{"id":3712,"date":"2011-12-09T00:41:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T00:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=3712"},"modified":"2011-12-09T00:41:55","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T00:41:55","slug":"what-blog-world-expo-taught-me-about-the-future-of-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/what-blog-world-expo-taught-me-about-the-future-of-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"What Blog World Expo Taught Me About the Future of Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I recently spent three days in LA at Blog World (Blog World and New Media Expo<\/a> #bwela), with some of my favorite people (bloggers and those connected to them), saturating myself with information while starting new and building on old relationships.\u00a0 As you probably know by now, I love connecting with people online, but I love even more connecting the old-fashioned way \u2013 face-to-face!<\/p>\n

Other than stronger connections and new relationships, the most important takeaway from the conference, IMHO, is that we all need to stop worrying about “where it’s going” in Social and start concentrating on “where it is<\/em>.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

I understand that with something moving as quickly as this social media wave, it is tempting to spend all our time focused on speculating about the future.\u00a0 Everyone wants to be out in front of the next big thing in Social and get their brand there first to be recognized as an innovator on the cutting edge\u2026 but at what cost?\u00a0 We still have current customers to serve and current strategies to implement, and quite honestly many of us still have a lot to learn about how to best use the current social media tools.<\/p>\n

We need to pay attention to NOW.\u00a0 Social media has finally been somewhat mainstream for long enough that companies are just starting to reap the benefits of the longer-term relationships they are building with consumers.\u00a0 Brand loyalty is growing as brands learn what their consumers REALLY want and how they want it \u2013 including their use of social media and the unique passion points in those mediums.<\/p>\n

Now that the initial novelty of social media use for business has settled down a bit, give yourselves and your consumers a chance to breathe and enjoy the Return on Relationship (ROR, #RonR)<\/a> that you have spent the last few years building.\u00a0 There will always be a \u201cnext best thing\u201d but your current customers are here NOW and need your attention NOW.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you really want to stand out and put your brand in a strong position for the future, keep your peripheral vision on the future, but keep your most direct, powerful focus on what is here now, today: your customers\/shoppers???.\u00a0 Watch them, listen to them, and let them tell you when to move to that \u201cnext best thing\u201d in Social.\u00a0 In the meantime, remember, your customers are ALWAYS your next best thing \u2013 treat them that way. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ted Rubin <\/em>
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally posted at <\/em>TedRubin.com<\/em><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently spent three days in LA at Blog World (Blog World and New Media Expo #bwela), with some of my favorite people (bloggers and those connected to them), saturating myself with information while starting new and building on old relationships.\u00a0 As you probably know by now, I love connecting with people online, but I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[1519,1370,1458,1517,1518,32,480,479,30,1496,1520,3],"class_list":["post-3712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-tedrubin","tag-bwela","tag-ronr","tag-tedrubin-2","tag-blog-world-2011","tag-blog-world-expo","tag-marketing","tag-return-on-relationship","tag-ror","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-best-practices","tag-social-media-future","tag-ted-rubin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3714,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3712\/revisions\/3714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}