Daily Archives: November 3, 2012

21 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2012 in Review | Bedford Corners NY Real Estate

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21 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2012 in Review

Last December I made some predictions about what will happen to social media this year. Now it’s time to see which of the predictions came true and what did I miss. I’ll be grading myself, one point for being spot on, 0.5 points if the trends that are there but not yet very strong, and 0 for a miss.

Here is the original slideshow:

And here’s how it turned out:

1. Social media marketing disappears.

No, not yet. Social media is not yet integral part of marketing. It is still something that is done separately. However we are moving towards more integration.

2. Integrating social media to corporate websites.

Not yet, half way there. More and more corporate websites are displaying social media integration but it’s still on the level of „follow us“ or „like our page“. True integration with real user generated content and personalized experience will take time.

3. More support through social media.

Yes. Response times to social media questions are improving and companies are starting to take that seriously. People report their problems in their channel of choice and expect an answer. This trend will continue until social channels are fully integrated with others.

4. Social CRM will make inroads in larger organizations.

Yes and the trend is continuing. Social data will be added to the CRM systems to find trends in sentiment and individual preferences of customers. Research firm Gartner has stated that the SCRM market grew this year to $1.2 billion, accounting for near 10 percent of all CRM spending.

5. Social media will influence more sales.

Yes and the trend is continuing. Social media integration will allow customers to get real user opinions before making purchase decisions. People depend on peer opinion to make buying decisions.

6. Social commerce on mobile devices.

Yes and the trend is continuing. Mobile commerce is expected to reach 10 billion dollars in 2012 and 31 billion by 2016. It’s time to start an new start-up on this area.

7. Social media budgets will grow.

Yes and the trend is continuing. Most companies will continue to increase their social media budgets. This includes in-house spending on and outsourced services. The spending should grow 2 to 3 times by the end of 2016.

8. Social media advertising will grow.

Yes and the trend is continuing. This is pretty much the same as social media budgets. But as we can see from GM droping Facebook earlier this year, some marketing managers treat them separately. Social media advertising will grow to $10 Billion in 2016.

9. Social media ROI is a must.

Yes/No. More result oriented but still less than half of the marketers measure results from social media. Likes and followers are not results! CMOs worldwide agree they need to measure social media marketing’s contribution to the business in relevant, quantifiable terms.

10. Rise of the branded content.

Yes. Brands need to create content that is good enough to be curated and shared. This trend will continue and blur the lines between advertising and editorial content.

11. Content Curation and Discovery.

Yes/No. Aggregation and content curation are getting more important and brands start filtering information to give value to their customers. However there’s no visible success stories in this field yet.

12. Tabletizing and mobilizing websites.

Yes and the trend is continuing. Mobile broke trough finally. You need a mobile/tablet optimized site if you want to create a good user experience for your customers. It’s a must now!

13. Social gaming will grow and spill over to real world.

No. The initial gold rush of social media games died in 2012. There are people who play and those who don’t. There are now more players than ever, but the activity is in the background, visible to those who are into it. The potential growth of mobile social gaming is still there.

14. Location! Location! Location!

Yes/No. The push for local mobile marketing is ongoing. There’s a huge potential for local information, reviews, coupons, loyalty programs and more. People will be checking for recommendations about nearby restaurants, bars, hotels, etc. However there will still be a few yeas before the local real-time information is seamlessly integrated into our lives.

15. Most social media usage will be on mobile devices.

Surprisingly, not yet. In July 2012 only 38% of US mobile subscribers accessed social networking site or blog on their devices. On the other hand Facebook hit 488 million mobile users earlier this year globally. This means that in some countries mobile social networking is in the range of 80%. In a few years you will always be connected with social media, no matter where you are!

16. Group buying sites will add location based services.

No. I thought that this is a brain dead model. Grow a huge list by offering really cheap deals and then sell that list to businesses to get really cheap deals. Add location targeting and you get profit. Apparently not, maybe it take some time to figure out the business model for this.

17. Interacting with live TV in social media.

Yes. Live TV shows will react to user interactions such as votes, suggestions, etc. TV is going to be everywhere through mobile apps and this trend is growing.

18. News will be social.

Not yet. I thought that news websites will gradually be replaced by applications integrated with social media technology such as Facebook’s Open Graph. This will not happen as fast as I initially predicted. But we’re going down that road as we speak.

19. Mobile apps will become more social.

Yes. All of the successful new mobile apps will be deeply integrated with social networks allowing you to share and engage more than ever before.

20. Your social media footprint will grow.

Yes. Frictionless sharing capabilities and social gestures will make our lives increasingly visible on social networking sites. Always connected, always sharing! If you don’t share, your friends will. Some may rise privacy concerns but most people will ignore the implications and their lives are going to be more open than ever before.

21. Facebook will break the 1 Billion people mark.

Yes. I predicted that Facebook will reach a cool billion users or 1.1 billion even. Well, billion is already there and remaining 100 million come in the next 2-3 months by the end of 2012.

I missed 6 of the 21 predictions by thinking that change will happen faster. This is still only 28,6% better than tossing a coin. 15 of my predictions for this year really happened and this is more than 71%. I will post the new Social Media Marketing Trends for 2013 in December.

Here you go! What do you think will happen in 2013. Please, let us know in the comments.

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Posted on: October 30, 2012

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Waiting for power? It could be a matter of poles | Armonk NY Real Estate

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Despite the caravans of power trucks in neighborhoods across the New York City area, a shortage of the specially-treated wooden poles used to string overhead power transmission lines and hold up transformers may be slowing the recovery.

Specialty pole suppliers like Cox Industries and Bridgewell International are producing and trucking as many as 1,500 poles a day to customers in the Northeast since Hurricane Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coastline on Monday, flooding entire towns and leaving millions of homes in the dark. More than 3.5 million people remained without power as of Friday afternoon.

But in some cases suppliers say they cannot keep up. Class 1 and 2 utility poles, which are the largest in diameter and among the most commonly-used in the Northeast, sold out fast and the orders are still coming, said Chris Slonaker, an East Coast sales manager for Bridgewell, which is based in Tigard, Oregon.

“The stock that was available at the time of the storm is all gone, and we are trying to replenish it,” said Slonaker, whose company supplies power poles to Consolidated Edison Inc, Public Service Enterprise Group Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and several rural electric cooperatives.

ConEd, which still had about 500,000 customers without power as of Friday afternoon, would not immediately comment on why its customer service personnel had told some homeowners that utility pole supplies were a challenge. A spokeswoman said the biggest obstacles to restoring power to customers with overhead lines was impassable roads and thousands of downed power lines.

REPLENISHING STOCK

To complicate matters, because of high demand, stockpiles of the southern pine trees used to make the poles are in short supply at plants Bridgewell buys from. Trees are arriving at plants daily and several thousand poles are under construction now, Slonaker said.

They should be ready to ship to the Northeast by the middle of next week for a 900-mile trip that takes two to three days – which could mean another week – or more – without electricity and heat even as a cold snap settles into the area.

Most of the dozen or so plants Bridgewell buys utility poles from have been operating 24-hours a day since the storm. They usually operate only 8-hours a day during normal weather and 16-hours a day after most big weather events. Typically, Bridgewell ships 50 truckloads, each with about 30 poles, each day for one or two days after a storm. But Hurricane Sandy has led to an influx of orders far larger.

“Orders have continued at this pace,” every day since Sandy struck on Monday, Slonaker said.

And even after producing the poles, Bridgewell is finding there are more orders than there were trucks. Hundreds of flatbed trucks that would normally deliver plywood and other supplies are being outfitted with wooden stakes so they can haul the 35-to-50-foot utility poles.

TOO FEW TRUCKS, BLOCKED ROADS

Orangeburg, South Carolina-based Cox Industries is sending upwards of 1,200 poles per day to warehouses in Hainesport, New Jersey and Hicksville, New York on Long Island from its production factories in the southeast, said Don Surrency, a sales manager at the company.

Surrency said Cox has not had trouble keeping up with orders to PSE&G, Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) or Verizon and is sending about 40 trucks per day, each loaded with 25 to 30 poles. But getting them to the right place hasn’t been easy.

“There are other obstacles you don’t typically see in storms,” said Surrency.

Among them: The dense population, blocked or difficult to pass roadways – sometimes because of cars that have simply run out of gas, he said.

Truck drivers have, so far, not encountered the fuel shortages many residents in New York and New Jersey have experienced, Surrency and Slonaker said.

John Margaritis, a spokesman for PSE&G, the biggest power provider in New Jersey, said that supply of utility poles has not been an issue. The utility in hard-hit New Jersey still had 692,000 customers without power as of Friday afternoon.

LIPA did not return calls and emails for comment on Friday.

Before the storm, most of the utilities Bridgewell deals with had already ordered extra supplies of poles. But Slonaker says those ran out quickly.

“They were prepared, but this was bigger than expected,” he said. “It’s hard to prepare for this.

via chicagotribune.com