A while ago this site published a wish list of improvements that it felt could be made to Microsoft Outlook to equip it for identity management in the modern world. This particular article actually generated an email response from Microsoft suggesting the use of their Business Contact Manager add-on for Outlook. Since that time Microsoft has also released Outlook 2010. Yet neither of these solutions offered the support for extended identity information that should be necessary in managing our connections today.

Can we obtain identity information from social sites, like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. From some yes, others no – much actually depends on how the application is built. Facebook for example assumes we already know the person and have no need to retain an independent record of that person’s identity. Twitter holds some information, but does not provide access to their email address. LinkedIn enables us to download to Outlook (or any other software that can handle .VCF files) the person’s electronic business card. Plaxo, is actually a social capability that allows you to automatically backup you contact records.

Despite early attempts at electronic exchange of business cards the technology never really succeeded. So we give out, old fashioned, cards then go about transcribing them onto some form of electronic record. In actual fact a person’s identity is made up of a series of documents, tasks, emails, phone calls, etc. that form one part of the whole interaction we have with that individual. So If I sit down at my computer and search for “Paul Connolly” then I will find everything I have on file for him as well as any associated Internet based updates. Hmm, nice in theory but not always practical and thus we can see the card is merely the tip of the iceberg, and this does not even start to account to the heap of records the average corporation maintains about that individual.

Yet think about how many identity records you use on an average day and you will be surprised how many times you supply email addresses, usernames and passwords in order to access systems that we are entitled to use. Open IDs still have not gained as much ground as they ought to have. Is it because of a reluctance to make use of a single digital identity on the part of the user, or is it because of a lack of trust of the vendors? What is surprising is the number of Internet based applications that login using a Facebook account, perhaps this is the de-facto Open ID.

Facebook with nearly 500 million members is therefore reaching somewhere in the region 1 in 14 of the world is interesting because it is seen by many as trustworthy. Yet I cannot see LinkedIn allowing you to login using a Facebook ID. Yet there are now many marketing applications that leverage Facebook in order to perform marketing based activities. Perhaps the reason that you cannot download an email from Facebook actually works in its favour in putting marketer and customer together in a way that maintains separation and can be ignored by the user if they wish.

Privacy of contacts should be taken very seriously by corporations, yet social applications do allow marketers and prospects to mingle in the same space, albeit for a period of time, and that can be crucial, yet so is the need not to be making ‘advertising noise’ during that connection. This is one reason why the customer wishes to maintain a certain distance – and quite how much is of their choosing, not the marketing organisation.

For any business it is important to maintain as full a data set about customers and prospects as possible, even if you have no email address then skype ID, Facebook ID, LinkedIn ID etc may well be important facets which will need to be recorded. The earlier comments regarding the shortcomings of Microsoft Outlook remain valid even with the 2010 product. Social identities are as important (if not more-so then physical or email addresses) in order to keep an ongoing dialogue with that individual. The next generation of contact data that we store must be socially aware.

One of the major goals of this existing time is in the way IT departments advance any appreciation of the organisations they are an element of. Each part of the organisation should  be working together with other company departments in plotting a path through the difficulties the business may be facing. Within this context technology departments have got to emerge as they key internal strategic partner for change as opposed to a simple overhead or cost centre.

The known conditions that are a part of our current decline remains throughout most industrial sectors and corporations remain more severely challenged than at any moment since the depression of the 1930′s. To a sizable extent revenue development and reduction of costs have turned into key corporate priorities. For many it may be a pipe-dream to ever return to pre-2008 income and profit levels. The current vision for some organisations may now be modestly a case of developing product sales to a stage that a sustainable income is possible;  after that it may be possible to leverage this as the foundation for steady future advances.

IT executives ought to be securing a relationship with the corporate management, understanding the enterprise capabilities and possibly contributing assistance for crucial change programs which assist your firm to achieve its goals. Three of the priorities in this regard include:

* Knowing the enterprise
* Thinking strategically
* Taking action and being in charge of enterprise transformation initiatives

Knowing the business must be with reference to knowing the desired ambitions in addition to objectives for particular areas and identify methods through which technical solutions is able to help in answering enterprise troubles. Largely this is about automation of things which may otherwise take extensive manual labour to complete. One of the rewards here can be projects that utilize rapid deployment techniques; technology should be capable of quickly delivering answers. Your aspirations at this point needs to be focused on helping the organization with achieving all their aims and objectives, and not on specific technology goals.

Thinking strategically relates to developing a specific knowledge of the company, its ambitions and as a consequence implementing strategic system functions which assist in the achievement of these needs. It is not possible to take your eyes off a changing and developing big picture it is necessary to constantly reassess all projects against these changing goals. Yet at the same time any critical assessment must substitute the focus from IT as being a overhead to becoming a profit enhancing centre of distinction which makes the necessary contribution to the future outlook of the enterprise. The sum total change initiatives should focus on aiding the organisation to strengthen, and attain its objectives.

Responding to and leading corporate transformation initiatives is important since this is an area where IT has built a solid status during many years. Nevertheless what is distinctive at this point needs to be that improvement ought to be business motivated and definitely not technology driven. This represents a key improvement in thinking for a variety of technology management.

Sadly there are many so-called ‘Social Media Marketing experts’ talking on this subject on a daily basis. The majority of these are merely advertising people who are simply advising businesses on how to leverage Social Media sites as a tool for traditional advertising. Lets be clear here – there is nothing wrong with leveraging the channel as an advertising mechanism. However advertising only has a tiny part to play in leveraging the Social Media Channel for business success. What is far more important is being involved in the ongoing dialogue. Therefore it is important to take a more holistic view in defining a strategy to manage your social media intervention.

One aspect of Peter Giblett’s new book “Is your Business Ready for the Social Media Revolution?“, is moving away from advertising based marketing towards building a dialogue with customers, prospects and the industry at large.

There are three pillars to leveraging Social Media for business success:

• • Building a communication & collaborative capability
• • Intelligent intervention in the marketplace
• • Generating revenue as a trusted adviser

Some advertising specialists think only in terms of generating in income from this channel, but this approach will not ultimately lead to success. So lets look at each of these in turn.

Communications & Collaboration

The whole history of business involves communication, in-fact trade or barter may have been one of the reasons we humans learned to talk. Humans are adaptive creatures and new communications capabilities will always be arriving, in fact it seems to be a large part behind driving many technological advances. Today we face a changing world of business communications where everything is more rapid, in short bite sized chunks. We naturally want to be involved in a dialogue before we buy anything, the net result is that we want to be able to trust those products that we decide to purchase.

From a business standpoint part of that dialogue involves a wide range of people who are involved in getting any product to market. This more than ever before is a collaborative process. In the past collaboration has been about reaching out via email, we often forget to involve all the knowledge-holders within an organisation, let alone with suppliers, customers etc. Collaborative efforts have always been based on team membership.

The collaborative challenge today demands the involvement of a wider audience, including suppliers, customers, and other partners we are able to improve the level of communication and take appropriate action. Understanding that a customer’s business is closing early on Wednesday for a corporate event and keeping the trucking partner in the loop will ensure that deliveries are re-scheduled and arrive at an appropriate time for processing. Included are industry experts; don’t know the answer to a problem – look it up on-line or find an expert. Social media is bringing those experts closer to your business as a normal resource and in many cases without paying an exorbitant fee (although you should always expect to pay for valuable contributions).

The section “Invest On Relationships” discusses the value to be gained from improving collaboration within the workplace. Everyone has competencies they bring with them from either their social life or prior workplace. They have a sphere of collaboration, starting with themselves, expanding to the people they work with. This builds through teams and departments to the company as a whole. Each step potentially adds expertise. Ultimately it is the individual spheres of influence touch customers, suppliers, and third party partners with whom we are able to build a trusting relationship over time.

Intelligent Intervention

When people are talking about your brand your finger needs to be right on the pulse! The response needs to be immediate, proportionate and relevant.

Googling your brand or company should show your web-site to the top of the search results, but it is unlikely to show what someone just said about you on Twitter. Using traditional search engines it takes time and a lot of effort to discover what was said yesterday. A negative blog may take months to discover via traditional search. This is where it is important to build a social media intelligence capability. is about knowing what is being said about a product and having a plan to respond proportionately in any given situation. The triggers are questions about ‘What is being said about my organisation, my product, my competitors?’ To a large extent these are traditional market research questions, but we have never before had such a powerful view about people’s thinking. People are giving their views every day about topics that may have some relevance to your business. It is driven by what is important to people at a specific point in time.

In addition we can link this general knowledge with a knowledge of the views of customers, when retaining social media ID’s of customers when they make on-line comments (and remember there may be many). This information is closely allied to marketing intelligence.

Monitoring solutions are available that will automatically monitor the Internet buzz and throw up an alert when action is needed. Rewarding recommendations is a key. What do you do when an independent person spontaneously says something good about your product and company? At the very least it is important to thank them, one airline thanked a customer by giving a 25% discount on flights because of something said on Twitter.

Helping people with their problems is one of the best ways of intervening in the marketplace. Solving someone else’s problem will win you kudos, even if the person does not use your product. What happens next time they are looking to buy? You will be high on their wish list and possibly the only candidate.

Revenue Opportunity

Advertising on the Social Media channel will generate an income, but this will generally be at the same rate as advertising on the Internet. We may be able to tweak this a few points by focusing advertising campaigns towards specific demographic groups. But this is not where the real power of the medium lies. For business the Social Media channel is based on trust and expertise. You have to demonstrate expertise in order to build trust, and it is this that will ultimately bring revenue.

This is where leveraging this channel requires a shift in thinking. The marketing communication budget is not simply about advertising, it must now think about customer involvement. A corporation’s ability to leverage the Social Media channel to collaborate and be involved in the marketplace becomes important. It builds a revenue based on trust and expertise in specific areas.

A prospective customer who has found you through a specific Social Media is interested in the services that you have to offer, they will come to you because they already trust you and they are interested in your product. Hey isn’t this better than Yellow Pages?

The ROI of Social Media

Social Media can be viewed by many as the current must-have, but at what cost? Are corporations setting aside the ROI in order to jump start their enterprise social media presence?

It has been said that it is not possible to identify an ROI for collaborative improvements and that we only see the real improvements in the rear-view mirror. Yet defining an ROI for any project or proposed solution is about producing a best estimate at the time the need is perceived. That is as relevant for any Social Media project as it is for any other corporate change. Remember the major impact of social medial is more in the area of business than with the technology that underpins it.

The other aspect here is about contributing to an improvement in business results. This should be measurable through Business Intelligence. It is valid to measure the contribution made by Social Media to the bottom line. This must include a value for the collaborative effort, and for web intervention (including the real value from promotions offered). Spending should be appropriate, but will always be based on business drivers.

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This article is based on segments of Peter Giblett’s new book “Is your Business Ready? For the Social Media Revolution”. This book is now available on Amazon.

We will educate your executive team on how to build a corporate social media strategy. Our half-day seminars cost $500.00 CDN + Tax. Once you have a payment receipt please email to schedule a mutually acceptable appointment. Please note that outside the Greater Toronto area travel and accommodation expenses may apply. Cancellations will not be accepted, although appointments can be rescheduled upto 48 hours in advance.

This programs brings a down-to-earth understanding of how your business can leverage these new dynamic on-line channels. Social Media is about how we communicate and build trust. It is a new way of making connections that will soon impact every business on this planet

The seminar takes three hours and discusses the following topics:

• Understanding Social Media
• The challenges to leveraging Social Media in your business
• Why you should use Social Media for your business
• The Social Media landscape
• How to leverage the Social Media Channel for Business Success
• Defining a Social Media Strategy
• Collaboration – Building working relationships
• Image Management – Having your finger on the pulse
• The Revenue Opportunity – Trust based relationships
• Delivering value through Social Media

This seminar forms an executive briefing that will allow you to formulate a corporate social media strategy. Provided as a part of this seminar will be 3 copies of Peter B. Giblett’s book – Is your Business Ready for the Social Media Revolution?

Since then activity on the site seems to have waned significantly. More correctly that is the activity of those within my network, it may of course be different with the people in your network. Wave’s biggest problem has always been: “What would I use it for?” and I have heard this question so many times. First and foremost Wave is a product that will be used to communicate and collaborate. It has the capability of extending the collaboration in a team, project, or corporate community. It should be used with existing connections, it is not really for networking and building new connections.

I have explained the power of building documents by collaboration to my business partners, but there is still a preference to “Send me a copy and I will take a look while at the cottage this weekend”; with Wave there is no copy – it is all on-line. That is of-course one stumbling block – the whole world is not yet connected. People do walk away from a reliable DSL line from time to time and the collaborative document is not available in cottage country, or even on a plane.

Wave has several types of templates that can be opened:

* Discussion: Introduce a topic; make several alternative proposals; obtain feedback

* Task Tracking: to define a set of collaborative tasks and review progress.

* Meeting and Agenda

* Brainstorming: to allow ideas on a discussion topic to flow.

* Document: Everything you need to create a collaborative document

Of course it is still possible to open a plain, blank Wave. But in adding these templates Google has put thought into how we might use the product. From a project perspective it may be possible to introduce a discussion or a brainstorm wave and at a later stage pull the key ideas into a document wave.

From everyone that I have talked to about Wave it is the idea of synchronicity that is the largest challenge. Each person needs to understand the advantages of working synchronously, this can for some be a challenge, because they follow the activity of others rather than focusing on their own contribution. In the documents that I have created I have been the only participant of the wave when I have gone through my initial thinking, no matter how rough or polished the item – the reason: to get the initial thought documented before opening it up to comment from others. The great thing here is that the document can have gaps, sections where your thinking is incomplete – I have found it important to state something like “{{FURTHER THOUGHT REQUIRED}}” at those points where you desire additional input otherwise others may take your incomplete statement as a complete view and never change what you have written.

One of the biggest challenges can be about deleting elements of a document. There can be two views of the correct form of words to be used, but you do not want a war between two participants over one small section of the document.

A method by which it is possible to link the contents of  traditional emails into a Wave is one area that still needs to be addressed by Google. It is clear today that there are big challenges to adopting Wave in certain sectors of the community, where email is an important tool. Perhaps an application that works on the Blackberry will be a giant step forwards. It is already possible to use Wave on the iPhone through the browser and even possible to remove the Safari wrapper for Wave to appear as a fully functioning program. There is an application for Android phones, although from recent chatter this is problematic. Get over smart-phone usage problems and this may enhance Google Wave usage.

I am yet to meet any person or corporation that is using Wave at the heart of their communications strategy, so the feeling is more dead halt than wave of the future at this time. We should continue to look back at this product.

It is true that for whatever we post there is an element of broadcasting. That new blog post is posted with the intent that everyone interested in our products or services will see it and will be swayed by our viewpoint. We also tell our social media connections in order that we are able to share the knowledge and in itself spread the news. Normally the intent here is to be seen as a thought leader, indeed we are in the process of using the Internet to build influence, improve reputation and engender trust. That element of broadcasting is about ensuring that our message gets out to all that have an interest in the subject.

When we use Social Media to tell our connections about the post then secretly we have a desire to make the message viral; to have the key influencers across the planet sit up and take note. Yet that is also coupled with anxiety of what will happen as a result of the viral message and whether the business can cope with the subsequent order uplift. In reality we know that our message will only be read by a small percentage of those in our network. It is with that small percentage that we are looking to move from a broadcast to a dialogue. Some of our connections will also be kind enough to pass it on to their network, which will add importance to our message.

This is the true impact of social media and our network. We bring all the power of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, to bear in order to spread the word. Through the power of Social Media search the message can be seen by more than our direct network – it can be seen by those who have an immediate need, which can lead to new business connections and an uplift an sales. It is very much about building trust – place a good article, or video, and people will want to see more. When they see more and it all offers similar quality information they will start to trust you which will bring sales.

In addition to the things we post it is important that we are involved in the dialogue. This is the bigger picture. Jumping into the right conversation at the right time will also build trust. This however must add value and should never be taken as a platform to criticise our competitors product. Social Media is above all an ongoing conversation.

Remember that in society at large there is a level of mistrust, a cynicism that every message that put out  is a con designed to separate the fool from his money. We mistrust government and party politics in general. It is through our posts that we seek to differentiate ourselves from these layers in society. We post to blogs in order to demonstrate our openness and willingness to interact with the marketplace at large and be involved in the key debates in the industry. In order to do this we must also be willing to admit our mistakes or errors. In the digital world it is almost impossible to hide anything. Instead we have to realise that the web is a great connector and our openness is an asset for doing business.

It is not so much a case of an enterprise remodelling itself around a technology, but leveraging a series of technological platforms in order to get closer to its customers and the marketplace at large. Through the aid of Social Media it is relatively easy to visualise how a corporation selling consumer based products can leverage tools like Twitter to build visibility, but it less obvious how this benefits a corporation whose customers are other businesses. There should however be little difference between the approached, it is simply the audience that changes, between the B2C and B2B models, and the amount of work needed in order to win new business.

How the corporation manages that relationship should remain the same. The key aspect is that doing business is being focused more and more on a trust based relationship. Business owners do not want to buy a product because they are told this by an advertisement (whether on TV or in a trade publication) that it is the best they need that statement to be affirmed or denied through their trust network. Building the collaborative corporation does not gain support by “rail[ing] against the old corporate order and proclaim that they’re working for its downfall” this is simply not the case, yet the new world must be understood to be implemented.

Business has always been founded on our ability to communicate, right from the first time we humans ever traded or bartered. According to Ramon Vela how we buy things has changed. People are less influenced by slick advertisements and more by what they know about the person they are buying from and whether they can trust them. Vella provides training for technology sales people entitles “Becoming the Trusted Advisor” – the basic concepts here though can apply to much more than technology sales that is Vela’s forte.

Enterprise 2.0, Collaborative Enterprises, etc and how business leverages Social Media is all the people in the equation not the technologies. It is about visibility and being seen as the expert in your field; contributing the the knowledge base in the marketplace; providing value even before building a commercial relationship; and problem solving. Obviously this article is only scratching the surface of the problem, please add your views.

Ensuring a successful relationship, through communication and collaboration embodying a value based approach in order to win business.

Modern business demands that we are able to maximise value to our customers; we achieve this through our relationship and by building a partnership. Customer relationship management (CRM) has long been on the agenda for business growth – yet to many this is merely an IT system rather than a way of life for the organisation. With Social Media there is a need for a more holistic customer relationship management process. We talk to customers and prospects, we address their concerns while building a relationship with them in a public forum. The relationship we build is not one-to-one, it is based on the needs of one individual but is is visible to a much broader audience (in fact it can be visible to the entire world).

There is an old maxim that we hold out friends close and our enemies even closer. In Social Media Land it is important to build relationships with your customers and with prospects alike – the reasons are obvious; because we wish to do business with them. We also need to build relationships with competitors – why? to know what they are saying and doing of course. Then there are a wealth of other people that we need to build relationships with, including researchers, writers, industry experts, shipping companies, suppliers, etc, etc. Social Media impacts them all.

Ultimately there is a sphere of influence that extends beyond the organisation, its staff, its suppliers, its customers. This must by its public nature extend to the industry at large; it is like everything that we do being published in a trade journal for all to see. That sphere of influence is becoming increasingly visible and our competitors are already leveraging it to their advantage.

Generally we would all like to think that improving our visibility is good, we all want that – it drives in business. Dell Computer has stated that it expects to have sales of over $6 million through its activity in Social Media channels in 2010. This level of sales comes about through a commitment to Social Media that operates across the company. It comes from answering marketplace questions about Windows, PC faults etc. Dell takes an approach that ensure responses are made by people with the real knowledge – it is more likely to be the product designer than a marketing person because they do not want a ‘marketing spin’ put on the story. The response must be focused, accurate and deliver knowledge to the person needing it. This delivers VALUE to the customer, or prospect.

This dialogue wins friends in the marketplace, not only is the person with the problem impressed that a mega-corporation took the time to respond, but they did so in a timely and accurate manner, even when the question related to another company’s product. For Dell this pays dividends because that person will add the company to their shortlist when they are looking for a new product that Dell sells – Dell will be on the shortlist. The other aspect about this dialogue is that it is public and clearly visible to other people encountering the similar questions, yet have not put finger to keyboard to ask the question.

Yet there is also a negative side to all of this visibility: our failings can be seen by all as well. Again though this needs to be managed in an open and honest way. Businesses are driven by people and as we all know people do make mistakes. Our faults must be managed, business needs an intelligent intervention in the Social Media space to understand what is being said about our brands and to respond appropriately.

BUT Surely the reason I want my business to be using Social Media is to sell more products?

Yes, that is true. Yet moving traditional ‘push-based’ marketing techniques into the Social Media space meets with only limited success. Your business can advertise on Social Media sites, it can even focus the advertising to appeal to specific audiences, but remember more than ever before people have learned to tune-out advertising on web sites – because they have a purpose, a goal, and responding to that advert no matter how compelling will mean they delay or do not reach their goal. Involvement in Social Media means more than simply advertising, it means being involved. Through this general introduction to relationship based business it should be clear that the key elements are:

☼ Improving the way we communicate and collaborate

☼ Intelligently intervening in the marketplace

☼ Through this building a revenue stream

Obviously revenue is important, we could not survive long in business without it. These three elements are closely bound together in a relationship based business. Part of selling is providing a solution for other people’s problems. We are better able to provide solutions by understanding those problems; listening; asking questions; building relationships; envisioning solutions. This is at the heart of a social media engagement and building a market intelligence which can be leveraged to build the business.

It may be that building sales through trusted relationship takes a longer sales cycle, but yet people may also be lining up at your door because of your Social Media intervention. Some sales take more patience than others but then you are adding value through every communication in an holistic way. One of the longer term results will be increasing customer loyalty around specific products – something that has been lacking of late in certain industry sectors. In fact brand loyalty can be put back on the agenda through correct use of Social Media.

This is part of a series on communications and links to other articles on this site…

There are several types of communication that are important to the average business today:

◊ Direct one-to-one, a dialogue

◊ One-to-many, broadcasting

◊ Many-to-many, such as in a meeting

On a “One to One” basis we communicate directly or through another medium. There are differences in how we communicate but there is generally a dialogue that occurs in any conversation. Our approach may be different say for a letter (if anyone writes these anymore) or an email than in a conversation, but it is a dialogue nonetheless. In a conversation we will deal with one point at a time, whereas in a letter we tend to put in all of the related detail before sending it.

Email differs from a normal letter in that it is not purely a one-to-one messaging tool, it allows us to send that same message to multiple people. We developed the ability to broadcast early in human history as well – remember the smoke-signals used by Native Americans were almost certainly used in other ancient societies; even 16 century England had a fire warning system used to send messages rapidly across the country in order to prepare for an expected attack of the Spanish Armada, allowing them to muster forces at a time when sending a message by traditional means was agonisingly slow.

“One to Many” messages are used in a multitude of ways, like a newspaper article, telegraph, radio, television. The ‘presenter’ prepares their statement and makes it via the appropriate medium. In the modern world we are putting a lot of this information on-line in the form of blogs or websites, but the majority still follows the process of one person posting for all to see.

“Many to Many” communications don’t really exist through any of the traditional communications media. A meeting may give everyone an opportunity for everyone to speak, but it is in reality held through a series on one to many communications. Us humans are simply not able to handle multiple simultaneous conversations; so we have developed a protocol that enables us to achieve the effect of a many-to-many conversation.

Computers on the other hand are able do multiple things at the same time more effectively and they can communicate with other computer at a speed allows messages to travel the globe in an instant.

The changing world of business communications is largely about empowering collaboration between people who are interested in a particular outcome. In business relationships matter and have always been vital for success, in fact it plays on another basic part of human nature. The need for a crew to work together for the success of the voyage is as vital in a trawler facing a ferocious storm as it is in your business.

Each person involved brings with them something unique that helps the team succeed. Yet today we are able  to contribute in so many ways and continue contributing. With the use of Social Media it is even possible to have our customers make a contribution to our product development which can be a vital part of our success. Collaboration is a very personal thing. Each and every person has a sphere of collaboration, which is about them, their team, the department they work for, the company, customers, suppliers, third-parties, industry experts, etc. Even their friends perhaps have a role to play.

Ultimately the changing world of business communications is about improving out ability to collaborate. It is about bringing the right people together, cost effectively, to solve a specific problem, then moving on.