Ecademy - A way of living

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?

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.