1. Conversation is the king, not Content.

Today your content is mashed, re-created, glanced over, or just summarised elsewhere. You might be the content creator, but someone remixing and reusing the content more intelligently is actually reaping more benefits out of it. Stumpleupon, Digg are just few examples. They link to your articles, and will receives hundreds of comments and may even send you a spike of traffic for a day or two, but the conversation remains just there.

Conversation is the king, not Content

It used to be the content, but now it’s the conversation. Do focus on content, but also think of new ways which can actually produce more conversations around your content.

2. Engagement is the new Marketing

Engagement is the new Marketing

An engaged user is more valuable than a passive user. He spends more time, is ready to try out more things and is more favourable to share his finds with his friends. Getting your message across one engaged user is more valuable than getting to dozens of passive users. The old metrics of TRP ratings, eyeballs and rankings are all going to die or won’t remain effective in calculating ROI of an ad campaign in very near future.

Today most of the marketing managers understand that the real value from a customer not only comes from money transactions but the way he can influence others in doing the same. Converting customers into your brand ambassadors can extend their relationships to their peers and friends.

It has been never easy before for companies to provide right tools, environment and engaging with the customers at every level. The traditional media is losing its effectiveness as more and more people are ignoring or plainly dismissing marketing messages.

3. Money follows Attention

Money follows Attention

Attention makes a brand big or small. You can manufacture anything but attention. You have to earn it. In today’s information overload world where user is bombarded with choices, he is growing impatient every moment. You are spending thousands of dollars for that prime spot on TV, but he is fast forwarding them on his TIVO and Tata Sky Plus. The remote is becoming a nightmare for sponsors and advertisers.

To get a user’s attention, you have to provide two things relevancy and engagement. Facebook might be losing millions at the moment, but in terms of getting attention it’s far ahead. All they have to figure out is how to make ads relevant so that they don’t interrupt user’s attention.

4. Participation not Consumption

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Today a user can be more active than just consuming the content. He can participate in various ways from co-creating the content, adding his viewpoints, voting for the content, tagging and to sharing the content.

Today a user is becoming a content too. His social profile, thoughts, pictures, videos are not only created by his friends but by a set of new virtual peers. The whole meaning of content and copyright is changing.

Though the problem of Participation inequality (where only a fraction of all users participate) will always exist but sites which can find ways to increase participation will become even more important in the socially charged era.

5. Free, Piracy and Freemium as new business models

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The biggest problem content producers face today is not about piracy or copy theft but obscurity. You no longer can build walls and still make money. You have to let the users come, consume your content for free and once they become your loyal users, you can make money through many different emerging revenue models. By giving users power to access, remix and share your content, you are gaining their loyalty and support.

Many start-ups have made loads of cash by giving away their basic services free, and only charging their loyal customers for value added or enhanced version of their services. Skype, Flickr, 37 Signals are some of its prime example.

The co-chair of Disney's board has recognized piracy as a "business model" to be competed with, instead of a war to be fought on Disney's customers:

New York Times who just made 10-12 million dollars from their paid archives where quick to recognize their mistake and made 100 million in just 2 quarters by making it freely accessible.