What can learn from global events?

The last three weeks…and what can we learn from this.

Do you remember when Diana was killed in a car crash, or when the planes struck the twin towers, or the millennium celebrations, or…

Of course you do. We all do. Because these are bonding moments for everyone. Most recently this has been the death and burial of Queen Elizabeth II, an event that more than 4,000,000,000 people watched on TV making it the most watched TV broadcast of all time.

The reason that these things matter is because they move us together. They give us an opportunity to share our thoughts and feelings with people we others wouldn’t know and ever speak to. Whether you were queueing to see the coffin in Westminster, or lining The Long Walk in Windsor you probably were sharing and talking with people you didn’t know.

Of course, the other place that you might have been talking to people was on social media. Perhaps those were people that you knew already or perhaps not. But either way, you came together because you had a shared interest at a. Shared moment in a particular thing.

Have you ever thought about how this happens away from these life-changing global events though? It used to happen to us all the time we would go to events, coffee shops, symposiums and “network” with people who may (or may not) be people who end-up becoming friends, collaborators, or even clients for us.

Since the earliest days of mankind these interactions have been at the very core of who we are as a species. We have met, shared, debated and partnered with our fellow humans.

Covid, rising energy prices, pressure to reduce our carbon footprint have all conspired to encourage us to stay at home now though. Where once I was 100% of my time “at work” this had over the years gradually reduced to being about 40% at work and 60% at home. The covid and lockdowns meant I was 100% at home and, frankly, I haven’t really gone back to face to face meetings for the most part. I am not averse to them, but they just don’t seem very efficient (and the people I meet largely feel the same).

But social media has not only kept me productive and effective, it’s kept me sane. I have forged what I imagine will be life-long relationships with people who I now count as dear friends. I have rekindled old (dead) relationships with people I’ve not seen for many years and I have strengthen the bonds for those people who I regularly saw.

But this shift in me is mired by a shift in the clients I work with. Where once there is no chance a client would have hired DLA ignite without a face to face meeting now they happily do so. Many of our clients we have never met (and possibly will never meet). Not only have I got better at working remotely (and so have the clients) everyone’s expectation now is that we don’t actually have to meet if it isn’t convenient.

But how do we have those chance meetings, this first encounters, those “you know what, I really like you” feelings in a digital world? The answer is social media. It is the largest networking event there has ever been. It’s a networking event that EVERYONE attends.

So, given that this is the landscape, do you have a strategy to help you capitalise on this? This is a strategic imperative and the opportunity won’t be exploited with an app or by telling people to “just post more”…this requires a plan and a clear roadmap of how to achieve the objectives required.

So the question is “does your company have that strategic plan?” or are you just hoping that the old methods that haven’t been working just happen to start working again?

#personalbrand #digitalselling #purpose #digitalorganization #socialmediastrategy