October, 2019 - Servant of Chaos

Safe on Social Media? Don’t Bank on It

Often when we hear of “hacking” or more correctly “cyber hacking”, we hear about how personally identifiable information or secure information has been compromised. This can take the form of files and images or it can be photos, information that confirms our identity and more.

And while a great deal of attention is spent on securing digital systems, one of the most common forms of cyber hacking is “social engineering”. This is where small amounts of personal information are taken from your online profiles and then used to broker more detailed information about you. For example, checking in to a hotel via social media can yield surprisingly useful information that can be used to gain more worrying data, such as your date of birth or address.

How does this work? This interview / experiment from CNN will raise your eyebrows.

The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage

Storytelling

You know when you hear a story how it can inspire, engage and move you? Sometimes you can feel it happening. Sometimes you know it is happening intellectually but can’t quite put your finger on the trigger.

It often feels that we are focusing on positivity over truth – but when an emotional truth breaks through – in a story or experience – we know it for what it is. The challenge for us all is to tell that deeper story – because while it is not always positive, it is liberating.

Blogging into the future

999 Theses, Future of Work, FutureVisions

When I started this blog, way back in 2005, I began with a hypothesis. I wanted to write 999 articles exploring the collision of consumer culture and business – and my focus was on proving or disproving a topic at a time.

I began by writing anonymously – fearing that my personal explorations here might impact my professional work. Eventually, after prompting from Ann Handley, I changed this approach, started writing for MarketingProfs and began publishing under my own name.

As the world of blogging and social media started to take off, Drew McLellan and I ventured into the world of crowdsourced publishing with The Age of Conversation. We wanted to know whether there was some emergent value in blogging as a new form of consumer engagement – so we asked the people who were at the forefront of the journey – bloggers. We brought together 103 authors from 15 countries and published the first edition within three months of conception. It was amazing.

A couple of years later we published a second and a third edition. Across these three editions we published around 300 authors and sold thousands of copies that raised tens of thousands for charity. And at the same time, it generated a community of marketers that remain connected to this day.

But times have changed.

This article by Andreas Stegmann looks at the role of the personal blog in 2019. He shares his analysis and insight around many of the assumptions that held water a few years ago:

Own your home – do you need to write on your own blog or should you simply use LinkedIn or Medium as your publishing platform? My view is that it depends on what you are trying to achieve – but in general I remain convinced that there is power (and simplicity) in “sharing the message, owning the destination” – and that means post and update on social channels, but write and archive on your own site.
Content is king – up until recently, blogs were seen as the most important factor in driving digital and social media presence. But as Andreas points out, content is not king. It is table stakes.
Play to a niche – write on a single topic or subject area. Even a blog on marketing can spin off in hundreds of directions. Writing to a niche will take you so far – but may not reflect either the needs of your writing nor the needs of your audience.

So where to from here?

Writing a blog takes effort and attention. It’s not a simple thing to do. But writing requires you to think through and articulate concepts in a way that tweeting or sharing content via social media does not. And for those of us who work at the point where people and technology meet – and where the future of work and ways of working continue to evolve, I feel that writing and publishing (yes video and podcasting too) may be the best form of future thinking and future proofing that we can do.

Merit wins out, right?

Creativity, Diversity

The idea of meritocracy – that innate talent and hard work are the drivers of success – is often promoted as the reason that we should turn away from diversity quotas. But political philosopher Michael Sandel provides a refreshing critique.