Social Media Trends for 2011 – Multi-Channel and Cross-Media Social Networks

Hi friends, Hope all is well! Today is the day to talk about social media trends for 2011. Social Media Optimization, as a part of Internet Marketing, is a key to success for online business in 2011. Actually it was a key to success in 2010 too.What I want to say is - on the one hand all marketers are once again looking at how they can regain and grow market share, on the other - in contrast, these same marketing professionals are faced with a growing population of digitally-oriented consumers who are connected 24/7 / 365, increasingly immune to the marketing practices of the last decade and are exposed to anywhere from 300 to 3,000 individual marketing message every day. So, where are marketers and online entrepreneurs putting investments in 2011? Here's my thoughts about it! Social Media Social media is nothing new but has simply gone online or evolved from its offline ancestor, the physical social network such as the Rotary Club or other in-person professional and networking organizations. The fundamental value of social media is the ability to share content among like-minded individuals. This makes for a natural union between consumer product companies and social media. However today’s form of online social networking is about listening, building and interacting with a community. It is a tool to use and one to better help you engage and listen to your customers, fans, business partners and anyone you define as your community. As a marketing tool, we are looking at some very large audience figures with social media and according to their own sources, Facebook has more than 500 million users, LinkedIn 75 million users and Twitter 105 million users who send 65 million tweets each day. Together, these add up to over 700 million users, listeners or viewers a company can engage. For the sake of comparison, just over 100 million users watched the U.S. Super Bowl in January of 2010, but keep in mind that’s the highest number for the competition in American television history! Social media is not going away and using and engaging with it is critical! Multi-Channel, Cross-Media and Integrated Marketing There’s no silver bullet when it comes to internet marketing and customers, and prospects respond and prefer different marketing mediums, including online, print, broadcast, mobile and social media. Smart marketing professionals are not only using more than one medium but also integrating various mediums to lead the viewer or user through a brand experience across multiple marketing platforms. These experiences can take the form of billboards with QR codes, print advertising with a mobile phone SMS call to action or go the advertiser’s Facebook account and hit the “Like” button or a mobile video ad that allowed you to view additional mobile video footage and share with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers. As you can see, just as our companies, products and people change, so does the marketing field and best methods for engaging audiences around the global. To develop the greatest impact with your campaigns, you must keep up on these trends because it’s where consumers will be going and you don’t want your competitors to beat you to the best ways to interact with audiences you need to reach. In the next two months, we’ll take a closer look at these trends and what mobile, social media and integration of these major trends can mean for marketers looking to stay on top.