Three Social Media Marketing Predictions for 2011

If there’s anything that’s true about social media marketing, it is the amount of money that is being spent on it. Yet the return on investment in social media marketing is so poorly understood. Social media marketing is still inits infancy and we will see big changes to the landscape in the years to come.

Here are a few predictions that will impact social media marketing in a big way this year:

#1: Youtube will beat Yahoo as the second largest search engine in the world
More and more people are interested in watching video instead of doing text searches. Youtube will quickly become the second most used search engine.

#2: Email will make a comeback
One of the biggest reasons why email addresses (as opposed to social media) are such an excellent investment is because people who use them rarely change them. Social media has become so saturated that messages are often lost.

#3: Large companies will spend money on ‘vanity’ metrics
Most experts believe that there is very big difference between vanity and actionable metrics, and one of my predictions for this year will be that large companies will waste a lot of money on vanity metrics that will do them no good. Therefore, it’s important for companies using social media to understand which metrics count in terms of their company’s performance and which don’t.