Media Guerrilla's 2005 Predictions

A lot of chatter in the blogosphere this week with respect to new year predictions, in fact Tom Murphy at PR Opinions had probably one of the better year-in-review pieces.  In his post, Tom states poignantly:

“The problem with sticking your neck out at this time of year with predictions for the next twelve months is that you have a moral responsibility to review the trends to see how accurate you've been...”

Agreed, but given this is my first official year of blogging, I’m technically off the hook for at least the next twelve months, so with that said here are Media Guerrilla’s top five predictions for 2005:

Year of the Co-Op Blog: Awareness and interest in blogging is already reaching a boiling point, yet “lack of time” remains the biggest obstacle for new voices.  With this in mind, I predict we’ll begin to see small groups of like-minded bloggers lessening the time burden of blogging by teaming up to distribute content via multiple contributors.

For the PR bloggers reading this post, think about my prediction in the context of the Global PR Blog.  Why did the conversation have to end in July?

Year of the Corp Blog: In 2004 we saw a healthy mix of companies (e.g., Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) start corporate blogs.  In 2005, I predict we’ll see a significant jump in the number of companies with corporate blogging programs.  This seems like a no brainer prediction, but if it’s true, think about how quickly the landscape for communications is going to change in the new year.

Year of the Blogmaster: As more companies get into the blogging mix they’ll inevitably struggle with which department ultimately takes ownership of the blog (e.g., will it be corporate comm., product marketing, website dev, etc.)?  For this reason, I think we’ll begin to see a new formal position take shape within organizations – the blogmaster.

Okay, maybe “chief conversationalist” or “customer evangelist” would be better names, but you get the idea.  This person will have a blend of journalism, marketing and PR experience, and their job will be to develop content for the corporate blog, as well as engage with customers in conversations online.

Year of the Online Communications Program:  I think more companies are going to realize this year that, well, their PR and marketing programs need help and that they need to re-energize their brands by re-thinking how they engage customers.  The Web will of course play a major part in this strategy.  Corporate blogs and blogmaster positions will be part of this effort, but broader scale programs that look to fold macro and micro media programs together will have the most success.

Year of the Big Media Bloggers: In an effort to remain competitive and perhaps grow ad revenue, I think we will see more Big Media journalists take up blogging under their corporate brands.  David Pogue at the New York Times gave us a glimpse of this earlier this fall when he launched Pogue’s Posts.  In 2005 I think we may see more journalists follow suit, folks like Walt Mossberg/WSJ, Peter Lewis/Fortune or Steve Wildstrom/BusinessWeek. 

I think the personal technology columnists have the easiest window of entry for a blog, given they already have great name recognition, plus their content naturally has mass consumer appeal.

So there you have it.  This time next year I’ll revisit what I’ve predicted here and we’ll see if I’m a genius or a lunatic…