Happy New Year!
The Harte of Marketing is taking a few days off and will be back in the new year.
Before doing so I just wanted to say thank you! I know there are a ton of blogs out there and I really appreciate you all for taking the time out of your busy days to generate conversations, provide insights, and share experiences. It’s your passion that continually drives us all to embrace change and listen to all the voices that are helping shape the future of marketing, communications and social media.
It has been a pleasure to get to know you all and I am excited to see what 2009 brings! Wishing you all a year filled with much continued change, healthy debate, prosperity and new friendships!
And it wouldn’t be a New Year’s post without a prediction or two! Here’s mine:
In 2009 companies will begin implementing social media, but with a traditional marketing mindset. Meaning, they will start to embrace the tools but will do as one-way communication because it’s what they are most comfortable with. (While this type of implementation might draw scrutiny from some, I believe it’s a step in the right direction.)
What’s your prediction for 2009?
(And yes, it’s a real Philadelphia Mummer!)
[Photo: u2rob]
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Tags: communications, Marketing, new years 2009, Social Media
15 Responses to “Happy New Year!”
The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Hi Beth, I’m so glad I found your blog. You always stimulate great discussions. I’m looking forward to a great new year ahead.
As for predictions… I think that Twitter will become a household word and will be much more mainstream, like what happened to Facebook last year.
Todd Smith’s last blog post..Let’s See Everyone’s Snow Photos!
You know I cherish our relationship and glad we got to build on it this past year. It’s been a great 2008 and cannot wait to see what 2009 brings the both of us.
You ROCK and hope you have a great New Years
Sonny Gill’s last blog post..how to kick the recession in the butt
Beth, I’m grateful for having connected with you this year. I look forward to learning more from you and watching you ROCK 2009 even more! Happy New Year!
My prediction is that you’ll continue to be a valuable voice…and that we’ll finally have a chance to meet!
Ditto what Sonny said…2008 will be memorable for me because I met you guys and a few others. Such a collective force of original thought, passion and ideas. It’s awesome. As for your prediction, I think it’s dead on. I think Corps’. CMO’s will begrudgingly accept social media and as you say try to push it; but they’ll measure it and judge the success of it the same way they have their old school initiatives of the past.. In other words, they’ll let you in the door, but they will expect you to take your shoes off and not touch anything as you sit on the plastic covered furniture.
Marc’s last blog post..Mailing it in before 2009
Beth, Happy New Year. I’m so glad we got to meet at least over the phone this year, hopefully in person in ’09. I’m going to take a different look at your prediction and Marc’s comment and say the CMOs (and others in marketing departments) who have already started down the path of integrating social marketing into their strategy and tactics will be the ones who help their companies stay afloat during this recession. The CMOs who are doing it begrudgingly for the first time in ’09 will see less success in demand gen, branding, communications and all other facets of marketing.
Can’t wait to watch what you do in ’09!
/kff
Kyle’s last blog post..URL Shrinking Increases Marketing Effectiveness
Hi Beth, I have found myself in such a learning curve since I started exploring social media and how it works. All of you have been so generous with sharing. I continually struggle with two identities rolled into one which I just ended up using my name @JulieWalraven. If I was only going to use social media with my career management side, it would probably be easy but since I spend most of my life with Wausau Whitewater, (www.wausauwhitewater.org) I find myself answering to a board. I have only started telling some of the board that I have been exploring social media and it is an uphill battle. I started the blog for the non-profit without asking, just to understand how blogging works. I can understand how large corporations struggle with change when on such a smaller scale, I struggle with getting people to try new ideas.
At this point, I like many people, can’t imagine a world without Twitter and all the knowledge available and all the people I would never have known existed. Hopefully, all that you and others do will continue to change the world in 2009.
Thank you and Happy New Year!
Julie Walraven’s last blog post..My Journey with LinkedIn
Happy New Year, Beth! You know I am so unbelievably excited to see what 2009 has in store for you, as your star is shining incredibly bright right now. Looking forward to seeing you again early and often this year!
Here’s to 2009!
A great conclusion to an active and interesting year, Beth. I’m blessed to have met you virtually and begun a relationship that I can’t wait to cement with in-person mayhem!
Till then, thanks for being the insightful and conscientious pro that you are…and keep your eye out for sales on red&pink sh*tkickers, they’ll look great with our team (@shannonpaul, @ambercadabra) arm bands and capes!
Heather Rast’s last blog post..Are You Listening? Or Merely Hearing?
Hey Beth,
Wishing a very Happy New Year and all the best for 2009! Do what you do and continue to Rock It!
Hi Beth,
At the risk of sounding like an alien, I just registered on Twitter and found your blog mentioned MANY times so I decided to check it out. I am a senior marketer with over 15 years of traditional mass and direct marketing experience. I agree with Kyle. To truly thrive, marketers will need to integrate more traditional media with emerging and social media. Consumers are king and a two-way communication strategy will be key. I look forward to following your blog and others to see how this plays out in 09. Thanks for the great insights!
I think you are quite correct in your prediction. For so many clients, the idea of giving up control is anathema. Even if the marketing team buys into it, they have to face the slings and arrows of the rest of the company the first time a vaguely negative comments comes in.
Happy (Belated) New Year.
Alan Wolk’s last blog post..Why I Write
Happy New Year everyone! Thanks so much for the compliments and additional predictions. I have really enjoyed getting to know a lot of you in 2008…here’s to a great 2009!
@SteveWoodruff @HeatherRast, @KyleFlaherty, I predict that 2009 will be the year we meet!
Hopefully in either NJ (Steve) or at SxSW.
@MarcMeyer, “they’ll let you in the door, but they will expect you to take your shoes off and not touch anything as you sit on the plastic covered furniture.” That is a classic one-liner that will live in infamy. So glad that Toby Bloomberg (@TobyDiva) will be using it with the AMA. Perfect!
@MarcMeyer, @KyleFlaherty, @LaurieBroderick, @AlanWolk, I hope my prediction is wrong, but I think it will be true for the first two-three quarters of 2009…enough time for companies to realize they aren’t implementing social media in a way that truly develops those all-important conversations between customers and companies. Let’s just hope they don’t blame social media itself for those missteps.
@JulieWalraven, glad to see that you are taking a step towards implementing social media internally. Indeed sometimes a struggle when management doesn’t understand that it takes their personal involvement and commitment to develop online relationships. The good news is they understand business development and what goes into it, so I think social media is a natural next step even if the online and public nature of it is scary at first. Hopefully your efforts will not go unnoticed and your social media plan will show your board how Wausau Whitewater’s marketing is benefiting from the addition of this additional communications channel. BTW, you do have a plan, right?
Happy New Year to you, as well, Beth!
I’m not one for predictions, but I hope that the opposite happens — that companies begin to learn to operate and communicate in a two-way fashion. There is much in the new-product development/customer insights world that is pushing in this direction … if marketing communication teams and their agencies can just get on board … and realize social-media tools are a good catalyst … well, that would be a good direction!
A pleasure reading your insights, as always; thanks for sharing with all of us.
Adam Needles’s last blog post..Next Generation of Marketing Services Agencies 1 of 2: Pillars and Barriers
[...] Beth Harte points out that some companies, sold on the concept of social media, will skip right past “How?” and jump into the deep end — for better or worse: In 2009 companies will begin implementing social media, but with a traditional marketing mindset. Meaning, they will start to embrace the tools but will do as one-way communication because it’s what they are most comfortable with. [...]