Networked communications: The New Normal

Steve Woodruff @Connection Agent

By the way…
The purpose of this presentation is to help those who are interested in social media to understand the inevitable and central role that digital networked communications will play now and in the future.
That is most clearly seen by looking at the overall trends shaping the way society increasingly communicates…

Outline
What is Social Media/Networked Communications?
Trend Currents (not current trends!)
What does all this mean for business and for me ?

What is Social Media?

Social Media is…
People doing what they’ve always done – connecting and sharing
Instead of a backyard fence, we now have a digital web
We’re communicating, in multiple ways, as we always have – but faster, broader, and richer
Social media is…

Networked Communications on steroids!

Networked Communications
Social media is a subset of a much broader category that we can call (digital) Networked Communications .
We’ve always done Networked Communications (think: the neighborhood gossip grapevine.) Now, it’s just faster and richer.
Only when it is placed in its broader context does it make the most cultural and business sense.
See more on this topic at:
http://bit.ly/NetworkedCommunications

Cultural Ubiquity Social networking is cutting across ALL areas of business (not just marketing), and the use of social networking in business is a subset of its broad use in general life and culture. It’s not going away!

Trend Currents
Things like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. are current trends – temporary manifestations
Networked Communications is a Trend Current – those inexorable forces re-shaping culture and technology

The Inexorable Trend Currents
Disintermediation
Mobile Computing
Self-Expression
Community Formation
These inexorable trends are the flowing river (specific social media platforms are the boats)
Networked Communications are interwoven with these trend currents:

1. Disintermediation
Commerce
Information
Gatekeepers
The barriers between people and information/people/goods are rapidly falling. Example: Amazon and buying (books + whatever!)

The Bottom Line: Then There were once many walls and gaps between most people – direct contact with people and information was severely limited and regularly mediated

The Bottom Line: Now Peer-to-peer engagement: The new normal

Smartphones/pads
Web and Apps everywhere
Wi-Fi & always-on connectivity
2. Mobile Computing Everything from text to video will increasingly be in portable form factors. Digital communications over a network will simply be assumed – like breathing air.

3. Self-Expression
Ideas
Opinions
Multi-media
There is no longer a barrier or time lag between idea, expression, publication, and consumption.

4. Community
Find
Dialogue
Organize
People are now free to create their own communities, without top-down involvement, supervision, or geographical constraints

So…Who is in Charge Now? These Trend Currents – and the digital tools that fuel them – make the growth of social media/networked communications into virtually every sphere an inevitability.

What’s in it for YOU?

Business Opportunity
Companies can humanize – connect and communicate with customers
Knowledge can flow easily (in all directions)
Messages can go forward “unmediated” by others
Advocates can be created and user communities built
Internal silos can be eroded through peer-to-peer communication

By the way…
Businesses that try to jump into social media, without having key people personally involved (building trusted network connections as individuals) will almost certainly fail.
Therefore, a primary call to action is to encourage involvement in personal and professional digital networks in order to understand the environment (which is very different from the one-way communications format)
So….

(Personal) Opportunity Networking
“ Safety Net” - fear- and circumstance-driven
“ Opportunity Network ” – confidence and future-driven
Greatest opportunities, for you and others, will be through ties of shared interest, sympathy, and connections

Levels of Involvement

Passive Outposting
Add your basic info to on-line repositories (Visual CV, LinkedIn, etc.)
Allows you to be “findable” on-line
Join to an early strategy of “lurking” (reading and listening) to get a feel for the landscape

Formal Connecting
Reaching out and becoming a “connection” with trusted individuals you know
LinkedIn very common on the professional level; Facebook the standard on the personal level
Begins to open up access to wider networks (friends of friends)

Lifestreaming
More open sharing of multiple facets of life
Higher level of focus on status updates, pics, quick videos
Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare very popular
Professionals may struggle to gain a comfort level with this amount of disclosure

Engaging with Private Communities
Countless focused (some open; some invite-only or private) communities exist around areas of interest
Private “walled gardens” allow a freer level of sharing without wide open exposure on the web
Very useful for professionals/businesses trying to practice “safe social networking”

Open Web Sharing
Your writing, comments, updates, pix, etc. are open to the whole world
Blogs, Twitter, and other sharing platforms enable an unlimited audience
Can provide a vast Opportunity Network
Must embrace privacy/publicity tradeoff

Levels of Intimacy

Roles People Play

What do I do now?
START!
What’s in it for… them (give, add value)
Be pro-active and think long-term
Merge on-line and off-line
Become a connector
Remember: Google is your new resume, and it never forgets!

Where I live on-line www.stevewoodruff.com

Twitter: @connectionagent
Connection Agent blog
Digital Biz Card: text swoodruff to 50500
Free e-book!

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Networked communications: The New Normal

by Steve Woodruff

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