Last month, I was asked to speak at a conference at the School of International Business on social media. Whilst researching this topic, I came across some insights into what I anticipate will be the next big thing in the world of social media.
Here are my ten points of view:
1) Until now, brands have been focused on attracting as many people as possible to their websites. Consumer brands can now reap the rewards by building social online shops, where Facebook users (all 700 million of them) can buy products on their favourite social network without having to visit any external website. Facebook could become one of the main channels for online shopping in the future. In 2010, companies spent around $1.4 billion on social media initiatives. Local businesses should probably focus on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp or Foursquare. For technology-oriented companies, the best approach is to create blogs and communities on Twitter, Facebook, Quora or Hacker News.
2) The physical and digital worlds will be more connected than ever – as it is now possible to go for a run in the park and track our progress online, whilst sharing our weight loss with friends via iPhone apps that link to our Facebook and Twitter profiles, allowing us to track our progress and share information with friends.
3) Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms will become increasingly important as channels through which other companies can grow and develop their own technologies and businesses. Several companies, such as Media Marketing Online (MMO) and Zynga (among others), have reaped huge profits «at the expense» of these two platforms.
4) Companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon are collecting information about each and every one of us: our likes and dislikes, our interests and aversions. In the age of Web 3.0, the era of the Semantic Web, we will no longer need to search for information on the web; it will find us based on all the data that companies are collecting. The right information will be served to the right people at the right time, saving a considerable amount of time, effort and energy.
5) Mobile technology will become the dominant force, and geolocation will develop further, enabling it to offer us special promotions, vouchers and recommendations based on our geographical location and personal interests.
6) Human relationships will no longer be based on physical dependence; we will make friends and socialise with people from all over the world and from all walks of life, all ethnic backgrounds and all faiths, creating a melting pot of cultures from across the globe.
7) We will no longer be passive media consumers. The media will interact with us dynamically across all platforms. Just like WOW players today, we will all become part of a virtual world that is unknown to us, but in which we are all avatars in the game of life.
8) As the web becomes increasingly overloaded with information, the content we are exposed to will become increasingly personalised, as large companies, by investing large sums of money in firms such as Facebook and Google, will ensure that the information they present is highly tailored to our interests. This is instead of experiencing information overload, which would actually have the opposite effect.
9) Businesses will gain a better understanding of how to measure the ROI of their social media marketing efforts and will realise that social media is not simply a figure representing the number of people in their communities, but rather a participant who shares their page and the general sentiment online.
10) There will be an ever-increasing number of new sources to cover more digital services. Whether it’s how we get from A to B (Waze), how we find answers to our questions (Quora), how we test our websites (uTest), how to get things done (Fiverr) or how we share information (Wikipedia).
All these ideas are, of course, just speculation based on my own experience. What do you think is next in social media marketing?.