• Decreases in ad spending, specifically in traditional media and online vehicles geared to brand awareness
• Increases in social media efforts, including word of mouth, blogging and social networking (which do not require large budgets and, in many instances, do not even involve media spending)
• Market share gains for online direct response vehicles like search and e-mail marketing because marketers can tie them to sales

• Corporate participation is expected to bring social applications to the mainstream this year
• Companies will move beyond one-off experiments in social media to establish full-fledged initiatives
• Floods of ordinary consumers will test the waters because their friends, and companies they trust, have shown that social applications are not only safe, but also fun and useful
• By the end of the year, marketers will be searching for concrete ways to measure ROI like the social networking "momentum effect" or a standardized engagement metric

• Companies should put brand monitoring in place, focus on objectives over technologies, and go for speed over perfection in applications deployment
• Companies should formalize internal processes so that they can quickly and consistently integrate social media initiatives into online marketing campaigns
• Sophisticated marketers should look at shifting their focus from building awareness to motivating consideration, an ideal use for social media applications like discussion boards.

Forrester also issued a more quantitative report (covered in eMarketer) showing that although spending on social media marketing is growing, it still takes a backseat to more established forms of online marketing. 37% of online retailers plan to emphasize blogs and message boards this year, spending an average of $11,344, another 24% plan to spend on RSS at a much higher average of $83,833, and 34% plan to experiment with social networks, spending on average only $575. In comparison, 58% of marketers surveyed plan on emphasizing pay for performance marketing, spending an average of $1.4 million, and more than three-quarters said they will emphasize e-mail, spending an average of $311,200.