuite helps you curate content and share it across your social network.

#6: Paper.li

With Paper.li, you can publish your own virtual newspaper which pulls in information from various social media platforms.

Paper.li is an easy way to pull in links from your favorite sources.

#7: Alltop

Alltop curates the content for you by allowing you to create a MyAlltop page to subscribe to your favorite blogs.

Alltop is a great resource to help you find the best content from your favorite blogs.

#8: Mobile

Flipboard and Pulse are two mobile apps Mari mentions in this video. And she explains why using mobile apps makes it easy for you to curate content on social media.

Content curation apps like Pulse are valuable tools to stay up to date.

Watch the video to learn more about these content curation tools!  And be sure to listen for Mari’s hot marketing tips on how to craft a tweet to get more retweets.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Social Media Examiner TV, make sure to tweet about it (use hashtag #SMEtv), share it on Facebook or even embed this episode on your blog.

We want to hear from you! Do you include content curation in your marketing tactics? Which content curation tools help you find content online? Please tell us in the comments below.

Let’s explore LinkedIn together and see if you can identify new ways to enhance your user experience by considering the topics discussed below. As I’ve done in the companion pieces to this post, 26 Twitter Tips and 26 Facebook Tips, I’ll introduce LinkedIn Tips from A-Z.

These tips will reference both personal and company perspectives. But before we get started, let’s go over a couple of LinkedIn basics—who’s on LinkedIn, creating your LinkedIn profile and developing your list of LinkedIn connections.

Develop a network of relevant connections.

Who’s on LinkedIn?

To put it simply, everyone; full- and part-time employees, contractors, freelancers and key decision-makers from any given industry or company can be found on LinkedIn.

Creating Your LinkedIn Profile

If you’re just getting started on LinkedIn, you’ll want to strive for 100% completeness on your personal profile by adding your current position, at least two past positions, information about your education, a summary of your background/experiences, a profile photo, details about your specialties and at least three recommendations. And if you’ve been on LinkedIn for a while, think about profile changes you can make to further demonstrate who you are and what you have to offer.

Developing Your List of LinkedIn Connections

You can grow your list of LinkedIn connections through webmail contacts (email contacts who are already on LinkedIn), colleagues and classmates, and through networking on LinkedIn groups.

Your connections are what make LinkedIn work for you, so taking the time to expand your reach is time well spent. A unique perspective on connections is offered by Stephanie Sammons in her post, How Connecting Your Connections to Connect with One Another Will Help Elevate Your Social Status.

LinkedIn Tips From A-Z

#1: Applications

As LinkedIn suggests, you can add third-party applications to “enrich your profile, share and collaborate with your network, and get the key insights that help you be more effective.” There are currently 19 applications to choose from. Depending on what you want to highlight, you can give a good example of your specialties, areas of interest, and work samples.

For example, on my LinkedIn profile I’m currently using Reading List by Amazon, Blog Link and the new Publications feature. You can have a total of 15 modules and/or applications on your profile. A message bar will appear at the top of the page if you need to remove an application prior to adding another.

#2: Blog Links

You can bring your blog posts into LinkedIn with applications such as Blog Link or WordPress LinkedIn. It’s a powerful way to engage your connections with material you’ve written and if they hadn’t already been visiting your blog on a regular basis, your posts will make it in front of their eyes when they receive their LinkedIn updates.

#3: Company Pages

LinkedIn has offered company profiles since 2008 and last month the profiles were upgraded to “Company Pages.” Companies can now showcase significantly more about their business. With the new Products and Services tab, companies are able to feature products and services with descriptive overviews. Videos can also be embedded on the page, one per product or service. At this time, you can only upload videos from YouTube, although LinkedIn expects that to change in the near future.

Recommend your favorite products and services on LinkedIn Company Pages

“Since the Company Page roll-out, 20,000 companies are sharing over 40,000 products. Companies of all sizes and industries are using Company Pages,” said Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s director of product management. When a LinkedIn member recommends a company’s product, they share the recommendation with all of their connections.

Ryan spoke about the power of recommendations for businesses, and referred to the Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey, in which Nielsen found that recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising. Ninety percent of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.

#4: Direct Ad Campaigns

LinkedIn Direct Ads allow you to target ads by industry, company, geography, job function, seniority, gender and age. Ads can appear as a media box, banner ad or text hyperlink. Ads are pay-per-click or by impressions and can be stopped at any time.

#5: Events

With the LinkedIn Events application, you can browse by event type, topic, location and add your own event for users to find, promote and attend. Coree Silvera has a helpful post, Promote Your Event by Using LinkedIn Event Application. As she suggests, you can share with your contacts and also purchase paid advertising options targeting a specific audience on LinkedIn. This would entail going outside your own network of connections using advertising methods such as CPC (cost-per-click), CPI (cost-per-impression) or text ads.

You can also follow LinkedIn events on Twitter.

#6: Follow Companies

Company follows make it possible for you to keep your eye on key events happening at companies you’re interested in. You’ll see information regarding new jobs, new hires and promotions, what it’s like to work there via employee testimonials and how to contact a recruiter.

#7: Groups

LinkedIn Groups are a great way to stay on top of topics of interest to you and to network with others in your field. You can see who was most influential in the group the past week and follow their activities on LinkedIn. To find groups, go to LinkedIn Groups Directory.

LinkedIn has restrictions about whom you can reach out to with a free account. The person has to have been a colleague, classmate, someone you’ve done business with or a friend. One of the best bonus features of Groups is that you can send InMail to group members without having to upgrade to a premium account.

#8: Help Center

You can reference LinkedIn’s Help Center when you have questions and receive step-by-step answers.

#9: Images

As mentioned above, a profile picture is one of the key components that make your profile complete. Keep in mind though that the image can only be 80 pixels by 80 pixels.

Edenchanges has a very good blog post with suggestions for how to take a good LinkedIn profile picture. LinkedIn will permit you to resize a photo, but you won’t be able to do any editing. So choose your photo carefully keeping in mind location, what you are wearing, whether it has good composition and lighting and if it has the artistic feel you want. You can specify who sees your profile picture: my connections, my network or everyone.

#10: Jobs

When looking for a job, you can use LinkedIn to look into companies of interest to you by seeing if anyone you know may know someone at the company. Susan Adams, senior editor at Forbes, gives some useful tips for how to master LinkedIn for a job search in a series of articles. In one post, she discusses how to use advanced search by company, location and title. Check it out if you’re looking for ways to enhance job searches.

#11: Keywords

Use keywords to optimize your profile. Use words that are specific to your industry and skills. You can optimize the specialties section and even include mention of your geographic location to improve the chances of coming up in searches. (Learn more about SEO in #19.)

#12: Link to Your LinkedIn Profile

Be sure to include your LinkedIn URL in your email signature, on your website, info tab on your Facebook profile and blog, as well as on your print marketing collateral and business card.

#13: Mobile

Connect with LinkedIn on your mobile phone. There are apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Palm. For all other phones, go to LinkedIn mobile. The iPhone app for LinkedIn has recently been updated. Learn more about the latest version.

Connect with LinkedIn on your mobile phone.

#14: Network Statistics

With Network Statistics, you can see information about your network, including how many users you can reach through your connections. Your network grows every time you add a connection. To get there, click on the Profile tab, and you’ll see four more tabs: My Connections, Imported Contacts, Profile Organizer and Network Statistics.

#15: Organizer

Profile Organizer is a feature on the LinkedIn premium account that enables you to bookmark LinkedIn searches on profiles, company pages and jobs you may want to apply for. You can save the information to a folder of your choice, and add details and notes that you want to keep track of.

#16: Proactive

Use LinkedIn proactively. Don’t set up a profile and abandon it. In Shama Hyder Kabani’s book The Zen of Social Media Marketing, she suggests four ways to be proactive: 1) gain more visibility by adding connections, 2) increase your rank with search engines by making your profile public and customizing your public profile’s URL to include your actual name (LinkedIn is ranked very high by search engines), 3) get business advice by finding answers to your most pressing questions and 4) conduct market research by asking your potential clients or customers what their greatest needs are.

Enhance your LinkedIn user experience.

#17: Questions

One of the most utilized features on LinkedIn is questions and answers. Questions can be used for networking and marketing purposes. Many people make answering questions a way to demonstrate their expertise. Diana Freeman has a great post where she discusses four unique ways to get traffic to your blog from LinkedIn Answers:

• Create a new blog post in response to a question.
• Answer a question linking to relevant existing posts.
• Create a stand signature for your answers.
• Create a blog post asking a question that includes pictures.

#18: Recommendations

Recommendations are an important part of your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn suggests that users with recommendations are three times as likely to get inquiries through LinkedIn searches. To initiate a recommendation request, go to the Profile tab and select Recommendations. There you will find a list of your jobs and education and you can choose what you want to be recommended for, decide whom you’ll ask, create your customized message and send from within LinkedIn.

Kirsten Dixson, a reputation management and online identity expert, is quoted in a post by C.G. Lynch on CIO.com. She suggests you ask for endorsements from not only the person above you but “all the way around you: above, below and sideways.” Lynch adds that like a recommendation written for the paper-based or email world, a person recommending you on LinkedIn can benefit from some guidance on what thoughts and facts you’re looking to present in their recommendation.

#19: SEO on Your LinkedIn Profile

Mike Volpe shares some great suggestions in the YouTube video below for how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for SEO. Mike suggests customizing your public profile URL to be your name (versus the default LinkedIn URL that has a long string of numbers and letters), and edit the links to your websites. For example, instead of using the default “My company” for your website, you can add the name of your company and keyword anchor text. Watch the video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0glUGk81Kyg

#20: Tools

LinkedIn has a number of productivity tools that you can use to search, build your network and manage your contacts. You can download a toolbar for Outlook, browser toolbar, email signature, Mac search widget and a Google toolbar assistant.

#21: Updates

You can add Twitter to your LinkedIn profile and when you update your LinkedIn network by asking a question, sharing a thought or posting an article, you can choose whether to share it on Twitter at the same time. It’s a very powerful way to integrate the business side of your tweets. Read more about it on LinkedIn works with Twitter, and vice versa.

You can also see all the activity of your LinkedIn connections when you sign into LinkedIn and go to Home Page, where you can take three actions on your network’s updates; e.g., like, comment or send a message.

#22: Videos

The new Products and Services tab on LinkedIn’s Company Pages gives you the ability to add product videos to your page. This is an incredibly dynamic way to showcase and communicate more about your company.

#23: Weekly

Make LinkedIn an active part of your social networking and be sure to update your profile at least once a week; e.g., making a connection, requesting a recommendation, asking a question, adding a slide presentation or adding a new book to your Amazon reading list.

Add LinkedIn updates to your to-do list.

#24: Experience

Use the Summary part of your profile to highlight the most important aspects of your experiences and what you have to offer. Add specific specialties as well.

#25: YouTube

LinkedIn’s YouTube Channel is a great resource where you can see videos and short “in tips” on topics such as creating a 100% complete profile, sharing your basic information, telling your story through your job history, and including details about your education. You might consider subscribing to LinkedIn’s YouTube channel so you can be notified anytime new videos are added.

#26: Zero In on Connections

Patrice-Anne Rutledge, the author of Using LinkedIn, suggests in her post, Seven Ways to Increase the Chance of Being Found on LinkedIn, that users develop a network of relevant connections. She says, “Focus on developing a quality network that can actually help you achieve your goals.”

Final Thoughts About LinkedIn

Researching and writing this post about LinkedIn has truly been eye-opening for me about the number of robust features and possibilities for using LinkedIn. In fact, up to now, it’s been my most underutilized social networking presence and I’m now committed more than ever to enhance my experiences on LinkedIn.

What LinkedIn tactics would you add to this list? Which ones are you already using? What do you plan to look into? Leave your comments in the box below.

Photo credits: Flickr: Bührmann’s photostream, Flickr: Solacetech’s photostream, Flickr: 4_EveR_YounG’s photostream & Flickr: Bark’s photostream

Since we started Social Media Examiner in October 2009, we’ve published more than 280 articles. These original posts were written by dozens of social media professionals.

We decided to tap their knowledge and expertise to see what’s likely coming next year. Here are their predictions for where social media is headed in the next 12 months.

#1: Marketers will have more tools to stimulate conversation.

Tom Martin

“Social Media will become Conversational Marketing and its practitioners will shift their focus more to ideas and technologies that can create or stimulate conversation versus simply focusing on the engagement in conversation. These technologies will be very data measurement–driven, like QR codes for instance. By making this shift, social media consultants will retain and improve their standing within the internal ROI-driven cultures of today’s companies.”

Tom Martin is founder of Converse Digital. He works with companies and ad agencies to help them monitor, create and engage in digital conversations to grow market share or increase customer loyalty.

#2: More companies will invest in social media.

Nicole Kelly

“As paid search traffic and conversion rates continue to decline and become more expensive, companies will start looking to social media to replace volume. Therefore, measuring the ROI of social media will become a top priority as companies consider expanding budgets and staff members for social media–related activities.”

Nicole Kelly is the director of social media for CareOne Debt Relief Services and is passionately working to understand and help define social media measurement.

#3: Social media will become mainstream.

Debbie Hemley

“In 2011, the social media dust will finally settle and folks will stop referring to it as ‘new’ media. Social media will take its rightful place on the editorial calendars and budgets of corporate marketing departments. The calls to action will reverberate virtually and within the brick-and-mortar planning rooms of corporate marketing departments. Those who hadn’t before will report reading online news, magazines and books; and watching more full-length and short videos on a myriad of screens and devices than they did in 2010. We will catch up with friends and colleagues as we leap from one geolocation to the next.”

Debbie Hemley is a blogger and nonfiction writer. She writes about social media, marketing and writing.

#4: Quora will leave beta and become a serious player in social networking.

Peter Wylie

“Quora is superior to any other question-and-answer platform in terms of quality, and it has fantastic technologists working on the product to help it scale.  Its experiment with setting up Twitter handles for every topic on the site using Mechanical Turk was genius, and it shows a clear strategic desire to integrate more closely with other social behavior.  Expect Quora to be brought up in conversation with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube in 2011.”

Peter Wylie is lead researcher for Three Ships Media, an emerging media marketing company that specializes in using blogs and social networks to connect clients with target customers.

#5: People will demand more from social media.

Jason Falls

“Business will demand more business-driving proof, readers will demand more substance to blogs and those who are practitioners will have to demand excellence out of themselves. This will go a long way in cleaning up the industry, in my opinion. The ‘gurus’ will fade away while the practitioners excel. If you aren’t moving the needle, you’re done.”

Jason Falls is principal of Social Media Explorer, a social media marketing consulting firm based in Louisville, KY. He is the author of the popular industry blog SocialMediaExplorer.com.

#6: Social media will no longer be something the “cool kids” are doing.

Lewis Howes

“Social media is something all entrepreneurs and businesses have to do if they want to succeed going forward. In the last year, we’ve seen many start to jump in and experiment with various campaigns on Twitter, Facebook and geolocation networks. Going forward, we’ll continue to see more of that and I see mobile and social media meshing even more.  There will start to be actual numbers and statistics to back up what works and what doesn’t.  2011 will be an interesting year during which creativity will continue to thrive, yet social media will start to gain solid support with evidence that it does in fact work.”

Lewis Howes is the author of two books on the topic of LinkedIn and runs the largest resource of sports social media marketing content online.  Learn more at LewisHowes.com.

#7: Facebook will become a real ecommerce platform.

Tim Ware

“I predict Facebook will launch a Facebook-based ecommerce payment system so that users can truly complete the entire checkout process without leaving Facebook. No iFrames, no logging in to your Paypal account, etc. Look out, Paypal!”

Tim Ware is the owner of HyperArts Web Design, helping businesses build and promote their web presence. His focus these days is Facebook app development and Static FBML.

#8 Social communication skills will get better.

Linda Coles

“We will all get cleverer with how we communicate online and add a little etiquette as we realize we are not simply communicating with another computer, but a warm-blooded human. Networking and developing relationships online is no different than offline, so let’s stop treating it differently. The Internet has simply increased its scale.”

Linda Coles of Blue Banana is a sought-after speaker who also runs various workshops and seminars on how to use social media tools effectively and productively.

#9: Social media will expand through creativity, diversification and content.

Terry Lozoff

“Tumblr saw a decent amount of buzz in the business world during the latter part of 2010, but still has a relatively light presence in the corporate world. Following in the footsteps of brands like Huggies and news organizations like Newsweek and The New Yorker, more brands and content-based organizations will take a longer look at Tumblr in 2011, and how to engage with a new base of consumers through this channel, as well as others in the social periphery.”

Terry Lozoff is the president and CEO of Antler, an experiential and digital marketing agency based in Boston, MA.

#10: Internet noise will reach rock-concert levels.

Dino Dogan

“Three to four billion people are currently NOT online. However, given the growth and adoption patterns over the last 10 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of 2011, more than 4 billion people are using the Internet, effectively doubling the current Internet population. Where is this growth coming from? This new emerging market is coming from Africa, the Middle East and South America. In 2011, a new playing field will open up filled with people hungry for specificity, quality and education.”

Dino Dogan is a blogger, writer, motorcyclist, dog trainer, singer/songwriter and martial artist. He’s currently working on Human-Dog Problem Tree, a thesis in human-dog relationships. His home is at DIY Blogger.

#11: Social media will become targetable.

Jay Baer

“2011 will be the year of convergence and integration. We’ve been talking about ‘one-to-one marketing’ for 20 years, but in 2011 we’ll finally start to see it become a reality. We’ll start to be able to send an email only to customers who clicked a particular bit.ly link on Twitter. We’ll be able to send a Facebook status message only to customers who visited a particular page on our website. We’ll be able to meaningfully segment our social communication, and that will make social far more useful for companies and organizations of all sizes and levels of sophistication.”

Jay Baer is a hype-free, tequila-loving social media strategist, speaker and coach. He’s the author of Convince & Convert, one of the planet’s most popular social media blogs. And his latest book is The Now Revolution.

#12: Social media will become more cross-functional.

Jacob Morgan

“Social media will branch out from typically being owned by PR and/or marketing departments.  Social media itself will be seen as just a channel instead of a panacea for solving all organizational business problems.  Social media will also be looked at as more than just an external-facing communication channel; it will be perceived as an internal communication channel.  I think we will also see a broader movement toward ‘social customer’ strategy, which seeks to solve organizational business problems as they pertain to customers. This means integrating people, process and technology.”

Jacob Morgan is the principal of Chess Media Group, a social business consultancy focused on customer and employee engagement strategies, and authors a popular blog on Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0.

#13: Small businesses will stand a better chance of competing with the bigger names.

Ching Ya

“2011 will be the year where social media can be a game-changer for many sectors. Data on user experience and personalized sharing will be more emphasized than ever, but so will be the dispute about privacy and where the line should be drawn. Profile security will probably be another huge issue that requires a clear standard and resolution from the authority.”

Ching Ya is the author of Social @ Blogging Tracker. She provides Facebook customization service for small business.

#14: There will be a shakeout in second-tier social media platforms.

Rich Brooks

“This shakeout will leave Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as the only viable social media platforms for business. They will continue to steal ideas from each other to where their services overlap and they’ll all become a bit homogeneous, leaving an opportunity for a disruptive technology in 2012. In addition, prominent B-schools will start promoting their social media course loads, legitimizing social media for giant corporations. Finally, Justin Beiber will cause a massive overload of the social media networks, forcing us all to re-evaluate our priorities.”

Rich Brooks is president of Flyte New Media, a web design and Internet marketing company helping small businesses succeed with SEO, blogging, email marketing, social media and websites that sell.

#15: 2011 will be the breakout year for social search.

Jeff Korhan

“There will be less noise as marketers seek more personalized interaction with consumers.  Fresh and creative methods of social marketing that encourage engagement will become the norm—along with a noticeable decrease in traditional brand marketing.  This progressive use of social media for what it does best will generally result in business becoming profoundly social.”

Jeff Korhan is a professional speaker, consultant and columnist on new media and small business marketing. Read more on his website.

#16: Content marketing will drive social media forward.

Kristi Hines

“More businesses will continue to jump into social media, but instead of pushing sales pitches, they will be pushing content in the form of blogs, infographics, ebooks, whitepapers, free reports and much more.  Content development is growing in popularity, and social promotion—when done correctly—is the best way to make content marketing successful.  The only real issue with this will be if businesses go overboard pushing poor content in an attempt to try to get it to go viral.”

Kristi Hines is an Internet marketing specialist with Vertical Measures and author of Kikolani, a blog that focuses on social media and networking strategies for successful bloggers and businesses.

#17: Social media will have an ever-larger impact in the search engine rankings.

Jim Lodico

“In the same way that the search engines currently value incoming links as a way of giving credibility to a website, I think we will also see Facebook Likes, tweets and other forms of social media sharing working their way into the formula. From a publishing perspective, this isn’t a big change. High-quality, outstanding content is still key to an organic SEO campaign. Publishers (and who isn’t a publisher these days) need to create content that others will want to share and make it easy for them to do so with Facebook Like buttons, Tweet This buttons and other easy-to-use social media tools built right into the post. Visitors should be encouraged to share across social media channels, especially as this sharing starts to play a more important role in the search engine rankings.”

Jim Lodico is a copywriter and marketing consultant specializing in creating powerful content and teaching businesses how to use blogs.

#18: Curation tools will become the primary way people use social media.

Jamie Beckland

“I could tell you that all key metrics (like time spent, amount of content generated and influence) around social media will hit new records in 2011, but you already knew that, didn’t you? With hundreds or thousands of online connections, it’s impossible for people to keep track of all of the great content from their social network. In 2011, we will reach a tipping point, where there is no way to manage social media without a curation tool. From Facebook’s Top News to Cadmus to Google Reader, filtering and prioritization is already a thorny challenge. In 2011, it will become a crisis as the number of voices, and number of channels, continue to explode. Look for a new set of consumer-oriented tools to lead the way, as business tools for marketers lag.”

Jamie Beckland creates social and emerging media programs for White Horse, a digital marketing agency, and has built online communities since 2004.

#19: 2011 will be a year of listening, courage and enabling.

Ekaterina Walter

“More and more brands will realize the power of listening before engaging (and not the other way around). I anticipate more brands will have the courage to open up and truly and humanly participate, not just broadcast. Brands are also realizing how critical it is to fully enable their employees to become brand ambassadors, hence you see more brands creating internal university-like training around social media and putting Social Media Center of Excellence functions in place. This list is not exhaustive at all, but it demonstrates that more brands are going back to marketing basics and focusing on their objectives, their stories and on empowering internally rather than on technologies and platforms.”

Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for social networking strategy and social media enablement. Read more on her website.

#20: Influence will be measured by follower and fan engagement.

Dr. Rachna Jain

“Social media will continue to evolve toward followership/fans as a measure of influence. Not numbers for numbers’ sake, but instead, how many people can you activate to your cause or belief? It will be less about growing a huge fan base, and moving more toward growing an interactive and engaged fan base. Whoever drives the most engagement wins.”

Dr. Rachna Jain is a psychologist by training and a social marketer by preference. She writes about the interconnections of neuroscience, psychology and social media.

#21: Personal authenticity will become increasingly important.

Stephanie Sammons

“Business owners and professionals will cultivate personal authenticity to rise above the increased noise, earn the respect of their target markets and ultimately generate new business.  Outsourcing social media activity or utilizing shortcuts to automate blogging and social media participation will not be effective for building community and developing new business relationships within the social world.  My best advice?  Be yourself, develop a strategy and establish a system for managing all your efforts.  Remember, marketing is a commitment!”

Stephanie Sammons is the voice behind Smart Social Pro, a resource for professional practitioners to help them understand how to leverage the power of social media and blogging in their practices.

#22: Brands will use more one-on-one communication on social media.

Lori Randall

“Social Media is still a novelty to many. Brands that beam content via social media like a TV commercial enjoy some success just because it’s new.  I see a huge shift in coming in 2011. I predict that mass media approaches will continue to run riot, but that mainstream people will develop a clear-eyed view on this murky subject and seek out unaffected, one-on-one communication that meets their desire to be heard, understood and helped concerning what matters to them most.  Scripted answers from an outsourced ‘Social Media Department’ won’t do. This dynamic will cause brands that communicate like normal people (instead of infomercials) to rise above the babble and get noticed because they will be so rare.”

Lori Randall is an online marketing strategist specializing in social media and WordPress sites. She often asks, “What truth about your brand makes your heart pound? Then work it!”

#23: The social media industry will “reboot.”

Elijah Young

“Brands that have hired outside consultants to handle social campaigns will start to look for more than friends/followers/fans as a metric of success, and start looking at the bottom line of their business.  Expect many fly-by-night specialists and consultants to see much of their client base dwindle due to a lack of tangible business results from their campaigns.  Expect the entire industry to start to mature, possibly with some industry-wide metrics and standards being adopted by the most forward-thinking of the bunch.”

Elijah Young is the lead strategist and owner of Social Talk Live. He’s also a business strategist who helps existing and new companies promote and grow their business.

#24: Expect to see more traction, innovation and spending in group buying in 2011.

Christine Gallagher

“I believe we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface in the group buying space. Services like Groupon, Living Social and BuyWithMe will continue to grow, spawn competitors and change the way businesses offer—and customers reap—the benefits of discount deals.”

Christine Gallagher is a relationship marketing speaker, trainer and coach. Christine helps small business owners maximize their profits using social media and online marketing techniques.

#25: In 2011, we’ll see a further divide between Twitter and Facebook.

Bill Seaver

“Facebook will continue to grow and broaden both how many people use it and what people do with it (i.e., Facebook email), whereas we’ll see Twitter narrow in use and appeal. People who continue using Twitter in 2011 will have a reason for being there beyond connecting with long-lost classmates and sharing photos of their weekend activities. They will overwhelmingly have business reasons for staying connected on Twitter. As such, Twitter will become a platform where you can connect with some people in their professional lives, and Facebook will continue to be the platform where you can connect with most people in their personal lives.”

Bill Seaver is the founder of MicroExplosion Media, a social media marketing consulting firm based in Nashville. He’s an active blogger and podcaster.

#26: Social media marketers will get the value—and necessity—of relying on direct-response tactics.

Tia Dobi

“In 2009, I made $40,000 from one tweet, thanks to my skill in evoking ROI learned from teachers like Claude Hopkins, John Caples and David Ogilvy. Direct-response know-how will separate the men from the boys in 2011… exploding opportunities that apps such as Facebook Places, Facebook Ads and Amazon Facebook Connect Campaign afford us by making point-of-purchase available everywhere, all the time. For the savvy marketer with the right thinking—and writing—2011 is the year of profits beyond belief.”

Tia Dobi is a former TV producer, direct-response marketing consultant and author of the upcoming book Copywriting for Twitter Impact.

#27: Social media measurements will become visual.

Nick Shin

“According to many who participate in my weekly #smmeasure Twitter chat on Thursdays (with co-host Sheldon Levine of Sysomos), metrics such as the number of followers/fans are highly irrelevant. However in 2011, social media measurement will focus on why basic metrics such as the one described are very much relevant. As social media strategists explain the measurement aspect, the shift from data tables to visual statements will begin. Rather than Excel sheets, expect PowerPoint presentations to visually tell the success of one’s social media strategy.”

Nick Shin is an online marketing strategist specializing in SEM, social media and PPC. When he isn’t collaborating or consulting on marketing strategies, you can find him on the tennis court.

#28: Deals, specials and discounts will flourish inside of Facebook pages.

Amy Porterfield

“Facebook pages are quickly becoming the exclusive promo hubs; the place where businesses can offer exclusive discounts and specials to warm audiences on a consistent basis. And the best thing about Facebook promos is that they can spread virally inside Facebook and beyond quickly, cheaply and with few barriers. With the continuing sophistication and flexibility of Facebook pages, I predict we will see a huge rise of promo hubs inside Facebook and businesses will continue to create even more opportunities to gain greater visibility for themselves while offering enticing opportunities via great deals to their customers.”

Amy Porterfield is a social media strategy consultant. Her passion is helping companies, authors and speakers create raving fans using social media and online marketing.

#29: More collaboration between social media players.

Nathan Hangen

“In 2011, I fully expect location-based services such as Gowalla and Foursquare to be enveloped by Facebook Places, perhaps being relegated to ancillary roles as clients, rather than providers. I really believe that this is the only way the check-in model can reach mass adoption. As part of this evolution, Groupon and Facebook will strike a partnership in order to integrate Groupon’s service into Facebook deals in some way, shape or form. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zynga joined in on the action and added a game layer on top of these services, putting SCVNGR’s business model at risk.”

Nathan Hangen is an Internet marketing strategist and founder of Webrepreneur Media. He co-authored the book Beyond Blogging with Mike Cliffe-Jones and provides small business consulting services at Making it Social.

#30: Facebook will welcome its one billionth member to massive worldwide fanfare.

Mari Smith

“I predict that the Check-in button will become just as, if not more, popular as the Like button via sites and apps such as GetGlue.com and Clicker.com, where you let your friends know what entertainment you’re watching right now. I also predict some form of Check-in button will roll out for websites because it can be clicked each time a reader visits a website, versus the Like button’s one-time click.”

Mari Smith is a social media speaker, trainer, thought leader and co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

More Social Media Success Stories in 2011

And I’m sure we’ll have many more social media success stories to share with you here on Social Media Examiner throughout 2011.

Would you like to stay in touch with Social Media Examiner’s writers? Follow our “Social Media Examiner Writer” list on Twitter.

What do you think? What are your social media predictions for 2011? Please leave your comments and join in the conversation below.

Yet something was missing – the hard business case for social media.  Like most companies, Cisco knew it was benefiting from social media, but it couldn’t prove it.

The launch of a new router using only social media would provide the proof Cisco’s marketers were seeking.

The results surprised even the social media enthusiasts. With this single project, the company shaved six figures off its launch expenses and set a new precedent for future product launches.

“It was classified as one of the top five launches in company history,” said LaSandra Brill, senior manager, global social media. “It was the crossing the chasm point for us in the adoption phase of social media and helped us get over the hump of internal acceptance.”

Router Launch: Promotion Through Play

Up to that point, the traditional product launch went something like this:

• Fly in more than 100 executives and press members from 100 countries to headquarters in San Jose, California
• Take a few hours of the CEO’s or an executive’s time to prep and present
• Distribute well-crafted – but static – press releases to key media
• Email customers
• Run print ads in major business newspapers and magazines

For its Aggregated Services Router (ASR) launch, Cisco aimed to execute entirely online leveraging social media, and in doing so, engage network engineers in a more interactive, fun way.

Cisco met its audience where they were – in online venues and the gaming world. Here’s how:

Second Life – The company built a stage with big-screen monitors, chairs for the audience and palm trees for its flagship launch event – entirely in a Second Life environment. It then piped in video of executives presenting the ASR.

Network engineers or the press could board their own “personal transport device” to surf through a virtual router.

To generate pre-launch buzz, the team held a concert in Second Life featuring eight bands over seven hours.

An executive presents the new ASR in a live Second Life event.

A 3D Game – More than 20,000 network engineers learned as they played a 3D game, wherein they “defended the network” using the ASR. (Research shows that 17% to 18% of IT professionals play games online every day.) Top scorers went on to a championship round with the winner bagging $10,000 plus a router.

“If they’re playing games, that’s how they want to engage and that’s who they are,” Brill said. “How do we make that applicable to what they do at work?”

YouTube – Video gets eyeballs. Cisco’s “Future of Shopping” is up to 3.3 million views.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDi0FNcaock

Additionally, the company heavily used video to educate customers and the media about the ASR, encouraging them to pass along links via social sharing.

Video conferencing – The company’s next-generation video conferencing technology, Cisco TelePresence, brought customers together at local offices around the globe. Executives back in San Jose could see the audience’s facial expressions and vice versa.

Mobile – A video datasheet engaged engineers on their mobile devices.

Facebook – Hardcore network engineers could connect on the Cisco Support Group for Uber User Internet Addicts. How addicted are they? One member shared that he networked his community swimming pool so he could stay connected poolside.

“It allowed them to connect with Cisco in a new way, and build preference and customer loyalty,” Brill said.

Social Media Widget – Cisco assembled videos, collateral and images in a widget format and embedded it into “social media” news releases and launch pages. Bloggers and others could spread the information easily with the embedded code.

Cisco blogs – Videos and other content engaged bloggers and customers, encouraging viral pickups.

Online forum – Cisco seeded its Networking Professionals Technology Community Forum with launch-related discussion topics and gave customers an “Ask the Expert” function.

The whole campaign spanned three months with the launch in the middle. During pre-launch, launch and post-launch, Cisco kept the audience engaged by encouraging discussion with and among its audience.

Reaching 9,000 People

Compared to traditional launches of the past, the ASR launch delivered eye-opening numbers. More than 9,000 people (90 times more than past launches) from 128 countries attended virtual launch events. Without travel, the launch saved an estimated 42,000 gallons of gas.

Plus, top executives spent only about an hour recording the video presentation.

Print ads were largely replaced with media coverage, including nearly three times as many press articles as a comparable traditional launch, more than 1,000 blog posts and 40 million online impressions.

Yet Cisco wasn’t the only one recognizing the impact of the campaign. In fact, the company earned a Leading Lights award for Best Marketing.

Taken alone, the reach of the campaign impresses. But consider this: The whole launch cost one-sixth of a similar launch that used traditional outreach methods.

Social Media: The New Norm

The ASR launch effectively tore the lid off social media at Cisco, which now truly walks its talk regarding the power of networks. Since then, social networking comes standard with every product launch and print advertising funds have largely moved to social activities.

And media like video, Facebook and Twitter keep customers and the press engaged continuously. Cisco now runs live public Q&A sessions showcasing John Chambers, Cisco’s chairman and CEO, as he answers questions coming in via Twitter.

Live TelePresence sessions bring executives and customers together for face-to-face virtual meetings.

The company’s chief technology officer, Padmasree Warrior, communicates with nearly 1.4 million followers on Twitter.

With subsequent launches, the company has realized even greater ROI – now seeing costs just one-seventh of those before. But the networking company keeps pursuing even greater returns with social networking.

“Now that we’ve got that buy-in, we need to just continue to show the success of one campaign over another,” Brill said.

Tools like Radian6 and Symphony help the core social media team, now eight people, measure the impact relative to cost of each campaign. After every campaign, the team just sets new benchmarks to beat.

“Social media doesn’t replace the need for white papers or sales interaction. I think it helps accelerate and shorten the sales cycle,” Brill said. “There are studies out there that people who are involved in communities and engaged with the brand are likely to spend up to 50% more than those who are not. We want to try to prove that.”

What success have you seen using social media for launches of new products or services? What worked well and what didn’t? Leave your comments in the box below.

David Armano recently published his social media predictions for 2010 on the Harvard Business Blog.  Here’s a detailed analysis on whether his predictions will likely come true.

Trend #1: Social Media Networks Become Exclusive

Armano predicts we’ll begin to see more exclusivity of networks as users focus more on specific niche content.  Indeed, research supports the prediction that people will be willing to pay for access to specialty networking groups.  Payment models by their very nature will exclude many spammers and create higher-quality networks.

“The bottom line is that users are willing to pay for social network content as long as sites cater to specific market niches as opposed to broader, mainstream audiences,” according to eMarketer.

Trend #2: Corporations Scale Social Media Efforts

Armano predicts corporations will begin to incorporate social media initiatives on a larger scale, moving beyond their one-off marketing experiments and general communication activity.

Research also supports this prediction.  For example, 94% of companies sponsoring online communities plan to increase their social networking support as well as engage with other social media tools, according to the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study by Deloitte.

Trend #3: Social Media for Business Becomes… Fun

Armano predicts businesses will focus more on adding entertainment to their social media efforts to incentivize user activity.

There’s plenty of data to support this trend:

Games rank #1 in top-performing mobile applications, followed by social networking apps, according to a recent report by Distimo. Games and networking are often closely related in many social media environments (I see this often on Facebook fan pages).

Here’s a great example of a mainstream company taking advantage of this emerging trend:  Volkswagen recently went 100% mobile for their GTI launch and created a virtual game via the Apple App Store.  It includes a chance to compete to win one of six limited-edition 2010 GTIs.  This is a great example of social media “game” marketing—and relates to trend #5.

Word of Facebook caution! Companies that plan on running contests on Facebook need to proceed with caution. Facebook just announced that brands, advertisers, and marketers that want to run contests or sweepstakes on its platform have to go through an approval process first. And it could get pricey.  For more information, check out this post by Mari Smith.

Trend #4: Social Media Policies Become Standard for Businesses

Armano predicts in the coming months, your company will release the “rules of engagement” for social media activity. These will be social media guidelines.

Here’s some data to support this trend:

• 40% of companies actively block employee access to social media for any purpose and only 26% of companies actually encourage social media use to further business objectives, according to a report by Russell Herder.
• 54% of chief information officers (CIOs) do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason while they’re at work, according to a similar study by Robert Half Technology.
• 19% of businesses permit social media use for business purposes only and 16% permit social media activity for limited personal use, according to the same study by Robert Half Technology.

Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology, points out, “Professionals should let common sense prevail when using Facebook and similar sites—even outside of business hours.  Regrettable posts can be a career liability.”<

Trend #5: Mobile Becomes a Social Media Lifeline

According to Armano, with the banning of social media activity increasing in the workplace and smartphone sales on the rise, the social networking addiction will be carried over to mobile devices.

Here’s some research to support this trend:

• AT&T’s mobile data traffic increased 4,932% over the last three years and over 1 billion “heavy mobile data users” are predicted by 2013, according to a presentation given by Morgan Stanley’s Economy Internet Trends.
• 46% of users younger than 35 prefer to engage in all things social media via a mobile device,according to a Gadgetology study.
• 20% of all bloggers report updating their blog from a mobile device, according to Technorati’s recent State of the Blogosphere report.

Trend #6:  Social Networks Reduce Users’ Reliance on Email

Armano predicts sharing of content will be sent via social networking sites instead of via traditional email.

Here’s data to support this trend:

• 32% of Gen Y consumers share promotional offers with members inside a social network, according to a report titled Participatory Network Marketing Methodology.
• 34% of marketers feel integrating social media and email marketing is one of the most important email marketing initiatives, according to a study by Universal McCann.
• 81.5% of social network users (those who use the Internet at least every other day) say messaging friends is the top activity when visiting social media sites, also reported by Universal McCann.

Here I’ve highlighted the studies and articles that support Armano’s conclusions.  The research seems to affirm his predictions.

Do you agree with these predictions? Are there any you predict won’t surface as trends in 2010? What other trends would you add to the mix?  Please leave your comments below.

#1: By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. Adults Will Use Twitter Monthly

A new study by eMarketer surpasses their previous estimates of Twitter usage. The study, conducted just last month, found the following: “In 2009, there will be 18 million U.S. adults who access Twitter on any platform at least monthly. That represents a 200% increase over 2008 levels. Usage will reach 26 million U.S. adults in 2010, a further 44.4% climb.”

Earlier this year, eMarketer reported more conservative usage numbers, stating that there were indications of large numbers of users abandoning the site shortly after signing up and many others only using it sporadically. However, they recently revised their estimates because “recent data shows healthy—and growing—percentages of U.S. Internet users adopting the popular microblogging platform,” according to eMarketer senior analyst, Paul Verna.

Twitter is not the only social networking site to report record usage numbers. In September, Facebook officially hit the 300 million-user mark, making the social networking site nearly as large as the U.S. population.

#2: Americans Spend 17% of Online Time on Social Media Sites

As popular social media platforms continue to grow their numbers of users, it is logical to conclude that Americans are spending more time on social networking sites. According to a recent study by The Nielsen Company, 17% of the time spent online was at social networking sites (an increase from 6% in August 2008).

Among those paying the most attention to this recent trend are advertisers. Online ad spending increased by 119% to $108 million in August 2009.

#3: In 2010, Over 50% of Marketers Will Be Using Social Media

Marketers are becoming even more aware that social media marketing must be a key component of their media buy strategy. This was recently affirmed in the findings of the “2010 Media Planning Intelligence Study” by the Center for Media Research, which examined the likelihood of marketers including social media in their 2010 marketing plan. Over half (56.3%) of marketers stated that social media would “realistically” be part of that mix.

The top 5 most popular media for the 2010 marketing spend were as follows:

• Email (56.8%)
• Social networks (56.3%)
• Keyword search (49.7%)
• Radio (42.2%)
• Magazines (42.1%)

In addition, 57% of media buyers reported they will buy non-traditional media, including online, display video, search, mobile and event sponsorships, while 43% reported they will buy the more traditional media, including TV, print and radio.

#4: Blogs Most Useful Social Media Tool, Say 51% of Businesses

McKinsey Quarterly’s “Global Survey” examined companies’ overall assessment of the value of different social media technologies. As reviewed by eMarketer, “When it came to customer-related benefits, blogs were the most useful tool, bringing measurable benefits to 51% of responding companies worldwide. That was followed by video-sharing and social networking at 48% each, and RSS feeds at 45%.”

In addition to these findings, the top three reported benefits of Web 2.0 marketing included:

• Increased marketing effectiveness (52%)
• Higher customer satisfaction (43%)
• Reduced marketing costs (38%)

#5: 75% of Marketers Plan to Increase Social Media Use in 2010

According to a recent survey by virtual events provider Unisfair, marketers are most focused on attracting and keeping customers in 2010 and they plan to use social media to make this happen. A few interesting factoids from the Unisfair findings:

The 3 leading marketing priorities in 2010 according to U.S. marketers:

• New customer acquisition (60%)
• Customer retention and engagement (48%)
• Thought leadership (45%)

The top 5 marketing tactics U.S. marketers planned to increase in their 2010 marketing mix:

• Social media (75%)
• Web search/SEO (51%)
• Email campaigns (49%)
• Virtual events (48%)
• Online advertising (28%)

The study also asked marketers to rank the value of social media platforms. LinkedIn came in on top at 26%, Facebook at 23% and Twitter at 17%.

What are your thoughts? How might these study findings impact your future social media activities? I’d love to hear from you.