Will All This Webby Stuff Work?

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The job starts Monday. New city, new gig, new apartment and nerves are sparring with excitement. It’s what you have been working toward during all those long hours, weekends and late nights. The money is good, the benefits and vacation time is cool, the company seems solid and now there’s only one concern. You hope it will work.

The team at the agency promised the campaign is going to nail the perfect customer. The target of men 18-25 will eat this up. The focus groups loved it and the cross media approach was the way to go. But you can hear that voice deep down pondering just one question. You worry if it will work.

Smart People Converge

There are two excellent events going on this month. One right now is Social2011 in Boston and next week it’s SOBCon in Chicago. It is inspiring to see how the discussion has advanced.  Fifteen to twenty ears ago, those of us utilizing the Internet on a regular basis were looked at as weird geek people who needed to get some fresh air.

Now the discussion is with business people conceptualizing the digital future. It’s nothing short of amazing yet there continues to be one issue tugging at the consciousness of many people. Will it work.

Now is the Time

Perhaps we need to listen, collaborate, experiment, have fun, take chances, make mistakes and understand there is not just one way to navigate all this web stuff. Maybe with some time your company can gain some traction through commitment to the channels. And the effort will subside the desire for instant wins. It might just work.

Do you hope it will work or do you work at it every day?

Kneale Mann

image credit: tiltedpixel

Our Need to Belong

What do you need?

Abraham Maslow wrote a paper in 1943 entitled The Theory of Human Motivation. The most famous portion of the work was his Hierarchy of Needs.

As you may know, it covered everything from our basic requirements for food and shelter to safety, self-esteem, morality, health, self actualization and one aspect that I find fascinating which is our desire to belong.

It is the reason we have clubs, teams, communities and networks. We need each other for commerce and business but we also need each other to converse and create, build and share. It is the essence of social networking which has been around for a couple of hundred million years.

Read the Room

While attending SobCon earlier this year, I noticed a shift in the tone of the discussions. It was not a room full of web geeks; it was an astute group of smart established business professionals. Sure, many of us met online but that’s where the conversation began. It was a conduit at best.

I was smiling yesterday as I read some positive comments about BlogWorld happening in Vegas this week and some even shocked about the professionalism of the speakers and presentations. Perhaps this is because we believe the online tools will help move the revenue line but still surprised that it really is doing that.

But SobCon and BlogWorld or any other convention is irrelevant without the people and our need to belong. You don’t get excited that you’re going to the game this weekend so you can sit by yourself, you are going to share an experience with others – in some cases, thousands of others.

So what do we do with all this?

Our need to belong is wired into our collective DNA. Don’t believe me? Remove all contact with humans for 24 hours. No contact! No email. No Internet. No phone. No tweets. No TV. No radio. No wireless device. Nothing.

The entire reason 33 miners were pulled out of an apartment sized hole in the earth a mile down was their ability to be a community. They longed to survive together.

How can you embrace our inherent need to belong in your business?

knealemann

image credit: socgeo ruhosting

Clichés and Experts

I’ve been thinking more about an excellent presentation at SobCon hosted by Amber Naslund.

Many thought we should stop leaning on certain terms.

The challenge is to know when sayings become cliché and when cliché becomes a crutch.


The session featured a room full of heavy online users, marketers, consultants and media makers. The common thread, we were all business people.

Two-way Conversation

If you are in the financial industry, you may talk about the facilitation of standing orders. If you work in insurance, annuity considerations may be mentioned. Hockey players discuss the trap and pinch. Mechanics concern themselves with final drive ratio. And doctors know the difference between fungal and viral.

After the discussion spilled in to the next break, it was clear that some felt these and many other social media sayings are overused by people who can’t back them up or define them.

No matter your industry; you have ways of explaining things which may be exclusive to your discipline.

The challenge to all of us, whether we are consulting our doctor about that thing on our arm or a mechanic who is examining that strange clang in the back quarter panel, is to ensure those tossing fancy terms around can back them up with meaning and experience.

Relationship Economy

I doubt you would let an unlicensed financial, medical or mechanical individual near your money, body or vehicle. So it is doubtful you would do the same with someone who has memorized a few phrases and has a couple of thousand tweets to help you build your business.

Right?

@knealemann
Helping you integrate all you do with all you do.

photo credit: istock

The Social Media Shift

Seat belt on. Clutch in. Punch it.

Social networking is as old as humans have been able to draw on caves and grunt.

Despite some claims that Twitter is the Holy Grail, we are the essential ingredient.

If Twitter went under today, the conversation would move to another place and continue.

Wet Your Whistle

If you meet friends at a local and it goes out of business, you don't stop seeing your friends, you find a new local. It’s not about the bricks and mortar, it’s about the people.

We are discovering a new way to communicate that has not replaced face-to-face conversations or mainstream media, it has enhanced those experiences.

There is a palpable social media shift. We're still having fun and connecting but more collaborative business relationships are growing online. I can only speak from personal experience but I have met hundreds of people I would not have met otherwise - many who live in my city.

My Kind Of A Town

A few weeks ago, I attended SobCon2010 which was the best business conference I have ever attended. Everyone was there to learn from each other and attend every minute of the sessions.

We may have met online but had taken it a human business level.

Since getting back from Chicago, I have had deep conversations with fellow participants with more on the way soon. We are talking about how we can help each other grow our perspective businesses.

Find Your Own Way

The social media shift happens differently for everyone and it's not a drag race. This stuff takes strategy, time and care. And if that scares you, then your competition will blow right by you in third gear.

So get in and get to know people. It's work, just like the rest of your business.

The shift is on. You in?

@knealemann
Helping you integrate all you do with all you do.

photo credit: porsche

Business and Buzzwords

None of us is immune.

We have all used the odd cliché or buzzword. I was at a presentation a few months ago and one of the speakers ended most sentences with “ok?” or “do you know what I mean?”

I spend the rest of the time counting his crutches.

If you own a white Honda, you see them all over the road. If you listen for buzz phrases, you will quickly find them everywhere too. Phrases that could perhaps be retired include "moving forward", “in this day and age” and “at the end of the day”. A bad one for me is "take it to the next level" - gotta stop usin' that one.

Gotta Give It 110%

Athletes are trained to string clichés and buzz phrases together while they sweat on the microphone and field a few soft balls from the TV guy between periods. How much of your meetings are filled with butt covering non committal doublespeak?

At SobCon this year, part of the presentation by Amber Naslund was on the buzzwords and phrases we seem to latch on to in social media - sustained engagement, relationship economy, two-way conversation, listen more sell less, etc. Her point was that we need to eliminate those crutches and focus on the real work. My point is that we can use them if we can define them and back them up.

Have you tried the "no buzz phrase" meeting, boss included?

It can be weird and uncomfortable at first but the results may surprise you. Toss in a game of buzzword bingo and magic may happen. The rules are simple, if anyone thinks someone else used an empty buzzword or phrase, they can stop the meeting and insist the person defines it.

We work 1800-2000 hours a year. Let's try and hide behind less empty sayings and have more meaningful collaboration.

Are you for it? What are up your favorites?

@knealemann
Helping you integrate all you do with all you do.

photo credit: studentactivities.bard.edu

This Is What Change Feels Like

What do you do?

It’s the second question we ask each other when we first meet. The answer is usually related to work. Imagine if the second question was who are you?

Millions have had to ask that question in the last two years. Some have had to find out who they were and some have discovered they are not defined by a job title or position.


A Game Changer or Life Changer?

I attended an event in Chicago this past weekend which was a chance to work with 150 really smart people and I’m so glad they let me sneak in. To some this may have appeared to be a social media convention. Social media are tools. This was not a tool convention. This was a gathering of passionate people taking about business.

SOBCon was founded by the irresistible Liz Strauss who has helped me beyond words along with her partner Terry Starbucker who is a loving and engaging guy who doesn’t mind singing in front of 150 people. That alone deserves admiration!

Thanks Liz and Terry for the privilege of attending SobCon 2010.

Nice To See Ya

We often go to “conventions” to learn stuff, do some networking and take away some additional nuggets to help our career and our business. All too often we return to our work with a renewed energy that lasts until Wednesday.

Then the old ways and the pressures of the system weigh us back down to where we were before we got on the plane. The binder collects dust, the bag of business cards is lost forever, the best of intentions to stay in touch fades and life goes on.

SOBCon is about full participation. If you attend, you work. And magic happens. You make new friends and business associates. I had numerous discussions with people who were asking my advice right after I sought theirs and it was a soft place to land and share.

I was reminded of the old sales adage that we are not selling hammers; we are selling you the ability to put a nail in the wall to hang your favorite picture.

SOBCon was not social media convention, it was not a discussion about how cool we are that we understand the power of the Internet and digital media. Who cares about all that crap if you don’t have people to put valuable information on these channels?

SOBCon was about people who work in large companies working with large brands sitting right next to sole proprietors navigating the scary world of business all on their own.

Find people you want to work with who will care about your ideas. Unearth those who want to help you while you help them. Don’t stop until you can follow what you know you should be doing and pay no attention to those who disagree.

SOBCon was not about social media and this post was not about SOBCon. This post was about finding ways for you to improve the collaborative nature of your work.

When did you last look inside yourself and those around you and ask the tough questions? Who are you, not what do you do?

This is what change feels like.

#sobcon stream on Twitter.

@knealemann
strategy. marketing. social media.