Dr. Amy Vanderbilt

CEO & Chief Strategist

The TrendPOV Show

http://DrAmyVanderbilt.com

Dr. Amy Vanderbilt is the Founder and Chief Strategist at TrendPOV.com, next generation social omni-media that over 600 thousand executives call GPS for your business strategy. She is an award-winning author, show host, executive coach, speaker, and commentator.Her career has enjoyed a fast climb through the ranks of academia, large business, small business, and even the Government by harnessing the power of emerging trends and her unique ability to understand where they are going, and how to use them for competitive advantage.

Although technology has evolved rapidly in the past decade, screen face-time and use of social media may have peaked regardless of innovation because people may have reached saturation point. Just when businesses thought they had caught up with using social media to track down and interact with customers, customers are backing off in search of simplicity, resulting in a potential slow down of evolving media consumption. With only a limited number of hours in the day, people will become more selective with their screen time; some may cut back on social media by selecting preferred sites or subscribing to fewer updates. The upshot of this trend seems to be that companies will have to get more creative—yet again—to get people to notice them. Despite technology usage having risen sharply over the past decade with video content being the biggest growth driver, and social networking and game-based incentive schemes becoming a mainstay of the workplace, consumer screen-time seemed to hit its peak in 2010 and the novelty of social networking seemed to have worn off. This in turn has affected advertising revenue. According to Spencer Ante, “Slowing and/or declining growth will make it harder to generate sales and profit growth from these sites. That will put more pressure on the advertising programs to deliver results.” As contributions to social media sites decline, video and blog entries will be fewer and diminishing comments and reviews will make content less reliable. Juan Carlos Perez noted in computerworld.com, “Companies need to find ways to re-engage those U.S. Internet users who have stopped participating on their social media sites.” Jonathan Salem Baskin recommended in an article on cmo.com that people figure out how to slow down, and then get their customers to do the same. He believes putting more time and thought back into brand promotion will create more lasting experiences for customers. To act on this convergence of trends for a competitive edge, consider the following. Simplicity backlash may slow motivation trends. Simplicity backlash will not, however, stop workforce trends from moving forward. Social media integration may adopt later for internal communication. Do not, therefore, push social and mobile communications on your workforce. Overall, be patient with workforce objectives.