As part of our upcoming year-end report, I spoke with Shiv Singh, vice president and global social media lead for Razorfish. Shiv is a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board and author of “Social Media Marketing for Dummies.” His blog Going Social Now is among the most respected social media marketing blogs. Our year-end reports publish on Dec. 8 and Dec. 15. If you’re not already a SmartBrief on Social Media subscriber, sign up today so you won’t miss it!
Social media is evolving quickly. What are the three trends on the horizon that business leaders absolutely must keep up with?
- Social brands. The most successful brands in 2010 are going to be the ones that evolve into social brands. This means that brands that have social voices — real people participating and talking on their behalf to customers in an engaging, conversational manner. The company must be willing to let its employees and its brand advocates become the face of the brand. Consumers demand that, and brands like Best Buy that are evolving into social brands (think Twelp Force) will be the ones that win. Every brand is going to need to become a social brand at some point.
- Real-time brands. Companies that become dynamic and responsive in real time to their customers and their needs will be the ones that succeed. This doesn’t just mean real time customer service but real time market research, real time product development, and real time customization and personalization of products and campaigns alike. This also means that the products will need to have a digital pulse in them.
- Identifying, nurturing and managing relationships. Customers increasingly are also influencers (expert, positional or referent), and companies will need to know who those people are and how much influence they actually have. A lot more effort is going to go into this. Along those lines, understanding how customers come together as communities and make collective decisions will be important, too.
What emerging technologies related to social media do you think have the greatest potential for businesses next year?
I’m really bullish on mobile for probably the first time. Smartphone penetration is finally and truly hitting the mainstream. Location-aware applications that integrate your social graph are going to revolutionize how we engage with each and with our favorite companies. Sure, we’re probably going to find it all a little invasive at first, but as consumers we’ll get used to it. And the businesses that provide the smartest solutions will be the ones that succeed.
The other emerging technology is what I consider the applification of everything. It is not so much a technology as it is a trend. But basically more companies will have the opportunity to deliver their services, products and advertising as applications — niche, compartmentalized mini-applications that travel between platforms and provide discrete value to consumers. These can be apps on a cell phone, those in a display window at a retail outlet or within the boundaries of a widget sitting on a profile page in Facebook.
What will be the greatest challenge for businesses in adopting social media in the coming year? How do you suggest they overcome that?
The greatest challenge is going to be their customers’ impatience for mediocrity. Consumers are demanding more and more every day and are expecting iPhone-like experiences from everything. The other challenges — being able to engage in meaningful conversations with consumers. They’re not going to have the time, energy or inclination to engage with brands the way they engage with people. To market or sell successfully will mean finding ways and reasons to engage with consumers who have less time for brands as they engage with each other in social media. The best way to address that is to try to become as much a part of your consumers’ lives as you are trying to get them to become a part of your brand world.
What represents the biggest opportunity?
Finding customers who will do the marketing for you. Or in other words using customers to create customers. And with the new technologies, the power of social influence online and crowd sourcing concepts, businesses have a unique opportunity to reinvent themselves and become social and real-time brands that have meaningful impacts on the lives of their customers.
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[...] SmartBlog On Social Media » Looking ahead to 2010 with Shiv Singh smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/12/03/looking-ahead-to-2010-with-shiv-singh – view page – cached As part of our upcoming year-end report, I spoke with Shiv Singh, vice president and global social media lead for Razorfish. Shiv is a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board and… Read moreAs part of our upcoming year-end report, I spoke with Shiv Singh, vice president and global social media lead for Razorfish. Shiv is a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board and author of “Social Media Marketing for Dummies.” His blog Going Social Now is among the most respected social media marketing blogs. Our year-end reports publish on Dec. View page [...]
[...] SmartBlog On Social Media » Looking ahead to 2010 with Shiv Singh smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/12/03/looking-ahead-to-2010-with-shiv-singh – view page – cached As part of our upcoming year-end report, I spoke with Shiv Singh, vice president and global social media lead for Razorfish. Shiv is a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board and… Read moreAs part of our upcoming year-end report, I spoke with Shiv Singh, vice president and global social media lead for Razorfish. Shiv is a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board and author of “Social Media Marketing for Dummies.” His blog Going Social Now is among the most respected social media marketing blogs. Our year-end reports publish on Dec. View page [...]
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by mostash: Looking ahead to 2010 with Shiv Singh http://bit.ly/5ktO5o...
Yeah some really good tips there. I organize events all the time and the speakers really are the key to selling it out. getting the right speakers totally depends on how you are connected but if you do draw the right ones it really doesn’t take much effort to sell it out as their names will carry the event and people will come from far and wide to see them.
[...] Looking ahead to 2010 with Shiv Singh Shiv Singh, vice president and global social media lead for Razorfish, a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board and author of “Social Media Marketing for Dummies.” Social brands. Real-time brands. Identifying, nurturing and managing relationships. [...]
[...] at business predictions for the coming year. But the best social media prognosticators (like Shiv Signh in his SmartBrief on Social Media interview) have a leg up on their counterparts in other [...]
[...] at business predictions for the coming year. But the best social media prognosticators (like Shiv Signh in his SmartBrief on Social Media interview) have a leg up on their counterparts in other [...]
Shiv – great thoughts for the coming year. One thought I have on the evolution of social, real-time brands lies in understanding where the dividing line lies between how much marketing can accomplish versus the aspects of becoming a social entity that require innovation within the company from the top down. Essentially, it’s about where the company shifts from marketing and a bit of product/service related social activity to a “brand behavior” model, in which the core of the enterprise is open.
A further challenge is finding leaders who know how to modulate between openness and real-time responsiveness without giving away the farm and just doing what customers ask of them, potentially losing their uniqueness along the way.
These are all tricky and highly transformative concepts and in my opinion, only a few organizations will achieve them soon. I think in 2010 we are going to be frustrated by the gap between the rate of change in the independent social application infrastructure, which will move very quickly, and the evolution of brands, which will have a hard time moving past implementing social for marketing, customer service and a bit of product management. Not to say that this initial social foray doesn’t have value – it has tremendous value for the brand – but that concepts like social, real-time brands, if they embrace that brand is about the entire enterprise, and not a construct of marketing and advertising – are a very large step that won’t happen as quickly as we might like.
Robert Davis
VP, Digital Marketing
PJA
http://www.agencypja.com
http://www.twitter.com/heyrobertdavis
Social, social, social, so this is the year of doing and not talking right? Companies have proven in the past that in order to survive you have to have the ability to change courses dependant on the environment. Great post and I hope that everything that you say above will come to fruition.
Mike
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[...] Looking ahead to 2010 with Shiv Singh - SmartBlog on Social Media “Social brands: The most successful brands in 2010 are going to be the ones that evolve into social brands. This means that brands that have social voices — real people participating and talking on their behalf to customers in an engaging, conversational manner. The company must be willing to let its employees and its brand advocates become the face of the brand.” Dela blogginlägget på andra webbplatser: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
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This is a good post. I am very excited about 2010 because it is going to mean some more substantial progress towards transforming how both businesses and consumers bheave and decide. I am also excited by emergence of innovative technologies in this space such as those developed by TipTop http://FeelTipTop.com and others.
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[...] SmartBlog on Social Media: Looking ahead to 2010 with Shiv Singh [...]
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[...] Looking ahead to 2010 with Shiv Singh [...]
[...] Click here to read the entire interview. This entry was posted in Branding, Opinion. Bookmark the permalink. ← Can AIDA Online Marketing help Small Business? 2010 Small Business Struggling with Marketing Dollars → [...]
[...] Click here to read the entire interview. This entry was posted in Branding, Opinion. Bookmark the permalink. ← Can AIDA Online Marketing help Small Business? 2010 Small Business Struggling with Marketing Dollars → [...]
[...] Click here to read the entire interview. This entry was posted in Branding, Opinion. Bookmark the permalink. ← Can AIDA Online Marketing help Small Business? 2010 Small Business Struggling with Marketing Dollars → [...]