 Ecademy's Penny Power looked at social media and how communication styles can impact results. She thinks that communication is becoming more open, more selective and more collaborative. Penny said: “My desire throughout this talk will be to help business people who have grown up with 20th Century corporate values to adapt to a world that is very different.
“Communication styles have changed throughout the past 30-40 years. A more casual approach has been adopted in industry.
“However, marketing communication inside the online world is even more radical. It is one of conversation not broadcasting. Conversation marketing and achieving success because of ‘who you are and what trust you create’, not ‘what you do and sell’ is becoming the ‘success factor’ for businesses.”
Penny says that the new world being created has a different philosophy, from being:
- Closed and cautious, to open and sharing
- Selective and quality-led, to being random and embracing of new people, and
- Controlling and hierarchical to being supportive and collaborative.
These are tough changes and they are already being seen in social networks like Ecademy and social media like Twitter. Open, random and supportive, rather than closed, selective and controlling.
Penny said: “The need for businesses to adapt is very evident. I see it every day and I hear of the life-changing results when people do.
“Letting Go is a theme of my talk - when individuals ‘let go’ of the fear of being random and supportive they enter a world that is collaborative and energising, creative and future-proofing.”
She added that the change is occurring because of the needs of the generation below (FaceBook’s success is no coincidence).
Penny said: “It is documented and believed that the length of time kids now have to be adolescent is up to 30 years old. In addition, technology enables people to embrace and stay in touch with friends and new contacts easily, gathering large networks and creating enormous influence.
 “A typical student will leave university with more than 1,000 contacts that will join 1000 companies and already know their values, their passions and their needs.”
Penny focused on the philosophies of the online world and in doing so taught a process called “Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me”, (a book on this theme is due out in August 2009), which enables clarity in using social media to “collect and share knowledge” and social networking to “collect and share people”.
Penny’s talk was more about the WHY not the HOW, as experience tells her that a massive change in thinking, a paradigm shift, is the critical aspect of learning this new world, how happens easily once context is achieved.
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