By Marina Shapiro
‘Out with the old, and in with the new.’ The industry of Social Media Marketing is maturing and we are predicting a new dawn for the Social Media revolution. So, what will it mean to be ‘social’ in 2011? What aspects of Social Media will be integral to the way businesses develop and grow? How will this impact the technology? Who will ‘win’ at Social Media this year? We’ve compiled top 11 predictions for the world of ‘social’ in 2011.
By Alex Romanovich, Social2B
“No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else”. – Bill Joy, Cofounder, Sun Microsystems The word Crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine, a portmanteau of the words ‘crowd’ and ‘outsourcing’. It is used to describe the phenomenon using group intelligence to solve problems and complete projects. A darling of Web 2.0, more and more companies are jumping on the crowdsourcing bandwagon, and even federal government agencies have begun to explore it, with the Federal Communications Commission crowdsourcing ideas on how to improve America’s broadband infrastructure.
The benefits of crowdsourcing are immense – not only does the crowdsourcing model have the potential to significantly reduce expenditure in the long term by not having to maintain permanent staff ‘on the bench’, it also allows companies to engage staff on a per-project basis, thus benefitting from having the people with the exact skills and expertise to fit each particular project. (more…)
By Alex Romanovich May 17th, 2009 ===== Oh no! I don’t want to scare you – this is not yet another post about whether Social Media Marketing (SMM) can be outsourced or not. Instead, it is a brief decomposition of what exactly I think can be, or cannot be, outsourced. Later on, I also provide a few examples of tools and techniques, which can be used to guide yourself into the world of Social Media. First, let me say – Social Media Marketing, like any other service, can be decomposed, broken into smaller tasks, and yes, outsourced. Let’s also agree that, in reality, outsourcing, is not about ‘shipping jobs overseas’, but rather a fairly old process of off-loading a set of processes and tasks to a qualified professional, hopefully with knowledge of the subject matter. Secondly, if we were to break Social Media Marketing into components, tasks and functions, we could come up with a very long and interesting list, similar to this one:
…and many other tasks and functions that we can list above. In reality, depending on how, when and what you are trying to achieve with Social Media Marketing, an organization can decide whether to outsource any of it or not. Certainly, if you are going to blog about the aviation industry, you would have to know something about it. Or if you are developing a strategy for small and medium size retailers, who are looking for ways to survive, and potentially grow, you’d better know something about catalog management and eCommerce. Truthfully, organizations need to decide what they can do internally, and what could be outsourced, out-tasked, crowdsourced, and ‘expert-sourced’. Social Media Marketing opens a number of opportunities for improvement if companies honestly assess their capabilities and admit their weaknesses, one of which could be their inability to manage projects successfully, or political undertones of their operations, blocking progress. In the end, Social Media Marketing is a ‘recombinant set of tools and services’, capable of assembling and disassembling upon need, to deliver tangible results – measured, tracked, and explained. Once the results are well understood by the marketing organization, changes, tweaks, and enhancement can be made. Most importantly, whether you outsource any of the above functions or keep it tightly interwoven within your marketing and technology organizations, one thing is absolutely clear – you, as an organization, need to dedicate yourself to a long term Social Media Marketing strategy and execution. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 
