When I go on a vacation somewhere exciting or unusual, the sights and sounds of the place linger in my mind for quite a few months after I return home. For me this experience is like virtually returning to my vacation spot for brief, yet almost real moments.

Why is this important to our latest newsletter? Because we’re discovering that virtual is the new reality in many aspects of the business world – especially with Web 2.0 advancements. While I’d probably never give up the physical experience of beach combing, body surfing or jungle hiking, there are many business interactions that are just as good or better using web technologies.

As Web 2.0 takes hold of a new era in virtual communication and reality, we’re exploring the new territory and excited at the ever-increasing ways to connect and interact with the media, clients, customers and prospects. This issue of Beta is dedicated to this very topic. We’re eager to share our new interconnectivity tools and resources with you, and as always, look forward to your insight and comments on the topic as well. I invite you to link me in to your online profiles, digg this or tag me with interesting online material as we summit this new mountain together.

Enjoy the issue!

Peter

Virtual Is the New Reality: The Generation of You and What It Means for Business Communicators

Ask yourself the following questions: Do you pay your bills online? Do your kids spend more time on MySpace than your actual family space in the home? Do you order movies on-demand from your cable company? Do you read your news online and react by posting comments?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re a part of the emerging virtual is the new reality trend. The Web 2.0 elements of social media are ushering in a new on-demand lifestyle where commerce, communities and socializing take place primarily online. While these trends seem most relevant to mainstream consumer audiences now, new paradigms developing in the virtual world indicate there are opportunities for the B2B markets to play as well.

Understand the Lay of the Land

While the online world doesn’t have the terrestrial qualities of the planet Mars, it is still a world that requires skillful navigation. So, before your business can start utilizing search marketing and new social media tools to communicate with online audiences, get your bearings straight by understanding the lay of the land. 

If you think of the Internet as a distinct online world, think of search engines as compasses that help people identify where on the net they need to go. So, for example, by effectively optimizing your web site content and all online marketing, sales and PR materials as well, search engine travelers will see your information like a sign post on the trip to their destination. 

Much like a road trip, the typical Internet user makes stops along the way. Those stops could be checking the headlines on Google News or CNN.com, visiting friends on MySpace or downloading a podcast from iTunes. To utilize the elements of virtual business communication, you need to understand how your customers travel the Internet and how to guide them towards your online stop. 

Sign Post: If You Place It, They Will Come

While Web 1.0 and the modern-day search engine made it possible for anyone anywhere to look up information, and instantly get a million possible answers, Web 2.0 is more about interconnectivity between the billions of users tapping into the Internet for company the way they interact with people in the physical world around them.

Looking at Web 2.0 as a new form of two-way communication is like an evolution to business marketers. Suddenly, we can instantly see if anyone’s interested in a new product by their reaction in online discussion groups, whether a press release was as hot of news as expected by how high it ranked on Google News and whether anyone’s interested in the topics we think are valuable by the number of ‘digg-its’ we get to our posted commentary on Digg.com.

Getting back to guiding your customers’ Internet path towards your business’ stop, posting signs along the most highly traveled routes, and allowing them to also communicate back to you is an easy task to achieve with new online connectivity tools.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Join the Online Social Circle: Subscribe to a social network like Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn. In addition to reaching friends and family, include your business contacts, clients and prospects in your online social connections. Your bio, business information, and description of products and services offered are just the start of the content you can include in your profile.
  
  
• Make Wiki Entries: Made famous by Wikipedia, you can use these websites that allow anyone to visit and add content to make wiki visitors aware of your company. There are many wikis out there beyond Wikipedia relevant to your business you can research and add your information to.
  
  
• Pass along a good tip with social bookmarking: When you find online content that’s helpful or intriguing to your business, clients' interests, co-workers, or personal interests, etc., you can pass along tips to the sites with social bookmarking, which allows web users to locate, classify, rank and share web content through ‘tagging’. The site del.icio.us is a great place with the tools to start.
  
  
• Online training. In addition to any in-person sales or product training seminars you hold, make the content available online in the form of videocasts or podcasts, so users can download content on-the-go and listen or watch at their convenience. Rich media content also lends itself well to improved search rankings.
  
  
• Make it Democratic with Intra-Client Blog. Learn how to better serve your customers by hosting an intra-client blog where your customers can post commentary, questions or requests for improvements about your company’s products or services. One of my clients, Hannon Hill, makers of web content management solutions, provides this format to their customers and regularly improves its software based on customer discussion and requests in their client blog.

Don’t Shout: How Speaking Strategically Gets Results

The key for B2B companies using social media effectively is to find a way to communicate with industry-specific audiences, instead of adding to the clutter by posting and communicating with mass mainstream audiences. Whether it’s thought capital columns in industry magazines that allow web posts to be added or online chats your CEO schedules once a week for industry members, as long as you integrate your approach with your overall sales, marketing and communications plans, your company can make the most of social media – even if you do need your teenager to help you set up your own LinkedIn account.

Client Column:
Life's tough; And life at the top’s tougher than you think

by Hodges L. Golson, Ph.D.
President, Management Psychology Group

Most executives are too busy trying to stay on top of the wide demands of their jobs to reflect on the unanticipated facets of life at the top of organizations. But it can be helpful to take a deep breath occasionally, and to examine the context of one’s environment on a deeper level. Some of these observations may provide insight for that process.

The following points illustrate some of the phenomena of executive life, which are typically hidden from view on the way up.

The Executive Amplifier. As one moves up in an organizational hierarchy, one's public organizational life starts to become a product of sound bites. You don't have the time to build relationships throughout your organizations as they become larger and as you move up. People can't get to know you the way they did as you were coming up, so they decide what you're like as a person and as a leader by what they see in short, infrequent samples of public behavior. And they read far too much into the leader's words and actions. If you make an effort to smile and to talk to people, you'll have the image of being an approachable, concerned and people-oriented leader. If you show no emotion and act in a neutral, unexpressive manner, people will see you as detached or will project things from their own psyches onto the blank screen you provide. If you scowl, snap at someone or otherwise look unhappy, they'll see you as negative, irritable and unfriendly. And it only takes a few times for the image to emerge. Therefore, think about how the little things you do day-in and day-out affect the image you project to the troops. Company cultures are based on shared values, which are displayed through your behavior. Much of an executive's impact on the troops is through the symbolism of his/her behavior.

The Executive as Celebrity. The larger your organization and the less often people see you, the more you become like a celebrity. Some people enjoy this but many are surprised and uncomfortable with it. Few anticipate the demands it will place on them or think about the downsides of the executive fishbowl before experiencing it.

The Executive as Energy Source. Many people look to the leader for their own inspiration and energy. The leader's job sometimes includes keeping the troops pumped when his/her energy and attitude are waning. This need to provide the spark for others can drain the executive's own energy, especially if he/she isn't a natural extravert. Extraverts typically recharge their batteries by contact with others while introverts tend to renew their resources by having time to themselves.

The Cognitive Elite. Executives are usually a little brighter than are people in the general population. That's often the reason they're in the executive role -- because they are good problem-solvers. Most of the executive's peers are also smart and most of the people they deal with are smart. There are plenty of smart people at all levels of large organizations, but on average executives score higher on measures of intellect than do people at lower organizational levels. Keep in mind that this is no guarantee that any one individual executive will be brighter than any one individual person from a lower level. However, the best executives will keep in mind the necessity of clarifying and simplifying messages that go to the whole organization. They also remember to include the emotional component of the message. People in the ranks as a group won't understand or get behind such concepts as "increasing stockholder value" without a sense of what's in it for them. Also, when there's bad news, they need to know you understand the hardships and that you really do care. But be careful because that's hard to fake.

A second aspect of the brainpower factor is the Apollo Effect. This refers to the phenomenon of having too many bright people on the team. An Apollo team is characterized by too many ideas, too much criticism of those ideas, and very little agreement about the direction the team should take. This was first observed by English psychologist R. M. Belbin who ran a series of large-scale management simulations in the '70's. He tried stacking the deck by creating a number of superteams (or Apollo teams, named after the Apollo Project). He did this by populating those teams with only the brightest individuals on the theory that there would be certain synergies resulting from the exceptionally high intelligence levels of the teams. In all cases, the Apollo Teams crashed and burned if they ever even got out of the gate. The teams with a balance of talents regularly ate their lunch. Too many executive teams are Apollo teams populated by bright but egocentric, stubborn, and insensitive people. You can guess what effect that has on teamwork.

The Imposter Phenomenon. This term was coined by psychologist Pauline Clance in her book of the same name. It refers to the feelings of inadequacy and guilt many successful people encounter because of their accomplishments. The internal dialog, whether conscious or beneath the surface, goes something like "I'm above average but not particularly special. I'm not sure I really did anything to deserve being where I am, and I'm worried that people will figure that out. I sometimes feel like an imposter."

The Paradox of Feedback. The higher one goes in an organization, the more one needs information and feedback. But the higher one goes, the less likely he/she is to get feedback. People aren't inclined to tell executives how they really come across. Issues of power (this woman can fire me), politics (I think he's a lousy leader but he sure responds to flattery), and socialization (kids don't tell Daddy what they really think) interfere. Also, many aspects of the executive personality work against his/her hearing bad news. They've always been reinforced for knowing the answer and being strong in the face of opposition. Having a good source of unbiased critique is invaluable for an executive's development.

High Visibility but No One To Talk To. Lonely-at-the-top is a cliché, but it’s true. At each successive level, the peer group support network gets weaker. Executive group interactions typically aren't characterized by openness and trust. Consequently, there's no arena for the executive to relax, to get the easy give-and-take interaction, feedback and counsel more commonly found at lower organizational levels.

Ambiguous or Nonexistent Reinforcement. At this level, outstanding performance is expected. When that's the norm, all you get is negative critique or nothing at all. You're at the top of the scale, so no one's going to notice unless your performance is not always outstanding. Besides, most CEO's, presidents, and executive level people give inadequate reinforcement and supportive critique. If the executive doesn't have a clear set of internal standards and a pretty good sense of his/her performance against those standards, that person is likely to become overly anxious in the short haul and miserable over time.

So what's the beleaguered executive to do? First, find out whether you're really suited for this kind of work. Many very bright and competent people don't have the unique combination of drives, interests, and characteristics for this work. Second, assuming that you've decided you are suited for executive responsibilities, you need to decide if your current role is a good fit.

Beyond answering the basic questions of suitability, the following suggestions may help:

Define the Goal. This is basic. You need to know where you're taking your troops. We've seen leaders' ratings from their subordinates improve across the board when the only thing that really changed in their behavior was the development of a clear goal that captured the imagination and support of people in the ranks.

Communicate the Goal. The obvious is easily overlooked. It does no good to define the goal if people don't know what it is. The message should be clear and consistent, and you need to be prepared to repeat it often. And don't discount the need for persuasion.

Be Optimistic but Realistic. Make sure the goal is a stretch but reachable. Communicate in an upbeat, positive manner but don't be a Pollyanna. Answer questions directly and acknowledge a lack of information when necessary. Give clear feedback about progress and performance against the goal, and be sure to reward good performance.

Model Openness and Trust. Absolute integrity is essential. Once a person has done something to lose trust in an organization, he/she may be able to regain some of it over time, but it never rises to the original level. It would be naive to ignore political dangers, but it's a disaster to become cynical or to make decisions based only on your own political gain. Executives usually live in a world that encourages predatory behavior. That won't change overnight, but it won't change at all if you don't make the effort. Don't neglect political dangers but set the example of dealing in a straightforward manner. The more fair and consistent you are, the more likely others will be to deal with you in the same way. If you do enough of this, eventually you'll establish that solid support network most executives lack.

Seek Feedback. You may have a strong game plan, but you need to know where you are to know how to get where you're going. Objective feedback is hard to come by but if you don't seek it, you won't get it. You need to know how your people see you and what they need from you. Structured methods such as upward or 360-degree ratings are helpful but not infallible. Ask people who have had a chance to observe you what you do well and what you need to improve on. Your own boss is a good starting place.

Get Good People and Let Them Go. Empowerment's fine as a value and as a pop-psych management term to toss out now and then, but if you empower the wrong people, you and your organization will go down the tubes. To make your life easier over time, don't make compromises on selection. Remember, A's hire A's and B's hire C's. The worst thing you can do with marginal people is to let them operate without structure or direction. The worst thing you can do with good people is to manage them too tightly. Once you know they're good and they're with the program, give them broad goals then get out of their way until they need help.

Take Care of Yourself. If your needs aren't getting met, if you're running yourself into the ground, if you're not taking enough time to replenish your reserves, you'll lose effectiveness. Balance is important. Remember that in order to regain control, it's sometimes necessary to let go of control. Be sure your stress management skills are well-developed and that you're taking the time to do the things that make you happy.

About the Author:

Hodges L. Golson is president and a founding partner of Management Psychology Group. He is a licensed psychologist and board certified in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Organizational and Business Consulting Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology. Dr. Golson can be reached at hgolson@mpgpc.com.

Carabiner Roundtable

>> In this roundtable discussion, Carabiners give insight on the phenomenon of social media, virtual reality and interconnectivity for B2B companies.

Q: How do you think social media will affect how B2B companies market themselves?

“With its roots firmly planted in the Web 2.0 culture, social media will force B2B companies to become more agile and engaging with their audiences. As market preferences continue to quickly change, companies will need to stay fleet of foot in order to deliver relevant information on the fly that meets the merging professional and personal lifestyles of their customers.”
- Jan Sisko

“They will try to create communities with their customer and partner communities.  B2Bs will be able to leverage the typically more intimate understanding they have of their highly targeted customer bases and showcase their own domain expertise while listening and reacting to customers/community members. I also see this technology further leveling the playing field for SMBs who typically have had the “ideas” but not the means to communicate in the ways that the larger companies have.”
- Peter Baron

“It has been interesting to see how companies are using new mediums like myspace, blogs and chat rooms to communicate company messages or just take the pulse on how those messages are being received.”
- Heather Oliver

Q: Before search marketing, and even the Internet, what do you think was a major development in technology or tools/processes that revolutionized how marketing and PR was done?

“Before the Internet, the technology process that revolutionized PR was communications using email. The ability to reach and communicate with reporters via an AOL, CompuServe or MCI Mail account transformed the way we could share information with the media. Instant mass communications, as well as targeted one-on-one outreach with a reporter, collapsed the timetable and enabled PR folks to reach more audiences and generate faster results. Reporters preferred email communications, so it didn’t impact our ability to build relationships with them. In fact, email communications was like having a private, exclusive channel with media. For those of us working in technology PR, email actually elevated us to a higher level in the minds of the media (in today’s lingo, it gave us ‘street cred’). Technology editors respected you for using technology to communicate with them.”
- Suzanne Moccia

“I think the evolution of laser and then color printing changed the way things are done.  When paper based communications hadn’t yet been outmoded by HTML and PDF files – it became possible to communicate in the same way that magazine’s could – with pictures, charts and nice layouts in press kits and other materials.”
- Peter Baron

“Email made a huge difference in getting news releases out. Before email, we printed the news releases on special "news release" letterhead; printed black and white or color photos (5x7 or 8x10); wrote a formal cover letter and packaged them in corporate folders...or if it was just the news release, we'd fold them and put them in #10 envelopes. I paid my daughters a penny a release to fold, stuff and seal 200 news releases at a time. Putting out a release was a major manual undertaking and expensive. Fortunately, my company could afford a copier. Before that, we'd send out for copies.”
- Deb Herrington

“I remember the What’s Up Fax service being a big deal for distributing press releases in Atlanta. Also, when I worked in the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s PR department they would include a paragraph about one of their upcoming events on their fax cover sheets.”
- Heather Oliver

Q: Who in your household is the most active online social networker?

“Probably my teenage kids with IM and social networking sites.  Phone based texting (SMS) is also still pretty popular with them.”
- Peter Baron

“I am. Not only do I use IM throughout the day for communications, but I also spend a lot of my evenings conversing with friends I've met online - people who I have a lot in common with and the only separation between us is geographical distance. I have a small group of online friends that I'm in daily touch with more or less, and have been for the past couple of years. They're located both inside and outside the U.S. I also belong to an online critique writing group.”
- Leslie Tentler

“My dog has his own web page on Dogster, so I’d have to say he is the most active online social networker from my household (kidding)!”
- Suzanne Moccia

Q: How do you see the interconnectivity among persons in the virtual world affecting the physical office work place in the next 5-10 years? Do you think everyone will just start working out of a home office?

“I think the days are numbered for the physical office world – in the near future it will become less and less necessary to go to an office to get work done effectively – even for team oriented assignments.  I even think that we’ll see companies seek ways to cut their ‘anchor-like’ leases as they realize that the unnecessary spending is making them less competitive with nimbler companies.”
- Peter Baron 

“We're still a long way from physical offices disappearing, but I do think more companies will start giving work-at-home options to employees. Working at home makes sense from a quality of life perspective, an environmental perspective, and a 'less overhead for the company' perspective.”
- Leslie Tentler  

“I know that my former employer Equant, now Orange Business Services, has transitioned to a predominantly home-based workforce in their Atlanta office so that they can save money on leasing space – they only have 2 floors in their building near the Galleria where they used to have 4. But, I don’t think that everyone will start working out of a home office. That’s like saying that no one will use snail mail anymore or print newspapers. Futurists have predicted it, but it just hasn’t happened.”
- Heather Oliver

“Social media and connecting with people online has become the norm to network and converse with friends. But I think within a few years we’ll have to remind ourselves of just how powerful face-to-face meetings are and re-engage in that type of one-on-one communication vs. going to the computer for everything. As more companies make working from home a mandatory requirement, we may see a resurgence of people wanting to go to an office for some face time and interaction with someone other than the mail carrier.”
- Kathy Cabrera