Web 2.0 is all about going out to your market and talking directly with your customers and prospects. It’s about building connections, collaborating, sharing information – being more transparent than you have been in the past – and getting prospects and customers more involved in your business and with each other than they have been before. – From Marketing Ideas You Can Copy

Ultimately speaking its not about the tools, as much as how you desire to contribute to your community locally, nearby, and around the globe. Here’s a guide from the Fedex Global Citizenship Blog

Giving Back To Your Community

Try to focus on one or two issues, and develop a plan for evaluating charitable requests and focus in those main areas. Your Chamber of Commerce or local United Way may have done a community assessment study about the most pressing needs in your area. Give your employees a say and remember it’s all right to start small. Remember that philanthropy doesn’t need to be something you “do” after the business day ends, it can also be integrated into the way your business operates.

And across the aisle much can be learned from non-profit organizations as well. While a business is in business to make money, there ultimately can and should be a greater good that the owners of the business aspire too. If this is the case then perhaps there is a place to,

Think like a Nonprofit

What have you learned from this elaborate dance?

May I suggest that many of us simply want to be valued by as many people as possible, and furthermore know why…?

Historically speaking time, distance, and ease of transportation have limited the number and type of people we relate too. Those boundaries are dropping fast. Crossing cultures, timezones, and distances are as easy as walking up to your computer. With tangible limitations gone, we find ourselves bumping up against the intangible ones. Religion becomes a common grouping point, interests also, there are also perceptions and feelings about everything from the minutia of daily existence to political parties and the presence of aliens. Some have suggested that social media is ultimately a narcissistic enterprise, “what is in it for me” but I would suggest that bigger question is how do I fit in with the greater whole. Who do I respect, why do I respect them, and what must I do to fit into the crowd. There is definitely an element of personal responsibility but it comes within an element of responsibility to the ever evolving community.

How to engage in the midst of this chaos?
– Provide a call to action and a narrative played out continuously which conveys the value of being apart of that narrative.

– Listen to the community, as you are ultimately their servant. Do you genuinely care? Yes you maybe a businessman or a leader, and yes you have to make decisions based on the best interests of your organization but carefully consider what guides you in those decisions. That decision framework is more obvious than you know. If you have an agenda it will show.

– Provide a vision for a better future and provide results. Make sure you continually revise your strategic planning to ensure those results keep happening.

– Communicate the three points above!

The community is ultimately platform agnostic. It is enabled and empowered by certain online platforms, but ultimately will continue to surge forward relentlessly regardless. Facebook, twitter, and rest can rise and fall on a dime – what will you do maintain contact with those important to you?

Photo Courtesy of niallkennedy

Context: Human beings from time immemorial, have attempted to understand the framework of life in which they lived. The use and interaction with astrology, philosophy, and religion bear this out through historical record and longstanding popularity. Astrology has attempted to use the observation of the stars in an attempt to understand the controlling forces of nature and human events. We see the observation and derivation of logic in an attempt to understand the motivations and actions of ourselves through the discipline of philosophy.  Throughout world religions, we see mankind recognizing that some sense of an other force or being out there, and that perhaps it just might be more powerful than humanity individually and collectively itself.

The virtual reality created by interaction over the internet is no different. As we interact with our world through the use of online media, we still attempt to understand what, why, when and how everything is happening around us. We hope that we can control it, lacking that we hope to understand it, failing that we hope to defend ourselves from real or perceived threats bourne out in the virtual world which are reflected from the real world.

Connection:Mankind has always sought connection and relationship; with the divine, his fellow human being, and with nature to some extent or another. Social media offers a means to graph the relationships and interactions which are associated with a mere moments consideration in the real world now become friendships and connections which can be graphed and stored with less and less effort. The issue comes that with greater ease in building relationships, the quality of the relationships can and often grow much more shallow.

The innate need and drive for relationship still remains though; and the desire for authenticity and honesty and utter distaste for hypocrisy continue to grow. With the noise of conversation growing ever louder, we fear will be lost and thus we seek to build as many connections and cross-connections with people we know to provide a framework of meaning, and worth. Without relationship, comes not only lack of meaning but even insult if deliberately rejected.

Communication: Mankind has always appreciated face to face personal interaction. It does not matter the time, place, culture, or point in the historical time. Mankind desires relationship. The development of communication technology has posed an interesting conundrum, potential dehumanization of the communication process. The reality though is that it also allows the desire to communicate to cross distances and boundaries never before anticipated or conceived. Any means of communication with allows for facial movement, voice inflections, and raw data to be transported as close to instantaneously will continue to be developed. In essence our ability to touch others will continue to be extended, how we choose to use that touch is a question that everyone must ponder.

How does one engage the social media movement? Go back to who you are, rather than who you want everyone else to think you are. Its a very natural human inclination to hide behind a mask, but the crowd has discovered a means to rip it off. As an organization or business, tell your story and show how you actually desire to contribute to the greater good. Simply broadcasting a message is not enough, show with actions that you mean what you say. Once you decide to engage as either a business or an individual remember context, connection, and communication. Place focused thought and effort into providing context for those through around you, reach out out to those you know or desire to know, and then communicate with them on a regular basis. Social media can appear to be all about you, but in order to use if effectively one must remember its really all about them.

Photo Courtesy of wili_hybrid

Some interesting facts to consider about communicating your message, and the world in which we live. The context of this situation is critical. The biggest lesson to be learned is that there is no easy answers or quick fixes but honesty, and authenticity will go the distance in building a relationship with your clients. What has been your experience?