Let’s play the word association game here. Tell me what comes to your mind when I say the word December. Of course, Christmas, shopping, holidays….Predictions!! Yup, predictions that’s the one this blog post will be all about. What will the year 2009 hold for us?

I have put down my 10 predictions. Five of these are on a more socio-economic level at large. Most of these changes that I am predicting will be huge leap jumps in their own way and will be possible only because of extensive use and acceptability of social media.

1. Thought Leadership as a Strategy:

These days, it is not uncommon to see people seek value out of everything. And by value, I am not restricting it to price equation alone. Value could be delivered in the form of information, education, better quality or even better service. One of the key principles of social media is to provide value to its consumer. For companies and in turn their brands to survive, they will have to provide value at all levels to their consumers. Social Media will prompt companies to adopt thought leadership as a value in their manifesto in their area of core competence.

The title is borrowed from the traditional proclamation – ‘The King is dead. Long Live the King’. What is basically meant (and I am taking this from Wikipedia) is that in certain monarchies of France and England, the transfer of sovereignty occurred instantaneously upon the moment of death of the previous monarch. In this blog post, I am using it to highlight that how a stand alone non interactive website (basically 1.0) is dead and without fail, its time for websites powered by social media (Websites 2.0) to take over!!

It is very common to see companies scrambling to get their website up. In few cases, some basic essentials of website are missing, but in most the marketers have no clear agenda on why they are building one. It’s not too surprising to see websites being made because it is a standard launch activity to do. It is more like a job in the task list at the time of product launch. The brand manager gets it executed because it was expected out of him or her.

This blog post has stemmed from the interesting discussion that my earlier post generated ‘Is advertising on Facebook called Social Media Marketing?” Mostly all agreed that while advertising on Facebook helped the marketer focus to the right target audience, it was still advertising.

Social Media Marketing on the other hand implicitly calls for user participation and building dialogue. Both of which remain absent with Facebook advertising form of communication. To me if there is one thing that segregates social media from others is the use of word ‘Audience’.

(This is two part series article)

I just had to use social media as his middle name. It is important to analyze how Barack Obama could leverage his views and personality to reach out to voters using social media tools. American elections created history of sorts – one and the most obvious one being elected as the first African American as President. Second and not so obvious one being use of social media for his presidential campaign by his campaign managers.

Let’s break it down into steps.

1. Voter Generated Content:

First thing that stood out of the campaign was his website. It allowed the voters and fans to not just learn more about him but also organize meetings and fan clubs on his behalf. Voters could download tools and use them in a manner they felt best to help them organize meetings. There was a ‘download’ section where voters could use donation widget, get campaign materials and Obama badges.

People customized content from his website

Diwali, the festival of lights, always brings with itself a mood of festivity and celebrations. No amount of sub prime crisis or Investments banks falling like nine pins can make the scene gloomy. We enjoyed Diwali in a grand way at office along with our friend Werner (and his team) who runs his firm Pink and White consulting. Some glimpses of the same.

It’s ain’t no matter if you are Black or White!!!