Jennifer Jones of Marketing Voices spoke to Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, a business strategy consulting firm, recently and asked her about the latest trends in social media and marketing. Charlene provided these insights:

1. Social media will be like “air.” It will be everywhere and used by everyone. No one will be afraid to use the tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter—sharing information will be second nature.

2. Every employee can be a marketer. From the manufacturing floor to the executive offices of large and small companies, everyone in the company will be using social marketing tools as a way to build brand and visibility.

3. Everyone can be a marketing channel for you. What’s most important is whether these bloggers have the right audiences and have captured the minds and hearts of others.

4. People are putting the technologies (for example, Twitter and Facebook) first—not the business objective. People must first determine what they want to accomplish rather than learn how to use these technologies.

Click here to listen to Charlene’s podcast in order to learn more. She is writing a new book that will be published early 2010 that is called Open: How Leaders Win by Letting Go. In this book, she explains how leaders in today’s businesses need to understand the need for communication transparency, letting go and not be so controlling in order to succeed. You can see a PowerPoint presentation about this concept here.