Potomac TechWire held its annual Social Media Outlook breakfast this morning at the Ritz in Northern Virginia.

Over a hot breakfast, the 300+ attendees listened to Rohit Bhargava, founding member of 360 Digital Influence Group at Ogilvy and author of the Influential Marketing Blog, talk about trends in social media.

Bhargava's blog was ranked by AdAge as among the top 25 marketing blogs.

It wasn't a govcon function, which means that government contracting wasn't mentioned per se. However, social media is a powerful marketing tool when used correctly, and more government contractors, as well as the government procurement community, are looking for ways to harness it.

Bhargava riffed on seven social media trends we should expect to see in 2011:

1. "Likeonomics" - How personal relationships, opinions and social capital are helping brands. We know the definition between like and dislike, thanks to Facebook, and we should be prepared to pay attention to what our audience likes and dislikes and to use that information to help craft appropriate messages to them.
2. The Rise of Curation - Allowing the audience to curate and filter content based on their own expertise. "Everybody is an expert at something," he said. As marketers, if we curate the content for our audience, we will be providing them a service.
3. Visualized Data - By having access to massive amounts of data, we can now visualize data in interesting and useful ways. Visualizations allow us to explore the real meanings behind the data. Social media gives us the platform to share with our audience.

4. Desperate Simplification - Information overload forces us to seek simplicity. As a result, users will seek tools to help them simplify. Do your audience a favor and say what you want to say simply. Be clear.
5. Addictive Randomness - (My personal favorite.) It's the idea that when the audience doesn't know what is coming, they will wait around to see what comes next.
6. Brutal Transparency - Consumers welcome unabashed honesty. Domino's social media response to some bad PR is a great example of how brutal transparency can help a brand.
7. Approachable Celebrity - Everyone is accessible via their social media. Even celebrities. "It's the closest you can get to a celebrity without the fear of a restraining order," he said. It's a chance to see their real personalities and genuine influence.

To accommodate the ten-minute time frame, Bhargava stated that he pulled these seven trends from a longer presentation, The Top 15 Marketing & Social Media Trends to Watch in 2011, which is available on his blog. It's worth a read.

Panel Highlights

The panel consisted of keynote speakers Bhargava and Addie Connor, Director of Advertising at SocialCode. They were joined by Jodi Gersh, Social Media Manager of Gannett; Chris McGill, SVP of Strategic Partnerships at UberMedia; Scott Silverman, co-founder of ifeelgoods.com; and Debbie Weil, author and social media consultant. The panel was moderated by editor and Potomac TechWire co-founder, Paul Sherman.

Scott Silverman: "Facebook credits will become the mandatory currency for all paid transactions on Facebook." He prognosticated that one-third of all of Facebook's revenue would come from these credits.

Rohit Bhargava: Focus on the "whys," not on the number of people you reach. A small percentage of your audience might be incredibly active and become your most ardent supporters.

Jodi Gersh: If you can manage it, create multiple Twitter accounts to handle niche content. People don't have time to winnow through a giant feed of broad-interest content and if only five percent of what you post is useful to your audience, you will lose them.

Debbie Weil: Don't just focus on Twitter and Facebook; your company blog and your site should have social activity built in -- only then can you truly develop an all-encompassing social strategy.

Scott Silverman: Even among the big three [Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn] there is room for niche social media platforms [Foodspotting, FourSquare, etc]. They have specific roles and are a real area of innovation.

Jodi Gersh: "There are more farms in Farmville than in the United States." The gameification of content and activity beyond just games is a big focus at Gannett. It's a way for our audience to fill those nuggets of empty time online.

Erin's Analysis

• A Twitter hashtag is de rigueur for any social media-focused event; the breakfast's hashtag was #socDC. As you can see from the list of tweets featuring that tag, even though the room featured 300+ attendees, a relatively small number were posting on Twitter during the event (a fact commented on by several present).
• Overall, I was impressed by Rohit Bhargava's keynote and panel remarks. Due the large number of panelists participating, the resulting discussion stayed at a fairly superficial level, marked by only one significant debate (when Debbie Weil asserted that Twitter and Facebook are overhyped, to the detriment of blogs -- a statement to which the other five panelists "politely disagreed" in large measure).
• More breakfast panels should feature scrambled eggs.

Which of these trends do you think will be important to your business in the coming year? Sound off in the comments below.