Look at Where the Eyeballs Are

Chris Abraham, President - Abraham & Harrison

I was sitting in a cafe with the respected social media expert and practitioner Chris Abraham recently in Clarendon, just outside Washington, D.C., and we were purposefully people watching. Our reason – nearly everyone who walked by had their eyes down, checking something on an iPhone, Blackberry or some other type of wireless PDA.

People were not looking around or at a friend who may have been walking alongside … they were not look at newsstands or signs or store windows. They were looking down, reading something online.

Our behavior as a society is similar everywhere else. It’s a sign of our times. We are enraptured by the mobile gadget revolution.

Consider these startling statistics from Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics:

• One billion iPhone apps were downloaded by iPhone users in the first 9 months.
• Americans have access to one billion Web pages.
• Newspaper circulation is down 7 million in the last 25 years but unique visitors to online news sources are up 30 million in the last 5 years.
• More video has been viewed at YouTube than on all of the TV networks in the last 60 years.
• Barack Obama raised $55 million in one month during his 2008 campaign … all through online social media.
• Twitter was a primary means of communications between ordinary citizens in Iran during the contested 2009 presidential elections.

And, Google’s research shows:

• 25% of search results for the top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
• 34% of the 95 million bloggers in America post opinions about new products and services … and they have influence.
• 78% of consumers online trust peer recommendations.
• Only 14% of Americans trust advertisements.

Here’s the reality:

We no longer search for the news, the news finds us … on our PDAs.

So … where does this leave us as professional communicators? When advising clients, the focus needs to be to listen first, stop selling and get into the online conversation. Share information, news and stories. Become an online resource.

Companies and organizations must act more like storytellers, party planners, aggregators and content providers than traditional advertisers or promoters.

The outcome will mean the difference between a company that stands in the spotlight or a company that’s relegated to the shadows.