We all wish we had a crystal ball we can consult whenever we need to peek into the future.  Short of offering our peers that magic crystal, we connected with some of the best and brightest to ask them to predict what 2012 has in store for us.  We compiled the collective wisdom of 34 renowned experts in the field of strategy, marketing and technology in our free eBook: 2012 Social Marketing & New Media Predictions.  We asked about the top social marketing developments, new technologies, biggest challenges, and top news resources.  Here’s a peek into the biggest social marketing developments you need to prepare for this year.  Your magic keyword cloud reads: integration, mobile, new influence, relevancy marketing, social business revolution, real-time analytics, convergence, and trust as a social currency.

The Year of Integration – Paul Gillin, the author of Social Media Marketing for the Business Customer, sees 2012 as the year when social marketers would stop delegating social to junior managers.  He predicts a new generation of integrated marketing programs that will be “much more sophisticated that anything we’ve seen in the past”.  Jay Baer, Laura Fitton, Steve Rubel, and Robert Collins agree. Robert Collins of Social Media Breakfast goes on to say that “social movements and programs will become more integrated within existing business processes and become the driving agent behind purpose-driven product innovation, lead generation, sales, R&D, customer service, market research, communications, brand development, company culture, and, yes, marketing”.

Convergence: Pamela Johnston from the Lahey Clinic and Andrew Patterson from Major League baseball see the biggest development in 2012 in the convergence between the worlds of marketing and IT.  Especially in healthcare, according to Pamela, “these two distinct teams are learning from and about each other in ways that will make us smarter, faster and more patient-centric in the years to come”. Andrew sees Facebook and the open graph providing the context to make “our digital marketing efforts stick.”

The Social Business Revolution – Brian Solis, the author of The End of Business as Usual, joins Matthew Grant of MarketingProfs in saying that in 2012 companies of all sizes will need to “transform their business and existing infrastructure, and reverse engineer the impact of business objectives and metrics.” Matthew goes on to predict that corporate sites will be better and more deeply integrated with social media properties “bringing with it a more seamless experience as you move from the social media spokes to the proprietary hub.”

Real-time – Globally recognized marketing strategist David Meerman Scott predicts that our ability to harness real-time in all aspects of marketing will be the true sign of the new nimble marketing organization in 2012. Marketers’ need to react instantly to breaking news, changes on their websites and negative customer feedback, will give rise to a “new mentality, infrastructure and workflows to meaningfully participate in real time.”

Relevancy marketing –Jason Falls, the author of No Bullshit Social Media, Stacy Debroff, Stephen Murphy see 2012 as the year of relevancy marketing.  Jason Falls predicts that adding customer relationship management and tying social CRM functionality to marketing efforts will improve “our ability as marketers to hit relevant audiences with relevant messages at relevant times and in relevant places.”

Mobile as a game-changer – Debi Kleiman, David Berkowitz, and Mark Lazen converge on mobile as the true game-changer in 2012.  Debi Kleiman defined mobile’s role as follows: “Social marketing use cases and the kind of data that can be gleaned when people are using social on their phones will require brands to completely rethink how they connect and communicate with consumers.”

Influence and Metrics: If we had to pick one area that is going to experience the most change, it would have to be that of metrics and influence.  Dave Peck, Ekaterina Walter, Marc Meyer, Michael Pace, Jonas Klit Nielsen, Tim Hayden expect that brands will be asking their agencies, vendors and internal stakeholders the real ROI questions and will be demanding the tools to measure the value. Ekaterina Walter predicts that “brands will need a way to feed these (ROI) metrics into one solution, which will aggregate, analyze and identify the right metrics that will help teams make the right decisions

Social maturity: Jim Storer, Doug Haslam, and Lora Kratchounova see 2012 more companies entering the social maturity stage in 2012. Jim predicts that companies will have “a more innate understanding of what they need to do in social media”, and will be more specific about where they allocate budgets within social media.  Jim and Lora see a shortage of experienced and talented community as more and more organizations seek to leverage social strategies.

Trust as a social currency – Erik Qualman, the author of Socialnomics and the newly printed Digital Leader, predicts 2012 will be the year “where digital leadership transcends privacy”. He sees the winning social network providers as those that “both individuals and companies trust.”

As you contemplate your plans for 2012, we encourage you to learn from the best and use their insights to inform your thinking, strategies and approach – download the free 2012 Social Marketing & New Media Predictions and let us know what you think.  Best of luck in 2012.

Mike Lewis

@BostonMike

Facebook, as we know it, has completely revolutionized the way we communicate. The tool itself has transformed how people interact, perceive others, and “develop” ourselves via cyberspace.

Nowadays, however, your behavior on the popular site can actually be categorized based on how you interpret and respond to the various medias.

A friend of mine posted this as her status the other day, and I couldn’t help but share…

17 Types of People on Facebook:

1) The “Lurker” -Never posts anything or comments on your post, but reads everything, and might make reference to your status if they see you in public.
2) The “Hyena” -Doesn’t ever really say anything, just LOLs and LMAOs at everything.
3) “Mr/Ms Popular” -Has 4…367 friends for NO reason.
4) The “Gamer” -Plays Words With Friends, Mafia Wars, Bakes virtual cakes and stuff, etc., ALL DAY, EVERYDAY.
5) The “Prophet” -Every post makes reference to God or Jesus.
6) The “Thief” -Steals status updates and posts them as their own.
7) The “Cynic” -Hates their life, and everything in it, as evidenced by the somber tone in ALL of their status updates.
The “Collector” -Never posts anything either, but joins every group, and becomes fans of the most random stuff.
9) The “Promoter” -Always sends event invitations to things that you ultimately delete or ignore.
10) The “Liker” -Never actually says anything, but always clicks the “like” button.
“Liking” all of your photos, check-ins, statuses, and new friends.
11) The “Hater” -Every post revolves around someone hating on them, and they swear people are trying to ruin their life.
12) The “Anti-Proofreader” -This person would benefit greatly from spell check, and sometimes you feel bad for them because you don’t know if they were typing fast, or really can’t spell.
13) “Drama Queen/King” -This person always posts stuff like “I can’t believe this!”, or “They gonna make me snap today!”, in the hopes that you will ask what happened, or what’s wrong but then they never finish telling the story.
14) “Womp Womp” -This person consistently tries to be funny…but never is.
15) The “News” -Always updates you on what they are doing and who they are doing it with, no matter how arbitrary.
16) The “Rooster” -Feels that it is their job to tell Facebook “Good Morning” every day.
17) The “Attention Seeker”- this is the person usually female(you know the ones) that feel it necessary to post pictures of themselves on Facebook two to three times a day in the hopes that someone will tell them they’re pretty or like the pic.. I mean come on is it really that important to get approval?

The most revealing part of that entire list is that each one of us more than likely fit into one of those categories or we will create another category as Facebook continues to evolve.

When the New England Patriots and New York Giants kick off Super Bowl XLVI in the early evening hours (locally) of Feb. 5 in Indianapolis, you can bet it is going to be one social event.

Officials in Indianapolis are taking to social media for this year’s big event, using the stage to host the game’s first-ever social media command center.

Reports indicate a group of social media strategists, analysts and tech lovers will oversee the digital fan chatter through Facebook, Twitter and various other social media tools while residing in a nearly 3,000-square-foot venue downtown. More than 20 individuals will reportedly oversee operations at the command center for 15 hours per day, searching a variety of keyword hash-tags to assist fans better enjoy their Super Bowl experience.

Among the tasks the team will be given includes tweeting directions to the thousands and thousands of fans in search of parking, guiding visitors to the city’s top attractions, and being on hand to provide any necessary emergency information. As an example, if someone tweets they cannot find parking in this lot or that lot, members in the command center can tweet out where the nearest available parking may be.

As a spokesperson for the digital marketing agency overseeing the social media efforts noted online, “Social media is just how people interact now. We felt it was critical to have some horsepower behind that aspect of the Super Bowl here, versus what you might have seen from other Super Bowls.” The agency has also teamed up with Ball State University, Butler University and IUPUI to provide more input and personnel into the project.

Local officials estimate that some 150,000 people will be in town to celebrate all the goings-on during the week leading up to the game.

As some social media experts have said, not providing a response to Twitter in 2012 is like letting the phone ring continuously in decades past.

And we all know how bad that is for business….

 Photo credit: inflexwetrust.com

No other tool in your marketing toolbox delivers the bang-for-your-buck like video content.

From our ebook Biggest Social Marketing and New Media Predictions for 2012, Jay Baer, social media strategist, coach, speaker and all-around good guy, shared that 2012 will be “the explosion in short-form multimedia, as companies start to truly embrace video and mobile photography.” With predictions like this, we asked: Could 2012 be the year marketers embrace video in their social marketing efforts? We think yes, and here’s four reasons why:

1. Video is Getting Bigger

Since May 2011, there are more than 48 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute.  And as of December 2011, YouTube boasted more than a trillion videos viewed this year alone. With 71% of all online adults participating platforms like YouTube, video sharing is up 38% since 2006, 28% of which share on a daily basis.

2. Video Sells to the C-Suite

If you think that video marketing is only suitable for end consumers, then think again. Senior executives watch videos to make purchase decisions. A Forbes Insights report points to 65% of senior decision-makers visiting a vendor’s website after watching a video. In fact, 83% of the surveyed senior executives report watching more online video today than they were a year ago, with 75% indicating they watch work-related videos at least weekly. Younger executives (those under 40) are more likely to make a purchase based on video alone. It is clear that video is becoming an essential way to connect with and sell to both senior decision-makers and end consumers.

3. Video is Essential for Inbound Marketing and SEO

Hosting videos on your site is a great way to attract and engage visitors. Visitors spend an average of two more minutes on websites that host videos than on sites that don’t. Video helps to increase a website’ quality score too. A ‘long click’, which leads to more time spent on site, results from higher quality content, ultimately enhancing user engagement.  In fact, video can increase your chances of getting on the first page Google’s search results 53 times!

4. Video is Killing the TV Star

A Bright Roll survey early this year reveals 65% of marketers plan to reallocate campaign dollars from TV to online video.  Over 25% see online and mobile video as the two areas that will see the overall largest spend increase this and next year. Most marketers report taking advertising budgets away from television and display. Marketers plan to spend more on video because it works – video drives sales.

For instance, meet Old Spice, the men’s body wash and deodorant manufacturer. About now, everyone has likely heard of the Old Spice campaign, The Man Your Man Can Smell Like. This one commercial, originally aimed for television, generated 5.9 million views on YouTube in the first 24 hours of its launch.  It got 20 million views three days, 1.4 billion impressions over six months. The ROI? Sales increased by 107% over six months.

GoPro, which makes mountable cameras, goes after current customers who are posting cool and interesting videos to YouTube using their cameras. One video, watched six million times in two days, showed a buck leaping across a mountain biker’s trail in Africa and knocking him to the ground. Quoted in a New York Times article, Stephen Baumer, GoPro CIO, said this: “The content ends up selling the cameras.” He went on to say, “these consumers, to our delight, are advertising on our behalf.”

Integrating Video into your Marketing Mix

We partnered with MarketingProfs to bring to our community of savvy marketers a new free white paper on Why Video is Essential to Your Marketing Mix. This resource focuses on examples from leading brands using video marketing to increase their visibility, attract new users and increase sales. You will learn how video can help you reach a specific audience, keep them engaged longer, and bring your brand to life in ways previously unimagined.

Here are a few of the examples shared in the whitepaper:

• Informative videos: WebMD is a great example of how video can be used to both inform and educate – their videos are of high-quality, focused on specific medical conditions and diseases.  The goal is to help consumers take better control of their health.
• Instructional videos: Iron Mountain, the leading information management and storage provider, offers fun, creative vignettes to their Facebook page. D-Link, a company selling networking equipment, has a library of short, instructional videos teaching both home and business owners how to use and set-up their products.
• Entertaining videos: Kinaxis, offering on-demand software for supply chain management, showcases a series of videos poking fun at the challenges associated with large supply chain environments. As of April 2010, the company had more than tripled its leads, and was able to increase the number of registered community members by 38%.

We welcome your thoughts, reactions and feedback.  Let us know how do you approach the process of video creation and promotion?  What are your top video tips and tricks? Has video helped your company?  As we embark on 2012, we promise to continue to provide deeper dives into best practices, successes, and notable trends to help you, social marketers, do more and do better. Comment on this blog, on Twitter at hashtag #AwarenessSMM, on Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices, or LinkedIn at the Social Media Marketing Mavens Group.

Talk about taking care of your beta users, the company is actually grandfathering in beta testers and giving them a 50 person meeting room, for life! Anyone who reads anything I write, knows that I am a HUGE fan of generous/freemium marketing and I think this is an incredibly novel and powerful way to promote a product, while rewarding users who helped shape it. The grandfathering is absolutely brilliant, as it ensures a certain amount of customer loyalty, and if the customers ever want to add more seats they can easily upgrade .

I got in touch with MeetingBurner and consistent with their marketing strategy they offered a special link for Socialnomics readers. Go to meetingburner.com/socialnomics and sign up for a free 50 person meeting room.

As I always tell my clients, make your loyal customers feel special. Offer them a unique reward and the rest will take care of itself.

Pinterest, a virtual pin board, is no longer just for individuals who pin what they love for potential home decorating, weddings, and recipes…it has become a mecca of fashion, design, consumer engagement, photo sharing, and more with brands and consumers alike. It’s a phenomenal platform for consumer brands to share what they have to offer in visually pleasing ways, as well as demonstrate appreciation for users who already talk about the brand, by re-pinning what those consumers already pinned. Whether it’s showing consumers taking part with the brand, introducing new products, campaigns, themes, or pictures iconic of the brand itself, Pinterest definitely has some legs to stick around when it comes to consumer-brand engagement.

Below are five brands, which have made other lists, and I believe are utilizing Pinterest for the value it can offer and showing their fans and consumers they aren’t just a brand name, but care to be involved with their consumers, offer cool content, and engage more personally…

1. Gap

The Gap on Pinterest has a few different boards including products they make, a focus on denim, but what sparked my interest was the board which was just about repins from other Pinterest users, “popular Gap images on Pinterest.” It’s a great way for the brand to engage with users as well as demonstrate the brand’s appreciation

2. Whole Foods

Whole Foods  takes it to a whole other level when it comes to sharing content via Pinterest. Not only do they talk about holiday preparations for food such as the not too long ago Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year, but they also provide other inspirational boards. They aren’t just talking about food they have and offer, but creative spins on food as well as forging there way into adjacent categories which would be of interest to people who care about food, cook often, and put real effort into the preparation that goes into it. Hat tip to Whole Foods for not just talking about their own products.

3. Nordstrom

Nordstrom has gone beyond the regular department store image and demonstrated to consumers they care to offer more than just being a brick and mortar retailer. On their Pinterest page, Nordstrom does categorize products they have now, but they keep it current, looking forward, and fresh. In addition they offer holiday gift ideas and even feature popular brands such as Ugg and Toms, both of which have demonstrated they are not a fleeting trend. However, I do think it would be cool if Nordstrom would take a step further and crowdsource some content for boards such as people wearing Toms or giving holiday gift tips from Nordstrom. Perhaps make it a contest in order to make even more contagious.

4. Travel Channel

The cool thing about the Travel Channel on Pinterst is that avid watchers of the channel will be pumped to see stuff categorized for their interests. Interested in street food or animals from around the world…search no more. Want to get to see a personal side of the channel and its people? Check out some behind the scenes pictures which they bucket away and pin on a board just for those special seekers. The pictures are vivid, personable, and fun. Perhaps another board could be one of people’s travels or food they’ve tried from around the world…engaging a step further with consumer generated content.

5. West Elm

The numbers I look at first when I go to a brand page on Pinterst is whether the brand just pins, or do they also “like” and “follow” others on the platform. West Elm has some of the most “likes” I’ve seen among brands. Not only do they show different interior design ideas, but they also have a board for fashion and interior design savvy, Etsy, as well as a board for a personal take – Smile Booth. This board allowed West Elm to show its employees during parties, as well as guests, consumers, and fans of the brand. I always believe in humanizing the brand, and having a board like this one is definitely a good example.

Did you know that there is an invisible, silent force that determines your Facebook success, and that mastering this force can give you an advantage over your competitors?

That force is called EdgeRank, and we sat down with Taulbee Jackson, President and CEO of Raidious, one of the leading interactive marketing companies, to discuss how marketers can harness its power. We’ll be devoting an entire hour to the subject during our webinar with him next week: EdgeRank Ninjutsu: How to Optimize Content for EdgeRank Success.

Why should marketers understand EdgeRank?

Lots of brands have invested heavily in developing audiences on Facebook – using not just technology and tools but also allocating human resources to the task. Although brands are producing content in an effort to engage with their Facebook fans, it is ultimately the EdgeRank algorithm that determines whether this content gets displayed to fans. Many companies end up spending time and money to develop their audience, but in reality only reaching a small percentage of them. Understanding EdgeRank can equip marketers with the critical insights to help them get more fans and keep them engaged over time. The long-term implications of EdgeRank are also important, particularly if a brand is integrating Facebook functionality into their site. We think EdgeRank can have more profound long-term ramifications than the Google algorithm for many marketers.

What was the most surprising fact about EdgeRank you discovered when researching for this webinar? 

The brilliance of EdgeRank and its targeting sophistication compared to that of other algorithms such as Google’s was surprising. Facebook uses a lot more and richer data than Google, analyzing and understanding relationships between key data points, which enables it to expose what’s really valuable for and relevant to its users. I was surprised to see how much Facebook cares about content quality and user engagement. They have gone to great lengths to make sure their users are not just seeing the content they know they want, but also offering content they may be interested, but didn’t know they wanted. This says a lot about Facebook’s commitment to its users. It also points to Facebook’s enormous potential to monetize their growing membership.

Google is more forward with the public when they make changes to their algorithm, while Facebook hardly every talks about EdgeRank. Why do you think that is?

Google’s algorithm has been around a lot longer, and entire industries have sprung up around understanding and utilizing that algorithm.  Google is not more transparent with their algorithm, it’s just that there are lot more SEO people monitoring it closely and sharing their insights. And because there are a lot more people focused on manipulating Google search, they have caught Google’s attention and made it important for the company to help these people understand what Google is aiming to accomplish. Google is focused on providing the best search results possible, and by sharing information about their updates, they help website publishers navigate these changes.

What are some tactics you have implemented with clients to specifically improve EdgeRank?

We have tested timing of posts and formats. As a result we have shifting our content approach to be more oriented towards rich media formats, which has been very successful for our clients. Proactively engaging communities and empowering fans to create and share their own content have also proven to be effective. The most important “tactic” for Raidious has always been treating marketing as a science experiment – test and optimize, then test and optimize some more, regardless of whether it is Facebook, email, Twitter, or blogposts. If you’re not constantly trying new things, you won’t know if you can do better.

What do you see for the future of EdgeRank?

As marketers begin to see the profound potential of the Facebook data – and the data-driven impact Facebook can have for brands, marketers will start pulling more of the Facebook data insights into their owned media properties – such as websites, mobile apps, blogs, etc. Equipped with new access to rich, meaningful user data, marketers will be able to offer deeply personalized user experiences. Facebook profiles will start to replace your email inbox, as it becomes your “key to the Internet”. Facebook is getting closer to achieving the data-driven marketer’s dream – capturing deep user preference insights that will empower marketers to connect products with both the known and unrealized needs of their target audience. Our company is one of the first of many that will focus on EdgeRank optimization as a core user engagement function, and we anticipate a new EdgeRank industry springing up similarly to the way the SEO industry has evolved.

For more insights from Taulbee Jackson, be sure to attend our free Awareness webinar on Wednesday, January 25, at 2 pm EST: EdgeRank Ninjutsu: How to Optimize Content for EdgeRank Success.

You can also post your questions for Taulbee in the comment section of this blogpost, on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Social Gaming is huge, but even some of these stats blew me away in this social and mobile gaming infographic:

Source: Prism Casino (click here to get full mobile gaming statistics)

For many of us in or just past the Baby Boomers generation, we grew up getting much of our breaking news via radio, television or the daily newspaper.

Today’s generation, however, simply needs to Internet access and they can stay update to date with the latest and breaking news worldwide.

As many of us first learned on Twitter Jan. 19, Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke  passed away Thursday in a Utah hospital, only nine days after crashing at the bottom of the superpipe during a training run in Park City, Utah. The Ontario (Canada) was married and just 29 years of age.

As noted in the details of her death, tests showed Burke sustained “irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest.”

The four-time Winter X Games champ, who successfully lobbied to have her sport debut at the 2014 Olympic in Sochi, Russia, tore her vertebral artery, which led to severe bleeding on the brain. The accident caused her to go into cardiac arrest on the scene, and she was on life support up until Thursday morning. A publicist reported that Burke’s organs and tissues were donated per her wishes.

“I’ve been doing this for long time, 11 years,” Burke commented in a 2010 interview. “I’ve been very lucky with the injuries I’ve had. It’s part of the game. Everybody gets hurt. Looking back on it, I’d probably do the exact same thing again.”

While many Canadians and ski lovers worldwide are and will mourn Burke’s the death, the speed with which many of us learned about her passing is in large part due to Twitter.

Just like the fight for freedom in parts of the Middle East last year, along with the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi, much of the news we hear of worldwide is coming to us via social media venues such as Twitter.

While some argue that sites such as Twitter can at times provide nothing more than rumors, such as Colts’ QB Peyton Manning reportedly retiring before he actually does, social media venues like Twitter and Facebook have implanted themselves as part of our daily news intake.

Anytime news such as that like Burke’s death appears on sites like Twitter, it is important to make sure that it is factual to say the least.

That being said, many people like me, someone who has been in the field of journalism for some 23 years, are keeping one eye on Twitter and Facebook and another on the “real news outlets” during the day.

Then again, maybe some of these social media sites are becoming the “real news outlets” of this online information-driven age.

Photo credit: globalnews.ca

2011 was a year of increased adoption of social technologies within the enterprise, and that trend will continue into 2012. In their fifth annual survey of over 4,200 global executives, McKinsey concludes that when adopted at scale, “social technologies can boost a company’s financial performance and market share.”  To help stay ahead of this wave of change, we connected with 34 top business and marketing strategies to get their take on the key technologies that will impact marketing and sales in 2012 for our free eBook 2012 Social Marketing & New Media Predictions. Here are some of their top predictions:

Integrated Analytics for Market-Driven Insights – 2012 will see marketing empowered by sophisticated analytics – with companies, their marketing analytics teams and their social technology vendors coming together to turn the deluge of social data into actionable, measurable insights. Brian Solis and David Meerman Scott point to this trend as shaping how businesses will communicate and engage with their constituents – with market-driven and not-marketing driven insights, as Brian Solis clarifies. These insights will be augmented by new technologies that will accurately measure influence and engagement, adds Paul Gillin. Ekaterina Walters at Intel also gives integrated analytics thumbs up, commenting that until brands have the tools to measure the right things at the right time an integrated way, “we won’t know what the impact is.”

Toolset/ CRM Integration: 2012 is also touted as the year where we will see further integration of the social technology toolset. Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer and No Bullshit Social Media predicts monitoring platforms will be adding publishing and management solutions, while social platforms will evolve to include e-mail, mobile and website management.  The social technology toolset will also see a tighter integration between social data and CRM and web analytics solutions.  This tighter social CRM (sCRM) integration will allow brands to address the ROI question and measure the impact on bottom-line results. Errol Apostolopoulos at Optaros, Inc. adds that marketers can expect to see numbers that reflect revenue per fan along “with proven ways to tap into the interest graph”, which will lead to “a lot more social success stories”. Marc Meyer of the Digital Response Marketing Group votes for the integrated dashboard – bundling marketing, monitoring and management “to address multiple accounts and reduce multiple logins and processes.”

The Year of Mobile: 2012 is (yet again) proclaimed as the year of mobile. Smart phones are becoming the primary channel for users to interact with social networks. David Berkowitz shares 2012 will be the year Facebook will have more than half of its users accessing it from mobile devices. Debi Kleiman of MITX predicts that this mobile shift “will require brands to completely rethink how they connect and communicate with consumers.” Jim Storer adds that mobile will become “an imperative, not just a nice-to-have.”

Jay Baer believes that we will see a more concerted efforts by companies to make their content mobile-friendly, while near-field communications (NFL) opportunities will drive relevancy, immediacy and tractions for the mobile-savvy brands. As Neil Glassman puts it, NFL will be about “real, real-time marketing.”  Mark Lazen of Social Media Today and The Customer Collective agrees that ultimately, mobile will open up marketing opportunities for relevancy.

Trends to Watch For: Other key social technology developments likely to impact the enterprise this year include – video, Google +, Facebook Edgerank, open APIs, inbound marketing tools and interactive voice response.  Access all 140+ predictions on what the experts agree would be the top social technology developments in 2012. Our free eBook 2012 Social Marketing & New Media Predictions also includes predictions on top social marketing developments, biggest challenges, and top news resources.  To get the latest from the experts quoted in the 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions, you can follow them on Twitter.

We welcome your thoughts, reactions, and feedback. Other social tech developments likely to impact us this year?  Let’s continue the discussion in the comments below, on Twitter at hashtag #AwarenessSMM, Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices, LinkedIn at the Social Media Marketing Mavens Group.

Mike Lewis

@BostonMike