The same goes for your company. How will it live up to the changes the new year will bring? What kinds of inbound marketing goals will your business set to rise above the competition and become top-of-mind for its prospects and customers? To help you answer these questions, we've compiled a list of 5 must-read articles written by fellow bloggers who are also trying to prepare for the new year.
1. 5 New Year's Resolutions for SMBs
Author: Jennifer Van Grove of Mashable
To help guide small businesses' social media/online strategies for 2010, Mashable offers some great ideas of sample resolutions. At the top of this list? Reflect on industry trends. Jennifer encourages you to evaluate the major trends of 2009 that occurred in your industry and adopt some of the techniques that worked.
Some other ideas include setting new social media goals, going local by finding smart ways of incorporating location data,
mastering Twitter lists
and experimenting with new ideas.
Lesson: Learn from others' marketing mistakes, yet don't be afraid to try something new.
2. 2010 Predictions for Communications
Author: Lou Hoffman on PR-Squared
Lou will make you smile with his tongue-in-cheek 2010 forecast for the communications industry, guest posted on Todd Defren's blog.
Among my favorites: journalists will pitch PR, social media will backfire on a political candidate and the Master's Golf Tournament will trigger another outbreak of articles about Tiger Woods. Some interesting thoughts, but of course, take them all with a grain of salt.
Lesson:
Expect the unexpected.
3.
8 Predictions for SEO in 2010
Author: Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz
Gazing into his SEO crystal ball, Rand pulls out 8 of his own guesses for the new year. Discussing recent trends, he attempts to predict what's to come, including the fading of the real-time search fad, the continuation of personalized search, a merger between Yahoo! and Bing, and a dramatic increase in SEO spending.
Lesson: Recent trends can sometimes help predict the changes to come.
4. eMarketer: 12 Digital Marketing Predictions for 2010
Author: Lee Odden of TopRank's Online Marketing Blog
Lee reflects on the 2010 predictions of eMarketer , a prominent Internet marketing trend resource, with insights into the future of monetization models, the effect of transparency on advertising, social and search, mobile, social commerce, public relations , social advertising, Twitter, video and mom/pop Internet usage -- you name it!
Some of eMarketer's interesting ideas include an increase in the Internet usage of the 55+ demographic, an expansion of social ad networks, the move of mobile into the mainstream and increased website transparency which will undermine online ad efforts.
Lesson: Expect to see more use of interactive mobile marketing in 2010.
5. 11 B2B Social Media Predictions for 2010
Author: Kipp Bodnar of Social Media B2B
Kipp's list focuses on the future of social media. While social media was definitely a marketing/communications hot topic in '09, Kipp thinks 2010 will involve a shift in spotlight to more clearly connecting social media to business objectives and better understanding how to measure the direct and indirect ROI of social media .
He stresses that in 2010, social media will begin to creep more and more into the sales funnel, resulting in a more social media savvy sales team and increased support from social media in lead generation.
Hungry for more 2010 prophecies? Social Media B2B offers an even bigger list of prediction articles at http://bit.ly/6HAx4M .
Lesson: Social media isn't just a marketing tool.
Read HubSpot's predictions
or tweet your own using hashtag
#Marketing2010
.
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