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Regardless of your business model, I believe it’s becoming very clear that the concrete, simple and personal messages from human beings are more moving to individuals considering a product or service than the fuzzy, complicated and corporate content that has been generated by corporate communications and product marketing teams.  But what does it all mean?  Well, how the rise of people participation impacts online buying behavior is one area I will be watching with great interest and specifically if there are correlations between online customer reviews and increases in return rates.  Will more online reviews equal more returns both online and offline?  Perhaps.  But I believe it’s also likely to lead more software firms coming forward to provide advanced feedback systems that include many of the authority ranking and mapping features that are popping up in the online social intelligence monitoring space.

So, if Trend Number 1 is an increase in return rates due to online customer reviews, then Trend Number 2 is a shift away from using distribution metrics as a measure of marketing campaign success and the adoption of more consumption measure to assess how desired behavioral objectives were achieved.  It’s more qualitative and quantitative and will likely require a lot of deep brain stimulation sessions at conferences and at trade shows to move the needle but it is likely to happen – IMHO.  How you ask?  Okay.  I believe Yahoo will publish a major MyBlogLog report linking blog analysis data and clickstream behavior that will link density of response around a specific cluster of authorities and conversations that drive online transactions.  This data will lead to Trend Number 3 The Rise of New Experts and Trend Number 4 The Teamwork Trend which I’ll blog about tomorrow…