101 Online Community & Social Business Trends to Watch in 2012

One of the most important things that we have learned in helping companies and associations implement social business models is to listen. At the end of each year companies, media sites, and consultants all lay out what they think will happen and what is important for the next year. We believe that there is great data in listening to those predictions and analyzing the trends inside these trend lists.

Here are 101 online community and social business trends for 2012 from some of the brightest minds in business. Some of the business people whose predictions are listed below are very well known and others are lesser known, though all are insightful. What trends to you see?

Customers

1. Customer-facing social hockey sticks. – DachisGroup
2. Social will continue to become nearly everyone’s primary source of content and interaction – Uprising
3. Consumers will reward transparent companies with their loyalty. – Charlene Li
4. Your customers want to be known. –
5. Customer first ! But for how long? – Bertrand Duperrin’s Notepad
6. Social penetration/saturation (the post social era poso) – Forrester Research

Strategy

7. Internal and external social business efforts blur, but remain distinct. – DachisGroup
8. We’ll stop focusing so much on adoption and instead focus on solutions – @Greg2dot0’s Blog
9. Social Selling as a Service – the Digital Influence Mapping Project
10. Social commerce will be all the buzz in 2012 – Online Community Manager
11. More attention for niche communities – Online Community Manager
12. Inside Out. – Sandy Carter
13. Codependence: SoLoMo. – Sandy Carter
14. Be meaningful to your media savvy and connected customer communities – Uprising
15. Identity Management – The Business of Social Media Beyond Web 2.6
16. Budget : from technology to organizational transformation – Bertrand Duperrin’s Notepad
17. Adopting one’s future instead of adopting social – Bertrand Duperrin’s Notepad
18. Community-Driven Content and Products – Mashable
19. Mass Appeal on Niche Networks – Mashable
20. Customer-oriented enterprise opportunities (enterprise social is the next big opportunity) – Forrester Research
21. Organisations will radically streamline their social media presences – Restless Communications
22. Outsourcing partnerships with attract more attention – Salesforce
23. Supplier Relationships Require New Guidelines – Salesforce

Engagement

24. Gamification – McAfee
25. Gamification doesn’t happen, yet. – DachisGroup
26. Gamification of social networking in the enterprise – Ideatrotter
27. Gamification Endures – the Digital Influence Mapping Project
28. Your audience is now an audience of audiences with audiences. – Sandy Carter
29. Crowdsourcing stops becoming a buzzword and starts becoming one of the most cost effective ways for small to medium sized business to engage their stakeholders – Uprising
30. Gamification – The Business of Social Media Beyond Web 2.2
31. Social engagement will move from specialized social teams to business users throughout the enterprise. – Attensity
32. Fun is required. Gamification Again. – Sandy Carter

Process & Organization

33. Social intranets struggle forward, social business processes don’t. – DachisGroup
34. The social business unit/center of excellence phenomenon continues. – DachisGroup
35. Social business budgets go up another level. – DachisGroup
36. The year will close with a consensus (or lack thereof) on enterprise social apps. – DachisGroup
37. We still won’t agree what to call it – @Greg2dot0’s Blog
38. We’ll understand what community is a bit better – Online Community Manager
39. CCO: Chief Community Officer – Online Community Manager
40. It’s all about the Process, baby. – Sandy Carter
41. Adoptation is a forethought. – Sandy Carter
42. Frictionless social gestures. – Sandy Carter
43. Participant, not spectator. – Sandy Carter
44. New Job Roles Grow. – Sandy Carter
45. Design for loss of control. – Sandy Carter
46. B2B marketers that don’t take ownership of social media as part of a strategic inbound engine will be an endangered species by the end of 2012 – Uprising
47. Social media will move beyond marketing, PR and customer service and will become an extension of an entire businesses employee, customer and partner base – Uprising
48. Enterprise App Stores & Business Intelligence Dashboards – The Business of Social Media Beyond Web 2.5
49. Enter the Social Business Expert – Britopian
50. Connected leaders and employees will create sustained competitive advantages through a culture of sharing. –
51. Broken Meetings are Changing – CMSWire
52. From Teams to Crowds – CMSWire
53. A more operations-driven approach to social dynamics – Bertrand Duperrin’s Notepad
54. The year of culture! – Bertrand Duperrin’s Notepad

Business Intelligence

55. Analytics and business intelligence (BI) becomes standard fare. – DachisGroup
56. Social business becomes less art, and more science. – DachisGroup
57. We’ll finally figure out that social’s value is measured by existing process metrics – @Greg2dot0’s Blog
58. Big Data struggles with unstructured information – @Greg2dot0’s Blog
59. Social Analytics – Ideatrotter
60. Social Insights over Social Data – the Digital Influence Mapping Project
61. More insistence on accountability, measurement and quantification – Uprising
62. More companies will consider use of social monitoring and analytics – Uprising
63. More data crunching and analysis and more strategic and targeted responses. – Uprising
64. Big Data – The Business of Social Media Beyond Web 2.4
65. Big Data – CMSWire
66. Integrated Analytics for Market-Driven Insights – Business2Community
67. Social analytics in real-time will become the new standard for success. – Attensity
68. Customer Data Needs to Inform Decision Making – Salesforce

Community Management

69. Community management goes pro. – DachisGroup
70. Community Managers Rule – Ideatrotter
71. Comprehensive Content Strategy – the Digital Influence Mapping Project
72. 2012 will be the Year of the Online Community Manager – Online Community Manager
73. 2012 will be the year of social media management – Messaging Wire
74. Perfecting Post Timing – Mashable
75. Community Management will rightly start to be seen as a subset of Content Planning. – Restless Communications

Mobile

76. Social shifts to mobile. – DachisGroup
77. Mobile will move to center stage in social – Uprising
78. Mobile – The Business of Social Media Beyond Web 2.3
79. Mobile Cloud – CMSWire
80. Optimizing for Mobile – Mashable
81. The Year of Mobile – Business2Community

Technology

82. Convergence Emergence – McAfee
83. The average large company will have no less than 4 social networks…unintentionally – @Greg2dot0’s Blog
84. Visualize it. – Sandy Carter
85. Surprise Innovation. – Sandy Carter
86. Users are going to rapidly gain a sense of comfort with the idea of Facebook as a marketplace – Uprising
87. Marketing technology will continue to converge – Uprising
88. Cloud Computing – The Business of Social Media Beyond Web 2.0
89. Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA) – The Business of Social Media Beyond Web 2.1
90. Simplicity – CMSWire
91. Enterprise scale – CMSWire
92. Integrating instead of adding – Bertrand Duperrin’s Notepad
93. Spam will make a comeback – with a vengeance – Messaging Wire
94. Death of the web (the approach of app internet) – Forrester Research
95. Enterprise versions of Google+ and Facebook will bring social business tools (if not thinking) into the mainstream – Restless Communications
96. Toolset/ CRM Integration – Business2Community
97. Companies will implement multi-channel tools that integrate social analysis with other enterprise systems. – Attensity
98. No Uniform Solution for Multi-Channel Strategy – Salesforce

Vendors & Platforms

99. Smaller social business vendors continue to get rolled up. – DachisGroup
100. We’re going to see some very complicated but useless new online community tools – Online Community Manager
101. Apple will get serious about the enterprise – Messaging Wire

Online Community Takeaway

Online communities will continue to grow toward becoming a strategic imperative for most businesses. 2012 will be one of those moments in business where companies have an unprecedented opportunity to differentiate themselves, keep customers engaged to raise customer satisfaction to record levels, and use consistent streams of market data to create the next generation of highly profitable products.

With the impact that social business strategies bring to organizations comes an ecosystem of processes and professionals that must also be designed, nurtured, and supported – from strategy and online community software to community management and optimizing your customer community using the analytics to improve its performance for your company. How you develop and integrate this ecosystem will be a critical success factor in 2012.

So, I leave you with questions.

• What trends can you see based on this list?
• Which trends are missing?
• Which predictions are most important?
• Which points put organizations most at risk if ignored?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.