Nick Cifuentes

As we now have buried our eyes & minds into a very exciting 2010, the focus on social media marketing will be ever growing. In fact, from this point on, I believe we are going to see a number of changes in marketing strategies, on and offline.

If you think closely, the world’s operating system is morphing. In the past, you have had a number of “closed” model marketing systems that prevented the singular idea that social media describes: collective interaction. In past years, marketing strategies have lived within specific business models and relied on “closed” channels to disseminate the message. For example, a newspaper would advertise a static ad, a direct-mail message would take a matter of days to make even a single impression. Once that message was delivered, the channel relied on a number of “closed” systems to tie into the medium properly, and the need to pause and wait for participation was often days, weeks, even months depending on the type and length of the campaign.

In today’s world, the operating system is being revamped, what took days, now takes seconds, and together this process of marketing evolution is pushing today’s marketing programs into an “open” system. This “open” system allows for instant connections with the customer, while the opportunity for response, collaboration, sharing, and growth increase tremendously.

Fundamental Shift

While this shift in marketing systems is underway, this “closed” to “open” environment is going to expand further beyond business into our everyday lives. Obviously, as marketers, we think of this in relevancy to the delivery of a message, in some manner. But, as time expands and social media begins to consume users’ lives online, the idea of an “open” system will fall into a number of funnels, including media and content, advertising, business solutions, education, legal environments, lifestyle, entertainment, love, religion, sex, etc…

And as this shift into an “open” system expands, a number of brands and individuals will be wary of moving so quickly into such an environment. A system like this is cluttered with a number of worries, such as “out of control”, “chaotic”, “risky”, or “feeling of being unsafe”.

This inescapable feeling of being in “risk” is common among brands, but learning to trust the system will be the hardest step to overcome starting in 2010 and moving beyond. If relating this change in marketing ethics to social media, the door must be swung open to attain any success. To what level you remain “open”, your business growth will be directly related.

Social Media: 5 Years Into the Future

12-18 Months: Social Media is CRM

As social media slowly becomes a part of everyone’s daily web interaction, this reality and change in systems means that YOU, your brand, must adjust and focus on agility instead of just optimization when it comes to integrating social media into your marketing programs. And as this becomes more of a reality, Social Media CRM systems are becoming a necessity, rather than option as more users begin to take part in social media and recognize your brand.

In the next 12-18 months, brands will work to close the gap on effectively managing dialogue with the market in terms of:

• sharing information
• fast-tracking problems
• responding to questions

Both internally and externally with customers, prospects, employees, other stakeholders, and the public.

Social Media monitoring devices such as Radian6, Visible Technologies, Buzzlogic, TNS Cymfony, Trackur, and other social media monitoring tools allow you to keep a finger to the pulse of your brand and see real-time data as social media mentions take place.

12-18 Months: Digital Jet Lag Goes Into Red Alert

As information already within social media is becoming clogged, expect a massive increase in the next 12-18 months with the uptick in both users and social media popularity. Because of this, expect filtering and curation to become a huge business. When it comes to finding methods to cull the information being pushed into the social networks and allow users to sort through it more efficiently, a step toward contextualizing and connecting with the ‘right’ information will step into the forefront with a number of new tools, platforms and systems to help control this excessive amount of content.

To be continued…

This post is part one of a continuous series that will be posted throughout the rest of January and February. Here is a sneak peak to some of the topics that I will be covering:

• Resistance to Change Ends?
• Privacy will become a MUST for Users
• Real-time, Social Mobile: Feedback, Rating, Comments, Tagging
• Uprising in Automated Social Agents
• Socially Augmented Reality
• FREE Access to a Global Network
• Social “Books”
• Smarter Social Advertising: Mobile, Online
• The End of One-Way Communications
• Social Advertising Budgets Explode
• The Extreme Reputation Economy
• The Importance of Social Capital
• The Global Social Brain

This blog series will also be posted on my work blog @ http://www.ovrdrv.com/blog

For the better part of 2009, Twitter and Facebook have been stealing the spotlight when it comes to discussions regarding social media “movers and shakers”. This is understandable as both have truly stepped on the gas in terms of increasing user base and improving functionality both in-house and externally through third party application development. Furthermore, both companies continue to dedicate significant time and research towards making their services useful for businesses, as we see new organizations join these networks daily and each with unique goals and strategies for doing so.

However, Flickr is a photo and video sharing social media channel that is also experiencing rapid growth and integration within many avenues of online business development and marketing, currently hosting more than 4 billion images, up from 3billion in November of 2008. With that said, Flickr should be researched and considered for use by many entrepreneurs as it too plays a large role within your company’s potential to benefit via social media outlets.

While there are a multitude of both personal and professional reasons to utilize Flickr, business owners should focus on implementing this platform to increase their level of personal interaction with current clients, build further awareness of their corporate brand, and perform strategic outreach campaigns to potential interested parties that would otherwise be unaware of their products or services.

Below are some simple starting points that will hopefully start your creative juices flowing as to how you can tailor the use of Flickr to your own company’s needs and strategies.

Flickr Facts for You & Your Company

• Flickr is an online web service and social community for sharing photos and video. As of October 2009, it claims to host more than 4 billion images, up from 3 billion in November of 2008.
• Flickr allows for user interaction, commenting, categorizing of albums, and building of contact lists (like followers or friends, if you will).
• Flickr allows users to sign up for a Pro-Account, which provides unlimited uploading of pictures and videos for $25/year.
• Flickr Groups are used to enhance social sharing based on location, events, affinity groups, etc. This is a large asset for businesses to further reach potential clients and customers based on interests.
• Within Flickr, users can create online Photo Contests to increase user interaction and visibility to the channel.
• Flickr provides a very resourceful analytics program that allows you to track your photo traffic and views by very detailed metrics.
• Ties in very well with other social media channels to cross update and draw traffic back to the channel.
• Very effective tagging, batching, editing and grouping functionality with Organizr.

How Can You & Your Company Utilize Flickr?

• Share all photos and videos from both in-house and user submitted material to act as a live-time online photo album.
• Utilize the highly effective keyword tagging features to get your company’s material visible to SEO searches, as well as internal searches from Flickr users.
• Join many Flickr affinity groups to gather interest from those who may not be familiar with your company’s products, services, location or values.
• Photo contests and special promotions can be designed and executed with Flickr as the vehicle used to facilitate these activities.
• Connect Flickr to current website, Facebook Fan Page, corporate blog, etc. to smoothly cross post content among all of of your company’s online assets.
• Flickr has great API and Widget based functionality that allows you and your technical staff to utilize Flickr functionality within your current online assets, displaying your public Flickr content in ways that work best for your brand, purpose or intended delivery to your audience.
• Learn more about your community and the values, activities, events and experiences your users or fellow businesses take part in.

A very important thing to keep in mind regarding your use of Flickr for business is this - do NOT oversell. This is highly frowned upon by the Flickr team and, more often than not, those companies who practice this have their account deleted from the site altogether. Flickr has constructed a very helpful, light-hearted and colloquial set of guidelines that will ensure you are fully aware of what the Do’s & Don’ts are for using this service.

Entrepreneurs must understand that Flickr is not a billboard, rather it is an online photo sharing community, a virtual scrapbook if you will, for you to further connect with those who you wish to gain a more robust idea of who you are and what you value as a business.

So, take a tour and explore the various features and uploading tools available. Search for groups that would be of interest to you or your market. Ask questions and share your thoughts here by commenting below. As you research its versatility and role within the world of social media, it could spark creative and helpful thoughts as to how Flickr can be useful to your company and overall brand identity.

Guest post by Business Development Consultant, Guy Mitrano (@guybby) Mitrano is a Gen-Y entrepreneur, and CEO of Burlington Boatyard, LLC & business consultant with strong awareness of the needs, strategies, & goals of fellow young entrepreneurs and start up companies.