Yesterday, Mary Meeker (partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) shared her Internet trends year-end report (embedded below). If you don’t follow Meeker’s Internet trend reports, you should. While I’m relatively plugged in to technology and Internet trends, her robust and insightful data always provides great perspective in terms of how I think about digital and social strategy as part of bigger PR and integrated marketing communications planning. A few quick (and I mean quick) thoughts after reading through her latest this morning. Would love to hear yours.

Highlight: Re-imagination of Nearly Everything (slides 20-58)

My favorite part of this year-end trend analysis is her “Re-imagining Everything” section where she breaks down how technology is continuing to radically transform how we live and interact with our surroundings — from basic communication, learning and paying for things to driving (navigating), traveling, selling products and services, and beyond. Typically, Mary’s reports are very data-driven, but this time the bulk of her deck is dedicated to the behavior changes effected by technology.

Insight: Re-Imagining Business to be Dynamic vs. Static

“Magnitude of upcoming change will be stunning. We are still in spring training” says it all:-). My career is rooted in how these shifts and emerging technologies can inform and transform how we communicate and forge meaningful connections with our respective audiences on their terms. If I’ve learned anything in my career thus far it’s that organizations have not re-imagined themselves in a long time, which has created a major lag in adaptation and adoption of tools that enable better connection with their customers. The implications are significant and the learning curve brutal – and it’s becomes more brutal the larger the organization in most cases. It seems common sensical, but if everything is being re-imagined, then our business practices need to be as well. The best way to ensure our success in leveraging emerging technology in business for external audiences is to build infrastructure inside our organizations that sets us up for success in a post-industrial era. This requires strong leadership and vision, educating employees/teams, redefining talent and how we source for talent, desiloing disciplines/practice areas to foster collaboration and growth, and the list goes on. If we focus here, when we go to leverage these tools for external audiences it will be much, much easier. It’s pretty hard to emulate an engaged, savvy and evolved if you’re not actually engaged, savvy and evolved. Those good old static media days are over.

Highlight: Mobile/Tablet Usage is Rapidly Growing (shocking #not)

• Global mobile traffic is growing rapidly to 13% of the Internet
• There are 5 billion mobile phones to 1 billion smartphones; despite tremendous ramp so far, smartphone user adoption has huge upside

Every headline I seem to see lately is all, “mobile first, bla bla bla,” but the reality is just think strategically about where your people are and what they are doing. This would mean that for the last five years, you should have baked mobile into your mar comm and development plans in whatever way makes sense for you. This could include leveraging everything from mobile website and app development, to leveraging SMS (text messaging) and QR codes in marketing  Ideally, you should be investing in responsive web design (building websites that are built to recognize the device it’s being viewed on and display for that device). For an example, check out space150‘s (employer) website and drag the left corner in to see how the display changes. This tiers for web, tablet and mobile offering users a seamless experience across devices. I’ve been a long-time advocate of mobile web before mobile app, unless of course you have a utility-driven app that is likely to be adopted and repeatedly used by a group of people. A lot of people build apps for app sake, but with 1 billion to 5 billion actually having a smartphone, that doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you have something exceptional to offer. A good rule is always to build things intentionally, simply and well, not just because. In a time that is disruptive, and quite frankly a bit intimidating, don’t lose site of a good foundation. Everything communicates, so build a digital foundation that represents your brand exceptionally well vs. a lot of half-assed assets. And always, always think about your customer (don’t use QR codes unless there’s something stellar on the other end, be thoughtful with SMS marketing, etc.).

Highlight: Social Emerging as Starting Distribution Point for Content  (slide 58)

Insight: Invest in Content Strategy and Connect to Media Strategy (integrate earned, owned and paid media)