Let the 2009 Trend Lists Grow

 One of my most popular posts last year was my summary of 2008 trend lists. I’m a little late this year, but better late than never =) When I look back at my three trends, it seems odd that I selected the growth of blogomerates, social media connections for PR and long tail PR. To me, these seem almost second nature!

So what do I think will be top trends for 2009? Here are my top three:

 

Brands that participate in conversations will thrive: Ever more so than ever, the need to participate in conversations with your community/customers is more important. Not only from a brand management perspective, but also for demonstrable bottom line results. The brand that connects with me – either for bad or good – will more likely get my attention. And when the nexy crisis emerges, those that are transparent and timely will succeed.

 

All things virtual will rise in popularity and then wane by the end of the year: Right now, all companies are spooked by the economy. I think this is a knee jerk reaction that will benefit companies that can help move physical events online (note: my company provides virtual events solutions). While this will provide immediate cost and time savings by reducing travel and hotel costs, I think that the pendulum will swing back by the end of 2009. However, once this trend begins, I believe that companies will reconsider which events to hold in the physical world vs. the virtual one.

 

It’s not about the tools, it’s about the information (attributing this to Stuart Miniman): I was chatting with Stuart when he made this comment, and he’s right. Right now, we’re enamored with all the tools – Twitter, Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Facebook, Friendfeed etc. – but what this all boils down to is the how to receive and send information. The company able to bring manage and disseminate information based on audience preferences – and in real-time – will have an advantage in the age of overwhelming information.

 

Other 2009 Predictions:

• Peter Himler over at The Flack beat me to a list of 2009 trends. These focus on social media, marketing and public relations

• Influential Marketing Blog – 2009 Predictions from the Pros at PSFK

• PR 2.0 – 2009 – The Year of Social Aggregation & Syndication: Scrapplet Paves the Way

• Conversation Agent – The Future is Now. Valeria looks at the future of the agency and company in this post.

• Scott Monty’s Social Media Predictions for 2009

• Marketing Pilgrim – Why 2009 is THE Year for Social Media

• Chris Brogran – 8 Marketing Bloggers to Watch in 2009

• Charlene Li of The Altimeter – Predictions for 2009

• Judith Hurwtiz’ Weblog – My Top Eleven Predictions for 2009 – predictions for the world of software.

• Inside the Marketer’s Studio – David Berkowitz’s Marketing Blog – Search Trends to Watch in 2009

• It’s All Virtual – 2009: The Year We Go Virtual

• The Junta42 blog – 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009 – Nice summary of predictions from savvy marketers.

• Paul Dunay’s Buzz Marketing for Technology – Top 10 Marketing Predictions for 2009 – Paul selects his top 10 from the Junta42 Blog list.

• What’s Next Blog – B.L. Ochman’s 2009 Online Marketing Predictions: Mobile, Better Lighting, Subscriptions Rule – I like prediction number 7 =)

• Collaborative Thinking – 2009: Planning Considerations for Enterprise 2.0. While not a “trends” list, it is an interesting list to read nonetheless

• Read Write Web – 2009 Web Predictions. Predictions by the staff at RWW – acquisitions, business plans and more!

• Micropersuasion – Reading Tea Leaves for 2009 in Google Search Data.  I love Steve Rubel’s approach to data mining information from Google Search to analyze trends for 2009.

• Social Media Explorer – More 2009 Predictions… And A Few Of Your Own. Jason Falls is a very insightful guy. He brings us predictions from Mindsalt. I like the one about time snippets vs. time slot for attention.

• Small Business Hub – Online Marketing: 2009 Predictions. Small Business Hub is HubSpot’s blog. They once again bring us a wealth of predictions for this year and even beyond.

• Furrier.org – Clay Shirky Media Business Market – His Forecast for 2009 – Look for the deeper meaning within his words . John Furrier writes this blog about all things Silicon Valley and tech. John does the heavy lifting to better understand Clay Shirky’s 2009 predictions.

• Experience Marketing Perspective – Five Marketing Trends that Will Boom in 2009. Kristin Morris brings a fresh perspective with her trends regarding virtual events, mobile marketing and more.

• my 2 cents – PR Forecast for the New Year. David Reich provides some interesting insights about PR for 2009. I’m not sure if these are pessimistic, optimistic or a bit of both =)!

• Brendan Cooper – provides his thoughts for social media in 2009 

• Daniel Durazo’s Blog – Daniels highlights his top public relations trends for 2009. Daniel is correct that the landscape has changed and those who can keep up with it will succeed.

  Leave a comment if you have any additional trend lists you would like added.  

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All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.