2010 is looking to be a whirlwind of a year for online marketing. With the internet appearing on more devices, as well as more types of devices, than ever before, businesses have and expanding variety of mediums to promote their business with. As always, there will be a select few that lead the pack by drawing hungry traffic to their websites like a pack of stampeding Spanish bulls. The following is a list of people and services to watch that I believe will make a tremendous impact in the next 12 months.
The Cheezburger Network (& founder Ben Huh)
If you have ever seen those cute images of cats with funny captions (like the one above) on the internet, chances are you’ve seen Ben’s work. Ben Huh has almost singlehandedly taken fragments of online culture and organized them into digital cash cows. Owning popular sites like icanhascheezburger and FAILBlog, Ben is able to forecast the types of online humor that people respond to. Following what The Cheezburger Network is up to gives online marketers the edge when deciding what types of content will be popular on their own sites and what will inevitably “#FAIL”.
Reason to watch: Capable of making just about anything with traffic profitable.
Google Webmaster Central Blog
If I had made this list last year this blog would have made the cut then as well. The Google Webmaster Central Blog is by far the best place for beginners to start leading about making websites “search engine friendly”. This blog is also where Google officially announces any news or changes that they might make to their core search service, which quite frankly, happens very frequently. Also, you might want to check out the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel for instructional videos as well.
Reason to watch: Most reliable SEO information for beginners.
SEOMOZ
CEO (and SEO) Rand Fishkin has been doing an excellent job at providing search marketers some of the best advice and tools on Search Engine Optimization. The blog at SEOMOZ features some of the most solid advice around and also features a wide selection of articles written by guest writers. Look to Rand in 2010 as we learn how to leverage the latest changes in real-time search and how to manipulate from them.
Reason to watch: Best SEO blog.
The Oatmeal (aka Matthew Inman)
This SEOMOZ veteran has basically taught us a masters class on what it means to create viral media in the last couple months. The comics an quizzes found on The Oatmeal have been a popular featured item on the news site Digg as well as twitter and the rest of the blogsphere. Although the content may be juvenile and ofter crude in nature with posts like “6 Reasons Bacon is Better Than True Love” you can bet that Inman will make the masses laugh out loud while wasting time at work.
Reason to watch: Linkbait Expert.
Despite all of the hype that we have been hearing over the past year or so around twitter, expect to hear more of it this year. 2009 was the year of fruition and widespread adoption of Facebook. Everyone and their grandmother is on Facebook now (mine is and she’s 71). Expect to see the same thing happen for twitter this year. What does that mean for us? Expect to see more companies using it as a marketing tool. This means designing and setting up accounts, initiating and monitoring communications, reputation management, content creation and delivery, and much more. Anything that is of any importance or interest appears on twitter before anywhere else. It is a better form of consumer communication than just about anything else currently.
Reason to watch: It’s “the nervous system” of the internet.
So these are 5 of my major rescources to watch and utilize in the next year. If you are interested in what didn’t make the list or how to utilize these resources, feel free to follow me on twitter or contact us by email.
Hi. I just noticed that your site looks like it has a few code errors at the very top of your website’s page. I’m not sure if everybody is getting this same bugginess when browsing your blog? I am employing a totally different browser than most people, referred to as Opera, so that is what might be causing it? I just wanted to make sure you know. Thanks for posting some great postings and I’ll try to return back with a completely different browser to check things out!
Being totally new to the online marketing and SEO game I am both overwhelmed and excited to learn. Thanks for the list of resources and I will make sure to check back on your blog often.