What is our future in Social Media Marketing?

If businesses aren't aware now nearing the end of 2010 that they must be highly educated and involved in social media marketing, then marketers in my opinion aren't doing their job! In order for us to be able to leverage technologies for business needs, we must be up-to-date on all the news and social trends around us. Now because of this, this is why some may wonder what the future brings.

A few things to keep in mind are:

Learn from our past history. We are currently seeing the same types of changes as some did a decade ago, and we need to be able to recognize these patterns to learn from them. If we continue to avoid the past and make the same mistakes we will never improve our position with businesses, thus possibly becoming obsolete.

Forget about De-Marketization. As soon as we are able to get people to realize that marketing and communication go hand in hand, and that we are using communication skills that people want to be reached by, we wont ever have this cross our minds again. 

Methodology will never change. Facebook and Myspace are constantly changing, but the way that people communicate within them will always remain the same. They may change things to keep a greater appeal to its users, but marketing is marketing and that will never change. It wasn't that long ago that I remember beepers and faxing were the new top tool!

So can any of you predict what will become of social media marketing? Will it change with its tools or always remain the same?

Cash or Credit?

It has been discovered that many Americans are worried about trying to stay away from going into debt and paying for the upcoming holidays with cash! ABC stated that millions of Americans have actually chosen to cut up their credit cards since last year’s holiday season.

 We are seeing most of this change in behavior because of the fact that card companies have severely clamped down on the availability of credit, but some can't help to wonder if it is because we as Americans are starting to change our ways. Are we finally seeing the damage that has been done and are attempting to use credit cards in a more healthy way?

Now on a twist of that are credit card companies starting to “feel the burn” of these changes? It seems to me that their marketing strategies are changing to try to reel their “best” customers back in. They have promoted new card rewards programs and other incentives to attempt at gaining some back, but they may have to do better than that because it looks like a lot of Americans have learned their lesson.