Well, I already did some little view in the mirror for 2008 - so it's time to at least try to see the two or three trends for the upcoming year. Overall I would say social media and online engagement will reach the next level and be more serious. And yes, I am pretty sure that these four things will be of some impact on our work the next months:
Esp in Europe mobile is already extremly strong in some regions. In France and Italy I would say mobile is today more important for our approach than the web on the line. And if I look at the new generation of phones, the so called iPhone class of mobile web access tools, I am pretty sure this will reach mainstream shortly after christmas. Even the friends of my 12- and 11-year old boys begin to have these smartphones. Good and linelike internet experience on the go is the one thing that is not just beginning but wastly distributed. I am sure to see more and more pr and marketing programs reflecting this. We are working on several things right now that will integrate true mobile elements and will play with geotagging aso.
Search is nothing new. But I see more and more marketers and communication pros getting the real value of search. Traditional SEO will melt away. New ways of dealing with search when developing pr toolkits and programs are already underway. No wonder we heavily invest in knowledge about search. If you are not listed on let's say Google on the first page of results with your topics it's just as if you don't exist. Or from personal experience: Most bloggers I know have around 30-40% of their daily visitors roaming in from search, just looking around like on a shopping mall. Some of us are already leveraging this pretty well, some aren't. Big thing for the next months I think.
Still there are a lot of online engagement programs out in the space that are ment to explore the scene. But more and more of them will be (and already are) reseach driven. As the social web will grow mature research will be a key success factor for new programs and outreach. New ideas about reseach and about developing metrics and targets out of research are already in our minds - and begin to be part of our programs.
Yes, forums. Surprise? No, not really, ey? Forums are still the most underestimated online wildlife space around. Massive user base, massive interest, massive possibilities. Sounds a bit 1.0 maybe, but I bet forums will have a renaissance in our industry.
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Comments (1)
Wolfgang,
Forums never went away, the hype did. Forums are massive in Australia, far bigger than blogs, but you wouldn't know that if you read traditional media (or bloggers)!
Posted by Con Frantzeskos | December 23, 2008 2:37 AM
Posted on December 23, 2008 02:37