Feature
Top Customer Experience Article
Online communities act as central hubs. Cloud computing moves to the forefront. Chief Digital Officers emerge. These and other factors will shape the face of digital marketing in 2014. Take a look at Vala Afshar's latest article -- The Future of Digital Marketing: 8 Trends -- to find out what other trends we should expect.
Whether it is with mobile, cloud or social technologies, marketers must embrace digital if they want to be relevant to today's customers. But this can only be achieved by working closely with IT to fulfill the goals of the business. As we move towards 2014, the digital transformation of today’s organizations will only accelerate, with several trends driving this forward."
The Contenders
This week's contenders include:
- Oracle WebCenter Sites Review: Strengths, Weaknesses by Curtis Fox
- Why Apple Needs Topsy in a $200 Million Way by Virginia Backaitis
- 10 Ways Amazon AWS Makes Building Enterprise Solutions Sexy by Virginia Backaitis
- Content Strategy: When Content Audits are Not a Good Idea by Gerry McGovern
- Managing Indirect Sales Channel Relationships: CRM Falls Short by Chris Bucholtz
- 3 Practical Ways to Boost Your Google+ Profile by Petr Passinger
- Splunk Turns to LucidWorks to Provide Context to Big Data by Virginia Backaitis
- Smarter Than Siri: Yahoo Acquires SkyPhrase by Virginia Backaitis
- The Silliness of #CyberMonday and Insanity of #BlackFriday by Ian Ritter
- Reflections on Time: The Race for Competitive Advantage by Deb Miller
- The New Marketing and the Mirror of Erised by Deb Lavoy
- Social in 2014: The Name Doesn't Matter, What We Do With It Matters by Mitch Lieberman
Top Social Business Article
2014 is upon us -- which makes it the perfect time to decide what side of the future you are on. Do you believe "any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous" or "the past is the new future"? Stowe Boyd shares his thoughts in 2014 Predictions: What Side of the Future Are You On?
So I will teeter between these extremes, looking ahead to 2014, willing to be ridiculous in the cause of cracking people's heads open, but realizing that there's still a great deal to pull out of the baggage of the immediate past."
The Contenders
- 2013 in Review: Intranet Deja Vu All Over Again by Stephen Fishman
- 9 Ways to Avoid 'Meeting Mania' by Tom Lowery
Top Information Management
Tom Wentworth warns against "history repeating itself" 15 years after CIO's put themselves into unnecessary financial burden by buying expensive packaged deals for their digital project needs. He sees the parallel as CMOs consider these one stop shop suites, rather than agile applications. Before making the mistake again, Tom Wentworth offers some advice on Breaking Bad Habits in IT: Avoid the Suite Trap:
CIO budgets are shifting toward the CMO, encouraging large marketing technology providers to recreate the types of suites big tech companies introduced years ago, targeted specifically to CMOs. These large packages pieced together from individual applications that guide every process of planning, creating and implementing marketing campaigns do not offer the dynamic solution marketers need in today’s digital age. I’d like to provide some practical reasons why this new generation of CMOs should avoid the vendor suite trap, and thus avoid the same mistakes CIOs long before them made."
The Contenders
Rounding up our features from this week:
- Reflections on IT Risk, Technology, Risk Management, Internal Audit by Norman Marks
- Should CIOs Report to Marketing? Ridiculous? It's Beginning to Happen by Virginia Backaitis
Title image by Firma V (Shutterstock).