作为市场营销新方向的社交媒介仍然占有重要地位。然而很多企业似乎并不待见这一新型营销方式。在Optus最近的一次研究中发现，仅有28%的小型企业使用社交媒介进行推广，另外有56%的企业表示近期没有社交媒介发展计划。

social networld

上述的调查结果其实并不难理解。现在，有些与博客或Facebook没有太大联系的商领域对Twitter、Foursquare等提供新技术和新服务已经十分满意。

据Optus中小型企业营销总监Phil Offer表示，小型业主拒绝使用社交媒介主要是因为他们认为社交媒介只是一种时尚；其次是这将给毁谤者诋毁品牌提供可能性；最后小型业主无暇考虑这种新兴的营销方式。

Offer认为这种商业模式可能还正在发展，因此现在还没有类似某某已经凭借这种方式赚钱这类有说服力的例子出现。社交媒介的营销方式现在还处在荒原阶段，企业要自己发掘如何正确利用社交媒介走向成功。

这里我们罗列出目前社交媒介的十大发展趋势。

1，小型网站安家社交网站

拥有5亿活跃用户的社交网站Facebook在网络中颇有影响力。最近各大品牌也注意到这一点，纷纷在Facebook网站上开设品牌页面，用于促进品牌营销。这就导致了一些专为举办活动开设的品牌小型网站面临危机。毕竟小型网站无法独立存在，它们也需要通过社交媒介平台吸引用户的关注。而且有些用户可能仅仅参加一次活动便不再登录网站。但是在社交网站Facebook中用户必须“Like”页面后才能参加活动，这也就提高了用户以后参与活动的可能性。

现在，新西兰ASB Bank, Best Buy和1800 Flowers等公司组织都已经将整体网站搬到了Facebook网络中。因此我们也可以看出，连接性和信息的广泛性对企业的客户策略至关重要，而品牌独立网站的重要性则正在在逐渐减弱。

2，购物网络化、购物社交化

如果您的Facebook页面拥有大量粉丝，您会考虑向他们兜售某些物品吗？

现在，Adgregate (www.adgregate.com)和Payvment (www.payvment.com)公司正在开发某种电子商务系统，以便于品牌用户在Facebook进行销售。

另外，能为用户提供购物明细的Swowp服务也促进了购物的社交化发展。

用户可以在网站上浏览各种物品，通过在线对话和朋友们一起进行品评。如此一来，人们在网上就可以一起购物。

其次，网上还有提供“团购”活动，这是美国公司Groupon (www.groupon.com)提出的一种多人购物方式。“团购”就是在一定时间范围内聚集足够的人数一起购物。通过“团购”，买方可以争取到更大的购物优惠。

今年4月，Groupon公司向俄罗斯投资公司Digital Sky Technology集资1亿3500万美元，并发布了’deal-of-the-day’服务。此外，澳大利亚网站如 Spreets (www.spreets.com.au), OurDeal (www.ourdeal.com.au)和Catch of the Day (www.catchoftheday.com.au)等也提供类似服务。

3，利用社交资源实现便捷生活

最近能源公司Origin使用Google Earth帮助潜在客户查看家中屋顶是否适合安装太阳能电池板。这一工具主要用于拍摄传递咨询者的住房图片，观察其屋顶状况。之前，Origin公司不得不派遣技术员到每一个家庭或让客户自己拍下屋顶图案在发送到公司。而现在在电话中就可以决定防止太阳能电池板的位置，测量是否有足够的空间安装太阳能电池板。

4，与商业相融合

最近很多企业的商业软件中都融入了社交工具或功能。其中，Salesforce.com早在今年6月就将类似Twitter或Facebook的功能引入该公司开发的软件中。这款Chatter软件可以使用户关注人们的最近动向，并向用户汇报关注领域的重大发展变化。

该公司亚太地区营销副总裁Jeremy Cooper指出，Chatter软件在发布后的前6周激活次数高达2万2000次，占公司总安装基础的25%。现在，激活次数已经上升到3万次。

对此，Cooper表示Chatter软件的研发意图在于将“社交图谱”与企业资讯相结合。将人们熟悉的Facebook或Twitter等社交网站的功能放置到一个更加隐秘安全的商业环境中。

据Salesforce.com的审计显示，在MarketTools发布的8周后，客户在团队协作方面提高25%，查找讯息方面提高19%，产值提高10%，而电子邮件使用率则下降13%。而Cooper自己的公司在电子邮件使用率方面则下降了30%。

5，定位功能

手机应用Foursquare (www.foursquare.com)可以使用户到某个地方“登记”，然后给朋友留言。登录次数多的用户则会成为“市长”。

目前使用这一应用的澳大利亚用户并不多，但美国营销人员将会为其“登记”附近地点的用户提供特殊服务。

对此，Gain认为“登记”将促进Facebook新款位置信息服务Facebook Places的使用。

6，微博的兴起

社交网站Twitter的兴起在一定程度上反映了人们对发布和回复信息的热衷。由于现在很多博客只是简单地发布一些趣闻和游客的评论反馈，因此联系两者的微型服务就此应运而生，其中以Tumblr (www.tumblr.com)和Posterous (www.posterous.com)首当其冲。

Dawson将这种服务称为“微博”。就像在Facebook或Twitter等社交网站上一样，用户通过微博可以简单地分享一些关注话题。

Dawson认为，人们在Facebook等社交网站上发布的内容已经从私人信息变得更为大众化，而微博则就是一种单纯的分享工具。

7，虚拟人生

如果您正在进行一段长对话，那网络的另一端与您对话的究竟是不是一个人呢？

悉尼公司MyCyberTwin (www.mycybertwin.com) 最近向St George Bank, NAB和NASA提供了一款高级人工智能系统。

该公司的首席执行官Liesl Capper-Beilby表示MyCyberTwin公司正在运用社交媒介，其中的关键就是确保用户知道自己得到的回复并不是来自于真人。

同时，美国Next IT (www.nextit.com) 也向航空公司和军队提供类似服务。

8，名誉管理和人生规划

Facebook总有用户对一些不当评论或更新进行申诉。现在很多从事招聘行业的人都知道社交媒介，尤其是Linkedin是一种搜索职位候选人的有效工具。

管理更新Linedin上的个人档案对用户找寻新工作至关重要，哪怕用户并不心急找工作，也可以通过社交媒介关心自己的名誉状态。现在Unvarnished (www.getunvarnished.com)等新网站中用户可以匿名对别人进行评价。这样一来，用户也许不能辨别哪位是自己的朋友，但却可以知道人们对你的真正看法。

9，用户舆论数据监控

当客户在一旁讨论各大使用社交媒介营销策略的品牌时，如果您并不想加入这个话题，那您可以选择旁听他们的谈话内容。

现在悉尼公司BuzzNumbers (www.buzznumbershq.com)提供一项社交媒介网络监控服务，向用户传递人们讨论的大致内容。

该公司的首席执行官Nick Holmes将这一服务称为无需对用户进行咨询的“新型用户调查”。现在，用户是否满意服务不再是公司唯一想知道的反馈内容，用户们经常谈论的内容和如何采取的解决方法等问题也得到了企业的高度重视。通过这项服务，品牌及一些大型公司可以监听用户之间的讨论内容。

10，社交游戏与虚拟交易

谁能想象Facebook的虚拟农场游戏能在网络中如此风靡？今年9月Zynga旗下社交游戏FarmVille月活跃用户高达6200万。玩家可以邀请其他Facebook用户成为邻居，并看到对方的农场进度。另外，玩家还可以花费现金购买游戏虚拟货币。

FarmVille是一款操作简单的网络社交游戏，其与其他社交游戏相连。同时，这也是一个潜力巨大的商业模式，据预计2012年社交游戏的产值规模将达到50亿美元。

澳大利亚社交游戏开发公司 3RDsense的首席执行官Colin Cardwell指出，很多FarmVille玩家愿意用现实货币换取游戏虚拟货币。因此，品牌企业也可以依样画葫芦吸引大量的玩家，从中盈利。(本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译)

Social media still dominates headlines as the new direction for business marketing, but it seems many businesses are resisting the call. A recent survey by Optus found that only 28% of small businesses used social media to promote their business, while 56% had no near-term plans to start.

It’s an understandable response. Just as they begin to understand the concepts of social media marketing, something new comes along and changes everything. Businesses that have barely come to grips with blogging and Facebook must also now contend with Twitter, Foursquare and a host of other new technologies and services.

According to Optus’ marketing director for small and medium business, Phil Offer, the main reason small business owners gave for not getting into social media was that it was a fad. Second was that it would somehow negatively hurt their brand by giving a voice to detractors, while the third reason was that they were simply too busy.

“The business case is probably still developing, so there isn’t the same compelling reason, as if everyone was doing it and making money out of it,” Offer says.

“It is a digital Wild West, and you have to find your own path to success.”

Fortunately, we are here to help you get ahead of the pack. Here are 10 of the latest trends to hit the social media landscape.
RIP micro-sitesWith more than 500 million active users, Facebook is having a significant impact on the rest of the web, distorting traffic flows and user behaviour. Major brands have noticed, with a proliferation of fan pages springing up for everything from Smarties to The Mighty Boosh.

According to the head of digital at public relations firm Edelman Australia, Matthew Gain, the result has been the death of the so-called micro-sites once launched by brands to support specific campaigns.

“Increasingly that is moving onto Facebook,” Gain says. “With a microsite you had to generate media to get people to the site. Then they would arrive, maybe enter a competition, and then disappear.

With Facebook, you have an opportunity for an ongoing engagement, because to enter a competition they have to ‘like’ the page.”

It is a trend that Deloitte Digital CEO Peter Williams believes will only get bigger.

“We are even seeing organisations like ASB Bank in New Zealand, Best Buy and 1800 Flowers put their whole website into Facebook,” Williams says. “Facebook is the most important website in the world these days. It is just cutting a swathe through everything.”

He says the strategy now for clients is one of entanglement, and striving to essentially merge what they do on their website with Facebook and YouTube.

“But we are seeing the importance of the individual website on the decline,” Williams says.

Shopping goes social, onlineSo you’ve got thousands of fans liking your Facebook page – why not sell them something? Companies such as Adgregate (www.adgregate.com) and Payvment (www.payvment.com) are making it easy for brands to sell through Facebook with a complete eCommerce solution.

Shopping itself is also developing a social element thanks to services such as Swowp, (www.shwowp.com) that lets a user keep track of their shopping history and then share it with others.

Social media researcher Ross Dawson expects strong growth from social shopping services.

“You can browse together what’s on the websites, look at different things, and comment on them,” Dawson says. “So you can go shopping with your friends, but do it in an online context.”

If shopping with friends is fun, how about shopping with a group of strangers to receive a better offer? This is the model behind Groupon (www.groupon.com), a US-based company that sources interesting deals for consumers, but only makes them available for a limited time and on the basis that enough people commit to making a purchase.

In April 2010 Groupon raised US$135 million from the Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technology, and has spawned dozens of clones offering ‘deal-of-the-day’ services. There are more than half a dozen such sites in Australia, including Spreets (www.spreets.com.au), OurDeal (www.ourdeal.com.au), and Catch of the Day (www.catchoftheday.com.au).

Making use of what’s out thereThere is a huge amount of information already in social tools about your would-be customers – why not use it?

Although perhaps not strictly an example of social media, the energy company Origin has been using Google Earth for more than a year to help potential clients find out if their roof is suitable for mounting solar panels.

Origin’s head of residential solar Dominic Drenen says the tool is used to bring up an aerial photograph of a caller’s residence, which can be used to determine the characteristics of their roof.

Previously Origin had to send a technician out to every home, or have customers take photos of their roof and email them in.

“When we have the customer on phone we can agree where we would locate the panels, measure it up and determine if there is enough roof area,” Drenen says. “We can even mark up where the panels would go and email that through to the customer. We can efficiently transact over the phone and reduce quite a lot of risk.”
Mixing it with the businessMany commercial software suppliers are now building social tools and functionality directly into enterprise applications. The charge was led by Salesforce.com, which in June this year introduced Twitter and Facebook-like functionality into its software. Its Chatter software enables user to follow what other people are doing, and processes in the business can also be set up to report significant developments to the people most interested.

According to Salesforce.com’s Asia Pacific vice president of marketing, Jeremy Cooper, there were more than 22,000 activations in the first six weeks after the product’s launch, which is roughly 25% of the company’s installed base. That has swelled to more than 30,000 now.

“The intention was to make the ‘social graph’ meet the corporate directory, and to try and deliver the functionality that people know and are familiar with Facebook and Twitter and to put that in a context that is private and secure for business,” Cooper says.

An audit of Salesforce.com customers by MarketTools eight weeks after the launch found customers had seen a 25% increase in team collaboration, a 19% increase in the ability to find information, a 10% increase in productivity and a 13% drop in email usage. Cooper says his company’s own use of email is down by 30%.
Location, location, locationLocations across Australia are presided over by a number of virtual ‘mayors’ thanks to the rising popularity of Foursquare (www.foursquare.com), a mobile application/game that lets users ‘check-in’ to locations and leave comments or alert their friends. He or she who checks into a location the most becomes its mayor.

The number of Australia users is currently small, but marketers in the US are targeting the larger user population there with special offers when they check-in to nearby locations.

According to Gain ‘checking-in’ will get a boost from Facebook’s introduction of its own location-based service, Facebook Places.

“There is going to be an interesting hype cycle for the use of these things,” Gains says. “People on Foursquare used to check in everywhere, but now tend to check in when they want to show off, like at the Big Day Out. But there will be a real opportunity for people to be marketing to people at those specific events.”

He says there is also potential for brands to encourage users to come to their real-world location and check-in to receive a special offer.
The rise of the mini-blogThe popularity of Twitter in part reflects a desire for immediate gratification in posting and consumption of information. With so many blogs today simply reposting interesting information with added commentary, it’s not surprising that someone has found a mid-point between the two ideas, leading to services such as Tumblr (www.tumblr.com) and Posterous (www.posterous.com).

Dawson calls these services mini-blogs, as they take what Twitter and Facebook have done in allowing people to easily share content that they like, and moved that back onto the broader web.

“The updates on Facebook have shifted from being very personal things to being a lot more about sharing articles and content,” Dawson says. “The mini blogs are almost purely sharing tools, designed to pull in a YouTube video or a link, but you can actually see the content as well, which brings it a lot more to life.”

Many mini-bloggers describe themselves as curators of information, rather than bloggers. For an example, check out the person blog run by AMP’s catalyst for magic at AMP, Annalie Killian here.

Talking to no one

Next time you find yourself enjoying a long chat online, it might be worth checking wether the person at the other end is really a person at all. Sydney company MyCyberTwin (www.mycybertwin.com) has been providing advanced artificial intelligence agents to companies including St George Bank, NAB and NASA to answer queries.

Chief executive Liesl Capper-Beilby says her company has begun seeding CyberTwins into social media scenarios for clients to ensure that their social media presence is maintained, with impressive results. The key however is in making sure that the people who are chatting know that the responses are not coming from a real person.

In the US Next IT (www.nextit.com) is providing similar technology to various airlines, and even to the US Army for its straight-talking no-nonsense SGT STAR.
Managing your reputation, and careerThere have already been many stories of people getting reprimanded or even fired over an inappropriate tweet or Facebook update. Anyone in the recruitment industry will know however that social media – particularly LinkedIn – is an essential tool for both researching candidates and finding new ones.

Keeping your profile up-to-date on LinkedIn is becoming crucial to finding your next job – particularly if you weren’t looking for one. So too is keeping your reputation intact. New sites such as Unvarnished (www.getunvarnished.com) enable people to leave anonymous comments about you. You may not learn who you friends really are, but you’ll know what they really think of you.

Listening in

Customers are out there talking about brands using social media. Even if you don’t want to join the conversation, it is a good idea to know what’s being said. Sydney-based company BuzzNumbers (www.buzznumbershq.com) provide social media monitoring services to listen in online and deliver an understanding of what people are saying.

Chief executive Nick Holmes a Court describes it as like ‘the new customer research’, but saves actually asking people what they think. He says companies are increasingly demanding to know more than just whether that chatter is positive or negative, and want to know more about what aspect of the business is being discussed and what can be done as a result.

“If you are a consumer brand or any major company, there is a whole lot of chatter going on,” Holmes a Court says. “You can just sit back and listen passively to conversations, and determine what people are saying.”

Get in the game

Who would have thought that a virtual farming simulator on Facebook would become one of the biggest hits on the internet? In September Farmville from Zynga (www.zynga.com) reported having more than 62 million active users. Farmville players can invite their Facebook friends to be neighbours, so they can see the progress of each other’s farms. Farmers can also spend money to by virtual goods within the game.

Farmville is an example of a casual social online game, where players can drop in and out easily, and also interact with other gamers. It is big business too, with various sources estimating that the size of the social gaming market could reach US$5 billion by 2012.

According to the chief executive of Australian social games develop 3RDsense, Colin Cardwell, interest in social games from brand advertisers is rowing.

“You have all these people in Farmville who are parting with cash for this virtual currency,” says Cardwell. “If you are a brand and you can get them engage like that, then you can get them to do all kinds of things in return for virtual currency.”(source:smartcompany)