Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

10 Social Super Bowl Marketing Strategies

originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

On Sunday, I’ll be hoping for more than just another Super Bowl where the New York Giants leave New Englanders weeping in their clam chowder. I’m hoping to see advertisers use social media in ways that make sense for them -- and their consumers.

Marketers’ Super Bowl strategies are locked up by now, so consider the suggestions below more of a wish list than a guide. These apply to far more than the Super Bowl, though, so print them out or save them in Evernote and use them throughout the year ahead.

1) Think like your target consumers. If you don’t have this memorized, internalize how they use social media, and learn what they do while watching television. Learn what they share, how they share, who they share it with, and why they’re sharing it.

2) Give your current fans something first. Anything. Now’s the time to remember them. How often do people walk down the street thinking, “I wonder what advertisers are going to be shilling a week from now?” The crazy thing is that this is happening right now. Reward your loyal fans who already have publicly expressed an interest in you.

3) Integrate with television through mobile social media. Shazam has teased that up to one- third of Super Bowl ads will have a “Shazam This” callout. Why only one-third? Services like Shazam offer easy ways for consumers to instantly share ads and engage in other kinds of mobile experiences.

4) Provide access to the people in or behind the spots. Our culture doesn’t just value celebrity; it values talent. Social media offers many perfect ways to connect talent with the people who care about them, whether it’s through tweets, chats, behind the scenes video, Google+ Hangouts, or countless other options.

5) Reach out to at least one community beyond Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. What are your customers most passionate about? Who will be especially interested in what you have to say? Consider this an opportunity to branch out beyond your checklist or comfort zone.

6) Bring people together in person. Are people already coming together in person to watch the game? That sounds like a social opportunity, one that can combine the physical with the digital.

7) Offer still images that can be pinned, tumbled, and grammed. Brands invest so much in the spots that they may forget how powerful still images are now. Make it easy for people to share images through sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram. What’s great is that the brand doesn’t even need to actively participate in those social platforms (though brands would do well to evaluate them). Just look at the images popping up on Pinterest via VW.com, with screen shots of the Volkswagen ad teaser of dogs barking the Darth Vader theme. Now imagine how much traction there would be if VW offered still images and a simple “pin this” icon.

8) Monitor everything. Hint: the previous example from Pinterest is actually a useful brand- monitoring tool to show images shared there from any other site. The more you know about what’s being shared, the more you can facilitate more of that behavior, add your voice, and respond as needed.

9) Connect search and social. One way brands will start doing this is simply by participating in Google+. That will be increasingly important this year. Beyond, that though, brands should ensure all their owned digital touchpoints are optimized for search engines. Given the budgets involved for Feb. 5, perhaps some paid media is in order too.

10) Plan what happens after the game is over. Ideally, you’ll have all these new fans and followers and friends, and you’ll need to give them a reason to stick with you once your promotional stunt is history. With the potential for social media to create an ongoing dialogue and even relationships, this is an asset marketers didn’t have a decade ago. Use it.

The game lasts a few hours. The build-up takes a couple weeks. Two days after the game’s over, most of the ads are forgotten. The mechanics of social media aren’t generally as flashy as a 30-second spot, but social experiences should last far longer.

Instant RFP in Jeopardy at Social Media Insider Summit

image of four great presenters and a moderator talking too much courtesy of Drew Neisser via Foursquare

Instant RFP in Jeopardy
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider Summit

Florida is one of our more unpredictable states. The weather, the voting patterns, and the Florida Marlins can constantly surprise the locals, and there aren’t many other places where you can reasonably ask, “Is the Buick driver in front of me taking a nap, or is there an alligator crossing the highway?”

That helps to explain why MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit in Florida this week sparked far more questions than answers. The session I hosted was supposed to provide answers to the question, “How can a retailer use social media to drive in-store sales while positioning the marketer as an innovator?” That was the premise of “Instant RFP,” a panel where I presented four social media startups with a scenario they had to address. They had a week to prepare their answer, but just five minutes to present it, with additional time to answer questions.

The presenters were: CrowdTwist CEO Irving Fain, MicroStrategy Senior Director Marc Hayem, Echo VP of Marketing Kristin Hersant, and Brand Networks CEO Jamie Tedford. Their responses were strong, but the questions they provoked were far more interesting. SMIS event chair Cathy Taylor introduced the session saying it was like a game show and I was Alex Trebek; she couldn’t have been more prescient. I wound up providing an answer, and the panelists served up the questions that marketers should ask. In this case, the answer is, “A retailer should use social media to drive sales at their individual stores.” Here are the questions:

1) What’s the return on investment of social media?

This was a favorite of Fain’s, and it was echoed in all the presentations in this session, as well as others during the event. There doesn’t always have to be a clear-cut ROI. For instance, Coca-Cola’s Laura Houghton mentioned in a session on Google+ that Coca-Cola needed to be where its fans expected the brand to be, and it also needed to capitalize on any search-related benefits. She wasn’t looking at how many cans of Coke were moved. Yet for retailers and other marketers, it’s increasingly possible to track sales. What’s even better is that consumers who are fans of a brand will be especially interested in purchasing that brand’s products. From the panel, there were many answers on ways to do it: segmenting audiences to message the most influential shoppers; mobile sale alerts; live events promoted through social media; allowing local store owners to create their own sales. The specific tactics matter less than the bigger idea that marketers can push for answers relevant to their brands.

2) How much control of social programs should be given to local store or market managers versus a centralized marketing team?

Tedford seemed to have the most experience here, and he was a strong advocate of shared responsibility. He acknowledged that local managers often know which promotions will resonate best with their individual markets, but the centralized team will have more experience with what works across a large array of locations. Local managers also tend to differ in terms of their interest and activity with various marketing channels, so one store’s presence could be flourishing and another could be dormant without national promotions to even out the discrepancies.

3) How should marketers use their physical stores?

This question was inspired by Hersant, whose response focused on simultaneous live events at all of this hypothetical retailer’s 1,500 locations. The build-up would occur largely through social channels, while live feeds of the hottest products would appear in stores. Much of what Hersant proposed, including a live chat with a company spokesperson or celebrity endorser, could be done entirely digitally, which made the program all the more intriguing. Just because it can be done digitally, should it involve the physical locations somehow? And how can retailers with a physical presence bring digital experiences into their stores? What’s key is that digital marketers consider all consumer touchpoints, including the physical stores and people working there, as assets that can be incorporated into social media marketing programs.

4) How much do you segment your audience?

All presenters addressed audience segmentation in various ways. The most explicit were Fain, who discussed identifying the most influential consumers and targeting them separately, and Hayem, who proposed using data augmentation to make inferences about consumers and segment them accordingly. Segmentation is hardly a new discipline for marketers, but social media adds more variables. Once you define what influencers are, how do you treat them differently? How uniformly do influencers act across local markets? How much do you factor in one’s purchase history versus social sharing activity? Does all of this segmentation lead to a better ROI than mass messaging, given the added investment of resources needed?

Clearly, there are more than four questions here. The biggest lesson is that these are all questions you can ask today with the expectation of getting answers relevant to your brands, markets, and campaigns. Which questions will you ask first?

TripIt's Questionable Billing Practices Tarnish Travel App

I've been a big fan of TripIt for years, logging more than 292,000 miles of trips through the travel service that organizes travel plans into useful itineraries easily accessible via mobile devices. My enthusiasm for them was greatly diminished though recently due to their billing practices and clear lack of understanding why what they're doing is wrong.

Some time ago, I received a free trial of TripIt Pro which activates many of TripIt's bonus features like real-time flight status alerts (which often proved to be inaccurate, and less reliable than far cheaper programs like FlightTrack Pro) and updates on when flight fares drop and you can receive refunds (the one time TripIt kept alerting me to refunds was for the wrong flight, so it didn't apply to me).

A friend and colleague received the free trial at the same time, and alerted me several weeks ago that he was billed for the service once the trial ran out. He received no notice from TripIt, and only discovered it through Mint, which was tracking his finances. I find it problematic when Mint brings up fees like this. Mint had alerted me to some suspect fees from Citibank, and I was able to call the bank and get the fees waived given that the bank never alerted me to them. Citibank's customer service was far better than TripIt's, which I contacted once I discovered TripIt had charged me $49 in February 2011. Note that TripIt never sent me an alert that I would be billed or that I was billed. It was there for me to check on my own when going through my account on TripIt.

For those who use TripIt, you know you get A LOT of alerts from them. They're always telling you about upcoming trips, who's in your area, and why you should upgrade. They have no problem sending lots of messages to users. The only reason that I can fathom that they wouldn't alert people that they have been billed is dishonesty. They have yet to offer any other plausible reason for this.

I tweeted them on January 6 about the error and got no response.

I also posted on Facebook on January 9:

Warning to Tripit Pro users: Tripit will not inform you when your account is up for renewal and thus when you will be charged. When you discover you've been charged and ask for a refund, they will not give it to you. These are completely dishonest billing practices, and I highly advise against signing up for TripIt until things change.

Another user commented that I should contact the credit card company for a refund. I responded:

This is a bigger deal than asking for refunds. My problem is that TripIt does not notify users when you'll be charged or when you were charged. Either TripIt wasn't aware of this and should change it, or it's doing this intentionally. With all the notifications TRipIt sends users, this would be a logical one for them to include.

TripIt responded with a generic message:

We’re always willing to review a policy or procedure based on user feedback and this post has been passed on to management. Please note that billing information, including next billing date and amount, are available to all users at anytime in the Billing Information area of their profile...

I responded in turn:

I'm glad it's been passed on to management. I've received a lot of communication from TripIt but none even suggesting that it would be in customers' best interests to notify them when they will be charged. This is tone deaf customer service, and it's why I canceled my premium account and am exploring alternatives to TripIt's free services.

TripIt still never addressed the issue beyond 'passing the post on to management.'

TripIt clearly doesn't get the benefit of alerting users to charges, nor do they bother explaning why they don't alert people. Further proof comes from TripIt's Catina, who responded to a separate email I sent through their site:

Thanks for contacting us. Reviewing your TripIt Pro account based on your email address XXX, we see that you were billed on 2/11/11 for $49 transaction id is XXX . Your next scheduled renewal is 2/12/12. If you feel you were billed after that date, it could be that you have another account with a different email address that's not associated to XXX. We can only pull account information by an email address. At the time of sign up you entered your credit card information and agreed to the terms of service (which stated that if you did not cancel prior to the conclusion of the trail period that your membership would continue and your card would be charged).

You can view your transaction history and print receipts for each transaction, on our web site (www.tripit.com), in the 'Your purchase history' section of the billing history page of your TripIt account. To access this area (after signing in) go to User Name > Settings > Billing info (you can find a direct link in our help page item: http://help.tripit.com/entries/393497)

To avoid the auto renewal, you can cancel your TripIt Pro subscription and keep your Pro benefits for the full term paid please see the instructions in our help page on this topic: http://help.tripit.com/entries/89464. If you wish to close your account, sign in to TripIt and click on your user name and then Settings > Close Account (http://www.tripit.com/account/delete). Be sure to select the 'do not contact' option if you don't want to receive any TripIt initiated emails in the future. Please note, if you are a paid TripIt Pro member and cancel your TripIt account no refunds will be provided.

So in other words, it's the "terms of service defense." But that still doesn't answer why they were charging users without alerting them. I explained this to them, and Catina said, "You stated, 'I was billed twice.'" I never said that, so the next exchange was all about clarifying something that Catina invented.

It was then that I posted on Facebook and got another form response from TripIt:

We saw your Facebook posting and wanted to inform you, your transaction history can be viewed on our web site (www.tripit.com), in the 'Your purchase history' section of the billing history page of your TripIt account. To access this area (after signing in) go to User Name > Settings > Billing info (you can find a direct link in our help page item: http://help.tripit.com/entries/393497)

I responded to Catina:

That still doesn't help as you never notified me a payment was due or then
processed. I will continue to post this on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere
until you change your policy. A refund is still requested as well. If you
were being charged for a service, wouldn't you want to know about it? I'd
actually be fine forgoing my refund if you change your policy.

Catina never responded, nor did anyone else from TripIt through this line.

I did take one more measure. I know someone who works with TripIt, so I reached out to her partially to let her know that I was going to raise the issue further, and partially to see if I'd get any better a response. She responded:

I checked with our team, and the intention behind auto-renewal is to prevent travelers from having a service lapse in the middle of traveling. The last thing we'd want to happen is for a traveler not be alerted that their plane is early/late (for example), when they're expecting to hear from us. However, we do provide a 2-week grace period following the charge, so cancellations can be made during that time.

Please know that your voice has been heard, and we're taking into consideration the suggestions you've made.

Again, my voice has been heard. Management received my request. Great. I responded to her:

My problem isn’t the auto-renewal at all. I understand that makes sense for some services.

Can you explain why they wouldn’t notify users that their auto-renewal is coming up, and that their auto-renewal was just processed? How does one even know when the grace period is if they’re never notified?

I heard nothing more from her or anyone at TripIt.

For a service built on notifications, and one that I thought was designed with the consumer in mind, I have been seeking alternatives. FlightTrack Pro, as mentioned, works well for notifications with a one-time $10 charge. Kayak's My Trips further organizes trips in a similar way that TripIt does and is proving to work well.

I'd like to keep using TripIt but can't if this is how they treat their users. Fortunately the alternatives keep getting better.

The Chosen Media

The Chosen Media
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider
(update: for the benefit of the Walgreens representative who commented below, and the benefit of anyone else who may be confused, this entire column is an opinion, as is everything else on this blog)

“Now therefore, if You will obey our voices, and keep our covenant, then social media shall be a special treasure to us above all media. For You are holy media to us, and we have chosen You to be our treasured media from all other media on the face of the Earth.” – The Gospel of Zuckerberkowitz 3:16, shamelessly bastardized from Biblical passages cited in Wikipedia

Social media has clearly become the Chosen Media. If you have any doubt, consider the outcries over the past week directed at Google, Facebook, and Walgreens:

1)     Google sparked the biggest backlash. As noted by fellow columnist Cathy Taylor, Google betrayed users’ trust by pumping Google+ results into natural search listings while shutting out Facebook and Twitter. The outcry will reverberate as more people initiate searches that trigger questionable social results. My friend Dan Lewis tweeted, “Google's social-ly image search stunks. [sic] I like @dberkowitz, but I don't want his vacation pics when doing a search on ‘Tiananmen Square.’”

The headlines coming out of it were sometimes scathing. The Washington Post ran a guide to its privacy and antitrust implications. Gizmodo declared, “Google just made Bing the best search engine.” Relevance is personal, so Google had some defenders, but if this is what social search looks like, the early verdict indicates people would rather keep the two separate.

2)     Facebook can thank Google for taking attention away from its own controversy. The social network is now mining public and private Facebook posts for data that Politico can use in its reporting. Anytime you reference Mitt Romney driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of his car (that means you, Gail Collins), Facebook will tabulate your feelings about it and send it over to Politico’s editorial desk.

The problem lies with Facebook mining private posts without educating users about what it’s doing or providing a way to opt out. There are probably millions of people paranoid about the government monitoring their lives who don’t realize that Mark Zuckerberg’s operation is at least as sophisticated. ReadWriteWeb noted that this is a great potential service from Facebook, but Facebook can’t violate users’ trust.

3)     If you can’t trust Google and Facebook, you can at least trust your local pharmacy, right? Not so fast. Walgreens has been involved in a lengthy and public dispute with pharmacy benefits provider Express Scripts. While Express Scripts is reaching out to consumers to help them switch pharmacies, Walgreens is wagering that the court of public opinion will be decided through social channels. It kicked off a widespread campaign by sponsoring tweets and paying off bloggers, with the goal of pressuring Express Scripts to relent to Walgreens’ terms.

The problem for Walgreens is that it’s bringing a lot of extra negative attention to the issue. Promoting a tweet with the hashtag “ilovewalgreens” hardly feels authentic, and the bloggers being paid don’t necessarily have any connection to or affinity for the retailer.

In each of these examples, the offending party is being accused of violating the Covenant that was formed between the People and the Chosen Media. It’s a Covenant that says transparency, privacy, and authenticity are sacred. It’s a Covenant that says the People own the Chosen Media, no matter which corporations participate. It’s a Covenant that says that the People’s loyalties are to the Chosen Media, and to each other; everything else is fluid.

Few other things are sacred anymore. The prophets of Lucy and Berle and Cosby no longer carry the same resonance. Newer idols, like “American Idol,” work precisely because they resonate through the Chosen Media. In lieu of temple chambers, we have echo chambers.

What’s sacred today may not be tomorrow. Yet right now, media companies, marketers, and everyone else must respect the Covenant between the People and the Chosen Media -- or face the uproar by those aggrieved.

Presenting CES: Consumer Electronics Socialization

I'm just getting started with post-CES recaps, and I've got two that came out today. In Advertising Age, I shared "Five Key Things to Know about CES." It's a guide for marketers that may prove useful when digesting CES 2012 and planning for the 2013 event.

In MediaPost's Social Media Insider, presented below, I take a little bit of a lighter approach that focuses on the gadgets' point of view. There's plenty more to say about such event that attracts 140,000 people, and I welcome your thoughts on it too.

Presenting CES: Consumer Electronics Socialization

Emcee (an actual microphone): I'd like to introduce you to CES, which we all know stands for Consumer Electronics Socialization. We've got a lot of great speakers here -- and Bose SoundDock, you know that doesn't just refer to you!

Bose SoundDock: Boo!

Emcee: Thanks for the annual heckling. This year's CES has been especially meaningful for us. Unlike a show like South by Southwest (SXSW), which is social in the sense of people connecting with each other, CES is all about us. It's designed for us devices to communicate with each other. To start off, I'd like to go around the auditorium here and hear a handful of examples of how you've been socializing at CES 2012. Xbox, why don't we start with you?

Xbox: I have never felt younger. This year, you’ll be able to browse content on your Windows Phone and access it through your Xbox. And just wait until I fully integrate with my new cousin Skype.

Emcee: Skype, why don’t you tell us more about that. Skype, are you there?

Xbox: She was just here a second ago but dropped off. Anyway, I’m also really excited about our improvements in voice controls.

Dragon TV: You know I’m already doing that, right? My parents at Nuance Communications are taking voice recognition technology from the PC to the mobile device to the TV set this year.

Vlingo: You’re not the only ones. We’re taking our Virtual Assistant from the phone to the TV.

Emcee: The TV is such a focus of cross-device communication. Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, LG, put down your remotes. We know that you’re all very excited about this.

Simple.tv: It’s so much bigger than voice control. You can now pre-order my DVR that can record broadcast television shows to watch from your other devices, like laptops and phones.

Emcee: Sign me up. CES is hardly just about us socializing with the TV, though.

Atari Arcade: That’s right, my parents at Discovery Bay Games made me so that I can instantly turn an iPad into a classic retro arcade game console. Socialization is supposed to be fun, isn’t it?

Emcee: Exactly. From gaming, it’s extending into other areas of the home.

Whirlpool: I’ve come out with new washing machines and dryers that allow people to monitor the status of their laundry cycle on their mobile devices.

Nest: Mind if we chime in? We’re new here this year, but we’ve got a new thermostat that adapts to people’s lifestyles and adjusts energy usage to fit with their consumption patterns. You can then access the thermostat via mobile apps. 

Emcee: And it goes even further -- like the garage.

Ford SYNC: Well, I get a little claustrophobic in the garage, but I know what you mean. I’m an actual platform for my cars, so I can become a search engine, an entertainment console, or just about anything else. And then when you pair your phone with me, I make communicating even easier.

Mercedes: I’m also pairing with Facebook, Yelp, and others. Just think of all the ways you can rationalize buying me now. Pay $50,000 for Facebook, and the car is free!

Emcee: Good point. Meanwhile, CES is playing out in all kinds of ways across mobile devices.

Android: From early on, I’ve been designed to sync up with the Chrome browser and other Web-based services.

Kindle: Mind if I chime in?

Emcee: How did you sneak in here?

Kindle: Well, Amazon doesn’t usually let me come to this, but for a lot of consumers I was the first to deliver on the promise of starting content on one device and continuing it on another -- even if you only use the software and don’t buy my hardware.

Netflix: Word. I may compete with Kindle’s people, but I’ve also built the future of my business on universal access to all of my content.

Emcee: It’s true. What you’ve already created is a sign of where everyone else here is going. Years ago, it was hard to have this show, as none of us at CES actually socialized with each other. We’re getting so much better at talking to each other that it’s making people love us so much more.

Android: (zzzzzzz)

Emcee: Oh no, Android ran out of juice already. Let’s power up at the buffet. We still have a lot more to talk about, especially as we plan for CES 2013, when none of us will be able to shut up.

 

So-Called Predictions For A Social 2012

So-Called Predictions For A Social 2012

originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

I used to really like reading and writing prediction roundups this time of year. Then I started reading and writing them. They all tend to include most or all of the following elements:

1)     Predictions based on events or trends that already happened in the previous year (Facebook’s mobile usage will take off in 2012!)

2)     Financial predictions that can be expressed by plotting past performance on a chart and extending it another year (The past four New Year’s Days through this week, AAPL shares went from about $100 to $200 to $300 to $400, so you’ve probably read predictions that Apple’s shares will hit $500 this year)

3)     A couple wacky, outside of the box examples of either of the above to show that the writer has some original thoughts that have no grounding in reality (AAPL will reach $1,000! Facebook will launch a new line of hand soap!)

Learning from previous events to plan ahead may not be as exciting as claiming psychic powers and telling fortunes, but there’s value in it nonetheless. That’s why a lot of my so-called predictions for 2012 are really extensions of the previous week’s roundup of everything that happened in 2011. Read that for added context, and read more below about what to expect for social media this year. You may not be shocked or even awed by this modest list, but it should lay the groundwork for all of our work ahead.

Community management

Which company had the biggest impact on community management in 2011? Facebook and Twitter evolved and grew, but the real change agent has been Google. First, Google+ became a social network whose greatest value will likely be what happens outside of the Google+ site, and then YouTube transformed from a distribution tool to a community. These changes will influence how community management works with other marketing disciplines. There goes another silo.

Gamification

Gamification will be exposed for the gimmick it is, but marketers will still benefit from selective uses of it. There are so many companies that either openly promote gamification or couch it as something related like social loyalty, such as Badgy, Bulbstorm, Bunchball, Crowd Factory, and CrowdTwist. The g-word is mercifully in decline. It’s akin to how we no longer discuss widgets, but there’s still a place for distributed content.

Health

Despite my issues with the aforementioned g-word, it played a big role in the consumer health technology market over the past year, with services such as Lark, Striiv, and Jawbone’s Up using game mechanics to help consumers achieve wellness goals such as sleeping better and being more physically active. My personal favorite is Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 for Xbox Kinect, which constantly reminds me how far ahead Jeremy Epstein is in burning calories. These social hooks will keep consumers more hooked.

Influence

Not only did millions learn their Klout score in 2011, but some learned their Kred score (ugh), and their PROskore (double ugh), and their ranking on the Empire Avenue index (please, make it all stop). More importantly, so much effort has been made into creating new definitions of influence. For instance, an influencer on Crowdtap is very different from one on Expo TV or Circle of Moms. In 2011, influence got really messy, in the way that your home gets really messy when you’re sorting through everything, right before it’s all put back together in a more orderly manner. It will take more than a year to meaningfully reassemble the influence puzzle, but expect plenty of effort expended here.

Location

Local hooks tie in seamlessly with mobile marketing, but it’s bigger than that. Brands, publishers, technologists and others need to figure out how to use location in fun and useful ways. One of my latest gaming obsessions is Life is Crime, an Android app that’s basically Mafia Wars using real locations. My wife is a little worried about how proud I am that I’m the kingpin of a Chase bank branch and a health clinic in our neighborhood. It’s the real-world angle that makes it so exciting.

Mobile

The one milestone to note here is that Facebook is on the cusp of having more than half of its users accessing from mobile devices. As goes Facebook, so goes media. Ready?

Professional productivity

Pay attention to the professional services space. Whether it’s a network like LinkedIn, a content platform like SlideShare, or productivity tools like Rapportive, Boomerang, and Buffer, there are ways for you to use social media right now to do your job better. Master them now; don’t wait to catch up when you’re actively job hunting later.

Shopping

Social commerce became a known entity in 2011. Now it’s here, so what should marketers do about it? This will be one of those years where the pendulum swings back from gimmicks to fundamentals, whether through marketers making better use of their social channels for explicitly commercial purposes, or through new uses of emerging mobile social shopping services.

TV

In many ways, TV powers Twitter, and Twitter drives TV ratings. Apps like Shazam, IntoNow, and GetGlue are creating new kinds of interactions. Accessing real-time content relating to what’s on TV will be far more meaningful than the fleeting fad of check-ins. Meanwhile, regardless of what Apple does in the TV space this year, Microsoft already has tens of millions of people using interactive and increasingly social TV experiences through Xbox. This year, Microsoft is in the best position to transform how we think of social TV. Regardless of which platforms and apps win, TV is already extremely social, and some of the best untapped social marketing opportunities right now are in the living room.

Get cracking

If that’s not enough to get started with for 2012, you must be planning for 2020 already. Happy New Year.