A couple of days ago ComScore published a Top Social Media Sites 2008 list. The list that I found on Techcrunch is an interesting read since I for one thought that Facebook and MySpace would be on top. But instead we find Blogger as the largest social media site in the world. Blogger and WordPress together actually outnumber Facebook and MySpace which means blogging is the number one social media activity in the world right now.

Blogger however is only a site while WordPress also provides an open source platform to bloggers who want to host their own blog (like me). This probably means that WordPress is up there with Blogger fighting for the number one spot.

It’s notable to see that Facebook is the one with the most positive trend. Blogs are showing a healthy growth too while Windows Live has taken a dive. Next years graph will show us if Windows Live has changed their trend with the new features launched in the end of 2008. I do however miss sites like Twitter, Digg and YouTube in the results. They’re just as much social media sites as Flickr, Scribd and Facebook.
Personal publishing remains strong and we can expect more people than ever getting involved with social media in one way or another in 2009.
 

Your advertising has to change

Reaching out to consumers however will require a more complex and advanced execution of communication than ever as people distribute their online behavior on more sites than ever. 

• Creative advertising that entertains your target group becomes more important than ever if you wanna stay ahead of your competition.
• Ideas that don’t include a social spread are only half way there.
• Understanding of technology is key.
• Brands that focus on distributing their communication rather than trying to pull traffic to their own campaign sites will be the winners.
• Making sure your content is relevant and close to brand and product is more important than ever.
• One idea - visible everywhere in every way. (i.e. don’t place video in one place, place it everywhere.)
• Make sure measurement and statistics is in place to show where to feed more money and where to cut the investments.
• Change campaign set up on a daily basis in the beginning of the campaign.
• Don’t forget the technical back end of the social sites – provide applications, widgets and code that supports your overall idea.

If you end up producing valuable content to the masses that have no relation to your products you’ll end up playing clown without getting paid.