Top 8 Social Media Predictions for 2012

A few Predictions for Social Media in 2012.

1. Social media will be incorporated into corporate websites

Many businesses have added social media links and information to their websites that consumers now look for these links. Visiting a companies Facebook page or Twitter profile has become as important as reading reviews on the business, and corporate websites have noticed this. 2012 will be their time to join the fun.

2. An increase in social media usage on mobile devices

CNet.com reported that, “In April, research firm Gartner reported that over 296 million smartphones shipped worldwide last year. This year, the research firm expects that figure to jump to 468 million. Next year, smartphone shipments could jump to over 630 million, the company said. But all those figures pale in comparison to Gartner’s expected 2015 shipments. The research firm said that by then, 1.1 billion smartphones will ship worldwide.”

3. An increase in personal support

In 2011, individuals began reaching out to others through social media websites. Their problems, issues and causes were spread through outlets like Facebook communities; this has become an accepted outlet to share experiences, find others who support the same causes or have the same problems as you. This type of viral support will only increase in the years to come.

4. Social media budgets will grow

Now that businesses have seen how social media has effected the world, they realize how important their own social media presence is. Websites like, Facebook and Twitter, are such a large part of everyday life for so many people that it’s hard to picture life without this social connection.

5. Social media advertizing will grow

With so many people skipping TV commercials, businesses will look to take their advertizing where the people actually are: social media websites. Some companies will create in-house positions and others will outsource to get their information to the public (via blogs, reviews, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other outlets relevant to their business.)

6. Creating websites that are compatible with mobile devices

With the increase in smartphone owners, iPads, Tablets, Nooks and so on, companies will have to make sure their website can be accessed through these devices. People often access their favorite websites from their smartphone or tablet while at work, in the airport, waiting at the doctors office, etc. If they can’t access your businesses information, your businesses loses out.

7. Election campaigns + social media

It all started around the time of President Obama’s Presidential Campaign – an increase in Facebook pages geared toward the election and candidates popped up everywhere. These days it seems as if every public figure has their own Facebook account to keep the people informed – including our President.

8. Facebook will surpass 1 Billion people

“Where does that more than 1 billion Facebook users come from? The countries with more than 20 million people and Facebook penetration below 20% will add most of this growth in 2012. Add the potential growth of other countries and you get to a cool billion or 1.1 billion even. And that does not include China.

To see the next level of social media checkout my companies new break-through Social TV platform at http://facebook.com/transitionmanlivetv

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on “How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to: at http://http://budurl.com/qhxc

Four Social Media Trends for 2011

In a recent Social Media Today article.

Here are 4 Social Media Trends, all maketers and business owners should keep in mind when using social media to grow their businesses.

1. Social commerce. Social who? In short, you can now sell on Facebook by letting your customers buy, but also letting them tell their friends. And letting their friends tell their friends. Even if you don’t offer ecommerce on your website, it’s now possible to provide that service through the social network. And it’s overly simple to set up.

2. Group buying. You’ve heard of sites, such as Groupon, that sell for discounts if you get your friends to “group” together to buy a product or service? Based on the $1 billion price tag Groupon received earlier this year, expect them and like-minded sites (such as LivingSocial, YouSwoop, and ScoutMom) to continue to grow, offering you a new way to reach different audiences.

3. Q&A sites. It may seem crazy if you’re not a high user of the social platforms, but people are beginning to make real decisions based on recommendations from their virtual friends. Sites such as JustAnswer will begin to pop up, allowing people to ask a question and get real answers, from real people. The marketing possibilities become endless because you’ll begin to collect data from groups of people instead of one customer at a time.

4. Mobile. It’s no surprise our phones are becoming like third hands for most of us or that we’re eons behind Asian countries on how we use them. But we’re beginning to catch on and move toward abandoning our laptops for phones. Watch for movement toward mobile payments and begin thinking about how to accept payments via an application on the phone.

So, other than content, customer engagement, net neutrality, FTC rules, social commerce, group buying, Q&A sites, and mobile, what trends are you seeing, using technology, for 2011?

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on “How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to: at http://budurl.com/qhxc/

Social Media Marketing training

In this Blog post I discuss how you can actual sell in the social networks. I will be conducting a social media training on Nov. 13-14, for Professional Speakers, Authors, Coaches, & Business owners. http://www.socialmedia4profits.blogspot.com/

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on “How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to: at http://budurl.com/qhxc/

Social Media Marketing - Tips for business growth

In this video: Social Media Marketing Expert Johnny Campbell- The Transition Man, shares exactly "How a business can succeed through the power of social media. He provides 6 tips for business growth and success.

For more marketing information on how to use Fan pages in business
Please be sure to Join my Fan page at:
http://facebook.com/transitionmanfan

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on “How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to: at http://budurl.com/qhxc/

The Art of Selling

If your interested in learning how to sell more effectively in a
sluggish economy, then I would like you to consider joining my
5 week video sales trainng class,
where I will teach you how to attract more leads and make more sales
using social media marketing and direct respones marketing.

For details on the training email me at: johnny@transitionman.com  
and I will provide you information.
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Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on
“How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to:
at http://budurl.com/qhxc/

How to Develop a Strategic Social Media Program for Business

Social media for fun does not require planning. You go with your guts and emotion and start joining places where it feels right for you. However, social media for business is at the other extreme, and to succeed there is a real need for proper planning before the execution.

Steps

Starting with a Strong Purpose

1. Know your purpose. Like any good corporate program or initiative, a strong purpose and a good set of objectives is important. This set of purpose and objectives has to be relevant and aligned to your other corporate objectives.
   
2. Know the limitations. It is important to know that not all objectives or purpose can be served by social media and it would be foolish to assume so, just because everybody is in social media. Social media is effective not only in PR, marketing and brand building but it is also effective when use for innovation crowd-sourcing, building corporate culture and market engagements.
   

Knowing Your Social Media Landscape

1. Know the landscape. Before engaging social media for business purposes, it is important that the people involved in the social media initiative have a clear understanding of the attributes of the field they will be playing in. Know the landscape before you start constructing. The social media landscape generally consists of the following attributes that should always be in the mind of social media strategist or planning team:
   
   • Community-driven where people not only listen or view ads and news but they participate in this new media.
     
   • Conversation is the new content king aside from videos and images. As David Armano said "It's the conversation economy".[1]
     
   • It's viral where people spread, shared and transmit content readily. That's what makes social media contagious.
     
   • Personal spaces are even more pronounced, if you got no permission don't enter. Nobody wants to be spammed or get ads-bombed.
     
   • Authenticity is what makes social media real and human. Don't bother with high cost production houses; real is soul here.
     
   
   
2. Build relationships. At the end of the day, these attributes are what builds relationships among friends. Get acquainted with people who were previously a stranger to you. These attributes build a strong fan base for your brands and business. Small businesses and unknown musicians become famous because of them too.
   

Build A Road - The 4Es of Social Media

1. Build a road. After you have understood what social media landscape attributes are, you will need to build a road before you can travel to your destination. The road here is acquainted to the 4 primary social media strategies that your company can deploy in your social media initiatives. These are the 4Es of social media:
   
   • Education Strategy - Enriching your target community's knowledge with information and resources for them to better understand you.
     
   • Entertainment Strategy - You create fun, sticky and memorable content that allows them to associate the image or message to your brand or business.
     
   • Engagement Strategy - Your purpose is to engage the community by recognizing their presence, contributions and inputs.
     
   • Empowerment Strategy - A space and role is created and provided to your target community to play an active role in what you are doing.
     
   
   
2. Tailor to your size. If your company is large enough, you can opt to deploy all at the same time (hey! you got a super highway) but if your company is small choosing the most relevant and effective route will be your best investment and keeps your resources focus.
   

Build, Hire but Don't Steal A Vehicle

1. Build slowly. You need a set of wheels to move forward. Once the road is ready, in order for you to move forward you will need a set of wheels. Depending on the size of your company, it would mean a bicycle, tricycle, motorcycle, car, F1 sports car etc. The set of wheels here that we refer to are the social media tools and widgets that you will need to decide on what to use, how they can work together and when to use it. There are thousands of them around and there are few that are most popular like Hubpages here. In general the sets of social media tools can be divided into 4 major categories:
   
   • Networking tools - blogs, microblogs, social networks, etc.
     
   • Collaboration tools - wikis, social news, social bookmarking, etc.
     
   • Multimedia tools - videos, images, interactive contents, etc.
     
   • Entertainment tools - virtual worlds, online gaming, etc.
     
   
   
2. Select according to need. Selecting the right combination of tools is important and helps you build expertise on this tools over time, because frankly you don;t want to be managing 20 social networking sites at one go.
   

Guide Your Journey

1. Set up road signs. Whenever anyone goes on a long journey or to unfamiliar places, one of the most important thing to have when he/she is travelling is to be able to refer to the roadsigns on the side of the road. It tells you your destination, the dangers, and other necessary information to make sure you don't get lost or end up in a road that has no gas/petrol station. The same logic applies to social media. It is important that your social media initiative has a good set of metric or measurements that will tell how you are doing at any one time. Nathan Gilliatt of Social Target LLC categorizes measurements into 4 distinct types:[2]
   
   • PR/media measurement - Viewing social media as media for their ability to reach an audience.
     
   • Word of mouth measurement - Viewing social media as online interactions among people.
     
   • Web analytics - Interested in people's usage patterns, as both audience and customers.
     
   • Opinion research - Mining online opinions as the world's largest focus group.
     
   
   
2. Translate into equity. All these are important to consider but even more important to actually measure is to be able to translate the measurement information above into what we called the "Social Media Equity", a set of fundamentals that are important for companies to make decisions about their social media investments.
   
   • Strength of relationship (size, quality, relevance of type of activities etc)
     
   • Degree of familiarity (with your business, brands etc, not just awareness)
     
   • Degree of efficiency (where and how efficient is your viral logistics)
     
   • Value creation (are there any?)
     
   
   
3. Be aware that measurement via loyalty is but one aspect. Loyalty without social media equity nailed down, it is hard to say whether your investment in social media has actually work or not. This is because having 100,000 readers in your blog only says so much as 100,000 eyeballs of awareness but is this sufficient as a measure for performance?
   

Don't Forget the Fuel

1. Get going. So you understood the terrain, you got yourself a road/highway, bought your wheels, set up the roadsigns, so let's move it. Hold on a sec! Have you fueled? Fueling your social media initiative is no small task because when your company wants to take social media seriously, you got to really invest in:
   
   • Time - yes, time to know how to use the widgets, set up your blog, create content, filter content, participate in conversations, spread your virus.
     
   • Fresh Content - needs to be cooked up periodically whether it is from your company or from other sources. Social media is not a corporate website where you can stick up one article and let it stay there for time immemorial.
     
   • Dedicated Team - yes, social media is no part time job for your HR manager, corp comm or PR or marketing team. If your guy has a business card that reads:
     
     • Mr So and So Sales, Marketing and Social Media Manager; your fuel is going to run low real soon.
       
     
     
   • Creative Juices - to create value relevant content and conversations. Creative here does not necessary equate to fantastic designs but to content and conversations that delivered in ways that are of use. If you can put aesthetic make-up to that, this is even better.
     
   • Good Design - because nobody wants to stick around a 1.0 design site and initiative.
     
   • Widget Familiar - This is given. Anybody that wants to be in social media has to get themselves familiar with at least 10 to 30 different widgets and how they work and inter-work with each other.
     
   
   
2. Get involved; be active in getting it moving. If your plan is to ask your IT department to hook it up for you via a memo or official request and then put that task to a queue of other stuff that the IT department has to attend to; that is really not going to work.
   

The Take Back

1. Always be aware that there is nothing to loose when social media is done for the fun, but in business a lot is at stake and you certainly don't want your company, brand or initiative falling short.
   

Sources and Citations

1. ↑ http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2007/id20070409_372598.htm


2. ↑ http://net-savvy.com/executive/measurement/measurement-silos-are-you-measuring-media-or.html

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on
“How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to:
at http://budurl.com/qhxc/

Social Media Marketing - The One Big Problem

Johnny Campbell- The Transition Man shares the one biggest problem with using social media marketing to grow your business. Please feel free to comment on the post and re-tweet it.





Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on
“How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to:
at http://http://budurl.com/qhxc

Social Networking by Seth Godin

Great Video by Seth Godin on social networking I love it, this is how you succeed and what I teach at my social media marketing trainings.

Checkout my videos below and you will see what I mean. Social Media Marketing success requires you to have something in common with the people you want to connect with and be of service to.

Social Media Marketing- is it working for you

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on
“How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to:
at http://budurl.com/qhxc/

Social Bookmarking - 3 reason to use it in business

If you are trying to sell things on the Internet and you do not have a blog you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. Would you go to play golf without a putter?

Your competition is blogging and they are beating your pants off every day with ease. A part of blogging is submitting your articles to social directories.

Here are 3 reasons social bookmarking must be a part of your business.

1. Social Bookmarking is a popular way to get information. Directories like Digg and Reddit are quickly becoming the choice of people all over the world as a way to keep up to date on what is going on.
If you are not blogging and submitting to relevant social directories you are missing out on this easy form of traffic.

2. Social bookmarking is easy to do. Here's what you need. You should get a Blogger blog and set it up so that you can quickly bookmark the top directories. Then you should post in your blog everyday. If you can talk and type you can blog.

3. Social Bookmarking is an interactive way to develop relationships with your readers. This has become know as Web 2.0 and it is important to the future of your business.

People still like to deal with people. This is an age-old sales trick that sometimes gets lost on the Internet. By making yourself and your blog interactive you become a real person. This will help increase your chances for sales and repeat sales.

4. Search engines love social book marketing sites. You are making their life easy when you blog around keyword rich topics that a person researching can find. When you master the techniques of social book marketing you will find you can get on page one of Google and other search engines very quickly.

The reason for this is search engines are spidering Digg, Reddit, stumble upon, and many more non-stop looking for fresh relevant content to put online. This may as well be you as opposed to your competition.

If all of this seems confusing it really shouldn't be. Read join my newsletter and get my “Social Media Sales Report. It is a free report you will receive once you join my newsletter. In it you will learn everything you ever wanted to know on social book marketing and how to use it to increase your business.

Do not wait until tomorrow to get started. Do it today and your business will thank you.

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on
“How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to:
at http://http://budurl.com/qhxc

Generate Traffic with Powerful Headlines

Did you know that people scan web sites, using headlines to help them decide whether it's worth their time to read the whole page. If you want to give your copy a chance to be read, you need to use compelling descriptive headlines.

Your article headline is a promise to the prospective readers.

The headline's job is to communicate clearly the benefit that the reader will receive in exchange for their limited time. In order to write a great headline and great content, you need to start with the headline first. Promises need to be made before they can be fulfilled. If you write the content first you are trying to fulfill your promise before it is made.

With a compelling headline in front of you, you will need to produce compelling content in order to fulfill the promise. Your headline is the first impression you will make on a prospective reader.

In fact, most of the time it will be the only impression you will make, as only 2 out of 10 readers read beyond the headline. The better your headline, the better your chances of getting the rest of what you have written read. So the headline plays the significant role in the effectiveness of the entire article.

How can someone with no experience come up with a compelling headline?

The easiest way is to cheat. Well, not exactly. Borrow would be a better term. Every copywriter has what is called a "swipe file". This is a collection of ads and articles that have successful headlines. There are also resources that can be found that contain lists of successful headlines. Using such tools for developing headlines is not really considered cheating.

The collection of successful headlines provides guidance in formulating a new somewhat unique headline. It is actually very rare that a copywriter will come up with a 100% totally unique headline.

It is the promise of the headline that attracts the reader. If it depicts a benefit that the reader desires, then the reader will continue on and read the article. "How to" articles are very attractive to readers.

Whenever "How to" is used in a headline the benefit of reading the article is very clear.

Examples would be:
"How to Get Rich"
"How to Save Money"
"How to Get a Date"

The promise and benefit of the articles is very clear with these headlines. Write a headline with a compelling promise and a desirable benefit and your chances of the reader deciding to stop and read the whole story is greatly enhance.

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on
“How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to:
at http://budurl.com/qhxc/

Social Media Marketing- selling tips

Social Media Marketing sales process explained.

Recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on
“How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business” For details go to:
at http://budurl.com/qhxc/

Social Media Marketing - 3 strategies for growing your business.

Social media marketing in a nutshell is a way to promote your business online using social networks and channels. Social Media marketing is proving to be the most powerful way to build your brand, gain social creditability, and make money.

Keeping this in mind, listed below are 3 ways to use social media marketing to grow your business.

1. Blogging is a very strong way to combine various forms of social media marketing all in one place. If you do not have a blog you are losing ground to your competitors who do.

2. Social Bookmark your blog posts to create traffic from social directories and as search engine bait for search engine traffic. Be sure and use a quality blogging platform such as blogger.com.Social bookmarking gives you a way to get links back to your blog very quickly & gain social creditability. You should be bookmarking to social directories such as Technorati, Digg, and Stumbleupon.

Also go get a Twitter account and twitter is quickly becoming a great way to drive traffic to your video, blog, or website . Twitter is fast becoming one of the top social sites online to gain major exposure. You can follow me at: http://www.twitter.com/transitionman

3. Video sharing sites such as YouTube are becoming a favorite way for bloggers to
add some excitement to their blogs, but it is also much more than that. Many bloggers are also easily creating videos and putting them online on their blog. This is a very powerful form of social media that is giving your visitor what they want. Many people are a product of the TV generation and like to learn by watching as opposed to reading.

There is much more I could say about social media including social networking in places such as FaceBook, linkedin, and many others. The bottom line is making money online & offline via social media marketing all comes down to you educating yourself about the social media, investing educational materials and taking action every single day to impliment a social media tactic.

To help you in this area I recently I completed an in-depth 75min teleseminar on
“How to use social media marketing tactics to grow your business”
For details click on the link http://tinyurl.com/49xwrn/