Social Media Predictions for 2011

By John Disque

The year 2010 brought many major and unique changes in the way people communicate. Social Media has become the most powerful media in the world, especially for marketing and news reporting. The Nielsen Report showed an 83 percent increase in the U.S. in social networking for 2009. Twitter had an increase of 3,712% while Facebook's 699% increase was still a major climb over the previous year.

I have some predictions of my own for social media in 2011:

• More politicians will start using Facebook and leave Twitter
• More musicians and bands will leave Facebook and look for a smaller, more intimate social media
• Multi-screening is the key on all social media, and businesses are catching on
• The Travel industry will use Twitter to do more 1 on 1 socializing
• Police, FBI, CIA will be watching all media sites a lot closer
• Small businesses will do a better job at targeting their market on Facebook
• Bigger businesses will set up departments and hire new people to do nothing but keep up with and influence the social media sites
• Google will make more of a presence
• Local activists and organizations will spring up all over Facebook and Twitter
• More people will get away from small talk and begin targeting the true experts in their areas of concern
• Brilliant business people will do a better job of utilizing search engines and joining services with social media
• Business leaders will target and focus on trends
• Businesses will focus on developing their own trends and creating automatic attention
• Surprise news, controversial news, breaking news will be the money makers for the news outlets
• Businesses will work harder to gain customer loyalty (rewards, exclusive rights, 1 on 1 communication, for example)
• Writers will find and stick with their niche, and discover that it works

Published January 2, 2011