Now this is super super smart.
Now this is super super smart.
Author: Michael Litman
Categories
Facebook vs. The United States
Great stuff here. Worth your time.
via chrisrutz.de
What Social Media Will Look Like in 2012
11 Predictions That Will Affect Marketers and the Way They Do Business
It’s easy to get caught up in today’s trends or even focus on the next six months. Some of 2009’s biggest trends included an increased emphasis on real-time search and information distribution, while distribution of marketing content in widgets and other pieces of portable content that worked across devices and social spaces also saw its stake rise. Plus, there were great improvements in social-media monitoring and analytics. And most notably, marketers finally acknowledged that social media was more than just a fad, with almost complete adoption by all major marketers.
Here are the top 11 predictions for what social media will look like in 2012 (based on a full presentation which is available on my blog). Some of these items exist today in their early stages, but this list is about what I believe will become the norm in 2012. Ultimately, share of voice, point of view and community influence will be more important than brand ownership — and marketers will need to get over it if they want to stay relevant in 2012.
1. Privacy expectations will (have to) change
There will be a cultural shift, whereby people will begin to find it increasingly more acceptable to expose more and more of their personal details on different forms of social media. Sharing your likes, dislikes, opinions, photos, videos and other forms of personal information will be the norm and people will become more accepting of personalized experiences, both corporate and personal, that are reacting to this dearth of personal information.2. Complete decentralization of social networks
The concept of a friend network will be a portable experience. You’ll find most digital experiences will be able to leverage the power of your social networks in a way that leverages your readily available personal information and the relationships you’ve established. We’re already seeing the beginnings of this with Facebook Connect and Google’s FriendConnect.3. Our interaction with search engines will be different
Real-time information in Google search, e.g. from Twitter, blog results and user reviews, will be more prominent. Google’s Social Search will change the way we interact with search engines by pushing relevant content from our personal networks to the front of search results, making them more personalized. The importance of digital-influencer marketing will increase significantly.4. Rise of the content aggregators
The amount of content online is growing at an exponential rate, and most online users have at least three online profiles from social networks to micro-blogging to social news sites. Our ability to manage this influx is challenging, and content aggregators will be the new demi-gods, bringing method to madness (and make a killing). Filtering and managing content will be big business for those who can get it right and provide easy-to-use services.5. Social media augmented reality
Openly accessible information from the social-media space will be used to enhance everyday experiences. For example: the contacts book in your phone links to Facebook and Twitter to show real-time updates on what the contact is doing before you put in the call, real-time reviews from friends and associates will appear in GPS-based mapping services as a standard feature, and socially enabled CRM will change the way companies manage business relationships forever.6. Influencer marketing will be redefined
As social media continues to permeate more and more aspects of not only the way we interact with digital media but also other channels such as digital outdoor, commerce or online TV, we will see the significance of influencer marketing grow dramatically. As a basic example, the inclusion of Twitter in Google search results or Google’s soon-to-be-released Social Search will permeate search results with content that will not be managed by Google’s infamous PageRank but by social influence and relevance to your social network. Discovering people that can help you to reach your desired consumer will become exponentially more effective and important.7. Ratings everywhere
In today’s world, having a commerce site that doesn’t have user ratings could actually prove to be a detriment to sales. In the near future, brands and businesses will more frequently place user ratings and accept open feedback on their actual websites. User ratings will become so common that marketers should expect to find them woven into most digital experiences.8. Social media agents
Managing the customer experience offline and online is already a key concern for marketers and customer-experience advocates. As businesses continue to support customers by monitoring and engaging in the social media space, tools to optimize this experience will become more important. Expect to see a certain percentage of responses handled by natural language engines that can respond to basic commentary such as “my service is down” or “I never received my package.”9. Riding the (Google) wave
It’s still early days as Google Wave is still primarily limited to developers but it has the potential to revolutionize collaboration and engagement. Wave offers marketers a unique way, at minimal cost, to allow consumers to engage with each other in way that is miles beyond anything we’re currently using. Savvy marketers will develop extensions for Wave that evolve its unique communication toolset into a rich brand experience that is immersive but allows for new levels of interaction from crowdsourced storytelling to crowdsourced product design.10. Thinking beyond “nowness”
In 2009 we became very focused on the real-time nature of social media. The implications behind consumer feedback and interaction around brands using tools like Twitter or Facebook’s news stream caused marketers to re-evaluate the power of social media tools in parallel to “traditional” digital-media channels such as search. Looking into the future we’ll need to try and evaluate what’s next and the likely answer is based on the next evolution of the web as we know it: the semantic web. In a semantic web world, search engines, for example, will anticipate the best search results we’re looking for based on what they know about us (such as all our public social networking profiles). There will be an opportunity for marketers who push the limits of their imagination to anticipate what marketing will look like in this next stage of the web and creating new and compelling experiences that we’re only touching the surface of now.11. Social media everything and the return of digital media
Social functions will become so commonplace in digital experiences that the thought of not having socially-enhanced experiences will seem illogical. Digital media by its very nature is inherently social. I hope we’re not talking about social media in 2012, and we just refer to everything as digital media again.via adage.com
Categories
The iPad: Apple’s Next Gold Rush
Categories
The Amazing World of Coca-Cola
Silos beget compliance. Silos are getting in our way and so is compliance. Things are changing but it’s changing slower than many of us would like. In the meantime we’re left with porous organizations with the semblance of vertical structures (and the illusion of control).
Consciously or subconsciously we do not like to give up power. As the fabric of business gets reworked, leaders are having to give up control to retain the ability to lead. This is causing friction from the top and the bottom. Both those at the top and the all important in-the-trenches-leader need to develop two skills that once were seen as weaknesses.
- The ability to take criticism
- The ability to admit you’re wrong
Taking Criticism
Think about our current leaders; political, corporate or any leader in a traditional command and control structure. How well does upper management take criticism from lower levels of the business or from the outside? Not well at all. In fact most leaders block out anything but immediate feedback from peers, those even higher and maybe if they’re a good manager those directly beneath them.
This is a fatal flaw. The best feedback often comes from those furthest away from you. Not to discredit the feedback from those around you but they’re often blind to the same things you are.
Even the trolls and the haters have a kernel of truth to their criticism. It doesn’t mean you should change your leadership style or your strategy just because someone #FAIL’s you on Twitter but it’s a data point to be considered. If enough #FAIL’s start racking up then you may want to do some navel gazing.
Being Wrong
In this agile world we live in now, knowing when you’re wrong is incredibly important. It can mean the difference from professional life or death. Often we make a decision, and it’s the right decision at the right time, but times change and the ability to abandon sunk costs and move on is tough and shouldn’t be taken lightly but shouldn’t be the reason not change course. It’s a tough balance and I highly recommend Seth Godin’s The Dip: When to Quit (and When to Stick)
for a quick read on how to assess the right way and time to move on.Part of admitting to being wrong is the all challenging apology. If social media has taught me anything it’s that “I’m sorry” is incredibly powerful and we should be using it much more. Over the last five years I’ve been bordering on abusing it but not using it sucks. Two simple (heartfelt) words can often rebuild bridges once burned in the heat of the moment.
There are of course many more skills that you’ll need to acquire along the journey of leadership but without these two I don’t think you’ll ever get there.
What are your tips for not just developing these skills for yourself but helping upper management develop these skills?
Be sure to sign up for the New Comm Biz Social Newsletter to receive a little bit of interactive magic in your mail each month.
via newcommbiz.com
Put in your @name on Twitter and see what it does. Very nicely done.
Categories
How To Let Out the Creative Beast
via calebgardner.com
Categories
The New YouTube Dissected
via mashable.com
The reviews are pouring in for Apple’s much anticipated iPad and we’ve got you covered. Below is a mega-list of reviews of Apple’s iPad. Or, you could use this handy flowchart to decide if you should buy one.
- Alltop Top iPad News
- ABC News Sneak Peek at the iPad
- Boing Boing Apple’s iPad Is a Touch of Genius by Xeni Jardin
- BusinessWeek Apple’s Bet on IPad Requires Buyers to Take “Leap of Faith”
- Chicago Sun-Times Review: iPad Is Pure Innovation—One of Best Computers Ever by Andy Ihnatko
- The Christian Science Monitor If you’re a book reader, should you buy an iPad? by Marjorie Kehe
- Electronista First iPad Reviews Come In: a “Winner”
- Guardian iPad Reviews: the First Verdicts Come In
- Houston Chronicle Dr. Mac: Apple’s iPad is Better Than Expected by Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus
- Huffington Post iPad Reviews: Raves for Apple’s Latest Product
- Macrumors iPad Unboxing and Very Nice Hands On Video Review by Arnold Kim
- Mashable First iPad Hands-On and Reviews Start Rolling by Barb Dybwad
- PCMag.com Apple iPad
- PCWorld iPad Reviews: 5 Things We’ve Learned by Jared Newman
- The Register iPad Includes Hyberbole Generator by Bill Ray
- The Root The Techies Are Wrong about the iPad by Omar Wasow
- The New York Times Review: Looking at the iPad From 2 Angles by David Pogue
- The Wall Street Journal Apple iPad Review: Laptop Killer? Pretty Close by Walter S. Mossberg
- Time The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again? by Stephen Fry
- USAToday Verdict is in on Apple iPad: It’s a Winner by Edward C. Baig
- Wired Why We Are Obsessed With the iPad by Dylan F. Tweney
- ZDNet News to Know: iPad Reviews
via flowtown.com