Targeted geo-mobile coupons, passive location-based networking, and TV on the Internet are among the eight emerging media trends that Mashable thinks you need to know about. The report cites building momentum behind a handful of off shoots that could lead to their eventual mainstream success. Mashable’s Shane Snow draws parallels between these trends and similar events that sparked Pinterest to number 3 in social networks and allowed Foursquare to corner the geo market.

In addition to the aforementioned three, the list is filled out by audio watermarking, motion tracking and facial recognition for intention data, automatic social media-activated discounts, brands building publications and entertainment channels, and mobile, immersive reality.

To view the list, click here.
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Brian Erni

Of those mentioned on the list, brand building publications and entertainment channels jumps to the forefront. Snow uses popular energy drink company Red Bull as an example of how corporations are slowly, but surely, creating their own outlets:

Red Bull’s homepage, for example, looks like an action-sports news site. The company pumps out professional-grade news articles, feature stories and videos each day, pushing them to social marketing channels such as Facebook and Twitter. This fuels the company’s social media accounts with content and points followers back to Red Bull’s site, rather than elsewhere on the Internet.

And it’s not just Red Bull. Big brands are leveraging their place in the market by becoming the outlet that they once coveted, giving them further opportunity to control the message. Frankly, I think it’s  pretty brilliant. If you’ll allow me a metaphor, instead of waiting around to be invited to the party, companies are throwing one of their own.

What we’re seeing here is the evolution of corporate blogging. Companies are learning that they’re the masters of their brand’s destiny, so why apologize by hiding your blog in the corner of a toolbar? Instead, put its functionality front and center, populating it with the content you want to be attached to. At its heart, it’s thought leadership 101, but with no pitches or follow up calls. Of course, content will remain king, but as long as readers find enough valuable in what is filling those pages, brands may have found a way to cut out even the most sophisticated third party outlets.

According to this article on Mashable, brands have been known to fall victim to 11 deadly sins when it comes to managing their social media presence. The report, compiled by Sundeep Kapur of ClickZ, highlights the lot of them.

The list of faux pas include running specials all the time, blocking negative feedback, launching press releases on social media and focusing on “likes.”

To see the complete list, click here.
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Brian Erni: As the corporate world has tried and continues to attempt to unlock the power of social media with a janitor-like key ring, it’s not hard to believe that they’ve stumbled along the way. Go on Facebook and you don’t have to scroll for very long  before coming across one of these social media slip ups in your news feed. So if they’re that prevalent, how can brands avoid them? How do some organizations (my beloved New York Jets are one that come to mind) get it so right, while others flail their way toward Internet mediocrity?

It’d be disingenuous to say that anyone has been able to find the sure fire social media success formula,  but in my humble opinion, effective communication starts with understanding the medium you want to interface with. If you truly grasp how users consume content on a specific channel, you’ll begin to distinguish what differentiates a good social media strategy from a bad one. From there, engagement and transparency reign supreme. No consumer expects a brand to have a 40% off sale every weekend, but they do expect that once you have one, they’ll be apprised of it. No reasonable person thinks that there will never be a dissatisfied customer, but they will appreciate when a company goes out of their way to get the situation quickly rectified.

If brands start to look at social media strategy as an opportunity to garner more exposure for themselves while gaining a new level of engagement with their consumers, they might start to rise above the noise created when tricks like the ones on Mashable’s list are employed.