A little over two years ago when I was starting my blog I came up with the idea of calling it “microexplosion” it was all based on the idea that all the new media tools are simply spark creators and that if the goal of marketing/PR/advertising is to create ideas that catch fire, then leveraging the new spark creators would be worth looking into. The funny thing about a spark, is that it doesn’t seem like a big deal all by itself. After all, a spark vanishes in an instant. You don’t even feel it if it touches your skin…but given the enough time and the right circumstances a spark can turn into a blazing fire.

Traditional marketers don’t have time for sparks. They want something that goes boom. It needs to be big and it needs to be loud. They want everyone to know when it ignites. Their entire professional worth is based on the bigness and the loudness of the boom. They get paid to make big booms.

Social media marketers don’t need a big boom. They have all these little spark starters. They can go over here and create a spark and then go over there and create a spark and then discover another area and create a spark and in the end they step back and see some of those sparks turn into tiny flames. Those flames can turn into small fires and those fires grow and can go on blazing for a long time.

Think of it like this…explosion fires are quickly put out, but fires that start with sparks aren’t. Explosion fires are quickly discovered and dealt with but spark fires go unnoticed at first but when they are noticed they’re already spreading rapidly. That’s why forest fires are such a big deal. They can take weeks to put out.

If you’re marketing with explosions you have to keep making it bigger and louder just to make sure someone notices your explosion among all the other explosion marketers. If you’re marketing with sparks, you just have to find the right scenario for your spark to ignite.

I think the business of website development is going through a major shift. With the power of current blog platforms and the ease with which they can be used as a valid alternative to traditional websites, I believe small web shops are going to have to adapt and/or specialize in something else or their business is dead meat.

In the good old days (about four years ago) you could build a website from the bottom up if you were talented enough or you had to pay someone to build a website for you. Fact is, many of those sites amount to little more than what we see on blogs today, but it was the only way to really get a decent, well branded web presence. There were some do it yourself type of website tools with templates you could choose from, but by and large if you were serious about being online you didn’t go that route.

That’s not the case anymore. Blog platforms can be customized beautifully these days with a fraction of the development time and cost because the entire backend of the site is already done. That’s a huge shift for the web design business because traditional shops (and I’ve worked for and with some) would have their own code set for building sites or they would start from scratch. Customers got charged like crazy for sites that would really be no big deal in this day and age. The worst part is not everyone knows this and some web shops are still selling their services like always.

All I’m saying here is that it’s no longer necessary to look only to a web design firm to build your web presence. My friend Cory Miller began a venture a while back to start building on Wordpress and selling the designs so he can deliver an entire web presence on a platform he didn’t have to build. You can check it out at iThemes.com and you’ll see the designs are really sharp. Nathan Moore and the Anthology Creative crew did my blog on Wordpress and I love it. It’s clean, simple, gives me everything I could want, and it’s a full website that covers everything I need.

This web development shift is great for customers. They are generally better looking sites that are easy to manage and much cheaper than what some companies charge.

If this feels a little too doom and gloom for the web designers then you’re not seeing the opportunities. I actually think the future is bright in the web design/development world if they adapt to the changes or become specialized. Here are three areas that seem wide open for growth:

• Blog Design Specialists: Blogs have emerged as a great platform for a web presence that meets the needs of what many people want when they think about getting a website. The web designers who are focused on providing a great web presence with a focus on ease of use, function, and beauty will do well. Their counterparts building sites the old way, however, will still be charging clients to use some bulky, proprietary stuff their company is married to.
• The Flash/Controlled Media Specialists: Some people want to control the entire online experience for users and Flash or some other controlled online media like that is always going to be a preference for those people. Blogs won’t cut it in that regard and the specialists who can do this well will likely be in demand for a long time.
• The Big, Bad, Complex Website Specialist: There are some websites that are just too big and bad to warrant being built on a blog platform. You’re not going to see Amazon.com or anything like that switching over to a blog so there will always be a need for the large and highly complex site specialists.

I should note if anyone is wondering…I don’t build websites. I know enough HTML to get into trouble and  my design skills are mediocre at best. This entire perspective is based on the opportunities for consumers and my observations about how the market is changing. It’s as simple as this: the days of paying more than five or ten thousand dollars for a website are gone except in some select scenarios. In many cases you can get more than enough for what you need for under $1000. Just be aware of that next you want a website.