There was a time when your professional life and your personal life were distinctly separate. But the world has changed, and continues to change.
"The rate of change is leaving individuals and businesses breathless," said social business strategist Ryan Hogarth, during the keynote presentation at ITWeb's Social Media Summit this morning.
"Lost is the concept of where our personal lives start and end and our professional lives start and end. How we work changed the first time someone was given a cellphone at work," he said, adding that, in the hyper-connected world we live in today, we are always working.
"Social media is less than 10 years old, yet it has become a global standard," he said. Every event today has the possibility of being broadcast to the world via social media, Hogarth added.
Technology and social media are bringing about the kind of change that makes it possible for individuals and businesses to become global sensations in short amounts of time, he said.
It is not surprising then that businesses have had to become more social, said Hogarth, adding that this is especially important in the age of transformational consumers. "Businesses need to be always on, always available, always different and always changing. Being connected is as important as having electricity. If you are not connected, you are going to be left out."
For businesses to be social, he believes they need to embrace four things: mobile, Internet, social and technology. "Social media has found its place in marketing, an obvious place to find itself," he said. However, he stressed that business needs to "rescue" social media from the marketing department. "Social is about your entire business. Every part of the business must be thinking along social lines."
According to Hogarth, social media is particularly relevant in HR. "HR is taking a more central role as a result of social media. Human resources should be about human development. Your customers and employees can be your greatest assets. You just need to allow them to be," he said. "We need to be looking after our people. The most successful businesses in the world realise that their greatest assets are not their plants, buildings and machinery, but rather their people."
People have become accustomed to frictionless engagements, and businesses need to remove the friction and complication from their interactions with their customers, noted Hogarth. "We have become lazy customers because we want to get what we want right now. The more friction you have, the less social your business can be."
Businesses need to give up control, he asserted. "Today, the only way to build any kind of control is to build trust. Essentially, business needs to be naked in front of the public."
To uncover friction, he advised that businesses explore what is disrupting their industries and what is wasting time, while also looking at how to make things easier, and what problems the business is trying to solve.
Today, more than ever, there is great opportunity, he said. "We have to embrace technology, but to do so, we have to understand it. When we recognise and see that things are changing, only then do we get to spend time out in the sun."
When asked about return on investment and social media use in business, he likened it to wearing pants to the office. "Social media is not just a nice to have, it is something that you just have to do.
"Big business used to own the media, thus they could control the message. Social media - the biggest media in the world - is owned by us, and business has lost control of that message," he concluded. "It is you and I that are changing this world via social media, and it is business that is desperately trying to keep up."
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