Image via Wikipedia

I saw Steve Rubel’s research last week and wanted to chip in with some thoughts.

If you’re wondering about the baby monitor picture to the right, that represents what Edelman’s Wolfgang Luenenbuerger calls the “baby monitor principle.” The notion is that consumer expectations from social media are pretty much in line with how parents react to baby monitors. If you’ve spent any time on Twitter and witnessed the communications or micro-messages being pushed up to the service, well, you understand. Whether it’s a failed router, hapless iPhone or requesting new features, savvy consumers now expect companies to not only listen to them but engage them – and fast. Fact is, if you don’t someone else will. And that someone is usually a competitor.

Now, let’s dissect what’s trending according to Edelman.

Satisfaction Guaranteed – Customer care and PR are blending as consumers use social media to demand service

I touched on this as we looked at the Baby Monitor Principle above, but there’s no question companies are now retrofitting their customer service and delivery approach. I was tweeting earlier about how companies are prepping themselves to better engage with customers after a post from Peter Kim commenting on the lack of awareness within the brand monitoring space. My argument is simple. The technology is available to listen and foster engagement. It’s the mechanics of engagement that makes companies look clumsy. In other words, corporations sometimes aren’t very good at humanizing themselves. Expect smart companies to continue to invest in community managers and digitally-savvy PR firms to run niche outreach and influence programs.

Media Reforestation -  The media is in a constant state of reinvention as it transitions from atoms to bits

The digital train is tearing down the tracks and has no signs of slowing. Every industry is being reshaped by the expectation that everything should be digitized. Add digital hungry consumers with web devices, NetPCs, Kindles and smart gaming consoles and you’ve got a multichannel marketing and distribution train wreck. Look for media and publishing companies to continue to invest in niche sites and technologies that will not only spur innovation but will give a PR lift to old media’s ailing digital reputation.

Less is the New More – Overload takes its toll. Gorging on media is out. Selective ignorance and friends as filters are in

I don’t suspect gorging on media to go out anytime soon for early adopters and those working in high-tech. However, i strongly advocate the filtering principle. In fact, many of you might even say there’s no such thing as information overload because most of us don’t really have the know-how to effectively filter through the noise. In other words there’s no such thing as information overload, just bad filtering. And look no further than the lack of adoption for RSS inside corporate firewalls as an example. If you’ve spent any time inside a feedreader or RSS aggregator you know how utilitarian they are at delivering customized content. The problem is that most companies haven’t really figured out how to incorporate RSS scenarios into day-to-day workflows. In turn, you have a large and essentially untapped segment of users that haven’t been exposed to effective filtering. Thus, I’d expect consumer-driven things like customer reviews and ratings to continue to drive the “friends as filters” notion Rubel describes.

Corporate All-Stars – Workers flock to social media to build their personal brands, yet offer employers an effective and credible way to market in the downturn

The digital set have been fortifying their online reputations for a while now. But things have changed dramatically with the proliferation of social networks, lifestreaming apps and microblog services like Twitter. Employees have quickly figured out that publishing content (blogging) and participating in online communities can give new meaning to the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” saying. With corporate boundaries increasingly blurred around the ownership and distribution of content, smart users have take it upon themselves to become their own media company. While that scares some 1.0 companies, other organizations are taking advantage of the end result: a more human face associated with their brands.

The Power of Pull -  Where push once ruled, it’s now equally important to create digital content that people discover through search

This one’s really easy to dissect. Just focus on the word “create”. Edelman says marketers and PR pros are finally realizing the intricacies of how content should be created. According to a December study by Junta42, more than 50% surveyed  are planning a larger spend on content and search engine marketing (SEM). While that’s music to SEM and SEO firms, it has more to do with prepping your organization to adopt a more holistic approach to media creation and distribution. Very few companies thoroughly analyze the ins and outs of why content should be created in the first place. It’s becoming an opt-in web, so make sure your content is not only findable but ask yourself if it my web content was a magazine or newsletter, would people want to stay subscribed?