Social Media and Crayons – Business As Creative Collaboration

I repeatedly suffer from BFO’s – Blinding Flashes of the Obvious.

Today’s news flash is that business is (or should be) more like when you were 6 years old hanging out with your best friend. Ice cream in one hand,  crayon in the other, drawing in the living room floor.

Business is a collaborative creation between you and your neighbors, albeit more sustainable than squiggles on paper. For centuries the dialogue of business has gone like this:

Me: I have a problem
You: I can solve your problem
Me: Great! Thanks for solving my problem. What do I owe you?
You: 25 Bucks ( or goats, cats, clamshells, beads, scarves, smooth stones – name your poison)

In fact, I can think of three entrepreneur friends here in Austin who started their businesses like that:

Friend: Hey I need to build this thing. Can you do it?
Entrepreneur:  I don’t know. Let me figure it out.
Entrepreneur: I’ve figured it out here you go.
Friend: Great! Here are 25 rune stones.
Entrepreneur: You know I’ve got something here. Can you recommend me to a few more friends?
Repeat several times till you make your first million.

But somewhere along the way the fact that we’re working on this together gets lost amongst growth, employees and making the mortgage payment.

Enter the mystery of Social Media.

What’s really cool about Social Media is that we can have his collaborative process in real time with hundreds, if not thousands, of people.  And it brings us back to the Bazaar from the Cluetrain Manifesto.  We’re all out there having these conversations about what we need and how we can fill those needs.   I talk to you. You talk to a business.  The business talks to me. It’s all so very fractal or Zen. I’m not sure which yet.

Point is – social tools become the channels by which we have that old fashioned conversation.

So here’s a way to bring that grassroots conversation back to the web.

1) Find a group of people who have a common problem or interest.
The caveat here is that these folks actually have to be on the web. If they’re not reading blogs, forums, tweets, Facebook, or MySpace, you may have trouble reaching them. That’s okay. There are plenty of people on the web.

2) Find out what their problem is.
Go out to LinkedIn. Go out to forums. Ask questions. Do a survey. Figure out what people are complaining about. Do a lot of keyword searches to see what people are searching for.  If you see where the “marketplace” ( and I mean this literally) is going position your service with that trend. Go with the flow.

3) Respond. Get engaged in the conversation.
After you’ve asked your questions throw your service or product out to the herd through the tools you’ve got available.  Get their feedback and create a discussion about your service. Be open that you’re trying to figure it out. Once you’ve got some traction take one community to another – move their forum to yours.  Remember that you’ve got to give something back. This may mean being a thought leader or giving your product to a few bloggers so that they can talk about it.

4) Take Feedback and Respond to it
Just like in the ancient dialogue where we communicate about a service – you’ve got to be open to taking feedback.  Yes. People are snarky online. But you’re stronger than that, right? Respond to their twitter posts, respond to the email comments.  Keep that dialogue open and gird your loins for when things may not be all rainbows and roses.

This process is the same one that we went through when we were kids on the floor. I draw a purple horse. You add a few lines. I make it a unicorn. You add zebra stripes.  We look at it and high five, because we built it together and we want to share it with the world.

Now let’s go see if Mom will put it on the refrigerator (or her blog).