“concentrate on the relationship not the technology”.

POST: People, Objective, Strategy, Technology. People come first.

For example, figuring out how to talk through the Groundswell is different for associations than for corporations. For the corporate world, Charlene and Josh correlate different tools and techniques to different marketing problems–awareness, word-of-mouth, complexity or accessibility. Those are all important, but in a mission-driven association, talking through the Groundswell is about more… leadership. From advocacy to disseminating best practices, talking through the Groundswell will be very important to maintaining our role as leaders.

But clearly, I am not alone. At last week’s Digital Now conference in Orlando, I noticed a dramatically different tone from the speakers who were discussing social networking tools. As recently as a year ago, speakers were practically saying that we were idiots and doomed to extinction if we didn’t adopt everything now.

This year, speakers said things like, “Measure twice, cut once … no rose colored glasses … don’t try to do too much too fast …” etc.

It’s clear what’s happening. Memorably, one guy said about his networking app, “The crickets are chirping.” The chuckle in the room expressed a combination of pain, relief and familiartity. I count our app among them. Many of us got caught up in the hype, and we have learned again it’s about more than the cool tool.

I think we’ve known that for a while, but until Charlene and Josh came along with this tool, I wasn’t sure what to do with that insight. Their method shortens my exploration work by a factor of 4.