Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Based on the ebb and flow of the social web in 2007 this new year promises to bring more disruption facilitated by the cascading conversations of individuals, one to one to millions. We are likely to experience significant adoption of the social web by businesses representing every market segment and industry.

The force that fuels significant growth will be the “noise” created by cascading conversations at velocities never imagined or experienced. Conversations are markets and unless businesses learn to engage they will loose their market positions, some slowly and some overnight.

A cascading conversation is a consecutive series of organic conversations which often proceed via social networks, one to one to millions. It allows the conversational synthesis of topics from a single user’s creation to spread at the click of a mouse and with no geographical boundaries or other limitations as to who chooses to engage in the conversation or who is touched or influenced by the cascading affect.

The cascading conversation contains many functional streams that take part in the conversation’s transformation one at the time. Often another cascading conversation is generated from a previous conversation. The social web accelerates cascading reactions from conversations due to the dynamics of one to one to millions conversing about anything and everything, including businesses.

Cascading conversations carry an idea forward in ever-broadening circles. The very nature of cascading conversation implies, “the conversation creates the results.” The social web creates the medium to engage thousands…then millions…of people. These people create conversations centric to topics of interest and issues of affinity with others who have migrated to groups–commonly known as swarms.

The Social Web: A Conversation-driven Process

The social web created a two way conversation between people. At first its appeal attracted the younger generation looking to be heard and wanting to converse. Now more and more adults are finding satisfaction from the conversational web. Whether engaging for personal or professional reasons, adults are finding the creativity of the social web and the dynamics of virtual relationship appealing. The subsequent cascading conversations have fueled global conversations about business, politics, causes, opportunities, knowledge and any other thing which one would classify as adult conversational topics. People are connecting in the virtual world and finding ways to help one another, including finding jobs, finding friends or finding stimulating conversations.

What is the effect of these conversations on businesses?

The essence of any business is primarily about conversations. Business leaders spend most of their time engaged in communication. Whether face-to-face with their teams and customers or alone in their offices dealing with memos and e-mails, these are all conversations about the business—its brands, strategies and effectiveness. At its simplest, the role of leaders is to have the right conversations with the right people in the most effective and efficient manner.

However, experience has shown that conversations can also be the cause of many organizational ills. Individual conversations may poorly engage the work-force; fail to reflect reality; fail to focus and align people; and stifle individual and business transformation. A common failure of business conversations is they can be one sided and lacking a learning exchange. Business success is simple: increasing or accelerating the organization’s effectiveness requires changing the organizational conversation. Cascading conversations can accelerate business transformation whether planned or not.

Cascading Conversations Can Transform Markets

Markets have historically relied on traditional media to carry their messages to the masses. Using multiple forms of media, businesses have tried to reach consumers with advertising messages aimed at getting consumer attention through product or service appealing images. Consumers have been surrounded by messages appealing to the human senses, needs and desires.

Slick advertising campaigns, sponsorships and a host of other media techniques have been used to create affinity and attract consumers. These methods have been used for years and advances in technology and media have simply increased the creativity of the messages and the means. Conversations between people have become the media and the cascading effect is gaining power and momentum. Businesses are just now beginning to pay attention.

Some businesses are following the social web because that is where the people are migrating. IBM has developed social networks for businesses. The likes of Wells Fargo, American Express, Bank of America and Nationwide Insurance to name a few have recently engaged in using the tools of social media to reach their customers. Many businesses either do not know what the social web is or they have underestimated it and discounted it as a fad. However the wave of cascading conversations will grow at exponential rates throughout 2008 and the collective voices of the people will only get louder. Businesses will follow the noise even if business leaders do not understand how to engage in conversations.

The new business leaders of tomorrow will understand the value of conversations and subsequently we will then begin to see the evolution of a new dynamic called social commerce. Today these are just ripples in the ocean of the social web. Tomorrow these ripples could create a wave of change again at velocities never before imagined or experienced.

Substantial issues regarding the effect of cascading conversations need to be considered going forward.

Are your people having the right conversations? Are business leaders focused on the impact of cascading conversations? Could business be more effective at conducting or leveraging cascading conversations? Are business leaders listening? Will business be transformed or will it lead the transformation?

What say you?

Jay Deragon

www.relationship-economy.com

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

There is an old saying, “if you stay in this world you will never learn another one.”Learning the dynamics, the art and the science of the new world created by the social web is one of the foremost challenges for businesses.

Current business theories are correct in their own world, but the problem is that the theory may not make contact with the new world.

For businesses to succeed in the new world a transformation in leadership thinking will be required.

Back to the Future

Imagine if business leaders were able to go forward in time and see what needs to change today in order to create a better future. Most business leaders would jump at the opportunity to be able to see the future in order to better manage today’s decisions. Well here are 10 Points of Business Transformation required to survive and thrive in a new world:

1. Management practices of the past have smothered the individual and tried to contain and manage individual expression. The social web brings back the individual and enables individual freedom of expression.
2. The social web is not a thing, rather it is a movement accelerated by the art of self expression, the reach of relationships and fueled by the science of advanced technology. This combination of art and science has created a new world with new markets fueled by conversations, one to one to millions individually.
3. Economic activity takes place within social relations. People create economic gains by what they buy and recommend and how many others with whom they share their preferences. For businesses to reach buyers they need to reach people.
4. If you destroy the people of a company, you do not have much left for the future. People drive all business processes, products and services. People influence customer and supplier relations. If your cultural robs expression what are you customers and suppliers hearing and feeling about your business
5. Fear and lack of trust can make economic growth impossible. Don’t fear the social web, embrace it. Distrust destroys relationships
6. The social web gives businesses reach and richness in finding innovative answers to perplexing business problems.
7. Businesses are social networks. If you didn’t know this you are in denial about the power of people conversing with other people.
8. Human Resource Management is no longer a rules game. People don’t resist change–they resist being changed. The traditional approach to human resource practices needs to be transformed to practices that empower people.
9. People have conversations with people, not things. Customers will connect with customers and employees will connect with employees. What are these conversations producing? What can a business learn from these conversations?
10. Remove the barriers to relationships. Lead the transformation or be transformed by it.

Much of our day to day life, personal and professional, is interaction with other people and the patterns of interaction influence so much of the events around us and before us. The social web is creating new patterns of interaction which in turn is creating a new world of social exchanges about everything, anything and between everyone everywhere.

For businesses to survive and thrive in this new world they will need to go back to the future and adopt the 10 Points for Business Transformation required to thrive in the new world. We will cover each point in greater detail in the future.

What say you?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Social Tools are changing the way business gets done.IBM, Toyota, even Wells-Fargo Bank, have invested serious money in Second Life and are using blogs to engage customers, people; many corporations are building their own social networks to serve employees and to create commerce amongst customers; major law firms encourage their employees to blog; wikis are often far more powerful and useful than standard resources and have replaced intranets in many instances as invaluable sources of information and communication throughout the enterprise. RSS Feeds, Instant Messaging, Video - all can deliver greater involvement and transparency.

Originators become real, human and influential, and for the new generation of techno-savvy professionals, the opportunities and applications are unbounded.

One of the key challenges for businesses is how they integrate these new technologies within the enterprise and figure out which best suit their needs and the needs of their customers. Another challenge is how to facilitate ecommerce into these social exchanges thus enabling participates to exchange products and services for economic gains.

Economic activity takes place within social relations. For businesses to reach buyers they need to reach people. More importantly businesses need to understand “how” to reach people.

The Dividing Factors between People and Businesses

Today people use the social web for a variety of reasons but the primary aim is relational. Relational in the sense that people connect to people to find affinities, to learn, to share and with the freedom of expression. All the activity that drives the social web today is not represented by a collective strategy of the people rather the activities are a process of discovery fueled by the intrigue of finding, knowing and conversing with people you’ve never met physically. The discovery process for people follows a common framework which includes:

1. What does one person have in common with another
2. What does one person know that another may want to know
3. Who does one person know that another may want to know
4. Where, in life, in location, in stature is one person compared to another
5. What possible opportunities could develop out of a relationship between one person and another

All five of these discoveries are facilitated through the information people present about themselves in profiles, in their past communications with others and in the subsequent conversational threads exchanged one to one to millions. From these “virtual conversations” people create an emotional and intellectual profile of others and it is from these profiles that people begin to form active relationship and engaging conversations between themselves and others of like profiles. These relationships are driven by emotional and intellectual profiles formed by virtual conversations. It is the emotional and intellectual profiles which create individual gauges of trust within the virtual world.

Business leaders are just now beginning to engage in the social web however much of what we see today demonstrates a disconnect in purpose and methodology. Businesses approach the social web with a common objective of gaining relationships and converting those relationships into economic gains. The strategic approach to the social web by business follows a common framework including:

1. How can we market ourselves effectively within the social web
2. What positioning can we gain from use of the social web
3. What products and services can we sell through the social web
4. What gains would we get from setting up our own social network
5. What is our competition doing and what do we need to do better

A business is driven by the need to produce revenue and subsequent profits for its stakeholders. Progress in management practices and technological advances have shaped the mindset of business leaders to focus on productivity, profitability. market share and capital; results. In one hand this progress has delivered the results and on the other hand it has deteriorated relationships with employees, customers and suppliers. The trust factors between people and corporations continue to decline. Corporate actions of the recent past have only reinforced the distrust factor.

As many business leaders rush into the social web intrigued by a new fertile ground for business opportunity the fundamental factors of success will be learning how to go back and connect with people.

Which comes first, the business or the people? What drives business success, the people or management methods? Just look at the differences in framework between why and how people approach the social web and why and how businesses approach the social web. Do you see the differences?

What say you?

Okay, after a lot of kicking and screaming today I got my website back up. I lost my entire database in my blog section and the last backup I had was a couple of months ago. This is a good reminder that you should backup your database regularly. I’m going to start doing it on weekly!

Dang, I’m still upset, but there’s nothing I can do about it now except move on. Please, make sure you backup your database so you don’t have to go through the same thing I did today!

I remember the days when I was on the road for 3 weeks out of the month. It seemed like a non-stop working vacation. I was able to enjoy the festivities of each of the cities I was in and conducted business as usual.

One of the biggest challenges I faced was getting back to people in a timely manner. Since I never knew where I was going to be the next week, and my days were filled with meetings, I missed a lot of opportunities because potential clients couldn’t reach me.

Even though I’m home for most of the time now, I found a answering service solution that I think would have been very beneficial to me in my road warrior days and it is something you should check out if you’re on the road a lot.

So, instead of missing out on those opportunities, get yourself telephone answering service that you can check every night and get back to the people you need to so you can close more sales and make more money.