I have started to see articles that state a common theme. It is that all products and services will eventually commoditize to the point where it is virtually impossible to distinguish them by price or performance. This result is driven by a rise in international competition and the natural growth of multiple competitors in every space improving their capabilities to an equal level. I suppose we have lots of signs that this will come true because consumers are less and less loyal to any specific brand or organization, and getting VERY LOYAL to doing whatever is simplest in their lives. We will shop at any grocery store, get our shoes from any place that has something we need, and buy gas wherever it is most convenient and the pumps go fast.

If we continue down this road, there will only be two things that will really make a difference to customers, clients, patients, members, or constituents and that will be: 1 – anything that save them time and 2 – buying from a brand or supplier that the consumer has an emotional relationship to, and the best way to get that emotional connection will be that the customer perceives that the supplier is providing value in their lives OUTSIDE of the product or service itself. For example, I can get my taxes done by any number of firms at this point, so my choice is driven by the fact that we finally found an accounting firm that actually acts as if they care about us and they demonstrate that by communicating with us often to update us on law changes and such all year long – not just in November when they want our business again.

My guess is the vast majority of you reading this now provide a service or product that others do as well. I can also guess that your ability to differentiate is shrinking every day. If you agree with this concept, then it is time to reconfigure how you show the love to your customers. Since I am a technology guy, I suggest strongly that you develop digital tools to help you show the love so that the costs can be kept down for providing value and connection to them. By the way, using technology to show the love is not oxymoronic. The number one most trusted brand online is Amazon and they have very little contact between their human staff and their millions of customers, yet they show the love well. To make this easy, I am providing the following formula for you:

1. Build a high profile presence online by providing lots of information on your industry. Seek to help the world by sharing lots of content in video, PPT’s, infographics and documents. You will be making a statement that you are the industry expert and that also want to help people to learn important aspect of your industry. For example, if you are a bank, build online assets that teach people how to get an SBA Loan, or learn how to best save for retirement.
2. Rebuild your process for onboarding new customers. This is a high value process that too many organizations ignore. Most gather a few fields of information to take care of billing, but really don’t have a step-by-step process for onboarding customers so they feel valued, or like they have joined an exclusive relationship.
3. Develop a powerful organizational voice through which to talk to your customers on a regular basis. We have many channels today like blogging, Twitter, Facebook, podcasts, etc. When you talk to them be sure to run in a ratio where you deliver five things of value to them for every one thing that would be a promotion or sale for you. This is called "Earned Media" because you earn the right to talk to your customer through providing value on an ongoing basis.
4. Develop a new data model for your customers where you gather thirty to forty fields of information on EVERYONE who buys your products. This might need to be done over time, and that is OK. The end result needs to be that you have tons of data on your customers so you can use that data to build closer relationships with them.

This is a battle in the market that you do not want to lose. The era of earning a customers business through product or service differentiation is waning. There will always be small tweaks that might be unique, but in general, the economy is going to become an increasingly competitive place. If showing your customer that you care about them has not been a cornerstone of your strategy, or if you don’t even know your end consumer because you sell through distribution, I suggest you hold an emergency meeting and figure out how to connect with your customers at a valuable level.
　

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Powerful, passionate and creative, Scott Klososky is one of the first successful Internet entrepreneurs and is a highly sought-after technology and future trends speaker. He is the author of The Velocity Manifesto, Enterprise Social Technology, and Manager's Guide to Social Media.

If you have no idea what Snapchat is, I urge you to load it on your mobile device and try it out. This application is sweeping through the teenagers of the U.S. and seems to be the next darling of the social networking market. I recently saw the first article predicting it will be the next billion-dollar acquisition. Facebook (as usual) has copied the Snapchat capability in their service called Poke (A name which I loathe, by the way. You would think Facebook could come up with a better name than "Poke").

The single unique capability that both companies offer is the ability to send a photo to someone with a very short viewing time window that only the sender controls. For example, Snapchat lets you decide whether to allow the recipient a viewing window of only one second, or as many as ten. The way this works is, the receiver holds down a button and viewing begins. Once it reaches the end, it is auto-erased and gone for good. This means you’d better be paying close attention because those seconds go by quick, and that is the idea.

Hmmm, so let’s see … this now means we now have a disposable picture medium that can transmit messages which never end up being shared on the Internet. Oh, how I wonder what kids would ever want to do with that (cue the Captain Obvious face). Of course the prediction is that this would become the perfect sexting application, and that does appear to be happening, but early observation is that the vast majority of usage does not involve nudity.

Naturally, young people love the service because it is a quick way to update "friends" that aren’t as close as other circles without the risk of the photo message(s) being forwarded to anyone else. In other words, users can let someone know what they are doing in the moment while retaining control of a message’s share-ability or virulence.

Now, before you turn your nose up at this concept and once again wonder why kids do crazy things with their mobile devices, let’s look a little deeper at this capability and the great new uses for business application.

One of the big problems we have in our highly connected online world is that when we share text, documents, pictures and videos, we have little ability to control their redistribution. This is true for email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. Once we post or send content, make an announcement, or generally communicate in any way with a person or group online, the audience can simply save or pass along whatever might have been intended for a small circulation or "their eyes only". Along these lines, we share highly private information with family members, and critical business information with employees. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to set rules around content, or communications that have a digital self-destruct time limit, so they could not be forwarded or saved? Truth be told, I have been talking about needing this capability in email for years (ever had to recall a message that you CC’ed an entire department on by accident).

I would venture to guess that more than half of the content or communications in the world would be sent as self-destructing if people were given a choice, and that would dramatically change what we would be willing to share. For example, banks would be more willing to push out balances to people if they knew the information would disappear right after viewing so as not to become a security or privacy issue. The level of honesty and direct talk would go up because people would not have to filter what they send, worried that it would someday come back to haunt them if someone else ever saw it. Then again, some people would be more than willing to send hateful or evil things if they knew it would disappear and not be tracked too. Just imagine the online "crank calls" that could be sent!

We are truly in the early days of really putting together our communication tools and methods. With all that we have built so far (email, texting, IM, social networking, etc.) we have not even scratched the surface of the tweaks that will surely come. Snapchat and self-destructing content is just the latest new twist …

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Powerful, passionate and creative, Scott Klososky is one of the first successful Internet entrepreneurs and is a highly sought-after technology and future trends speaker. He is the author of The Velocity Manifesto, Enterprise Social Technology, and Manager's Guide to Social Media.

There seems to be a built in negative filter for most people when it comes to the concept of humans being dependent, or "addicted" to technology. They assume that anytime people are unnaturally attached to a device, there must be a form of psychosis involved. Surely this stems from a deep-seated belief that anything that was not naturally grown inside our body is by definition – artificially augmenting ourselves. Admittedly this is a slippery slope. We have deemed using steroids or HGH an unfair advantage in building ones body for athletics. Yet we are OK with laser eye surgery in order to improve eyesight – in some cases to better than 20/20.

We seem to be generally OK with a little Botox shot to lose some wrinkles. Even a minor rhinoplasty to smooth out a bumpy nose. Breast augmentation is OK if there is a specific need, but too much and you are just showing off. In South America, plastic surgery is becoming almost pedestrian in it’s frequency. So augmenting our bodies has been gaining in acceptance in some ways, and specifically banned in others. Trust me, we have not even begun to wrestle with body augmenting issues at this point.

I believe we will go through three eras with devices. The first will be the mobile era, and that is where we are today. We carry mobile technology that connects us to our contacts, and information in nearly real time. When we forget our mobile device, we now feel somewhat cut off from the world, and for some people this is panicking, while others can live with it for a short time – even relish it. Of course as always, we have the fringe who refuse to use a mobile device because it will somehow lower their humanity level. I find this very unenlightened, but hey, I do technology for a living.

The second era will be the wearable era. This will bring us technology that is built into our clothes, jewelry, watches, glasses, etc. By imbedding technology this closely to our bodies, we will be less likely to forget it, and have an increasing ability to integrate it into our daily lives. It will become less apparent that we are interfacing with it, which will result in more subtle abilities to gather, post, or digest information on the fly. Our clothes will charge batteries, or simply be the batteries in some cases. Watches will interface with glasses to give us heads up displays of critical alerts or streams of information. The list of possibilities is exciting!

The third era will be the implantable era. The logical next step of course, where we imbed devices and the interfaces into our bodies. This will include everything from brain computer interfaces, to interface tattoos. This will cause a world where there is even a large digital divide between those who are wired, and those who refuse and simply will be crippled in their ability to leverage technology.

This brings us back to the question of augmentation and how we really feel about changing our bodies, and the addiction to those changes. I suspect that most people will LOVE having technology imbedded so that they will have faster and more permanent access to all the benefits technology brings us. I could list all the other ways we will imbed tech going forward, but lets leave that for another blog because the point here is that I think this progression should show us that we really have no business looking down on the teenager that spazzes when they are away from their mobile device.

Nor should we tell ourselves that the "addiction" to technology is a horrible thing. It is more true to say that we highly value the connections and benefits that technology give us, so we seek to not be disconnected from it, and frankly, that is OK. As presented, we will soon seek to imbed technology into our bodies so that it is always just a thought away. We will stop debating if our "addiction" to technology is good or bad. We will simply seek to find the balance between connecting digitally, and connecting physically. I do believe we need both in our lives by the way.

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Powerful, passionate and creative, Scott Klososky is one of the first successful Internet entrepreneurs and is a highly sought-after technology and future trends speaker. He is the author of The Velocity Manifesto, Enterprise Social Technology, and Manager's Guide to Social Media.

At every level, technology is now a game changing tool – and a great weapon of destruction. I suspect there has been little in the history of humanity that has more ability to change our lives, careers and fortunes save war and pestilence. It should be no surprise that when billions of us can now be connected through an inventory of devices and social connections, we can also be disconnected. Hard drives can fail, viruses can disrupt, phones can drop in toilets (twice so far for my daughter) and batteries can die. In many of these cases we not only lose the connection we are becoming so addicted to, we also can lose data we never realized could disappear in an instant. Yes, technology giveth, and can taketh away.

On a larger scale, technology is reconstructing whole industries in just a few years. Often this much faster than the players can handle and that is why we see the demise or crippling of organizations like Blockbuster, Kodak, Borders Books, various music retailers, travel agencies, and newspapers. Over the past twenty years, we have participated in a huge leap forward for mankind. Much more dramatic than landing people in the moon, we are living through an explosion of connectedness of organizations, people, devices, and intelligences. These connections are rewiring just about every aspect of our lives, including our careers because just about every industry is going through wrenching changes due to the havoc technology is instigating for us. I often think about the Chinese character for "chaos" and it’s dual meaning of disorganization and opportunity.

I happen to love the fact that I am alive at this moment to watch the chaos, and benefit from the opportunities. I also mourn the fact that I will probably not be around in fifty years to see what it will be like when it all slows down. Yes, I do believe we are on a curve, and that the pace of change and innovation will one day slow. Making any prediction beyond a few years is dangerous, but just to go on the record and take a shot… I suspect that we will see another 25 years of high paced change and growth in the technology space, then a cooling period. This will be followed by 25 years of fully digesting and implementing all the new concepts and tools that will be invented.

The reason I believe we will have a cooling off era can best be seen with the example of tools like Microsoft Office. This is a set of tools that grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, and now has hit a point where we hardly use 50% of the capabilities. So adding lots of additional features is a bit of a waste – and frankly, we are starting to hit the wall on features that can even be added that have large value. We are now down to small incremental changes, and many people have no inspiration to buy the new versions because the older versions have more than they need. Apply this same pattern to mobile devices, tablets, social technologies, cloud computing, and what you get is a world in 25 years where we have so much power at our fingertips through those new technologies, that we simply to not need any more. Once that happens – this glut of power and features – we will stop wanting more, and companies will stop producing more. Ergo, the pace of change naturally slows down.

I suppose this is akin to a growth spurt in a human being. We are flat in the middle of a technology growth spurt, and spurts do come to an end eventually. So yes, technology is driving a lot of chaos in the world. Take heart, if you can hang on for 25 years, it will slow down…

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Powerful, passionate and creative, Scott Klososky is one of the first successful Internet entrepreneurs and is a highly sought-after technology and future trends speaker. You can read this article and others on Scott's blog Technology Story.

Leaders by their very nature are under pressure to have advanced intellectual and emotional intelligence. In today’s economy, they better add one more – VQ, The Vision Quotient. The pace of change is speeding up. Each and everyday, the competition grows a bit smarter, and more of them from all over the world, extend into your territory. New technologies come on the market and mutate the foundational ways that organizations connect with prospects and complete transactions. Governments tax, regulate, dictate interest rates, and prosecute, and each time they do, the playing field changes. The more accurately you can see into this future, the more prepared you can be when we get there. This is just logical, however…

Sadly, we have bred a generation of leaders who are very execution focused and for whom the term "future" simply means the next quarter. Blame Wall Street, blame greedy shareholders or just blame greedy CEO’s if you choose, but the reality is, we have very few organizational leaders today who burn much energy really understanding where their industries will go in the next decade. They simply want to be successful within the boundaries of this year. On the other end of the spectrum, we had a great example in Steve Jobs of a leader who had an accurate vision of the future, and was willing to stick with it for years. He also had the courage to play out his vision of the future while competitors tried to copy products like Apple produced and failed. Steve won by simply designing his products better – and as we have learned, accurate vision plus great design – wins.

If I were a "follower" in a company and got the choice to pick my muse, I would pick having an accurate future vision as one of the top skills I would want in that leader. This is a skill by the way; it is not a God given talent. People that develop the ability to make accurate predictions on where an industry will go over time do so through extrapolating facts and trends, and adding innovative thinking to fill in the gaps. Emotional Intelligence must be learned over time as you become wiser about relating to others at a heart level. Vision Intelligence must be learned over time as you become wiser about how trends extrapolate, and how industries evolve. Only a handful of leaders out of any sampling of 100 actually have developed this ability. The others just step onto the gerbil wheel of their careers each day and deal with whatever is close at hand that will get them the largest bonus by the next measuring date.

I call having an accurate vision of the future being a "high beam" leader. One that can see the twists in the road a little better and a little earlier than their brethren in the industry. There seems to be around 1000 books a year that get written about some aspect of leadership, yet rarely do I see one that holds leaders accountable to have seen major industry changed before they happened. Consequently, we have a steady stream of large and well-known brands that simply laid down and died in the market because their leadership teams seemed to flat miss a major strategy change that needed to be made in their organization. Think I am being overly harsh? How many newspapers have we lost? Borders? Blockbuster? Kodak? Churches? Post Office locations? The list goes on.

And the list will go on until we get a generation of leaders who have a better ability to accurately see where their industries are going, how the underlying variables will change, and then have the courage to do something about it. The strangest thing to me about all of this is this… If you asked me for a good model of an industry that saw the future and did something about, I would have to point out the tobacco industry. They saw the demise of cigarette smoking in the US, and redeployed much or their cash into the food industry. Laugh all you want, at least they were willing to see the writing on the wall and survive. Many leaders in other markets have simply "led" their teams right off the cliff.

Even the mundane streets department in most cities does a better job of understanding the future and building roads to support future growth. One would think that our high paid leaders in the business word could at least do as good a job as the transportation departments!!

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Powerful, passionate and creative, Scott Klososky is one of the first successful Internet entrepreneurs and is a highly sought-after technology and future trends speaker.  You can read this article and others on Scott's blog Technology Story. 

I was reading an article the other day and someone posed a question much like the title of this post, and of course it sent my mind off into a catastrophe of ideas. In the Matrix movies the Internet became an entity with human qualities – for example, it became aware of itself enough to exhibit a will to live, dominate, and control its existence. Those qualities seem to be what many humans are driven by today. It really is not that interesting to me to speculate on when, or if, the Internet one day fulfills the prophecy of the Matrix (or the Terminator Series) because I suspect the fact that we know this could be an issue will assure we never let the machines gain complete control over us. With that said, one has to wonder how much control they already have when my kids get the shakes whenever they are more than 20 ft. from their iPhones.

Before we get all science fiction infected, I will simply address the question in the title, "what would the Internet be like if it was a person?" As I wrote this blog, it struck me that the Internet is the way it is because we are constructing it to be exactly the way we want it. Maybe not the way each one of us wants it, but certainly the way the majority desires. It represents us collectively – probably the most democratic thing ever invented, so none of its human characteristics should surprise us. When I personalize the Web (hereafter referred to Netsy) I don’t really imagine it as a male or female, just a unisex human being that has billions of friends.

Netsy wants to be friends with everyone on the earth. No one should be left out – the more connections the better. Everything is better with a Web based crowd that includes every human being, and Netsy wants to be VERY close friends with all of us. The more known about us the better because how can we be good friends without understanding each others likes, dislikes, locations, preferences, and conversations (we will hit privacy later.) Part of being a great friend is being available 24/7 for each other, and Netsy sure works hard to be always available, and really wants you to be available 24/7 as well. After all, what are friends for…

You must be impressed with Netsy’s memory because very little is ever forgotten. Outside of a serious data storage disaster, almost everything you have ever said, done, or shared with Netsy is stored in the memory banks. Even things you ask to be deleted are actually just hidden from your view. Netsy finds it valuable to remember everything because if could be important later, maybe not to you, but surely to someone. In fact, lots of organizations will pay her/him for access to the huge memory store Netsy nurtures so carefully. Long after you have forgotten details of purchases you made together, conversations you have had, pictures you have shared, etc., your good friend will be able to pull them back for you – or someone else.

The reality is friends don’t always see eye to eye, and one thing that Netsy does that many people do not appreciate is the lack of an ability to keep things secret. Netsy really does not believe in privacy. Oh, promises will be made of security and privacy, but depending on who asks, or who is paying, Netsy cannot really resist giving up your most personal information. I love Netsy as much as the next person, but we have to be realistic, nothing is safe, and likely never will be as long as governments and profit making companies control the Net. But, hey, privacy is over rated right? Who cares if people know what I look at on the Web, where I am, who I talk to, what I buy, or what I read.

As friendly and easygoing as Netsy is, there is no question that he/she wants more power, speed and functionality. Being a teenager (basically) Netsy craves growth and is frankly addicted to adding power and functionality daily. Where it will stop, no one knows, yet we can be assured that Netsy has no intention of cooling of the growth. For my part, I have prospered just from being friends with Netsy and the closer I get, the more shared power I tap into just from the intimacy of our relationship. I look at it a bit like being friends with Brad Pitt. I hope he just keeps getting bigger and more powerful because that just helps me (disclaimer, that is just a metaphor, I don’t know Brad Pitt.) I guess the blessing in all of this is that Netsy rarely forces anything on me, he/she just seeks to be a really powerful friend with benefits and I can self-select all I can handle.

One thing that scares me a little about Netsy is her/his desire for more autonomy and automation. Netsy is constantly offering, or just plain forcing, an integration of her skills into our relationship, and ergo, into my life. This includes making decisions for me that hopefully free me from thinking about little details he/she can really handle on my behalf. Netsy filters search results I get automatically, and helps me discover things at my physical location because he/she knows where I am and tries to be helpful by providing location information for me – including telling my friends (and others) where I am – automatically. In fact Netsy helps me out in so many automated ways I am never really sure when that help is being provided. I guess we just have to trust that Netsy has our best interests in mind. Yet, what do we do if we do want all that automated "help?"

Just a couple of weeks ago I saw an impressive thing. Netsy stood up the government when they wanted to enact legislation aimed at the issue of copyright violation. Netsy has some friends that don’t always follow the rules, and the government thought they should decide who Netsy befriends, and who gets shunned. Netsy freaked at the thought and the government blinked and backed down. The same way they back down when they talk about taxing Netsy. Seriously, should someone as powerful as Netsy really have to pay taxes? Some governments even try to tell Netsy who to communicate with and on what subjects, but many of Netsy’s friends have learned how to meet with him/her on the sly. Netsy really is not impressed with governments and I kind of like that.

I have to admit, Netsy is a pretty powerful buddy to have, and like all powerful people, there are plusses and minuses to the relationship. This I know, I first met Netsy in the mid 90’s when he/she was just a babe. It is scary, yet intriguing, to think what the relationship will look like in another fifteen years!

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Scott Klososky is one of the first successful Internet entrepreneurs and is a highly sought-after technology and future trends speaker.  You can read this article and others on Scott's blog Technology Story.

One of the foundational aspects of social technologies I talk about is the ability for a person,or an organization to use new tools to harvest huge amounts of information from the Websphere and pack it into our brains. I often regale people on the concept that it is a knowledge economy and the smart people will win. When I say smart by the way, I do not mean just the high IQ people, I also mean those that are best informed on what is happening in their industries. After all, it takes both an ability to process data and find the useful analytics, combined with a huge amount of relevant data to do magic things. One without the other is useless. So in a practical world, a smart person without access to new and complete data has a quickly declining value. A person with terabytes of powerful data is worthless if they cannot process it and draw correlations. The world is full of people at both these extremes.

Recently, I moved to a new house and my paper newspaper was not delivered to the new house. So I went online and downloaded the iPad app for my local newspaper. That was the last paper based information source I still relaxed with on the couch at night. Now I use my iPad as the delivery source for all my information on the couch. I use Flipboard to digest everything on Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, etc. I read the current news on MSN.com, and have a few other dashboard sources built so I can bury my brain in a flow of information in 45 minutes a night and assure that I see most everything that might be important to me. I have become an information digestion bigot. I say this because I get annoyed if it takes me 3 minutes longer than necessary to get the information I want into my brain. Maybe it would be better to say I am an information snob. I want it all, I want it now, and I want it into my brain with the least work possible.

I was technically on vacation, but I found myself feeling naked without harvesting my normal reams (just a metaphor now) of information and digesting it. I had this sneaking suspicion there would be a hole in my knowledgebase if I ignored the flow all week. So from time to time I found myself drinking from the flow little bits at a time just so I did not miss anything critical. Am I addicted to the river of information? Maybe… Actually I think I am addicted to having answers to the questions people ask me. I am addicted to being current with my knowledge – and by current I mean up to the minute, not the week. Have I mentioned that it is a knowledge economy and the smart people win?

We have a lot of tools at this point to harvest information on any subject and get it into our brains. The tools will also get better. They will help us filter more concisely, and will aggregate the right kinds of information to the proper places for us automatically. They will alert us to specific pieces of information that might be critical to us. Even though we have a growing toolbox to do this, most people are still stuck in the rut of digesting tiny amounts information at a slow pace. Stanford did a study that said that we now consume 3 times the information as we did in 1960. I have to believe that the curve is speeding up, and that in 5 years we will be digesting 3 times what we are today. The toolbox we have been given (and will be given) allows for this. The question is are you ready? Your brain has capacity from what I hear, so will you use it? It is a knowledge economy and the smart people win – and being a “smart people” is a choice…

P.S. For those of you that like to make excuses for continuing to digest information at the slow pace that used to be acceptable, here is the top five so you don’t waste brain cells convincing yourself…

1. I don’t have time to digest more information. (Really? Don’t have time to get smarter?)
2. I am overwhelmed with the information that is out there. (Really? That is what all the new aggregation and filtering tools are for.)
3. I don’t know where to start. (Email me and I will send you a document that teaches you how to do this
4. I already learn about my industry from magazines, meetings and trade shows. (And how stale is that information?)
5. I already know everything there is to know about my industry, or I don’t need to know much about my industry because I am in the middle to lower part of the org chart. (In both cases you are deluded and will not prosper with this viewpoint. I say that as a friend that would like you to reexamine…)

How are you going to improve your "river of information?" Leave your comments below.

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Scott Klososky, a former CEO and author of the new books, Enterprise Social Technology and The Velocity Manifesto, specializes in having the vision and ability to see trends in emerging technologies, which allows him to be a thought leader who applies his skills to help organizations thrive, leaders prosper, and entire industries move forward. His unique perspectives on technology, business culture, and the future allows him to travel the globe as a speaker and consultant, working with senior executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to universities and nonprofits. Contact Scott at 760-603-8110 or scott@klososky.com.

I often comment that technology is just a tool. It’s not magic, nor mysterious, it is just a tool. I do admit that some aspects can be complicated, and if one adds together all the technology we face in life, it can get overwhelming. However, it is just a tool in the end, but a very powerful tool to be sure. Those who master it have a distinct advantage over those who do not. We all choose to what extent we invest time into adding technology skills to our lives – be that social tools, devices, software applications, or operating systems. The scary thing is that most people lack even the semblance of a plan. They just roll along grabbing at pieces when it fits in their lives, or when they are embarrassed into it.

In an effort to actually be helpful, and not just a critic, I submit to you the following list of mistakes that I see people make. And, on the other side of the mistakes, some advice on how to improve the situation…

1 – Failing to invest time learning– An older gentleman asked me a really simple question the other day, he said "is it hard to learn how to use Facebook and Twitter?" It stopped me for a second because I have never really given it much thought. I shared with him that I think they are both pretty simple to learn, you just have to dive in and use them for a while, and choose the right tools along the way to help you use them wisely. In truth, technologists have been working for a couple of decades to make technology easier to use, and I think they are making great progress. The fact that millions of people can pick up and iPhone and figure it out in a few days is witness to that. Or, that millions can use Facebook or Twitter each day without any kind of tech support. Although it is really not difficult to learn how to use new technologies in most cases, it does take time and that is something you must be willing to invest. It is an investment after all, and you should expect a return. Be honest with yourself, do you invest an appropriate amount of time learning how to use new technology tools?

2 – Failing to upgrade often enough– In this case, I am referring to both hardware and software. I regularly see people who are very dependent on a laptop using something that must have been discontinued during the Clinton years. I see people using software versions that are 2 or 3 releases behind. If your phone does not do email, you need to upgrade. I am not suggesting that everyone stand in line at the Apple store so they can get the next iAddictiveToy, but operating with gear that is lacking in features or performance is like hammering nails with brick. It can get the job done, but not very efficiently. If you buy a hammer it might be productive for your lifetime. When you buy technology, it has a shelf life that expires at the point where a newer version would provide benefits that provide a clear return on the upgrade investment.

3 – Fearing experimentation– This is an insidious crippler. When you fear experimenting with new tools, you dramatically cut down the ability to find elegant solutions to problems, or features that could really help your performance. Fear stops you for taking steps forward, and in this case, it is often the fear of failure, fear of complexity, fear of embarrassment, or just plain old fear of the unknown. I understand the concept of these fears. I also know that the price you will pay for succumbing to them is high. As with anything else in life, fear is a self made barrier that rarely serves a good purpose. In this case, it will stop you from prospering at times.

4 – Choosing blind ignorance as a path– This one plain frustrates me. Some people just turn a blind eye to technology tools much like the ostrich sticks its head in the sand (if they really do that.) The fact is, just about anything in life can be done without the aid of technology, and many people have been doing things that way for decades. So it is convenient to simply go on operating without change. The upside being that you don’t have to think hard, or risk change. They live their lives with a vague sense that the rest of the world is using technology, but they stridently refuse to ask themselves why, nor seek to even learn enough to understand what the tools actually do. Ignorance is not really bliss – it is just lazy.

5 – Believing that technology is the only solution– Just to keep this balanced, the last crippler is believing that technology is the best tool for everything. It is not. Technology is a great augmenting factor in lots of things, but there are other ways to do many of the things technology does, and in some cases, much better. For example, technology facilitates conversations – in fantastic ways at this point. But, there are times when talking to people face to face is the most effective way to communicate, and I mean sitting across the table from each other, not on the screen. There are times when creating our own unique content is a better idea than harvesting content from the Web. And there are times when just trying something out for ourselves, instead of basing a decision on a social rating site, is the best path.

There is a widening gap in the capabilities, value, and quality of life between those that are good with technology tools and those that lag. As humanity progresses, this breach will grow further. Too many people live their lives unconsciously when it comes to the technology they could be using. Don’t be one of them…

Do you see yourself making one of these mistakes with technology? If so, what will you do to use technology more effectively? We'd love to hear your thoughts below.

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Scott Klososky is one of the first successful Internet entrepreneurs and is a highly sought-after technology and future trends speaker. You can read this article and others on Scott's blog Technology Story.

Allow me to share something that is staggering to me. I spend thousands of dollars a year with many companies that have no idea I exist - and so do you.

As sophisticated as we probably think we are at "knowing" our customers, clients, members, patients, etc. (which I will refer to as customers from here on out) we really are quite in the dark. Gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores, and discount stores by and large do nothing to even know the names of their customers. Banks, hospitals, and insurance companies know only the bare minimum they need to in order to provide their services. Although building good relationships with customers has been critical since the start of the very first business, we still live in the dark ages of actually knowing what is going on with any individual constituent.

We now stand on the brink of this situation changing. Oddly, it is not a technology problem at this point, it is a paradigm issue. Way too many organizations are stuck with a belief that harvesting more information from customers is an invasion of privacy, or too much work with too little return. Both of these beliefs are outdated. We now live in a world where most people are willing to share certain fields of information without feeling like their privacy is being breached.

In fact, they are sharing liberally online by telling the world their likes and dislikes, their locations, and their opinions. We also live in a world where the organization that has the most information on their customers, and is using it, will win. We simply have to move away from the thought that we should acquire only the bare minimum of information on our customers, and instead look to harvest all that we can to provide targeted marketing (which people want) and better services (which they crave.)

The concept of Business Intelligence (BI) has exploded in the past few years. The driver of this is that we have gotten quite good at collecting business and transactional data, but have struggled to turn that raw data into useful knowledge. BI provides tools and a platform for moving data up the chain of value to information, knowledge, and finally, wisdom. Customer Intelligence (CI) is a subcategory of BI, and it deals with the same dynamic.

The first step is to admit that we are not using all of the customer information sitting right in front of us in a worthy manner. That problem is compounded in that we have access to tons of customer information for free online, and most of us do nothing to reach out and get it. Then we have the pile of data that includes all the information we could ask for but do not - not because people would not give it to us, but because we do not ask them. Every leader and every organization should be investing some time in thinking though what a CI system would look like in their operation.

This takes creativity, and the ability to see the world through different eyes. It requires one to let go of the current ways that customers are engaged, and literally rebuild how transactions happen. It takes applying new technologies that are pretty common at this point, and very inexpensive (if not free.) Here is an example:

My local convenience store is a place where my wife and I spend about $6,000 a year on gas. That is not our total budget of course - we spend at least that amount again with other C-stores. They have no idea who I am, and do nothing to build a relationship with me. They just post the prices outside for gas and hope I come by because they are located close by. The fact is I pass about 12 C-stores every time I leave the house and can do business with any of them, and often do. I could be loyal to any of them, but I am not. It has nothing to do with the price of gas; it has to do with the fact that they provide no value in my life other than a commodity.

The simple adjustment they would have to make is to add the capability for the pump to identify me by either the credit card I use, or letting me check in to the station with Foursquare or Facebook Places (or any of the other location-based systems.) When I fill up, I could just tap my iPhone or Android-based phone on the pump and use a technology like Bump to transfer the amount of the purchase to my file. Then I could see how much I have spent on gas over the last year, month, etc., and any other purchase information they want to track. They can then use this electronic connection to send me messages like discounts on gas or products, or notices of price changes. Now they have the tools to get me to be loyal to them, and a connection to build a relationship.

Replace gas station with your organization, add a little creativity, and I promise, you could develop a much deeper connection to your customers by learning more about them, and using that information to strengthen your value proposition.

Or you can just wait around until your competitors do this and you are forced to spend a year catching up while you bleed market share the whole time. The choice is yours, Customer Intelligence, or Customer Invisibility.

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Scott Klososky, a former CEO and author of the new books, Enterprise Social Technology and The Velocity Manifesto, specializes in having the vision and ability to see trends in emerging technologies, which allows him to be a thought leader who applies his skills to help organizations thrive, leaders prosper, and entire industries move forward. His unique perspectives on technology, business culture, and the future allows him to travel the globe as a speaker and consultant, working with senior executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to universities and nonprofits. Contact Scott at 760-603-8110 or scott@klososky.com.

What is an eCommunity? It is a question I hear often, and it is usually followed by an answer that does not do more than scrape the surface of this powerful tool.

The term eCommunity has been used to describe Facebook and MySpace type networks, but this is a limited view of what has the potential to be a very powerful business networking and marketing tool.

Let’s start by redefining what the term eCommunity actually means.  Each of us has the tools to create a network (or community) of contacts and connections that is aided – even driven by – technology.   

In other words, your eCommunity is really what used to be defined as your Rolodex, and the personal relationships you could call on by phone or in person.
 
The Internet has now provided a way for us to completely redefine our “business/personal community,” and more importantly, how we nurture and grow it. By making a conscious effort to leverage the new tools available, we can take dramatic strides in reaching our business goals.

“How do I begin?” you ask.

#1 Sign up for Plaxo Pulse and use it to keep your contacts up to date.

#2 Sign up for LinkedIn and use it to formalize your network contacts and connect to their contacts.

#3 Build a Facebook profile and use it to communicate in a deeper way with contacts with whom you work regularly.  In addition, this is a great way to introduce yourself to new contacts.

#4 Join an industry eCommunity that puts you in the stream of conversations about the industry in which you work.

How it works
These four communities will provide you with built-in tools that allow you to build and manage your community. 

For example, LinkedIn allows you to make contact with prospects with a warm invite instead of a cold call. 

Plaxo Pulse will automatically keep your contacts updated, so you never lose anyone and will always be notified of useful data including work anniversaries and birthdays. 

Facebook applications allow you to update your activities and projects so your “friends” can keep track of your progress.  This is very useful when your “friends” are all business contacts who you want to keep up to date on your professional projects.

15 minutes twice a week
Business people who have invested in this new technology are seeing a significant return on investment. 

A couple of weeks ago, I assisted a second-level contact gather information for a professional presentation. He was looking for stories from people who had recently experienced bad customer service, and by reaching out to his eCommunity, he was able to gather the information he needed from sending one email. 

I also had recent success using LinkedIn to track down a former board member of mine with whom I had lost contact.  Upon reconnecting through LinkedIn, I called her, filled her in on my latest activities, and was able to re-establish an important business relationship that will assist me with a current opportunity I am working. 
 
You, too, can have such success with a small investment in time.

Find some time to set up your profiles and get yourself started. Then set up a meeting with yourself for 15 minutes twice a week, and take the time to do one more thing to bolster your online presence and strengthen your online community.

Don’t be left on the sidelines with only your Outlook contact list as your eCommunity.  It takes only a small investment of time in order to have a tool that you can leverage for great results.

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Scott Klososky speaks and consults for organizations worldwide on technology and trends, and has written books on both technology-infused leadership and social technologies.