My previous blog post about the psychology of social commerce was inspired and pretty much directed by one of the chapters from Brian Solis’ latest book: “What’s the Future of Business?: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences” (#WTF). I mentioned there that I was going to share with you my impressions from the entire book and this is what this post is about. (To see how his other work and books have inspired me, check out this blog post here too.)

Brian Solis has a way with words. His thoughts are so brilliant and well put that I find it extremely difficult to rephrase them (bear in mind, I am not native in English), so I’m never happy with the outcome. Which is why I chose to share with you my favourite quotes from his book. I hope you enjoy them! And please do tell me which ones are your favourite. Feel free to suggest more in addition to the list I’ve compiled! :)

Here we go:

Over the weekend I went to visit my friend in Stuttgart, so while on the train I finally got to read Brian Solis’ latest book “What's the Future of Business?: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences” (abbreviated as WTF – cool, right?). Of course, I read it in one go and I felt inspired by it as I have with each and every his work. Before I share with you my impressions about the book though, I would like to show you today just one particular thing I found absolutely fascinating – an infographic explaining what drives shopping decisions.

In chapter 12 of WTF, Brian Solis argues that to design experiences and trigger emotions brands have to have an understanding of social sciences and the psychology of engagement in order to make sense of the attitude and behaviour of their target audiences.

To help us develop that understanding of “the A.R.T. of Engagement (actions, reactions, and transactions)” Brian Solis presents a rather interesting infographic by TabJuice that was inspired by Robert Cialdini’s work about the Six Principles of Influence and visualises six common brain triggers that influence consumer’s shopping decisions.

Believe it or not, social media has been around for over a decade. Considered just a fad at the beginning, it has invaded our personal and professional lives to a massive extent. Still, the biggest difficulty for brands and people working in social media is to understand its rules. The sheer advice in the form of articles and blog posts available on the Internet doesn’t make that ‘mission’ particularly easy.

We read and hear all the time “follow the trends (e.g. visuals and infographics, Pinterest and Instagram)”, “do that, don’t do that”, “focus on that, ignore that” – oh my! Checking out a few of those articles in a row doesn’t really make it clearer; you get even more confused.

Therefore, when I came across the infographic you can see at the end of this post I was yet again impressed with the power of visuals and how they manage to transmit a number of messages in a quick and easy to understand, yet creative and fun way. Well done to Jeremy Waite for compiling the rules and creating the infographic!

The truth is though,

Many companies, especially multinational organisations, have been putting some serious efforts to adopt sustainability into their operations and supply chains. As my dissertation has shown, this move towards sustainable development has largely been due to increased stakeholder expectations and the need to secure a safe future for the next generations by tackling the major planetary issues we are facing today. Admittedly however, the challenge in the 21st century sustainability is not the lack of technology, but the need to transform consumer behaviour, which can only be overcome by educating society and facilitating knowledge. This means that businesses today are not only required to effectively communicate their efforts, but to also make them relevant to the community and to involve and engage people to take action.

This is indeed easier said than done. But, a relatively new avenue for communications in the realm of corporate sustainability provides social media – not just technology, but a significant shift in the way we communicate, interact and build relationships.

At the beginning of the emergence of social media companies were rather sceptical and it took a while before social media was properly adopted into marketing communications and PR (although this is still not the case in each and every organisation). We can observe a similar thing when it comes to using social media for sustainability – leaders find it difficult to see the potentials and to really make it work.

As I am very passionate about this topic and I firmly believe that social media is going to play a significant role in building a sustainable future, I would like to share 44 facts and figures from various studies that are included in my dissertation and that back up my beliefs. This way, I am hoping to progress the conversation about social media’s power for sustainability. I would love to hear what you think.

So, here are the 44 facts and figures businesses cannot ignore in their sustainability efforts and comms:

Due to my internet saga with o2 I haven’t been able to write and publish much content lately. (By the way I am supposed to get everything installed on 23 September, so fingers crossed!)

There have been a few new things in the social media area that I’ve wanted to talk about, so today I am going to focus on the ‘biggest’ news of all - the new Facebook guidelines and rules for running promotions and contests. You could say that it’s not really news anymore, as it happened a few weeks ago, but it’s still worth discussing and providing some useful information to those of you who haven’t yet had the chance to familiarise themselves with the subject.

From now on Facebook pages are not required to use third-party applications to run competitions, promotions, draws or giveaways, but can simply do so on their Timeline, i.e. Wall.

Basically fans can now enter a contest or promotion by: