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About Social Pros Podcast:
Social Pros is one of the longest-running marketing podcasts in existence (10 YEARS and counting), and was recently recognized as the #1 Audio/Podcast Series by the Content Marketing Awards.
Our purpose? Making sure that we speak to real people doing real work in social media.
Listeners get inside stories and behind-the-scenes secrets about how teams at companies like Google, Reddit, Glossier, Zillow, Lyft, Oracle, and dozens more, staff, operate, and measure their social media programs. With 500+ episodes, the Social Pros Podcast brings the humanity of social media to the forefront, while providing incredibly useful marketing strategies that listeners can immediately implement.
Thank you to our sponsor ICUC Social.
Follow Social Pros on LinkedIn.
To inquire about becoming a guest, please email Leanna Pham at leanna@convinceandconvert.com.
Apple Podcast Reviews:
The Social Pros podcast has quickly become a favorite in my feed! I'm consistently impressed by the engaging conversations, insightful content, and actionable ideas. I truly learn something every time I listen!
@Arlie KThis is absolutely an awesome listen for anyone in communications or social media!!
@Will31CThis podcast has become one of my staple weekly podcasts for learning about marketing! Love the conversations that they have and it's always enjoyable and educational!
@Simonstone95Love the podcast - informative, in depth and spot on for any business size.
@MissTriathlon
Rohit Bhargava, Founder of Influential Marketing Group, bestselling author, and keynote speaker, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss the art, science, and impact of trend spotting and idea curation.
Getting Ahead of the Game
Getting Ahead of the GameWorking in social is about staying on top of the latest trends, embracing new technologies, and keeping an eye out for the next big thing. For Rohit, this means ditching the notion of trends altogether and pursuing the curation of ideas.
Instead of chasing trends, it’s all about understanding the thoughts, feelings, and intentions that drive the interest in the latest “it” item. By recognizing the human behavior behind trends, you can identify the non-obvious fads long before they become mainstream. The aim is to achieve such a level of understanding about the current human climate that you can identify the fledgling platforms for the behavior long before they hit the global market.
This is a change from the common practice of stating trends in terms of a thing, such as “[insert social platform here] is the next big thing”. That is simply a statement of a thing that exists, not the human behavior linked to the thing. For Rohit, the behavior is the trend, the item is the vehicle.
In This Episode
- Why curating ideas sometimes means working in the physical realm
- Why spotting trends does not mean identifying mainstream products or platforms in use
- How a weekly email newsletter leads to better self-discipline
- Why the taking the first step towards identifying trends means putting a stop to losing things
- Why excelling in the modern social world means professionally celebrating personal individualism
- How being purposefully unperfect leads to lovable social
Quotes From This Episode
“I describe myself often as an idea collector.” —@rohitbhargava
“I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘trend spotting’. There’s idea-spotting.” —@rohitbhargava
“They don’t stop being trends because it’s three or four years later. They just become obvious instead of non-obvious.” —@rohitbhargava
“What is the underlying human behavior behind this that makes it a trend and not just a statement of something that exists?” —@rohitbhargava
“Use exactly the words you want to use and nothing else.” —@rohitbhargava
“Every trend has 25 or 30 different sources behind it.” —@rohitbhargava
“Great trend predictions are never a case of finding a needle in a haystack but rather spending all your time gathering the hay and sticking the needle in the middle of it.” —@rohitbhargava
“We have to get out of ourselves and understand what’s behind these behaviors.” —@rohitbhargava
“We all have this necessity to be more than what we are on our business card.” —@rohitbhargava
“You can come up with something and you can make it meaningful because it’s flawed.” —@rohitbhargava
“Being unperfect or flawed is not the same thing as being broken.” —@rohitbhargava
Resources
- Rohit Bhargava on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn
- 2017 Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas & Predict the Future
- 2013 Trend – Powered By Women
- Personality Not Included
What’s your one tip for becoming a social pro?
Be observant and willing to try things out of your comfort zone. No matter how much we know, there will always be something new. It’s hard to set aside the skepticism of new things and give new ideas and new people doing new things a chance but it’s important to try.
If you could do a Skype call with any living person, who would it be?
The amazingly talented Steve Martin. Rohit is intensely impressed by the way he writes and thinks and a Skype call with him would be a fascinating experience.
See you next week!
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