Social Media.  It is THE buzzword in marketing right now.  The problem is, it is still a little hard to grasp.  Most of us have a good idea of the concept – using all of the social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, etc) around us to attract traffic to us.

But as this new mindset of marketing grows out of it’s infancy, through the toddler years, and is now gaining the recognition that it deserves, there are a few key elements that are coming to light that any social media consultant should keep in mind.

An article entitled “140 Predictions About Social Marketing” was released today that had some interesting points made by the master of social media marketing and consulting, David Meerman Scott (@dmscott).  Here are his thoughts on the biggest Social Media Development coming in 2012:

“Social media gives us the ability to communicate instantly, yet most marketers have not developed the communication skills to address real time. Marketers have been trained with a campaign mentality, spending weeks planning, designing and executing in a sequential manner. Social marketing is changing that. We now need the ability to react instantly to breaking news, changes on our websites and negative customer feedback. Marketers need a new mentality, infrastructure and workflows to meaningfully participate in real time.”

If you aren’t prepared to engage your customers – both the good and the bad – in real-time social media avenues, you may find that doing business successfully is harder and harder.

Are you prepared to embrace the social media marketing changes on the horizon?  Be prepared.  They are coming.