How Accurate Were My 2011 Business Predictions?
As I gear up to publish my 2012 business predictions, I thought I’d do a quick look-back on my 2011 predictions. How accurate were they anyway?
Here’s what I predicted for the year 2011:
- Cloud Computing Goes Mainstream
- Optimizing for Social Media (Rather than Search Engines)
- Increased Focus on Reputation Management
- More Video, More Mobile Advertising
- Affiliates Will Get Smarter & Demand Accountability
First, I predicted that cloud computing would go mainstream. Based on what I’ve seen, I think this prediction was fairly accurate, although somewhat premature. The trend seems to be growing at a steady pace, but I’ve seen nothing that indicates widespread adoption or that we’ve crossed a tipping point.
Personally, I’m continuing to make my business as cloud-based as possible. I now use Google Docs extensively, back up my iPhone to iCloud, and use SugarSync for backing up my computers to a central cloud-based location.
My prediction about optimizing sites for social media was especially prescient. Google+ was introduced in June 2011. G+ data is now a major factor in search engine rankings, which are more fluid than they’ve ever been before.
Gone are the days of static rankings where everybody is served up similar results. What I see and what you see may be very different for the same search term.
Not only that, I hardly visit a site that doesn’t have Facebook “Like” and Twitter “Tweet” buttons automatically included on every page.
My third and fourth predictions — increased focus on reputation management; more video and more mobile advertising — seem to be mostly accurate, but hard to measure in any meaningful way. In the absence of hard data, I offer up an interesting anecdote…
On the reputation management front, a blogger named Crystal Cox was found guilty of defamation and fined $2.5 million in damages in November 2011. At first, everyone was livid about how this was a violation of freedom of speech, etc. But dig deeper and the judgment doesn’t seem so harsh.
Turns out one of Crystal Cox’s three self-given titles is “Search Engine Reputation Manager.” But get this…
She first put up multiple web sites designed to damage the reputation of one Kevin Padrick and his company Obsidian Finance Group. Once she had ranked her sites all over the first page of Google — and Padrick’s reputation had been sufficiently damaged — she then offered Padrick and his company her SEO reputation management for “only” $2,500 a month.
Can you say “extortion?”
Anyway, that’s one of the year’s biggest reputation management stories. You can read all about Crystal Cox’s shenanigans on Salty Droid if you’re so inclined.
My fifth and final prediction of the year 2011 was that affiliates would wise up and demand accountability from affiliate programs. This has not happened in spite of my efforts to publicize the issues.
Still, I continue to get emails from individuals who were not paid their commissions. And I’ve read many similar stories that are posted in public places online. While affiliates may not be catching on as quickly as I’d predicted, I plan to keep writing about these issues as they come up.
So there you have it.
Four of the predictions seem to have been accurate or mostly accurate. And one seems to have missed the mark. I’m going to try to go five for five in 2012. ;-)
-Ryan M. Healy
