As I continue my study of how collaboration tools are providing value in the enterprise, I keep coming back to the fact that much of the real value comes from the knowledge the user has about which networks and channels work best for what. Five years ago, you knew that reaching a particular VP was most efficiently accomplished via telephone, reaching a specific sales person worked best via email, and that one Director contact would react only when you could catch her in person. Today, the channels to connect with people have grown tenfold with tools like Skype, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Yammer and many others. While this creates the wonderful ability to maintain and reach a broader network of individuals it also creates a more complex web of networks to negotiate. If not used appropriately, the efficiency gains one might expect from collaborative tools could actually add to your workload vs. making you a more productive and efficient professional.

I have found that the more I Tweet the less I Blog. I'm not the only one as I hear it from other Social Media inspired individuals. Now is this a valid excuse well I'm still not sure. You see I do now find myself trawling the internet more easily for valuable content as my online community has become more honed into my way of thinking so they feed me with all the types of articles I would have taken ages to find a year ago. I also find that my Google Alerts have a brilliant relevance and it musters articles I stand is awe of as they are better written and more publicized than anything I would have done at this point in time. I can then share these easily through my Microsharing/blogging platforms and gain kudos from my community. All my writing concepts tend to now be in Wiki's and proposals and less and less on my Blog. A pity I hear you say.....or maybe not.

 

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The concept of ambient ties fascinates me and it became all apparent this last weekend. My wife and I were invited down the coast to a friend’s seaside cottage for the weekend. Our friend used to work and live in the small coastal town where the cottage is but has since moved to the city. This was her first time back in about 5 months and we shared the experience of returning with her.

I’ll put my social media hat on for a second and then I’ll get back to the weekend story. When my wife and I first moved to the city we live in now eight months ago we knew only a couple of people. I struck up a local Twitter network rather fast as the city of Melbourne I found opened its arms up to me and made me feel right at home both on and offline. After being here for only a month though I needed to go and visit the dentist. I asked my Twitter network if there was someone in my area who they could recommend. @emilyfreeman came to my rescue and let me know her dentist was great and really professional. Turned out she was right and my wife also went there soon afterwards. I had never met Emily before yet I knew some of the people who followed her on Twitter who I trusted.

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 I had been waiting in anticipation for the show since I booked it a month ago. Silly pun and unintended there, as the booked show I'm referring to was an event "The future of the Book" held as part of the Melbourne writers festival this week. Straight off the bat I'll let you know that I'm mildly dyslexic and even though I have always had a massive respect for books I'm not the type to plunder my way through a glorious stack of books in a weekend. My mother used to take me by the hand around the library with a basket which she piled high with her weeks reading so it wasn't for lack of being shown the way that I didn't do the same. I am an Audio book person and Audible.com is my friend. Friend in the way it points out what other books I would probably like if I enjoyed the one I just listened to and friend in the way that it takes me to reviews by other people who share my interests. I know you're all probably laughing, yes at me and not with me, thinking you probably have no real friends. We'll get to that in another Blog post when we discuss what a friend really means to us but here's a little insight by Cameron Marlow about Online Social Media and friends in Facebook http://tinyurl.com/aapjq2

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Great question I found on Discussion Forum which I just had to share with you all 

I began my Twitter account while working for the Local Government Association last December. I wished to connect up with communication professionals across the public and private sectors, and with people in local government, central government and journalism.

My Twitter account - @EdwardWelsh - went well. I have around 365 followers. I was tipped a number of times as one of the people in local government to follow on Twitter. I made some important new contacts. I have begun seeing Twitter as a news feed.

But I am now changing employer and sector. In a fortnight, I start at the Association of Train Operating Companies.

How will my Twitter profile change? Will I keep the followers I have? Will some drift away as I gain new followers? Will I stop following a lot of people? Has anyone any tips about changing jobs and the impact on one Twitter account?

My Reply:

Great question Ed and one I am sure we will all come into contact with over time. The key to all you have put forward here is Identity and Personality. Can I just say off the mark that using your own name as your Twitter name is key to all this as you have branded your profile as you. You will always maintain your personal identity no matter what job you move to.  Everyone who uses Social Media needs a purpose and objective for it to deliver value back to them. I am going to assume your purpose and objective wont change, you still want it to deliver news to you related to your field of work and interest. The news you may want to get though may start to change. You will need to update your BIO with your new position on Twitter to reflect the new direction to gain more relevant news. Actually Ed I just looked and you don't have a BIO in twitter. I tend to Block anyone who doesn't have a Twitter BIO (don't mean to sound harsh) as I don't feel they are sharing their interests or Personality with me so why should I do the same with them - Its social remember.

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Social Media is nothing we can hide behind. It exposes us in areas we didn't know we even had areas. I wanted to introduce you to what I call the "coffee shop syndrome" of Online Social Media:

Remember those times we skived off from school pretending to be sick so we could have a day off. Remember then how your parents would tell you "well if you're too sick to go to school you're defiantly too sick to go to the shops." You tended to agree only because if someone from school saw you out and about they would wonder why you were not in class. Well the coffee shop syndrome relates to this concept but I just wanted to set the scene offline first.

"The Coffee Shop Syndrome" relates to our level of Emotional Intelligence and how we act upon these skills in the world of Online Social Media. Remember that Emotional Intelligence refers to how often we demonstrate certain behaviours.  It's a set of skills that define how effectively we perceive, understand, reason with and manage our own and others' feelings.  It's all very well believing we demonstrate a high level of EI but if we don't have an outward display of this behaviour then others may have a different opinion!!

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I felt compelled to write this post in light of the recent Twitter crazed support of the most popular reality show in the history of Australian TV, MasterChef. Something fundamental was uncovered for me and it relates to a change which we are all going to have to face up to. Twitter is crossing boundaries and these are quite serious ones indeed which Media companies such as Channel 10 are going to have to face up to.

The MasterChef final went to air on the East coast of Australia at 7:30pm last night. It was only to be aired two hours later on the west coast of Australia when it would be 7:30pm there, due to the time zone difference. MasterChef, during the series, gained a massive following on Twitter. If you don't believe me do a search in Twitter on #masterchef and see for yourself. The series for many who use Twitter was made that much more special when shared with new and old friends alike on the Twitter Social Media platform. The advertisement breaks for once became useful as Tweets spun between the lounge rooms of viewers. This is entertainment and we will see this concept grow and grow.

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With regards to authenticity in the Tweetspace: Earlier this year on the 5^th of March there was an earth quake in the Melbourne region which shook everyone a little as it's not a common occurrence. Tweets started to steam out about the occurrence and our local vetted ABC radio/TV channel which has a Twitter account @774melbourne followed it furiously trying to get the "right" story and doing a good job of it. The size of the tremor was being reported as 5+ on many accounts and this was starting to become official. A month earlier there had been a quake a few thousand km away in the pacific and people who were Googling "earthquake Australia" were in their haste seeing the size of a quake as 5.7 . Chinese whispers took this into the Tweepspace and I heard people talking about it in town the following day giving this statistic. There had been an Earthquake on the 14^th of February near Fiji which measured 5.7 and from what I can gather the two occurrences were being linked. The actual size of the quake in Melbourne was 4.6

Following on from this another story: On the 18^th of march @Wolfcat from the The ABC (Australia) was asked to present how Twitter had been used during the devastating Australian Victoria bushfires to locate lost loved ones and deliver critical information to those under threat. @Wolfcat had established and oversaw the Twitter channel for this part of the ABC. He was not given long to present and asked the audience to please understand that he could not give it its due in the short time he had allocated to him. Instead he would present on the Earthquake which occurred on the 5^th of March and how the ABC had operated in order to feed the relevant information out to the Tweetspace. It was really interesting as he explained how he had developed a method of establishing the Epicentre of this seismic event based on his mapping of the regions the relevant Tweets were coming in from.

As is happening more and more during seminar sessions there was a Twitter Tag #v21 which the audience were including in their Tweet threads out to their followers to keep on topic. I was sitting in the audience and started to feel the room shake while @Wolfcat was explaining all this. I immediately blamed it on a strong black coffee I had had during the break and having missed lunch earlier. Low and behold the streams of Tweets from outside the room started to come back in on the #v21 that there had just been another Earthquake. More and more tweets came streaming in and the session room started to buzz with this massive coincidence. http://tinyurl.com/n7nsx5  .

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Knowledge Solutions is investigating the Emotional Intelligence aspects of Micro-blogging (MB) tools like Twitter and other Social Media software. We are running courses which help companies profile themselves and their staff to see what if any Social Media will best suit the organisations Culture and that of their staff.

We have heard a number of arguments as to what the initial perception of Twitter is and why some People take to it like a duck to water and why others simply dont. Twitter (MB) can be used well and also really badly depending on how it is introduced to participants. I wont go into how to best introduce it here suffice to say that unless some time is spent in defining the aims of the tool and the derived benefits in context, adoption and successful uptake will be impacted.

There are so many aspects to this simple to use tool which are so useful however still perceived as a waste of time to those who don't understand it. There are also a huge amount of so called experts who bang on and on about the pure marketing benefits. If you had never seen or used Twitter before and someone said to you, Twitter is all about getting your product out there and getting loads of people to follow you so that eventually they will buy that product, would it appeal to you? You may give it a go but participation wouldn't last long with such a blinkered one sided commercially focused view which is bound to fail. However if someone was introduced to the Micro-Blogging world as understanding the relationship building, finger on the pulse, community focused, collaborative, Knowledge Management, Self Service aspects of the tools it would paint a whole different picture.

We need to reduce the clutter and clarify and educate about the protocols around the use of the tools in order to lower resistance.

I found the following snippets so interesting I had to republish them. You can find more on the http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/ site. It all points towards the uptake in the Relationship Economy and the future of the New Web with its Interactive technology. 

1. Web 2.0 technology takes center stage at Gartner CRM Summit: According to expert Paul Greenberg, the customer experience is now the key differentiator in the business ecosystem. Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis and social networking sites are changing the way companies interact with their customers and putting the customer experience center stage. Gartner recommends companies looking to improve the customer experience get started with Web 2.0 as soon as possible.

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