Forrester is looking toward 2011 and considering how social media will continue to change marketing.  We’d love to involve you in that discussion.  Join us in The Forrester Community For Interactive Marketing Professionals as we and other interactive marketers discuss and debate the hot new predictions for 2011.  

We’ve launched four specific areas of focus (although you can always suggest more).  Will 2011 be . . .

• The year location-based services go mainstream?  Thus far, checking in from real-world locations has been an activity reserved for early adopters, but this behavior is growing, being spurred on by innovation from foursquare and Facebook.  Will this be the “hockey stick” year for foursquare, where growth kicks into hyperdrive? Or will Facebook roll over foursquare as it did MySpace? And what will it take to hook the masses in the check-in craze?
   
• The year of trust?  Trust has always been an important brand attribute, but in 2011 it will become crucial for brands to earn followers, affinity and advocacy.  How will brands earn trust in social media channels?  How will trust be measured?  What happens to brands that lose on trust?  What steps will Facebook take to earn more trust as the social network continues to integrate itself into consumers’ surfing, social and mobile habits?
   
• The year of social stagnation and brand differentiation?  For years, fresh blood has flooded into social networks, making it easy for marketers to collect new fans and followers.  But as we approach saturation, brands will have to fight tooth and nail to bring competitive advantage and differentiation to their social strategies.  How will brands bring differentiation into social media?  What happens to those brands that fail to differentiate?  And are there ways social networks and brands can fight social stagnation?
   
• The year of social clutter and relevance?  With brands and consumers having adopted social media, it’s gotten to be a noisy place. How will social networks and tools change to keep consumers’ favorite venues full of welcome information and not filled with spam and valueless updates and tweets?  Will current social venues get better at furnishing relevant info to users, or will they lose traction to new tools that cut through the clutter?  What will be the role of brands in content curation? And will marketing messages make the cut or be filtered out as so much noise?

If your ideas or comments contribute to our final analysis, we’ll add you as a contributor to the research.  So please join us in our community, and if you have other ideas on what is coming in 2011, please feel free to suggest them in the community discussion entitled, “Opportunity to participate in Forrester research about 2011 Social Media Predictions.”

Comments have been turned off on this blog post to encourage you to join The Forrester Community For Interactive Marketing Professionals.  See you there!