Digital-News on Scoop.it today

Marketing in this decade not only needs but REQUIRES the ability to think outside of the box!  Look at some of the trends appearing in a marketing campaign near you  in the next year!

Web and Graphic Design Trends 2014 – Infographic via istock (Midyear Check)

Interactive infographic:
http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=1619#.Uq1MuI0hZjF

Great Infographic and I bet at least half right :). M

Another great Scoop David!  I will take the test later and report my results  :)

Right Marty...great infographic! Thanks for the scoop!

Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at the Altimeter Group, has published a valuable presentation outlining the key traits characterizing sustainable business models in the near future.

The key takeaways include: 

1. The market sees purposeful brands that stand for something specific
    
2. Local and personalized wins always over global
    
3. Crowds are becoming like companies - bypassing 
   inefficient intermediaries
    
4. On-demand wins always over standardized offerings
    
5. Business models may need to be changed along the way 
    
6. Partnering with your customers is the key to the future 

Excellent trends analysis. Owyang is right on target with his future of business models identikit. 

Check the full presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/the-future-of-business-models 

(HT to Giuseppe Mauriello)

The new type of enterprise

Great find by Robin Good and timely as we just had a session with Rita McGrath (author of the End of Competitive Advantage) emphasizing the impact of disruption and the need for a different mindset around resilience. This preso by Jeremiah Owyang gives some great tips for thinking about the types of shifts in business models we should be thinking about. 

Slide 13 captures these shifts well:

1. Purpose (start with why) is key

2. Glocal wins - Global reach and mindset delivered locally (relationships)

3. Personalize everything possible

4. On-demand 

5. People make and share - collaboration and co-creation with your customers

6. Empowered people

This is important for CPAs to understand as they advise and support their businesses (clients and employers). Business models are no longer stagnant or as Rita would say, sustainable over a long-term. Thus we need to be constantly re-examiming our competitive advantages.

The Future of Social Media and Online Influence...

Four trends that will definitely be there in 2019.

The great title of this scoop says it all. Everyone is creating content marketing but no one is sure how the top of the conversion funnel, those things we do like blogging and social media that drive traffic, and the bottom of the funnel, the magic land of conversions and ROI live, are connected.

There are several problems trying to connect traffic generation to ROI and conversion including:

* Attribution.
* Lack of accurate tools.
* TIME.
* Lack of predictive analytics.

Attribution, knowing where converting traffic came from, can be a bear. Conversion funnels can be peppered with visits; content and referring URLs What was the magic combination that actually created the conversion? Sophisticated analytics model attribution and assign some weighted value, but this is riff with bias and accurate enough (generally) to calm the riot. Some modeled attribution still beats NONE since no modeled attribution can lead to cutting off your websites proverbial nose to spite its face.

Time is part of the attribution problem. Some content lasts for a day and that are all its ever going to do. Other "evergreen" content can last for a year sending converting traffic all along. How do you know when you have short or long term content? By how it behaves and that is defining a bard door after horses are already out.

There is a missing algorithm in all of this. The magic QUANT math that can accurately connect funnel tops to bottoms. The problem is that QUANT math better be flexible and have some Artificial Intelligence-like flexibility or it isn't of much use since the web is a constantly changing sea of data, attribution and time.

We will master these complex FACTORS and find a way to better connect our funnel tops and bottoms someday soon. In the meantime bailing wire and chewing gum ROI systems will continue to rule our content marketing investments.

Working on http://www.curecancerstarter.org has been a lesson in web 3.0. Not QUITE here yet but BIG hints of What's Next include:

* The Cloud changes what and how we store.
* When you change what we store you change information architecture.
* You can see the beginning of "appification" of everything (smaller amounts of code executed faster and then updated frequently).
* Websites are becoming contingent on two THEMS (visitors and users of the Content Management System backend).

This last bullet is where the real design revolution lives. Once we design "what if, then..." contingent frameworks based on the needs of visitors (fully modeled based on personas and segments) and those using the CMS we've built we are DESIGNING less and THINKING more.

Each time we've placed limits on how our CMS will be used we've seen the need for LESS structure and more freedom. The logic of WHAT IT, THEN.... dictates a different approach to "designing a website".

This new approach will be less DESIGN and more flexibility, frameworks and user controlled functionality. Web designers, and this is not a new idea from me LOL, are becoming more like video game designers creating environments and contingent presentations.

So prepare to DESIGN less and LISTEN more as you use the new tools of web 3.0 to think in terms of contingencies and environments.