Servant of Chaos

Best. Generation. Ever.

Often when we talk about the big, world changing trends that will shape our future, we focus only on technology. But, for me, the single biggest challenge facing us all in the next ten years is the retirement of the generation known as Baby Boomers.

It was previously expected that 2011 would mark a turning point in global demographics with Baby Boomers reaching retirement age. This has partly been ameliorated due to the global financial crisis which saw retirement savings slashed. But time waits for no man (or woman) – and the coming years will see drastic changes in our workplaces. Not only will we begin to lose corporate knowledge, business experience and capabilities – it will be replaced by a younger generation – the millennials (or Gen Y/Z) – with vastly different priorities and expectations.

The shock waves that radiate from this change will impact almost every aspect of our lives. This infographic from OnlineGraduatePrograms.com sums up some of these impacts nicely (with thanks to R Ray Wang). But think beyond the figures – think also of the behaviours – for that’s where the real change will hit us full force. Get ready.

The Psychology of Social Commerce

I love this style of illustration – it taps into my nostalgic sense of wonder. But what I like most about this infographic from Tab Juice is that it nicely captures some of the changing behaviours that are impacting the way that consumers approach their purchasing. And the lesson for marketers? Understanding your social customer will change what you do and why you do it.

Will 2012 be the year that you really start to grapple with the challenges of social media within your business landscape?

The Wrath of Angry Birds

According to Gizmowatch, it seems that Angry Birds really did change the world - “if we rewind the total Angry Bird playtime, we will go back to the time when humans evolved”. That’s 200,000 years of game time. Seems the birds won.

Is the Average Day on Facebook Like Yours?

Do you consider yourself an average person? Do you do the average things that other average people do? Do you behave a little above or below average?

I only ask, because it seems that average people all over the world are spending a more than average amount of time on Facebook. And this infographic from the folks at JESS3 makes me wonder – do you consider yourself average in this same way? Does this social media diet sound like yours? And what, really, does this tell us about ourselves. Think I may need to get out more – as it seems there are all these friends that I have never met. Maybe we should meet for coffee. Let me know ;)

Work Expectations of the Next Generation

No matter what you call the next generation of workers – millennials, Gen Z or even the three billion – there is no doubt that they will change our workplaces forever. How? The Cisco Connected World Study asked the questions and turned the answer into an infographic which tells the story. Now – how does this fit with your business workplace policy?

StumbleUpon: Where Randomness meets Serendipity

When I first started blogging, every now and then I’d receive an avalanche of traffic. In fact, the first time it happened it crashed my server (I had been running the Servantofchaos.com blog on a server in my garage, and it just could not cope) – and I ended up switching to Typepad.

The culprit was StumbleUpon.

These days, social networks like Twitter or Facebook garner most of the attention, but this new infographic from column 5 media shows just how powerful StumbleUpon can be. In fact, it drives over 50% of social media traffic in the US. And the coolest thing is that while pages shared via Twitter have a half life of about 3 hours, stumbled pages are over 130 times more effective.

StumbleUpon also has a cool way of managing and scheduling your shared links. Called su.pr, it helps you optimise your shared links by time of day - I wrote about it here. And while many people tend to dislike the StumbleUpon toolbar, with a small investment of your time, the system can deliver you some great content and plenty of new on-topic information. It takes the randomness of the web out and replaces it with serendipity. What more could you ask for?

The Melbourne Cup, Gambling and the Cognitive Surplus

That wild, wonderful thing that is Wikipedia has changed our lives in all sorts of subtle ways. Gone are the vast bookshelves of leather bound tomes that held me in thrall as a child – and in their stead is a white page, an empty search field and a button.

Amazingly, as Clay Shirky reminds us, Wikipedia was built by a global collective donating 100 million hours of time to its grand vision. But this cognitive surplus is just a drop in the ocean of time that is spent by Americans watching television each year – estimated to be many times that number.

Now, while this is fascinating as a data fact, what I am more interested in is the substitution that is taking place. You see, for 100 million people to donate one hour of their time – a deliberate choice is being made. The choice is to create rather than to consume. And the thing is – as humans, we seek the pleasure of consumption over the cold choice of decision. We have to be driven to act. Compelled. Consumption, after all, is the easy way.

Now think about the current debate in Australia around the regulation of gambling. Clubs across Australia are claiming that these regulations will impact their ability to employ people and to support the community through their charitable giving and community support programs. But as Ben Eltham points out, most clubs direct a miserly proportion of their revenues into such programs:

Or examine the Rooty Hill RSL, also in Sydney’s western suburbs … Poker machines raked in $43.2 million of the club’s total operating revenue of $64.7 million … [with only] $601,000 [spent] on donations.

What would happen if INDIVIDUALS actually chose where to invest their “community support” programs? I’d actually be keen to see some small percentage being funnelled into a microloan style service or even an insurance fund to help problem gamblers (but that is a whole other blog post).

Today, on Melbourne Cup day, the folks over at DebtConsolidation.com.au have put together this infographic that images what could be done with all those wagers being made at the track and at betting agencies across the country. Makes you think – what good could we do if we made better decisions? What indeed.

How Well Do You Listen and Engage With Your Customers?

Increasingly, businesses are turning to social media as part of their marketing mix. There is a smattering of Facebook, a Twitter account – and maybe even a YouTube channel. Some will have a social media monitoring solution in place, others a bunch of Google Alerts bombarding their inbox with messages and updates. But there is often a gulf between the listening and doing – between the monitoring and engaging.

And perhaps, more alarmingly, there are precious few businesses who have done the work to put social media into a framework or business context. That’s why I advocate continuous digital strategy. It’s why I think a social business maturity model is important – so that you can actively work to transform your business relationships, systems and processes in such a way as they deliver sustaining value over time.

Social Business Maturity Model

View more presentations from Gavin Heaton

Unfortunately, many of us only take on transformative challenges when we are forced to – often because our competitors beat us to the punch.

Wouldn’t it be nice to lead and set the agenda instead?

The Dell Social Listening questionnaire gives you valuable information from seven relatively simple questions. Based on Forrester industry data, it allows you to model your own business (or your competitors’ business) and have it visualised as an infographic. Here is one I did for a medium sized tech company. Makes for interesting reading … but it can also be a useful way of laying out your strategic challenges – especially if you are also working in a medium sized tech company.

How do you compare? Where are the gaps? And what are you going to do to close them?

You see, it is important to listen to and engage with your customers. But that’s not the end result. It’s the start. Get to it!

Want SEO? Create Useful Content First

There was a time when we used to create websites to solve a problem. Now, often, our websites are the problems that need to be solved. They no longer tell the story we want to tell. They don’t engage the people that they should. They aren’t relevant to the communities we claim to serve.

To solve this new problem, we often turn to search engine optimisation (SEO). What we are looking for is a quick fix. The problem, of course, is that you can’t quick fix bad content.

My recommendation is always to focus on useful content. Make sure that what you are creating helps the people who need it. Make sure that it reaches them in a format that is easy for them to consume. And design it so that it can be shared with others who have the same challenges.

Sounds simple, right?

But, don’t take my word for it. Check out what the folks at Brafton have to say in this funky content marketing for SEO infographic. Then stop looking for silver bullets and get to work on some quality content. Your customers will love you for it.

We Are What We Share

When AddThis launched it was a very welcome addition to the blogging tool set. No longer did we need to clumsily add icons or images and links to the bottom of each web page. We simply added a few lines of code to our blog templates and a row of sharing buttons would appear. Like magic.

But the best thing of all was the analytics. AddThis were ahead of the game in providing decent analytics your posts, click throughs and so on. In the process, they have accumulated a wealth of information about WHAT we share and WHY. This infographic celebrates AddThis’ five year anniversary.