Friday night had arrived and your best friend had come over for the weekend.  You’d pulled out the sparkly Caboodle full of bright colored makeup and the crimping iron to make yourselves look royally righteous, talked about your latest crushes, and listened to the radio for hours – just waiting to hear that one song.  You had even called the radio station to make a request for the DJ to play it.  MTV was also on in the family room, turned up barely loud enough to prompt you run in and catch the videos you didn’t want to miss.  You’d been making t-shirts with puff paint hearts and rhinestones while watching for your Swatch phone to light up with a call from the boys you thought were totally awesome.  Finally, you heard your song come on, and you started singing and dancing with your friend.  You had to wait, but it was so worth it!

So much has changed over the past thirty years.  Instant gratification – there is no more waiting for what you want.  Fast food restaurants dot every corner, purchase deliveries occur within hours, cell phones allow us to communicate anywhere and at any time, computers provide access to any information we want to research or by which we want to be entertained, including any song we want to hear.

Enter Social Media channels.  Wow, they have changed the scape of how we interconnect.  You can track people down from times in your life long passed.  Breaking news and popular trends hit your feed almost simultaneously to real time occurrences.  Friendships can begin, employment can end, and businesses can sell goods within moments.  Information rapidly hits us throughout all hours of the day, and immediate access to anything we want isn’t denied. The delight in attaining something for which we’ve had to wait is perhaps inconceivable as the fleeting satisfaction of instant gain has possibly pushed us into the realm of superficial happiness.

Nostalgia may hold some of us in a perceived contentment of times when life was slower, and we may have to consciously slow down areas of our lives that we want to savor.  However, a huge percentage of people of all ages in modern society are active on the internet and through social sites.  We have not only become accustomed to having instant access to what we want, but we have become dependent in some cases on the accelerated flow of information.

Sure, there’s an upside as well as a downside to living in a fast paced world, so we need to incorporate balance into our lives in whichever ways make sense.  When it comes to succeeding in business though, this ever streaming web of information and access to instantaneous acquirement can be beneficially utilized.  You have the opportunity to capture moments in Instagram, share them through Twitter and Facebook, and collect them on Pinterest.  You can include your audience in watching what you do on YouTube and even invite them to join your team through LinkedIn.  There are so many venues through which to connect, involve, and grow your clientele through social media.

Hang on to those joyous feelings of hearing your favorite tune on the radio.  Grow fresh, organic produce in your garden.  Shop local and support your regional farmers markets.  Prepare meals from scratch and feed your family at the table.  Practice yoga and go for long weekend hikes.  Prioritize where you slow down.  But, when it comes to keeping up with marketing trends, you’ve got to stay with the flow in order to keep your brand in the forefront of your customers’ minds.  Consistently post content relevant to your industry, use quality graphics, keep it real with personalized pictures, prioritize your boosts to reach your desired audience, focus on the channels that best support your brand, and respond to comments or inquiries quickly.

You may cherish the way life used to be, but don’t be intimidated by digital marketing trends.  High Road Digital can help you get on the fast track to growing your brand through social channels and on the web.  We can spin it with some old school methods in more traditional marketing too.  Think I’ll pop over to YouTube now and watch T’Pau’s Heart and Soul video for some inspiration and instant gratification!