Predictions: Nine in ’09

Welcome to the Era of Enablement, where the Expert Explosion encourages users to fulfill their Deep Desire for Context.

Where the Rise of the Human Editor propagates a Crisis of Identity and brands are forced into Rapid Response mode.

Where your Time to Market will determine whether Quality trumps Quantity content and Participation Creation defines brand loyalty.

Welcome to 2009.

1. Era of Enablement

In an environment where your advertising and marketing decisions hinge on cost concerns and roi, free, open-source platforms will prove to be the most cost-effective, results-driven options for creating and distributing online content.

community platforms that enable instant, participant-generated content are already growing rapidly, and so is the value of their content.

The default expectation today is that everyone is invited to become a content creator. smart brands are customizing open-source solutions so that consumers are experiencing content creation itself as a branded experience.

A deep desire to mitigate risk and financial exposure will force information technology professionals and marketing organizations to focus on enabling creators of content like never before.

Open-source platforms represent the collective wisdom of thousands of developers passionate about deploying enterprise-level content-creation systems using solved problems.

It’s time to embrace the Era of Enablement.

2. The Expert Explosion

Paradoxically, the era of enablement will result in the generation of a high volume of low-quality content. The barriers to creating content are so low, we will see a proliferation of niche-focused, content-creating ‘nexperts’ (niche-experts) in every category under the sun.

Their ability to rapidly create video, audio, text, or imagery will elevate these ‘amateur influencers’ or ‘prosumers’ to the point of a disproportionate influence through product recommendations, and they’ll represent an ever-growing collective buying power.

brands will need to embrace and encourage amateur influencers by engaging them early in a product’s life-cycle. Consumers will be vetting prosumers based on their ability to create frequent, relevant, high-quality content.

without any formal journalism training and with no commitment to objectivity, prosumers represent a substantial risk, and one of the better ways for brands to curb the risk is to find the value in objective amateur influencers and embrace their work to help cull the herd during The Expert Explosion.

3. A Deep Desire for Context

Content creators are faced with new options for content distribution every day: videos on youtube, documents on scribd, images on flickr, presentations on slideshare…

In a world where content distribution and consumption are multi-threaded, consumers are eager to understand your widely distributed content within a specific context — a context of their choice, not just yours.

Content is re-hashed, re-mixed and re-interpreted, presenting a tremendous opportunity to brands that generate a high volume of disparately distributed content.

Provide your audience with their preferred context for your content on branded web platforms that invite amateur influencers and prosumers to redistribute your content – that is the future of branded marketing online.

Brands who embrace this opportunity will succeed in meeting their audience’s Deep Desire for Context.

4. The Rise of the Human Editor

black-hat search engine optimization tactics, the decade-long emphasis on paid search advertising, and the overall failure of search to deliver what’s wanted have created an online world where trustworthy content is too often too hard to find.

Social media’s emphasis on sharing content among trusted ‘friends,’ ‘followers,’ or ‘connections’ has taken precedence in many people’s daily online activities as the most effective way to find relevant content.

tags, hashtags, ratings, rankings, comments, digg, technorati, stumbleupon – all attempt to expedite a consumer’s search for high-value, engaging and (most importantly) relevant content. as marketers co-opt these relatively new platforms they rapidly lose value and relevance in the marketplace.

This poses a significant risk to creators of branded content who attempt to drive consumption of their content, in their context, through the latest social media platforms. If you’re fueling the failure of social sharing by attempting to co-opt a group for self-serving marketing initiatives, you’re actually destroying the Rise of the Human Editor.

5. Crisis of Identity

Online social networks are blurring the lines between social, professional and personal relationships. As professional colleagues send social ‘friend requests’ across platforms, network consumers are faced with difficult content-sharing choices as their networks collide. This identity crisis will cause users to choose their networks more carefully.

niche networks will proliferate, and invitation-only networks will denote quality, cooperation, and value where co-opted content will be filtered and expelled.

Members will feel they must reduce network participation where value is unclear while they increase activities on networks where their opinions are heard, their content is shared, and the network reciprocates with valuable content.

Brand marketers attempting to infiltrate closed networks under the auspices of authentic participation will be boycotted. Furthermore, brands will find themselves wondering whether they should present themselves on networks as brands in and of themselves or as people representing brands.

The Crisis of Identity is upon us. who are you?

6. Rapid Response

In a world where networks communicate information among amateur influencers and prosumers at light speed, a brand’s success will depend on its ability to respond rapidly to ever-changing market conditions.

niche networks will facilitate the creation of online focus groups in which consumers provide valuable insight into their buying habits, brand opinions, and deep desires.

We will see the success of communities shaping products and promotions of the future, and users will be rewarded for their valuable viewpoints.

roi for social networks will no longer be gauged by impressions, engagement, or reach, but defined by the value found in the community’s ability to change and enhance products and marketing and to drive new business.

In an era of enablement, invitation-only niche networks will define your brand’s ability to succeed in a market defined by Rapid Response.

7. Time to Market

Gone are the days when designing, developing and deploying a new web platform was measured in months, quarters or even years. In today’s economic climate, the rapid deployment of content creation platforms will define your success online.

feature-rich, custom-designed, labor-intensive microsites built by the world’s largest interactive agencies are a medium of the past. Successful marketers will quickly enable the frequent creation of content meant to be shared and consumed in bite-sized chunks.

Success will no longer be measured in page visits and giant spikes in content consumption, but in long-term relationships with amateur influencers, prosumers, and brand advocates.

With the rapid deployment of new content distribution platforms, brands will become content creators, generating valuable content over time.

Re-evaluate your deployment strategy and adjust for an ever-shrinking Time to Market.

8. Quality Trumps Quantity

user-generated content is all the rage. with 13 hours of video added to youtube every minute, who can argue with that?
Moving forward, only high-quality content will bubble to the top. quality will be defined relative to the distribution channel and will be decided by the content’s intended audience.

As more distribution channels magically appear each day, content creators will be forced to distribute content farther and wider than ever before.

Marketers who understand the subtle differences between distribution channel expectations will succeed in delivering relevant content.

Those who constantly exceed their audience’s expectations for quality content will build relationships. Quality content will build relationships; relationships will influence buying decisions; influencing buying decisions drives revenue.

If your Quality Trumps Quantity, your investment in building relationships will pay dividends in 2009.

9. Participation Creation

Brands will be tempted to build their own branded, custom-developed, content generation platforms in an effort to own the consumer experience.

This will prove to be short-sighted. Content distribution channels are building their own brands in 2009 (just look at scribd or twitter), and they will define our online experiences.

Only brands who embrace and, more importantly, commit to creating content alongside the masses will weather the storm.

Participating in a legitimate community adds tremendous, unquantifiable brand value.

Users will encounter more and more brand relationships built on a personal connection in a trusted community, instead of joining a private-label branded community designed to deliver a self-serving marketing manager’s goals.

Where will you begin your Participation Creation initiative?

NINE IN `09 ON SCRIBD.COM