Industry experts are forecasting what they believe will be some of the hotter Web trends for 2010. I’ve summarized some of the most significant ones below:
The momentum for social media will continue to build. The use of social media expanded greatly in 2009. According to Nielsen, Facebook’s unique visitors grew by 170 percent from September, 2008 through September, 2009. During that same time period, Twitter grew 1,009 percent. (Web) industry experts predict that these sites and others will become even more important as companies discover new ways to use social networks to attract and retain business.
The focus of search engine optimization will continue to shift towards high quality content. Content and conversation in social media will continue to be an increasingly important factor in improving search engine results. In October, 2009, BusinessWeek reported that Google and Bing will begin indexing Twitter. This announcement underscored the growing relationship between social media and SEO. What this means to the search strategy for a company’s website is that search engines will rely less on keywords and links and more on quality content optimized for social channels.
As more mobile users continue to access the Internet, businesses will look more seriously at mobile for marketing opportunities. Seen as the most personal means of communication with consumers, mobile advertising is becoming increasing popular. The surge in smart phone applications increases the appeal for using them to insert marketing messages. Location information provides a great advantage for mobile advertising because it allows for highly targeted campaigns. Businesses will need to look past getting their website to be mobile friendly and consider going a step further with a comprehensive mobile campaign.
Developing a brand content strategy will be key to success. As some of the traditional forms of achieving top search results lose relevance to the search engines, quality content plays an even larger role in search engine marketing. Quality content also plays a major role in engaging customers within social media. Putting a blog on your website is a good way to develop a content strategy. Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter allow consumers to interact with your business but it’s still important to control the conversation to your advantage. The best way to do this is with the content on your website or blog.
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Online video will gain importance. The conventional wisdom is that Google is going to favor websites that feature multi-media so it’s important to include online video in your website strategy. Additionally, video in press releases benefits SEO because the PR video acts as a link to that video and improves search engine rank. In October 2009, PR Web released a report that stated that while only 12 percent of businesses put video in press releases, 94% of those found it to be of value.
More tools will be available which provide meaningful data regarding the impact of online marketing efforts. The availability of such tools is contributing to the “coming of age” of social media as a business tool. Participating in social media platforms requires an investment in both time and money. In order to justify this investment, companies will need an effective way to measure its bottom line benefits. Intelligent analytical tools are essential to this endeavor. In 2010, companies’ ability to accurately translate and utilize available analytical data will be an important success factor.