We’ve all had fun (well, all apart from him), but the party season is now over.
At the same time, social business is now coming of age – and growing up quickly
I know I’ve been a touch quiet on the blogging front recently (mostly due to being extremely busy), but it seems only right to start January by publishing a few predictions about what 2012 might hold for social business/social media.
I’ll be posting a series of social media/social business predictions in total over the next few days, in no particular order, but a few a day. As ever, comments very welcome…
Enterprise versions of Google+ and Facebook will bring social business tools (if not thinking) into the mainstream
People will get more used to sharing information within organisations in a manner which does NOT rely on email – a trend exascerbated by the influx of Gen-Y and beyond employees. Email will not die – far from it, it’s still the document of record for back-coverers everywhere, but the providers of tools for social business – in particular Google+ – will have a very good year. Especially if they can sort out the ugly UI.
Organisations will radically streamline their social media presences
Jeremiah Owyang’s recent research suggested that the average organisation has 178 different social media accounts. These will have to be streamlined, and ownership/management will tend to be brought into the centre of businesses before being devolved to business units again once
The ‘Centre of Excellence’ model/hub-and-spoke leading to ‘dandelion’ approach will become ever more common.
Community Management will rightly start to be seen as a subset of Content Planning.
The more platforms that an organisation is active across, the more thought needs to go into the roles for each of those platforms (including the audiences targeted and communities served). It simply won’t be good enough to replicate your Facebook posts on Google+, Twitter, Path, etc. etc