I am sitting in a plane on the way home from London, and it’s midnight. The air conditioning is not working but at least the engines are. The baby in the row next to me is also feeling the heat and is crying quite a lot so I put on my Dr Dre’s and turn up Randy Crawford and decide to pass the time writing this post on my Ipad.
I have just attended the WSI Excellence & Innovation conference in Birmingham. Of the two days we were lucky to hear Scott Klososky present to us 3 times.
The Future of Social Tech
The first presentation was on the future of social technology and he made some real interesting predictions. He opened by saying that if we don’t start accurately predicting where technology is going in the future our revenue streams in 3 years will start to dwindle.
So it is important to understand how to take advantage of social technologies and start testing it now. Otherwise we will always be behind our competitors and they will be teaching us instead of us leading the way.
It’s best to be teaching your competitors as it enables you to grab market share, rather than being behind and learning from them.
High Beam Leadership
Later that afternoon a select few of the top performing franchisees were invited to attend Scott’s High Beam Leadership presentation. It was real interesting and he highlighted that managers were low beam which meant they focused on the next 12 months and the execution of tasks, where high beam leaders looked in the future at least 5 years ahead. He explained the process he goes through when conducting one of his High-Beam leadership workshops.
Step 1 is to identify trends. We were given 10 minutes each to come up with trends that could affect our businesses. Creating the list made you think carefully about what actions one should take to ensure the continuous viability of your business.
Step 2 we had to review each trend and decide whether to leverage it or defend it.
Step 3 we had to paint a picture of the future
Step 4 was to create an investment portfolio. We had to identify what is needed to be done and to allocate resources like people and money to achieve our objectives.
Step 5 is to communicate our plan to the rest of the company
Then a review would be held every 12 months to see which trends needed to be removed and which had to stay and add new one as as well.
The Last presentation was on mobile marketing.
Scott discussed the new “M” Generation, kids that are between 5 and 8 years old today. They are brought up with technology from as young as 2 years old. I smiled when he mentioned this as our grand daughter started using my IPhone & IPad from the age of 9 months. In fact she said “IPad” before she said “daddy”
The “M” generation are good at 3 things.
Mobile, Multitasking & Master Learners.
Scott is definitely a futurist and seems to be accurate with his predictions,
Having access to smart people like Scott is one of the major benefits of being part of WSI.
I bought a copy of Scott’s latest book Social Technologies and had it autographed. Scott included a special message for me which is really motivating.
Last week WSI Held their annual UK WSI Excellence & Innovation Conference in Birmingham. Over 130 UK and International Internet Consultants attended the conference.
Over two days we were treated to some great presentations covering everything from local search to implementing and Enterprise Social Technology strategy.
On Friday we attended an awards dinner where the local and national Internet Consultants were recognised for special achievements.
Along with many of my colleagues I was recognised for the Community Award;
Francois receiving WSI Community award
Here I am with my lovely wife Marianna who I owe most of my success to.
The WSI Community Award for recognition for helping fellow Internet Consultants. It was an honour accepting the community award as I really enjoy helping my fellow consultants. Being recognised for this is really motivating.
A couple of weeks back I traveled to Toronto to attend a Social Tech Boot Camp with Scott Klososky. The boot camp was arranged by WSI for their top performing franchisees and I met a lot of my fellow Internet Consultants. In fact they are my friends.
What is Social Tech?
Well, first off it isn’t just a collection of social media tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Taken from a business standpoint, an enterprise can use Social Tech as a collection of new capabilities like, user-generated content, micro blogging and engaging in e-communities.
Scott says that companies can build a powerful Social Tech Strategy if you are in command of the following 3 categories:
Social Relevance:
Social relevance covers your entire company’s reputation, both at the individual and organisational level. Social relevance will soon begin to make a huge difference in your ability to sell products and services. There are already many cases of how your “Online Reputation” can affect the public’s opinion from buying from you. It is so easy to verify a company’s reputation by checking on a number of rating sites:
Social Media
This category covers media such as; videos, documents, slide presentations and photos and enables one to one or one to many sharing using the Internet. Never before in our history could one person create a video, create a presentation or take a photo and publish it instantly for all the World to see. And for all the World to see in an unfiltered way, not what TV, radio or newspapers want you to see. The people now have power to create any type of media and share it instantly with their friends, or the whole world. How powerful is that. We have already seen the power of using social media in countries such as Egypt.
Blogging, microblogging and RSS feeds are some of the tools to allow anyone to publish information, free of charge, to our entire population.
We are “citizens of the Web” who can create our own news and publish instantly for all to see.
Social Networking
The third category of social tech is social networking. It’s about connecting with people through a variety of online communities. Our networking activities no longer have to be in person or face to face. This method restricts our ability to maintain a one-to-one relationship with a large group of people.
Selling and Serving to customers is about to change
It is easy to see how social networking is going to change the way we sell and serve our clients or how we resolves issues that are raised.
Social Tech is far more than just Facebook, Twitter of LinkedIn. Organisations need to get a better understanding of Social Tech to ensure that they can get the most out of it.
I highly recommend that you read Scott Klososky’s book: “Enterprise Social Technology”. It is available on Amazon in hardcopy or Kindle.
Social Tech Boot Camp
As many of you know, my wife Marianna is very involved in our business and she attended the boot camp as well. We have both been certified to conduct these boot camps as per Scott’s instruction.
Contact me if you would like a presentation on Social Tech and how it affects companies today.
If you are interested in me conducting a Social Tech Boot Camp for your organisation, send me an email and we can arrange it. It is highly recommended for Executives and Senior Management and you will get the entire low down in 12 action packed hours.
Many of us have wondered how to justify an Ipad for our WSI business with our wives. For those of you who have attended my training and used the “sales folder”. Here is how I have moved it to my Ipad. I am having great success and it is a great sales presentation tool
My favourite apps are:
Present Pad
Goodreader
Analytics
Soundnote is awesome
2 screens
Infonet presenter
Keynote for Mac
WordPress pluggin
Dropbox
VLC for video
Mashable to stay socially updated
Goto Meeting
Skype
Here is the video I created showing you some of the ways I use it
Hope it helps and that your wife buys you one for Christmas
I have just gotten up and are ready to attend the largest WSI convention to date.
We are expecting over 470 delegates and two top speakers in the line up. Scott Klososky & Avinash Kaushik.
Yesterday we played golf and it rained so hard but in the spirit of the sport we all completed.
Tonight we have the gala awards and it is always a great evening of entertainment with some ICs getting some great recognition. I have two entries, one for the Value group and the other for CBT Coaches. I am holding thumbs and as you know if you don’t have a ticket you just can’t expect anything.
I am off to register now and meet up with fellow South Africans Mel & Nick Gard.
I will post my thoughts on the presentations as we go along.
Regards Francois
We recently worked with Greg Stollsteimer to optimize his online marketing website. Greg leads our WSI office serving Kansas and Missouri. He is a business leader with extensive systems and operations experience. His office offers a wide range of services to help you take advantage of the power of the internet. The main services offered on his website include; (more…)
The Future of Social Tech
