Joe Keenan of e-Marketing & Commerce muses here on the future evolution of social networks, relying on the prognostications of Forrester Research.
He notes that 42% of social netters maintain profiles on two or more social sites, and points to applications that will make identity "portability" a reality soon.
From that point, says Keenan/Forrester, we’re headed toward the "era of social commerce."
"Beginning in about two years, social networks will become more powerful than corporate Web sites and CRM systems as they’ll be a repository for identities and relationships. Communities will become the driving force for innovation, forcing brands to cater to them, resulting in a power shift toward the connected customer."
What to do? Says Keenan:
"Focus on your most vocal advocates. New forms of advocacy will emerge as social applications systems enable rating friends’ reputations for reliability. Because consumers trust their peers, brands must learn to rely on their advocates more than ever. As a result, develop relationships with key influencers within communities, win them over and allow them to carry the message to the community. Offer incentives like group discounts to advocates and their followers."
More generally, I’d add: If you’re a "senior" marketer in a nonprofit (by that, I mean over age 50!!), go find some youngster on your staff who "gets" this stuff from a tech capabilities standpoint, make sure they get appropriate coaching in real fundraising (or pair them with a proven direct marketer), and see what ideas emerge.
Over time, nonprofits will realize that the online "action" is no longer on their own carefully manicured institutional websites, but is shifting to the personal online networks maintained by their supporters.
Tom
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But what if your donors are all over 50 or 60, or nearly all, and very, very few of them are on the Social Net sites?
Great post. I agree social networks will be powerful in the coming years. How do you think the business world will leap into this new space? Should a business have a presence within every social network or should a business maintain one presence on a social business network with a portal into every social network?
I’m betting on the intelligent social community. In-house networks will be tied to a Blackbaud/Convio/CRM database of some type to enable more efficient marketing. The massive data from social networks will be they key to identifying people most valuable to your organization.
Well, well. Here we go again. Trying to predict the future — as though nearly every single past prognostication has proven to be far off the mark. To me it seems far too early to predict the shape and direction that social networks will take in the years ahead. The only thing we can comfortably foresee is that what we see five, much less ten, years down the line will be radically different from today’s reality. Will social networks as we now know them even be part of the picture? Who knows?!
Great article. I think 10 years down the line social networks will BE the internet, however sites like Facebook, Twitter etc will be a distant memory. The future ( as I see it anyway) lies in the smaller niche social networking websites which are showing up on the internet at an astounding rate. Hopefully this blog gets archived and we can check back in 10 years to see how right (or wrong) we are.