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To ask anyone to predict the upcoming year in digital marketing, is like having expected Henry Ford to have predicted the Ford Fusion… it's doubtful the term "hybrid" was even in his vocabulary. With the rate digital marketing has been changing—and here, we're talking substantial change occurring in periods of months, not years, decades or generations—experts can tell us what will be the hottest behavior in February, but that same usage will be old news far before the end of 2010.
However, one very sure-fire prediction we can make is that the social media wave will continue to swell; and it most certainly will NOT reach its crest for quite some time. When you compare social media's impact on traditional media… when you consider that it took radio almost forty years to reach 50 million users and Facebook just nine months to reach twice that number… social media can be recognized, hands-down, as the largest corporate, societal and even political shift since the industrial revolution.
Simply put, the media landscape has changed forever. Moreover, it’s a moving target, again, the reason why predictions aren't as clear-cut as we'd like. But, one thing that’s not moving is the outlet: your handheld mobile device. The handheld is where the wave is all aggregating. That is, that same surging population once so hot on surfing the net has stepped up their participation in the "online sport" and focus now on riding the wave. This dynamic allows us to give you our take on the new reality, and make a few predictions on it as well as the next big wave.
The New Reality: We're all living in “The ME (Mobile Enabled) Generation”
Do you Tweet? Do you have a Facebook page? Do you have your own website? If you answered "yes" to any or, perhaps, all of these, you have an online brand.
That's right, you are branded, and are on your way from being just another face in the "cyber-crowd," to becoming a social media "Crest Toothpaste," "Burger King," or "FedEx."
So one, you are online branded. And, two, like it or not, you are mobile. Given that we are all in the throes of the new reality—and all its revolutionary implications, it is not just advantageous to capitalize on the impact of this situation, it is critical to maximize it. All marketing campaigns need to adapt.
How? Take The Star Group's recent campaign for Virtua Orthopedics as an example. First visit it at virtuaflyers.org on your computer. Then visit the same site on your iPhone and see a totally customized mobile experience. This is not a new idea, but instead just standard operating procedure in today’s mobile-enabled reality.
Prediction 1: Social Search heats up
Now, for a reality check on the new reality: today anyone can be a brand. So, what is there to make you stand out? To distinguish yourself from all the other brands out there? To power up your business, fulfill your purpose, achieve your communication goals?
If our prediction holds true, the answers are simple: social search.
Social search, the term that represents the shift in search capability to include social network participation and engagement, is going to heat up in 2010. In fact, the fire has already been lit by a number of the big players in online search and social media.
Google has announced that they will be partnering with both Twitter and FriendFeed to deliver “social search results” to the user. Facebook will be tightly aligned to Microsoft’s Bing search engine (no surprise here given the partnership already established), meaning that Facebook status updates will appear in Bing search results, but only if the user’s privacy settings permit it. And finally, Yahoo! will be in the game soon enough because competitively, everyone has to transition to what the market demands… that is, to be mobile.
What all this means for your personal brand is that transparency will flow across the web. Now more than ever the smart "brands" will think before they tweet. “Governance” and “reputation management” will be no longer demand a high level of focus from just the corporate world—they will have to be considered personally as well.
Prediction 2: Video becomes a brand-standard
According to Treadstream's “The Global Web Index,” 72% of U.S. Internet users watched video clips monthly, making video bigger than blogging or social networking. In 2010, we have to think the percentage using video and the reasons for its use will continue to expand. Which, in turn, means results such as:
• The video résumé, becoming part of the career/resume arsenal and revolutionizing job searches and hiring.
• More and more people will utilize video on their websites and blogs as introductions to their worlds.
• Quality video production will get less expensive, more easily accessible and more user friendly.
• Video making a power-play to continue the conversation with consumers beyond the thirty-second offered by traditional media.
And speaking of consumer communications (i.e. advertising), in-stream video advertising will be tremendous in 2010, thanks to growing adoption by media agencies of Internet Advertising Bureau’s (IAB’s) development of video ad standards.
Allowing advertisers to insert pre-roll and post-roll ads within a video player window before or after streamed video content that has been requested by the consumer, in-stream video empowers advertisers with the flexibility to display video, rich media or standard banner creative into video players.
Certainly, the concept and technology of in-stream video advertising has been with us for some time, however now, finally, we have rules to play by! The IAB has already published a number of reports for its proposed standards, guidelines, and best practices for digital (online) video advertising. These include everything from the ad-serving technologies, metrics definitions and measurement guidelines, to creative standards and length variables (short-form vs. long-form).
The Next Wave in the Wave: “Google Wave”
May 28, 2009—a date that will make the digital history books for sure. It was the day Google announced Google Wave, a new model for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. A wave is equal parts conversation and document. A wave is shared. A wave is live. A wave is unprecedented.
And, of course, it is extremely mobile.
In Google Wave a person creates a wave and adds more people to it. Everyone on a person's wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. The wave is concurrent rich-text editing, where one can see on the screen—nearly instantly—what fellow collaborators are typing in the wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content, for it allows for both collaboration and communication. A playback function even allows users to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
At The Star Group, we are poised to pounce on the energy of Google Wave, firmly believing it will be the next trend in social search.
In conclusion, for digital marketing in 2010 we foresee what we've predicted for years—unpredictable growth in technology, incorporation into strategies and USE. The growth will most definitely stem from a shift from simply surfing the net, to riding the wave as a growing population embraces the new reality, the "ME Generation." Individuals and marketers alike will live by the motto, "Revolutionize, socialize and above all else, mobilize!"
Linda Rosanio is CEO of the Star Group with offices in Philadelphia and Fort Washington, PA, Voorhees and Morristown, NJ, Wilmington, DE, Kansas City, MO and Las Vegas, NV.