"I see a future cluttered with crowded and decreasingly relevant social media..."
My buddy Joe Pulizzi has just released the 2011 version of his 100+ Content and Social Media Predictions available here. My prognostication appears on page fifteen.
Since Joe sent out his request for opinions way back when (a month ago?), my opinion has changed somewhat. One reason: the impact of a marketers survey serving as the foundation of a report I’m writing with a client. I can’t quote from it until it’s released, but I can say it reveals some very interesting things regarding the respective roles of mobile marketing and social media…
So, my altered opinion for 2011: as mobile grows in significance, marketers who experience the very immediate and measurable impact of mobile apps and sites will lose patience with the amorphous promises of social media — and budget allocations will adjust accordingly. Frightened social media gurus, feeling the virtual earth move under their feet, will backpedal by telling us about the importance of “integration,” of considering mobile as just one part of a 360 degree customer relation strategy.
But customer actions will tell a different, truer story of their own. As mobile consumers use real time data and connectivity to make purchasing decisions on the spot, many of our brand-building investments will prove irrelevant. What will matter?
- Price, location, convenience, offers
- Giving consumers immediate access to the information they want
- Customer opinions: influencing what customers have to say about our products/services will grow in importance
What will not matter or matter less?
- Building pseudo relationships that have little meaning to consumers
- Pumping out content for the sake of pumping out content
- Adding more noise to an already noisy, crowded environment that demands too much of a consumer’s time and attention; frankly, they’re in “Hollywood” mode: don’t call us, we’ll call you
Disagree? Let’s plan to meet again a year from now and see how things actually turned out…