The super-connectivity of the digital world has brought business and consumers together from all parts of the world. While the great tea routes of commerce and explorers of the past exported items from around the globe, the present era’s interaction is immediate with very few barriers.

While the modern day market caravan is more the shape of social media efforts, clever marketing copy and the ever-present splash page, this instant connectivity heightens the need for responsible and experienced stewards of the ship. Social media, as the name implies is highly sociable and with “everything” on the tale for public consumption it is imperative that those guiding the ship represent the company, its mission statement and understand client needs and background.

Is there any difference to meeting potential clients at black tie affair or many other “meet and greet situations? In truth, trim off the digital graphic presentation and any other selling tool and it will return to classic notions of working the rooms, sans a fine champagne.

This becomes a turning point for social media platforms as whilst many thought the platform was open season for sales calls, to be successful you must be both learned and possess sturdy knowledge of the company in question but express in a professional manner

Yet social media is exposing the failing grounds of many in the public eye, from major sporting events whose child-like expert is only capable of prying comments of “cute guys” and other “genius” best left to drawings of unicorns and rainbows to companies who allow their products and services to be offered online like a second rate sale item. This becomes a massive hurdle to be bridged as with engagement, the need for a qualified business team to represent the companies at every turn becomes mandatory. The latter point must be clear because this cannot be the blind ambition of media and marketing consultant off in the ivory tower who casually understands the underpinnings of the company but an in the trenches executive.

Engage prospective clientele with earnest intent, representing the companies’ activities in a professional and accountable fashion.

John Davies is available on his personal page on Facebook and Twitter.

As the weave of social media grows over the internet and radically reshape its forms, the need for engagement accelerates yet for the most part it has resulted in precisely the opposite.

The great turning part of social media, though difficult to pinpoint, clearly started with youthful vigour. Building relationships through a cyber wonderland, yet maintaining a youthful joie de vivre. It was a frontier world of cyber rights and wrongs, at least of a cyber generation and for the most part without the watchful eye and certainly lacking an overlay of business. Yet as you cut away all the little subtleties it did something that is sorely lacking now; there was engagement. The simple action, albeit in a cyber version, of reaching across the aisle and engaging in conversation was both sheer brilliance and natural but also something sorely lacking in today’s version.

Of the present social media world, many corners of it appear to be more of endless colonnade of overturned soapboxes for good natured souls and hucksters to sell their wares. Pounding out manufactured, if not simply fixated scripts for the all-mighty but rarely engaging. The failure of many, that will be there undoing is that social media requires honest engagement, an open handshake of improving the lives of your community.

In this manner, social media can be used as the ultimate of business tools, well beyond a simple analysis of your Profit and Loss Statement but to truly bridge gaps with the marketplace and establish your brand.

Yet the pendulum will swing both ways as failure to earnestly care of your client wishes will rear its ugly head and if all you are concerned with is the quick sale, be ready for a long wait. Those who do not honestly engage in conversation or for that matter earnestly care for their communities’ best interest will watch their businesses decline. The present failing of social media is that is in many corners turning into yet another magazine, rife with advertisements and endless photo ops but rarely content that is worthy of intelligent consumer lifting in from the newsstands.

In the strange twist of events, the new business frontier looks a great deal like the old and once again, the importance of being earnest is at the root of success.

John Davies is available on his personal page on Facebook and Twitter.

While it can take years to develop a reputation of quality and honour within the modern world of super connectivity, it can end in the briefest of moments. The public, connected with powerful information sources such as Twitter and Facebook receives updates near instantly on their collective mobiles long before a news agency can develop a story. In the early stages of a “newsworthy” item, opinions will be made, possibly not based on fact and depending on how deep the situation relates to the mainstream an individuals’ fame and surge or flicker.

Though in many situations, most notably humanitarian concerns, the public will move in near unison yet quite often there is no apparent rhyme or reason. The examples are endless, such as while the public rushed to the aid of Haiti during the earthquake in 2009, a year later it was not as charitable with the events in Japan. The “how and why” is a peculiar mix, further confounded in the winter of 2010 when the public became enamoured with the ramblings of a drug addicted actor, never questioning why such comments were somehow fascinating. That along with a contemporary musical artist, clearly emulating, if not plagiarizing a hit performer of not-so distant past, makes understanding the tipping point of what is “wrong” as opposed to “right” in the public eye a challenge.

Many of these answers are a near impossible to find or at least scan on the surface. Within a glimmer of twenty years the world has shifted into hyper technology growth and the mainstream is only mid stream in understanding how it changes virtually every aspect of business. Where substance and content were once king, cultivating the right image and maintaining it is of absolute importance. One era’s scowl of lip synching in music, sending said artists into oblivion is now accepted with open arms along with audio tune. If true “substance” in the arts is waning, has fostering reputations in business environments suffered the same fate with “the spin” taking over?

Despite this and the countless counter culture reactions by the public, there is equally a broad swing of the axe if you fall astray. That is no more timely example than GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, who through his action of hunting and killing a elephant in Zimbabwe and then releasing in a video has unleashed a massive negative wave of public sentiment against his company. While animal rights activists and those including this author find his attitude extremely flawed, why is it different from the mutterings of an entertainer, clearly nearly mental collapse and suffering from significant drug dependencies? Why does one cause problem for business while another creates a surge of public interest and demand. With respects to the situation of Bob Parsons, while animal rights advocates scream foul, others spout comparisons to Teddy Roosevelt on the hunt. What side of the equation you stand on, assuming you come into the conversation without significant pre-existing opinion, is how “the spin” effected your judgement.

The answer may simply be in a sliding morality scale where sports stars and entertainers are not subject to the same standards as those in business, though much of that could relate to how much are devoted to “the spin” of the former group and cleaning up tarnished images. This is the slippery slope because while athletes and entertainers find their reputations quickly re-built after scandalous behaviour, the rest of the world is not so fortunate.

As noted by Oleg Ilin in his article “Online Reputation and Personal Brand”, your presence in Social Media outlets effectively introduces you to the world. This daily event, the once casual interactions that were without similar worry pre social media explosion but the future, with glass walls where everything is with glass walls requires an entirely upgraded vision of branding as well as greater social consciousness. Classic business values that seemed to skip a generation are ready to return and those in business today or finalizing academics will need to resurrect adding value to their community with products and services with the sincere issue of bettering its clients. Oddly, the new business world is accelerating and re-finding its value system, where quality and honesty reign supreme.

Echoing the best damn salesman I ever knew, “we are all salesman but to be successful you must believe in adding value to the lives of all around you, move past the quick sale and build your community”.

John Davies is available on his personal page on Facebook and Twitter.

While few would doubt it beforehand, the Goldman Sachs US $50 billion valuation of Facebook and subsequent US $450 million minority interest investment served notice of the not simply the potential social media giant but the enormous change in methods of communication.

Though the handwriting has been on the wall for quite sometime, the stunning endorsement of Facebook’s value should trigger to the entire business community, both large and small that lines of communication and relationships to the marketplace will continue to evolve as they have over the last decade. While hand-to-hand relationship marketing will always have its place, to ignore marketplace horizon is akin to business suicide. Those who do not respond and adopt proactive social media plans, with the aid of skilled professionals, will be a vestige of the past and quite possibly fighting for the business survival.

Social Media has went through a drastic serious of changes in the last decade from the networking of MySpace to the then upstart Facebook, with its youthful base. Despite the near shock of the valuation price, Facebook is undervalued at $50 billion. The massive “country” called Facebook with well more that 500 million subscribers, is well positioned for an IPO, with Goldman now in line to handle the deal. The maturation of Facebook from its early days has triumphed the financial growth of social media but more importantly for these purposes signalled the delivery of information, including marketing and news. With technological improvements and design changes to Facebook and heavyweight upstart Twitter, connectivity with clients has made the medium the first route for expeditious contact with the marketplace, the crystal palace of Marshall McLuhan’s Global Village where the medium is the message.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved

While the relatively new industry of Social Media pushes forward in the marketplace for progressive businesses, many companies still have yet to capture its enormous importance. The peculiarity of the sector is that unlike many business concepts, as “textbook” is written, much of it is already obsolete. Though that may baffle business leaders intending to stay abreast of the concern, given technological changes, public habits, as well as the present topical issue of privacy, this must be expected. Social media platforms face a future of changing consumer loyalty and businesses must understand the speed in which the market evolves. Business managers must adopt a plan that merges both online and offline content but in a variety of different tactics and mediums in overall brand development.

The once street feel of Facebook has all but disappeared as the frontier days of 2005 where you could sense a pulsing base beat of trends has been replaced with endless applications, multi-tiered selling tactics and rapidly aging population. The sheer volume of groups and pages, of which users have chosen to casually “like” have turned Facebook into a “tire-kicker’s” shopping mall, where they stroll by stores but never pull out the bill-fold and in many cases echo the voyeuristic problems that crippled MySpace. While it boasts a vast membership base, social media campaigns need to be cautioned that it is not an issue of simply running out your product but finding a route for regular interaction within your desired market and equally ensuring you are positioned correctly.

Twitter has its own unique set of concerns but diametrically the opposite of common marketing approaches and in many ways more of a brand awareness tool to facilitate the next step in the selling equation. The portal offers a youthful zeal, with speed of information and in combination with a natural private barrier allows for the building of a brand but in the bite-sized morsel. The hurdle for business to understand is by the sheer size of “followers” your reader is inundated with “tweets” and needs a hook that leads them to content or landing page within a small timeframe. While there are weaknesses to this platform, it offers a tremendous method of pushing information quickly into the market, leading them to your website. Twitter is not an answer on its own but rather an integral component for well-informed businesses to get their message out and begin the marketing cycle.

Shining brightly in the horizon is Tumblr, a subtle star in the Social Media sky. Boasting ease of use and engaging, the fresh faced blogging platform offers users a visual experience and at this stage, has maintained its edge that screams branding opportunity. The youthful energy rolls through Tumblr low and hard and works perfectly in the overall branding experience and needs to be recognized by businesses quickly.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved