2009 was a big big big year for Social Networking sites being leveraged for businesses. So I think that 2009 can be named the year that wasn't any good in any other except for the popularity of social media marketing.

We learned in 2009 that:

Gaining visibility through Tweeting and Facebook is actually fun. It’s also the most cost-effective way of enhancing brand image and keeping in touch with prospects and customers. You may find that most of your downstream constituents would be suitably impressed when you demonstrated you ability to post quality messages and build a good follower or fan base.

Social network messaging is far reaching and seems to carry more influence. People are happy to retweet, share, and generally recommend friends and followers to you. Social relationships go well beyond the one to one connections formed on networking sites. By sharing similar interests and experiences different unconnected users interact and form a community that results in local or traveling tweet-ups and or offline meetings that continue to grow beyond the online relationship.
 
Re-tweeting on twitter helps amplifying messages about your brand. In 2009 Harvard Business Research has found that 90% of tweets were done by 10% of twitter users! So if you want to be an influencer, re-tweeting  messages will help you extend your reach to more users.

Research has also shown that social ads are particularly useful for increasing buying intent, on-line ad awareness, and favor-ability. All of these activities must now be measured and weighed along with traditional marketing metrics and must be on the marketer’s dashboard in 2010.

So 2009 was bad in pretty much every other way except for the the growing popularity of social networks. Small businesses extend reach and helped large businesses touch and feel their constituents or rather I should vice versa; the constituents were able to touch and feel big corporate types which would have been unheard of before Twitter and Facebook.

Let's see what 2010 has in store for all of us. Here's to more tweeting and more facebook fan promotion!