Social Influence Marketing - Defined

After a great business coaching session yesterday with Laura Allen of 15secondpitch fame, I had a new assigment - get that first audio book wrapped up by next month. As a result I was up at 4:00 am this Saturday morning working away on the project - Secrets to Adopting Social Media To Build Your Fitness Business.

As I was preparing the content I started with this simple question in mind, "what is the purpose of a business?" Why should people care to adopt social media marketing and how does it pertain to the purpose of their businesses? If I could answer that simple question for clients I think I could set up the information to be more valuable for listeners.

As a result of digging around for the answer I came across this great presentation on the very topic (thanks Allen). Shiv Singh (pictured on the left) delivered a presentation in January of this year about “social influence marketing” and how brands will utilize this form of marketing.

One slide from the presentation stood out. Shiv provided his definition of “a business” from Drucker. The quote reads, “The Purpose of a Business is to Create a Customer”. Shiv added to the quote to create his version of the definition for social influence marketing:

“The Purpose of a Business is to Create a Customer…who creates customers”

Good answer Shiv. See his PPT below to learn more.

 

 

Our Legal System is Killing Progress - Here Are 4 Fixes

Most people will tell you based on routine life experiences that our legal system is out of control. The land of the free has become a legal minefield particularly for teachers and doctors, whose work has been paralyzed by fear of suits. What's the answer? Lawyer Philip K. Howard shares his 4 basic ideas to fix what's broken.

Philip Howard is the founder of Common Good, a drive to overhaul the US legal system. His new book is Life Without Lawyers. Full bio and more links

Global Migration - The Move to The Global Citizen

The third driver to the current revolution in business and institutions is shifting demography and not just age, but of culture. Global migration is the least understood and least governed area of globalization. The labor pool and customer base is being shifted in ways that have far reaching implications and you should take note of it. The video from the Economist above reflects migration patterns and economic implications.

Theorists sometimes call the movement of people around the world the "third wave" of globalization, after the movement of goods and the movement of money that began in the previous century. Trade and finance follow global norms and are governed by institutions: the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. There is no equivalent group with “migration” in its name. The most personal and perilous form of movement is the most unregulated. States make and often ignore their own rules, deciding who can come, how long they stay, and what rights they enjoy.

A recent NYT report titled, "Global Mogration, A World Ever More on the Move" pointed to this and other important facts as the globalization of cultures is increasingly having an impact on our world.

"While global trade and finance are disruptive — some would argue as much as migration — they are disruptive in less visible ways. A shirt made in Mexico can cost an American worker his job. A worker from Mexico might move next door, send his children to public school and need to be spoken to in Spanish.

One reason migration seems so potent is that it arose unexpectedly. As recently as the 1970s, immigration seemed of such little importance that the United States Census Bureau decided to stop asking people where their parents were born. Now, a quarter of the residents of the United States under 18 are immigrants or immigrants’ children.

The United Nations estimates that there are 214 million migrants across the globe, an increase of about 37 percent in two decades. Their ranks grew by 41 percent in Europe and 80 percent in North America. “There’s more mobility at this moment than at any time in world history,” said Gary P. Freeman, a political scientist at the University of Texas.

The most famous source countries in Europe — Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain — are suddenly migrant destinations, with Ireland electing a Nigerian-born man as its first black mayor in 2007."

Watch the video clip below to learn more and consider - are we moving to the age of the global citizen where nationality will be less of an important factor?

The New Paradigm of Content - It Isn't Just About Books

NYT reporter Nick Bilton shared an insightful article on the recent post of book publisher, designer and writer Craig Mod (on the left with monks) titled "Former Book Designer says Good Riddance to Print". It caught my attention because there are a few things Craig shares that not only apply to the book industry and they apply to ALL industries relating to content. Here are Craig's two most important points.

1. Content can be broadly grouped into two types: content where the form is important, such as poetry or text with graphics, and content where form is divorced from layout, which he says applies to most novels and non-fiction. This same categorization applies to other content formats.

2. Instead of arguing about pixels versus paper, as many book lovers tend to do, or any form of content comparison including vinyl vs. digital iPod for that matter, it is more useful to focus on whether the technology is a good match for the content. In other words, does the format make the content more appropriately consumable ? This is where new technologies will not just be replacing how things were done but creating new ways that heretofore where impossible.

When evaluating the issue of content and its deployment Craig's approach clarifies some questions. For example, I work in the fitness industry and witness the distribution of program content in the form of hard copy DVD and CD's. In the arena of fitness education, which is what this hard copy content is used for,  the content is very difficult to consume, a direct function of the manner in which the content is deployed.  When evaluating the replacement of this hard copy content, there is no doubt that new interactive forms will be of great benefit. As Nick points out in the article:

"Mr. Mod also discusses the need to push the boundaries of how we interact with content on these devices. Apples’s iBookstore, for example, takes the book metaphors too literally in a digital setting and doesn’t innovate enough given the tools at hand. “The metaphor of flipping pages already feels boring and forced on the iPhone. I suspect it will feel even more so on the iPad. The flow of content no longer has to be chunked into ‘page’ sized bites.” For hundreds of years, we’ve been consuming information on static pages, and for the most part, this content has been presented with a beginning, middle and end. Nonlinear, digital platforms will prompt a new range of thinking about stories and how to tell them."

For all the objections every industry will have to change and the upheavals it creates, the bottom line is that these technologies will have a great benefit in making people more productive. I'll leave you with this final quote which should be enough of a reason for folks to stop objecting so much to the idea that old copy books will be largely eliminated. There is much good when you really think about it:

"Once we dump this weight, we can prune our increasingly obsolete network of distribution. As physicality disappears, so, too, does the need to fly dead trees around the world.”