(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...Hi folks I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s in store for the future in all the things we talk about. Here are my thoughts. Oh, this is from Jonathan Trenn, not Chris Abraham.
Here we go in no particular order:
1) Businesses finally begin to make their marketing departments digital ready as they realize their customer are using media quite differently from what they were doing just five years ago.
But they’ll find that there’s no easy answers as that media usage is now completely dispersed. Many of these attempts will have traditional types run the outfit and they’ll try to implement old methods online. Others will be led by “new marketers” who’ve swallowed too much Kool Aid and they’ll forget that, yes, people still watch TV and read newspapers.
Business to business marketing (BtoB) will begin to adapt principles of social media that will be surprisingly successful as, lo and behold, personal relationships and the quality of them are important in business decision making.
2) Restricted invite only conferences begin to appear for senior traditional marketing types.
We can start to see this happening with the establishment of the Blog Council. Most of the conferences that go on when it comes to the online arena are attended by insiders - marketers, strategists, geeks, vendors. Traditional types will start to attend them but there soon will be conferences pop up that will be primarily for them. We’ll see restricted invitations…you can get in if you’re not a traditional type, but there has to be a pretty good reason. Why? Because the organizers and attendees don’t want to be hit on by a bunch of consultants and vendors.
3) There will be at least three major social media marketing mistakes that will get major attention. One of them will likely involve a major political candidate or a major advocacy group.
One of these will involve a company that overestimates the concept of ‘community’ and violates what Tangerine Toad calls “Your Brand Is Not My Friend”. (He’s spot on by the way). This means that the company will either try to “engage” a loosely connected group of people that the company will mistake as a community and they’ll treat them as if they are all enthusiasts of whatever product/service the company puts out. Or they’ll treat all of the people as if they’re of the same mentality.
A second will involve, just as we saw with Facebook Beacon, a company trying to monetize a community that they’ve put together too soon and/or too clumsily, causing a lot of heartburn. This will probably happen more than once. In fact, it could probably happen a lot. Especially with the lifespan of CMOs hovering about 19 months. CEOs and stockholders may not have the patience.
The political one will involve some moron who is too enthusiastic about his or her candidate or issue. They’ll use insulting language toward the other side. Happens every campaign cycle.
4) Facebook or LinkedIn or someone will create a more ‘adult’ social networking site.
There will be less thowing of sheep, less describing how you met someone by “hooking up”. The site will have more privacy and appear to be more professional, but it will still have fun features. More fun that LinkedIn.
5) A yet to be created social networking site will be created that will appeal to decision makers.
This may actually be divided into regional/industry categories as well. The platform could be white label or perhaps a business media outlet could be the one creating them. Trade and professional associations could partner with the host company. Trade associations themselves will begin building social networking sites for their members.
6) A company will create a suite of web-based social networking software that will include a blogging platform, photo editing, video producing and editing, podcasting, etc.
The different parts will be compatible from scratch. I’ll probably still have problems trying to figure it out but most of you will do just fine. (I may be contacting some of you for advice.) But it will mean no more downloading of several all of these cool things for social media rockstars. Our blogs will start to be more like Matt Dickman’s.
Group blogs will proliferate as well as, well, groups of (in our case) marketers/social media types work together to keep more continually updated content.
7) Jeremiah Owyang will get his 10,000,000th follower on Twitter. In 2010, he’ll be elected governor of California. On the Social Media ticket.
And in 2016, he’ll be elected president. He’ll be sworn in by Chief Justice NewMediaJim. The Speaker of the House will be a “Mr. Brogan from Massachusetts”. All members of the same party.
8 Speaking of elections, 2008 will be the (hopefully) last tradtional broadcast-TV focused presidential election
Despite some real breakthroughs, most political digital types have yet to be given a seat at the table. That’s because many campaign pros have are pompous asses with big egos who are in fact terrified of doing anything new and will always choose TV first. Mainly because that’s how they make money. They will primarily see the internets, those series of tubes, as a means to get cash from us from online fundraising. As I pointed out in a previous post, Mitt Romney’s team aired 5000 commercials in the first nine months of 2007. Mike Huckabee aired zero. Now Huckabee is ahead in the polls, thanks in large part to grassroots activists. Barack Obama should take note of that.
9) The 2008 election, barring a major event between now and next November, will be a lot closer than most people think.
The Democrats can’t afford to get too cocky. Presidential elections are often close. It could come down to the aforementioned activist groups taking the initiative to organize, educate,and get out the vote in certain swing states. Could be anti-war types on the left or conservative Christians on the right. And they may just pull it off for someone.
10) SEO and Defensive SEO becomes ingrained in the mind of the CEO
That’s because we get our information of products, services, company reputation, etc. from search. Or forums. Or social networks. A press release with the CEO saying “we screwed up” shouldn’t be enough anymore. This will become big business.
11) Conversion attribution becomes a big bone of contention.
What is conversion attribution? It sort of goes like this. When we buy something for the first time, it is often because we’ve been inluenced by several marketing messages from different channels. In the online arena, with often little measurable sense of exactly what made someone buy, but an (almost) exact sense of where someone came from (a search? a banner?) conversion attribution. It basically is the call for the revenue from an ecommerce transaction to be dispersed amongst the marketing channels according to some sort of formulaic attribution system of that tries to weigh the influence of each channel. It makes sense in theory but, to me, is mostly a crock in practice. It’s proponents argue that the ‘last click thru’ shouldn’t get all the credit for the sale.
But a lot of money is at stake and there’s gong to be a demand to share. You can be on it. There may be wars over this one.
12) Search engines develop deeper widget capabilities as Open Social blossoms
I don’t fully don’t understand all this, but if widgets make the search experience better and it can be transferred throughout the internet, then I bet it happens. Once it does, I’ll be able to explain it better. Anyone?
13) More and more broadcast and cable networks will look to develop miniseries that are only shown online. Most will fail.
As more and more of us move our media habits online, big media will follow. But overall, we’re a fickle bunch and despite some good efforts, many will fail initially. Lack of audience, ad models, viewer experience. All will pose some problems and big media will not have enough patience.
14) Women will be a major force in the success of social networking
More often than not, men are early adapters, while women are more cautious. But women seem to use the internet more for social reasons. We’ll see some significant success stories from social networks that are either specifically designed for or are primarily geared to women. And they won’t tolerate being overly marketed to or egregious violations of their privacy.
That’s it for now.
Filed under: 2008 Elections, Abraham Harrison LLC, Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Advertising, Blog Strategy, Blogger Code of Conduct, Blogging, Blogging Platforms, Blogging Policies, Blogosphere, Election Strategy, Facebook, Facebook Beacon, Google
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