Interactive Marketing Blog

Year 2008 is on the verge of completion. I’ve personally learnt a lot in this year being active online as well as offline interacting with some great minds. Infact, it won’t be wrong to say that all my readers, my online network friends and those who have helped me along the way have undoubtedly made me much smarter than I was before. So while I was blogging all this time about Marketing, Social Media and tidbits of tech news & analysis, one thing comes out quite prominent than ever before. We can say that the future is bright- it sure is but not all bright things will see the broad daylight in year 2009. So I’ll try to present a list of things which won’t happen in Indian Social Media space in 2009. Yeah it’s kind of a party popper but sometimes it’s good to keep ourselves deep rooted to the ground

So here is the list of 5 things that won’t happen in Indian Social Media in year 2009:

1. We won’t see the rise of mobile social media yet

Yes this is true. Though experts, gurus and mavens have predicted that mobile is the next big thing in Indian digital space but still it’s not going to take off in 2009, wherein mass will start using it. Though some suggest that internet penetration is indeed being driven, in part, by an increase in mobile internet users but it is largely inhabited by those are already online. And this counts to a very small number. So for Social Media to go mainstream via mobile, it needs to have wide acceptance across mass & class. Partly the problem lies in the compatibility of network carriers and also the prices of high end mobile end phones which makes it difficult for mass to have access. So fingers crossed!

2. We won’t see much expected anticipation from executives yet

Present economic climate is far from being good and much so will prevail in year 2009 even. So this gives an opportunity for companies executives to look for newer ways to stretch their hands and surely social media is one of those. But still the anticipation expected from companies will be far from encouraging. So 2009 won’t be a year where company executives, CEO’s, CMO’s will be driving their analog advertising dollars into digital dollars. But surely things will change as few early adopter companies will set examples and the rest of the herd will follow suit.

3. We won’t see much tangible ROI out of Social Media yet

Social Media ROI is still intangible and no definitive ideas have come along to measure it. This will make the social media adoption for companies murkier in 2009. So measuring ROI is one of the most important areas that have to be seen in 2009. I think, the traditional transaction model of buyers & sellers have to be shed and a new way have to be adopted for modern marketers to understand social media ROI. One needs to change view of what social media marketing is and where it contributes before we can develop a real ROI model. Perhaps we’ll make great progress in 2009 but a true ROI model will probably have to wait till 2010.

4. We won’t see effective tractable Social Media tools yet

Day in, day out newer tools to track social media campaigns comes out. Some stay and some loses their fizz. So year 2009 will be consolidation of social media tractable tools and by 2010 we will see rise of better, efficient and effective tools to manage social media campaigns.

5. We won’t see much needed standard Social Media Advertising yet

This has been the debate in many conferences that I’ve attended to. Standards are always needed not only for specific companies but the whole industry. The sooner we get standards, the sooner social media marketing campaigns can go from being a custom business development deal to a line item in the spreadsheet of every media buyer at every agency. This is one of the hindrances that today’s industry is facing. Infact tracking IAB’s Ad unit guidelines gives us some interesting insights too.

So these are the five things which I don’t see happening in year 2009. Though Social Media in India is still taking its own baby steps and companies are still in the process of mixing & matching different things, but surely year 2009 will show some clear trends that are to follow for years to come.

So what are your thoughts on what won’t happen in Social Media in 2009?