1. *
Starting 2013 informed and focused
By Catherine Elder, December 2012
Catherine Elder 1

2. *
* Predictions are really an extended projection of current
trends
* They will never be true for everyone
* What was true in the past remains true until it’s not – there
are early adopters and there are laggards and giving a
prediction for the early adopters serves no purpose for the
laggards who know that it won’t happen for them for years
* Understanding the trends and putting them in your own
context can help you strategically plan your activities
I’m Canadian so I’ll just add a
pre-apology for some ranting…
Catherine Elder 2

3. *
* Mobile
* Social
* Gamification
* Cloud computing
* BYOD
* Big data
* SoLoMoCoDa
* I end with content, some things to consider and commentary
Catherine Elder 3

4. *
* Multi-channel, splinternet
* Multi-screen
* Context
* Responsive design
* Augmented reality & the Outernet
* Digital wallet
* Consumerization
* Privacy & security
* Apps
* Online freelancers
Catherine Elder 4

5. *
* MORE, MORE, MORE
* 163% increase in mobile internet users from 2010 to 2014
* 4.7 billion own an internet-enabled mobile device
* Tablet sales increase 12.8%;
* 41 million Americans own a tablet
* 5% of tablets purchased are secondary tablets
* Time spent on mobile internet increased 54% in the last year
* 1/3 of time spent on mobile is when the user is at home
* Apps:
* Users are spending 12.9% (smartphones) and 9.5% (tablets) time on using
apps. There are literally thousands of apps available
* tablet users tend to spend more time using apps, an average of 8.2
minutes per session compared with 4.10 minutes for smartphone users but
smartphone users may access apps more often (12.9% vs. 9.5%).
* HTML 5 use will increase but native apps will continue to increase
Sources:
Yahoo! Ipsos Reid study
Rivetlogic citing Gartner
Catherine Elder 5

6. *
* More mobile use and the increase of the tablet market share means users are going to be
using multi-channels and multi-screens even more – and they expect a consistent
experience.
* Users are using their mobile devices in front of the television and will want to interact more
using devices to connect to other devices
* Users expect that they will be able to use whatever device they are on for what they want at
that time
* Companies will turn to responsive design for a simple solution to delivering on multi-screens
but if they don’t take into account context they won’t be as successful
* 9 out of 10 consumers have accessed mobile web while in-store
* 1/3 of mobile users (and some studies have up to 68% of smart phone use) is at home
* Most mobile enabled sites aren’t providing contextual content for people on the go – think
directions, maps, locations, hours, coupons
* There is already an over use of apps – the average mobile user has 3 apps and only used them once
* Case in point – large pharmacy promoting their app and their site not mobile context friendly – you can’t find
locations and hours on it
* The increase use of smartphones as digital wallets -using near field communications (NFC) chips
for ease of scanning short distance – will increase once security has been better addressed
* Privacy and security will continue to be hot topics; look for changes in password security on
mobile (Deloitte); m-commerce and mobile wallets still need some work
* Apps will increase and companies will be challenged to create apps that continue the experience
users get on the website and mobile web and provide value; apps must be sustained and offer
targeted use or multi-use, i.e. if the user only sees potential for one use they will be abandoned
forever
Catherine Elder 6

7. *
* Mobile becomes a way of life – flex hours and remote workers
evolve to the mobile workforce
* Millennials increasingly are becoming online freelancers and
entrepreneurs and their numbers are expecting to double next
year with 25% of graduates opting to work for themselves –
according to Elance in a Mainstreet.com article
* Smart companies will encourage this as they can lower office costs
and attract talent who will pay less to commute in cost and time
Catherine Elder 7

8. *
* Responsibility for social experience
* Personalization
* Neuro-marketing
* Community
Catherine Elder 8

9. *
* Over 50% of social media users follow brands and 1/3 of those post brand related content
* Facebook
* 845 million users posting a billion times per da;
* 45 million unique video viewers per month
* Twitter
* 465 million users posting 175 million times per day
* YouTube
* 157 million unique viewers per month
* Google+
* 90 million users adding 635,000 per week
* Instagram
* growing at 10 million new users every 10 days (we’ll see if this continues after their controversy of using
photos)
* Pinterest
* 19 million users
* Foursquare
* 15 million users growing at 50% year over year
Catherine Elder 9
Source: The new content marketer – Brightcove

10. *
* MORE, MORE, MORE
* Social isn’t a fad, it’s not going away and its growing
* Privacy and security still need some work, and social sites need to
get their act together on their privacy and security policies (just
look up Instagram)
* Millennials aren’t shy about sharing everything on their social sites
and this feeds into Big Data and Neuro-marketing (getting into mind
of consumer via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging - fMRI) with
the resulting expectation being that they will get a personalized
experience that they can customize – oh and can you entertain
them (gamification) while you’re at it?
* Communities will grow and evolve
* The wealth of LinkedIn groups will streamline into niche markets
and active conversations with others dying a natural death
* The big fish will consume the little fish
Catherine Elder 10

11. *
* It wasn’t long ago that the term “edutainment” was bandied
about as the demand to make education and information
more digestible by making it entertaining
* With the advent of mobile and the ability to interact between
devices, including gaming accessories, users are expecting
the functionality and ease of use they have with their games
to be translated into all their online experiences
Catherine Elder 11

12. *
* More talk about the cloud and software as a service (SaaS)
* The impact of the mobile workforce and BYOD (bring your
own device) will play into the cloud and see a growth of SaaS
– Let’s see how the big fish respond
* IT departments are going to have to find a way to support
cloud and BYOD - this is going to take some time and create
challenges as software and versioning challenge support and
users alike
Catherine Elder 12

13. *
* With all this digital activity comes the capture and collection of
more data
* According to ZDNET:
* Big data requires tapping into silos, warehouses, and external
systems using new techniques. While some big data will be single
function, many of the more intriguing possibilities requires a lot of
cooperation across the business and with external vendors, not at
easy task.
* Once we get a handle on big data and start analyzing we’ll be able
to link it to predict economic waves, market evolution, product
trends and user behaviour.
* Once we understand what the data is telling us we can impact the
purchasing journey and create content that provides the user with a
highly personalized, localized and customized experience (if you’re
a laggard company ignore this) on every channel and device they
use when they use it.
Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/the-big-five-it-
Catherine Elder 13 trends-of-the-next-half-decade-mobile-social-cloud-
consumerization-and-big-data/1811

14. *
* This is actually a good way to summarize – techies do love
their acronyms
* Social
* Local
* Mobile
* Commerce
* Data
* Can’t say it better so:
* “Organizations need to think and plan from an omnichannel
perspective – understanding customer interaction occasions in all
touchpoints and planning for consistent experiences across all of
them…”- Mr. Nawara quoted on mobilemarketer.
Catherine Elder 14 Source:
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/strategy/14356.html

15. *
* The biggest challenge online is still content and this
challenge has just grown exponentially
* If content is king, context is queen
* Content will need to be contextual – serving the situation and
device for the optimum user experience while being of consistent
standards and maintaining the user experience across channels.
* Mobile content must have the context for a mobile user –
whether they are using their smartphone in front of the TV at
home or on-the-go
* You can’t cut and paste pieces of blog content on all your social
channels and think that it’s working
* Quality content is about being simple, relatable and easy to
understand – best example: http://youtu.be/Wgi0t2ap-us
Catherine Elder 15

16. *
*99% of every text message is read
* 90% of those are read within the first 3 minutes upon receipt
*Consumer generated content is increasing with the ease
of video creation and sharing
* A few year’s ago the say was “You don’t own your brand – Google does”; now
your brand is in the hands of everyone with “Like” and “Share” at their fingertips
*eBooks continue to grow in popularity
* even with the near saturation of the market with eReaders, and
* the ability to read on tablets that will out reach PCs in a few
short years
*The growth of visual content, including videos and
infographics is continuing, especially since tablets are a
good visual display device
Source: Sitecore
Catherine Elder 16

17. *
* Photos
* Photos of real people out-perform stock photos by 95%
* Video growth is predicted to be 5.6% to 178.7 million viewers
* mobile is up 19.8% in viewership with smartphone video views up 21.8% and an increase of
TV & movie viewing online of approx13-16%
* Video viewership is up 58% year over year in the Canadian market
* Videos (YouTube) – not only do users enjoy watching but consumer generated content on
video is increasing as it’s become more accessible to film and upload content and then
share it
* Infographics – will grow in popularity and then drop off, visual story telling is only
effective if you have a good story to tell
* Tiling graphics – this is the current design fad that will probably morph into something else
soon, please
* Pinterest – photo collections by category; Instagram – let’s see if this app survives
* QR codes
* 1.4 million Canadian smartphone subscribers scanned QR codes at least once a month with an
additional 329,000 scanning monthly
* the primary reason for scanning a QR code is for product information
Sources:
• Marketing Experiments as cited by HubSpot’s Website Must haves
• https://www.emarketer.com/go/digitalmediausage.aspx
Catherine Elder 17 • http://www.youtube.com/user/IgniteSocialMedia?v=JyKnt6BBhu8
• Forrester

18. *
* Words that are mis-used and over used:
* Collaboration: let’s face it, companies still don’t have this down, especially when talking about
intranets, social intranets, collaboration tools and social collaboration
* Knowledge management: the brain drain might not be as prevalent as a few years back when
everyone went south however with an aging workforce knowledge is still walking out the door and
not being effectively captured and shared
* Innovation: “I don’t think that means what you think it means” from The Princess Bride
* Integration: again, what does this really mean? Not having 500 user names and passwords? And
we’re right back into that privacy and security conversation…
* Curration of content: content is not meant to be a museum piece; you can aggregated content,
have consumer generated content, and share content but it all needs to have context and be
written for the user for the device …
* Hot topics: privacy & security still – especially in relation to mobile, apps and health
* Hot issues:
* Mental health – especially around depression – look for creative ways to address it (e.g. Lady Gaga
just announced counselling booths at all her concerts)
* Wellness challenges – either make it or break it in the fight against obesity
* Accessibility – because as we go to smaller screens we need to be even more sensitive to the user
experience for all
* Beware of: social commentary being used as a news source
* Watch: Shazam (http://www.shazam.com) – app that identifies music, TV shows etc.; used by
The Bay to promote daily sales items, over 250 million users worldwide. Let’s see where they
take it next…
Catherine Elder 18

19. *
* Augmented reality (also called Outernet) is a technology that allows for
computer-generated virtual imagery information to be superimposed onto a live
direct or indirect real world environment in real time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality - devices like smartphones
and tablet computers contain these elements which often include a camera and
MEMS sensors such as accelerometer, GPS, and solid state compass, making
them suitable AR platforms.[2] - according to Wikipedia
* Outernet (megatrend), a trend describing the increasing convergence of virtual
elements with real environments. (also referred to as augmented reality) –
Source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outernet_(disambiguation)
* Crowdsourcing is a process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed
group of people. This process can occur both online and offline.[1]
Crowdsourcing is different from an ordinary outsourcing since it is a task or
problem that is outsourced to an undefined public rather than a specific body. -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing
* Solid state storage (SSS) is a type of computer storage media that is made from
silicon microchips. SSS stores data electronically instead of magnetically, as
spinning hard disk drives or magnetic oxide tape
do. http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/solid-state-storage
Catherine Elder 19

20. *
* Millennials are the incoming workforce and the new consumer and
they are very different
* 18-29 year olds
* By 2014 they will make up 36% of the workforce
* 64% ask about social media policies during job interviews
* 24% say that answer will impact their offer acceptance
* 1 in 3 would prioritize social media freedom, device flexibility and
work mobility over salary
* 35% have a side business
* Switch their attention between media platforms 27 times per hour
compared with 17 times for other age groups
* 91% have public Facebook and Foursquare sites
* 52% have over 300 Facebook friends
* 43% have liked more than 20 brands
Source: infographic by:
Catherine Elder 20

21. *
* Most companies continue to be laggards with the sad truth
being that if they are behind now then next year they will be
stepping backwards exponentially
* Less than 50% of companies have a social media policy
* 12% of firms using social media feel they are using it
effectively (ergo 88% of those using it aren’t sure)
* 40% of small to medium businesses still don’t have a website
* Websites are still letting people down, and then users reach
for the phone
* 17% that couldn’t complete their goal on the website went to
competitors.
* Some things will stay the same.
Sources:
• 1&1 Internet report cited in Hubspot’s Website Must Haves
• Forrester Research 2012 “Websites that don’t support
customers waste millions”
Catherine Elder 21 • http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/2012121718484
8-2967511-5-ways-social-media-will-change-your-job-in-2013

22. *
* Every year there is a slew of predictions followed by
whitepapers and self serving studies that help vendors sell
their wares and services.
* There is a preponderance of statistics that are used but
aren’t necessarily analyzed or in context.
* The predictions are so general or self evident that they are
useless – yes use of social media is going to increase...
* But…
* If they make you think and pay attention, well then they’ve
served their purpose.
Catherine Elder 22

23. * LinkedIn
By Catherine Elder
December 2012
Catherine Elder 23