A New Communication Gap to Fill

Forgive me, I might geek out a little on this one.

For years, I’ve made a good living—along with my fellow consultants—filling the gap between how Information Services (IT) and Business communicate. It’s usually IT and Accounting, or IT and Human Resources, or IT and Sales, or IT and the business as a whole. These groups all communicate in different ways, and we Business Analyst/Project Manager types have to write documents, draw pictures, and produce graphs so everyone on all sides knows what the other sides are trying to say.

The new gap in communication is between Marketing (not sales) and IT. For years, Marketing has been using a number of spray-pray-techniques (TV, radio, print) to get their company’s or client’s message out to the public. More recently, these three media have been increasingly ignored by the public. TV, radio and print are all in a long death spiral, as far as advertising goes. They are cutting back on staff and content, which makes them less valuable to viewers, listeners, and readers, and less able to sell advertising, which is largely ignored by the consumers anyway.

What’s an advertising firm/department to do? Turn to the Internet. The problem is that they really haven’t figured out how to market effectively on the Internet yet—and it may take a while. And when they do, the Internet will morph.

Oh, yeah, and the Internet means you are involving technology, and probably IT. IT “gets” the technical side of the Internet, but most departments don’t really understand how to use the technology to meet marketing goals.

The next big thing, or current big thing depending on how you look at it, is social networking. Now you’re really in for it, because the Marketing folks have heard about and want to use it, but the IT folks don’t understand how it impacts business. Who is the visionary here—a technical marketing person?? Now there’s a gap for you, and I dare you to try to find one!

If you’re in this quandary, my new book will help you sort a lot of it out. If you need a facilitator or thought leader, I’m here for you. But remember this social networking thing is just like the Internet, a moving target. Your only chance of exploiting it before it morphs is to understand the underlying core principals. Then you can “get” any new tool or craze that comes along and decide if it’s worth using or not.

M. A. "Ryan" Yuhas
Author, Speaker, Social Networking Facilitator
InterDimension Strategies Inc.
972-841-0226
877-217-9959