Seeing Around Corners. Watching the Trends.
Recently, I had the opportunity to be captured on video riffing on a few Internet trends. And since riffing only served to energize me about these issues, I thought I might add some additional dimension to my 90 seconds of comments. Watch me and read me.
The Internet is Evolving
In 1999 science fiction author William Gibson said in an NPR interview, “…the future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” Gison’s point is driven home every day working with our clients. For many, their impression of the internet or the way they use it is rooted in something I was doing 5 or 6 years ago. Their future is my past. Or when I attend a high technology conference like last week’s Drupalcon, I spend my evenings catching up on some fantastic new way the Internet is used to deliver information and services. In this case, the technologists’ present is MY future. While we are all at different places in experiencing the Internet, most certainly it continues to be a moving target. If you are building a website, you want to take your cue from the future to insure the greatest relevance. To do otherwise is to build early obsolescence into your web presence.
Internet Devices are Evolving
The place and manner in which we access the Internet is evolving. Mobile device browsers are taking their place alongside Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox & Chrome as ways people access information on the Internet. But that’s not all that is changing. People who visit your website through a mobile device are looking for different content than the visitors with their computer. Instead of a browse to the home page and meandering from there, the mobile user is digging for some very specific information, not a generalists view. It is important that you address the questions, “Is your content sufficient for the kinds of inquiries a mobile visitor seeks? Is your content management system capable of delivering that information? Is your presentation layer – that which people see – as friendly on a mobile device as it appears on a big monitor?
It’s About Your Internet Presence, Not Your Website
In a discussion with a prospect, I noted to him that a search for his name didn’t yield his bio on his website. Now that was, indeed, a problem in itself. But not my point. What the search revealed was this person being represented on several industry sites, an association site, and social media sites. It is no longer (never was) sufficient to simply define the Internet marketing task as building and managing a website. Rather, it is about managing the Internet presence of your organization and the people who represent it.


