Category Archives for "Purpose"

0 Conversations Online: Video and Audio

Another way of encouraging conversations online is through video and audio.

Conversations can take place:

1. Within the video or audio
2. External to the video or audio

Conversations within the video or audio

These media can be used to record real-life conversations. They can convey a lot of information in relatively little time. Bringing together people with experience in a particular topic can be very fruitful so long as the conversation is chaired effectively.

Transcripts can be helpful, especially for audio. Listeners can follow the transcript whilst playing the audio. You can do transcripts of video too; I follow someone who does a weekly video with transcript. It’s OK so long as the video is just a talking head.

Don’t underestimate the value of audio. Many people play CDs, podcasts, etc in their cars or whilst they’re out jogging. I prefer music myself but many people do use them for this purpose and so audio is still in demand.

Conversations external to video or audio

A video or audio on a web page or blog post may be a good way of sharing a conversation but it needs space to comment if viewers or listeners are to contribute.

Services such as YouTube provide a comments facility. If you embed your YouTube video on your site you need to consider whether you want people to comment. Most blog posts have a comments facility but if you embed the video on a page you may need to include one.  It is possible to provide comments facilities on pages or you can embed a comments facility from Facebook, for example.

Provision of comments facilities does not mean people will comment. Mostly people don’t but two things might increase numbers. One is traffic, if more people see your work, some of them will comment. The other is a loyal following who trust you and understand they will receive a reply (from you or others) and by commenting they support your work.

Building a loyal following takes time and effort but many voluntary organisations already have a loyal following. It may take a while for your following to adjust to being online and to discover you want comments. Opportunity and the example of others doing it will generally get things started.

2 Conversations Online: Emails

Another way to encourage online conversations is through emails. Many people believe emails are old-fashioned and social media are more effective means of communication. Actually, emails are still the most effective way of building up online contacts. Social media are proprietary applications and so your links and followers are not your property in the same way as your email list.

Everyone will be familiar with the invitation to stay in touch with a website by entering an email address. There are three main ways in which email addresses can be used:

The big advantage is people know how to reply to emails. The means to comment on blogs are not always obvious and sometimes there are various hoops to get through, such as registering, entering strings of characters to prove you’re not a machine and then waiting for your comment to be moderated. With emails you simply hit reply.

However, conversation by email is limited. Other people on the list don’t see your reply unless the website host shares it with them. There are ways around this, eg where an email includes a link to a web page, which can include a comments facility.

How have you used email for conversations?

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0 Conversations Online: Blogs

If you are seeking conversations through your website, blogs are an essential tool. Many people do not realise the many uses to which a blog can be put. Here is a summary of the properties of blog posts:

5 Conversations Online: Websites

In this and next few Wednesday posts I continue the theme of conversations online and explore how conversations happen online. There are differences between online and offline conversations although perhaps they are more apparent than real.

Nothing possible in real life is impossible online, although some things are more difficult. If we don’t pay attention, we miss a lot of the value of online relationships.

Websites may seem to be an odd place to start. They are after all a one-way medium. I put stuff on my website for visitors to read. Ok that’s true but I need to know what my visitors want to read. Or rather I need to know which visitors I want to build relationships with by placing content on my site they want to read.  (I’ve just started a new Tuesday sequence about how a website can be written by and for its visitors.)

Many organisations design websites without a target visitor in mind. It cab be difficult to work out exactly who is the ideal visitor!

Many sites are about the site owner or their organisation. Why do so many voluntary organisations write at great length about their governance structures? Sometimes on the home page! It helps to take a step back and think about who you want to reach and what might interest them.  Who benefits from what your organisation does and how?

Things to Consider

To be part of a conversation the site needs to be designed so each page has one message leading to a call to action. The call to action is how you know there is a conversation happening at all! Too many sites don’t explain properly their call to action or it is an afterthought. For example, beginning the home page with a request to download a newsletter is not a good idea. The visitor needs to know something about the newsletter before they download it. Help them make their decision!

Also think about the exchange you want. Do you want them to download your newsletter or to subscribe to it? The former is hardly a conversation at all. The latter may be the start of a relationship.

All this is fairly limited. In future posts I’ll explore how you can enhance your website and online presence so that you can take part in conversations. How does your website engage with its visitors?

0 Selling Causes Online

Selling may seem an odd way to describe promotion of a cause! But we do sell causes, whether we work online or not. Over the years I’ve handed out leaflets for many causes, such as the peace movement, the environment and a political party.

Standing on the high street handing out leaflets, is participation in the marketplace. It always has been. Political and religious views have always been expressed in the marketplace, just as much as it is a place for buying and selling products and services.  All three depend upon conversation to make a sale.

Selling a Cause

The purpose of selling a cause is to get a response from the customer. This might be a financial response although sometimes finance can be illegal, eg buying votes, requesting donations without a license. Aside from finance, you may be seeking responses such as:

Why Causes are Different

So, the boundaries between causes and products or services, are not always watertight. Even if there is no financial exchange, there is little  difference between a cause and a commercial exchange. Given that some businesses give a lot of stuff away and see themselves as educational, some may be hardly distinguished from a cause.  The distinction is income destination from the marketplace; goes into private hands or to finance the cause or its beneficiaries.

If we imagine a spectrum from those who are out solely to make money through to those who have a cause and no intention to make a penny, experience shows both ends tend to move towards the centre. The money-maker, if successful may find they need a cause to build relationships with their customers, whilst the cause may find it needs finance to meet its aims. An entrepreneur with integrity and an efficient cause may find they meet somewhere along the spectrum.

The term “social entrepreneur” was in vogue a few years ago. Really, any successful entrepreneur has to be social because they must build relationships with their customers. The term aims to show commerce can have social roots. The present argument about  accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, rather than distribution of wealth among small entrepreneurs who make sure finance circulates in the economy, perhaps shows the tension between business and social causes is still current.

To what extent do you find the distinction between a cause and a business helpful?  Do you have examples of business people and causes working together for mutual benefit in the marketplace?

1 Selling Services Online

The difference between products and services is a service is usually a one-off. It is tailor-made for the customer and so takes up more time for the producer than a product, where the same thing can be replicated many times.

So, a book is a product whilst consultancy based on the book, is a service. You would expect the price of a service to acknowledge the extra time and effort involved.

The issue for anyone selling services, online or offline, is scalability. Scalability is how you fit sufficient work into the time available to make a living. There are two ways to do this:

1. Charge a higher price. This works where there are corporate customers who can afford to pay consultants thousands of pounds a month. They do this because the consultant generates more than their fees for the business. In the third sector, this is unlikely to work on the same scale.
2. Develop services to sell to more than one person or organisation at a time. So, rather than one-to-one coaching, you set up group coaching. This means you may be able to do more for the same unit costs. Let’s say you typically charge for a session a sum that means you need to sell twenty a week to make a living. If you can run four sessions for five people, this reduces the work and maintains the income.

If option 2 works for you, then your service is scalable. Hairdressing is an example of a service that is not scalable.

Examples of Scalable Services

To deliver any service requires conversation, even hairdressers need to discuss their service with their customer.  Conversations are central to some services, such as consultancy and coaching.

Coaching is an example of a scalable service. Where coaching is about passing on a skill, eg website maintenance and so a number of people can share the same session. Consultancy may not be so easy where it addresses issues unique to a client.

Masterminds are another example of a scalable service. They bring a group of people together to share their expertise. They pay an organiser who holds the ring and sets the theme for each meeting. So, in a mastermind of website designers participants contribute their work for comment or bring issues or questions about their work for discussion. They are in touch because someone has set up the network to which they belong, usually someone who has a good track record with the theme of the mastermind.

Can you think of other scalable services?

0 Selling Products Online

Conversations in the marketplace aim to sell something. This does not necessarily mean an exchange involving money.  The exchange may be of ideas or activities.

So, it is helpful to think about what we mean by ‘sell’. To sell something is always an exchange. If I have a product I will give it to you in exchange for something else. It works because we both receive something we value more than whatever we give in exchange.  Any of the following may apply:

The Power of Products!

The big advantage of products is that once you’ve set up your online system, people can make purchases at any time with minimal additional work for you. Setting up reliable and robust systems can be a headache but it is in reach of anyone who wants to do it. This is a major development online and has been possible for only a few years.

Two Possibilities

I can write more about any aspect upon request.

1. Things shipped to your house. So, you can order a book, some groceries or a DVD and in a day or so it arrives at your door. Some people work from home and when their sites receive orders, they package and send them off. Others use companies that manufacture, pack and send orders on their behalf.
2. Products that can be downloaded directly. These include ebooks, videos and online courses. This is an exciting area and there is much giddy enthusiasm about earning millions through massive marketing campaigns. Very few people are going to become millionaires through this route (for obvious reasons) and it is unfortunate there is so much emphasis upon generating massive income. The way I look at it is if you have something of value to others then your duty is to make it available at a fair price. Those who are interested in your product must appreciate that a fair price is one that enables you to make a living.  Many small groups in the voluntary sector could generate modest income from selling products online.

The concept of a fair price is perhaps likely to be contested. But we should not fear this because it always has been. The marketplace has to be the arena where people agree a fair price. If someone has a good product they will care about their customers and their customers will care about them.

What are your views about products online? How do we work out a fair price?

2 Conversations in the Marketplace

Conversations in the marketplace are likely to take place between people and about real things. This contrasts with transactions through images of the real online.

I don’t want to get too hung up over the question whether it is possible to encounter something new online. A better question is how we make best use of our machines. We need to understand them and learn how they help or hinder. The problem is we make assumptions and project them onto all our creations.

The interesting thing about idolatry in the Old Testament is that it applies equally to images of other gods and images of the God of Israel. They understood that any image is immensely seductive and will divert us from paying attention to what is actually there.

The Internet is all image and if we are not careful we converse with images, ie representations of the real but not reality itself.

Conversations Between People

Ultimately, the Internet is a means of communication, of conversations between people. Relationships build the foundations for communication.  As trust grows it is possible to communicate more. So, the role of the marketplace is primarily building trust.

So, the question is how to establish a presence in the marketplace to enable buying or selling. There are three types of things we can buy or sell, online or in real life: products, services and causes. In the next three posts, I shall look at these in turn.

The challenge is how to do this with integrity.  Do you have any ideas or experience?

3 Taxonomy of Conversation: Generative Dialogue

This is the final post about of the four types of conversation. I’m asking how we experience each type online. Here is what I wrote about generative dialogue, four Wednesdays ago:

Generative dialogue is where we hear not just ourselves and others but the whole system.  We see ourselves within the whole; the role we play for good or ill.  This can be highly motivating when people experience it together.  This type of conversation can generate something new, an insight that no one person brought with them to the conversation. Everyone leaves with insights that are completely new.

As I suggested earlier, science can be a conversation between the scientist and whatever they study. Scientists make breakthroughs by paying attention to what is there. It is not about number crunching but rather insight through careful observation. Statistical analysis brings new information to light; it does not on its own explain its significance.

What is ‘the whole system’? Breakthroughs happen where scientists include something not previously relevant in their thinking. This is where any model can be weak. Have we included every relevant thing? The danger of a completely online world is that we assume the online world is all there is.

Is generative conversation impossible online?

We need to be cautious. Is it possible to discover something new through conversation online? Generative conversation is seeing something not from someone else’s perspective so much as an entirely new perspective. As such it is a subjective experience. It is not persuasion by a superior argument because no-one is aware of the argument before the discovery.

The danger of working online is we forget the world we operate in is artificial. Ultimately, our life online is not real. It is an aid to living a full life in the world; it is not in itself real. One thing our machines cannot do for us is to experience the world on our behalf.

We can choose to become more machine-like and refuse to allow the world to be seen in a different way. Our machines cannot choose to discover something new. New ideas can be communicated and debated online but they cannot be experienced.

The most significant contribution our technology makes is the opportunities for conversations between people all over the world.  Maybe we can experience new discoveries together.  I would be interested to hear any stories where this might have happened. Over to you!

0 Taxonomy of Conversation: Reflection

Reflection is the third of four types of conversation. How do we experience each type online?

Here is what I wrote three Wednesdays ago:

Reflection is where we listen from inside and hear ourselves reflexively and others with empathy.  It invites the listener to try on the insights of the other person to see if they might work for them.  It invites a more subjective understanding of unfamiliar points of view.

Is this possible online?

Any learning experience that encourages participants to apply their learning must do this. Learning new skills and applying them always involves reflection.

Some online marketers claim marketing and learning are the same.  Their model is reflective conversation. They don’t always achieve it and their results vary because learners vary.

A simple example.  I find as a coach to people designing and writing content for their website, they need to put themselves into their readers’ shoes. When someone visits their site, how do they experience it?

Plenty of tools enable online conversation and a big advantage is conversations can take place across great distances at low-cost. Here are some examples:

Of course, all these tools and approaches depend crucially upon content.  A webinar for 1000 people will be less reflective but it still depends upon its content. It is not adequate to simply explain how to do something. It is important to be inspirational, in the sense of inspiring viewers to take action. This does mean you must encourage participants to try something new.  Learning from experience is central to reflective learning.

Participants can share results and the outcome can be shared discovery and not so much debate.

Can you share an example of reflective online learning or conversation?  Is online learning ever as effective as real life learning?  Can online and offline learning be combined to support reflective learning?