Tomorrow I’m doing a keynote presentation for Ernst & Young’s Black Professional Network. The subject is brand building and network building on social media.

As I was researching and writing this presentation I was again impressed with how social media and technology have changed so much of how the world works, how business works and how we, as individuals navigate the world of work.

Much has been written about being a brand, the fact that individuals are brands and just as McDonald’s, Coke and others worry and fret about building their brands, so should we. It’s an almost incongruous thought – the faster the world gets, the more information there is the more individual action becomes important. You would think that with all this information and technology the individual would be less important, yet the reverse is true.

While it is overwhelming to consider how ‘little old you’ can change the world, it is quite realistic to consider how you can positively influence an industry or small part of an industry. Technology and social media has provided driven and talented individulas with the means to become influential in highly niched areas. In turn multiple acts of influence by many people add up to a changed world. I know, I’m terribly idealistic. But I have the most fun in idealism.

The key take away for those in the audience tomorrow will be this: Employers are caring less and less about your 4 page CV. What they will care more about is the quality of YOUR brand and the credibility of the network you can bring to their organisation.

Last week I witnessed a tense, bordering on nasty, exchange between two people on Twitter. A freelance writer, a woman, had been tweeting about her experience in looking for a new car and said she planned to write an article reviewing a few cars. A doctor, a man, responded to her saying she had no position to write about cars since she is not an authority on the subject but because she has a large following people would believe her.

This got me thinking: In the digital and social age it is possible for anyone to broadly disseminate a point of view or opinion. This is a good thing and a right with which we are all born. Information is therefore abundant. Have we not then passed the time that we admonish people for the information they put “out there”? Rather we all, individually, have to be responsible for filtering our own information. We have to be equally (if not more) responsible for what we accept as for what we transmit.

With greater access to information we have to become smarter, not dumber yet that is all too possible.

As we have been told at numerous conferences throughout the last 3 years, we are in the midst of a social media revolution and it’s changing everything.

As tired as that statement has become it is true. And the change it will bring to HR has arrived.

In truth it is not just “social media” that is changing things but rather a progression over the last 20 years of 4 things: Mobile, Internet, Social & Technology. The rapid evolution of these 4 technologies means that change is constant. How we do business is evolving all the time.

There are those of us who are old enough to remember a time when our personal and professional lives were distinctly separate. This all changed with cell phones, the moment someone was given a cell phone for work there was the possibility of being contacted by a client or a colleague in the evening or even on a Sunday . It changed again with the internet and email – we could do work at home if it was necessary. It changed yet again when we could get email on our phones while we were on the go. Then came the arrival of social media.  All of these are driven by technology and technology has brought all of these together onto a single device; the tablet, the smartphone.

So what does this mean for Human Resources?

In the early days of social media (the ‘early days’ being just 3 years ago) social was exclusively the domain of the marketing department. Quite likely no one in the office was allowed access to social platforms except the marketing people. Over the last 12 to 18 months we see social being freed from its marketing prison and moving into the greater corporate environment. This is putting human resources onto centre stage as far as social goes and for very good reason.  Social Media is PEOPLE, humans. It is not marketing, advertising, accounts or suppliers. It is the interaction of PEOPLE with these departments.

The experts on people in any business are (or should be) Human Resources.  It therefore makes sense for HR to take a leadership role.

An obvious area of change is the CV, the resume. This document, combined with a couple of references, was once the source of all the info HR would have about an applicant. Today that document is becoming of secondary importance to the wealth of information that can be obtained through social channels. What is the “social brand” of the applicant? The importance of this is increasing because the social generation (those who were in school 9 years ago during the birth of the social revolution) have entered the work place.  This means young people are having to think of their personal brands from the time they leave high school.

It is for this reason that HR managers need to know and understand social platforms and how to extract applicant information from them without violating rights to privacy.

And it’s not just looking at applicants. Finding the rights applicants through social platforms is becoming more common. Recruiters are finding applicants before they are looking for a job. You may have heard the phrase “big data is the new oil”. This refers to the vast amount of information that exists today and the opportunities that exist for those that can mine this information for what is important and valuable.  A staggering datum is that more information was created last year than was created from the beginning of human civilization up to 2011. So as our lives go more online, the more we share information about ourselves the more recruiters will be able to find the candidates they need by filtering through this data and thus they will find people who didn’t even know they were looking for a new job.

But I believe the greatest revolution will be bringing social culture to the corporate culture, which is inevitable and in fact, already happening.

We are passed the hype and hyperbole of social media. It has become culturally established. Of course a majority of our population are not yet even connected to the internet but this is changing and the pace of growth of connected citizens is growing all the time. For many the first experience of online life will be through Facebook and mobile apps rather than Google or websites.  The more this happens the more that experience is imported into corporate culture. Such people will not know e-mail as a means of communication but rather tweets and Facebook messages and they will want to interact with customers and colleagues in the same way.

This is a process that will have to be managed and lead by Human Resources: Providing and managing platforms that allow employees to build social relationships with each other. This presents almost unlimited possibilities and opportunities.

Employees who are promoted up through an organization will be able to share their invaluable experience with others through social news feeds; collaboration across distant branches (even on different continents) is not just possible but simple; building of corporate culture and a sense of identity and morale are inbuilt into such systems.

All of this presents a brand new way of thinking and to succeed in the working environment of this new world HR specialists have to learn and understand new technologies and the changing culture it brings.

The pace of change in the modern world is driven by technology and the almost daily advances it brings so it makes sense that if we are to survive into the future that we embrace technology and allow it to work for us.

The challenge for HR will be to first embrace this future, then convince senior management to embrace it and then of course to implement and manage it.

Last week I was asked to lead a 2 day seminar on social media for local government.  The program was pretty high level stuff – social media in communications, PR, handling a crisis and more.

What I landed up spending most time on was dealing with the basic words of social media. At the end of the first day I hurriedly put together this slide presentation. It may be of use to you and if so, please feel free to download.

Social Media Keywords

I am in the process of planning (read paying) for my son’s 21st birthday celebration.

Firstly, I should say I struggle with the idea that I have a son who is about to turn 21. How did that happen? How am I even old enough for this?

We recently have had several chats about what he is doing, his plans for the future and so on. This mostly make me feel like I’m imparting wise and important advice. This mostly makes him feel like he’s doing enough that it looks like he is taking this advice.

He plans to move out of the house at the beginning of next year. He and his long time girlfriend have already started scouting. During a discussion about this over the weekend I was struck by what he views as priority for a home and how this differs from what I looked for when I was doing the same over 20 years ago. I looked for two things: cheap and on a bus route.

Number one on Tyler’s list is an area that has a minimum of a 4Mps ADSL service. This is important enough that he won’t simply take Telkom’s word for it, he is and will get info from neighbours and other sources to establish vital things like low latency. With that in place his major concern is to have an uncapped packaged so he can work and have all the entertainment they need. “I don’t need DSTV, we’ll download all the movies and series we need,” he says.

How amazing. In my day, my home was a place to sleep. A home today is an office and an entertainment hub. A further illustration of the blurring of our professional and personal lives.

I can’t wait to see how my grand kids hunt for a home.

Oscar Pistorius skiet sy vriendin in sy huis dood omdat hy glo dink sy is ‘n inbreker.

— Beeld (@Beeld_Nuus) February 14, 2013

 “Oscar Pistorius shoots his friend dead in his house because he thought she was a burglar”

Social Media has so quickly become part of modern daily life but given how rapidly technology evolves the truth is that while much of social is now “business as usual” in reality we are constantly learning the ropes while live tweeting to the world.

Almost daily there are scandals being reported: Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked and made to look like McDonalds, an inappropriate tweet by a newsroom anchor or celebrity, someone fired because of their statements about work on Facebook.

But in the face of a terrible tragedy the last 7 days has truly shown us how powerful these platforms have become and why they have become an inseparable part of our lives. Love it, hate it, right or wrong our lives are changed by it.

The tragedy to which I refer of course is the shooting of Reeva Steenkamp by Oscar Pistorius. Die Beeld chose to break the story on Twitter on the morning of the 14th of February, even before they had posted a story on their website. This alone is a seismic shift in traditional media. A major, global story being broken in less than 140 characters.

After the story went viral just a few minutes later the dark shadow of the twitterverse showed itself with scathing tweets about the state of South Africa’s crime situation (since it was reported that Oscar mistook Reeva for a burglar). As doubt was cast on that version of events tweets turned to instant judgement and condemnation of Oscar himself.  Worse the jokes were circulating by that very afternoon and a fake Nando’s ad was spreading virally. South Africans, hurt and confused by yet another fallen hero, vented and ranted. Much of it was ugly. And so it went for the next 4 days.

On Tuesday the 19th at around 10am Oscar’s bail hearing began and Twitter took centre stage, revealing itself as the powerful medium it has become. It was the social eras version of the OJ trial. But we weren’t glued to TV. An appeal was made by media to be allowed to televise proceedings. This, predictably, was denied. Over the next few hours the world would discover that this no longer matters. People from around the world were glued to Twitter as live tweets streamed directly from the court room. It felt like we were in the room. Every question, answer, gasps from the gallery. By the end of the first day most opinion and commentary proclaimed Oscar’s guilt. Everyone was an investigator, a lawyer pointing out inconsistencies. By the end of day two those convictions were wavering as the defense took the opportunity to tear into the prosecutions case. But we didn’t have to read a long analysis the next day in print.

As just one example of the intense interest, Barry Bateman (@BarryBateman) a reporter for Eye Witness News live tweeting from the courtroom, saw his twitter following rise from 10,000 to over 60,000. It was riveting. Of course there was just as much senseless commentary by senseless people but once you figured out who to follow, it was amazing.

For better or for worse, this is how we will forever expect to follow important stories: We want to be there, right now as it is happening. We want to discuss it with others, right now as it happening. We want to interact directly with those who are there, as it is happening. Lastly, we want it WHERE we are, wherever that may be. This story was followed by people on planes, trains, board rooms, conferences, on the toilet, during meetings, at coffee shops, while shopping. Wherever people were they were following the story on Twitter.

It is in the last two days that Twitter has shined and showed why it is the new broadcast medium.

However, with everything I have said it should not be forgotten that at the centre and foundation of this is a tragedy that has left at least two families forever shattered and the innocent Reeva  Steenkamp dead. Let’s also not forget the national loss of an inspirational hero who could have done so much more for our nation had things happened differently.

My all new keynote presentation is entitled FRICTION!

I am enormously excited about delivering this keynote, which I will do for the first time next week.

Read the full overview here and let me know your thoughts.  I’d love to hear from you.

On the 7th of January @EWNupdates posted an interesting question on Twitter which got an even more interesting reply:

@ewnupdates#EWNChat no surprise,ppl rubber neck at car accidents,civilization has become more barbaric with technological advancement

— B. Wing Yip (@B_UU_Why) January 7, 2013

The statement that we have become more barbaric with technological advancement surprised me. I wondered if this was a consensus view so I threw it out on Facebook.  The responses to the question indicated some agreement with this view but certainly not by all.

This is probably one of those issues that needs an in depth study and it won’t be satisfactorily dealt with in a short blog post but since it’s my blog I’ll indulge myself and give my opinion.

Before dealing with the issue of technological advancement there is the question: Is modern society more barbaric than it has been? While I concede there are far too many issues of barbarism that we see every day, I disagree that we are “more barbaric”. We have come a long way since medeval practices where death  was a way of life, where social advacement was impossible and life was generally awful.

As for advancement, every major advance is met with suspicion and scorn. We know what happened to poor Galileo for suggesting the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the solar system and the idea that blood circulated around the body was met with scorn when first proposed. Despite all efforts to dampen human curiosity we have progressed.

I contend that the reason so many people are uncomfortable with modern technology is simply the rate of advancement.  We had a few hundred years to get used to the idea that we orbit the sun. However it seems we have just days or weeks or get used to new ideas before there is a further leap.  Just 14 years ago there was no proof that planets existed outside our solar system. In just 2 years over 2000 planets have been discovered with scientific knowledge informing us that there are probably over 200 billion just in our galaxy.

It’s a breathtaking ride to be alive today with so much change. We human’s seem to strive for  progress and resist change in equal measure so when we so much change it can be overwhelming.

And, of course when it comes to confronting barbarism we must acknowledge the roll that technology plays in exposing such abuse. Two months ago pictures circulated Facebook showing a man abusing his dog. He was scorned the world over within just days. I believe he lived in Brazil. His bararism was exposed the world over. Never made the greater impact of regime change in Egypt ignited and coordinated through Facebook.

We certainly not moving toward a utopia where the world is all glitter and cupcakes but I would argue that technology is a necessary civilizing influence.

The biggest change in business in the last 25 years is the colliding of “social” and “business”

These have always been distinctly separate, mutually exclusive galaxies. Your personal and professional lives were separate parts of the timeline. Business 8 to 5 and personal 5 to 7 the next day.

Since the internet changed the world in the 1990s which gave birth to social platforms in the early part of the 2000s we have seen the collision in progress. When two galaxies collide you would expect this to be violent, explosive and destructive.  However quite remarkably these blend with each other and over a period of time become one big galaxy. It is estimated that our Milky Way Galaxy will experience such a merging with the Andromeda Galaxy in about 5 billion years.  If this little planet is still around then it is quite probable we won’t even notice the merging.

This merging of social and business pretty much began with the arrival of the mobile phone in the 1980s. The moment you had a mobile phone you could be contact whenever needed.  5pm was not necessarily the end of your working day. Today we are doing business in the evenings, on Sunday mornings as well as during “normal” working hours. The office worker hates this.  The entrepreneur loves it.

As we have become accustomed to interacting with social and mobile technologies so the pressure for these to be integrated into business increases.

2013 will be the year that the collision of these galaxies will pass the tipping point.

So what is social business and why should any business bother? Becoming a social business is the process of identifying & removing the friction that exists between you and your customer. How do you make it possible for your customer to simply fall into your processes and services? Social business is integrating social technologies into a the business environment to stream line processes, allow for innovation, collaboration, sharing and, most importantly, growth.

There is no denying that we live in a social world.  Social media is far beyond the novelty and giggle stage. Social is how we live our lives, how we research, how we buy, how we experience. Business has failed to keep social media out of the work place and it is increasingly difficult to employees to do their jobs without interacting with your customers where they are – on social media.

Social media efforts in most businesses today are stuck in the marketing department and this is where it should remain for taking your brand to the world. To become social in a business thought means that Human Resources will need to equally own social media and integrate it throughout your business. Human Resources in the social age is becoming Human Relationships, the fostering and nurturing of these relationships internally.

2013 is the year of social business and what a year it will be!

This post originally appeared in the October issue of Shop SA. It addresses small to medium businesses that have yet to take the decision to “go social”.

15 years ago a growing hype was underway about “going online”. More and more we were told that our businesses had to have a website. Many businesses resisted the change. 

Why go online? My target market is not there. It’s a fad. I have a shop, I don’t need a website.  

Today you would not think of having a business without a website – in fact it is often the first thing we spend money on when starting a business.

Three years ago a new hype began – you have to “go social”. Similar resistance is being experienced right now about using social media for our businesses.  The hype can often feel like we are being beaten into submission.

But when “going social” is viewed as opportunity, resistance turns to forward motion. More than anything it is important to understand the shift in mindset that social media has brought to business that has made active involvement in social media a necessity.

1950 marked the start of the technological revolution. It was technology that drove the pace of planet forward. Technological advances forced the world to change markedly every 10 years. In 20 years we went from street cars to landing on the moon. Just 20 years after that we had computers in our homes and mobile phones enabling instant communication anywhere in the world.

With the arrival of the internet and shortly thereafter social platforms, we see that the world now changes markedly every three years.  It is now possible to build a global brand in just 36 months.

This is possible because of the social web.

People all over the world are able to instantly communicate, share and collaborate. Ownership of the media today is shifting to individuals. The social web is the media.

This is very different to the ownership through advertising model that existed until 12 years ago and because of this shift, business can no longer control communication or the message. Individuals are talking freely to each other the world over about brands, goods and services. We are sharing our experiences through blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

With over 1.4 billion people active on social networks around the world we can no longer ignore the fact that if we want to find customers we will find them out on the social web.

And since it is technology that is pushing the pace of the world forward it makes sense for business to embrace this technology in order to not just survive, but thrive in a business world that is becoming faster and faster.

When you make the decision to go social the opportunities for your business become a lot clearer. You are able to build a community around your brand and communicate directly to your customers rather than communicating broadly and hoping your market is listening. Using these platforms you reduce the friction between your business and your customer, responding quickly to what they need and what they want, increases your competitive advantage.  It is dynamic and exciting.

Resistance to change is natural but not smart! Smart business today is customer centred by being available on the channels and platforms that your customers use. Be where they are and communicate to them where they want to receive your communication. Make it easy for them to find and interact with you at their convenience. Then you can and will win.