Practical advice for managers on how the Web and social media can help them to do their jobs better

[source: Amazon]

I first heard Euan Semple speak about Social Media at a BCS (British Computer Society) ELITE event at BT Tower (in London) back in 2008. What differentiated him from others writing and speaking about the subject?

• Experience: he has a very credible background in collaboration and communications, formerly at the BBC and latterly as an ‘independent consultant’ with blue chips and niche players.
• Hype realism: a recognition of the need to drive real value from social media, delivering business outcomes, not ‘digital noise’.
• Adoption complexity: it takes ‘10 seconds’ to sign up on Twitter, and less again to start using it in an ineffective and potentially damaging way. Forces such as consumerisation and social web have created mind shifts in business. Euan sets out simple, effective, engaging and sensible advice which will inform CxOs, marketers and communications professionals alike.

If you have an interest in the social web and optimisation of communications using social media, this book is a must buy.

Further Info

[source: Amazon]

Today′s managers are faced with an increasing use of the Web and social platforms by their staff, their customers, and their competitors, but most aren′t sure quite what to do about it or how it all relates to them. Organizations Don′t Tweet, People Do provides managers in all sorts of organizations, from governments to multinationals, with practical advice, insight and inspiration on how the Web and social tools can help them to do their jobs better. From strategy to corporate communication, team building to customer relations, this uniquely people–centric guide to social media in the workplace offers managers, at all levels, valuable insights into the networked world as it applies to their challenges as managers, and it outlines practical things they can do to make social media integral to the tone and tenor of their departments or organizational cultures.

• • A long–overdue guide to social media that talks directly to people in the real world in which they work
  • Grounded in the author′s unparalleled experience consulting on social media, it features eye–opening accounts from some of the world′s most successful and powerful organizations
  • Gives managers at all levels and in every type of organization the context and the confidence to make better decisions about the social web and its impact on them

Euan Semple is one of the few people in the world who can turn the complex world of the social web into something we can all understand. And, at the same time, learn how to get the most from it.

Ten years ago, while working in a senior position at the BBC, Euan was one of the first to introduce what have since become known as social media tools into a large, successful organisation. He has subsequently had five years of unparalleled experience working with organisations such as Nokia, The World Bank and NATO.

He is a one-man digital upgrade option for us all to download.

This world is changing fast, but he makes sense of it because he understands that the core basics remain the same: community, learning, and interaction. He is a master story-teller who offers a host of practical tales about how this new world can work for real people in the real world.

The Digital Revolution has brought many benefits and profound societal changes. As we endlessly skim the web seeking “information rewards” like crazed lab rats, are we in danger of losing cognitive function, the ability to read and think deeply? Are our brains being re-wired by the very machines and technological channels that we mistakenly believe we control? Has the master already become the slave?

Having just finished reading the astonishing “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr, I am in vociferous agreement with his assertions on the dangers of cognitive overload and the risk of depletion of reasoning skills. Carr (formerly the executive editor of the Harvard Business review, and blogger), the author of “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google” famously posed the question “Is Google making us stupid?” And quite frankly, over-reliance on “search memory”, the neurological bombardment of constant digital stimuli and exponential demands of multi-tasking appear to be making us ‘flighty’ and intellectually shallow. Web pages are skimmed in an “F-shape” pattern in approximately 20 seconds. But, a “poor life this if full of care, we have no time to lift finger from mouse and stare” – and contemplate.

Carr questions if Google is a search engine or is it really (along with its Web cohorts) nothing more than a massively sophisticated distraction engine?

The Church of Google

Google’s business model is built on the art of distraction. Velocity counts, the paradigm demands constant skimming, link jumping, and attention hogging (chat, social platforms, RSS feeds, information sources akimbo). Web commercialisation, click revenues from advertising demand constant motion. A consumer ‘at rest’ decays in value. However, velocity through the digital mire may reward the AdSense gods, but does little for our comprehension, except service (and indeed reinforce it) with the banal and superficial.

From Socrates to Plato to Nietzsche

I hear screams of ‘Luddite’ echoing across the digital expanse. And true, the oral tradition of Socrates wrestled with the written tradition of Plato. Much would be lost. The concern was unfounded, and with Gutenberg’s printing press led to a surge in intellectual mass-cultivation and enlightenment. The tools we use become part of us, and we become part of them. As Carr reminds us of Nietzsche’s relationship with his typewriter:

“The Writing ball is a thing like me: made of iron

Yet easily twisted on journeys.

Patience and tact are required in abundance,

As well as fine fingers, to use us.”

We must not ignore the effect the tools we think we control, control us and shape us to their every whim.

Plasticity of the Brain

And it is indeed the marvellous plasticity of the brain that is its undoing. “What fires together, wires together” is a truism of the construction and reinforcement of neural circuitry. The brain adapts, and seems to be adapting to the attention deficient world of the web, and not necessarily to our benefit. Our ability to comprehend and subsequently ruminate over weighty or lengthy topics appears to be in swift decline. The speed at which information can be consumed appears to be a significant determining factor in its perceived quality and importance (an observation not lost on me in the way I have to structure blog articles).

Omni-visibility

For an number of years I have been interested in the concept of Web 2.0 “Presence Engineering.” In essence the automaton of self, always on, always present, always engaged. But as Seneca said: “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.” I therefore (taking heed of Carr) redefine omnipresence as omni-visibility. Multi-channel visibility is different to multi-channel presence. The former is advertising, the latter is fulfilment of brand promise. Substance comes with deep thought, contemplation, originality and innovation. Servicing web presence leads us into the same trap as the lab rat hunting for its next pellet. Consider therefore if you would benefit from greater digital disengagement in 2011, switch off the Kindle, buy some challenging (paper based) brain food and head for a secluded and tranquil glade for neural regeneration.

The Ultimate Book Worm

Carr also discusses Google Book Search and the extremely ambitious project to ‘digitise all of the world’s printed books.’ A wonderfully altruistic goal it might be argued, except for (copyright infringement aside) the placement of a single digital library in the hands of an humongous private enterprise. Monetisation of access, content ‘unbundling’, slice and dice and book mashups will surely follow. But is there a chimera under the dust cover? Why burn books when they can be digitally shredded? Search results could be skewed to present books ‘leaning to towards a certain ideology’, in digital form publication is transient – facilitating a re-write or implantation of propaganda revised narrative. And if a worm ever did get loose inside the great digital library, how could we ever trust the integrity of the word again?