How Brands Cut Their Exposure to Facebook Business Risk shows how brands can reduce the risks of depending on Facebook too much.
In the Facebook As Investment trilogy, I have analyzed several dimensions of investing in Facebook and raised my doubts about the company’s management and direction. In Part Three, I’ll address how brand executives can insulate themselves from Facebook’s—or any platform’s—fortunes by moving to make their relationships and networks portable. By making and managing investments carefully, brands’ relationships will endure regardless of platforms’ destinies.
By the way, Part One examined how Facebook’s trust gap would make it difficult for Facebook to fully monetize its considerable assets. Part Two analyzed Facebook as a social platform and revealed that it had no competitive threats from other pureplays; rather, the risk was that the whole pureplay category would lose its dominance in 3-5 years.
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Facebook As Investment: No Replacement for Facebook But Pureplays Will Fade shows how the fading importance of social networks is the threat—not competitors. In Part One of the Facebook As Investment trilogy, I argued that Facebook had a signifiant trust gap with users that would inhibit its ability to monetize its most unique and valuable assets, and that the trust gap was recently compounded by its “IPO irregularities.” In Part Two, I’ll take a different tack and analyze the investment prospects of Facebook-the-platform. Part Three advises executives on how to isolate their social business investments from Facebook business risks.
In its favor, Facebook will not have to worry about being “displaced” by another social network the way that it displaced MySpace. In the near term, this lack of competition will give the company some breathing room. However, a more daunting threat awaits, the end of the social network pureplay, but that is 3-5 years out.
Nonetheless, the fate of pureplays should be top-of-mind for serious Facebook investors: to produce the fabulous returns that […]
Facebook As Investment: How Trust Issues Block Its Best Path to Wealth describes why Facebook needs to change its orientation to users to unlock its full wealth potential. Over the past month, it has been de rigeur to comment on Facebook’s IPO and “quality” as an investment, but I decided to hold back until I could free a window to consider the matter in sufficient detail. The result is the “Facebook As Investment” trilogy, of which this is the first part. Part Two analyzes Facebook-the-platform’s investment prospects. Part Three advises executives on how to isolate their social business investments from Facebook business risks.
I did not buy into Facebook and do not plan to invest in its stock. I think it is a fantastic social venue and platform in which to connect with people (“stakeholders,” friends, associates..)—personally and for enterprises and brands. However, as I’ll argue here, Facebook‘s Achilles heel is a significant trust gap with most of its stakeholders. Its trust gap will make it difficult for Facebook management to fully […]
 My predictions from the 1990s and beyond about the disruption of “careers” and “work” have been coming true at an increasing pace, so here I’ll offer a quick retrospective of key trends as well as numerous how-to resources for using these disruptions to your advantage. Disruptions change the rules. Although most people don’t like “the rules” at times, we all take comfort in them because we have a clue about how to manage and get what we want. No one likes to feel clueless, but that’s how disruption causes most people to feel, so they try to avoid it. However, by facing the world head on and understanding the profound economic and social changes that are happening, you can see where the proverbial puck will be and skate there before most other people. Let’s go!
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 Based on numerous executive conversations I’ve had over the past few months, I’m struck by the staying power of 20th century “communications” rules, which still govern many brands today. Therefore, I’ll reveal hidden assumptions that lurk in too many boardrooms in the desire that you root them out before your rivals, so you can outmaneuver them before they disrupt you.
20th century success formulas offer very thin ice on which to skate, and many brands will have a cold awakening. Periods of disruption make assumptions lethal because disruptions change past rules or invalidate them completely, which leads executives and brand stewards astray. In this brief treatement of a complex subject, I’ll show why executives unwittingly sabotage social business’s network-based communications by using mass communications principles.
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The B2B Executive’s How-to Guide to Social Business is an executive primer on developing B2B relationships much faster and cheaper.
If you have been on several “social media” platforms as a firm or individual for some time but feel that you’re barely scratching the surface, this guide will help you boost your results significantly because: its goal is to help you develop B2B relationships more efficiently, instead of “selling” yourself and it shows you how to use B2B-oriented platforms in concert to increase leverage. If you would like some background on the profound distinction between “selling” yourself and focusing on relationship, “Social Business Disruption of B2B Sales & Marketing” crystallizes it in 8 minutes.
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 This Executive’s Guide to Blogging offers executives a pragmatic, conservative approach to blogging. For years, now, I have beseeched all the executives and “knowledge workers” I know (that’s thousands) to blog, so please consider this as part of that campaign—with benefits (because this is a how-to post). Here’s why: In the Knowledge Economy’s pervasive digital networks, you are invisible unless you come across people’s screens regularly. And, while you are invisible, your potential business partners are seeing people who do flit across their screens. If you aren’t there, you are in a bloody ocean that gets smaller every year. Don’t stay in, the water is not fine. Please understand that I’m stating this as a simple fact. I’m sure you’ve read books like The Long Tail, which describe how we are all publishers now, that is, those of us who decide to use the free tools at our disposal.
Blogging is 21st century thought leadership, which is table stakes in the Knowledge Economy. Your thoughts represent and “scale” you, so they help you to connect with people with whom […]
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