Who would have thought, not that long ago, that we would be as close as we are now. Who would have thought that we could live stream a soccer game over internet, around the world. But yet last night I watched Ottawa Fury play New York Cosmos, in Long Island New York, from my bed, on my iPad. Overshare, I know, but this is what our world is like now, and its about to go even further.
In the future, the world is going to be even smaller. Our world is already very interconnected. at the touch of a finger we can connect with things happening locally and internationally and have conversations about it with people around the world. This will go even further. What does this mean for business? Customer bases will grow, but marketing plans will change drastically, just as an example. Our social identities will travel with us from platform to platform, allowing companies to gather even more information on us. Big Brother watching, even when we aren’t streaming it…
You can already see it. Many places on the web when you are logging in, you can create a new profile, with another new password, or you can log in using your Facebook account. Not only is this helpful to you (one less password to remember) but it also helps Facebook and the companies using it for marketing. Now, Facebook also has data on what you are using beyond their website.
Tracking
Speaking of data, tracking what your potential customers are doing and thinking will evermore important. The regular twitter user can already track the performance of their tweets, determining the effectiveness of your twitter presence. For business, this will allow them to more efficiently target their marketing making it more effective.
With the advent of more and more wearable products such as the Google Glasses and the Apple Watch, there is a whole new level of data that can be tracked. Right now we can track our heart rate during a run to determine the effectiveness of the outing, but who says that a company couldn’t track your heart rate when you watch advertising to determine its effectiveness?
Buying
Soon you will be able to make purchases directly from your social media account. Pinterest has already said it will be doing this, allowing people to pin something for later or purchase it right now. On a company Facebook page, a new button has popped up. As you can see below, on the Ottawa Sport Council Facebook page you can book a spot in their webinar this week, right from their page.
This past weekend I attending a Sport Summit here in Ottawa. One of the sessions was a basics on crowdfunding. Much of what they talked about comes from the business world, but is translatable to the sport world. Crowdfunding is not only used to build a new rink in the far north but also to gather start up funds for your new idea. The speaker talked about marketing your cause properly to make it profitable. In the new age of the internet, he explained, this usually mean videos, tweets and constant updates about what is happening. He also made a good point about video. he said you need to have a hook in the first 30 seconds of the video, and to not let the video go over 2 minutes. Both referring to how short our attention spans have become.
The joys of the internet mean that your company could be based here in Ottawa, but be funded by a person in Toronto, Florida, or Hong Kong. You also may not know this person. They just simply saw a post shared by a friend.
Attending