Servant of Chaos -

#PMdigital–The Australian Prime Minister’s Digital Forum

On Friday, October 5, the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, hosted a forum on the digital economy. Streamed via the web it brought together business leaders, academics, politicians and small business owners. Through out the day, speakers returned to the themes that are driving change in our lives – what we refer to as the five forces of the consumerisation of IT. PLUS the need for skills and training – ways to impact the culture of business, drive change in our workforces and prepare our teams for the future of work.

This storify captures and curates the topics from the day.

You Had Me at Hello–20 Tips for Social Media Engagement

Social Business, Social Media

“I don’t have time for that”.

How many times have you heard those lines? It is often the first reaction to a new technology. It is the cold fish, slap-in-the-face of the overwhelmed. The desperate cry of the overworked.

Many times we let technology get in the way. It can confuse us or stop us from trying something new. Its first appearance looks like more work, more effort, more stress. More of everything that is bad.

But when we look back at improvements in productivity, technology is, without a doubt, the driving force. It has made our lives better – reducing boring, repetitive tasks, improving the speed of our decision making and delivering lightning fast, global communications to our desktops, fingertips and pockets. And yet, for many of us, new technology stops us in our tracks. After all, we are not all “early adopters” eager to try, use and show something new.

Often when we say “I don’t have time for that”, really we are saying, “I’m tired of this relentless change. I’m comfortable with the way I work. I’m good at it and I am busy doing what I am already doing.” In the end it appears to be change for technology’s sake.

But if the world of social media has taught us anything, it is that technology can also be transformative – it can change the way we do things. And it can change the way we think about things. It can change our attitudes.

But where do you start? This great 20 tip playbook from Salesforce Radian6 brings a decisively human element to the technology conversation (and I am not just saying this because I am mentioned in it). And while the focus is social media – this same approach can be equally applied to any communication challenge that you face. After all, it’s not about the technology – it’s about the people. Start by saying hello.

20 Ways to Succeed in Social Media Engagement from Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Trust and the Marketer

AgencyWorld, Future of Your Brand, Social Judgement, The Social Way

Consumers have always suspected marketers. Of something.

But this “something” has always been elusive. Hard to pin down.

In the back of the mind of most consumers, there is a small voice – a remnant of our evolutionary instinct – that warns us of a potential risk, a trap. The limbic system is part of our pre-verbal brain that we commonly refer to as “gut instinct”. And because it works without language, we are often challenged to put these feelings into words. As a result, we are left with a sense of mistrust. Something vague. Indiscernible.

But the limbic brain is also the space of creativity. It is the place of imagination and symbolism. And it is the essential playground of the marketer.

Each day, as consumers are bombarded with 3000+ messages, it is the limbic brain that acts as a first level of defence. Most droll pieces of advertising or communication are discarded – with only the most creative and most relevant breaking through.

These days, marketers have to work even harder to cut through the noise and confusion. It’s not just about creativity. It’s also about psychology, human behaviour (change) and analytics. We need to cover all four.

Over the last few years, Australian TV show, Gruen Planet, has peeled back the layers of the mysterious advertising onion. It has laid bare the role of planning and strategy, creative, copy, image and production. Blogs like Adam Ferrier’s Consumer Psychologist provide insight and analysis into what people buy and why they do so.

Infographics like the one below, provide a neat way of understanding some of the techniques used in advertising – but my limbic brain also tells me that we need a different approach now. Sure these approaches will continue to work – but we need to go further. We need to build a different kind of marketing – one that does not set off the limbic alarm bells. We need to address the deficit of trust experienced by consumers.

What if we could create marketing with a purpose (not marketing with a cause). Imagine what that would mean for our customers. Imagine what it would mean for our employees.

And imagine what it would mean for the marketing industry.

Sound dangerous? Don’t worry, it’s just your limbic system acting up.

CMO to CIO – It’s Time We Talked

Age of Conversation, Infographics, Innovation, Social Business, The Social Way, Web/Tech

When we crowdsourced the first The Age of Conversation book back in 2008, the idea of working from the outside-in was untested. Over 100 marketing innovators from 15 countries shared their thoughts and early experiences and Drew McLellan and I produced a book that would go on to create a community, showcase the early adopters and leading social media practitioners and ultimately raise around $50,000 for charity.

People like David Berkowitz wrote about participation and its ephemeral nature in a connected world. Toby Bloomberg peered into the future, suggesting that business was personal and that technology is fueling emotional engagement. And Katie Chatfield told brands to prepare themselves for a party.

Several years on, however, how many brands are ready to party? How many can scale their digital interactions into some form of customer engagement? And how many are prepared to turn conversations into something more than a link or a like?

As this infographic from Socialcast shows, many businesses continue to restrict access to social media in the workplace. At the same time, social marketing agency Awareness suggests that better customer engagement was a top business objective for social media.

Social Media Governance a Major Concern for CIOs: The gap between the business objectives and needs of two vital organisational units – technology and marketing appear at odds. Robert Half Technology’s survey of 1400 CIOs indicates that governance concerns are high on the CIO agenda – citing security, legal liability and bandwidth as reasons for blocking social media.
Social Media Generates Productivity and Creativity Payoffs: The “micro breaks” offered by social media may actually increase productivity. But this pales into insignificance against the business value of bringing the outside-in. A recent McKinsey Global Institute report suggests that cross-enterprise collaboration is estimated to unlock in excess of $900 billion across four industries.
CMO to CIO – Let’s Talk Timing: The competing needs of the CMO and CIO are often seen through the lens of conflict. Customer demands and revenue expectations drive a marketing agenda while risk management, compliance and governance occupy the minds of the CIO. Yet, the opportunity for collaboration exists. CMOs need to understand the challenges of governance and technology and CIOs need exposure to the “front office”. The answer lies in planning and timing. And having the right conversation.

Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week

5 Must-Read Posts

Some weeks, reading across the web can feel light on. At other times, it feels like there is an explosion of critical thinking and devastating insight.

Last week, it was the latter – with dozens of great articles challenging perceptions and charting a path into the future. These are the best five:

Following your passion can lead to a great career – but it takes time. And it takes stamina. Cal Newport suggests there is a way to solve Gen Y’s passion problem.
There’s a difference between building buzz and building community – and as Augie Ray found out, Alyssa Milano can retweet you and you don’t even get a lousy t-shirt
A vital element of digital marketing is content. But our understanding of content is also changing – and continuing experimentation will yield new categories in the years ahead. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) have been at the forefront of content innovation and have identified “digital transformation as the biggest marketing challenge”. Their vision is to “develop new products that lead audiences into a new digital future”. See the full speech here.
On the subject of content, Neil Perkin explains what it really means for businesses to not only “think like a publisher, but plan like a publisher”. Great article on the 70, 20, 10 Content Planning Model.
The juggernaut that is Dreamforce dominated a lot of digital marketing conversation last week. This post by Dion Hinchcliffe summarises the big themes around social business, cloud computing and the future of work.

Don’t Like Me – Hire Me: Recruiting Goes Social

Future of Work, Infographics, Social Recruiting, The Social Way

The 2012 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey reports that 92% of US companies have used social media to identify talent and potential employees. The survey also indicates that 43% of companies using social recruiting have seen an increase in candidate quality – with 73% successfully hiring.

Increasingly this means that personal brands and employer brands are colliding online – well before an interview or conversation takes place. This will impact both the employer and the individual job seeker in positive and challenging ways – with all having to come to grips with the potential and impact of digital marketing as the global economy recovers and the war for talent resumes.

Social Networks Are the Place Where Personal and Employer Brands Meet

In a crowded market it can be a struggle to stand out. On the one hand job seekers compete for the attention of leading businesses and promising startups; and on the other, employers strive to identify and source those with the talent, skills and cultural alignment to succeed within their business.

Increasingly, social networks are the space where personal brand and employer brands meet – bridging skills and geographies through business opportunity.

LinkedIn allows individuals to create profiles and companies to create pages, join groups, advertise events, jobs and corporate information. It has over 150 million individual profiles and more than 2.6 million company pages
Xing is the European focused equivalent of LinkedIn with over 7 million profiles
BranchOut uses the Facebook Open Graph to bring a professional and skill based layer to the most social of social networks
Ushi is a Chinese invitation-only business social network and focuses its membership on executive and senior professionals
Tianji has 12 million members and connects China’s white collar professionals and entrepreneurs
Niche professional networks abound, offering very focused connection based networks by industry, role or even age and experience

Finding the signal in the noise on any of these networks can be a challenge for employers and individuals alike.

Individuals Turn to the 4 BEs and Employers Respond

Even when there is a war on talent – when the demand for the best and brightest workers outstrips the supply, the sheer volume of names, profiles, links and data can prove disconcerting. And for those individuals seeking new career challenges and opportunities, it’s no longer good enough to prepare and send a CV in response to an advertisement – job seekers need to use the 4 BEs of Social Discovery:

Be found: Without some form of digital profile, individuals will struggle to compete with the more digital-savvy. A LinkedIn profile is a minimal starting point but can be easily augmented through simple online publishing tools like about.me
Be known: Individuals are increasingly using digital publishing platforms to showcase their skills, experience and networks. Employers are scouring this information to verify career facts and experience of candidates
Be trusted: It’s not just what you know – it’s who you are connected to. Reputation is an essential component for both the job seeker and the employer. This goes beyond the simplistic recommendations on LinkedIn – employers are seeking overlaps in networks to create verifiable profiles of candidates
Be successful: Reputation is also about delivery. What are the personal case studies that individuals can publish or link to? What are the outcomes and learnings that can be identified and how does this match against other profile and career data. Employers are seeking a broader understanding of candidates – information that goes beyond the facts and figures and provides a sense of “character” and “personality” (for which social media is imminently suited)

Personal Branding Meets Talent Sourcing

Proactive job seekers are seeking out, following and engaging prospective employers across social networks – but the reverse is also true. Those businesses who require highly specialized skills and expertise are identifying and tracking candidates across their careers. Talent sourcers are employing ever more sophisticated techniques and technologies to accelerate their discovery process.

Vendors have already begun bringing technology to bear against this challenge. Yvette Cameron suggests that Oracle’s new Social Relationship Management suite will bridge personal social and enterprise data to great effect in the coming 12-18 months; and that we should expect similar announcements to come from Salesforce during the annual Dreamforce event.

Social Technologies Disrupting the Workplace Silo

Today’s workers expect that social and mobile technologies will not only be available within the enterprise – but that they will be used to in ways that will empower them and improve productivity. Business leaders have been challenged to justify investment and to trace the value proposition involved. Social technologies and the business rigor that they provide may well provide not only the disruption required to create value within the enterprise – they may well create the future of work – and that’s where personal and employer brands may find their perfect match.

Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week

5 Must-Read Posts

Each week I seek out articles that indicate a shift in something – cultural thinking, consumer behaviour, strategy, communications, work practices … anything that opens the door to the unexpected.

It’s easy to find information that confirms what we already think or know, but it’s better to not only push the envelope of our own experience – we should seek to read unaddressed letters from the future of others.

I’m talking to you! The Future Belongs to the Curious – a great, brief introduction to Skillshare and why it’s meeting the changing way that we learn. Not a new article but new to me via Natalie Swainston.
What are the shifting forces in (digital) culture? Valeria Maltoni shares insights from a Creative Mornings talk by Johnathan Harris.
When we think strategy, we often think about what we have to work with. We analyse our tools and the spaces that we operate in – like a game of chess. Ben Kunz explains that Strategy Requires that You Make a Choice – but what if there was no chess board?
Why do brands advertise, what’s the role of creativity and what’s the difference between a great idea and everything else that should be left on the whiteboard? Edward Boches’ lecture on the Fundamentals of Creative Development is a great introduction.
I saved the brain explosion for last – Danah Boyd has collected a series of articles on the topic of Social Mediated Publicness. Read them and exercise your sexiest organ.

Invisible Digital is the Force for Next Generation Branding

Branding, Customer Experience, Digital Strategy, The Social Way

Next Generation Branding Happens from the Outside In

Apple does it. Amazon does it. Nike does it. Google does it too.

All are ranked in the top 50 of the 2012 BrandZ most valuable global brands report. Yet even within this exclusive collection of brands, some stand out from others. It’s not just that they encompass all that represents a strong brand as suggested in the report – “innovation, trust, reputation, responsible citizenship” – but something far more important. They are brands that exist from the outside in – brands that are created by the consumer experience that radiate back towards the company.

And they achieve this through the innovative use of digital strategy.

Apple’s Innovation: Invisible Digital

The excitement around the launch of any Apple product is palpable. From the first iPod through to the latest incarnation of iPhone, Apple has mastered the art of slow burn communication. There are various “leaks”, glimpses and mockups that find their way into the online world. Rumours of impending announcements are made and message boards, blogs and social media sites explode in anticipation. Meanwhile, the retail experience is perfected – employees are briefed and educated, supply chain is primed and inventory is delivered. And often, as in the case of the iPhone 5, the announcement is simply an exercise in expectation setting – it’s a pre-announcement of an announcement, a pre-launch of the launch. After the announcement, products can be pre-ordered online, ready for delivery or pick up after the launch.

It’s a carefully orchestrated strategy designed to prime the market and maximise sales. It is an experience that uses digital to connect the dots – from expectation setting through ordering to delivery. And yet, it’s a digital experience that does not call out its existence. At almost every touchpoint, customers experience a sense of digital innovation without the accompanying sense of interruption or dislocation. It’s digital that is invisible.

Invisible digital drives footfall: Retailers understand the importance of footfall – of having people physically in your stores – and Apple is no exception. But while many retailers struggle to drive people into store, Apple can orchestrate vast queues of people to line up for hours just to pick up their new device. Sure, these customers could choose to have their iPhones delivered to their home, but that would exclude them from a very public ritual that is beamed by mainstream media around the world. Orders may be placed online, but fulfilment (in all its senses), is delivered in person.
Invisible digital orchestrates engagement: Apple chooses not to actively participate in social media, ploughing their efforts into activities which create remarkable experiences for their customers. Whether it is an ad hoc visit, a reservation at the Genius Bar or the excitement of picking up a new device, the free WiFi at the Apple Store ensures that customers can create conversations around this experience, taking photographs, blogging, sharing and tweeting.
Invisible digital casts a brand halo: When we purchase a product or service we are investing a small amount of our reputation into a brand. And as we use that product or service there is a cross-halo effect that takes place – we share our own reputational glow with that brand and the brand, in turn, reflects upon us. Invisible digital allows this to happen seamlessly – and with each micro-interaction, the personal and public brand becomes ever more closely aligned.

The Bottom Line: Invisible Digital Sets the Stage for Next Generation Branding

Google claimed top ranking in the 2007 BrandZ report with Apple well down the list at 16th. It seemed at the time that Google were unassailable. Five years later, they are ranked 3rd behind IBM, and have suffered a 3% drop in their brand valuation (with a brand valuation that is only 60% of Apple’s $182 million). The need to innovate is relentless, but innovation must not focus on technology alone. Innovating the customer experience must become a priority for brands and invisible digital may be the key.

Invisible digital is not about technology in the traditional sense. The technology simply enables a flow that transports customers from one experience to another. The touchpoints, the interactions and ultimately, the aggregation of experiences creates next generation brands. Some brands understand how this works. Others must accelerate their efforts and investigations or risk falling further behind.

Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week

5 Must-Read Posts

From analysis to how-to, this week’s five must-read posts have a little something for everyone. Read them all and dazzle your colleagues with your insight, knowledge and pure awesomeness.

Paul Wallbank’s blistering commentary on the Australian retail sector resonates with a lot of the readers over at Smart Company. It’s the real e-myth and it’s not pretty
Have you ever wanted to connect with that rare breed of internet user – the “influencer”? If so, you will really want to read Sonia Simone’s 10 point plan for connecting with online influencers (without turning into a suck up)
Mike Hickinbotham asks should Australian social media marketers earn accreditation? What do you think? And who would you trust to deliver it?
I hadn’t used my Reddit account for years – and then suddenly last week it was hot. US President Obama held a live chat on the platform and suddenly it was the future of publishing. Here’s what you need to know about the “unofficial front page of the internet”.
In case you missed it, Mandi Bateson has put together a great presentation on Twitter Marketing Essentials. It’s the gift you give to someone you work with.