JomSocial and Joomla CMS help to initiate conversations

JomSocial is a perfect tool for meeting the demands of the marketplace and our overall shift in cultural interaction notably called “socialeconomics”. I have been reading a great new book by this title and in it there are many fascinating examples of how our society, now plagued with multi-tasking and the pace of a race car on the finishing lap, is using social media to “knock of several birds with a single stone” sort of speak. I recently started a new social community as a tool to centralize information about some of my views and those that I have collected about Public Education. The idea was to build conversations around topics that can help folks better understand not only what is at stake but perhaps where they can contribute their ideas and creativity in a way that can have impact on the end game. This www.givetoed.org community allows folks to interact with most of the popular social networking and community collaboration tools in a way that remains personal yet captures the spirit of teamwork.

Platform for communication, collaboration and education

The GiveToEd.org platform leveraged all of the key features found in the JomSocial Community suite for Joomla CMS and has the intention of centralizing conversational information that can increase awareness about targeted topical categories. The ability for anyone to contribute blog articles, calendar events and comments around these topics seems like a perfect application of these tools.

Since the JomSocial components are useful for expanding the user profile fields in Joomla CMS it is a huge compliment for a variety of web applications that want extended user profiles and registration form processing. I was an avid user and big fan of another such tool for several years now called Community Builder components. These were the first for the Joomla platform and are still a great choice for Social Networking sites and extending user profiles. However the overall architecture of the JomSocial suite of community tools is a little more user intuitive for a facebook style niche social community.

We will see more and more niche social communities moving forward.

I think we will see more of these types of niche communities over time since organizations like Linked in are the business networking “Chambers of Commerce” of the future. Businesses are competing globally now and our personal social circles are also much more diversified and geographically dispersed. As an example I joined facebook a while back but did not find many folks on there just a few “early adopters”, social media geeks like me. Since leavening the Mpls MN music scene in 2000 after a rewarding 15 year career in the music/entertainment business, I have been longing to connect with many of my old friends and colleagues. A few weeks back I found a few folks that knew a few folks that new a few folks and within a week I was instantly connected with nearly 300 wonderful people that I really missed and appreciate. They and I have been able to passively and personally interact in conversations in the weeks since. It is really neat to see what many of the folks, some I have not seen for 10 years, have been up to. Though I am half way across the country in a different world as a “family man a computer geek” I am able to connect to a part of me that I could have by no other means.

Relationship management tools will be the norm of tomorrow.

The Givetoed.org community we built is hoping to bring our local communities together around a central purpose of improving our public education. Social community and relationship management tools like this play an important role and create a bridge for people to communicate at a level they could not before. For example you can look at this two ways; One, you can get those spontaneous thoughts out with quick short messages that syndicate in real time for instant response to a broad audience quickly or you are able take your time with well articulated content you wish to share that could have a lasting effect on others opinions. These social web tools can help fill the gap of communication and collaboration between where we were not too long ago and where we are now and into the future.

Public Education is just one community that needs social media conversations

If the next generation of schools are going to be effective and affordable we will have to adapt to a world to a world we have yet to understand.  Just think, when a 1^st grader this year graduates from college it will be 2026 give or take a year. Look back on what happened in the past 16 years and tell me if you could have predicted where you would be today back then.

I am thankful that the technologies like JomSocial for Joomla CMS much like Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms have evolved to connect people and help us manage these many relationships

My hope is that many sites like our www.Givetoed.org social community web portal will bring people together to Collaborate, Communicate and Educate on important areas within our society. We learn more efficiently through interpersonal communication than by any other means. I hope you drop by and have a look around and even better yet leave your comments.

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Let’s talk about Value Building

In our quest to refine our own organization and to enhance our value add to customers we are actually leveraging the same principles that we have integrated into our consulting practice. The saying “reap what you sew” holds true and is something that you can duplicate in your organization to pass greater value on to your customers.

We spent a lot of time in our think tanks over the past year going around and around on developing a methodology that would allow us to deliver on our promise of what every consumer wants and expects; “Better Service, Faster Innovations and Greater Value”. In my research I discovered some fascinating resources I wanted to share. It is the whole business modeling concept of “Value Networks”.  I finally have a catch phrase for our business model. I have been struggling with how to best communicate this to folks and this was like the final piece to the light bulb for me.

Valuable Resources for Building Value  Networks

If you are a in a leadership role in any organization contemplating how you can survive the economic and globalization supply chain challenges or if you are searching for tools to help you achieve this new virtual workforce and social collaboration capabilities I think you will want to take a look at these links and associated resources.

 

1. For IT companies this is a brief from a Strategic Consulting Firm that I found very useful and if you can afford the program it looks very promising.

http://www.valueforward.com/manifesto/thanks.html

2. For companies struggling with how to rethink their organizations and infrastructures to accommodate the changing marketplace this whole Value Network concept explored in resources at this link will be a very useful though meandering.

http://www.openvaluenetworks.com/

Note: be sure to download some of the white papers and research. This is great stuff!!!

3. If you would like to explore technologies that support the infrastructure behind this kind of Value Network please visit www.crbm.net or www.learningcrm.com. These are repositories of information on the CRBM Platform that integrates info@hand CRM with Joomla CMS and QuickBooks Accounting Software for a comprehensive technology platform to build any next generation virtual business that connects to your own Value Network.

It is an exciting time in the IT and web space marketplace and for me this hit the nail on the head for us pushing out a high level understanding of who we are and what we do.

Who we are:

“We are a value network for delivering business results”

What we do:

“We deliver service recourses and consulting with a platform of integrated technologies designed to help small businesses achieve their strategic objectives.”

How you benefit:

“You can Future Proof your business with a solution that offers consolidated virtual productivity tools, better business intelligence, increased security, strategic relationship management and effective transaction management from a central dashboard.”

Why it is important:

“Increased competition from a global economy in transition requires a new scalable business model that incorporates virtual and social collaboration, consolidates resources and leverages  green technologies so you can increase your sales effectiveness.”

Why we are your best choice:

“Our unique Value Building Approach and associated technologies focuses on your intended business results, maximizing the return on your technology investment and giving you peace of mind about your virtual business tools”

I hope you find this useful and I welcome your thoughts and comments.

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Social Media and Social Technologies have many new building blocks and take time to implement

Keep an eye on these folks to learn the current trends in Social Web Technologies

The social wave just keeps getting bigger every time I look. Today I was building out my profile on Plaxo and found this great Web TV Show http://thesocialweb.tv/ If you are planning to work with a social community for your business then there are 39 and counting episodes that review a lot of the current trends and technologies in social media. These guys are sharp and have a lot of interesting guests and comments in their conversational format.

Couple thoughts on how I have positioned our use of social media.

My Social Framework

In addition to managing our 6 corporate portals and contributing to my blog, I currently manage several social network profiles; Facebook for connecting with family and friends, MySpace for my music profile, Plaxo and Linked In for business and professional networking. Then Twitter to communicate with industry pros and a community that connects with my Blog at www.cnpintegrations.com/myblog/ (so far around 20,000 followers). On top of that since we are using Social Media for part of our SEO strategy. We have accounts on Flicker, Digg, Stumbled Upon, Picasa, Delicious and many many others... to connect our messages and inter-link with each other. There are more that I will get involved with over time but this is plenty to keep me/us busy along with getting any real work done or saving time to spend with my family.

Careful with how you spend your time

This is such a time commitment and I see so many folks involved with even more than we are... I do wonder when they sleep. The trick is before you just start signing up that you think out a strategy of how you plan to use these tools to best serve your purpose and that will consider what will your best use of time. I had been advising folks to get active with a blog for years before I actually started posting regular on mine just because I did not have the time to commit to it. I knew the affect it could have on our site traffic but unless you are ready to be consistent then it could waist time since it has to grow over time and you need to continue to contribute content or you lose your readers and when you start up again you have to build a new audience from scratch. Make sure you establish your priorities and stay focused so you can get the best return on your time and talent investment. Each implementation is as unique as the individuals involved in making them happen. There are unique considerations for all of the social technologies that require thought and a keen eye on current trends if you want to implement them successfully or now waste a bunch of time. Remember all we have in this world is our time and once it is spent we cannot get it back.

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Waking up to Social CRM and the "Conversation"

I wrote a piece a while back about Customer Conversation Management or "CCM" which is really the essence of the new CRM 2.0 and now getting the label Social CRM. Regardless of the term you prefer to use to describe it the reality is that the customer is in charge of the engagement these days since they now have so many choices and your competition is global. I have plenty of blog articles here that further explore this concept but when I found this video, I had to put it up since it hits the core of the problem many companies have today with their customer engagements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM7ZaamZzDA

CNP Integrations has a proven process for succesful Customer Relationship Business Management and CRM 2.o or Social CRM implimentation.

If you have customer relationship pains and need consulting or technology solutions let's begin a "Conversation".

:-)

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Social Media, Social CRM and Social Networking... Is this a fad or a fundamental change in the way we communicate? I have grown fond of a video series “Did you know?” which has some interesting facts about our changing times and I think this fascinating information is a real reflection of what is driving much of the social revolution and effects of globalization. Some of these have overlap of information but each as a little different twist and additional facts to consider.

Source:

http://ow.ly/kBST

Other interesting video's:

Did You Know 4.0

Did You Know 3.0

Did You Know 2.0

Did You Know

Social Media in Plain English

Strategic Leadership and Social Media for Social Good: Progress and Predictions

Chris Pirillo: The Power of Social Media

Community with Chris Pirillo - Podcamp AZ 2008

A Social Media Revolution Sparked by Iranian Citizens

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