@erine put me on to this article about social media trends in 2012. I find it interesting that so many focus on the consumer to company relationship or Social Media rather than the variety of other relationships like employee to employee, partner to company, supplier to company, researcher to researcher, etc. That said, consumer relationships drive a lot of business and this article has 5 trends on social media. My favorite trend is the fragmenting of social channels. I wonder if anyone else finds that as funny as me. Social brings people and companies together but it’s fragmenting.
OK, enough said, Here are a couple good quotes but go to the site for the entire article.
Social media will be legitimized as a channel for communications
Social Relationship Management (SRM) will be a line item in large enterprise marketing budgets. Moreover, if it is already a line item, the investment will scale significantly. Social will move from being tagged as “additional responsibilities” for marketers, call center workers, and customer service reps, to being managed by legitimate, full-time resources.……..
Consumers already expect brands to respond via the channel of their choice, which is increasingly Facebook or Twitter. Therefore, lacking an infrastructure to manage these social channels will become unacceptable.
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With the exploding influence of networked consumers, the critical need for cross-departmental SRM, and frontline community managers, I predict that 2012 will be the year of social @scale.
