How Social Networks are Disrupting Everything you Know About Business

What are you doing about it? This basic question and everything that is in between the title and it are the framework of my post at the Marketing Profs:Daily Fix today.

A couple of days ago, David Armano had a post -- a must read for agency executives and their teams -- where he stated:

"Nowadays it's near impossible to have a discussion around a brand, marketing, or design strategy without considering the latest wave of how people are using 'digital'."

The use of digital is also blurring the lines between customer and seller. A few years ago people thought I was insane in facilitating a network on my lonesome on top of my day job. You join a professional association and become the VP of programming if you want to do that. Later they sought confirmation in their assessment of my insanity when I started Conversation Agent. Many are now using blogs as a dynamic newsletter to push news about their projects out.

The difference between native and immigrant in the two activities above is the degree of involvement. When I started developing the network I only suspected that I would have a higher degree of interest in its success -- now I know with certainty that it's because I am at the same time organizer and leader as well as participant. Having a blog is a way to stay curious and participate in the larger conversation, not merely a way to make your newsletter interactive. In other words, mindset and attitude count.

This is probably the one single reason why you will not be able to shift your business model to blur the lines between static and dynamic, push/pull and conversation until you participate yourself.

[image from Who's Harnessing Social Networks, Business Week]

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

I agree ... social media is definitely a participative experience (I think we have discussed this before).

However, I must admit that the digital immigrant and digital native distinctions are, as you hint at, becoming blurred. It seems to me that it is not necessarily about where you come from (or when you were born) ... but more about your willingness to participate despite your "status".

[Valeria Maltoni]

Gavin:

That was exactly my point. Degree of involvement and mindset/attitude are what is making the difference between native (want to) and immigrant (have to).

[Roger von Oech]

What do you think Facebook® will do to the networks you've created?

[Valeria Maltoni]

Roger:
Part of me says -- no idea. Part of me thinks that there will be others who will go in, take a look, and figure out a way to leverage that information. Esp. when search engines will mine that data. Maybe others have better suggestions?

[Tim Brunelle]

Valeria -

On the one hand, FB does aggregate and make my social networking easier in some respects. So, time saved.

But maybe FB will simply get more people to participate because it's a simple, one-stop destination.

Thanks for yet another great post!

Tim

[Valeria Maltoni]

Tim:
Thank you for stopping by. I am still curious to figure out what Facebook will do with the networks. Will they do anything? Will they mine the data? How?

[Joe Raasch]

Hi Valeria,

Dr. Karen Stephenson is another great resource on the topic of social networks.

I wrote about her on a post titled, "Heterarchy" on Aug. 24.

This is the future of change management, marketing, and the edge of success!

Cheers,

Joe