I’m generally sick of the endless flood of posts proclaiming social media trends for 2010. These predictions tend to fall into two categories: blinding flashes of the obvious and SWAGs (scientific wild-ass guesses). Most prediction posts are filled with the former, anticipating the increased shift to mobile access and other no-brainers.

Forrester’s just-released predictions, on the other hand, offer some more thoughtful glimpses into what to expect next year, much of which is focused on the transition from toe-in-the-water engagement in social media to a more mature, business-centric approach.

Among the predictions outlined by Emily Riley and a supporting cast of Forrester analysts (including Groundswell co-author Josh Bernoff), I was most intrigued by the assertion that social media “councils” will attain budget and power.

In 2009, a host of companies created social councils, typically cross-functional teams tasked with sharing ideas and exploring opportunities for social media. However, many of these councils remain informal and without mandate, reliant upon the budgets and abilities of their members. In 2010, these councils will emerge as central groups of Social Computing strategists who are empowered to allocate resources and prioritize initiatives across departments ??? giving them a chance to roll out actionable strategies that include cohesive Social Computing policies.

It was gratifying to read that a number of organizations have adopted these councils, since I’m a strong advocate of social media ownership being assigned to these groups. (I wrote about this back in September.)

I usually refer to these as “steering committees,” but the label is unimportant. I remember advising one client to establish just such a steering committee for its intranet, but I was told “steering committees” was a label that carried too much negative baggage. “How about ‘task force?’” I suggested. Nope, there was a history of bad experiences with task forces. “Council” didn’t work, either. They wound up calling it the intranet “guild.”

Whatever you call them, these groups had a profound impact on the intranets of companies that formed them. As I noted in my September post, cross-functionally managed intranets produced the best results, earned management support, and got the highest levels of funding (according to a Melcrum study).

There’s no reason to believe social media councils wouldn’t produce the same results. When representatives of every department with an interest in social media makes decisions collaboratively and in the best interest of the organization, the results are bound to be better than a group of corporate fiefdoms develop programs in a vacuum.

For any of these councils to work, though, several requirements must be met, some of which are hinted at in Forrester’s prediction:

• Mandate—Senior leadership must agree that the council is the oversight body for social media in the organization, the group that sets overall strategy and policy. It’s where the buck stops.
• Charter—The group needs a formal charter, signed off by the C-suite, that makes its powers and responsibilities explicit. This would cover everything from the requirements for hiring outside experts or agencies to decisions about the appropriateness of specific social channels. The council would also ensure channels are used to their best advantage and not exploited in ways that would hold the organization or its brands up to ridicule.
• Champion—The council needs an executive sponsor. Ideally, this would be the CEO who, as the ultimate arbiter of any business decision, will be able to reinforce the terms of the charter.
• Membership—The members of the council need to be high-ranking enough for the group’s decision to be taken seriously. Vice presidents are ideal, although director-level membership is more realistic. The work of the council is likely to be dismissed if the members are front-line workers perceived as having enough spare time to participate. Membership must also include all departments likely to engage routinely in social media—including marketing, PR/public affairs, advertising, HR and internal communications—as well as those with an interest in its application, like legal.
• Consistency—The team must meed regularly. A monthly meeting attended by all members is a bare minimum.
• Budget—While the budget for specific social media efforts will remain in the departments that will execute them, the council would have its own funds to invest in company-wide efforts.
• Visibility—The council’s efforts need to be well-communicated, along with the channels for introducing proposals to and getting approval from the council.

Forrester’s other predictions anticipate the ubiquity of social media monitoring, the adoption of meaningful metrics, the profitability or acquisition of Twitter, a refocusing on user privacy by Facebook, and the continued inability to solve the single identity problem as incompatible mobile devices and social applications continue to flood the market. The report suggests what these trends mean and offers some recommendations for marketers, at whom the report is directed.

As for my own blinding-flash-of-the-obvious predictions, I expect we’ll see…

• Adoption of social media by companies and industries that have resisted, based either on recognition that it’s no longer optional or a desire not to be left behind as competitors begin making more professional use of these channels.
• Business-to-business organizations that haven’t already figured out that they’re better positioned to engage in social media than many business-to-consumer companies will see the light.
• Companies that have insisted social media engagement be designed to drive traffic to company websites will begin to recognize the futility of that goal and shift to better, more relevant metrics.
• A surge of social media influence on television as apps and other social tools become available from your couch.
• An explosion of location-based social services, coupled with confusion about when it makes sense and how consumers will use it. After all, how many people to you really want knowing where you are at any given moment?
• A variety of hardware devices offering iPhone-like apps. HP printers are already doing it. Why not microwave ovens?
• Companies continue to resist providing access to employees. It’ll take more than one more year for the paranoia and misinformation to give way to understanding of the benefits of letting most employees visit Facebook (and other social sites) from work.
• Augmented reality (AR) applied to more real-world uses.
• The continued shift of online access from computers to mobile devices.
• The adoption of social media policies by organizations that don’t already have one (which, by the way, is most of them).
• The number of intranets incorporating some dimension of social media will reach critical mass.

As I say, there’s no risk in these predictions because the trends are already evident. There are, of course, dozens of other blinding flashes of the obvious that could be incorporated into a 2010 predictions list. Which ones are important to you?

And my big question: Is there a social media council in your organization (regardless of what it’s called) and which of the criteria listed above does it meet?