Independent Thinking » Amazon

7 Digital Trends to Watch in 2012

Daria Steigman — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:01:14 +0000

From l-r: Steve Radick, Dan Horowitz, Daria Steigman, and Rick Dunham

Integration, mobile, and consolidation were all topics under discussion at the January 12 IABC/Washington panel on trends in digital communications.

Here are my top seven takeaways:

1. Silos will start to fall. According to Steve Radick of Booz Allen Hamilton’s Digital Strategy and Social Media Practice, government agencies will better integrate their social media initiatives. He noted, in particular, that people are starting to understand the disconnects that happen when customer service is not integrated.

2. Government social media will be in “wait and see” mode. Radick said not to expect a lot of big Government 2.0 initiatives. He suggested that most agencies will be in waiting mode during this election year.

3. Companies will start to clean up their act. Dan Horowitz of Fleishman-Hillard’s Digital Group and Social Media Practice pointed to a new Altimeter report that found that large companies have an average of 178 corporate-owned social media accounts. In 2012, he said, they will consolidate and coordinate better–which involves, of course, aggregating efforts via smart tools (e.g., Buddy Press).

4. Social media reaches maturation. Horowitz pointed to Forrester’s just-released research on social media adoption that found that 86 percent of adults who use the Internet use social media.

5. The press release is dead. Okay, Rick Dunham, Washington Bureau Chief of the Houston Chronicle and chief author of the Texas on the Potomac blog, didn’t really say this. But he did say that he’s relying more and more on Twitter search and other social media to discover trending stories and breaking news–and to get ideas for news stories–and not so much on press releases.

Plus two trends from my remarks:

6. Mobile has arrived. eMarketer estimates that there will be 113.9 million mobile Internet users in 2012–an increase of 17.1 percent from 2011. This includes 72.8 million mobile shoppers and 37.5 million mobile buyers. This means that every business–large and small–needs to have a mobile strategy.

7. “Find-ability” will be more important than ever. With Google rolling out “Search Plus Your World,” having a solid content marketing strategy (and quality content) will be more important than ever. Businesses that are still relying on static, corporate-brochure-type Web sites will be left in the dust.

Bonus Trend: Platforms. I just read Phil Simon’s The Age of the Platform (review coming soon), and I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and think through how small businesses will be able to take advantage of what he calls “extremely valuable and powerful ecosystems” (think Amazon or Apple) that allow you to scale, morph, and bring in partners, users, vendors, and so forth. While the business concept may not be new, technology has made doing this very different. I think Simon’s on to something. This is one emerging trend to watch.

Agree with these trends? Disagree? Think something’s being over-hyped? Please weigh in below.

Photo courtesy of Capitol Communicator.

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Why Tablets Are the Next Big Thing

Daria Steigman — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:04:39 +0000

Amazon just unveiled the Kindle Fire, a lower-priced entry into the tablet market that seems to be more e-reader than productivity tool. Add that to the Vizio tablet, which sports a more conventional Android interface, and tablet wars may be coming to a superstore near you.

Of course, it didn’t take Amazon to tell me that tablets are the next big thing.

Here are two stories, one business and one consumer, that illustrate this.

Exhibit 1: Potbelly rocks the lunch line.

In my experience, sandwich shops with long lines at lunch time are doing something right. By that measure, the Potbelly on 3rd Street, SW, is a pretty special place.

At the store near my home, you wait in line, order at the counter, and then wait again for your sandwich to come out of the heater before picking out your toppings.

Not the 3rd Street store.

This store has equipped an employee with a tablet, and he places orders about 10-15 customers back in the line. This means your sandwich is ready to customize when you reach the counter. It’s efficient, and it creates a more-seamless process. I’d go back there anytime.

Of course, the live music helps too.

Exhibit 2: My mom wants an iPad.

I’m going to push for a Galaxy Tab instead. But I digress…

Before my parents went off on a road trip last month, I started getting lots of questions about data rates and where she might be able to read her e-mail while out of town.

Then they stayed with friends who had a summer home equipped with wifi–and an iPad. And my mom not only checked her e-mail daily but also caught up on the news without being tethered to one place.

My mom is online regularly. She has a digital subscription to the New York Times, leaves comments on news sites and the occasional blog, watches videos on YouTube, skype[s] with her grandson, and even dipped one toe into Twitter. And she and my dad watched a recent presidential candidates’ debate online. But that’s all on a desktop computer.

Until now, she’s been comfortable with the Web as a destination. Now she wants the Web where she is.

Mobile matters, and I think tablets are going to be game changers. But what say you?

Photo by isawnyu (Flickr).

Is Your Business Disruptive?

Daria Steigman — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:24:30 +0000

Chevy Chase Bank (now owned by Capital One) appears to have discovered free business banking. I know; I used to be their customer. In fact, I had one or more accounts with the bank for over 20 years.

While there are lots of reasons I left that bank, there’s exactly one reason I landed at PNC Bank a few years ago. They offered free banking to small businesses. They treated me as though my business is important to them. Bank staff learned my name, welcomed me in, and otherwise provided amazing customer service. Can you guess what happened next? (Yup, I moved all my accounts.)

It doesn’t take an industry changer (i.e., Apple and music distribution or Amazon and book publishing) to be disruptive. You just need to tilt the market in your direction.

What can your business do to be disruptive?

Photo by Christina (Flickr).

What Twitter Tells Us about Innovation in America

Daria Steigman — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:53:38 +0000

TIME Magazine has a terrific article about how Twitter is changing us. It’s well-written, and author Steven Johnson looks at Twitter not just as a fad tool for celebrities, but also as a platform that is changing how we are interconnected. A sample:

But watch a live mass-media event with Twitter open on your laptop and you’ll see that the futurists had it wrong. We still have national events, but now when we have them, we’re actually having a genuine, public conversation with a group that extends far beyond our nuclear family and our next-door neighbors.

What’s most interesting to me, however, is how Johnson cites Twitter, TiVo, Wikipedia, America Online, Amazon, and a few other companies and products to make a point about American innovation:

We didn’t build the Prius or the Wii, but if you measure global innovation in terms of actual lifestyle-changing hit products … the U.S. has been lapping the field for the past 20 years.

Johnson then goes on to talk about the difference between building the mousetrap and perfecting it. It’s thought-provoking stuff.

Susan Lucci, Susan Faludi, and SEO

Daria Steigman — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:43:13 +0000

What do a feminist author and a soap opera star have in common?

You can do a lot of free association when you’re on cold meds. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about something related to advertising. That got me thinking about a book I once read for a class by a feminist author who premised, in part, that women’s choices were unduly influenced by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. So women who “nested” were doing so because they watched 30 Something, and if we wore sexy lingerie it was because we’d seen a Christian Lacroix or Calvin Klein ad. Yeah, right. I eventually threw the book across the room and never got to the end.

Apropos of that conversation the other day, I wondered: whatever happened to Susan Faludi? So I did a Google search. But I spelled her name wrong and Google asked: Do you mean Susan Lucci? I still got that when I added in the book title. Eventually I went to Amazon, plugged in the book title, and figured it out.

I know very little about search engine optimization, which is why I try to learn from Lee Odden, Matt McGee, and other SEO pros. But I know that if your name can be mistaken for any variation of a soap opera star, you’ve got work to do on your online rankings. (Meanwhile, the irony that a feminist who posited a backlash against women was mistaken for a soap opera star wasn’t lost on me.)

How’s your online ranking? Have you ever been mistaken online for someone else? If so, what did you do to correct your online profile?