Ecademy - A way of living

The Journey to Advocacy

There is a lot of debate, not just on Social Networks including Ecademy, but also in many of the Business Networks, BNI, BRX, NRG, 4 Networking and so on, about the relative mix of quantity or quality, and how to go about building advocates, and having an active advocate group who promote you and sing your praises at every opportunity.

I'm often asked about how I've built the advocates that I have and I've given this a lot of thought. The journey to advocacy, is not complicated but it is something that cannot be short-circuited. After all, an advocate is someone who provides a continuous stream of referrals for you and your business, and that doesn't happen overnight. Giving referrals is something I discussed in this article... One aspect of that article that is important in this context is this passage...

When you make a referral you refer more than the business because the donor is referring the recipients skills and experience, but he is referring the donor's reputation. The subject of the referral will hold the donor responsible for the outcome of the referral as much as the recipient. Personally, I won't refer people to my contacts beyond the level of my current reputation with that contact. Sometimes, I've held back on a referral, not because I have doubts about the recipient himself, but because of my experience of others in the same company, my reputation with my contacts is too important to risk with those who do not show equal or better regard for reputational matters.

Understanding how to move through the journey to advocacy should make it easier to advocate, and be advocated. I describe the journey to advocacy as being all about 4 'A''s and a TIP. 

The Journey to Advocacy

Quantity Awareness     Visibility Approach              Interest Talk   about you to others   Acknowledge      Understand Introduce   you to others (when asked) Quality Advocate        Trust Promote   you pro-actively

Does competition create the leanest products and services?

The Western democracies have long valued the effects of competition in their markets, whereas historically the command and control economies have tended to favour state ownership and managerial control to ensure employment and efficiencies of scale.

Whilst there has been much evidence based analysis of the merits of both systems, speaking from the UK, I have only been exposed, in business, to the operation of a competitive market where my business success relies on me winning business from potential customers in a competitive arena. To do so, I have to demonstrate, to that customer, that my product or service is of better value, greater utility, to them, than those of my competition or from the ultimate competition which we all face, the decision of the client to do nothing.

REAL goals or S.M.A.R.T goals

For many years in corporate life, at about this time of year (December), I was asked to put together my goals and then challenged to make them S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed - other variations exist but the intention is broadly similar). Usually by about February it was pretty obvious that some of them wouldn't be achieved, and some weren't needed any more.

I wasn't alone.

SMART goals simply weren't smart, although the idea and principles make good sense. They are a great way to help people who are inexperienced in goal setting to think through what's needed, but they have weaknesses too. Over many years of working within and leading teams I learned that SMART goals aren't really goals at all, they aren't the things that drive us, they lacked ownership (many were just written do to satisfy the boss's boss that everyone knew what they were doing - what a laugh), and the measures and timing virtually guaranteed a degree of failure. As an example, a writer might set a S.M.A.R.T goal to write a book by March and to complete the outline by January. One month into the year a minor delay means the goal is missed, from then on it's catch up all the way.

Motivationally it's a poor choice.

The Changing Face of Advertising

(or How we are learning to love personalisation)

At a recent conference Mark Zuckerberg, the 23 year old boss of Facebook was talking to 250 or so “middle aged” advertising executives about the news ways that Facebook envisaged advertising developing. His thoughts are indeed interesting. “For the last 100 years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be part of the conversation”.

 

That phrase - 'Part of the conversation’ caught my eye. What does it mean to you?

Personal Branding and the Marketing Revolution

I've read many informative books and articles over the last few years and still I am no marketing expert, but as an expert in building community spirit and collaborative working I thought it might be fun to share some thoughts about the developments and hopefully promote some challenging debate here about Social Networking's role as a supporting toolset for developing out own personal branding to support our marketing needs.  This is an update to an article first published on Ecademy in 2006.

When mankind first started trading he developed markets as a place to bring people together and allow them to demonstrate what they had and what they did and decide, there and then, whether to trade. Marketing was via experience of the product at the market, Of course they didn't have the means of communicating in the way we do today.

Building referrals on a social network

Many members ask me about how they can be more effective at getting referrals from their activity on Ecademy and I thought others might be intersted in my experience here and also may have some comments and ideas that can help me and others become more effective.

What is a referral.

Referrals involve three people and some work. The three people are the Donor - the person giving the referral, the recipient - the person receiving the referral and the subject - the potential client. A referral happens when a donor knows the recipient well enough for three things to be in place:

1. Mutual respect and friendship
2. Credibility in the service
3. Absolute trust in all matters

The donor needs to be able to identify the potential subject and then ensure that the recipient will fit the bill, this doesn't just mean that they are capable to do the job, but that they also will fit with the client at an emotional and personal level, that there will be a meeting of minds between recipient and subject, That means that before I can give a referral I need to spend time getting to know people really well, building trust, understanding their character, reading what they write, understanding how they react under pressure, seeing how they behave in different circumstances and forming a view about whether I want to expose that person to the people who know me.

Communicating on-line

The development of on-line social networks has disrupted written communication for those involved and requires a new approach. For many the changed approach does not sit easily with them and they lapse regularly into 'speech based writing' - so what?

The issue here is that historically the written word was a monologue (a book is written once and read in isolation many times for example), as opposed to the dialog of normal face-to-face interactions. Unlike a speech or presentation where one person speaks and many listen the on-line world provides an environment in which many people converse, but the writing style tends towards becoming more like a speech.

On stage and in film (one or two talking - hundreds listening) conversations are scripted and rehearsed, and ad-lib conversation between individuals is a real skill often avoided. Why is that?

How can we best learn the skills we need and what do we need to watch out for?.

I'll be returning to these questions over the next few days and considering a number of the issues.

What are the limits of Freedom of Speech in Social Networking

In Social Networks (like Ecademy) members are often demanding their right to speak feely - to "say it as I find it" - on matters. Often those demand are defended on the grounds of Freedom of Speech.

In this globally connected internet world we need to take notice of local laws and traditions as well as cultural diversity. More than that, we also keep aware of them as the restrictions on Freedom of Speech change for reasons of political expediency and social necessity.
When we write in some forums there are also local rules and codes to keep in mind and some take a narrow and some a wide view. But how can we know, as our content is distributed around the world via search engines and mirror sites, what should we aim for? What is better?  - a narrow freedom or a wide one?

Using an on-line medium.... Update

Communication styles in an online network are pretty vital

About 18 months ago I wrote this article : Using an on-line medium for discussion – New game – New rules….. on Ecademy and some debates on Ecademy made me look at it again.

These thoughts fit in well with the thinking about readership styles discussed in this posting and these discussion issues affect both reading and writing styles.

The rules I discussed 18 months ago are as true now as they were then, the key rules I determined were...

Where is your attention?

I read Stowe Boyd's comments about attention profiling with interest. The idea of a markup language that allows us to define what has our attention and helps organisations to use that to push the right data to us is fascinating and although I can see it has big upsides I can also see big downsides.

There is no doubt though that in today's world grabbing our attention and keeping it is really important. So what might happen if we get this right?

What's your reading style?

There are two aspects to any written debate which I think need to be considered in any discussion about readership styles.

Firstly, written debate is is relatively permanent, so what we say has a habit of being read and re-read - and quoted back to us after our position has changed through debate!

Secondly the audience is invisible.

Let us transport ourselves to a university debating chamber, where someone might say 'What's the problem with that idea then pal?", said with a smile and an arm round the shoulder it's seen as a quizzical search for more information, if the "Pal" is spat out when standing square on shoulder to shoulder with faces inches away from each other and red cheeks, we see a different image and a different intention.