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.

1. “…next year is really going to be about paring down to the essentials based on proven successes and strong metrics.” http://mashable.com/2010/12/21/small-business-predictions/ 2. “Outsourcing social media such as blogs, writing e-mails, answering customer service inquiries, writing web copy, social media, ghostwritten blogs, tweets. People don’t always have the availability to write, tweet, research and post their own content.” http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2011-big-ideas-for-small-businesses-0835/ 3. “All signs are pointing toward a multicultural Web. By 2015, a billion people in BRIC countries [Brazil, Russia, India and China] will be using PCs. Thus, 2011 will mark the year that businesses either adapt to these changes or get left woefully behind.” http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2011-big-ideas-for-small-businesses-0835/ 4. “If you don’t have a mobile version of your site today, you are already behind.” http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1934793/21-social-media-predictions-trends-2011 5. “B2B companies will catch up to B2C companies in using social media.”           http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1934793/21-social-media-predictions-trends-2011 6. “The Rise of the Marketing Technologist – Marketers for the last few years have been closet techno geeks and it’s time for them to rise up – companies need digitally fluent marketers who can apply technologies to help make marketing more measurable and scientific. Then we can really change the dynamic from marketing as a cost center to marketing as a profit center!” http://socialmediatoday.com/pauldunay/250079/11-b2b-marketing-predictions-2011 7. “Marketing and sales alignment continues to be the #1 issue impeding marketing’s ability to be perceived as a major driver of B2B business value.” http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/strategy/b2b-marketing-predictions-for-2011 8. “Consumers’ increasing concerns over noise and privacy will decrease the relatively open access marketers have enjoyed in social channels. The easiest tactics will be the least effective, forcing marketers to bring the same kind of creativity, audience differentiation, and strategy that they bring in other channels. www.forrester.com/rb/Research/2011_now_social_media_marketing_gets_tough/q/id/57771/t/2?cm_mmc=Forrester-_-Blogs-_-Related%20Research-_-5583 9. “Social media measurement will mature rapidly now that there is real money being spent by marketers in the social realm. http://marketingmeasurementtoday.blogspot.com/2011/01/predictions-for-social-media-metrics.html 10.  “Commerce happens in communities of interest — not social networks. First, I’d like to distinguish between a social network and a community of interest, though the terms are often used interchangeably. Social networks or, more aptly, social networking is how we connect with people.” http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=147897 11.  “In 2011, those brands that truly embrace “social content generation” will build themselves a kingdom. The connections between brand, art or skill and visual communications in a socially connected world can create powerfully authentic appeal for brands.”  http://www.fastcompany.com/1712634/2011-back-to-the-future So there you have it- the 11 ‘social’ pointers set to make big news in 2011.  All of which tell us that the future of Social Media is changing and evolving into a force that no business large or small can afford to ignore.   The future is bright. The future is Social (albeit a new hybrid of ‘social’). Are you ready for it?

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. However, it can be a double-edged sword. The skills and expertise that are so easy (relatively) to capture by assembling a temporary, specialized workforce are also easily lost, and cooperation is often short term. ‘Crowdsourced’ projects also need to be managed carefully – when working with unknown entities, it is vital that they are managed properly to ensure the most positive outcome is reached. There is also a lack of stability. But in these days of financial turmoil, when even the most indispensible employee is worried about job security, we are naturally led to ask: is there such as thing as stability anymore?

Employees are fast becoming a liability for some corporations. As well as take-home salary, there are taxes, training, insurance costs, and so on, and companies are being forced to consider entirely new ways of working in order to survive, including open source and crowdsourcing models. But crowdsourcing is not just for startups – Google Summer of Code, an initiative which invites student programmers to compete for places on a scheme to develop open source projects for mentors, is probably one of the best known and successful examples of crowdsourcing.

Non-tech corporations are getting in on the act, too: household products giant Unilever has recently decided to drop its advertising agency of 16 years, Lowe, and will instead use the crowdsourcing platform IdeaBounty to source ideas for its future campaigns, by submitting a brief to the public and choosing the best among the ideas put forward. Naturally using Social Media to source talent, ideas and resources. Large corporations have always used occasional freelancers; crowdsourcing is merely an extension of this. If properly coordinated and planned with legal and human resources, the crowdsourced environment is a tremendous vehicle for communication – a way to massively increase knowledge, and by extension, the ability innovate and increase production.

Yochai Benkler, of Yale University, in his book The Wealth of Networks, sums it up extremely well: “The world is becoming too fast, too complex and too networked for any company to have all the answers inside”. Crowdsourcing as a concept is still in its infancy, and the company that is able to effectively harness its power now will without doubt be in a superior position to benefit in future. This concept is proof of why Social Media and Crowdsourcing are seemingly becoming synonymous. Many ideas, case studies, and even human resources are gathered and distributed using Social Media.

There are a number of examples where large brands and small start-ups are using ‘crowdsourced’ models to feature new products, solicit opinions on new features and improvements, and form groups of affinity, or professional social networks. Examples such as LinkedIn Groups, TheSocialCMO, The CMO Club, Social2B, Experts Exchange, and many others, provide fertile ground for thought leadership, member exchange, aggregation of expertise and ideas, and channels for distribution of content, thus ‘crowdsourcing’ content and user feedback.

The CMO Club, one of the fastest growing social professional networks of leading top marketers worldwide, is yet another example of a well integrated model, with ideas, research content, online and off-line conversation leading to an improvement in the quality of the marketing discipline. “I was really tired of low quality marketing conferences and ‘vendor-centric’ presentations and decided that leading marketing executives could do better”, stated Pete Krainik, Founder of The CMO Club.

“The crowdsourcing of ideas and conversations, leading to action and improvement is what we are all about.” And through my participation with The Social CMO Crew which continues to emerge as a thought leadership and digital marketing collective, again joint participation and action are leading to the creation of new marketing ideas, models, roles and channels. @JeffAshcroft who founded TheSocialCMO and The Social CMO Crew in August of 2009 shared the following. “As we migrate further into this realm of social collective communications and action, new models, performing well beyond the sum of the parts, will continue to emerge and evolve resulting in exponential increases in reach, quality, effectiveness and social impact.”

Marketing expertise group Social2B is an example of the crowdsourcing model on an international scale – with associates and experts based around the world, including the US, UK, Russia and Eastern Europe, and Argentina, they leverage a bank of multilingual, multicultural experts to call upon when needed. This new way of doing business allows even the smallest of companies to harness the power of a large group of specialized talent. The above entities demonstrate how Social Media and Crowdsourcing are integrally linked and at the same time how these new modes of organization are leading to an acceleration in the development and refinement of new ideas as well as the generation of new business models and positive social outcomes. You can listen to the BlogTalkRadio recording of the recent Crowdsourcing Interview with Alex Romanovich here:

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:

• Social Media Marketing Strategy
• Social Media Marketing Blueprint or Action Plan
• Social Media Channel Strategy (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube or a slightly different combination of the previously mentioned social media channels)
• Online Reputation Management, or set of reputation and brand related tools and services
• Social Media Profile Creation, Integration, and Management (Maintenance) – most of us know how to set up Twitter and Facebook accounts, but some of us don’t like to do it
• Blog creation, marketing, and optimization
• Online video marketing (video blogs included)
• Blog and Twitter (‘listening devices’) data collection, analysis, interpretation
• Action, related to ‘what to do next’ in the terms of marketing or communications response or maintenance
• Data mining and text analytics
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Copywriting and Creative Writing

…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.