7 tools for your 2012 communications plans

Following are seven tools you should add to your brainstorm meetings.

1. Consolidation

Groupon and Living Social and City Deals and Swirl and Totsy and Gilt, oh my! The race to the daily deal space was fierce and the competition amongst one another has eroded any kind of benefit for the merchant.

You’ll begin to see those sites consolidate or go out of business. If want an opportunity to use a daily deal site, keep an eye on which ones remain toward the middle of 2012.

For planning, think about how to use them for an overage in inventory or a boost in sales on a slow night. Do not consider them as your big sales plan for 2012. It’s been proven they don’t bring return customers.

2. Privacy

Privacy will continue to be a big discussion, with sites such as Diaspora coming out of beta and launching to the public. There also will be tools you can use to delete information you have on the social sites that you regret putting there.

While you can’t erase what others have written, you will have more control over what you put out there.

For planning, think about how your company (or clients) will use the Web without sharing proprietary information or being too transparent.

3. Gamification