Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’
The Future Of Business – Self-Employment, The New JOB!
The Future Of Business – Self-Employment, The New JOB! A couple weeks ago I started a conversation on Twitter & FaceBook, I made the statement; There will not be enough jobs to fill the need of a growing population, how will we work?
A blog post from world renown Futurist Thomas Frey touched on the loss of 2 Billion jobs by 2030. His logic is sound and he does admit to not having time enough to provide solutions to his prophecy, but his argument has merit. Thomas provides lists of changes and which jobs they will effect, unfortunately he mostly talking about we will lose over how to solve the problem. Some jobs will be created through the dismantling of existing infrastructure, but they will be short-term free lance type contratcs. Not a bad thing just a perspective.
We are in for a world of hurt in so many areas, I’m not sure there are enough Futurists in the world to provide input on solutions. Given the fact we have a growing population, 7 Billion in 2011, it is predicted we will hit close to 9 Billion by 2025, depending on your source. Take your current unemployment rate and do the math out to 2025, it doesn’t really matter what the number is. The fact there is an unemployment rate or problem tells you we will never really achieve employment for all. The population growth is evidence enough we will have more unemployment. Why? I think we focus on the wrong business system, we are fighting hand over fist to keep and maintain our old Industrial age model. That way of doing business limits employment, everything has a cap, including salaries.
Our educational systems are changing, but ever so slowly, making course ware freely available is a baby step in the right direction though. I expect the school system to morph into a global virtual learning centre, where accreditation transfers well from country to country. This should open many doors for all, a doctor from India is still a doctor, no need for upgrading or telling respectful people they’re credentials don’t measure up. An Open & Free model with equal standards no matter where you are from. It sounds naive but smarter minds than myself have looked at this before and have done nothing to make it work (that’s speculation on my part).
So what is solution? If the numbers are true, world population is out growing the number of available jobs, teaching people to be useful self-employed members of any society seems plausible. That would make self-employment the new job. This should be the primary focus of educators to ensure the masses will be able to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Continuing to force people to rely on a failing system, or systems, is not forward thinking, or acting in the best interest of mankind. Governments are still acting like King Richard, forcing the poor to pay more for something that wasn’t working. The Robin Hoods of the world, us here on the Internet are sharing our knowledge, we are even offering to help one another.
The numbers don’t lie, we need to embrace self-employment as a way of life. Waiting for an ailing business model to recover, repair itself, or be re-invented, is not good use of time and resources. It will be too late. But Self-employment alone won’t solve all our problems. If you are thinking of going down the self-employemnt track, there are some resources available in your communities. If you are not sure what type or kind of business to start, simply drive down main street and ask yourself what’s missing. Start there and expand on it, write a list of 40 ideas, but do something.
I know self-employment isn’t easy, it wasn’t meant to be, but it gives many a new way of providing for their families. Education and the likes of you & I helping each other, will make the world a better place.
The Future Of Business Is Self-employment.
Related articles
- The Future Of Business – Fight Off The Mainstream Media & Big Business (owengreaves.com)
- The Future Of Business – Change Is Coming, And Lots Of It. (owengreaves.com)
Whatever Happened To The Internet As A Destination?
Today I have been hanging out on Google+, Twitter, FaceBook and a few other Social Networks. All this hanging was bothersome, why?
It got me to thinking back when the Internet was new, there was very few places that dominated your time on the Internet, at least not since AOL. Today we are sucked into big sites like FaceBook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and so on. Think about how uch time you spend there, think about what you did before these sites came to be.
Can you even remember what the first thing you did back before these Social Networks? I used to spend a lot of time using Gopher, remember that one?
Today we are immediately, automatically taken to FaceBook or Twitter, we don’t even flinch or think twice about it. It’s like the Internet has lost it’s glitter and has taken a back seat to Social Networks.
The Internet has far more to offer than just Social Media Networks, it does doesn’t it? I hope so, if not, we will wonder aimlessly through the desert once again.
So whatever happened to the Internet as a destination?
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The Future Of Business – The Death Of Social Media GURUS & EXPERTS!
People are a funny lot aren’t they, we say one thing and do another, we want one thing but we want everything, we don’t want to be rich but we want to be millionaires. There are literally millions of websites telling us all how to get rich beyond our wildest dreams (whatever that is), how to get FREE target traffic to your website for $17, how to write amazing content, and the list goes on. The GURUS are everywhere, they litter your inbox without notice, you are being directed, pulled and pushed into a million advertisements every day, how do we know who the real GURUS are, who the EXPERTS are.
That question almost seems like the 64 million dollar question. I have been thinking about this for a very long time, frustrated by people who lead other people down the garden path so to speak. Why do we do this to each other, why do we kill each other, why do we lie to each other, that’s the REAL 64 Million dollar question.
One of the things I’m plagued with is, I have been here in the Social Networks a little while, OK a long while. There are many more that have been here longer than me, and I’m certain they struggle with the same problem. We, have this sense of ownership when it comes to the Social Networks. We, get offended by the so called people that claim to be GURUS & EXPERTS. Why? Because we don’t agree with them mostly. In some cases, WE, fight back, we even push back, but the GURUS keep coming. It is a futile effort in my humble opinion. Why? Because people don’t care, they are only interested in making a buck for the most part. What WE, don’t seem to understand, is that the problem will take care of its self. Much like nature takes care of a forest after a forest fire, the vegetation just starts to recover, it forgets that it had a fire, it just knows the fire will fade. Because the forest never dies. The forest doesn’t get caught-up in the ownership game, why, because it already knows what will happen if you try to own it. There is a simple order of things, it adapts, it overcomes by doing what it does best, it keeps doing what it was designed to do, it just grows. The GURUS & EXPERTS of the forest come and go, they think they have control over the forest, but the one thing they can’t control, is what the forest does best. GROW!
The same can be said for the Internet, you have different, billions of different kinds of growth, some good, and some bad. The bad we will call the forest fire, the good we will call healthy growth. These GURUS & EXPERTS like their 15 minutes of fame, they seek it without realizing how short that really is, and many follow them only to be found out later. We have GURUS & EXPERTS in every sector of the world, industry, society, races, and so on. They are everywhere. But they always fade into obscurity at some point, the growth around them is overwhelming, they are left behind because healthy growth wins every time. We all eventually catchup, before you know it, the shiny new thing no longer is, the GURU or EXPERT no longer is.
Social Media GURUS & EXPERTS are fads, they can’t sustain or stay ahead of the growth, the change, they simply disappear, they die and move onto something else. Social Media GURUS & EXPERTS will lose their job to one simple thing, everyone will catchup. Soon, Social Media will become something you just have to know how to do, like using the phone, the smart-phone is now the phone of the day, you just know how to use it. Why? You caught up, you learned, I call that healthy growth. So, someday soon, we will read about how those Social Media GURUS & EXPERTS died. When they can no longer find a customer to listen to something we all will already know how to do, they will move on to the next thing.
So today, I claim The Death Of The Social Media GURU or EXPERT, we have, or we are very close to catching up, and no longer in need of these wind bags, these snake oil salesmen & women.
From this day forward, business owners will need to learn, you don’t plug your business into Social Media, you plug Social Media into your business. That Social Media is not a business, businesses become Social. The best way to eliminate Social Media GURUS & EXPERTS? Grow, and they will scramble to find another way to sell you something.
I charge you, GO and build something great, let the world know about your passion(s), and don’t be that guy or girl that calls themselves a GURU or EXPERT of anything, just do. If you just do, the truth will come forward and you will find your place. And remember, an EXPERT is just a drip under pressure : )
Let 2012 be the Death Of Social Media GURUS & EXPERTS!
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- The Future Of Business – Social Is A Feature Not A Platform (owengreaves.com)
- The Future Of Business – Change Is Coming, And Lots Of It. (owengreaves.com)
- If I Were a Social Media Guru… (kaneconsulting.biz)
- Ten Social Media Strategies to Define a Successful 2012 (briansolis.com)
The Value Of A Fan, Like Or Follow
For whatever reason we seem to need to assign a dollar value for anything and everything, maybe there isn’t one, but we just have to have one. I’m not going to layout the proper conditions or equation in this post, I’ll let you do you own research, but let’s spend some time getting it right.
Yesterday I talked about Barking At Shadows, where we put far too much stock in the number of fans, likes and followers. Those indicators make you feel good but are really a false sense of security, it just means someone came knocking, they probably didn’t do anything else. So we start asking the question, what’s the value of a follower, a fan and a like…what’s the ROI?
The question of Social Media ROI comes up all the time, and immediately everyone points to the number of followers, likes and fans, but that would be the wrong thing to do right? In my last post I said I would introduce you to someone far smarter than I, he knows this stuff, he lives it. You will love his directness, he calls it as he sees it, so be prepared to learn Social Media ROI with passion. My good friend and author, Olivier Blanchard understands Social Media ROI metrics, he has clear and definite thoughts on how to plug Social Media into your business as well. I am a little biased but I highly recommend you read his book called Social Media ROI, you will be amazed at what you don’t know. I was in an exchange with Olivier and friends on FaceBook the other day in reference to this Mashable story posted on Olivier’s FaceBook wall called, “4 Ways to Convert Facebook Fans Into Super Fans”.
Olivier said with the above link:
Actually, no. Don’t. Attract fans with ads? Create advocates with… contests? Seriously? Who writes this crap? I wonder what the folks at Brains on Fire think about this garbage.
Owen said:
The problem with the “FAN” & the “LIKE” or the “FOLLOWER”, there is no real accurate way of measuring its value, it’s similar to KLOUT trying to accurately measure ones influence. Individually they don’t matter, but the SUM of these inaccurate metrics is more important. The SUM leads to a perceived value, not a real value that can be manipulated. The “SUPER FAN” is one more attempt to bring value to a single digit, WOM is hard enough to measure, the total number of those WOM messages matters more than the single blabber mouth being a SUPER FAN. But what do I know, I’m Canadian.
Olivier responded with:
You know how they do it, right? The CPF (cost per fan) gets magically transformed into fan value:
Because the fan cost $4 to acquire, that fan’s value is now estimated at $4. So the media buyer’s ROI equation, based on media equivalency models, becomes a factor of average acquisition cost – actual acquisition cost. It works like this:
“The average (cost) value of a fan is $4. Our CPF is $2. We acquired 100,000 fans, for a total fan value of $400,000. Your acquisition cost was $200,000. We provided an ROI of 200% with this campaign.
Whether the agency’s fees were included in that $200,000 depends on the agency. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. That’s the scam.
I responded with:
Its all scam, whomever scams best…. wins.
The conversation ended there, but almost everyone tries to game the Social Media Fan, Like and or follower, its barking at shadows.
The ultimate place to be is for you (your business) to bring extreme value, powerful solutions, backed by qualified data, and that might actually include the shadows, but it’s the lessor of all the metrics to be watching.
There is much to learn, and much more to unlearn when it comes to the future of business, but you should start with Olivier’s book, then his blog, then my blog. I am more about a new of changing, Olivier wants you to be honest and realistic about what you measure, and he’ll get in your face if you or I start spewing a bad message. We’ve talked about this value before, over and over again, it keeps coming back to the table. All it means is, many still don’t understand what it is and where it should go.
The Fan, the Like & the follower do have a value, but let’s put that value in perspective, and most importantly, let’s put that value in the right place in the equation.
Related articles
- Barking At Shadows (owengreaves.com)
- Which are the most important social media metrics? (Hint: they’re nothing to do with social media) (brendancooper.com)
- Be careful what you ask for, you might just measure it (briansolis.com)
Barking At Shadows
I must confess, my youngest son is responsible for the title of this blog post. We were sitting at the dinner table this nite and we were talking about our neighbours dog, deaf but not blind…soon though. Our dog (Zeena pictured on the left) on the other hand, has bionic hearing, she can hear the paper being dropped at the front door from anywhere in the house. She races to the door barking madly, when I open the door, nothing…. all she sees is her shadow. I said, this is just like social networks, and my son said, ya…you’re barking at shadows like those followers are real people. He said something there that inspired me to write this random thought process.
Also, this constant running and barking caused me to reflect on conversations on Twitter & FaceBook lately, in regards to LIKES, FANS & FOLLOWERS. I will call these three things shadows, shadows are very misleading, hard to determine, to see where they come from even, but mostly, we are lead to believe they are something far bigger than they really are.
We tend to put far too much stock in the number of followers, fans and likes. We even attach a value to these indicators, wrongly I might add, but we do it to justify our time getting them. So we can have a case for our actions. Don’t get me wrong, they are important, in that they tell you one thing for certain, someone came knocking at your businesses door. Those numbers don’t tell you much more than that, ideally we would like to believe there’s more data to be had when someone decides to follow you, be a fan, or when the like button is pushed. I would like to believe there was actually a plan in place when this data collecting started, but I’m skeptical.
If you didn’t have a plan, a strategy, or a desire outcome well thought-out before you put your business online, then your numbers merely mean you had a visitor. You might call them potential buyers, but nothing has been bought just yet, not until you can turn that fan, that like, or that follower into something more tangible. There is a very real way to this in Social Networks, but I’m not the one who will teach you this day, another far brighter than I will do it. Stay tuned, and I will reveal him to you in tomorrows post.
So, these numbers you are so proud of are no different than the shadows my dog finds, your bragging and pumping yourself up because you have large numbers is a false sense of security, you are hanging your businesses future on the number of likes, fans and followers, don’t do this, you’re just barking at shadows.
Related articles
- Is This One Of Your Goals For 2012? (owengreaves.com)
- Social Media is not Going to Save Your Business (briansolis.com)
