On every post I’ve written for at least two years, I’ve included a badge that states: “100% Human Content.” And this is, too (as you’ll see) but I used AI to compose most of it. I’d like to use this as a teachable moment on a smart way to use AI.

This post is about my annual Uprising Retreat. Nearly everyone there noted that this event is impossible to describe unless you’re there, but I’ll try. It’s a gathering of curious and brilliant people who openly share and teach one another, creating a bond that fosters career relevance. We also have a lot of fun in a breathtakingly beautiful place.

Now, during this event, I am psychologically and emotionally immersed. There is no way I can capture all the great highlights. This is where AI comes in.

Many of the attendees used the Plaud voice recorder to record and transcribe the talks. Dr. Matt Wilkinson uploaded these transcripts to Notebook LM, where we could all slice and dice the commentary. I used this to create a first draft of a highlight post and then used Claude to massage it a bit and put it in my voice.

So … what you are about to read is fully human content, parsed and assembled by AI.

The gift of uncertainty

Before each event, I send out a survey to let attendees prioritize the agenda. This year, one word kept popping up as they wrote about their careers: Uncertainty. So, I set the tone for the event with a brand new talk called “The Gift of Uncertainty.”

We are living in a “poly crisis.” Not just a hard moment. A genuinely disorienting one, where the norms and traditions and even laws that used to orient us feel like they’re shifting in real time. We are in a world of malignant uncertainty.

I opened the Uprising by saying this isn’t a flaw in the system — it’s our fuel, especially if you’re in marketing. I encouraged everyone to explore the “courage dividends” that come from overcoming fear and acting on opportunity,  even when the outcome is uncertain.

We live in chaos. But that sets the stage for hope. And leaders who can genuinely dispense hope — not spin, not optimism theater, but real grounded possibility — are going to matter enormously in the years ahead.

The agentic economy is here, and most people aren’t ready 

Dan Nestle, Dr. Matt Wilkinson, and Brian Piper built the technical foundation for the event with a live demonstration of what an AI-orchestrated workflow actually looks like end-to-end. They showed how they used Gemini, Claude, and other tools in parallel to explore every angle of a new product launch.

They laid out the technical reality clearly: We are moving from B2B and B2C toward an agent-to-agent economy. Your customers will soon have personal AI agents filtering what they see. You will have agents producing content. The question is whether there’s anything human left in the middle.

Brian introduced what he called the “human-in-the-loop sandwich” — and the image stuck with me. Your unique expertise and stories form the foundation. AI synthesizes and organizes. But human judgment sits at the top, as the final filter. Strip that out and you get what everyone is starting to call AI slop.

Dan made a point I think is genuinely underappreciated: keep your intellectual property separate from your tools. Your brand missions, your frameworks, your SOPs — those belong in a tool-agnostic library you can plug into whatever model is performing best this month. Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT. The models change. Your thinking shouldn’t have to change with them.

Matt demonstrated a system that turns static buyer personas into interactive AI simulations. Impressive. But he noted something that grounded the whole presentation: the real reason people show up to an event is still the humans in the room. No simulation replaces that.

The scariest AI risk isn’t replacement. It’s surrender.

Dr. Jasmine Gruia-Gray named something I think we all feel but don’t say out loud. She opened with a line that landed hard: “One day I couldn’t tell which parts of my thinking were mine.”

She cited a Wharton study where roughly 73% of participants followed faulty AI advice — not because they couldn’t tell it was wrong, but because the model was confident, and they stopped checking. That’s cognitive surrender. AI doesn’t replace your thinking. It keeps you from noticing you’ve already stopped thinking.

Her solution is a Socratic framework she calls BRACED — boundary testing, reversal from stakeholder, assumption surfacing, counter-hypothesis, disconfirming evidence, decision with tradeoffs. The specifics matter less than the principle. She ran it as a live game called Prompt Arena, where the goal wasn’t to get a better AI output. It was to build better thinking habits. That distinction is the whole ballgame right now.

The body knows things the brain ignores

Nicole Donnelly, the founder of Hello Moxie, gave what I thought was the most unexpected talk of the event. She’s been studying the intersection of trauma, workaholism, and leadership — and her argument is that most of our professional systems reward us for managing our bodies like machines. We optimize for output. We suppress the signals that slow us down. And we pay for it in creativity, in empathy, in the quality of our decisions.

We don’t need to move faster. We need to stop long enough to think. Embodiment is the last moat.

You can see her TEDx talk here.

Safe marketing compounds irrelevance

Jason Dressel, CEO of The History Factory, pushed back on what he called “confidence porn” — the performance of authority that substitutes for actual expertise. The market is correcting for that. People are hungry for real knowledge delivered through real stories.

His framework is simple: great stories need purposeful characters, a three-act structure built around conflict, and what he calls touchstones — the specific language and images that make a world feel real. Stories are 22 times more memorable than talking points. That’s not a preference. It’s neuroscience.

John Kowalski of BYK-Gardner Instruments said something I want to stitch on a pillow: safe marketing compounds irrelevance. He told the story of a company whose bear-resistant trash can failed spectacularly in a field test — and turned that failure into an unforgettable brand. The gap between what an industry expects and what an audience actually craves is where brand equity gets built. He called it the Awe Gap. I’m going to keep using that term.

Emotion is the experience. Full stop.

Stacy Sherman of Doing CX Right made a case that I think is more important than ever. As AI ingests public sentiment at scale, every micro-moment in the customer journey builds or erodes a ledger. The failed QR code. The boring hold music. The email that was obviously a form letter. These small failures accumulate, and AI systems are now reading that accumulated sentiment to rank brands.

Dana Malstaff, CEO of BOSS MOM, added a critical nuance on vulnerability — the kind that actually builds connection versus the kind that undermines authority. Her distinction: share your scars, not your wounds. Processed experiences with a lesson attached. Not active pain that you’re still in the middle of. Amen to that!

Dana also led a session on the future of brand communities, driving home the point that the best communities emerge from a dissatisfaction with the status quo. What do you want to change in the world?

Trust is the only distribution strategy that scales

Sarah Stahl, VP Marketing for Lake.com, shared how a startup resort hit $2 million in revenue on a $30,000 budget by out-trusting rather than out-spending. The mechanism was micro-creators with real proximity to real audiences. Sixty-eight percent of consumers trust a creator over a brand. That number should reorganize your marketing budget.

Chad Parizman of Ader Communications entertained everyone with a brief analysis of predictive markets and the potential dangers of addictive betting markets.

His argument was that prediction markets — platforms where people bet on real-world outcomes rather than company stocks — represent an underutilized seam for brands. 8.5 million monthly users, 25 trades per day. The conversations already happening around these markets are data-rich, audience-specific, and almost entirely untouched by brand strategy. The brands that figure out how to own those conversations are sitting on something.

It was the right mix of mind-blowing information and entertainment to end the day.

The future of content marketing

What an honor it was to sit side by side with the legendary Joe Pulizzi and hold court on the future of content marketing. Over the years, Joe and I have not always agreed but we have always been friends. As always, this was a spicy, energetic, and insightful 90 minutes.

Joe and I talked about what he calls the Trust Portfolio — and I think it’s one of the most practical ideas to come out of the event. Don’t bet everything on a single brand voice. Build a diversified network of employee creators. Give them room to be specific, to be themselves, to be a little weird. The marketing team becomes a media operations hub. The employees become the signal that cuts through the synthetic noise.

Our main debate centered around the most likely role of humanity in an AI-dominant content world. Joe thinks the window is closing. I think human art will persist. We’ll have to meet again in a few years to see what happens.

The future of your brand

Sarah Neely of Signal Swell has presented several times over the years and always has a fresh and relevant message. This year, she updated her core word-of-mouth marketing wisdom with a spin for the AI Age. She introduced a new framework — the Five C’s of AI Discoverability.

• Clarity
• Conversation
• Current
• Credible
• Composition

Mary Lague of Pilot 44 ran a foresight exercise that’s worth sitting with. If AI agents are mediating $3-5 trillion in commerce by 2036, and culture has fragmented into hyper-niche communities, what signals should we be watching now?

She hosted an interactive exercise that let every attendee create a vision of their own brand emerging from a set of megatrends such as brand communities and virtual humans.

But here’s the best part

These highlights are only the tip of the iceberg. Most attendees will tell you that most of the learning came from questions and answers, small group discussions (led by Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez, Lauren Colbert, Alice Ferris, and Chelsea Rae Stuck), breakout sessions on branding and personal branding, and late-night conversations at the bar.

For example, here are some takeaways from several attendees:

“I learned to not just embrace uncertainty, but to be grounded in it.”

“The biggest shift wasn’t a tactic. It was realizing that staying still long enough to understand what’s happening is often more powerful than reacting quickly to what’s changing.”

“Growth starts to feel heavy when nothing is compounding. That was the moment I realized the issue isn’t effort, it’s what the effort is building toward.”

Sarah Stahl, Founder, Market Movers

“Community creates the space for people to feel safe enough to move toward the future.”

“What do we hold onto and what do we release — that is our wisdom.”

Brian W Piper, Founder of AIreFlow Solutions

Melanie Borden, Author, “Theatre of the Mind” · Founder, The Borden Group

Mike Carr, Cofounder of John13.org &  Autism Labs

“When Mary Lague said 44% of Gen Z workers try to sabotage their company’s AI, it reordered my worldview. Leveraging AI is far more than mastering prompts and learning tools. It also involves helping people understand and work through massive change, many fear or don’t understand, so they seek to control it, apparently often to the detriment of their employer.”

“As Mark Schaefer said, leaders dispense hope. And when he exhorted us to create pockets of hope, order, and meaning, it landed as a clarion call to action for me and my business.”

Dan Christ, Owner and founder of Dan Christ Digital Services

“It’s possible not to be completely freaked out and overwhelmed about AI.”

Lisa Kohn, International Speaker, LisaKohn.com

“When you can’t tell if you’ve become part of the AI hive mind, you realize you’ve done it to yourself. Jasmine Gruia-Gray’s session on cognitive surrender was a moment that turned the conversation inward. While every other session was about forces changing the world around us and how to respond, she asked what we might be doing to our own thinking in the process.”

“Mark opened by making the case that uncertainty is the entry point for original thinking, and John Kowalski’s awe gap session reinforced it from a different angle. Safe marketing compounds irrelevance. The seam, the real opportunity, is in the unexpected.”

Elizabeth Humphries, Marketing Strategist, Market Your Marketing

“I was in awe of the people in the room at Uprising! Inspiring and engaging. It reminded me of the importance of presence and being fully present at an event like this will allow you to get the most out of your experience. If you’re distracted and disengaged, you could miss something that could change your life.”

Sid Meadows, President of The Collaborative Network and Host of The Trend Report Podcast

“The jaw-dropping moment for me was when I was encouraged to break through a self-limiting belief about what type of speaking engagements I could get paid for. For the first time in 25 years, I saw a path forward to market myself.”

Mike Garrison, founder of Values Based Mindset and author of Can I Borrow Your Car?

“Leaders dispense hope… giving your team, your customers, and your industry permission to believe something better is possible. When you stop selling features and start offering a vision worth following, you stop being a vendor and become the reason people show up.”

“The sheer volume of knowledge, expertise, and insight in this room was mind-blowing.”

John Kowalski, Disruptive Awe Architect, Disruptive Awe

“Our humanity is being stripped from us. Each talk pointed back to specific actions we can take to be more human, including choosing to be hopeful, more discerning, actively cultivating community by creating spaces where people feel valued, and reframing failure as experimentation. The more we lean into these things, the more we will become the trusted leaders and brands of the future.”

“Nanocommunities of 40 or fewer will be the future! This affirmed our company’s strategy. Scale is not always the answer.”

Nicole Donnelly, Founder, Hello Moxie

“Personal consequence is the real work. The breakout conversations are where ideas become valuable because they become personal. The unique element of The Uprising is that we get to intentionally take the time to unpack it and ask: What does it mean for me now?”

“Malignant Uncertainty” looms over livelihoods. The time needed (and spent) to process this feeling, with other smart folks, became the difference-maker.

“The Uprising had a contagion of bravery and a level of openness that elevated everyone.”

Lauren Colbert, Principal—Strategic Facilitator of Strategy, Innovation, & Collective Intelligence at Filament

“The fireside chat between Mark Schaefer and Joe Pulizzi reframed how I think about trust at scale. Mark mentioned that Cisco had trained more than 10,000 employees to speak on behalf of the brand — certified, equipped, and amplified. Joe called this building a Trust Portfolio. Distributed authorship. Distributed trust. Distributed reach. That changes the marketing job.”

Matt Wilkinson, CEO, Strivenn

“In an era of automation, bots, and synthetic content, care becomes premium. People want guidance, reassurance, belonging, support, and human attention. This made me rethink how I show up online and how I position my own services—not just as a consultant, but as someone who helps people navigate change.”

Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez, MBA, Bilingual Marketing Consultant and Founder of Beyond Engagement

“I’m energized by Mark’s idea of ‘uncertainty as fuel.’ It’s a powerful reframe in a time of so much chaos. ‘Negative capability’ is another reframing that speaks to intentionally and patiently pausing to connect new dots. I learned so much over the two days, and I know that I will continue to learn from this circle of smart humans.”

Sarah Neely, Vice President of Strategy at Fuzz and Founder of SignalSwell

“Each courageous moment rewires you to believe in yourself. This is the courage dividend.”

“I appreciated Sarah Neely’s new perspective on the future of discoverability — the S.H.A.R.E. framework (surprising, helpful, authentic, relevant, experiences).”

Jasmine Gruia-Gray, Managing Partner at Strivenn and co-host of A Splice of Life Science Marketing podcast, Product Marketing Tips newsletter

“Courageous actions rewire who you believe yourself to be.’ —Mark Schaefer. I found this particularly pertinent because every time I have taken a leap professionally or personally, it has paid off, and helped me douse some of that imposter syndrome or lack of confidence you get when you’re in a room that you’re not quite comfortable in.”

Stacey Miller, Vice President, Communications at Auto Care Association

“I need more community in my life! (inspiration, empowerment, safety).”

“Trust = safety. Nurture messaging creates belonging.”

Knox Keith, Author of Validated

“I’m inspired by how domain experts forge and build AI solutions. Just as my agency is building AI to address concerns related to accuracy and contextualization, I was so impressed by Dr. Jasmine Gruia-Gray’s work focused on critical thinking and cognitive decline. Her Socratic method-based BRACED framework was excellent.”

“Joe and Mark’s discussion has me completely re-imagining our leaders and employees as characters of our story, and how we tell that story through both company-owned and employee-owned platforms. This will likely be the biggest actionable takeaway in my strategic and tactical shift.”

Jason Dressel, CEO, History Factory

“We shouldn’t treat AI LIKE an audience. AI IS an audience—multiple audiences, in fact.”

“Negative Capability is the skill we need to cope with chaos. Marinate in an issue before acting under pressure to respond, and that’s how insights will be revealed.”

Dan Nestle, Founder and CPIO of Lilypath

“Within the first 15 minutes, I had my first ah-ha moment, when Mark said: ‘Every time I feel afraid, I do it!’ I need a poster of this in my office.”

“We are in the eye of the AI storm, but it also presents so many opportunities. I realized that I don’t have all the answers about how businesses will assimilate or adopt AI platforms, but I do know that the most powerful force in business is still human connection. Spending three days with 39 of the most knowledgeable, forward-thinking leaders in AI and new technologies left me feeling inspired and full of hope. The Uprising was an Executive Education course on steroids!”

Anne Deeter Gallaher, Owner/CEO of Deeter Gallaher Group LLC

“In a world that constantly competes for our attention, we need to ‘control the inputs.’ In other words, be deliberate about how much news we consume, which social media we engage with, whose opinions we give weight to, and how much access the outside world gets to our inner peace. Those inputs shape our focus, our fear, our energy, and ultimately, how we show up at work and in life.”

“We’re living in a time of ‘malignant uncertainty,’ where change isn’t only constant, it’s harder to predict. Companies need to let go of overly rigid plans and pay closer attention to what customers and employees are thinking, feeling, and doing in real time. The brands that earn trust will be the ones that build emotional connection when everything else feels uncertain.”

Stacy Sherman, International Keynote Speaker, Influencer & Podcaster: DoingCXRight.com

“AI is evolving and changing how we operate at a personal and work level faster than ever before. There is opportunity in seeing this ‘seam.’ Uncertainty makes room for me for creativity, growth, and progress.”

Debra Feresten, Debra Feresten Homes

I used to believe more content would grow my business, but now I see that trust is the real currency—and content is just the vehicle to earn it. That changes everything: from chasing reach to building a small, intentional audience that actually cares.”

“My AHA moment was realizing we’re not heading toward a world with better ads—we’re heading toward a world without them. When there’s no ‘skip button,’ only brands that create trust, community, and meaning will survive.”

Yevette Lynn, Kingsport Headshot Photographer and Studio Owner, The Journal

“AI tools become personal. They are like the hammer that a carpenter uses every day. They form to his hand and are customized to his needs. There is beauty in the wear of such tools, but if you were to pick one up, it feels foreign. To use them properly, one must interact with these tools and shape them to one’s personal needs.”

“Being raw in our content gives our community permission to share. But that sharing should come from scars, not wounds.”

“The tension between the obligation to react to the world and the value of marinating in uncertainty is the obligation of leadership.”

Atom Freeman, Founder of Prana DM, Host of Comic Industry Insiders podcast

“Building a personal brand is not a project, it’s a LIFESTYLE.”

“The customer journey is the cumulative effect of every interaction, good or bad.” Every micro moment shapes perception, and people are constantly evaluating, even when you are not thinking about it. What they remember is not necessarily the process, it is how it made them feel. “Emotion IS the experience”, and that is ultimately what defines your brand.

Your most powerful, underutilized influencer channel is already on payroll. Employees are a built-in network of credible, motivated nano-influencers, but only if you replace control with trust and give them a clear, supported way to share. If your own people are not advocating for your brand, why would someone else?

Chelsea Rae Stuck, CEO Craeve, and Host of the Curiously Stuck Podcast

And … back to me.

We can’t stay relevant on our own. Everybody who attended The Uprising has a new set of tools and a professional network to help them navigate the future.

The 2026 Uprising was a call to stop trying to be “safe” and instead build a future where our humanity is our most discoverable and durable asset. I hope you will join us May 04-07, 2027. Registration is open.

Some photographs provided by Yevette Lynn Photography

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post Human Renaissance in the Agentic Age: Insights from The Uprising Retreat appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Whatever happened to Web3?

Not long ago, every conference was stuffed with speakers pontificating about NFTs, tokenized economies, and digital wallets. We were promised that

• Web3 is ownership.
• Web3 is freedom.
• Decentralization is the future.

In 2022, Web3 was the dominant topic at the SXSW annual gathering of thought leaders. In 2023, there was barely a mention. When was the last time you used a Web3 function? That’s what I thought.

The rapid disinterest in Web3 is reflected in these Google Trend charts:

NFTs

Web3

Metaverse

We can’t overlook the fact that millions of dollars were invested in these ideas and those investments aren’t going to fade into the night. Will there be a time for Web3? Should marketers still pay attention?

I think so, and today I’ll tell you why.

First let’s look at the challenges facing Web3 development and adoption (at least from my point of view). The following points are GENERALIZATIONS. There are exceptions, of course, so don’t beat me up.

1. Disconnected from business value

Let’s start with the fact that too much focus has been on the sizzle without the steak.

An example. My biggest Web3 annoyance has been POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocol). This is a simple NFT that is generally a memento from an event. A symbol that you attended something.

In my own community, every time we had an event, somebody was sure to suggest that I create a POAP. The conversation would go like this:

Web3 fan: “This event was great. You should create a POAP.”

Me: “Why?”

“Because we can.”

“But why?”

“Because we should.”

“But why?”

“It would be a nice memory.”

“But it takes work to mint this, and then it sits on a server somewhere burning energy forever. I don’t wanna.”

To me, a POAP is like the cheap pen or sticker you pick up at a trade show, and then you throw it out when you clean out your desk. Except you can’t throw out a POAP.

My point is, that many Web3 ideas are irrational products disconnected from real business cases. Too often, it is cool technology in search of a problem.

2. It’s not user-friendly

I was early to dabble in NFTs because I wanted to experiment and experience what it was all about. I set up a digital wallet, figured out what this eth “gas” was all about, and finally put it all together over two days to actually make a purchase. It was a pain in the ass. Still is.

It has been difficult to “on-board” to Web3, which has depressed consumer adoption.

3. Disconnected from the real world

The breakthrough for the success of the “Web2” internet was the user interface.

If you wanted to save a file, you dragged it to a “folder.”

If you wanted to get rid of a file, you put it in an icon of a trash can.

Every Web2 action was tethered to something you could understand from the real world.

Web3 introduced us to altcoins, defi, degens, hodlers, and other concepts that don’t intersect the real world. In a way, that’s what made it fun for the early adopters. Speaking this cryptographic language made you one of the cool kids and kept others out. But that’s also why Web3 has not been widely adopted.

4. Tarnished reputation

Let’s say I was selling a new sports car. We’ll call it the Mark500. It’s a visionary, futuristic vehicle with a retro vibe, so the most passionate automotive fans rushed to buy one. This created scarcity, and the value of my car soared as favorable press coverage documented that the Mark500 was a great investment! 

Oh happy day! Mark is getting rich. I can buy a Taylor Swift ticket!

But there’s one little problem. Everybody can copy my car. I have no meaningful intellectual property to protect my product. Thousands of low-quality Mark500 rip-offs enter the market. It’s confusing to know which car is real.

And then owners discover a big problem. The brakes on the Mark500 don’t work. Every day there seems to be another story of the Mark500 crashing into a tree or driving off a cliff. At first, the early Mark500 owners deny the problems. They are irrationally in love with the technology and want to protect their investments.

But soon, it’s undeniable. The press is reporting brake failures everywhere. Even after I repair my product, there is so much negative publicity that my brand will never fully recover.

The parable of the Mark500 is a story about NFTs. There was so much corruption, so many “rug pulls” and broken promises that most people could not trust the NFT “brand” any more. Sure, a few people held on to their Mark500, hoping for a turnaround. But the general public has moved on.

5. It’s not really decentralized

One of the things I could never understand about Web3 is why people were so in love with “decentralization.” Communities would become democratized and decisions would be made by shareholders, based on how many NFTs or tokens were held. That is almost always a lousy way to make decisions.

Decentralization meant a shift toward a more personalized internet, where data is controlled and owned by the individual. It also meant that owning the rights to your data and owning the rights to a community or product meant that everyone had a say, and everyone could be properly compensated for their time and data.

In a decentralized organization, the shareholders rule.

Occasionally, a democratic process is a good way to make decisions, like an election. But it is usually a terrible way to make most business decisions. That’s a story for another day, but suffice to say that touting “decentralization” as a goal is not really a business advantage in many cases when you need speed, expertise, and decisiveness to win the day.

We may not be happy that companies own our data, but most people are resigned to that reality in exchange for a personalized and free web experience. “Data ownership” is simply not a burning problem for the general population.

Further, as reality played out, it turns out that these Web3 platforms weren’t really decentralized at all. Jack Dorsey famously said:

You don’t own web3. The VCs and their LPs (limited partners) do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that in 2021 I launched a creator cryptocurrency through a platform called Rally. It was a way for people to own a “share” of me. But in the end, Rally was just another VC investment that made stupid decisions and ignored its stakeholders. You can read the story of the rise and fall of my crypto token here.

And yet …

There are aspects of Web3 that I loved. My crypto token helped me build a wonderful, caring RISE  community. I could use the token to thank people and reward loyalty. It opened up new business models for monetization. Looking past the silliness of POAPs, NFTs represent a proof of ownership and authenticity, an elegant new way to create contracts, enable new business models, and reward loyalty.

There is SO MUCH POTENTIAL.

But clearly, problems have to be solved.

Web3 must be focused on true business value and grounded best practices tethered to reality. Obstacles to mass adoption like digital wallets and ridiculous “gas fees” have to go away or at least become invisible in the consumer journey.

And, we’ll probably have to stop using tarnished words like NFT or Web3, just like the doomed Mark500 would have to be reimagined and re-branded to be trusted again.

Now, here is the good news.

It’s happening. These problems are being solved. There is an undercurrent of Web3 successes bubbling up in mainstream businesses.

One example of this is an idea called “Open Loyalty” being pioneered by brainiacs like Mathew Sweezey. Mathew was a co-founder of the Salesforce Web3 Studio and is now on his own, helping brands apply Web3 in a rational way. Web3 is being reimagined!

To learn what Open Loyalty is all about and glimpse how Web3 is evolving into a truly customer-friendly experience, please listen to what Mathew has to say in the latest episode of The Marketing Companion podcast. I predict you’ll agree with me — Web3 is not over yet. It may be just beginning.

All you have to do is click here to hear the show:

Click here to listen to episode 274

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

The post Whatever happened to Web3? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A few weeks ago, I saw a blog post titled “The Future of Content Marketing” But it wasn’t, really.

It had obvious forecasts like “people will use more video.” That’s like saying, “In the future people will like dogs.”

So I challenged myself to think this through. In two years, we will not recognize the field of marketing. The transformation is happening before our eyes and I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s next, specifically about the future of content marketing.

It would be useless to think about what’s coming five years down the road. The change is too rapid and there are too many wildcards! But how about two years? I think that is within reach for me. Let’s dream a little about the near future of content marketing and riff on 10 ideas.

1. Robo content

AI-generated content is here. It’s good enough to create videos, movie scripts, and poetry. It is certainly good enough to create a blog post or a tweet. Resistance is futile. My friends are already doing it (I am not. This is really me, I promise).

The fact that AI bots will generate endless amounts of content will profoundly impact content marketing because it will obviously usher in a whole new phase of …

2. Content Shock, Part 2

In 2014 I forecast that content marketing would not be a sustainable strategy for many businesses when the content density in a niche or industry reaches over-saturation. It’s basic economics. When the competition increases, it will cost more to win and earn meaningful attention in a noisy world. Some businesses will drop out. That’s the simple version.

While this idea was regarded as controversial at the time, I don’t think any rational person would disagree that my assessment was correct. It is excruciatingly difficult to stand out today, especially if we are trying to win an SEO game.

If you thought content density is a big hurdle now, what will the future of content marketing look like when bots start generating streams of endless material? By the way, Google has “outlawed” AI content, declaring it spam … but the bots will ultimately win. Google won’t be able to keep up with this rapidly-expanding technology.

AI will also contribute to another content marketing crisis called …

3. Deep fakes

Today, simple, inexpensive technology exists to create realistic videos of people doing and saying anything. This deep fake technology is advancing faster than the world’s ability to detect it.

This presents nothing short of an existential crisis for the media, politicians, celebrities, and any content marketer. The Future Today Institute recently projected that deep fake technology has an 80 percent probability of enabling disastrous consequences. The danger is that harmful fake content will go viral and disrupt society before anybody knows it’s fake.

Imagine the creative agency from hell where talented storytellers work on deep fakes that will disrupt the world in dangerous ways and control the thought of a population. This is dictator’s dream playbook.

On a micro level, this could be targeted at any of us. Businesses and individuals really have just one way to fight back. It’s …

4. The personal brand

What does content marketing have to do with your personal brand?

Everything.

In this perilous environment, our only hope is to create an uncompromising brand of trust. The only remedy is to establish and maintain an effective digital base of trust so people know what to believe.

Creating an effective online presence as a trusted authority solves three key content marketing problems:

1. If we can’t win at SEO like we used to, we can earn attention through content that expresses our authority. Topical authority will replace keyword research as the primary content marketing strategy.
2. When bots and deep fakes flood the world with garbage, your verified and trusted brand can establish a beacon of authority. All marketing is based on trust and we are in a world where trust is falling off a cliff. We will look to real people for assurance.
3. Increasingly, people don’t trust companies, ads, and brands, but they do trust each other. The personal brand IS the brand. Just ask Tesla.

Authority will be everything in the future. Even Google is rewarding content that establishes E-A-T (Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness).

Start working on this now. A proven place to start is my book KNOWN or my personal branding master class. This is a particularly important strategy for company executives, not just entrepreneurs, creators, and small business owners!

Next, let’s look at where this content will be showing up …

5. The metaverse and beyond

I recently wrote a post projecting who would be the early adopters of the metaverse and this will be driven by young people who prefer their online lives to their real ones. This suggests a whole host of real-world societal problems, but let’s stick to content.

Traditional content platforms like blogs, videos, and podcasts won’t go away, but growth will flatten and eventually begin to decline in the next two years as more people consume content in the metaverse.

For a content creator, here is the primary benefit of the metaverse: It breaks through algorithmic “bubbles.” Facebook, YouTube, and Google limit your worldview. The content that is exposed to you is based on your established preferences, friends, location, etc. Consumers are literally held in a content bubble.

The metaverse can break that bubble. If you offer cool new experiences, especially if you’re first and unique, consumers will give you a chance out of curiosity and the opportunity to try something new.

However, you won’t need the metaverse to engage customers. Even traditional content needs to become more …

6. Interactive

Here’s something that puzzles me. The technology exists to make content that is spectacular, interactive, and exciting. Why aren’t companies using it?

It’s possible to make the format of the content as fun and conversational as the content itself. The gold standard for interactive storytelling might be The New York Times. They lead the way in combining video, audio, maps, text, polls, and more to create immersive stories. If a newspaper can do it, why can’t a brand? If you really want to stand out today, make your content immersive and interactive.

Here are three examples that I like:

• Easter Island is eroding
• Haiti’s Lost Billions
• What makes Simone Biles the Greatest Gymnast

Winning in this world of the metaverse and interactivity will require …

7. New skills

An effective content marketer today has to be highly creative, connected to their audience, and skilled when it comes to engagement and distribution. That won’t change. But we’ll need to adapt and learn some new skills in the future.

The major shift is the move from providing information to immersive experiences and community.

This suggests a need for new talents. Creating experiences requires more than storytelling. It needs a collaborative effort like what we see in video games. There will probably be a talent shift from the gaming industry to agencies and corporate storytelling, at least I hope so because it needs to happen!

The other skillset shift will be around community, one of the most over-hyped words in social media today. True community is not an audience or a list of customers. It is an engaged group of like-minded people moving toward a shared interest or purpose. In a world longing for connection and belonging, the opportunity to create community through content will be paramount. If you have a true community, that IS your marketing.

But we won’t have to do it alone …

8. Co-creation

A trend I see gathering steam everywhere is content co-creation. Fabio Tambosi, formerly with adidas, told me that a brand is “a canvas to amplify customer voices.” How does this play out in a practical way?

We are seeing brand fans creating ads, art, and video content. In a way, the contributions of influencers are co-creation.

In theory, the technology of Web3 will put a jetpack on co-created content efforts. In fact, there will be co-created communities and even businesses. I’m not 100 percent sold on this as a trend within our two-year horizon but maybe in year three or four. The hurdle is the adoption of the technology. There has been rapid adoption among a small and energized minority but I think the real transformation may come through …

9. Creators and tokenized economies

You may know that I launched a creator token through the Rally.io platform called $RISE (as in RISE above the noise!). This is a grand experiment and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had a ringside seat to observe “the sausage being made” but I do have faith in its ultimate direction.

There is a lot of noise around Web3, creator tokens, and NFTs. It can be confusing and overwhelming. But I think the main marketing strategy is to view this trend as a way to help people belong, connect and interact with your content in a new way.

• For example, fans who hold my tokens have exclusive access to engage with me while I record The Marketing Companion podcast.
• I have set up a Discord server where people can discuss my content, and theirs. We will be co-creating. Members of the community are showing up on each other’s podcasts, etc.
• People in my community are offering $RISE coin rewards for help in content creation and promotion.
• I have proposed a new book project through my $RISE community that will enable an inside view of the process and even collaboration.

Although these ideas are new, there is an overwhelming amount of Web3 money and effort being devoted to fast-tracking these innovations. In the next two years, tokenized creator communities will begin to transform content collaboration, creation, and distribution.

PS If you want to join my learning community, just get a username from Rally.io, send it to me in an email and I’ll send you some $RISE tokens to get started.

10. New channels

A viral tweet of Gen Zers saying that “TikTok is their Google” has gained more than 125,000 retweets and likes. As the new go-to social media app, TikTok doesn’t just take space in our minds as an app for entertainment but for inspiration and education as well.

TikTok is significant and its growth rate is unprecedented. It will keep getting bigger. So, what will be next?

Social media is fracturing along demographic lines. Facebook is only growing through 55 and older. Snapchat is sort of the place for Millennials and TikTok is the home for Gen Z (in general). I think in the next two years Gen Alpha will look up at their older siblings and think “Nah. We need our own place.”

The next big channel will be driven by Gen Alpha and will also be video-oriented. It might be a little past the two-year horizon, but I think that’s where the innovation might occur.

Also, I look for high growth in Discord. This started out as a backchannel for gamers but has become the de facto community network for Web3. It’s quirky and difficult but eventually, the functionality will meet the needs of its growing fan base.

What about Twitter, a primary distribution channel for content? Honestly, whether Twitter changes hands or not, I don’t foresee major disruptions. If Twitter was easy to fix, it would have been fixed. As somebody who has been on the platform since the early days, it is actually better in terms of spam bots than in past years.

For any social media channel, the task of sorting through porn, violence, threats, and lies is intensely complex. All the social media channels will face regulatory issues in the next few years.

Final thoughts on the future of content marketing

For the last 10 years, most content creators have been in a groove, chunking out the same blog posts, podcasts, and videos every week. Unfortunately, almost all of this content is “average” or even below average against the expectations of today’s consumers. The AI bots can do a fine job creating “average” content, so these creators will need to pivot based on some of the ideas in this post.

The best content makes you think or feel deeply. It will be human (most likely) and probably driven by somebody with an established personal brand that we trust.

“Feeling” content comes from a sense of awe. To make people feel “awe,” you need to touch an internal chord that is deep and unique. That’s why experiences will be so important to the future of content marketing. The stories will be expansive and immersive.

The word I keep thinking about when I consider the future of content marketing is “audacious.” It will have to be spectacular to stand out. I don’t think bots can do that. Yet.

This is a long-ish post and yet I’m only brushing the surface of the future of content marketing. Chances are I missed something. What’s on your mind?

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. Discover his $RISE create community.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

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One of the themes of this blog over the past few months has been that in marketing terms, the pandemic was a re-set. I choose this word carefully. It is not a change, an evolution, or an aberration. We are re-starting from a new base level of consumer changes in buying behavior and expectations.

There is NO WAY to look at historical trends and project what might be next. A new study from Facebook provides a glimpse of what I’m talking about.

The report, called Industry Perspective: The Evolving Customer Experience, features insights into how customers are shopping after the pandemic. One might believe that such a study by Facebook could be self-serving, but the research looks solid and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

A few consumer changes highlighted in the report:

• A staggering 81 percent of consumers admit they have changed a shopping habit since the start of the pandemic.
• 92 percent say they will continue their new behavior in the long term.
• 66 percent of consumers say their mobile phone is their most favored shopping tool.

Another eye-opener:

… the implication is that most internet purchases are impulse buys … or at least unplanned purchases. I think this suggests an important consideration for marketing strategy. For some product purchases, content marketing and SEO would be far less important than digital advertising and influencer advocacy.

This brings up another interesting data point:

Although this is new research, I don’t think this trend is necessarily pandemic-related. It’s been brewing for a long time. I recently read a report from GWI that showed the NUMBER ONE reason Gen Z visits social media is to seek content on the latest trends from their favorite influencers. That is a “wow” revelation. Influencers rule the internet.

Can you imagine seeing statistics like this five years ago? Even three years ago? Marketing is being turned on its head! I find that incredibly energizing and fun.

And this is just the beginning. We are entering an Era of Unintended Consequences. If you’re creating a new marketing strategy based on an iteration of previous years, it’s time to blow the thing up and re-think everything.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of several best-selling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

The post Five facts indicating dramatic post-pandemic consumer changes appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

By Kiki Schirr, {grow} Contributing Columnist

To marketers, Reddit is a bit like a genie’s lamp. It’s a powerful tool and can drive huge waves of readers to a website. On the other hand, if your intentions in using Reddit aren’t pure, punishment can rain upon you in the form of user censure.

Whether you love Reddit or fear it, no marketer can ignore it.

From 2018, the Alexa.com ranking of Internet traffic has dropped the site from third in the United States to sixth. However, in this time adoption of Reddit’s mobile app has grown like wildfire. Reddit’s blog boasted 30% YoY growth in 2019 — bringing them to 430 million monthly active users. For reference, that’s about 100 million more visitors per month than Twitter.

If you’ve used Reddit before, you probably have seen their slang term: tl;dr. Tl;dr is an acronym for “too long; didn’t read,” that originated when users (known as the original poster or OP) started proceeding long explanations with a 1 sentence summary. Tl;drs helped Redditors decide if a post was worth the effort to read.

But, in the 15 years of Reddit’s tenure, technical innovation was bound to occur—and sure enough, intrepid Reddit users are creating summary bots to make tl;dr automatic.

The most ubiquitous bot, the one that runs through every link post by default, is called AutoTDLR. It runs on the SMMRY algorithm. SMMRY is a 7-step program to summarize and prioritize important sentences within text in order to shorten the overall piece.

By calling SMMRY’s API, AutoTLDR feeds the content of every link posted to Reddit through SMMRY to see if it deserves to be shortened. When the algorithm can shorten the article or post by 70%, the bot posts the result to the comments section of the OP’s link.

Should content strategists fear the uprising of summary bots?

First, just to clear all that jargon up: when someone shares your content on Reddit now, it is automatically summarized. Whether you like it or not, without any human action, the bones of your text will be posted to their page.

While this might seem bad to a marketer because it decreases traffic to a site by providing its content without a page view, this is actually a wonderful innovation for Reddit.

Redditors had always suspected that a large percentage of users were reading comments or otherwise interacting with articles without reading them. But in 2017, Reddit was shocked and dismayed when Notre Dame extrapolated that 73% of posts on Reddit have been upvoted or downvoted by users who never opened the content.

AutoTDLR bot improves Reddit by lowering the amount of users who never read beyond the headline of an article. So while you might miss the page visit, if your post is run through summary bots, the message might very well reach a larger audience than if it hadn’t.

How should content strategists respond to summary bots?

The first step to being responsive to AutoTDLR is to run your content through summary bots before publishing, every time. You can copy-paste the text into SMMRY.com and see how it would be summarized as 6 sentences, 7, 8, or more. I’d guess 6 would be the median number of sentences AutoTDLR generates on Reddit, so keep that in mind.

The first thing I noticed when I started running my past {grow} posts through SMMRY was that my obsessive habit of using 3 examples to support my statements was hurting me. The last of SMMRY’s five stated goals is to “remove excessive examples,” and it seems that I was repeatedly offending the algorithm with my writing style.

But experienced copywriters will adjust quickly. SMMRY prioritizes sentences by the number and variety of topic-related keywords prior to the ending punctuation. Marketers who are already used to writing with discreet keyword usage won’t have trouble taking the algorithm in stride.

Writing for Robots 101

If a particular important point hasn’t made the 6 chosen sentences of AutoTDLR’s summary, you can probably force it in with good editing.

First reread the piece to determine which single sentence is the most vital. Then reduce unnecessary words within that sentence. Transitions and stop words will hurt your sentence’s importance. Finally, try to make sure that there are a variety of keywords within that sentence.

Here’s a cheat code, though. You can sneak additional ideas into SMMRY’s concept of a single sentence by using punctuation other than a period. For example:

Why would you use punctuation other than a period? Gaming SMMRY’s algorithm! Because SMMRY has only been programmed to recognize the period as the end of a thought, this entire paragraph would be counted as only one sentence.

There are a few other best practices. Don’t have any information only represented within images or hyperlinks. Pictures are never included and links are not a priority. Also be aware of your use of lists as they can trigger SMMRY’s shears, too.

What are the greater implications of AI in content strategy?

AutoTDLR’s function is currently limited to Reddit. Therefore it is only a minor consideration for most marketers today. After all, Reddit’s 400 million monthly active users are only a fraction of Facebook’s 1.5 billion MAU. Unless your target audience uses Reddit, like tech users or fitness buffs do, you might have other sites prioritized.

However, you don’t need to be Michio Kaku or Ray Kurzweil to see the writing on the wall. Marketing AI in general and in particular auto summarization will become more common over time.

How will your marketing strategy respond?

You could provide a quick summary paragraph at the beginning of longer posts yourself. This executive summary would help establish the salient points in when readers were only skimming. One added benefit is that summaries will increase the frequency of your most important keywords.

Another strategy would be to use the inverted pyramid structure of newspaper journalists. First load the most important content at the top. Then be sure to sprinkle keywords throughout the rest of the piece.

To fight the robots, you must talk to humans

However, the most important thing to do when facing any rapid innovation is to talk with your customers directly.

You might already be surprised how your readers are engaging with your content. Some readers might only quickly skim through on mobile, others might autogenerate compilations of articles into e-reader files to ingest and annotate during commutes.

Summary bots and marketing AI are still fluid technologies. You will need to keep a thumb on your reader’s pulse to stay on top of trends.

Approach people that you see liking, commenting on, or sharing your articles, and before asking any personal questions be sure to thank them for their support. If they respond positively, that’s when it would be appropriate to ask if they would mind explaining how they are most likely to consume your content. Be sure to thank them again after they share their insight.

Kiki Schirr is a freelance marketer who enjoys absorbing new trends within the tech scene. Her favorite subreddit is r/ICanDrawThat, but she thinks new Redditors should also check out r/ShowerThoughts and r/AnimalsBeingDerps. She is most easily reached via Twitter.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

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I was challenged by my friends at Dell to write a post on what it would mean to be “Future Ready” … How do we prepare and remain relevant for the next 5-10 years of business?

I’m up for the challenge and here is my first insight:  Don’t worry about Ello.

But seriously.

OK. Here are the trends I will be looking for and a few career-antidotes to make sure you are lean, mean and Future Ready!

1. The fourth marketing revolution

Here are the three digital epochs we have been through so far: Presence (powered by the founding of the Internet, Discovery (powered by search engines), and Utility and Service (powered by social/mobile).

The Fourth Epoch will be Immersion, which will be powered by wearable technology and augmented reality. The marketing emphasis will be to get people out of their self-imposed (or Google-imposed) content filter bubbles by getting them to try something fun, bold and immersive in augmented reality.

Future Ready strategy: There is always an advantage for first-movers in each of these epochs. So … be first. The blending of the 2D and 3D worlds is already happening and will probably start to go mainstream in marketing by the end of 2016 or early 2017. Don’t be taken by surprise. Start studying this topic.

2. The marketing opportunity of malignant complexity

Let’s face it. Nobody really understands how the Internet works. It has grown so large and the growth in its complexity is not linear. With complexity comes vulnerability to hackers and the bad guys. If you think the last 12 months of corporate/international hacking was bad, this is just the beginning. It is going to get much, much worse and very soon.

Future Ready strategy: Remember those oh-so-simple days of differentiating your product through its new lemon scent or stylish floral packaging? The big consumer selling point in the future is going to be SAFETY. You need to spend whatever it takes NOW to put a digital buffer around your business. New businesses will spring up around Internet hacking security insurance policies.

3. The re-birth of content

The Internet is exciting but content is still rather … boring. Let’s face it, we read a blog post like we read a newspaper 50 years ago. We watch YouTube, consuming content passively like we did watching “I Love Lucy” in the 1960s. All that will be changing in the next few years. Shortly, the Internet will surround us like the air that we breathe. We won’t have to worry about a wifi connection or even having an “opener” like a computer or tablet. We will be able to live in our content, touch it, smell it, be it.

Future Ready strategy: At least two Fortune 500 companies I have visited already have an augmented reality department, exploring practical applications for the technology and even driving the development. It’s not too soon for you to be learning about this as well. And it’s not going to be expensive to get into this. We will have crowd-sourced AR platforms like we have WordPress for blogs. Also, we are near the era of bot-generated content and it will be nearly indistinguishable from human writing.

4. Big Data disappears

Well … it won’t exactly disappear. It will still be there. But it won’t be as intimidating as it is now.  We will simply verbalize a question, even a complex question, and get an answer back. We won’t need data scientist or statisticians. The answer will just be there for us. In fact, it will even tell you the right questions to ask to propel your marketing forward!

Future ready strategy: This is an easy one. You won’t have to do anything. This is already happening now, in fact. Amazing new services are popping up every month it seems. Stephen Wolfram (of Wolfram Alpha fame) unveiled new services at SXSW this year that mines all available public data they can find and answers complex questions about the environment, weather, popular culture, and more using common English inquiries. The bucking bronco of Big Data is being broken before our eyes.

5. Career shifts

There’s a lot of buzz going around about a massive loss of knowledge worker jobs in the next decade. I don’t necessarily see that happening for marketing but we will need a shift in job skills needed to keep up and compete.

Future ready strategy: Last week a college student from a major university came up to me after a speech and said “I learned more about social media from your one hour speech than I learned in four years of college.”

This is not necessarily a reflection on my speech but a view of the deplorable situation in marketing education today. I just lectured at a national university that had no classes in digital marketing. How is that possible?

I’m convinced companies are going to have re-train most of these kids when they graduate. Here are the skills you need to compete: Statistics and analytics, digital marketing and advertising strategies, content creation skills, and community management … in addition to the marketing basics of course.

What do you think? What are you doing to future-proof yourself?

This post was written as part of the Dell Insight Partners program, which provides news and analysis about the evolving world of tech. For more on these topics, visit Dell’s thought leadership site PowerMore. Dell sponsored this article, but the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dell’s positions or strategies.

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There are so many shifting sands on the marketing landscape that it might seem overwhelming. But there are two trends that deserve to be on your radar screen and that is the topic of the latest scintillating edition of The Marketing Companion.

After Tom and I enjoy a non-traditional gift exchange for the one-year anniversary of the podcast, we dissect what we believe to be important trends to consider moving forward:

1) The use of “big data” to actually predict mega-trends and market outcomes

2) 3D Printing.

The second one might seem a little strange to list as a marketing trend but if you listen to the logic on the podcast I think you’ll agree that this could have a huge impact on cost and price, delivery, availability, sourcing, distribution models … well, just about everything marketers should care about.

What’s that you say? You want to get to the freaking podcast and fast? Well here it is, with no further delay!

Or click here for episode 25 of The Marketing Companion

Other Ways to Listen to this Podcast:

• • • Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe in iTunes
    • Click here for the show’s RSS feed – for Android listeners.
    • Find the podcast on Stitcher

Illustration courtesy BigStock.com

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A couple times a year I get the opportunity to chat with Mitch Joel on his industry-leading podcast, Six Pixels of Separation.  Some have called us the Odd Couple of Marketing and while we may disagree at times, you are always sure to get a lively and thought-provoking discussion when the two of us get together.

Mitch is an extraordinary thinker and the author of one of my favorite business books, Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It.  Through his podcast, agency, and speaking schedule, he gets to interact with some of the top marketing minds in the world.

Last week we went head-to-head on the future of digital marketing and it was one of the most energizing professional conversations I have had in a long time. Mitch Joel is a master interviewer and he always pushes me in new directions.

I just had to share this interview with you:

The future of digital marketing podcast

I would also invite you to weigh-in on the conversation. What is your reaction to our vision of where the industry is going? The problems? The opportunities? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comment section!

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

The post Riffing on the future of digital marketing with Mitch Joel appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I have been writing and speaking on some new ideas about where I think social media and digital marketing will be going over the next few years. It seems pretty clear to me … let’s see if you agree.

To explain my premise, allow me to provide a brief description of where we have BEEN, which will lead to where we are GOING.

The first three digital revolutions

So far, we have seen three distinct phases or revolutions of digital marketing. These revolutions have not replaced each other but have built on the progress and moved us forward.

Our first digital revolution occurred at the dawn of the web in the late 1990s. Our business priority was simply establishing a website. Once we had a site, it needed to be discovered. Enabled by Google, our business priority turned to search engine optimization (in fact a $26 billion industry was created!). An emphasis on “Discovery” was the second digital revolution.

Today, we are in the third digital revolution, which has been enabled by social media and mobile technology. Our business goal in this phase is to help and serve people at their point of need, whether they are looking for a movie review, the best price on a laptop, or product information at the point of sale at a retail store.

By the way, at the edge of each of these revolutions, life becomes more difficult for marketers. If you were the first in your industry with a website, you had an advantage until your competitors caught on. Likewise, if you were the first to crack the code on SEO, Oh Happy Day! You led the search results as long as your competitors were sucking on ether.

Today, the world is more difficult because competitors are also fueling their helpful presence with content. If they were first and dominant in their niche, good news, good news, good news. But if the niche is filled, they are probably in Content Shock.

The fourth revolution

In the next 18-24 months we will be entering the fourth digital revolution. This will be an era of explosive marketing creativity and innovation enabled by wearable technology and augmented reality.

The impact of this development will be profound … perhaps more profound than the Internet itself. The way we learn, discover, connect and entertain ourselves will be dramatically altered.

Imagine a world where we are untethered from devices and the strength of a wi-fi connection. The Internet will surround us like the air that we breathe – a digital layer on top of the “real world” in any place we choose. Every book, every wall — even a package label — will come alive with interactive possibilities.

This will be an era of marketing without boundaries and I think it will be fueled by a marketing emphasis on fun, immersive experiences.

Marketing without boundaries

My thinking goes like this … Today in our “third revolution” based on “utility” as a marketing strategy, we have severe limits. Once we help our customers, how do we continue to engage and grow with them on a daily basis? “OK, I’ve bought my car. Thanks for the useful information. See you in five years when I am ready to buy again.”

But there is virtually no limit to a person’s desire to have fun. In fact, we would rather play games and have fun more than anything (there is a lot of psychology behind this that I can’t get into in this short post).

I think the winners in the next revolution will be creating fun, immersive experiences on a daily basis for their customers. Like every other marketing phase, early adopters will flourish and those late to the game will struggle. Maybe five years from now I will be writing about “Fun Shock” – we will be overwhelmed by competing opportunities to interact. “Minority Report” will seem quaint.

What do you think of these implications?  What are your thoughts on this next frontier, or perhaps more appropriately, the next FUNtier?

Original illustration copyright Schaefer Marketing Solutions

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions. IBM had no editorial control of this content.

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By Mark Schaefer

Over the past few years I have been giving a speech about the “six layers” of customer engagement. It has been a hit with my audiences and it occurred to me that I have never shared this idea with you. So, let’s change that.

We are in the process of creating increasingly complex layers of digital distance between our companies and our customers. Mastering these six layers represent both enormous challenges and opportunities …

In the beginning

Historically, we dealt with customers face-to-face, with a trusted word and a firm handshake. Then in the late 1990s, with the creation of our first company websites, we took a one way ticket AWAY from these personal relationships and created the first, permanent digital divide between ourselves and our customers.

Year by year, this divide grew as companies found ways to cut costs and create customer delight by moving more and more self-service options to the web. We literally raced away from our personal relationships.

The second digital layer emerged just a few years ago as nerdy chat rooms bloomed into social networks. For many people, this became the preferred way to communicate, discover products and services, and connect with customer service. Time on websites went down, time on social sites exploded.

So for a business, we must now figure out how to connect with people in this new information eco-system and compel them to love us so much that they want to investigate our website, which is where the business takes place. After all this “socializing” we still need to get people to buy something right?

The third layer

The third layer is a social layer around all the other social platforms, and that is Facebook. You see, for many people today Facebook IS the Internet.

Yes, people love Flickr, but Facebook is the number one photo site in the world. We love YouTube, but millions of hours of YouTube videos are watched every day THROUGH Facebook. Does it seem like there is yet another layer going on here?  There is. Even if we do a great job populating the social web with our content, that content is increasingly viewed through Facebook. So, our businesses need to be there.

But we’re just getting started.

The mobile layer

Today, more than half of Facebook’s users access the site over a mobile device … and that is increasing month by month. So even if we have a great website, even if we are populating the social web and optimizing for Facebook, we now need to do it in a way that works on a screen that fits in the palm of your hand.

Mobile represents the fourth layer between our customers and the money we would like to liberate from their wallets.

All of this is probably familiar to you and hopefully your business is already implementing a web design that is responsive for mobile. If your head is spinning about the rate of change so far, you’re in for an even greater shock. We are on the cusp of the most rapid and disruptive technological change in history – augmented reality. There will be a digital layer over the “real world” and the Internet will surround us like the air that we breathe.

Now everything changes

The Google Glass project is just the first volley in a revolution that will change the way we connect, learn, shop, communicate, and entertain ourselves. In fact, it will touch almost everything in our daily lives.  It is not the new Internet. It will be something far more important and foundational — it will be more like the new electricity. The widespread adoption of augmented reality, first in glasses and then in contact lenses, will transform every way we connect and communicate. Your business will need to master this layer and all of its implications.

The virtual layer will liberate us from devices and open up dazzling new opportunities to create new businesses, new applications, new customer connections.

Now that we have a ubiquitous digital layer across the world, what do we do with it? Why, we have fun of course …

The sixth layer of engagement

People love to play games more than anything. The average World of Warcraft player spends six hours at the game. Six hours. Wow. What if a business could tap into just a little of that!

Smart businesses are trying to figure out how to do exactly that. There is a whole theory of game science that creates these addictions and it can certainly be applied to marketing.

Social, mobile, location, augmented reality … it all enables the game layer. Why not turn your customer engagements into a game with levels, achievements, and rewards? Today, the popular mantra is to create “utility.” But I think there is a limited amount of engagement a company can provide through some useful electronic connection. But there is no limit to the amount of fun that can be provided. We are a few years away from an economy based on fun.

Implications

If you think this through, and I hope you do, there are some important implications beyond the six layers:

1) Customers are going to leave a data trail on every level. The companies that can mine this stream will create powerful competitive advantage. That’s why, increasingly, marketing = math.

2) Not every customer will engage with you on every layer. That means your channel strategies are going to multiply.

3) With the premium on fun and entertainment, this means good news and rising rates for the best content creators and game developers.

4) Bring plenty of money. I don’t think creating an augmented reality customer service department is going to be cheap.

5) For the companies that move first in these spaces there will be an unparalleled opportunity to create customer connection and loyalty.

Whew. Is your head ready to explode?

I would sincerely love your thoughts on this concept. What makes sense? What did I miss?

(Warning: shameless self-promotion ahead) If these ideas tantalize you, why not hire me to give you the full meal deal through a speech at your next company or industry conference? We’ll have a lot of fun with these ideas.

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