The Prequel to Your Show

April 26, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

simulated-cosmos

I’m a big Battlestar Galactica fan. I’ve watched most episodes several times to understand the story’s complex arcs, but always had some unanswered questions. The producers and writers clearly wanted to challenge the audience, and succeeded.

Despite my passion for BSG, my expectation for the recent first episode of the prequel, Caprica, was fairly low. The initial reviews were lukewarm so I figured it wouldn’t live up to the BSG series and might confuse me. I was wrong. It was great.

Since watching it, I’ve been thinking about the value of the backstory to bloggers, speakers and solo professional and creative practitioners.

You know how the prequel is usually done in business. The writer or speaker either begins with, or interjects some version of “now let me tell you a little bit about myself”. Its a literal and linear approach, although sometimes effectively interjecting anecdote and humor as it explains. The Ron Moore (BSG and Caprica Executive Producer) approach is much more interesting. It doesn’t explain, it unfolds. The audience has to be more attentive in order to connect the slender threads between past and present. So its a compelling and inclusive user experience and not a boring account.

Your backstory can be woven through your content. Its your personal myth: defining moments, experiences, insights, synchronicity, dreams, joy, metaphor, suffering and learning that you made happen or let happen and that changed you. Your readers, viewers and listeners won’t be bored, and they won’t be confused about what they really most want to know: who are you?

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Filed under: Content, authenticity, inclusion, metaphor, personal brand, self-expression, writing
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My 12-Month Social Media for Solo Professional Service Firm Experience

December 13, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

RedShift:12-Month Social Media Experience

RedShift:12-Month Social Media Experience

I realized that its been exactly 12 months since I decided to get involved with social media. I’d already been blogging for a number years, but prior social media experiments were disappointing. Its good that I gave it another chance.

There’s so much out there about how to use social media for professional and business benefit. It can be daunting to find the right information that you can relate to if you’re a small business or professional service provider just getting started. That’s why I wanted to present my experience as a story and a picture. I didn’t follow a plan; I just dove in.

The experiential, test and learn approach worked great for me and it was right that I waited until the social networking applications allowed users full control. If I made a mistake, or changed my mind, it was easy to edit or delete. I needed that.

I didn’t have a plan beyond wanting to connect with people and bring my content to a higher level, and I think that was a good thing. I developed my own social media models and tools as I learned and gained experience. The more I learned, on my own and from others that I connected with, the more clear I got about where I was going with social media and how it integrated with my my business. It was an iterative, not linear, progression. That’s typical for me, but that’s me. Success in social medial looks and feels different for everyone and there’s nothing wrong with figuring out what’s most valuable to you as you work with it.

My only strong recommendation is to not get bogged down in a lot of advance research or planning, or wanting to be like others. That’s because of the sheer volume of information out there and the huge numbers of people involved. Just start. You’ll figure it out as you go along.

I think that iterative processes and learning are better expressed in visuals and I’m hoping readers will relate to some of my activities and milestones in the diagram and hopefully can imagine their own. I’ve tried to illustrate how my social media experience for a small professional service firm is an ongoing, fluid work in process.

I’m pleased that I’ve built a good foundation and platform for growth, have new relationships with excellent people, and have expanded my personal and professional influence. The biggest return at this point is the content I’ve developed and integrated through repeatedly expressing my ideas, insights, beliefs and observations for my small, high quality and growing community.

The only cost was my time and its been well spent. In fact, after only 12 months, my social media experiment has morphed into my most important small business system. Its become the cornerstone of my intellectual and social capital development and hopefully, in the near future, a driver of increased awareness of my brand by people who need what I offer.

For small businesses and professional service providers in the connected and conceptual world, social media can definitely add to the Value of You!.

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Filed under: SEO/SEM, authenticity, differentiation, direction, global microbrand, mind mapping, personal brand, self-expression, social media, social networks, solo psf
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The value of You!

November 24, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

RedShift: The New ROI-Of You

RedShift: The New ROI-Of You

If everything you read or hear about money and finance contradicts your present experience, what you want and where you’re going, why look or listen? Think about it: do you want the so-called “experts” to determine your worth?

You may protest, saying you have $100 in the bank and owe $20,000, so you know you’re toast. Really? By what criteria? Most of the financial valuation criteria was designed for a world economy that bears little resemblance to the present, and maybe none to the near future.

So perhaps:
You’ve heavily invested in your physical well-being that will likely prolong your life for 20 years. Is that not a high-yield investment?

You’ve created a global micro-branded business that is not generating much revenue. What about the many intangible assets that can be amortized? How much? How long?

You’re beginning your encore career and are concerned with making yourself and the world better. How do you value your present and future impact? On how many lives? For how many generations even after you’re gone?

You’re sticking out, for 8 more years, a job you despise to meet your financial goals. How do you value what you really owe for that 8 years, or beyond?

The probable scenarios are countless. What does yours look like?

Remove your attention from the 100% negative financial reporting and boldly claim and create the value of you. Its not a fantasy. Its creative authority. Perhaps your -$19,900 negative worth is actually +$4 million. Which will you intend?.

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Filed under: Consciousness, In Transition, career, global microbrand, going solo, innovation, knowledge, networks, personal brand, relationship, shift, social capital, social networks, solo psf
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Social Networks Part 4: Quantitative ROI

October 6, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

RedShift Social Media-Network Model for Business

RedShift Social Media-Network Model for Business

Businesses across all industries are paying more attention to social networks which are predicted to explode worldwide. Although clearly there’s tremendous opportunity and potential it can be overwhelming to grasp the rapid disruption happening and the voluminous information getting pushed out.

Decision makers need help discerning what’s valuable from what’s hype and in taking a direction that makes sense for them. My goal is to help them do that with a unique 4-stage map that is more strategy than tactics and more visual than wordy.

My posts on stages 1-3 are:

The purpose integral to my model is that businesses of all size increase their natural natural influence by using social networks to expand their social capital, brand awareness and sense response skills and abilities.

The quantifiable return in my model is the sum of actionable metrics that follow the qualitative experiential learning of the earlier phase. Its nearly impossible to assign a dollar figure to every social media action. Its more reasonable to present ROI as a story of the benefits of your social media initiative. What’s most important in the very organic world of social networks, is patiently directing the movement, or progression from one stage to the next and not losing commitment to authentic community relationship-building in the quest for ROI.

I developed this model to support a practical approach to social media with recommendations including:

  • Determine if and how social networks can help you grow your business and/or improve profitability.

  • Accept the disruption resulting from a shift from seller to buyer power.

  • Involve people in the decision making process who will challenge assumptions and habitual responses to change and disruption.

  • Understand that it will take two years to measure returns on integrating social networks, whether external, internal (behind the firewall), or both.

  • Model natural and authentic communications both offline and online and give incentives for participation.

  • Don’t wait, over-plan, over-control, micro-manage or over-analyze. Adopt a test and learn approach to social networks.

  • Be open-minded and creative about results and metrics you choose to track, knowing that you could get an unexpected equivalent result, or something even better.

  • If the above don’t convince you, consider the cost to your business of doing nothing.

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Filed under: authenticity, culture, direction, disruption, emergence, enterprise initiatives, expansion, global microbrand, integral, micro-business, networks, personal brand, relationship, social capital, social media, social networks, tribal wisdom
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Social Networks Part 3: Qualitative ROI

October 2, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

Return on Natural Influence - RO(n)L

Return on Natural Influence - RO(n)L

In previous posts I’ve talked about Social Networks: The Pre-requisites, a model for Social Network Community Segmentation, and also Integrating Social Media and Networks (using RedShift as a case study).

Clients, of course, want to understand the ROI, in quantitative metrics, of their investment in social media and networks. That’s understandably important to them.

But its helpful to first understand ROI from a qualitative perspective to ensure that there’s a success path that makes sense and that can be simply and effectively communicated to gain support and participation. If you can’t do that, you could go the wrong way and reach a dead end when you try to quantify the return on your social network investments.

Its important to understand that the link between your investment and the quantifiable return is “indirect”. You need a map to get from one to another.

Three major roads on the RO(n)I map are:

  • Social Capital: shared information, support and strengthened ties that facilitate business actions and inter-actions.
  • Brand Awareness: the cumulative trust-building effect of proving the brand promise, demonstrating the brand message and building the personal/business reputation.
  • Sense Response: unique individual and collective skills and abilities that result from practicing a new way of listening and interacting so that you respond to change before it happens and unmet needs before they’re expressed.

The map may have different signs and paths, depending on your specific business and industry. But having one is critical to avoid getting lost in a failed social network initiative.

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Filed under: Natural influence, emergence, global microbrand, personal brand, qualitative research, social capital, social media, social networks, tribal wisdom
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