This is a guest post written by Valeria Maltoni.
Thursday at 12:00 pm ET/11:00 am CT/9:00 am PT is the new Twitter chat #kaizenblog. It was inspired by the idea that blogging for me has been a way to practice kaizen, the art of continuous improvement for writing, ideas, and community-building.
It can be the same for businesses large and small – the ability to keep the pulse on what energizes people, while at the same time receive bite-sized feedback from customers and prospects is a way to integrate practice and doing while conceptualizing and planning.
In our opening conversation a couple of weeks ago, a few thoughts emerged that will help frame the understanding of the new culture of microsharing:
- Continuous practice of sharing and community building yields productivity improvements
- We-smarter-than-me attitude leads to macro results from many micro interactions
- Practicing by writing comments and participating in the content of others breeds reflection
- While it’s easy to blog/publish, it’s not as easy to build a meaningful/compelling community
- The best social media types see the Twitter community as a communications tool
- As we see (and learn from) how one another polishes bit by bit, we all shine brighter
Brian spoke about the “golden rule” – leave the sort of comments you want to get. Don’t treat comments as free link space. He was inspired to write a post on this concept.
The most interesting aspect of microsharing by far is the fact that it is more focused on process than outcome. One of the reasons why businesses are having a hard time figuring out how to leverage it is the fact that in order to put time and attention towards it, they need validation that there will be outcomes.
It doesn’t stop there. Sharing in small portions, or bites, has been germane to pop culture and led to the adoption of media snacking. We’re doing this and in many respects, it’s the only way we know how to consume information these days and still hold jobs and have personal lives. We’re exchanging and consuming information in small chunks at the edges of other activities, or in between – we create while we wait.
What became apparent with Twitter will become even more prevalent as mobile applications raise in popularity and go mainstream – iPhone and BlackBerry from fascinating objects to utilities without which we cannot live, just like the laptop or computer.
One interesting application of the microsharing idea could be to learn a specific skill, like mastering words, or words in a new language. The other is the polishing and improvement of stories by clustering – adding additional data points and resources from the network.
How will businesses benefit from this ? Beyond the obvious ability to have a fast dialogue or point of access with customers, they can learn to understand what to listen for, to help guide and connect people to resources, and connect to what’s next for ideas, trends, and executions.
What are your thoughts?
Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent, helps businesses understand how customers and communities have changed marketing, PR, and communications – and how to bring value in this new environment. Join her every Thursday on #kaizenblog.
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