The Societal Web – Social Collaboration for Business
Social media in particular, and the Societal Web in general, are great places to reach out and create content for others to find and learn about us, our products and what problems they solve or resolve for our clients. Done well we create advocates and champions and a steady stream of referrals. All good.
Little things can make a massive difference though.
Some Background
When we blog we share aspects of our Knowledge, but in truth very little knowledge is unique to us (or can’t be researched and found from other sources). Knowledge gives us confidence to do what we do. When we demonstrate that we have it (with understanding) to others we give them confidence that we can do what we can do. When we demonstrate the knowledge we also free other people from the need to gain our level of deep understanding and enable them to relax.
We do that best when we also demonstrate Skill in the application of that knowledge. That shines through as a demonstration of finesse and timing in delivery.
Skill is one thing, Experience is another. Experience allows us to manage risk, to apply the Knowledge and Skill that we have in the right ways at the right time and to be robust enough to manage changes in conditions that make the previous knowledge imperfectly matched to the actual situation.
When we demonstrate Knowledge applied with Skill and Experience to situations we build Credibility in what we do.
Those four things create “KSEC” and I think demonstrating high “KSEC” is critical to building advocates and referrals (See ‘The Journey to Advocacy Part 1 > and Part 2 > and Building referrals on Ecademy >
Visibility – The final piece
It all means nothing though if you are invisible. Quite a few times in the last few weeks I’ve seen questions raised on the blogs pages and in private groups where someone who I suspect has great knowledge, skills and experience, has replied by saying something along the lines of ‘Give me a call’. The impact is that for all of the audience to the original question their KSEC has ZERO Reach, and they only educate the questioner, if indeed they do call.
The alternative is to provide, through a detailed comment, the knowledge sought, demonstrate KSEC and give it the reach of all of the audience, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. They all learn more about you and your knowledge, skills and experience and create a view about your credibility from that. When we teach others what we know and how well we can apply it, we teach them to bring business knocking on our door.
How well do you do it?
William Buist
Understanding effective use of Social Media and the Societal Web – Teleconference
