A colleague just passed this along: Northern Hemisphere population is no longer at replacement levels – potentially dire consequences .
This has far-reaching business implications – both domestically (one MORE argument that you can’t build too many biz plans around the aging of America) but globally — notably, and unlike Japan, China will *never* grow rich.. it will, however, grow old AND poor … and relatively soon …
Paul Seaman’s “21st Century PR Issues” rarely fails to stick delightful verbal needles in conventional wisdom. In that regard, his Social Media Reality Check 2010 doesn’t disappoint us. http://9mp.com/jes3A
As I read his posting, what came to mind was a topic of conversation I’ve been having with two other colleagues for, well, a clutch of years now.
Companies have stories to tell. If we anthropomorphize for a bit and talk about business ventures as ‘beings,’ they want you to know about them, they need you to know why they’re different, why they do things the way they do, and why they charge what they do. And how they do this is through the voice they’ve had for decades – PR, corporate communications, advertising.
So, a new kid on the block says, “no, this is ALL wrong, the voice of the whole is made up of the individual voices of the crowd.” That new kid is social media. Reduced to black and white, it smacks of a very old divide between control (some would say dictatorial) and freedom (some would say anarchical ranting).
I have a crackpot idea that the blossoming of grey hair on people ‘of a certain age’ is the universe’s way of reminding us that the world isn’t black or white – but often something in between. And so it is, I’m guessing, about this false distinction ‘tween what companies need to tell the world and what the wisdom of crowds can tell us.
I think there’s something very important in finding alignment – sometimes at least – between what companies want people to know about them … and… what buzz exists in the many social media venues. Companies need both – they need strong and clear messages that help them rise above being seen as ‘also-rans’ and they need to be comfortable with the new places, new players and new rules of places created by the likes of Facebook and blogs.
In a phrase: social media is growing up.
Three words.
What makes you different from your competition? Why should anyone see your company, your products, your services, as anything but a commodity that can be found, exactly the same, in the offerings of a dozen other places? If you charge a premium for your services – do they know why?
People start business with a vision – the belief that their uniqueness will serve customers — and themselves.
The magic is in connecting that vision to what people carry around in their heads.
And the first step is finding out what people REALLY say about you, what their worries are, their gripes, their understanding or misunderstanding of what makes you special.
MindshareMining is a service that helps you discover that buzz.
There’s a slow food movement. Maybe there should be a slow analysis movement.
I was in a brainstorming meeting the other day. Lots of smart people, enormously healthy egos, and the ‘name of the game’ was throwing as many ideas (good, bad, indifferent) up on a whiteboard. Two guys off to the side didn’t really seem to be caught up in the effort — despite the fact it was *their* group that needed new ideas for a project.
‘looked over and both were busy thumb-typing. SO, I did what any curmudgeon-for-hire does in those situations: I stopped the brainstorming and asked the young Masters of the Universe if they’d like to share their tweets with the rest of the us.
Serious hateful glares… I pretended to look slightly hurt by their disapproval.
Afterwards, one of them came up and said he was pissed off that I’d done that – that he is FULLY capable of doing a lot of things at once. I said I didn’t believe that argument and “neither do learning theorists!”
Truth is, I’d heard that argument, several times, but short of spending time doing searches (instead of more productive activities) I figured finding a reference was a “someday maybe” kind of thing.
Lo and behold, in a recent Arts & Letters Daily, an article to *exactly* this point:
enjoy: http://chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Turn-Their-Attention/63746/
(just to clear up a silly bit of sanitization, the original quote by Lyndon Johnson describing the intellectual heft of Gerald Ford was “he’s not smart enough to chew gum and fart at the same time.” )
Got this a few minutes ago and it passed the ‘will this interest me enough to get me to stop sipping my espresso’ test. I’m seriously intrigued by this gaming-to-learn venue. ‘not entirely sure why
And why I’m posting it here? Companies are often a bit like very large container ships – a little slow to change course. Consultants can come in, charge big bucks, and leave clients with long strategic ‘to-do’ lists all gussied up in PowerPoint decks.
uh-huh…
OR, maybe, using games like this can get ideas into heads.
As I say, I’m intrigued.
From an introduction blurb:
A small company’s online presence — its mindshare among target markets — always matters. Always.
Value judgments about reputation and ability, mental pictures of products-at-work, and final buying decisions depend on how convincing your online presence is — relative to that of your competitors.
Your products, services and, indeed, your entire business may depend on impressions formed in a few seconds — followed by a few simple mouse clicks.
While crucial to your business success, measuring and assessing your competitive mindshare is not magic. It’s just hard work that requires business experience, technological savvy, a keen ability to insightfully connect the proverbial dots, and a commitment of that precious resource of time.
The short of it? Big companies know the critical importance of managing the ‘buzz’ about their brand, their products, their services and their people. More often than not, pricey management consultancies are brought in to help company’s with this effort.
Lot of time. Lot of expense.
Point is, for small companies, this reputation is every bit as critical. In some cases, even more. But – it’s a luxury. Neither the time nor the funds are possible.
MindshareMapping.com is planning on changing this.
Atoms, not bits, will make the next great wave of bazillionaires. We’ve been talking about desktop fabrication for years but …the sticking point has always been it’s-still-a-plastic-model-of-something-we-make-with-our-fabricators-not-a-Real-Thing problem. AND, that’s where radically low volume factory runs in China, enabled by CAD plans whipped up somewhere else (and reality verified by desktop fabs) and the near-zero container-transportation costs will make a difference. A big BIG difference.
Do a google search on “Atoms are the next bits”…
A client has asked me to propose how I’d do a “social computing audit” for them — essentially, they want to see (1) how their competitors are using things like blogs and YouTube, or FaceBook and Twitter and (2) what tools or methods *they* might want to adapt.
Something interesting – and unexpected – came up in the research I put into the proposal for that gig. The CEO who’d asked for ‘some thoughts on a proposal’ was politely skeptical about the bottom line value of these new tools. Still – off I went to do some preliminary work.
I found two things. Sure enough, the company had a very scant presence in these new(ish) venues. And — as minimal as it was — it was *about* par for the course for that particular industry. The surprising thing was that a lion’s share of tweets and blog comments came from a handful of clearly dissatisfied customers!
Bottom line? It’s one thing to monitor how you’re ‘keeping up with’ competitors in terms of online visibility, it’s another to see *what* your online reputation is.
Really big companies know this difference and pay dearly for reputation management — for their company as well as for their c-level execs!
As far as I know (that is to say, as far as 5 minutes on Google searches popped up), the company that does this kind of small-company and (and their senior people) reputation management is a local (Bay Area) firm, Reputation Defender ( http://reputationdefender.com )
‘might be worth your while to check them out !
Naomi Klein’s is an equal oppt’y critic whenever she sees form getting more attention than substance. Today’s Guardian article is a sobering commentary on how corporate, and yes — governmental — branding is anything but an invisible hand shaping our culture http://portante.9mp.com/4NK2w
The disruption of change, the poignancy of thoughts of what were, and what may never be.
A quote from the first line of a book review seems appropriate here:
Sicily is the key to Italy, as Goethe once wrote, and one novel is the key to Sicily: “The Leopard,” Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s masterpiece. This tale of the decline and fall of the house of Salina, a family of Sicilian aristocrats, first appeared in 1958, but it reads more like the last 19th-century novel, a perfect evocation of a lost world.
Something I believed in, something I wanted to believe in, is undergoing a kind of change that will benefit so many people, and that will, as the saying goes, ‘make a more inclusive tent.’ And yes, to put a metric on it, it will make more money for a lot of people. Careers will bloom, reputations will be made.
And yet, I think of the book’s protagonist, looking out over the totally silent and searingly hot vineyards of his old Sicilian town, worrying if his way of life can ever be the same again. My own view is different here – it’s of container ships moving into ports, of San Francisco Bay and the sounds below my window are those of a working marina.
Lampedusa’s “The Leopard” is as fitting a commentary on the inevitability — and heart wrenching pain — of change. Should you ever wonder about whether the sights and sounds you have come to love will change, and how you will adopt and adapt, I can think of no better recommendation than to wander through this novel.
Ah– the review the quote above came from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/arts/29iht-booktue.1.14826755.html
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