Here’s a post (with a few additions) that I did earlier this week on the Sysomos blog.

If 2009 was the year that social media established itself, 2010 will be how social media is embraced and leveraged by a growing number of companies. With this in mind, here are some fearless predictions about what’s on the horizon.

1. Social media monitoring and measurement will gain even more traction as companies recognize the importance of listening and understanding what’s happening so they can engage with key influencers and opinion leaders. The social media monitoring market will likely consolidate, and paid tools will attraction more attention as customers upgrade from free tools.

2. Geo-location will become a key trend as more social media users broadcasts their locations, not only to friends, family and colleagues but to retailers as well. This will give businesses the ability to send the right advertising offers to people at the right time and the right place. Look for services such as FourSquare and Twitter to drive the geo-location market.

3. Facebook’s impressive growth (my prediction is 500 million users) will continue but users will have to live with the reality that Facebook wants to make more of its – and your – information public so that more of its content will be monetized. Twitter’s user base will expand as well but not as wildly as 2009. FourSquare and Posterous will remain niche services.

4. Blogs will come back into style as companies realize they’re powerful and effective tools to  communicate with customers, potential customers, partners, investors and employees. In 2009, the pendulum swung hard to micro-messaging but expect macro-messaging (aka blogs) to stage a rebound.

5. Video will continue to grow aggressively as more companies realize it’s an effective way to communicate amid a sea of text.

6. Social media will increasingly become an integrated part of more companies’ communications, marketing and sales activities. This trend will be driven by the growing recognition that social media can build new and different relationships with customers and existing customers. As well, the continued economic uncertainly is making social media more attractive due to its low cost.

7. ROI – return on investment – will become a major issue as companies look to measure and justify their social media spending so they can gauge its success, and compare it against other marketing/communications initiatives.

8. The term “social media” will start to disappear as it becomes an established part of the Web’s overall fabric – much like Web 2.0 is used far less often.