Great predictions, thanks for sharing :-)

Great piece! One question for you, Ann. You said that, "In interviews, leagues of former unemployed newspaper reporters and editors -- now gainfully employed producing compelling content -- tell how they finally feed their families, once again."

Can you elaborate? How are they making a living in the electronic world? Thanks!

Hi Elaine -- My predictions were somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course. But what I meant by that was that companies increasingly will look toward hiring good writers and editors (perhaps some former reporters) to produce their marketing "content" for them. I'm talking about stuff like blogs, white papers, newsletters, podcasts, videologs, whatever...

What that means, in a larger sense, is that companies will begin to see that producing quality content that their customers actually WANT to consumer and seek out is the cornerstone of their marketing efforts. They'll produce well-written or well-produced stuff that's about their customers and prospects, and not simply about their products and services, in order to act more as a "trusted resource" of information within their market, and deepen the relationship with customers. That's a shift from what how many companies are still thinking. BTW - Hubspot (right here in Boston) is a great example of a company who uses Content like this, as a cornerstone of their efforts. But there are many more examples, as well.

Thanks for asking! Happy holidays to you.

Will people still have time for all this social media? or will people who sit unemployed at home just use social media in order to keep contact, making the social media websites the unemployed communities?

Prediction:
Large companies will miss out on social media whereas smaller companies will take benefit http://bit.ly/VZBV

Social Media in 2009? Twitter and Facebook. Google just joined Twitter.

Excellent. Thanks.

Thanks for the great article Ann.

Here's my prediction:
Social Media groups will add more value to users then most professional associations and poorly managed associations will see their membership drop dramatically and go belly up.

Thanks for the article Ann.

Here's my 2009 digital marketing predictions.

http://www.frontiering.com.au/blog/2008/12/18/2009-digital-marketing-predictions/

Thank you for the fabulous article. I've just begun my exploration of social networking strategies and trying to figure out how to best wrap my arms around the beast. Very Helpful!

Hi Ann,

Read your predictions that have compiled together by Peter. I guess it takes something to attempt to foresee for the coming year and put it all down.

My firm Windchimes Communications is a social media agency based out of Mumbai, India. I too have mentioned my share of predictions for 2009 relating to social media

http://windchimesindia.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/predictions2009/

Would love to read your take on it.

Nimesh Shah

I certainly hope that blogging isn't dead in 2009! Having just shed my ludite skin in 2008 to finally dive into the blogosphere, and create one of my own, I'd like to think there's some shelf-life left to it. And given the dire predictions about the death of tv over the last five years, I'm guessing my rss feed will stay full for a good while longer.

Happy Holidays & thanks for the great collection of predictions!

Great article. The paper is fantastic. You did one bang up job!

2009 is going to be a huge year for social media. Great paper, I look forward to reading more in the future.

Emma, blogging definitely wont go away in 2009, in fact I think its quite the opposite.

As popular as it seems, blogging is really in its infancy and is growing by a huge multiple every year.