Network Solutions – Small business conversations and working together for small business success

Facebook Connect (or Google Friend Connect – it doesn’t really matter which.)  In 2007 we “had to have” Second Life islands and widgets.  In 2008, we “had to have” Facebook Fan Pages and iPhone Apps.  In 2009, marketers will continue to put tactics before strategy and implement next year’s shiny object to ‘socialize’ their web presence without quite understanding why it’s important to do so.  Hopefully, 2010’s shiny object will be “a strategy.” [from Greg Verdino]

After a devastating holiday season, retailers will eagerly seek a way to improve results other than driving demand with deeper discounts. One option they will investigate will be how to insert people and social connections into the buying process, illuminating and influencing for the first time the Black Hole Of Consideration. As they lick their wounds in the first half of 2009, retailers will watch from the sidelines as media companies implement open social technologies like Facebook Connect and the Open Social Platform. But as the holiday season launches early after Labor Day, shoppers will find options to see what friends are recommending, buying and rating integrated into the shopping experience. [from Charlene Li]

Digital natives are less likely to use all the privacy settings available on social networks. Other digital immigrants sometimes forget, don’t know how, or don’t care about privacy settings either. The Internet will become a massive high school yearbook, that is searchable and open to the world.

With tighter budgets and so much buzz marketing departments everywhere will embrace social media to engage their customers (trade shows will take a huge hit), and extend their brands. The downside will be that many (most?) will miss the point and try to market through social media channels. Expect more blogs about product benefits and tweets about limited time offers.

There will be increased expectations by C-suite execs that their marketers can “figure out” how to integrate Social Media programs into broader marketing efforts.  While the customer conversation and support efforts can and should continue unabated, the credibility that such efforts create will spawn opportunities to become more ambitious in commercial outreach (i.e., the consumers who now love the company and help vet the storyline will also be keen to help the company succeed – promoting that storyline in PR and advertising, guided content creation, etc.). [from Todd Defren]

They’ll probably do it out of the same frustration we all have with the platform – it’s so useful and good but hasn’t been improved in the least and still doesn’t work well. For a group of guys to build the single-most useful communications software and social utility in recent memory, you’d think they’d work to keep users happy and improve the service. It’s like they build the first car, but refuse to add power steering, brakes and air conditioning. Still, we won’t gravitate elsewhere because it’s selling point is its simplicity and utility. But damn! What the hell are they doing with that funding? Google will not only make it work right, they’ll make it work better and add to their already ubiquitous hold on the online user experience. [from Jason Falls]

Already having gotten publicity by being featured in (gasp!) mainstream media in 2008, the rise of Twitter is a certainty. Brands will adopt Twitter for everything from media/influencer outreach to customer service to crisis communications. But more than any push-channel, Twitter will give customers, advocates and critics unprecedented access to corporate personnel and vice versa.

It’s been a key tool I’ve used on behalf of Ford because it’s given us a strategic advantage over GM: they’ve largely used the mass-marketing approach of social media through blog posts and (mostly) RSS-to-Twitter feeds; I’m in the process of humanizing the Ford brand, and individual accounts on Twitter make that possible. [from Scott Monty]