UPDATE/THE POINT:  One, Edelman PR has some of the best minds in social media right now.  Period.  Two, Rubel’s article points out a pattern/mistakes big companies make when a new medium is emerging/taking the throne aka becomes the center of attention.  That mistake – applying old business models and practices to a new genre/lane of communication and business.   Third, have and will continue to embark on a new age of consumerism.  This means talking, treating, acting, dancing – whatever the ____ you want to call it – but doing a different dance with consumers.  They i.e. consumers i.e. people you want to buy your crap are going to be tighter on how they spend their dollars so you better be talking some real sh** or no one’s going to give two sh**.  Enjoy the read.

Clearly we are right in the middle of a major shift in our time. Having spent the past ten years working our way out of the shadows of the 20th century – we are just getting started on what the future holds when it comes to how we consume information, communicate, purchase products and more.

Right now we are in the middle of the latest evolutionary phase of digital media. The hyper active digital media users and experts are harnessing what social media really is. We are seeing new businesses, products and marketing campaigns take form in front of our eyes.

How do companies position themselves for success in this rapidly changing media environment?

A great place to start is to follow these two awesome digital execs at Edelman PR, Steve Rubel and Dave Armano.  Both recently acknowledged changes going on right now in some recent articles they posted up online.

In Steve Rubel’s It’s Time to Prepare for the End of the Web as we know it he acknowledges the web will come to an end as mobile takes over:

According to Morgan Stanley, within five years global internet consumption on mobile devices will surpass the same activity on PCs. This sounds like good news. It won’t be enough just to build branded mobile applications that repurpose content across all of the different platforms. That’s like newspapers taking the print experience and replicating it on the web as they tried back in the 1990s. Rather, we will need to rethink, remix and repackage information for an entirely different modality than platforms of yore.

Steve accurately points out that companies shouldn’t make the same mistakes when it comes to the mobile revolution that old media companies did in the 90s by replicating their print format and business model and applying it to the web platform. As we have seen recently – repeating old business models within a new format equates to a major fail.

In Dave Armano’s Why marketing won’t look like marketing in the post-conumer era states:

Providing better products, better experiences and providing indisputable value through things like services will get the right people saying the right things about you. This means there’s going to be a Dawrinism effect at play here. Inferior brands, services and marketing strategies are going to fall on deaf ears and wither away while superior brands with more relevant and meaningful ways of connecting with their customers will prevail.

The point?

The rules of the game have and will continue to rapidly change.

Don’t be a business lagger – be a business leader. Pay attention to your target audience. Take in the entire landscape. Create products that offer value. Listen to your tribe. Incentivize them to participate in the conversation. Maybe then – consumers will buy product and thank your company for making their lives a little easier in these trying times.

An era of change requires one to be constantly changing within themselves, within their organization – this includes small and large businesses, no one is immune.

Lastly, if you want to learn more from these two maestros then see this great deck on Six Digital Trends to watch out for. It. Is. Sick.