Five “Must Read” Social Media Marketing reports

Lee Odden from Top Rank Marketing has a list of 5 Social Media marketing reports provided on their blog

Meet 5 Social Marketing Guru’s

Mashable has an excellent profile of five of the top social media marketing professionals. From the article:

” Within this space, a small set of leaders are paving the way for how businesses are using social tools. Whether they are reimagining platforms or creating new tool for analyzing data, these visionaries are steering the way towards innovation.”

Social Marketing Metrics

Mashable provides an articled by Prashant Suryakumar  entitled, “New Metrics for Social Marketing.”  From the article:

” Behavioral targeting dramatically changed with online advertising, and now social media can take this effectiveness to new heights. Activity-based segmentation is far different from traditional demographic segmentation, and this is typically driven by a difference between the purchasers and the consumers of a product. “

How to identify a Social Media Con Man

FeedFront has an interesting article about ways that you can determine whether the “social media guru” you are considering hiring is just a fraud. From the article:

” Many have even felt duped by the firm they hired. After looking at a couple of the choices, it’s easy to see how the companies might feel deceived, based on the fact that they’ve hired self-proclaimed “experts” who I remember claiming to be experts in something else just a year ago. “

23 Web tools for Small Business

Mashable has a good article about 23 freee web applications small businesses can utilize to increase productivity. List includes 8 social media marketing resources. From the article:

” One of the categories SMBs ask for the most help with is social media. You need to quickly and easily keep an eye on what people are saying about you; more importantly, you need to participate in the social media conversation yourself, without drowning hours upon endless hours bouncing around various websites.”

2011 Social Media Marketing Predictions

Social Media Marketing is going to skyrocket in 2011. Here are some predictions:

Advertising Age ” Once that difference is clear, we can start to understand why communities of interest monetize more easily than social networks. A community of interest platform is so supportive of e-commerce because buying is a natural way we share our interests within our community.”

Click Through ” Now, as budget freezes start to thaw, it’s time for them to consider how to integrate social media functionality (for example, incorporating the power of Facebook comment boxes onsite to provide a feedback loop for consumers) onto their main site. Sites will become a hub to aggregate and explain activity on social networks, and add long-form value.”

Click Through Part 2 ” Brand owners will want to track sentiment and mentions on social networks. Measurement won’t get ’solved’ as it isn’t a single problem, and it needn’t be a problem at all if you first determine what the goals of any activity are upfront, then decide on metrics.”

Fast Company “ In 2011, those brands that truly embrace “social content generation” will build themselves a kingdom. The connections between brand, art or skill and visual communications in a socially connected world can create powerfully authentic appeal for brands. “

ComScore ” Our 2011 briefings cover 111 social media trends while busting some social media myths in the process. We include dates for each installment’s release on one of our blogs.”

B2C Marketing Insider ” Consumers fear a lack of privacy online, an idea that already doesn’t exist, and never will, and government may over-react.  Curbing publishers’ ability to track and understand consumers could hurt online marketing as a whole. When it comes to measuring results, we may be pushed away from strict metrics and be forced to use the same guestimates we already do for traditional media.”

B2C Marketing Insider (5 social media marketing predictions for 2011) ” The real opportunity for the social graph to bring social elements to an existing website – allowing a brand to pull the best and most useful information and relaitonships from Facebook and other sites to their own site. “

B2C Marketing Insider (Turn your Corporate Website into a Social Media Hub) ” 93 percent of people active in social media say they expect companies to have a presence in social media and networking sites and 85 percent of them want the companies to communicate and interact with them on those sites.”

 Mashable (2011 predictions for the PR Agency) ” The recent social revolution changed the game again. Our social networks have taken on the role of crowdsourced news editors. Instead of going directly to websites to scan for news, we frequently only see bite-sized news headlines that have been posted or retweeted by our trusted sources. When we do go directly to a site, we’re now relying more on news aggregators such as TechMeme, or getting the scoop on what’s trending from sites such as Tweetbeat.”

MinyanVille ” So rather than wipe the egg off my face this time next year, I’ve compiled the predictions that I found to be the most intriguing — however likely or unlikely they may be.”

Stuff.co.nz ” The idea is simple: Instapaper reformats web pages into very readable text-only versions and stores them offline. Instapaper now has competition from Read It Later, and both benefit from curation sites like Give Me Something to Read and Longform.org. Distillation (the dumbing-down of web pages) and a logical division of labor (harvest now, process later) played a part. “

CMS Critic ” Context provides an understanding of the content consumer, and her unique set of circumstances. With context, you can match the right content, at the right moment of opportunity to encourage, support, or persuade the visitor to take action. “

BusinessNewsDaily (50 predictions from various industry experts) ” All signs are pointing toward a multicultural Web. By 2015, a billion people in BRIC countries [Brazil, Russia, India and China] will be using PCs. Thus, 2011 will mark the year that businesses either adapt to these changes or get left woefully behind.
— Swamy Viswanathan of Language Weaver

VentureBeat ” Today, Facebook and other social channels are becoming the way people interact with the larger world around them –- and brand marketers are going to make sure they’re not too late to the party.”

eMarketer ” Email and social will continue to get closer as more marketers integrate the two channels with each other. More than a quarter of respondents said they had already formulated and implemented a strategy for making email and social work together, and another 43% plan to make efforts toward integration in 2011, though some are more prepared than others.”

Technorati ( 3 social media anti-predictions ) ” The only way Twitter will make money is if they close the network and charge for premium accounts. However, it won’t work. It would be like if Google was going to start charging consumers to use their search functionality.”

Social Media B2B (about a dozen separate list of 2011 predictions)  “ Marketers should be able to understand what their audience’s preferences are and must be able to cater to each and every one of them in a flexible way. There would be a surge in ‘device-neutral’ content, those that can be consumed from mobile devices to the traditional desktop computers, because re-purposing simply takes lots of effort and money. “

eConsultancy ” I think location + social media will be bigger in 2011. It started in 2010 and Facebook Places will no doubt help accelerate things. But it’s clear how live events (location) and social media can combine very powerfully, just as it’s clear how coupons, group buying and location can combine. “

Straight Talk by Ted Rubin ” Google will acquire Twitter, and pay whatever it takes to grab a valuable piece of the social marketing landscape, and FourSquare, et al will disappear as geotargeting will become more of a proactive medium controlled by those who really know where you are and what you are doing. “

Social Media Revolution Part 2

Another video about the growth of social media in 2010 by Box Hill Institute with a slightly Australian perspective.

Social Media Revolution 2010

A bit dated, but still interesting video of the (ongoing) growth and impact of social media from Social Media Energy.

2010 in “Real-Time”

ReadWriteWeb has an article discussing how real-time communications really took off in 2010 and why the web will become even more real-time based in 2011. From the article:

” It’s because of companies like Google that “real-time” is quickly becoming a term that describes our standard expectations, not the mind-expanding future of the Web that it once was.”

The Mareketing/PR Agency of the Future

The Social Media Insider interviews Bryan Wiener from 360i about his thoughts concerning the social agency of the future.