FEED is About Consumer Behavior

That of the connected consumer. Razorfish new report Meet the Connected Consumer highlights some key observations (hat tip to Kris Hoet):

• “The concept of social networking is evolving and morphing. It’s now about making the 
  entire Web social instead of just creating a ghetto of destination sites where people have to 
  go to socialize.”
• “Distribution must evolve into a science, as reaching consumers in a fragmented, personalized environment will become increasingly complex. ... Major publishers are now forced to completely rethink the way they reach consumers in a fractured distribution environment.”
• “The new experience might be a conversation; it might be a series of decisions made by the user; it might be an interactive storytelling session. ... Don’t limit the vision of a new application by making it conform to your status quo when it’s only just an idea.”

It's about adoption and use, which is where as an organization and a business you can observe behavior and choose to offer a connection with you through distributed content. Some statistics to back this up:

• 28% use Twitter, a relatively new communication tool, with some frequency
• 41% use tag clouds with some regularity
• 52% use RSS feeds with some regularity
• 52% have shared bookmarks with others through services like Delicious
• 55% use widgets on the computer desktop with some frequency
• 62% use widgets on Web sites such as Facebook or iGoogle
• 81% read “Most Popular” or “Most Emailed” links with some frequency (84% receive videos from their peers)

The report finds that connected consumers increasingly rely on peers for product recommendations, and search (primarily Google) to locate products online. This is forcing online retailers, for example, to rethink their strategies—optimizing for search activity, enabling user-generated content and ratings, and creating engaging, valuable digital experiences to differentiate their brand.

It shouldn't be a surprise that human connections are the drivers of technology adoption. Feed is about personalization, distribution, and collaboration.

Someone asked me a question during my last talk at MIMA - how do you create a community? The short answer is that it's not instant, neither it is fast. You need people to get people, and it takes work - seeding and feeding - to reach a network strong enough to create a real, working community. The good news is that we are beginning to notice the efforts of organic marketing. 

Today at Fast Company expert blog I talk about how to connect with the connected customer. How are you going to utilize these tools to connect, establish your credibility, and engage your customers? The Internet allows your content to gain greater distribution in a way that is not controlled by the medium anymore, but by the user.

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

I have been increasingly thinking about affinities. And at least anecdotally I am seeing a shift in behaviour where online connection is now driving offline interaction (rather than the other way around). Much of this seems to be about strengthening the affinities that we have between us. Raises interesting questions for brands and the marketers who claim to own them ;)

[Valeria Maltoni]

You just articulated something for me I have been thinking about - affinity. Owning a brand is an illusion of control by professionals who by and large tend to not get too much love inside their organizations. I'm reading a book on marketing right now that states there are two kinds of CEOs: (1) those who know they don't understand marketing and; (2) those who don't. Thank you, Gavin.