Social Media Marketing In The Year Of The Dragon
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Mon, Jan 23, 2012
Last year, we had some really breakthrough moments for social media. Who can forget the much-hyped launch of Google+, the new Facebook timeline, Charlie Sheen’s fall from grace and the death of Steve Jobs? We had the rise of twitter use for businesses, and the development of location based marketing. QR codes became inexplicably trendy, and Instagram turned everyone into a professional photographer. In figures, there were some memorable moments too:
- Facebook broke 800 million followers
- Twitter had its fifth birthday
- Google+ rapidly grew to 150 million users
- 50% of social network members connected to a brand
So what’s coming next? What can we expect from this dynamic area in 2012? Let’s take a look
“Search plus your world” from Google
Google has a ton of new features and online communities compared to this time last year. Now Google is going to integrate what it knows about you into search results: they will be personalized. Most of these personalized results will come from the Google+ network and be built into the main results. Some are enthusiastic about this change and some are wary: what if search results end up being determined by how many Google +1’s a certain page has? Will we all become a slave to the +1 button? Only time will tell.
“Social” advertising becomes mainstream
Advertising on Social Media will grow in 2012. 90% of customers online say they will trust recommendations from people that they know, and 70% will trust the opinions posted online by users they don’t know. Advertising is going to get smarter to take these statistics into account. We see more companies moving to social advertising away from traditional PPC platforms.
How do you think social media marketing will pan out in the year of the Dragon? Will we see more advertising, and further integration into business and marketing strategies? Sound off below.
Don't forget to check out this FREE whitepaper '10 Tips on Monitoring Social Media'.
