6 digital trends to watch

My colleague Steve Rubel and I wear many hats at Edelman. One of those hats is keeping an eye on the trends unfolding in real time and deriving meaning from them as they pertain to organizations and brands. Attached to this post is a slideshow where we identify what these trends are and at a high level how your organization needs to plan accordingly for them. They are:

1.Marketing in the age of streams
Your customers, consumers and employees are no longer only visiting static Web pages but participating in conversations which increasingly occur off domain in “streams” flowing from Facebook, Twitter and even apps. In order to catch them, you must be highly relevant in their streams.


2.The Googleization of media
Quality Content and potent social connections in addition to traditional keywords are influencing how visible you are to the search engines. Everyone is media.


3.The data decade
Data is increasingly becoming available to anyone and everyone. From it we can derive insights into behaviors. We must become “data junkies” to fully harness this trend.


4.Business becomes social
Moving from designated spokesperson to employee engagement at scale—business itself is beginning to look more social as organizations start to engage all stakeholders in open and mutually beneficial ways.


5.Location, location, location
Where you are is becoming the new what are you doing as multiple platforms begin to adopt the new geolocation status update generating new kinds of data.


6.Private becomes public
Despite privacy concerns, applications and behaviors which support social sharing are still going strong as what is considered private becomes re-defined as we continue engaging in networks.

We believe these trends are not future gazing but what’s happening at this very moment and that they will cause organizations to adapt to change, adopt new practices and innovate accordingly. For more industry insights, ideas and perspectives you can visit our newly created “branded channel” on Slideshare.