A lot is written about digital transformation.  Is it cloud? Is it IOT? Is It Blockchain?

It's none of these things, it's you.

Companies can no longer differentiate themselves, they are stuck in an endless cycle of "we are the best", "we are number one", "we are the biggest" ... we have a saying in the UK "my Dad is bigger than your Dad".  Marketing like this does not work and nobody cares about your company anyway.

The only thing companies can do is shout louder and louder over the noise. And none of us are listening.

I posted the other day on Twitter about the increase in the use of ad-blockers.  Somebody had a go at me on Twitter because "the empirical evidence is that spending on advertising is going up" he said.  It is.  But here's the thing.  Nobody is listening and nobody cares.

There is one thing that each company has that is unique.  The one thing can be used to help sell more, it can be used to market more, it can be used to win the war on talent, in fact it can be used to transform a business ... to digital.

It's people.

Let's take IBM it has 531,000 followers on Twitter.

IBM has 366 employees.

Let's empower 50% of those employees to talk on social and let's assume they only have 100 followers.  These 100 people, know and love these people.

This would give IBM a following of 18.3 Million.

Now the average person has a following of 500 people, this would give IBM a following of 91.5 Million.

That's 91.5 million people who could share and amplify IBM content ... well I will be honest, it's unlikely they will share IBM content, because it will be boring.  I know that because ONLY 531K people follow IBM.

But authentic content from it's employees, so that's another story!