Social Media 2009

Viral marketing and social media have come a long way in 2008. Last year at this time, I was forever explaining podcasts and widgets and this year people are creating their own from many different sources. It truly was the year of the widget.
If you are a small company and jumped on the bandwagon early, congratulations! You probably got some relatively cheap word of mouth marketing under your belt. This year, the big guns are coming and with their large budgets we'll no doubt be seeing big changes in the social media sphere again. My predictions for 2009.

1) Social media budgets will become standard. Last year there was a lot of "squeezing in" social media. No one had a set budget for it but everyone wanted to try it. With the economy uncertain, lots of brands are going to rethink their TV budgets in favor of more targeted online visibility.
2) Social media will become more highly measured. With companies like Avenue A (and even us) trying to corner the market on measuring social media this will become a new arms race in the online world. Tying ROI to social media is imperative and we must begin to make sense of social media in a more precise way.
3) The big players are staying. With lots of clients asking me "what is the next Facebook?" I have to honestly say I don't think there's going to be one in the very near future. As long as the brightest minds are concentrating on how to measure and monetize, it's unlikely more huge players will enter the ring.
4) We'll say goodbye to lots of startups. Sad but true, startups are coming and going more quickly than I can even keep track of. With VC's pulling away, we'll see a lot of startups fail in the first quarter.
5) The Blogosphere will continue to grow. Blogs went this year from "a couple of people in the ad and tech world" to "my neighbor, my fitness instructor, and the checkout girl at the supermarket" having a blog. There will likely be companies trying to create blog networks and organize the blogs as more and more people try their hand at citizen journalism.

Predictions aside, it's officially safe to try social media now. It's not a fad, it works, and it's not going anywhere. If you're a numbers and ROI type, you will be relieved to know that this type of measurement is in the works.

~~ Caitlin