I’m falling in love with technology again thanks to Social Media. My first affair started with a green screened Omega that had about 250 kilobytes of RAM, about 1/4000th of what the standard desktop ships with today. It was expensive, it was frustratingly difficult to operate and it lacked any real functionality – I loved it.
My next great moment came when I got my first Mac, any Mac user will know what I mean so no further explanation needed. I embraced desktop publishing using Photoshop version 1 and have been an advocate for the World Wide Web since it was commercially viable, all those years ago.
As a business person today you need to embrace technology not by choice, but because your business will struggle to survive. And yes, I am aware there will always be exceptions to the rule, these will be few, and not in my field of interest, and chances are not yours either, and therein lies my point.
Technology comes in many guises, much of it now so integrated that it is now invisible to us. Hardware, software and emerging cloud forms are the pulse of business, its the way we manage our systems, it is how we communicate, and now, how we are perceived by out communities, whether that be our peers or by our customer base.
In the early days of the World Wide Web, pre and post bust, I invested a good portion of my professional life teaching and guiding business people in the benefits of email and websites even at a time when modem speeds were just barely topping 14.4k (that was when WWW meant World Wide Wait). It’s hard to believe that even today people are still using dial up connections and our business owners are still trying to decide whether their business needs a website. Quick tip here, get broadband now, and yes, even in the web 2.0 era, you must have a website.
As business folk we now have the dilemma of catching up to and embracing the social media wave. Sure you’ve got this far without it, why not stand back and see what happens you might say. It’s just not going to work that way; this is not some youth fuelled novelty we are witnessing in Facebook and Twitter and in the growth of the Google empire. Stand back too long, you and your business will miss out on something incredible, oh and you’ll potentially have the angst of watching your competitors sail off into the sunset with your customers in tow.
My message to you is this; start now in creating a social media presence for your business, the timing is perfect. Watch others and learn from their success, establish yourself as an expert in your field and be a positive contributor to the global community so others can learn from you. It is then you will start to see the time and energy convert to cash and opportunity.
In an age when we think everything has been discovered and there’s nothing left to do we can become idle and distracted. Before we know it we are left standing in the dust of the “on to it” crowd and we start justifying that we are happy with the simple life. I’m sure the same was said for the pony express, the telegraph, the telephone, the fax, email, websites and now Web2.0. It is just progress and nothing to be feared, as business people we need to keep pace with change and embrace and adopt new ideas.
Finally there is one thing I’ve found true in all successful business people, they cannot and don’t do it alone. Learning about and understanding Social Media is no exception, some things will work better for you than others and the way we use them will vary. MondayMorning is a community of real people sharing real experience. The choice is now yours - stand back, or be the global contributor.
Our free introduction to Webinars is a perfect starting point, click here for a date that suits and register today.
No comments:
Post a Comment