Content poised to dominate social media for 2012

There are only 44 days left until we pop the champagne, sing Auld Lang Syne (badly) and listen to Big Ben chime us in (or out) to 2012. Which gets us thinking…what is going to set the social media marketing agenda next year?

Here at Furlong PR, we are big believers in the pivotal role of expert content coupled with intelligent SEO on the bottom line. We have seen first-hand how content marketing can drive tangible results.

The gurus at Social Media Explorer (socialmediaexplorer.com) have already taken to their crystal balls, placing content marketing atop their social marketing trends for 2012.

So what’s new about content marketing? Social media pundits have been talking about this marketing discipline for years, but what has changed is buy-in at board level. Executives seem to have started to appreciate the positive impact that quality blog content, viral videos, white papers and the like can have on SEO and lead generation.

Content marketing requires quite a drastic rethink for many CMOs or CEO’s, in the sense that it asks brands to ‘be the media’ rather than feature ‘in the media’. The knee-jerk reaction has traditionally been that media=expensive=no thank you. But now that social media departments can begin to demonstrate the real business benefits of a strategy that incorporates content, budgets seem to be adapting to allow them to develop more sophisticated content strategies.

What does this mean for 2012? Socialmediaexplorer.com predicts that marketing departments will need to evolve their hiring strategies, seeking to match the demographics of content writers to their specific audiences. If 2012 really is the year that content marketing hits the mainstream, we expect to see a fresh focus on the creation and curation of quality content, which can only be a step forwards.

For the rest of Social Media Explorer’s social media trends for 2012, click here: