Words of Wisdom from Dave Nelsen
, the Social Media Guru Guy
A Remedy for Too Much E-mail
Ever heard the expression, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?” Yes, I'm talking about e-mail. According to the recent book, The Tyranny of E-mail by John Freeman, we’re now spending more than 40% of our time in corporate America “working” e-mail (note the quotes around the word working). It's not just you; it's your entire staff, your entire company. The problem with e-mail is that it’s other people’s agenda, not your priorities.
Worse than that, with the explosion of spam and use of “Reply All,” information density is actually declining. Am I the only one who thinks we should have the death penalty for long e-mails? This tool is totally out of control.
Gen Y rarely, if ever, uses e-mail. Why? With their fresh eyes, they’ve found social media tools that are more efficient and more effective for communicating. When they want to convey time-critical information, they send texts. Otherwise, they use a rich information-sharing tool called Facebook. While these tools are great for personal communication, what if we could use similar mechanisms for corporate communiation? Interesting... no?
Companies that have adopted such approaches are seeing (on average) a 30% reduction in e-mail AND achieving 52% faster access to information. Think about it. That amounts to one hour per day, per employee, for every person in your company.
For sharing time-critical information, use Yammer or Chatter. With these texting-based services there's a big difference compared to e-mail: It's not just that messages arrive instantly even without Internet connectivity. And it's not just that messages are concise, such that you can read and respond in less than a minute. Instead, these new tools put conversations into the cloud.
Information is no longer lost, fragmented across people’s PCs as with e-mail. Instead, it becomes part of a corporate knowledge base, searchable on demand, today or years from now. Further, it's no longer the content producers decide who consumes information via “To,” “CC” and “BCC”. Instead, content consumers decide who to follow. That’s a game-changing idea.
Next, complement such texting-based services with one of the world's best knowledge management systems. I'm talking about the software that powers Wikipedia - or rather a dedicated version that lives on your servers, inside your firewall. It’s available free from Tiki.org.
Imagine a knowledge base, not of all human knowledge, but of all corporate knowledge, that’s searchable and traceable so that employees know who added what... when.
Think about the implications of making it culturally illegal in your company to send documents via e-mail. Instead post your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files (Mac fans: think Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) to your Twiki and have employees edit them in place.
When employees leave, you won't lose the corporate knowledge in their e-mail archives. When employees join, you can direct them to the relevant pages of your Twiki and they’ll onboard themselves.
Like telegrams, pagers, and fax machines, e-mail is now past its prime. It’s time to equip your organization with the latest tools... before your competitors do.
No Smartphone? Dumb Move!
I usually focus on business social networking issues and I will continue to do so, however, today I’m addressing a related topic of equal importance.
In speaking to hundreds of business executives around the United States each month, I find a surprising percentage are not embracing technology, specifically tablets (think iPad or Galaxy Tab), smartphones (think iPhone or Droid), and hundreds of thousands of apps.
This is an incredibly dangerous head-in-sand strategy. Remember what Darwin observed: “It’s not the strongest or most intelligent that survive...but those who adapt to a changing environment most quickly.” While it’s true for species, it’s true for businesses on a hyper-accelerated time scale. Think about it: how long can you stand still and not respond to your competition, not enhance your products and services, not upgrade your technology and team?
It is impossible to keep up in business without thoroughly embracing technology. If you are uncomfortable with technology, it’s time to reexamine your mindset. Yes, it is just a mindset.
Start by buying an Apple iPhone 4S and get to know Siri, the integrated voice assistant. It’s the most insanely great product that humans have yet produced. Or as an alternative, get your hands on one of the newest Google Android phones by HTC, Motorola Mobility, etc. They are almost as good and, no doubt, these two players will continue to leapfrog each other in the coming years.
Notice that I didn’t recommend BlackBerry or, for now (but stay tuned) Microsoft Windows Mobile. That’s because it’s not just about the hardware; it’s also about the apps.
Apple and Google have an astounding lead over their competitors with vibrant app ecosystems measured in the hundreds of thousands. These apps are changing personal-business productivity. I estimate that my own productivity has roughly doubled in the past three years using this technology and I expect it to continue to increase.
My solution also involves an iPad2 “tablet”. Yes, tablets are a key part of the equation and there are also good Android options such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Now, let’s talk apps. For social media, you’ll want the apps for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, FourSquare, and Google+ among others. But expand your horizon: Consider an app called Evernote that stores your notes and a vast array of other information in the cloud. It works on Apple and Google platforms as well as on PCs and Macs. You can put anything into Evernote and then find it fast from anywhere using virtually any device (think Internet café in Costa Rica).
While the basic version of Evernote is free, for $46 a year you get optical character recognition (OCR) among other premium features. Imagine photographing a business card or scanning a document or even handwritten notes. Once in your Evernote repository, any relevant word or phrase will bring it up instantly on your iPhone (or any other device). You can even search based on where you were when you documented it. It’s a personal productivity game-changer.
Here’s the bottom line: If your competition is using tablets, apps and smartphones and you’re not, you’re at an increasing disadvantage. Like the dinosaurs, your business is not long for this planet. It’s time to choose to love technology.
Words of Wisdom from Dave Nelsen, the Social Media Guru Guy
December 2011: Somewhere or Everywhere?
Some businesses chase every new social media service, or at least get nervous about missing something as each new platform is introduced. They feel the need to be everywhere. The most common mistake I see consumer-focused companies (B2C) make is dissipating their limited resources and therefore under-investing in (or worse, ignoring) Facebook and Twitter. It's a huge missed opportunity.
Surprisingly, business-focused companies (B2B) make exactly the opposite mistake. They see the tremendous success of B2C businesses in Facebook and Twitter and rush right in. In fact, I see very few B2B initiatives that show apparent return on investment (ROI) in either platform. They're the wrong tools for most B2Bs.
I suggest that, instead, you answer the following questions first before selecting your tool(s):
- What are our key objectives in implementing this initiative? Hint: They should probably relate in some way to profits.
- Who is our target audience? Define your target audience(s) as narrowly as possible and serve each individually. Addressing two different audiences with one initiative creates 50% noise for each.
- How can we create genuine value for our target audience, in a way that has the potential to create value for our business too?
- What are the demographics of our target audience? Where are they already spending their time and attention?
With the perspective of honest answers to each of these questions, you're now equipped to select the right tool to connect with your audience.
One final point (the most important advice, and not just for social networking): It's better to do one thing well than three things poorly. In social media and social networking (as in life) the goal is not to be everywhere; it's to be thoroughly engaged in your selected community.
Pick your best tool and use it to truly connect with your audience. In so doing, there's potential for real revenue.
You can find more formal details here: wesocialize.biz
To contact Dave directly: dave@WeSocialize.biz
