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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781630473846 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morgan James Publishing |
| Publication date: | 07/14/2015 |
| Pages: | 220 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE IMPORTANCE OF SHARING
Humans have been sharing resources and knowledge since they first banded together in prehistoric times, even before there was language. We shared to survive then, but we continue to share knowledge even though survival is no longer at stake. Or is it?
Philosophers have long pondered the nature of mankind and why we interact the way we do. We share for many reasons — some self-serving and some not — but I firmly believe that our need to share is based on the human instinct not only to survive, but to thrive.
Things are moving at a faster pace today for humankind than ever before, and we're more connected now than we've ever been. We're no longer polarized by geography, by race, by gender — but we still need each other to survive. Time has spread us across the globe, and the need to connect is written into our DNA, even though we're competing for the same limited space on this planet.
So what does this have to do with where we are today? Why is this important?
Because we're on the cusp of something big: a shift in human evolution.
Digital and Social Technologies Are Making a HUGE Impact
The Digital Age is a big part of this new shift in human evolution. The technology explosion of the last few years is teaching us to interact in a new way.
Social media, while it has had a big impact by itself, is just a piece of a bigger picture that is growing and expanding by the minute. It's exciting, but it's also a little scary. We're on the upward curve of a wave that's going to change our lives forever.
The digital and social technologies that have sprung up are connecting us to the rest of the world. That's the first part of this wave. The cusp I referred to earlier — the top of the wave — is that these technologies and ways of communicating are also transforming our physical world.
For example, 3-D printers, the stuff of science fiction just a decade or two ago, are now allowing us to manufacture parts and materials — from biomaterials and implants for the medical industry to aerospace technologies and manufacturing — that transform the way we live. We can even print clothing and food. Imagine the impact this will have when 3-D printing technology becomes commonplace (and it's getting there). We'll be able to order things like jackets, gourmet meals, or cars and have them printed and delivered immediately — or even print them ourselves in the comfort of our own home.
Another example is the sensors that connect things and people, such as wearable technology like Apple Watch and Fitbit. Even the Tesla self-driving car that can navigate and steer its way to any destination demonstrates the rapid evolution of technologies that connect our digital and physical world. At this point, we are limited only by our imaginations regarding what could be next.
Resisting the Cocoon
In our lifetimes we've seen some pretty amazing things come to pass. Back in 1991, I read a book that I'll never forget — The Popcorn Report by Faith Popcorn. It outlined her predictions about the impact of technologies that enable us to cocoon in our homes. The idea was that we'd no longer need to coexist outside. Everything would be delivered. You could work from home because everything would be remote. People would have Internet connections, remote conferences, watch keynotes on big screens without leaving their bedrooms. Anything you would need to eat, sleep, and work would all be deliverable within your own space. Well, that's all here now. Just a little over twenty years later, we are technologically enabled to safely cocoon in our homes without sacrificing anything we need to survive.
Amazon, Google Express, and Instacart are prime examples of brands that are making this concept real for us today. Their next-day and same-day delivery of goods and services fills a need that we have been clamoring for: saving time. Frankly, I've tried to beat their system, ordering just one small item like a container of dental floss or placing a huge order then choosing a delivery time to my house just a few hours later. In every instance, they come through with delivery as promised, with a smile. How do they do that?
The Digital Age has made everyone busier, more accessible, and managing more devices, so saving time is a big deal. However, what's happened in the last decade has profoundly affected us socially. Most all of us have experienced a decrease in our connection with each other physically because we can "connect" online. The things Faith Popcorn predicted weren't science fiction. They were just the beginning of this big new shift. But there's more coming, and it's important to understand what that will look like, and the way it will impact us as people and as brands.
As humans, the thought of totally cocooning creeps us out a bit. We don't want to think that we will exist just in our homes and never venture outside. With reality TV shows like Hoarders or movies that depict people who struggle with agoraphobia (the fear of being outside), Hollywood makes us cringe at the idea. Although technology makes it easier to insulate ourselves, we still need to leave the house, or at the very least, step outside our front doors.
Why? Because our biggest need as humans is connection. I'm not talking about basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. I'm talking about the need to find a tribe. Our need to belong. Our need to contribute to something greater than ourselves and be acknowledged for it by another human. Social ceases to exist without it, because people must connect with other people. We crave it. We'll fight for it. Who wants a world without family reunions, anniversaries, and dinner with friends?
So Why Do We Share at All?
In my research for this book I interviewed more than one hundred people to figure out what motivates us to share. What I've discovered is that behind all the reasons people say we share, whether it's to help someone, make them laugh, or alert them to something, there is really only one reason at the core of human sharing: self-perception.
Now, before you start ranting, "But wait, Bryan, that seems too selfish a reason; there has to be something deeper," let me explain.
Our own estimation of ourselves means a lot to each one of us because that's our identity as humans. We also care about what others think of us because we need to connect with them and belong to a tribe, and to do this we need to align ourselves with other humans. In the marketing world, this is branding. And as humans, because technology has empowered us to share with our global tribe, it's never been more important to treat ourselves as a personal brand.
Creating and sharing information is important, but creating and sharing our personal brand is what shapes the way people perceive us and connects us to the tribes that matter.
To help put a little science around this, my team and I spent quite a bit of time pondering the legitimacy of this formula:
my perceived personal reputation of brand [??] content or source
This formula shows that personal reputation is equal to the perceived reputation of the content or source that's being shared. In other words, I will only share something with others that is in line with how I perceive myself and how I want to be perceived. Do I identify with being "the first to know"? If I did, I would probably share content I felt was late-breaking news. Do I identify with being humorous? Then I would share jokes or other things I thought were funny. Do I want others to see me as a helpful connector? Then I would probably share information directly with someone I thought I could help.
Most of this is done unconsciously because we're all very multidimensional, non-self-actualized, busy humans.
However, when you consciously recognize your own personal brand, whether it be creativity, love, justice, humor, science, or whatever you truly love and care about, then the ideas you share will connect you to others that care about the same thing.
But what about brands that are trying to build online communities and build relationships? How can they thrive in a digital world?
The Secret Sauce for Brands
As far as brands are concerned, one of the biggest shortcomings of the Digital Age is the disconnection between their own self-recognition as an entity and the individual humans they're trying to serve. Brands most often turn to technology first to make quick connections at scale but forget what makes people want to interact with them in the first place — a human-to-human connection. This is especially true on social channels.
We've all heard the axiom that our customers are at the center of our business, and that our brand reputations are now in the hands of the consumer. That may be true, but how can these brands compete in a social space where the scales have tipped and consumers have more control?
As my friend Jay Baer says about social platforms, "You're not just competing with other brands for their attention, you're also competing with their friends, family, music playlists, soccer games, and nights out on the town."
It's a noisy feed out there, each one being different, unique, and personalized to each individual user. The one thing you have in your favor? When you understand why we share and how we interact with each other, you regain a place as a potential friend to your customers instead of being perceived by them as a cold, insensitive entity with no redeeming aspects with which to connect. If this isn't a competitive advantage, I don't know what is.
We want our social followers to share what we have to say, and we become disappointed when they don't. But are you saying anything that's worthy of sharing? Does what you share fill a human need or desire? Have you connected with people in a way that strikes a chord? What is it that makes a piece of social communication shareable?
The Shareability Quotient
To help brands share, we developed what we call "The Shareability Quotient."
Much like a personal brand, no doubt your company has built a brand around a set of core values that reflect what's important to your audience. They perceive your brand as either a trusted source or as having insightful, helpful, funny, or valuable content. The Shareability Quotient says that the likelihood of a share is greater than or equal to the perceived reputation of your content or trust as a source.
In other words, if you want people to share your stuff, they need to trust you or identify with the content you're producing, period.
For them to trust your brand, you need to:
• Work on humanizing every single interaction (embrace your imperfections).
• Know what they care about (empathize).
• Know what you stand for as a brand (simplify).
• Do the hard work to create content that is shareable (communicate).
In other words, being human means being shareable.
Brands must embody sharing as a guiding principle far beyond the social realm. They need to acknowledge its importance not just in messaging but also in their human interaction across their entire company experience. Knowing how your business mindfully chooses to share with your customers and prospects, how it interplays in the interaction with your peers, your employees — even your competitors — can make the difference between success and failure.
To survive this evolutionary shift that's coming, we all need to find ways to embrace the social and digital wave that's cresting right now — use its momentum and align ourselves to influence human experience. It's time to define our sharing principles.
CHAPTER 2SHARING IN THE HUMAN ECONOMY
The big change that we've been discussing — the wave that's about to crest — is giving rise to a new way of doing business. It's been dubbed the human economy, and it's revolutionary. Extraordinary technological changes have occurred over the last five to seven decades; consider alone some of technology's major milestones, including advances in transportation and the advent of the Internet. I believe our soon-to-come new way of doing business will impact the human economy on a similar scale as those advances. It will be the first time humanity merges seamlessly with the digital and the physical world, and its hallmark will be the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things is a technological shift that's taking place right now where physical devices are being digitally connected to create more value. According to Gartner Inc., there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020. Technology giants like IBM and Cisco have been working on this for several years. In fact, Cisco even goes so far as to call this evolution the "Internet of Everything." I spoke to Blair Christie, chief marketing officer of Cisco, about this in one of my company PureMatter's Substance interviews. She talked about the concept, in the context of value, and how it changes the face of business and our lives as a whole:
The Internet of Everything is basically the next wave. It's how people, process, data, and things are connecting in a way that hasn't happened before. For instance, we think we're connected today, but less than 1 percent of the world is actually connected to the Internet. Today that's less than 2 billion people. By 2020 it will be close to 5 billion. Right now 20 to 25 billion things are connected to the Internet — by 2020 close to 50 billion things will be connected. That's remarkable! We're already having machine-to-machine or thing-to-thing doing a lot of interacting, but we will be seeing more people-to-machine, machine-to-people, and people-to-people connecting and providing more value in that connection than we've ever seen before.
Blair Christie believes that moving beyond the Internet of Things to fully embrace the Internet of Everything is where the real value lies for people, and I agree. When everything at home and everything at work is connected, it will fundamentally change our lives.
Today, sharing communities are making it easier for individuals to get goods and services from each other (not just from brands), and this has produced new disruptive business models. Whether it's sharing or buying pre-owned or custom products (eBay, Craigslist, Pleygo, Etsy), providing services (Elance, ODesk, Angie's List), or transportation (Car2Go, Uber, or Zipcar), people are moving toward a more collaborative mode of doing business with each other, and that's forcing industries to change the way they approach relationships with consumers.
In November 2014, I attended the 3D EXPERIENCE FORUM, a conference held by Dassault Systemes in Las Vegas. I was fascinated by the magic behind how virtual reality could help plan and build toward greater human experiences. Quite frankly, I thought I was attending a conference about technology. I was wrong, very wrong.
Several keynotes stuck out, including one from Honda. Company representatives explained how testing in virtual systems allows for an understanding of every possible car crash scenario, which provides a true perspective of how to build safe and well-designed cars with the right parts. The forum also featured a virtual recreation of a beating heart (which looked so real you couldn't tell the difference). With the aid of 3-D glasses, the demonstration showed spinning, dissecting, and new ways for doctors to perform surgery before they ever operate. This technology is a direct result of customers' demands for companies to deliver something extraordinarily different. "Loyalty and its definition has changed overnight," said Ken Clayton, vice president of Dassault Systemes. "Customers have gone in a direction for reasons we didn't understand. And now the experience has to speak through our products. Customers expect and deserve a personal experience."
During the demonstration, a discussion on collaboration on top of computation provided a real aha moment for me. Imagine a group of people meeting via video to build three-dimensional products virtually and to overlay their independent work to look for inconsistencies together. Witnessing thousands of computations involving a deep level of math in real time in a truly collaborative experience blew me away.
Collaboration will play a big role in building the experiences of the future. "A complete software experience must include HR plus sales plus marketing plus 3-D applications in order to be successful," said Monica Menghini, executive vice president of Dassault. "Each touchpoint has an engaged process that can make or break the end result or customer experience." Dassault made it clear to me that we can now do this through a collaborative social process using their virtual technology.
Business heads like Jeremiah Owyang, founder of Crowd Companies, are leaders in the Collaborative Economy movement, which is all about the convergence of the physical and digital worlds. In fact, a report called "Sharing Is the New Buying,"cocreated by Crowd Companies and the community technology company Vision Critical, surveyed over ninety thousand customers across the US, Canada, and the UK to see how they are participating in today's collaborative business environment. The results are an astonishing indicator of how powerful sharing is right now and how much more powerful it will be in the years to come.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Shareology"
by .
Copyright © 2016 BRYAN KRAMER.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
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