sociallyawesome

As we enter a hopeful new year, we thought it would be helpful to deliver some key items for your corporate social media strategy checklist for 2013. And, as we also enter a new year of Google changes to the ever-important search algorithm, we include a review of SEO from a social standpoint.

We all agree that social media has revolutionized marketing. Content is now fully democratized, created by and for consumers with little control or input from major media companies or brands. If your brand has any value at all, someone has said so. They've written a blog post or created a video about how much or how little your brand added value to their life.

Additionally, good marketers know that consumer recommendations and endorsements are the most powerful drivers of intent. Brands seek to use this kind of content in their ads because consumers recognize and appreciate authenticity. The challenge is this content can be hard to find, and even more difficult to activate. When so much is being said about so many topics, how do you find what you need and quickly turn it into an ad message that can be delivered at scale? This may be the biggest problem facing brands in today's social landscape.

To solve this issue, a lot of work has been done on discovering content, but very little on understanding and activating the content. Each day, consumers are commenting on your brand across the web, but brands are blind to it. Companies like Radian6 are collating info on social chatter and content, but what does a brand do with it? If I know that Mary in Montana hates me, what do I do? It would be incredibly powerful if you could harness this knowledge, learn from it, and gain insight. Making social content actionable means brands can motivate tens of thousands of people to respond in an hour and can collate information in real-time. There is no comparing the power of this and, say, a year-long research test in Tulsa.

The problem that needs solving is the ability to activate social content at scale. Brands have invested heavily on listening, and while many exhibit a faith in social, they don't know how to manage and distribute content at scale around those conversations. Marketers need a solution to study all of the content created by consumers. Marketers need a taxonomy of consumer-created content, which they can use to power their marketing campaigns. They need a vehicle to redistribute that content at scale.

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The social media landscape has undergone enormous changes since the current Socialmedia.biz team of strategists partnered up in 2009. With the end of the year fast approaching, we thought this would be a good time to offer our forecasts into what the next year may hold in store for social media, mobile, social businesses and more.

Here are nine fearless predictions — including a look at the current state, predicted future state and our recommendations.

In today's social web a retailer can't just pick one or two social sites, they need to been seen on all. Much like you wouldn't put all your ad spend in billboards.