Concepts emerge, divide, converge and morph. SEO is a good example. At one point there were two distinct camps: the search engine optimization folks and the organic optimization folks. But now the distinction is blurred. Highly technically focused search engine businesses now evangelize organic content.

Content-marketing is another example. The convergence was faster. The concept was based on: make the content interesting, relevant, compelling, appealing and valuable to the reader, and people will find it, share it and want more from the producer. The cream will rise to the top. But now, companies are tightly connecting content with SEO tools, techniques and technologies. Tailor the content to what they know people search for, and sell the system to drive traffic.

Who knows what’s good or bad, right or wrong, or which way to go?

This makes life interesting for professional service firms. How do you differentiate and position your services when the needs, problems, solutions and competitors are shifting and morphing?

Think of it as the ultimate opportunity to be unique.

For example: I became aware at one point that people need help with “what they don’t know they don’t know” and really had a passion for that space. So over time, I developed a model based on that realization that’s helped guide my strategic and creative decisions and that’s resulted in solutions that clients value.

I suggest getting very clear on what’s always been important to you, what you stand for, what you have passion for, and what you’re enthusiastic about. Build your frameworks around those. Who knows, someday the next big concept could be yours.

Social Media:Community Snapshot

Social media will increasingly become more important to businesses that must find new ways to gain influence and increase attention share in peer-to-peer (friends) networks.

However, the strategies being developed to help companies accomplish this are often loosely based on a traditional sales and marketing funnel analogy, identifying community members as:

• visitors
• prospects
• leads
• opportunities
• customers

The funnel goal is to focus efforts on the people who are most likely to be influenced to take action and move them through the funnel.

This is an effective social network model but is based on assumptions that are not applicable for many businesses. The graphic simply illustrates a non-linear social community model as a connected group of people, including a tiny percentage who talk and a very large percentage who listen only, and who all have latent needs. Often, that’s it!

In this model, people (peers) who listen only to other people (peers and brand) may be just as likely to be influenced as the small percentage of people (peers) who talk. And there’s no way of knowing what the brand (people) can do to facilitate that. It requires experiential learning.

Because many communities look and act like this, its critical that business social media strategies differentiate assumptions from myths and not base their quest for quantitative metrics and ROI on those myths. Its harder to do that than it sounds because we individually and collectively (culture) identify with what’s worked in the past. Its what we “know”.

But success could mean testing many assumptions about the 95% of community members who listen only, and learning how to earn their attention and better understand them. Compared to traditional marketing methods, its a less clear, test and learn approach, dependent more on time than money. But that should not mean a casual or haphazard, half-hearted approach to social media.

Regardless of how tentative you feel about it, or how small you start, take it seriously. This is the future, and whatever the size of your business, an important decision you’ll make and change that you’ll lead.

Social Media - Medical Device Industry

I have a former background in machine-tool, as a controller and later, a partner. A key market was medical device which has continued to grow, 6% annually in the U.S., which manufactures a large percentage of global product.

Despite industry consolidation, approximately 80% of the more than 8,000 U.S. medical device firms employ less than 50 people. What they lack in resources, they can make up in agility and responsiveness to highly specific customer needs and requirements which include R&D partnerships and new market applications for existing products and processes.

Success for the small medical device manufacturer requires continual research, a focus on promotion, internal knowledge sharing and collaborative partnerships. For these reasons, as well as their insistence on getting the biggest (measurable) bang for their media investments, medical device companies can greatly benefit from social media.

Businesses of all sizes and industries, from solo firms to large corporations, are becoming increasingly interested in using social networks, both internally and externally, to build collaborative and conversational communities.

When I talk to owners, managers and executives about their approach and expectations, I often hear answers that combine elements of Web site initiatives and marketing campaigns. But social networks are about sharing and relationship building. A traditional approach will likely fail.

What I usually don’t hear is a deep understanding of why social networks make sense for them and how social networks are related to shifts in control of markets, knowledge, media and technology. Unlike pre-Web 2.0 online marketing, branding, communications and e-commerce, social networks initiatives bear little resemblance to traditional business and marketing models. Although its good to carefully and consciously experiment, a serious social network program requires that deep understanding as well as integrating a clear purpose and message in all content and communications.

I like the holon as a metaphor for an integral social network strategy.

Social Media Integral Strategy

A holon (Greek: holos, “whole”) is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was coined by Arthur Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine (1967, p. 48). Wikipedia

Whatever the planning process, a visual will ensure that strategy and execution is anchored to the underlying understanding and purpose. Simple questions should be asked at the outset and periodically, for example:

• Is this good for me?
• ….for us?
• ….for the community?
• ….for a greater good?

Once the purpose is clear, a road-map for short-term experiential learning, and long-term actionable metrics can be developed to direct your social networks to go the right way.

If you’re in professional services you’re hearing some version of this when you make a sales call: “All this blogging and social networking and having conversations is too much work, too expensive, giving my expertise away for free and just another passing fad. I need to get good leads because I know I can close the business if I have the leads. So I want you to help me with a business development plan so that I meet my business and life goals and objectives.”

In the past, I’d be immediately mentally rehearsing my exit thinking “they’re clueless, don’t waste your time, there’s nothing here.” I’m now practicing a better response by being be present with, open to and curious about these potential clients. My approach is to meet them where they are and drop any attachment to getting their business. I don’t try to persuade them about anything, its futile. And I avoid getting drawn into long, detailed story and history, its meaningless.

What I commit to is understanding how a business owner responds to change out of old habit and then continually reinforces the counter-directing assumptions by endlessly, willfully and forcefully repeating them. “Push” is the modus operandi. But “push back” is no longer mine. That alone can shift the dynamic of the meeting and create an opening for inquiry, deep listening, re-framing and shared understanding. Whether new business results or not, positive fulfillment, often indirectly, unfailingly corresponds with my choice to be naturally influential, even when the sales call seems hopeless.

I may not get a new client, but I’ll definitely gain a new friend.

I’ve always been quite proud of and grateful for my skill, talent and experience in strategy. The ability to figure out all the angles, possibilities, scenarios and methods for problem solving and decision making served me very well in both my professional and personal life. Or so I thought.

Because over the past year I’ve shifted as I’ve realized that my being strategic about certain aspects of my personal reality was a (lifelong!) habitual, albeit sophisticated, attempt to control when non-resistance, or willingness to let go, accept and receive, was the better response. And these old habits, particularly when they’re connected to safety and survival needs (my specialties), tend to sneak back in and get the ego involved when I least expect it, during meditation for example.

But gradually, and sometimes in leaps and bounds, there’s a great sense of ease and relief in letting go of attempting to control through strategic means that which we don’t have control over and in fact never did have control over.

So for the past days I’ve been going through a lot of my material, and books, and notes to try to synthesize, re-frame and present this material visually and creatively to maximize its value to my readers and clients. I wanted to come up with a compelling diagram or clever map that would provide a starting point to answering the question: when is strategy the correct response and when does it counter-direct? The harder I tried, the less I accomplished and the worse I felt until I finally realized that I was being strategic…again.

So I allowed myself a few minutes of stillness to see what came up and this came up:

Relief.

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