It got me thinking a lot about how we talk about apps, services and generally what’s next – particularly in digital marketing. It seems to make sense that rather than to continually chase after the latest toy or technology, digital brands and the planners behind them should start first with values. Not unlike a solid strategy leads to the right tactics, or even how form follows function, so too should a digital marketing experience be built on the right values.

Starting with the values – the constants that remain unchanged and resonate in ways that matter most – provides a guiding framework for thinking about what’s next in digital marketing.

Is this a big idea? Maybe. Maybe not, but I like how it changes our thinking. So I thought I’d put together a quick deck on this principle and submit it to the AAAA Transformers Program for consideration.

I think there are others that have done a wonderful job discussing many of these themes as well, including big ideas in what’s next in marketing and branded utilities, but I thought I’d share a couple ideas to the larger conversation in hopes that they add a little extra value.

Feedback would be lovely.

1. The web is transitioning from mere interactivity to a more dynamic, real-time web where read-write functions are heading towards balanced synchronicity. The real-time web, as I have argued in the past, is the next logical step in the Internet’s evolution.
2. The complete disaggregation of the web in parallel with the slow decline of the destination web.
3. More and more people are publishing more and more “social objects” and sharing them online. That data deluge is creating a new kind of search opportunity.

Via Ed Cotton

• Twitter can be useful for keeping up with friends, but businesses are also finding ways to employ it. Daniel Rothamel, a real-estate agent from Palmyra, Va., follows feeds from more than 1,000 people, including neighbors and fellow real-estate professionals. The 27-year-old searches the site for people who indicate that they are seeking real-estate help in his area; once he used the service to exchange messages with a potential customer, who later changed his plans.
• Mr. Rothamel doesn’t just seek out professional advice, though. He once used the service to help identity some flowers growing in his front yard. He snapped a photo of them, uploaded the image to a Web site, posted a link to the site through Twitter and asked for help. Someone quickly responded, warning him not to pull the flowers up — they were daylilies and would bloom soon enough.
• Other users are flocking to Twitter as an easy self-publishing and promotional tool. People are using it to build up their professional reputation by sharing updates about their work in a less time-intensive way than starting a blog. Andrew Flusche, an attorney in Fredericksburg, Va., recently used Twitter to promote a webinar he was holding on trademark registration. The session got 15 attendees, compared with seven for a subsequent seminar he didn’t promote on the service.
• Twitter is already spreading quickly at several companies, however. Online shoe retailer Zappos.com Inc., of Henderson, Nev., has more than 450 employees using the service to communicate with one another on topics ranging from politics to marketing plans. Zappos Chief Executive Tony Hsieh kicked off the trend by launching his own personal Twitter account, and continues to blast out updates about his activities to his more than 14,000 followers.
• Some companies are using the service as a way to reach out to customers. Frank Eliason, director of digital care for Comcast Corp., often resolves dozens of customer-service issues a day over Twitter. Several months ago, employees of the cable operator started mining public Twitter accounts to detect issues people were having with their service, from faulty DVRs to troubled Internet connections.

As Twitter continues to find it’s way into the mainstream (no doubt aided by the trend of celebrities like Britney Spears joining Twitter), it will be interesting to see how other business make Twitter useful.

For more inspired thinking on how to successfully start using Twitter for business, you won’t want to miss these posts from Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang.

And of course you can follow me at Twitter.com/rmoede.

“A 15-year veteran NBC cameraman, Jim follows the US President wherever he goes. In recent years that has included all continents except South America and perhaps Antarctica. He’s passionate and proud of his old media work, but he understands and accepts the world is changing. “I am quickly becoming a dinosaur,” he reflects in our interview, and for that reason he has become immersed in social media.

Not only does he believe his social media work benefits him, he talks about how his individual efforts are helping NBC. People see him through social media as a human representation of the network. He knows at least one person who has returned to watching NBC news because of Jim’s Social media activities.”

Last night Iron Man opened here in several theaters around DC, and most of the Tweets getting thrown around were by folks eager to head to the theaters or trying to meet up with friends at the advanced screening of the Marvel movie.

Within seconds of the movie finishing, the reviews came pouring out – nearly all positive, at least, according to Summize, where a quick search aggregates all the Tweets about the film.

We experienced a taste of this when Cloverfield finally came out after an immensely successful viral marketing campaign. Fans who had desperately clamored to see the premiere instantly shared their reviews and opinions – many of them less than glowing – on Twitter, which resulted in a big opening day, but a quick fall-off.

And it’s that instantaneous feedback that will begin to shape the success of films. If it’s a winner, then the Twitter crowd will only help ticket sales on opening weekend, which is really the only weekend that counts. If the film is a dud, then the studios have even less of a chance duping moviegoers into even checking it out, as Twitter users have effectively killed the lackluster movie before it even had a chance.

If you trust your employees you can let them out of their cages and cubicles and empower them to represent your brand in the real world.

They can solve problems, answer questions, entertain and inform.

They can become friends with customers and in short, they can be your pure brand ambassadors or the best ads you ever had.

Of course, this all depends on how brave you are.

Zappos has a great listing of their employees who are on Twitter, proudly displaying their team’s collective thoughts, ideas and comments on just about anything. Rather than hide behind a thin veneer of brand management, they understand that simply allowing their employees to be real people and interact in real ways with customers can have a huge impact on customer service and brand loyalty.

This got me thinking about our own recently redesigned web site at Viget Labs, where a lot of thought went into how we highlight our great team of designers, developers, marketers and strategists. Not only does every person have a full bio and photo, but we also include blog posts we each write on our respective Labs’ blog, link to our personal blogs and also display our Twitter feeds directly on the Viget site.

It’s a bold move by some organization’s standards, but it fits our culture – open and collaborative. And when we get out to events in the community, I find that next to our blogs it’s one of the first things people comment on. They love it. It’s fun, real and memorable. I’m proud to say I get to work with a shop that understands it’s best marketing is simply showcasing it’s own team.

Similar to Facebook Lexicon or even Google Trends, Twist is a dead-simple tool for tracking the frequency of keywords in Twitter. Developed by the good people at Flaptor, Twist allows users to see the trend of searched terms over time.

Ideally, as conversations continue to leave the blogosphere for other digital outlets, hopefully more services like Twist will emerge as useful tools for brands to track and measure these conversations.

An article in this week’s Wall Street Journal showcases several small entrepreneurs who leveraged the blogosphere to earn the kind of publicity and lead generation they never could have afforded with traditional marketing.

Businesses of all types and sizes are focusing on the power of bloggers as opinion shapers. But harnessing that power is particularly important for small-business owners who don’t have the money to create name recognition with big marketing campaigns. By connecting with the right blogs, small businesses can generate buzz around their products and services and increase sales dramatically.

Unshackled from the red-tape that plagues so many larger organizations, the barriers to entry for the small business owner are next to nothing. Instead, whether its through a blog or Twitter or leveraging LinkedIn, small businesses can easily implement low-cost and efficient social media tools to generate leads, maintain customer relationships and strengthen search results for their web site.

Relatedly, I overheard at a recent event that Twitter was one person’s “human-filtered best-of-the-web.” I couldn’t agree more.

1. Match your usernames and avatars
2. Search Twitter for users mentioning your favorite social site
3. Search Google for profiles on your favorite social news sites mentioning Twitter
4. Link to your Twitter account from all your social profiles
5. Ask readers of your blog to follow you
6. “Twitter-jack” active social news and Twitter users’ friends
7. Ask questions
8. Don’t just spam Twitter, add value
9. Post the title with the URL
10. Consider using a social media specific URL shortener