TREND #1

Wearables & Socialnomics

Simply defined, socialnomics is the empowerment of the consumer through mobile and social. It’s word of mouth on digital steroids. Wearables will help take this to a whole new level.

MAKE THE CONNECTION: Advances in wearable tech, combined with decreasing costs of video storage, indicate that soon everything will be recorded. The point? Always think twice before pressing the “send” button.

Remember: Privacy is dead; and, for some, reputations are dying. Both companies and individuals need to make sure their digital stamp (profile/items/posts) projects the exact image they are trying to convey.

TREND #2

Transparency Is Here

The world is increasingly transparent. Take McDonald’s, for example. Its secret sauce is no longer a secret since McDonald’s of Canada produced a video of executive chef Dan Coudreaut showing how to make it at home.

MAKE THE CONNECTION: It’s estimated that by 2017, more than 60% of the content we consume on our mobile devices will be video. And in today’s world, your digital reputation is your reputation.

Google your business’ name. Be sure to also click on the images and video tabs to see any media that has been posted of you. If you find unflattering content, submit a request to Google for its removal from search results: google.com/webmaster/tools/removals.

You need to train your teammates and employees as well. If you haven’t, and something negative occurs, then, as the old adage goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

TREND #3

KISS…Keep It Simple

Steve Jobs was proud of the things he and Apple decided NOT to do. He knew that if you try to stand for everything, then you stand for nothing.

MAKE THE CONNECTION: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg discovered that “…the trick isn’t adding stuff, it’s taking away.” The same applies when it comes to multitasking. A British Institute of Psychiatry study recently revealed that reading digital messages while performing another creative task, for example, decreases your IQ in the moment by 10 points. This is the same as not sleeping for 36 hours.

Eliminating multitasking puts you on a path to simplification and success. As Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great” puts it: “If you have more than three priorities, then you don’t have any.”

TREND #4

Make or Break

Marketers used to conjure up 30-second commercials that were so entertaining they would be discussed around the water cooler. Those conversations are now happening online in real time.

MAKE THE CONNECTION: Today’s winners are not the result of Madison Avenue, blue-blood politics, or monopolistic distributors. As a result of the ease and speed with which information can be distributed through technology, the winners today are great products and services. Consumers want to have a relationship with businesses. That takes honesty, transparency, listening, and reacting. Because not every company can do these well, the ones that do will win decisively. Put another way, the overall achievement of companies going forward will be largely dependent on their social media success.