Digital and Social Trends for 2012

It's a new year, and for many digital rainmakers, a fresh budget to pursue the best strategies to influence the online raindance in 2012. Digital marketing and social media have evolved and marketers are looking for ways to be more targeted, efficient in their approach to an increasingly digital savvy consumer. Here are five of the 2012 trends we believe will have the greatest impact:

1). Deeper consumer insights from social behaviors

Rainmakers will learn a lot more about Facebook and Twitter users, helping them understand their behaviors while using these popular social platforms.That will lead to the creation of new advertising properties and campaigns will be crafted to lead with social media concepts, rather than using the channel as an afterthought.

2). Birth of "F" and "T" commerce
With better and more targeted consumer behavior data, brands on Facebook and Twitter will create commerce tabs and sections to make it easier to drive conversions based on the content being shared by fans and followers.


3). Blogger journalists arrive
Blogging by trained writers and journalists will come of age and brands will incorporate bloggers in almost everything they do. They'll leverage the legitimacy of influential and expert bloggers, who will be recognized as having the same "third party credibility" as traditional media columnists.

4). Social means mobile 
Mobile usage will begin to overtake desktop use and social interaction will be led by how consumers interact with brands via mobile applications. There will be more photo and video sharing of user experiences, more 'liking' and 'favoriting,' of content and targeted social gaming experiences based on the user's location.

5). Click-to-play joins ad options
With video content leading the digital raindance on multiple platforms, brands will develop customized video ads that they'll serve up on a "click-to-play for pay" basis. With specific click-to-play data to evaluate, brands will be able to calculate the cost per view and increase its social data mining intelligence beyond the simple browser cookie-tracked behavior.