I’ve just posted a new BookMap. This time it’s for CrowdSurfing by Martin Thomas and David Brain. This book investigates the move towards embracing the crowd within corporations and political organisations. Much of the book is focussed on surrendering some control, not only to customers but also to partners and employees, giving them a greater say in the operation of the organisation.

The book investigates the new style of leadership required to capitalise on this phenomenon and delivers many real world examples of success and “must-try-harder” in the area.

You can find this and more BookMaps by clicking the tab at the top of the screen.

As the wise old saying goes….”if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got”.

In a personal context this isn’t a bad rule to slot into our memory banks, just between “Next week I’ll start making my lunch each day instead of buying it” and “I will finish my Christmas shopping earlier this year”.

Well, it’s not true in the field of marketing and communications, not anymore. But it’s going to take a little while for this realisation to filter up to the bigwig decision makers.

In terms of marketing there’s an incredible inertia. Old school corporate types are still ploughing money into barely-measurable, broadcast marketing methods in the hopes that if they do what they’ve always done, they’ll get what they’ve always got. What is that anyway? Brand recognition? Positive weekly ad recall surveys? ROI? or tangible connections with customers? Changes are taking place in the way people are consuming content and media and expectations surrounding our conversations with brands are shifting.

That’s not to say there isn’t merit in some broadcast methods but the shift in the balance of power is eroding the traction these old-school methods once had. This change will require brands to stop telling us they’re great and actually start being great for real…. and letting us tell each other.

I like to draw what I call BookMaps once I’ve read a book to make sure as much of the good stuff as possible sticks to the inside of my skull. This is a recent one that I did after reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It - perhaps you’ll find it useful too! Feel free to download the PDF using the link below and stick it up somewhere.

Crush It collates all of Gary’s no-nonsense approach to using social media for business with a specific focus on authenticity, personal brand and working hard. It’s written in GaryVee’s unique in-your-face style and demonstrates his passion for this subject following his real-world use of it to develop his own wine-business on www.winelibrary.com

I’ll be putting a full review here on KISS. at some point under a new tab at the top along with several other reviews and BookMaps.

Download the PDF version here.

The past few hours saw a flood of tweets on Twitter with the keywords “RIP Kanye West”. There were enough tweets and retweets for the phrase “RIP Kanye West” to feature at the top of Twitter Trending topics section.

One thing to point out first - he’s not dead. At least, not in the last hour he’s not.

That’s the thing about Twitter - a medium with lightning fast capabilities, a worldwide reach and zero editorial control makes it a perfect place to start rumours and spread misinformation.

Will Kanye West be cursing whoever started this thing? I think not. The publicity is incredible and will continue for quite a while yet.

Should this situation ring alarm bells for brands and organisations? If they are considering the use of microblogging to develop relationships with their targeted publics should they reconsider? Again, I think not.

The ease of the spread of ‘negative’ sentiment is very real with all social media but a lack of participation does not make you immune. If Kanye needed to, he could engage with this viral hoax and either tackle it or turn it even further to his advantage by riding the wave.

Translating this across to the situation for a brand - if all there’s a debate going on about your company or product, especially if it includes misinformation, don’t you at least want to be in the same room?