Psst….you. Yeah, you. I gotta good deal for you. A fool-proof investment strategy. One that can’t fail.
Scared yet? You shouldn’t be. I’m not referring to placing all your money on black or red or in the latest stock. I’m suggesting an investment that is going to pay off exponentially — an investment in people, your people. In the past, organizations looked for drones who fit the mission’s mold. There was one figure-head who represented everyone and many of those employed by the company or doing business with them had never even had any direct connection to this individual. But with the democratization of marketing and this newfangled thing called social media, where everyone (employees and customers) are brand evangelists, these figure-heads have been toppled.
In a recent post on HarvardBusiness.org,  authors Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd pointed out the necessity for companies/organizations to embrace what is no longer a fantasy land of what could happen in the future (like our childhood dreams of flying cars), but is happening with social media (like Dell selling $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter).
It’s time to think about the future and I don’t mean twenty years from now. I mean this time next year, next quarter even. How are you remaining competitive/relevant? How are you becoming part of the conversations that are occurring in cyberspace? How are you investing in your employees, members and/or customers? How are you empowering them?
We all embrace technology at different rates. Some are beta testers before the rest of us even know it’s available. Some of us jump on the bandwagon after the celebrity endorsement (you know who you are, even if you won’t admit you did it for Ashton), some (like me) need to weigh the pros and cons and talk to people who are currently using it before they invest time and money and others will go kicking and screaming into the new era.
I was on an NTEN Ask The Expert  call recently with Seth Godin and Beth Kanter. It’s impossible for me to recount every gem they shared but a couple of things stuck with me. Godin said we’re in the middle of an industrial revolution…and that new (social) media puts a sharper point on our need to tell our story.  He wasn’t telling us what to do merely pointing out that things are never going to return to the way they were prior to social networking. Things have changed. They will continue to change and you will be called upon to give your advice, story, expertise. If you’re not willing or are unequipped to do so, you may just find that you’ve brought about your own demise and the tradition you’ve clung to on how things have always been done, has relegated you to something of an antique.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
YourMembership.com – The Complete Online Member Community
