Blake Cahill, President of Banyan Branch, was interviewed by SMT last November 14. It's that time of the year to ask that question: What comes next year?
- Don't dismiss Google+ just yet. Now that brand pages have launched, the hangout feature will be an amazing opportunity for brand advocates to connect with spokespeople, experts and other advocates. I'm not sure if it will take off, but I think we will see a similar initial spike in the brand pages to what we saw in the initial Google+ public interest.
- Google will also be launching a wallet feature, which might make it an adversary for Facebook's possible commerce play.
- The continued expansion of Smartphones will drive interactions in all channels because more people will be able to access social from their phones - Location based services may get a bump from this too.
- Twitter brandpages with clickable backgrounds and analytics.
- Social will get more photogenic - Instagram and Pinterest will become as widely known as Twitter and FB, and hopefully as widely adopted.
- Facebook fatigue - The new timeline is too busy. Newsfeeds will become too infiltrated with ads (whether via Fan pages or FB injecting ads into the newsfeed). People will look elsewhere to stay connected.
- Common retailers will finally integrate and see the value of social; and how they can create and target users with targeted messages to increase their revenue. Non-tech industries (like retail) always lag behind tech advances by a few years, and while a few big brands have tech-savvy marketing teams you'll see checking-in and store promotions instead of brands simply saying "join us on social network X".
- RIP Myspace. Someone put a fork in it. It's done.