You can’t move for predictions at this time of year as the calendar dictates that we take stock and revaluate. In the PR industry we’ve long since moved to evaluating the industry on monthly cycles.

I revisited my predictions for 2009 this morning. Check it out for yourself. It stands up to scrutiny but then as Broadstuff’s Alan Patrick said last week paradigm shifts are for people too stupid to spot trends (attributed to an old hack via Redmonk’s James Governor).

2010 will see more of the same: plain old hard work and graft. As Steve Earl is fond of saying, “there’s a war on stupid.” I’m fairly sure it’s not original but he carries it off well.

Wiser bloggers than me have beaten me to the detail of predictions for the coming 12-months. Here are some predictions that I think are spot on.

Demise of the social media expert
If you want to be in communications and stay in communications you need to practise and understand social media. It can no longer be a niche expertise. Craig McGill got there first on Content Managed. He said “Hopefully, 2010 sees the death of “if they say they are a social media expert then they aren’t an expert […].” WagEd’s Jon Silk has blogged on a similar theme (see point 5).

UK political parties fail to embrace social media
Paul Armstrong says that we should expect to be disappointed if we’re expecting social media to take a significant role in the UK election. No party has a clear strategy. Paul says, “The signs are there – bad websites, minimal social media presence and old-school monologue and press pictures = goodbye connected voters.  Disappointing.  Neither party has more than 20k fans.  Missed opportunity is putting it mildly.”

Measurement
Next Fifteen boss Tim Dyson foresees closure on the connection between PR investment and PR outcomes. In any other are of marketing these are guaranteed. Not yet for PR. “PR that directly links to product sales will do well in any economy.  The trick is making the connection. […] What is still surprising to me is how rarely PR people do some simple analysis that shows the results they generated on a graph that connects to sales a company has made,” says Dyson.

Economy
My concern is growth and when it’s going to return to the economy. Public spending versus GDP is currently running at 45 per cent according to UK Public Spending. Imagine if that is cut back by 10 to 20 per cent by the new Government before growth returns to the economy. That’s a hit on GDP of anywhere between 4 to 10 per cent.

There’s the deep U shaped recession that Sir Martin Sorrell predicts for Europe. Or even a W. Figures for the level of government spending on PR and communications are hard to come by but such cuts would inevitably have a significant impact on the industry.

Stephen Davis is more optimistic. He believes that 2010 will see private companies make investments and begin to take on new staff but that the public sector (in Britain at least) will be face cuts.

As I say in the PR industry we’ve been managing businesses on monthly cycles for some time and that isn’t going to change anytime soon.