What do you regard the workplace of the future will look like? Years ago, clearly beneath the change of The Jetsons, we envisioned a future of drifting cars, willing to help robots, and conversing computers. Though we're circumference closer to that vision, we're still expected years divided from domicile help similar to Rosie the Robot Maid or R.U.D.I, George Jetson's mega-helpful computer.
Not having my own seer to deliberate on what the future unequivocally binds for tiny businesses, we incited instead to the folks at Elance, the world's largest online freelance practice platform. This week the firm expelled its Elance 2010 Year in Review , that highlighted the workplace transformations 2010 brought us and took a "sneak peak" at 2011 business and work trends.
Some of the seeds for next year have already proposed sprouting. Just a couple of years ago, the "rule" for tiny entrepreneurs was to beginning a business, erect a website, and then emanate a mobile app. Elance, however, mentioned the priority will be to go mobile earlier. Based on their 2010 activity, Elance mentioned there was a 98 percent enlarge in urge for mobile developers, as "touch shade tablets and mobile devices" turn a high priority for Americans.
Elance mentioned either you are seeking to assemble new websites or revamp existing ones, you need to pattern with mobile in mind. This should lead to "simpler, cleaner, and more candid Web designs and a shift in pattern truth that puts mobile first, and desktop second." (Think short, easy-to-read calm in one-column formats.)
By right away we all know businesses must be amicable to takeover the concern of consumers. But this year amicable shifted from being all about joining to being more about coercing -- in a "gentle" way, of course. And what improved way to remonstrate consumers to do business with you than by gift discounts? That's what's done Groupon the "fastest-growing firm ever" according to Forbes and stirred the company's owner to travel divided from a $6 billion buyout bid from Google. In fact Elance reported that urge for workers with amicable media skills grew significantly this year as "social shopping rapidly went from a cold direction to an mercantile force."
Content will still be aristocrat in 2011, but Elance mentioned formulating "keyword-rich content" is to purposes of finding engine optimization "simply won't cut it next year and beyond." Instead, they predicted, "search engines are beginning to find new ways to tell apart high quality initial calm by tracking amicable media 'buzz' by sites similar to Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz." If your business uses content, Elance said, it will be "all about quality, not amount in 2011."
Based on 2010 employing patterns Elance moreover spoken normal selling (direct mail, telemarketing, etc.) dead, giving way to "cutting-edge forms of promotion and patron acquisition" similar to finding engine and amicable media marketing. In fact, Elance predicted, "next year, normal selling will turn even more obsolete" as more businesses adopt viral and amicable selling methods.
As we told you final week, there's a lot of wake up going on in the cloud. This direction will go on next year, as Elance spoken that "online work won't be only a buzzword in 2011 -- it will be the way to do business, period." If you wish to vie with other businesses (either considerable or small), you must be ready to "adopt more strong online tools" inclusive the type of real-time conspiring that is most appropriate qualified using clouded cover computing.
This direction has moreover led to bomb expansion in the use of online workers, and Elance CEO Fabio Rosati mentioned he doesn't expect a slack anytime soon. According to Rosati, more professionals are "opting to work online instead of onsite, imprinting a essential shift in labor practices." Elance itself surpassed the 1 million spot in job listings given its inauguration in 2006, posting over 375,000 jobs this year alone.
This mutation impacts workers and business owners alike. If you're seeking for a job, you may wish to embankment your resume (which Elance claimed are on "the margin of extinction") in preference of a digital portfolio. And if you've given up on the job track and motionless to search for the entrepreneurial life, starting as an eccentric executive is a great place to begin.
You won't be alone. About 30 percent of the U.S. job market, an estimated 42 million workers, right away consists of eccentric contractors, part-time or proxy staffers, and the self-employed. By 2020, this "contingent workforce" is expected to blossom to 40 percent of the on the whole job market.
Science novella bard William Gibson, the human who coined the tenure "cyberspace", once observed: "The future is here. It's only not at large distributed yet." The future of work has already arrived, as well -- and 2011 will be the year it goes in to far-reaching distribution.
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