Karl Quirino

How do people with common interests find each other? How does anyone find anything nowadays online? The simple answer is: word gets around. And on the Net, word gets around fast. The community of discourse is the audience and people are discovering and inventing new ways to find or share relevant information and knowledge with blinding speed. When you realise this and start engaging it new doors of opportunity begin to open for you. This is what I do for organisations and businesses. 

A POWERFUL TOOL 

Communication is a powerful tool. Letters are for writing, people use telephones for talking and everyone watches television for news and entertainment. Now, what's the Web for? For most, it provides a place like we've never seen before – access to information, connection to other people, entry into communities, and the ability to broadcast ideas pressed into service for the individual, group, business or organisation. 

The world of Web 2.0 restores the 'banter of the bazaar', a phrase coined in the Cluetrain Manifesto. It tears down power structures and senseless bureaucracies. It puts everyone in touch with everyone. To speak with a human voice, organisations and businesses must learn to share the concerns of their stakeholders, constituencies, communities and clients. This works best when people inside have the fullest contact possible with people on the outside. 

Karl Quirino & Associates’ order of business orbits around empowering organisations and small businesses in New Zealand with evolving Web 2.0 solutions that work and one that levels the playing field for them. It consists of a joint team of individual specialists who utilise digital-based tools and applications fashioned together into versatile interactive websites that connect to touch points on the World Wide Web. In essence, these become their platforms. 

PERSONA AND VOICE 

These platforms give our clients a persona and voice. They enhance their social capital and strengthen their brand identity. Clients who are empowered with our solutions are then able to project a clearer picture of themselves through those touch points to a much wider range of individuals, groups and organisations - one that strives to position their organisation or business in the best of terms using social media. It’s their channel on the World Wide Web. 

Wikipedia defines ‘social media’ as online content  created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. It goes on to say that, “At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use.“ 

RESONATE WITH PEOPLE 

“Talk” marketing isn’t about superficial buzz that sizzles fast and fades even faster. The goal is helping people make sense of all the dross found on the Web through conversations. The more meaningful the conversations, the faster people are able to connect to your organisation. Buzz-making noise doesn’t resonate with people. Meaning does. 

Perhaps even more, the other half of any conversation is listening. The purpose of marketing communications today isn’t just about manufacturing information; it’s listening and bringing ideas back into the marketplace. Also, it is ideas that spark innovation that influence service development. It pinpoints ways to get access to and attention from decision makers. Listening is the new strategy and it happens through conversations whether these are conducted face-to-face or, better yet, in online communities and social networks. 

RESTORING HUMANITY 

Stories are conversations. They come in many forms, videos included. Conversation gives us humanity. Without it we’re less than the sum of our parts, unable to improvise.  It is the 21st century with 6-billion plus of us, on a shrinking planet, with dwindling resources, not talking. Lose the means to work out who we are, what we have in common, and we lose stories, our greatest consolation.