Social media in 2010

Mobile internet has grown immensely in 2009 and according to the latest TrendsSpotting report it will be at the heart of social media in 2010:

Mobile social media
In the report, David Armano says “mobile becomes a social media lifeline”: on the basis that nearly 70% of organisations ban social networking in the workplace, mobile internet will be a lifeline for addicted workers and what was once a cigarette break could turn into a social media break.

Dan Zarella predicts that with the rise of augmented reality, the border between the web and reality will become increasingly blurred.

As people trust other people online when it comes to forming an opinion about a product or service, the growth of the mobile internet will mean this increasingly occurs at the point of consumption. Imagine you’re in a shop, hesitating between two vacuum cleaners. What do you do? Do you ask the salesman or you check out independent consumer reviews via your mobile?

With the development of geolocation apps, this principle also applies to restaurants, bars, hotels, etc.. You’re travelling to Paris for business, you’ve just finished your meeting in a neighborhood that you’re not familiar with and you’re looking for a restaurant to have lunch? What do you do? Check out the reviews of the local brasseries on your mobile on Yelp, of course.

Social media goes up the agenda of organisations
The good news is that in 2010 companies seem to have plans to invest seriously in social media. According to BizReport, social media is a priority for marketers: more than half of respondents (56.3%) had planned to include social media in their marketing mix.

This is in line with the TrendsSpotting report where many social media players talk about the growing importance of social media for organisations.

According to Charlene Li, “social media will become part of everyday lexicon for business in 2010″ while for Adam Cohen, “Social media gets smarter”: companies will start using social media more strategically.

For Connie Benson, “social media will shift from being experimental to metrics and the loop will be closed so that social media monitoring is necessary and actionable”.

David Armano highlights that as of today, very few organisations have used social media beyond campaigns. He uses Best Buy as a benchmark of a company that has really managed to leverage social media strategically (Robin wrote about Best Buy and social media a few months ago).

David Armano goes further by predicting the mass adoption of social media policies in companies in 2010: specific rules of engagement across different social networks, rules on how employees’ participation in social media.

I agree with David. This year, companies will understand the importance of investing for the long term in social media rather than just on specific campaigns – as Robin put it, “stop campaigning and start committing”.

What was already important for brands in 2009 becomes crucial in 2010: listening to and participating in online conversations as they have a real impact on people’s opinions. Even more so now that Google and Microsoft have incorporated the real-time social web at the core of their search algorithms: Today, when researching a brand, you’ll surely find tweets about it.

Already this year Pepsi has dropped its Super Bowl advertising spend (after 23 consecutive years) to invest in social media in 2010, which implies these predictions may have some weight…