Valley PR Blog

Five things I look forward to in 2008

By Angelo Fernando on January 1st, 2008 In Marketing, Social Media

After the mixed bag of social media triumphs and hiccups last year, here are some positive things to watch out for in the new year:

1. Coming clean. Wal-mart’s site, Working Families for Walmart, has moved the project in house, out of PR Agency Edelman. You may recall astroturfing issue over the original fake blog, or flog.

2. Publishing and Crowdsourcing. The book on Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe (to be published by Random House early 2008) used the concept of wisdom of the crowds to create a book jacket.They call it ‘coversourcing‘ and you can participate. Entries close on 10 February 2008.

3. Intranet makeovers. Social networks have given organizations a taste of how to (un)manage employee communications. Marc Wright has a great how to article in the Jan-Feb issue of IABC’s CW (membership required) about how to dip ones toes into web 2.0 with what organizations already have: the staff directory, video library, a project wiki and a user group.

4. Social media knowledge distribution: Combine the spark generated by wireless book readers such as Kindle and the trends such as the OpenCourseWare initiative (by MIT,) and it is entirely possible for knowledge industries to give users new ways to access content.

5. Niche marketing to cell phones. This is a wild card. A lot depends on how much of social media nodes and features cell phone carriers incorporate into handsets and service plans. Even without their help, as we have more points of access via Bluetooth and WiFi, we could be using our phones to do more. We could ‘attend’ events targeted at small groups, and participate/collaborate live via phones rather than laptops.

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