“Content is Free, Context is Where the Value is.” ~Robert Lavigne (April 20, 2010)

In my original blog My Thoughts Enclosed…, I posted the following entry.

My Thoughts Enclosed:

The Three Gears of Enterprise Social Media Adoption

The Three Gears of Enterprise Social Media Adoption in a Nutshell

First Gear of Enterprise Social Media Adoption (self-directed behaviour) – characterized by Hoarding of Knowledge and/or Broadcasting of Content leading to bot-like behaviours that fails to engage the intended audience into a collaborative encounter.

Second Gear of Enterprise Social Media Adoption (reciprocity behaviour) – characterized by Sharing of Content with unrealistic expectation.  Using Social Media in Second Gear leads you to revert to First Gear when someone doesn’t comment/like/retweet before gaining real engagement and collaboration.

Third Gear of Enterprise Social Media Adoption (the “good guy” or “amazing woman” behaviour) – characterized by sharing content to a larger community freely, openly and without reservation, with a likely outcome of finding the truly engaged and collaborative community that you were searching for.

Only through engaging using a Third Gear philosophy will you achieve the real value proposition that Social Media can deliver.  Whether it is within your organization using Enterprise 2.0, or outside of your organization using Social CRM, your mindset and attitude in using the tools will determine your success or failure and not the tools themselves.

In that blog entry, I also originated the statement

“Content is free, context is where the value is.” ~Robert Lavigne (April 20, 2010)

In the upcoming blog entry, it will evolve into

“Content is Free. Context is Not!”

Value YOUR Context. Engage YOUR Community.

~Robert Lavigne (October 28, 2011)