Three Things to Keep in Mind When Investing in New Ideas

As a specialized agency, we often find ourselves integrated into client teams in an advisory role. We live and breathe technology and communications; consuming information, creating experiences, and collaborating with vendors. We help clients and partners ask the questions that get them the solutions that they need.

If you want to advocate on behalf of your company, here are three things to keep in mind the next time that you’re looking to invest in new technology:

1. Everyone is selling the next big idea. It’s important to understand your needs and be able to make those needs the focal point of any discussion.
2. When you’re relying on the person pitching you for an education, the information that you’re given is most likely going to be delivered in a way that supports their agenda. Do your own research.
3. Know what questions to ask.

The most important question that you can ask yourself when dealing with companies and vendors in the communications and technology space is:

Do I know enough about this to make an educated decision?

If the answer is no, find a trusted partner who can sit in and advocate on behalf of your brand. Investing in good advice upfront can you save you from a bad investment down the road.

Seem simple? The best advice usually is.

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When she’s not working as a marketing manager for Make Me Social, Mandi Frishman enjoys the simple things in life. During her time studying at The University of Florida, Mandi became convinced in the power of learning through play. She has since committed herself to playing (and learning) all day, every day.

The Power of Social Media Storytelling: Facebook Timeline and True Corporate Communication

Author Reynolds Price once said of stories, “Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives,”

In cultures across the globe values are shared through allegories, pictures are painted with narratives, and emotional bonds are created through stories. This is as true online as it is offline, in life as well as in business; after all, aren’t the two woven together for at least 8 hours a day Monday through Friday?

If you ever doubt the power of a good story, look at the view count on Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 video. Whether you agree with the organization or not, over 79 million views speak to the power of using storytelling to drive people to action. If you were one of the 79 million views you probably noticed that they used Facebook Timeline to tell that story.

This is not a coincidence – Facebook Timeline is designed for storytelling.  While many assumed that the switch to Timeline was about aesthetics, it’s about a larger change that we’ve been watching happen since Make Me Social was founded in 2009. It’s the end of corporate doublespeak and the beginning of true corporate communication – where the audience talks back.

In a world where stories are written in 140 characters and the only walls that exist between nations are ones made of code, companies must learn to become storytellers…and the really good ones will learn how to make their audience a part of their story.

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When she’s not working as a marketing manager for Make Me Social, Mandi Frishman enjoys listening to books on tape and pretending that the words are coming from the storyteller doll that she made in 3rd grade. During her time studying at The University of Florida, Mandi became convinced in the power of learning through play. She has since committed herself to playing (and learning) all day, every day.

The Limit Does Not Exist: The End Of “Social Media”

If you sit a child down with wooden blocks, how long does it take for the blocks to be transformed into a castle, a circus or a cat? The blocks themselves remain unchanged, and what they can become will only be limited by the imagination of the young architect.

At some point in the child’s life, someone may tell them that a wooden block can’t be a cat, because cats aren’t made up of harsh angles and fixed lines. The child could accept that as true or they could pick up some tools and smooth the block into the shape of a cat.

Social media is the wooden block and we are the child.

We have been handed one of the most powerful tools for expression in recent history, the building blocks of community and communication, and it is up to us to decide what we want to build. The only limits that exist are self-imposed – or in some cases, imposed at the corporate level.

So how does your business use social media internally? That’s right, internally. As in, to speed up and improve internal communications and collaboration, and build a more vibrant, engaged, community of employees.

The idea itself is not new but many businesses seem hesitant to use existing social media technologies internally. It doesn’t mesh with some preconceived notion of what social media is. Here’s an idea: forget everything that you know about social media. Forget the term “social media”. This is communication, supported by technology. This is creativity, supported by collaboration.

This is Enterprise 2.0 and it is a wooden block. What will you build?

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When she’s not working as a marketing manager for Make Me Social, Mandi Frishman enjoys hiding Mean Girls quotes in blog titles. During her time studying at The University of Florida, Mandi became convinced in the power of learning through play. She has since committed herself to playing (and learning) all day, every day.