Spinfield: Web marketing trends today, tomorrow, and beyond…

The use of social media for marketing purposes, including sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Digg, and blogs, continued to grow in 2008. For many companies, it is no longer a curiosity, but a growing tool for interacting with potential customers.

So what will 2009 hold as social media continue to evolve?  Here are a few educated guesses.

1. Blogging Goes Mainstream – In 2008, many companies still needed to be convinced that blogging is beneficial.  In 2009, blogging will be recognized as an economical tool for sharing information about organizations and products.
2. The Rise of Blogging as a Profession? – Gone are the days of having an intern or just anybody regularly post articles about your company.   Writing quality and legal concerns demand an increase in writing skill and professionalism.
3. Budgets will be Saved – Reflecting the economy, lower marketing budgets will require creativity on the part of marketing departments. Limited marketing funds will continue to shift away from traditional media to more economical social media.
4. Life Becomes Easier – Participating in conventional social media is time consuming. Look for the growth in tools  designed to organize your social media life.  Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb offers Six Ways to Update Your Status as one way of saving time and managing your social networking accounts.
5. Niche Social Networking Grows -  More Web sites will include their own social networking sections, allowing for more targeted interaction with applications like Google Friend Connect.
6. Switching Focus to Hand-helds – More and more social media users are using hand-held devices to stay connected. Social networking sites which cater to this will thrive and attract more users.

These are just a few possible guesses as to where social media is heading in 2009.   What do you see for its future?

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