Customers and employees are still underserved and underappreciated. Some would say, in business, social media lost its way. Others would argue social media failed to live up to the hype. There are unfortunately still many examples of businesses not getting it, viewing or outsourcing it as a mere “marketing” function, and operating in siloes where social becomes anti-social by design. Without purpose and collaboration, social will always be just another thing that businesses use to defer the inevitable…change. Even though…
Attention is a Precious Commodity: Earn it and Spend it Wisely
There’s an oft-shared quote that I’d also love to share with you here, “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” French mathematician, physicist, writer and philosopher Blaise Pascal essentially captured the essence of thoughtful and purposeful communication with a bold but confusing statement in 1657. At first blush, his words almost seem counter-intuitive. I mean after all, how can spending more time writing a letter equate to its downsizing? That’s the point. Think about…
Community is Much More Than Belonging to Something; It’s About Doing Something Together That Makes Belonging Matter
Viginia Coutinho is a dear friend who just released a new book (in Portuguese) that helps strategists think differently about social media. She is also the organizer of Upload Lisboa, a fantastic event in Portugal that focuses on innovation and disruptive technologies. Earlier in the year, she surprised me by asking if I would consider writing the foreword. Even though I don’t write much about social media these days, I couldn’t let her down. Now that her book is available,…
A Manifesto for Building Relationships in the Digital Era
Not too long ago, my dear friend Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid) and I set out to explore a new world of visual communication that combined an intentional form of written storytelling illustrated through clever yet pithy cartoons. That work was originally brought to life in #WTF (What’s the Future of Business). The engagement around Hugh’s work eventually spilled over from print to online with readers sharing their favorite Hugh cartoons via Tweets, Instagrams, Vines, Pinterest, et al. We were inspired to…
Let Digital Natives Be Your Guide in Defining the Future of Work
Don’t let complacency undermine your company’s hyperconnected present and future. Pervasive technology fundamentally changes how people communicate, discover and connect. With smartphones and tablets serving as digital appendages, we focus on small screens throughout our day, every day and in all we do. Technology’s biggest impact, however, is not so much on the devices or the apps we use, but on our behavior. Specifically, it affects how we learn, how we buy, how we work, and how we influence and…
Live Your Brand the Way Your Customers Do
I recently spent some time with PRNews editor Steve Goldstein. As part of a fireside chat we’re doing at the upcoming 20/20 Summit in San Francisco, Steve asked a few questions that lead to a pretty deep conversation. I wanted to share it with you here. Digital Darwinism is Real: Compete for the Future (Compete for You) Now PR News: In your book “What’s the Future of Business?” you suggest that while it’s a good thing that companies are investing…
The Disconnect in Connecting the Workplace
There’s a lot of talk about the future of work… Technology is indeed connecting us in ways that improve communication, discovery and connectivity. The world is becoming a much smaller place as a result. Chances are that you are connected in one network or another to people in at least 12 other countries. Although social networking and smartphones are relatively new as a staple in the everyday life of adults and kids, how we as consumers use these networks and…
Social Media is Lost Without a Social Compass
Marcia W. DiStaso and Denise Sevick Bortree recently published a university-level textbook to address an important topic by the same name, The Ethical Practice of Social Media in Public Relations. As they were wrapping up the editing of the book, I was asked to contribute the foreword. Upon reading some of the manuscript, the answer was, YES! Of course, I asked if I could share it here with you and I’m happy to announce that it’s included below… About The…
10 Quotes on The Future of Business
10 quotes by Brian Solis on the Future of Business from Prezly Every now and then, I receive a nice surprise that gives me pause. Today is one such moment. I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to share it with you. The team over at Prezly put together a wonderful Slideshare that features some key quotes from my last three books Engage, The End of Business as Usual and What’s the Future of Business (WTF). I could only…
GoldieBlox vs. the Beastie Boys – What Constitutes Fair Use?
Guest post by Monica Corton (@momusing), Executive Vice President, Creative Affairs & Licensing Next Decade Entertainment, Inc. Now that the Beastie Boys have gone on the offensive for the unlicensed and unauthorized use of their song “Girls”, written by Adam Horovitz and Rick Rubin, as used in the Goldieblox viral video campaign to feature their girls toy line . . . let’s try to unpack what actually happened and why songwriters and music publishers firmly believe that this was not…
