Recently, Steve Rubel, EVP of Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman during his presentation at Mashable Connect 2011 said that;

“The reality is, there’s too much content and not enough time,” says Rubel. “More content will be created today than existed in entirety before 2003.” With limited time and attention spans, people are experiencing information overload as well as “people overload.” Rubel called it a “friending arms race,” referring to the Facebook phenomena in which “he or she who dies with the most ‘friends’ wins.”

The 2011 Trust Barometer survey shows a massive shift in trust, with academics, experts and technical experts being elevated to the most trusted sources. Meanwhile, the overall authority of peers has declined 4% since the beginning of 2009.

Consumers are combining social interaction with online commercial activity.

Rubel also said that as of 2010, the Internet has now entered into an are of consumer validation, in which the every day user are beginning to “find the signal in the noise” and are only following the information and people that are most important to them online.

Here are what Rubel’s five steps for success are;

1. Elevate the Experts

Connect with other experts and recognize them as experts.

2. Curate to Connect

Become a curator for your audience and separate the art from all of the junk.

3. Dazzle with Data

“People on the Internet do not read,” Rubel says. “They read 20% of a webpage before they move on; 57% never come back to that page; and we spend 15-20 seconds on a webpage before we move on. We are a global planet of fruit flies.”

4. Put Pubs on Hubs

No longer are companies able to only publish their information on their website. Social hubs are now where the users are educating themselves about your businesses.

5. Ask & Answer

“Be a source of knowledge,” says Rubel. Become an active participant in your customers daily activity.