Began his career more than 20 years ago in Deloitte & Touche as Senior Consultant, Manager and Project Manager for Tecnología y Gestión de la Innovación (TGI-TENEO Group), Novotec Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers. He was Director of Strategic Planning and Corporate Development for Seur Corporation (Spanish leader in urgent transport).

Currently he develops his activity as independent consultant and trainer for a several international consulting & training firms in Strategic and Change Management, Organisation and People Management, Business and Organisational Models, Project Management, Management Skills, Revenue Enhancement, and Innovation Management.

In Bridgedworld he specializes in the areas of Training, Strategic Management & Planning, Organisation, Project Management, and Change Management.

Julio has a MSc. Industrial Engineer ICAI’s degree, and post graduated specialization courses in Strategic Management & Planning, Change Management, Strategic Management of Technology, and e-Business. He speaks fluently Spanish, English, French and Portuguese.

From there, he moved on to the U.S. where he became International Sales Vice President for several major Latin American and Spanish corporations with extensive marketing operations in North America. In this capacity, he created networks of distribution and sales agents in the oilfield equipment, construction and wood product sectors.

He then transferred to Spain to become the International Sales Director for the Spanish Company, Silestone S.A. where by 2001, he had established from the ground up an international sales structure covering 42 countries with annual sales of U.S. $20 million.

He returned to the U.S. in 2002 and has since acted as a consultant for the international trade, tourism, telecommunications and financial services sectors for U.S. based companies looking to expand internationally. He brings this same expertise to BridgedWorld.

Jorge graduated with a Master in International Business from George Washington University and received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chile School of Political Science and Economics. He is fluent in English, Spanish and French.

So I leave you with my 5 basic precautions to be taken when going to participate in a network.

1. Your e-mail. Do not use your personal or your business email. You can open your Gmail or Hotmail account to include all that comes  from the networks: message alerts, new entries in your groups, post from your contacts, etc. .. There are many people on the Net who´s role is only seek to expand its database of emails and then fill your inbox with spam (not to mention those that can trade with your mail, of course).
2. Update your profile and put real data. The difference between a complete and incomplete profile is only 15 minutes. And I speak about basic information. If you also use all the applications that most networks put at your disposal you will improve your presence. There is no need to detail everything you did, but the necessary information for someone to accept your request for contact. A summary of who you are, your picture, and the dates correctly. Making false or inflated claims is another of the “weaknesses” which should be avoided. Keeping your information up to date is also a way to gain visibility as each time you do your contacts will know and want to review your profile
3. The political and religious ideas. If you’re not a politician or an active member of a religious order, avoid these two issues. They tend to generate too much controversy and as a result of the limited space and time you have in the networks, argument becomes difficult. There are blogs and forums, specific locations where these issues can be discussed and where of course the willingness of participants avoids misunderstandings, as well of course the use of a nickname is possible to ensure anonymity.
4. Define your level of privacy. To reassure those who have just arrived, those who are not on the Web because they do not feel safe on the Internet, all networks offer different levels of privacy of information. There is even some information you will share individually with each of your contacts. I recommend starting with high levels of privacy and gradually reducing it.
5. People and groups to which you’re invited. In accordance with points 1 and 2, when someone sends you an invitation to connect check his profile to avoid joining the network of someone looking for your email or looking to fill your mailbox with ads or trying to lure you into a great business deale. Not to mention those who only seek to “suck” your contacts or to polish their profile. Some groups are simply useless and have no reason for being. And the worst are those who only seek to have thousands of members and then send their “business news” using their Newsletter to group members.

And above the list the most important is to be yourself. After all the networks are just people who come into contact with each other.

1. The number of users. And I do not mean to be large.
2. The level of users. Neither understood as high nor as low … I mean quality for the purpose of the network and your network.
3. The user activity. There’s no “nuance”. Either there is activity or not.

I am in various social and professional networks and have come to the conclusion that they are a great channel of communication, but still not a place to share, as they should be. But if any of the above parameters fails, then they are not those great channels at all. And what the current reality shows is that the network activity, especially professionals, is rather low. True, the traffic can be high and we must not despise passive users but the interesting thing is when you build communication.

But there is a point that worries me. I get the impression that there is a discrepancy between the value of the network for users and for managers of the network itself. The managers seem more concerned with “capturing” new users than consolidating old ones and generate debate and activity that, after all, lead to more natural activity, greater commitment from users since they were recommended by other users. A WOM that works.

I once heard a network manager saying, roughly, “we put the platform and the users have to do the rest.” And it sounds as if the board of a football club said “we put the stadium, the rest is up to the members.”

If managers do not identify the leaders, the animators, who are the end of the day moving the network and motivate users in some way, the network will die.

It is incumbent upon those who  self define as “ believers” in these environments to give a serious tone and for managers to focus on something more than simply put the platform.

If you like this post, take a look on:
Social networking laboratory
Facebooknomics

I also recommend take a look in the graphic of this post in RocaSalvatella on the cycle in the implementation and management of Social Media. I'll take the end: "Social media is not the goal but a mean to develop the business." I agree.

An interesting and comprehensive paper on Spain and its characteristics as a recipient of investment.

You can download from here

Building a brand club action is not only desirable, but its achievement is shown correctly as relevant commercial achievement, social and institutional. As with other trends, the market is an invitation to take these actions, whose implementation is being developed under the wave model (Ray Noorda, Surfing a High Tech Wave: A story of Novell’s Early Years 1980-1990):

1. If you’re riding the wave, stay hard, because you’ve accomplished.
2. If you are behind the wave, forget about surfing because you lost the race.
3. But, if you’ve rushed ahead and go for it, the wave will pass over you.

As each day comes a new fan club a few weeks left empty and without management or a brand with a presence born twittered that the fifth tweet stops issuing either a new executive blog content remains unchanged, we suggest that this model of Noorda´s technology adoption is completely applicable to corporate communication, where few companies ride the wave.

Focus on the CC, the reasons why companies fail to ride the wave are crystal clear:

• They are quick and are overwhelmed by the wave: are the first to be mounted on new technologies, but lack the resources to manage, plan, execute and measure the benefits of digital communication, giving up this identity shortly.
• Or you arrive late (if ever) to the wave: ie, they underestimate the digital presence of their audiences (employees, customers, suppliers, opinion leaders, media) by not taking the exercise of strategic communication as part of the culture corporate. Thus, it builds a process of digital ignorance about the brand by the public above.

Rather than contradictory, these two business situations facing the digital communication are complementary and can coexist even when an organization makes the strategic communication tactics 2.0.

The problem is in focus. In a strategic definition of the communication, the message flow between the receivers-transmitters (digitally speaking, because all the channels would be dynamic and dual) carrying the corporate identity, where digital identity is a representation of that.

In short, it’s exhilarating to use all digital artillery through a strategic approach from communication.

Of course, if you leave aside the methodical planning, which will result will be noise, smoke and much wasted effort.

If you liked this post, I recommend other related posts:
Facebooknomics
Social networking laboratory
SRM – Stakeholder Relationship Management (Ignacio Prieto)
El valor de la Red (David Soler)
Lo que no sabes de Facebook y de Twitter (Gaby Castellanos)

A couple of months ago I was “discussing” with one of the country’s culture section leading journalists and a well known editor and they told me “nothing is going to happen to the paper book. There is nothing to worry about.” I wrote a post in which I made a parallel between the book, media and music, and someone told me “they had nothing to do with each other.”

Well, looks like they do.

The first “enemy” seemed to be Google. Now it also appears that the problem is to prevent piracy (?) by controlling the distribution of digital book using the same methods than in the real world.

Could it be that they make no difference between FREE ACCESS and FREE OF CHARGE? Could it be that the publishing sector actors and the media have not realized that the rules are changing?

All actors that revolve around the publishing industry, as it happened with the administrators of labels and media, believe that we should not liberalize the contents because it makes people think they are free. They still want to control what you buy and how you buy it.

I believe that in the Internet you can not apply the same strategy as in the real world, you cannot “try to stem the tide” to how books are distributed. But that does not mean we have to provide all content for nothing. No doubt there are or will be models where advertising may eventually supports a free of charge model, but I think:

• The content is what is valuable but, perhaps, is priceless. Maybe you have to build a world of products and services around the content and that will not be for free. The book, like music, would be the “excuse” to attract users.
• We need to make our books available in all formats so the user can decide what to buy. This enables you at the same time to reach all targets.
• Everything has its price. You just cannot price the same a hardcover book and pdf version, not even like a paperback.
• Implement a content policy “freemium”. A part is free and the other is free access but you have to pay something. For instance: in a CD offer something free or put a bonus track for free. In a technical book allow access to the abstract for free (not worth just the first chapter).

These are just some ideas. Surely there is no a single solution and every publisher should adapt its offer, but something I am sure about is:

• As in the music industry, this “revolution” will only popularize reading. Seize it.
• You can spend all day debating whether or when this will change. Let’s do something.
• Someone in the value chain will not survive or at least not all of that link.

1. Blue World composed of large corporations as a result of successive mergers and acquisitions. Employees having global geographic mobility, good salaries  and great benefits.
2. Green World where all those concerned about the environment, ecology and social responsibility work professionally.
3. Orange World based on small businesses and professional specialists working in networks with each other.

Until now companies felt more comfortable contracting with well known suppliers to discuss certain projects (the blue world). It seemed that the recruitment of micro-businesses or independent professionals was reserved for very specific jobs, more operational and based on trust in the practitioner. But every day we see more often  great professionals – many come from managerial and executive positions in multinational enterprises – are launched to make available to the market, large enterprises and SMEs, experience and know-how outside the typical great brand operation schemes. That is the Orange World.

This new scenario opens up a world of possibilities to both companies whose resources did not allow them before to enjoy higher levels of expertise services and provides skilled professionals interesting and challenging tasks.

A development that does not generate a sense of “emptiness” for those who were accustomed to the blue world large structures.

Projects can be addressed with equal or perhaps greater professionalism that those done by a general purpose company as it brings together and network specialists in each area.

This model also prevents from growing overheads by reducing structures, offices, etc.  It’s about being nimble, fast and “light”.

When taking the opportunities that technology offers and the Internet, some models look almost redundant. You have to take everything the Net puts at our disposal. And this serves to businesses of all sizes.

Since 2001, serves as Project Officer in the state agency of Xiamen Investment Promotion, offering consulting services to foreign companies on investment opportunities, administrative and legal issues.

Betty has a degree in English Philology and a Master in International Economic Law by the Law School of Xiamen University.

She speaks Chinese and English

This strategy aligns well with the type of diffusion we want. Relationship marketing is market oriented, customer committed and create, develops and maintain relationship with them. Client and provider roles are not fully defined and are flexible. Disintermediation, search for value creation and a strong emphasis on customer service are some of their characteristics.

Relationship Marketing requires a complex, ongoing internal marketing, an interconnection between major functions and marketing mentality across the organization. Relationship marketing considers target audience not only consumers but also dealers and after-sales service.

A new trend extends the scope of Relationship Marketing to suppliers, competitors, government, media, etc. We consider this new approach as a more effective way of creating a fully integrated relationship environment in a sort of holistic view of the company’s position (see SRM – Stakeholder Relationship Management).

The ultimate goal of relationship marketing is customer loyalty. Modern companies award value to each of its customers based on its CLV – Customer Lifetime Value – or net present value based on the returns offered in the customer’s estimated life cycle. But often they forget that the most valuable element of a loyalty process – affiliated programs – lies in the importance of the client as product prescriber.

Everybody knows that it is five times more expensive to get a new customer than keep an old one – a golden rule to build a long lasting company. However, dissatisfied customers are much more belligerent. Some studies show that unhappy customers transmit its dissatisfaction to an average of nine people. Others show to be much more skeptical when buying, a client who has bad reference about a certain product than the customer who conveyed its dissatisfaction.

If everyone agrees that the greatest gains in productivity will draw by implementing a strategy based on Web 2.0, what then is the reason to wait so long for such a coveted takeoff?

There are several reasons but for those who already know the benefits, it comes from the fact that particularly middle management, but also by high-level executives (technocracy), fears to lose their institutional power – the blurring of power is an intolerable threat.

Today it is simply unrealistic to envisage that an organization changes, turns upside down and becomes flat, not hierarchical, horizontal communication channeled, democratized in their status. Technological tools for this are already developed but they can just provide support, never be able to undertake such a change. It is a full-scale cultural change – someone will say that requires a redesign of the human essence.

For large organizations, is more effective to start this process in a new business or product line by creating a new division, start-up or so where this new concept can be put into practice with the required mentality and a brand new organizational design not influenced by the main office.

Another common case is that of medium-sized companies wishing to acquire international visibility but do not have large advertising budget allowance. These companies can perform tactical actions such as a preliminary to its strategic reorientation by creating a specific department.

Small firms are more flexible and easier to deal with change processes. Only one condition to meet, the owner must be convinced of the benefits of this new strategy and commit to take it forward.

The benefits are many and varied type but one of the most important is to “feel” the market.

At Bridgedworld we analyze the company potential, help define the new positioning, establish tools and channels and deploy a set of actions during the period deemed necessary.

This is Consulting and Interim Management. This is Bridgedworld.

Related Posts:
Viral Marketing and Enterprise 2.0 (I)
Facebooknomics
Social Networking Laboratory
SRM – Stakeholder Relationship Management