2010 Utility Marketing & Social Media Trends

I think it is clear that we will see the continued growth, commercialization and overall sophistication of online social media. This will have interesting implications for its evolution, both on the user and marketing sides of the coin. A small number of utilities will begin integrating social media presence with their traditional marketing efforts, but this will not happen on a broader scale until 2011 and beyond.

Utilities will also start seeing the cross-functional complexities of operating in the social media space. Integrating communications, marketing and customer care will be a challenge for 2011+. Few will have problems with it this year...though it will start to appear on the internal radar.

The influx of brands and other commercial interests into social media sites will continue to fracture online communities into more refined and specialized sub-groups. To keep up and maintain relevance, marketers will have to better understand the behaviours and intersections within these communities, as well as the relationship with traditional marketing. Figuring out what is valuable to customers will be ongoing process of learning; however, data and more sophisticated analytics will be increasingly mission critical. Social search optimization (SSO) will be a more recognized term in 2010, though mostly irrelevant to utilities. And yes, the argument for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will remain valid and strong.

Content will remain king, especially for utilities. Utility social media efforts that don't provide valuable, helpful and/or compelling information to users will fall flat. Being there will still not be enough in 2010 and for the foreseeable future. It will take time for customers to connect with their energy provider(s) and understand what that relationship can be.

The smart phone revolution will rapidly innovative new ways of communicating and interacting, though utilities will not be on the cutting edge of this movement. New business models will emerge, but few utilities will integrate in 2010.

Better understanding and leveraging media convergence will be of increasing importance. Utility communicators will look for social media resource expenditure ROIs (at the request of management) and find them elusive at best in 2010. There will be significant advancements in social media tracking and analytics as provider compete, Though this automation will not match perfectly with the utility need, the industry will adapt and leverage where they can. Utility communicators and some util marketers will become increasingly savvy in this area, which will lay the ground work for 2011+.

Bottom line, social media will continue to quickly evolve and both marketing and communications will be forced to adapt along the way. While the primary focus for utilities in 2010 will still be strategic communications and brand, we will see its awareness and influence grow within other departments.