Thursday, February 18, 2010

2010 - the year of video & online PR

As we all know predictions are a dangerous game. Particularly when it comes to social media.

Last year and my colleagues and I listened to people who know better than us, we heard some interesting things.

This included:

1. The mobile device is set to soar thanks to iPhone
2. Video popularity and accessibility would follow as bandwidth and download speeds improved (particularly on mobile phones)
3. Social media and content marketing really do matter in financial services - both retail and institutional.

And here we are, barely into 2010 (January often doesn't count in Australia), yet flooded with requests for help with, guess what? Video. Online PR strategy and campaigns. Content. And a serve of social media monitoring on the side please.

The parts of financial services looking at social media is interesting - and completely diverse. We expected large consumer brands to lead whereas we've now seen everyone from industry institutional asset managers to retail direct players take up online PR or more social-media-friendly forms of online communication and engagement .

When my favourite monolithic bank added an iPhone app to their existing mobile banking platform on the holidays I was a little surprised and delighted. Yes, the functionality is rubbish but it does look good. I'm sure version 1.1 is just around the corner.

Apparently the predictions were right. Of course it's early days so it will be interesting to see if the increased investment in interactive communication and online PR holds until the next holiday season.

We suspect it will.