Wed 3 Jan 2007
Predictions for 2007
Posted by Mark White, Blog Consultant in Blogging News , Corporate Blogging , Blogging for Small Businesses
As ever, this time of year is when people look back over what has happened in the previous year and forward to what they think will happen in the New Year.
While I’m not a great one for New Year Resolutions, I thought that I would add my own thoughts as to some of the trends that I believe we will be looking at in the arena of business blogging and social media.
In no particular order:
1. Blog Integration: Blogs will become more integrated with “standard” websites and indeed the norm will be to have the interactive elements of a blog for specific purposes as part of more and more sites.
2. Small Business Blogs: Small Businesses will recognise that simply starting up a static website will not provide them with the online presence and communication tool that they require. Those small businesses wishing to make an impact will move their current website on to a blog platform and will lead the way in this area.
3. Internal blogs: Dark blogs (or internal blogs) will step out into the light. Having used blogging as internal communications tools, larger companies will build on that experience to start to incorporate externally customer focused blogs into their customer relations programs. Smaller companies will start to use internal blogs more extensively as a central information and communication resource.
4. Corporate Blogs: The FTSE 250 will see over 15 externally facing blogs set up as corporate organisations start to realise and explore the different options that business blogs offer them.
5. Social Media: In the UK, there will become a greater acceptance and use of the social media tools that are available. In the second half of the year, we will see social media toolkits becoming an increasingly important part of a company’s online marketing activities.
6. Old ideas will persist: Nevertheless, people will continue to explain how to use business blogs by starting with the phrase “blogs are an online diary”. Alas!
7. Social Bookmarking: social bookmarking will spread outside of the primarily technical audience that it currently serves and be used more extensively. There will also be the first steps in consolidation within this area creating fewer independent and viable players.
8. RSS: the use of RSS will continue to gain ground outside of the current user base. This will develop the very specific RSS channels though is dependent on the benefits being more clearly explained and communicated by those already using it.
9. User generated content: the trend will continue but will expand from the mega site focus down to the smaller individual sites and blogs which will create strong “micro communities” in industry and market segments.
January 6th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Hi Mark!
I still get a lot of people asking me what RSS is and how it works.
Even people coming to my ‘blog seem to get flummoxed from time to time and it’s actually a trickier sell than it seems.
If someone doesn’t know what an RSS feed is, then they don’t know of aggregators or live bookmarks, either.
So you’re left with talking someone through quite a complex set of options just so that they can pin the benefits to something and not just say: “Well, why don’t you just use bookmarks? I understand that!”
January 6th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Predictions? Some seem like statements of fact
Great list Mark!
January 6th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Ted, Possibly statements of fact in the US but here in the UK I think that we are still struggling to catch up with you guys!
Lots of talk about personal blogs in the media here but little about business ones. We’ll keep spreading the word in corporate circles though and I do see this year as a big one for a much better understanding of blogs as a business tool in the UK!
March 14th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Blogs are very good for small businesses. I agree that the understanding of business blogs is limited in the UK. I am an independent travel consultant and writer. I started a blog just under 5 months ago, my Google page rank has gone up, site visitors have tripled and bookings have increased. But don’t think it is easy, yes, it is low cost, important for a small business without a large marketing budget. However very time consuming researching and writing posts.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:20 am
Karen, thanks for your comment - blogging has to be taken as part of a comapny’s overall promotional and marketing activity. However, it sounds as though your blogging has been giving good results and producing very positive returne on your time invested. Long may it continue!!