You may or may not be running a program on Foursquare, but chances are your customers are checking in and reviewing your products and services on location. Wouldn't it be smart to analyze these trends across multiple check-in services? You could find the optimal path to offer coupons and run promotional in-store programs.
You don't have to worry about your Mom joining Google+ and using it with the same enthusiasm as she does Facebook. She will. Because Google+'s next version will combine social clues from peer-to-peer interactions with search recommendations and possibly reviews. Users will be able to go seamlessly from conversation to search and purchase.
One of the most important things to note about Google+ right now is the way Google is soliciting feedback about the various features from early adopters. We are witnessing a massive focus group and a public usability test. In time, we may see some features dropped, some new ones evolve and others tweaked. Mobile extensions are a given. Among these iterations, Google is likely to start pushing targeted ads and offer product recommendations. Consumer reviews will be an organic part of the process as people post about what they have seen, what they have done, search and purchase will be a click away.
Thanks to the plus platform, Google added a whole new data stream to its wealth of information on search behavior. Soon, it will know not only what we are curious about, but also how we get to those questions. It will have all the elements of a powerful, socially driven, product/service recommendation engine.
I've been under a rock - admittedly. I was away for a few weeks, first on vacation, then transitioning into a new job at NM Incite - a Nielsen / McKinsey company. While switching gears from PR to consulting, I am also steering my blog's focus to be about the future.
Everybody wonders 'what's next?' The best way to answer that is to read between the lines today and put pieces of the puzzle together. dotWOM will not only be about trend watching (e.g., Google+ launched), but it will be about trend discovery (i.e., what Google+ means for social search and commerce). It will tell its readers what changes and innovations we can expect to see in the industry, based on consumer behavior, mergers, brand initiatives.
