Member-to-Member

Sex Proves Once Again We're Only Human - Even in Cyberspace

2008-10-08T13:41:26-04:00

I'd tripped over this stat a few weeks ago, that Facebook has surpassed "sex" and "google" in Google searches, but it took a ClickZ article by Dave Evans for me to focus on why this was more than just titillating information for the geek in me that likes it when new technology succeeds.

As I've written before, I believe that humans behave similarly online and offline and that as technology improves to let us interact more naturally online we will transfer many of our offline behaviors into our online lives. Specifically, as I've noted regarding ISTE and ASCRS's social networking successes, when online interaction offers unique benefits we humans move online even more readily. As Dave points out, the "sex search" benchmark indicator of (presumably non-sexual) Facebook interaction parallels "real life" behaviors and brings our online and offline realities into greater parity:

Regardless of how you feel about it personally, the adult publishing industry has often been an early driver of success for content and content-related technologies: Think video tapes, early Web sites, and early online commerce. What's worth noting is that in each of these cases, mainstream applications eventually overtook the adult applications in terms of broad appeal, use, and economic value. In other words, the adult industry plays an early role in establishing the economic viability of emerging content channels: However, it's the arrival of and subsequent adoption by the mainstream audience that signals the societal acceptance of that content channel as being an important channel for business. Overtaking benchmarks like searches for the term "sex" is therefore an indicator of the broad-based acceptance of the underlying technologies. (my emphasis) - Excerpt of Evans' article

In other words, even if we WANT to have sex* more than chat with our friends and colleagues, in a normal day that's pretty difficult and so we spend most of our time talking about politics, parties and pictures (a sampling of my Facebook page today) instead.

Dave makes another great observation about how the sex stat demonstrates that Metcalfe's law of exponential networking utility - also demonstrated by LinkedIn's contraction of our networks from six degrees to three - is operating on the social web as well. I commend you to Dave's whole article; it's a good read (at least the geek in me finds it sexy).

*Of course in discussing sexual obsession, I'm speaking in general cultural terms. Need proof? Google "Hot" Trends 39 minutes ago show as: Leyrn, Jamie, Whitney and Jennifer... followed finally by "prime rate". So clearly, all references to sex in this post are merely social commentary; nothing personal:)

Secrets to Social Networking Success: 7 Lessons from the Association Sector

2008-09-16T05:30:00-04:00

As I wrote in my last post about providing real world value, I think the Association sector offers unique insight to how social technologies - social networking in particular - will be successful as it matures. As a result of attending ASAE's annual conference last month, I picked up a number of tips for helping social networking be successful. Many of these takeaways came from a great presentation by Jessica Medaille and Jennifer Ragan-Fore of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) on their Second Life initiative, which I referenced in my last post. I also garnered insight from presentations made by the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery (ASCRS), the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) and several others.

From these examples, and from a variety of other sessions and conversations at the conference, here are my key takeaways on '7 secrets' to making a social networking initiative work among a group of already-connected-to-some-extent professionals.

1. Participation profiles of real-world and virtual-world users will be different
People don't seem interested in duplicating their offline interactions online and why would they? No one has the time for that. ASCRS discovered that by offering 24x7 ability for ophthalmologists to share video and photo case studies in their (EyeSpaceMD) community, they attracted a new cadre of member in developing countries whose primary, if not only, participation is virtual. Similar results were noted by others among certain younger demographics and student populations. Though I think it is too early to tell, there did not seem to be evidence that active offline participants shift their participation exclusively to online, though it is reasonable to expect some rebalancing of time allotment might occur if they become active online.

2. Public or private networks? Both!
There was quite a bit of discussion around whether to participate in public networks like LinkedIn and Facebook or to invest an association-controlled private networks as the best approach. A "Secret Session" at ASAE which did not make it into the conference materials and was originally promoted exclusively on Facebook - and which was well attended - seemed to prove the point that both public and private networks serve a valuable purpose. While the public networks reach out and engage members, and in most cases non-members as well, where they interact with their own personal communities, the private communities offer them more focused and specific interaction opportunities. In addition to reaching different populations the point was made that engaging in both public and private participation provides the opportunity for redundant messaging. Just like a magazine ad does not provide the same potential for communication depth that a direct mail or white paper piece does, both serve their purposes and together they can be powerful for engaging your audience.

3. Use online initiatives to address unique needs and deliver 'real world value'
I detailed my observations on this issue in my last post, but in short some of the most compelling examples of social networking demonstrated how social technology initiatives can deliver real world value, but in a way that can only be delivered online. This is the social web's "killer app." The secret sauce formula for this will be unique to each community, however, so engage your community early in figuring out where the key to success lies. Let them lead you there.

4. Recruit "connectors," not just "enthusiasts"
ISTE learned a valuable lesson in that enthusiasts and champions who like your social media effort may or may not be able or willing to invest the time to really reach out to new members or facilitate regular participation - all of which are necessary to create and sustain the dynamic environment needed for success. By 'promoting' certain participants into more committed and active volunteer roles (e.g., "docents") within the community, tasked with connecting members, ISTE was able to first seed and later guide activity in the community as it grew. Recruiting, supporting and managing these connectors, just like any other volunteer corps, has helped them sustain the social initiatives' value and relevance over time and continues to help it expand its impact.

5. Create online opportunities for engagement
"Build it and they will come," is not a sound social networking strategy. Just like an lecture or seminar creates an excuse for offsides networking (often perceived as more valuable than the subject of the gathering), online events do the same thing. The fact that 24x7 availability makes your social web initiative capable of offering persistent value doesn't mean that it will do so, particularly if people have no excuse to visit and participate. Putting a real-time event (i.e., noon to 2pm, this Thursday) on their calendar gives people a reason to make the time to visit at the same time others are participating, increasing the chances they will engage socially and find enough value in the experience to come back to visit again. In addition to events, one association created wikis with "holes in the content" to give people enough of a framework for participation that they could jump in and start filling in the holes, a great example of seeding the effort and encouraging it to grow organically.

6. Encourage responsible controversy
Even though many communities (online and offline) engage in conflict avoidance, online controversy can attract engagement and become viral quickly. As the conflict heats up so do the traffic numbers and engagement metrics. From my personal experience, I would observe that people enjoy watching a good online fight when they are able to participate by observing from a "safe distance" and where they feel personally less threatened than they would in person. This dynamic can be a double-edged sword as well, of course, and contentious dialogs can easily spin out of control and become divisive public relations problems if not well managed. This is why, just as in offline meetings, online moderation is critical, as is "taking things private" to mediate and manage when necessary. The best way to prepare for this dynamic is to set out the Rules of Engagement through Terms of Service and 'plain English' ROE statements that members accept when they join and are held accountable to as they participate.

7. Be open to happy accidents - Success may be where you least expect it
ISTE reported that although they were targeting young adults with professional development offerings, their Second Life initiatives brought in members of all ages seeking social interaction with their peers. They adapted their effort to meet these needs and have a vibrant community that has contributed to their dramatic 54% membership growth in the last two years.

There were other tidbits that came out of the many discussions I had in sunny San Diego but it's now lunchtime and these represent the major themes. If anyone is curious about specific situations they confront in preparing a social networking initiative feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to share other information of relevance.

The Value of 'Real World' Value - Social Media Lessons from the Association Sector

2008-09-11T23:55:21-04:00

Good news! Successful social networking among trade and professional associations demonstrate that fundamental principals of business are thriving and that despite my periodic doubts, people still value value. Even better, if you're me, after studying several specific initiatives and talking to lots of people I have uncovered what I think is the pithy success formula for social networking success: enable something virtually which cannot be fully achieved in the real world, and ensure that it has 'real world value' to your participant base. We talk a lot about social networking lacking ROI, but where it delivers real world value, there is strong potential for ROI.

I follow the association sector's adoption and use of social media because I think the association sector is the perfect petri dish for B2B social media adoption since association members already value their strong and multilayered business communities in the real world, many of which are ripe for migration or expansion online. To explore this further, I attended the ASAE & The Center's annual conference in San Diego last month in order to get the pulse of how social media is working in this sector. I paid special attention to how these new strategies were integrated into their marketing efforts. My takeaway is that the sector's involvement is still largely experimental but that social media and networking is growing among associations overall and that there are several very noteworthy implementations that have a lot to teach us.

It was clear from the get-go at the conference (which was huge with over 5,000 participants) that ASAE was making a commitment to educate its membership of trade and professional association executives about social media. Much of this was due to the efforts of the Young Association Professionals (YAP) group that is doing some great work promoting and tracking the sector's adoption of new technologies. Some of the most active YAP members, Ben Martin and Lindy Dreyer - recently of SocialFish - also co-authored a study on association usage of social technologies. You can read the executive summary yourself but the surprising takeaway for me in the results is that more associations are experimenting with social networking (31%) than were heavily into blogging (24%). While I think there are many reasons for this, including the fact that the the majority of this activity is on LinkedIn and Facebook, which is a lower resource commitment than actually supporting your own blog or social network, it speaks to the fact that associations inherently understand the value in networking because it is the core of their value proposition to their members.

There's more to their interest than simple member services, however; many are participating out of fear as well, having experienced lower engagement and membership trends from young professionals over the past few years. Even membership trends are only part of their concern as some associations are experiencing direct competition from disenfranchised members (and non members) who are using social networking as replacements for traditional association involvement. This last fact scares sector leaders quite a bit, as it should, because it threatens the established business model most associations are built upon (i.e., member dues). To make it even more frightening, a few forward thinkers in the sector are predicting that the trade association of the future will have no dues structure but rely on discreet revenue generating offerings such as conferences, publications, research etc. Even if this extreme case does not come to pass for the majority of associations in the short term, there is clear pressure on association executives to evolve their historic business model in order to compete with Free.

For all the buzz and energy around this subject at the conference, though, there were relatively few examples of major initiatives to implement social networks within associations (as opposed to experimenting on Facebook and LinkedIn). This is understandable as such initiatives take time to implement and refine, but two examples did catch my attention, both for their creativity and for the 'lessons learned' that came out of them. These interesting initiatives were rolled out by the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

A couple of things were interesting about the ASCRS experience. First, by implementing a social network (EyeSpaceMD) that allows member ophthamologists to discuss photo and video of interesting surgical cases, ASCRS tapped into a "killer app" enabling their membership to explore professional issues on a scale they could never achieve in the real world. These global multimedia member discussions not only help the association achieve its core education and networking mission, but it gives individual members a starring role in content creation and peer-to-peer education that enriches their professional development as they engage in their own medical practices.

Second, the association is gaining something more than mission accomplishment out of this initiative, while providing a valuable service to existing members they are also appealing to a whole new market segment of 10,000+ ophthamologists in the developing world that they'd never been able to reach before. These doctors cannot afford to attend expensive conferences in the US and so previously simply did not participate or join the association. Now, through EyeSpaceMD ASCRS is attracting new members, many of whom are bringing unusual and interesting challenges not frequently observed in developed countries to the global discussion. This enriched global exchange of new and varied medical case information in the virtual world is simply impossible in the real world. ASCRS provided the technical infrastructure for virtual interactions and the members provide each other with content and networking which has tangible real world benefit. While it seems to be early to quantify a specific ROI on this effort, there is no question that delivered a solid business value to ASCRS in opening up an entirely new market segment for the organization to expand into.

ISTE's experience setting up shop in Second Life was equally interesting in how their initiative appealed to needs that were not - and arguably could not - be met in the real world. When ISTE started its Second Life initiative in 2006 they planned to appeal to younger members and prospects looking for professional development opportunities. What they also tapped into was an unmet need for members of all ages, who spent their days isolated in the classroom with children and youth, to socialize and network with peers in their off hours. Sensing and responding to this need the association began sponsoring social mixer events along with professional development opportunities and it was so successful that they've grown their Second Life membership to 3,000 (15% of their total membership) as well as attracted a cadre of 45 virtual volunteer "docents" in the Second Life world to meet, greet and network for them. ISTE's Second Life initiative was part of a larger and very successful membership drive which grew their member base by 54% over two years.

Most of us who are proponents of social marketing have always promoted it as a complement to real world efforts, and this is as it should be since social networking adoption is far from ubiquitous. What is so interesting to me about the experience of these two professional associations, however, is how it demonstrates that even as a complement strategy, social media efforts still need to provide unique value - unique to their audience and to their media. That value must manifest itself somehow in the real world, because at the end of the day the real world is where we all live. As we early adopters struggle with social media fatigue we must realize that to woo the rest of the world in to join us, it is only real world value that will bring them in. Real world value creation is the fundamental rule of business and I'm glad to see that just because we've happened on another cool technology, the basic rule still stands. Call me old fashioned (or old, that would fit too), but I find comfort in this fact.

Also, call me refreshed. I took the summer "off" from a bunch of stuff, including blogging, and feel all the better for it. Hope everyone else had a great time in the real world too.

(Note: My next post will delve into seven specific tips for making social networks implementations successful, based on the learnings from ASCRS, ISTE and more. Stay tuned and subscribe to this blog's feed or email delivery option.)

Who Says You Must Blog to Protect Your Good Name? A Case Study

2008-05-29T07:42:20-04:00

In recent weeks, I've noticed a new theme amongst the social media digerati that goes something like "how do we get the rest of the world to understand the promise of social media? How do we get all those laggard companies blogging and tweeting with us?" I've always cautioned my clients not to jump too far ahead of their customers and stakeholders in adopting any technology, and though I do believe that all companies should factor social media into their outreach and marketing strategies, it is far from appropriate for every company in every situation to use social media as a primary tool. Here's an example of where caution is warranted: the situation facing CACI in their response to allegations that their employees were involved in the Abu Ghraib torture scandals in 2004.

Last week I attended an Executive Biz book signing for the book Our Good Name which documents CACI's response to what Chairman of CACI's Board, Jack London, insists are false accusations against the defense contractor. The book is voluminous and detailed and London's defense at the event was impassioned.Shashi Bellamkonda from Network Solutions was there also and blogged about it. Check out his video from the event (note: I took the picture of him with Dr. London).

Explaining the situation in 2004 when the story first broke, Dr. London portrayed the company as on the defense against a media juggernaut that forced them into a public relations response strategy he characterizes in the book as "Whack-a-Mole". Four years after the fact, despite the book and the company's PR defense strategy to prove its innocence, legal and media allegations persist.

At the book signing several of us asked Dr. London about the company's decision in '04-'05 to pursue a traditional PR strategy of defending the company, specifically their decision not to blog about it or confront bloggers in public fora, opting for private communications which attempted to set the record straight. Dr. London's response was insightful. In essence he said that the company chose not to engage in public (including social media) dialog because it did not want to legitimize bloggers and journalists who it perceived were jumping on the attention-getting bandwagon of a hot story based on incorrect information.

While some social media enthusiasts might think this decision by CACI's management and public relations team is too conservative, let's consider several things at the outset. One, the Abu Ghraib incident was not about corporate profits or marketing consumer fads; it was about the dignity of human life and it called into question our nation's commitment to the values at the core of our society. Second, not only wereCACI's reputation and revenue base on the line, but criminal charges were being pressed and both the media and the government were on the hunt for who to blame in this incident that gave the the United States of America (including the President) a black eye. Thirdly, because of the serious nature of the offenses, theAbu Ghraib incident and everything about it was - and continues to be - highly emotionally charged with a wide variety of individuals around the world feeling strongly about the victims, the players and the principles at stake.

Regarding the players and how CACI chose to get its story out, let's look closely at who counts among CACI's stakeholder set and whether a social media strategy would have been appropriate in reaching them with the story of CACI's defense. The company's customers are primarily U.S. Government defense and intelligence agencies who do not value dirty laundry aired in public - theirs or anyone tied to them. These agencies are funded by Congress, relevant committees of which are tasked with spending the public's tax money wisely and who are constantly under public and media scrutiny. Though individuals in Congress have been known to take advantage of media scandals, few want to see the bloggosphere erupt in a ranting frenzy fueled by one of the companies they've contracted to carry on the serious work of a foreign war.

In short, CACI had little to gain in the eyes of its primary audience by pursuing an open information war to correct misinformation. The channels which were available to them to defend themselves, including direct communications with Congress and participation in government investigations provided them solid opportunities to communicate with very targeted messages to their primary audience.

Even if a more public dialog-oriented communications strategy might have been unnecessary to reach the company's customers and stakeholders, would CACI have been more successful in countering the tide of misinformation in the eyes of the general public using social media? I think there is a case to be made for this since their decision not to engage directly positioned them as less forthcoming than if they had put a spokesperson into the public debate in the same way Dell has in responding to Dell Hell.

However, let's remember something else about spokespeople and corporate participation in social media; companies in the midst of (or vulnerable to) legal proceedings need to be careful of what "they say" because it can and will be used against them. As I said last month in a post about organizational identity in the era of social media, "it's somewhat Utopian to think that good will alone will keep us safe from negative consequences of humanity unleashed." This is the reason that corporate bloggers such as Shashi (Network Solutions) and Richard Binhammer (Dell) often have their own personal blogs which, while highlighting their company affiliation, also have clear disclaimers noting that the opinions expressed are not those of the company.CACI was not only undergoing government investigations when it decided not to engage bloggers and journalists in social media, but it wisely understood that it would be a likely target for civil suits once criminal investigations were over. Thanks to Google's elephant memory on the web, whatever the company spokespeople "said" in public will be around for years to come, possibly fueling more legal action against them. In fact, this proved to be true even without their spokespeople actively using social media as demonstrated by a new suit filed against them this month.

In conclusion, despite my personal proclivities in advising my clients to open dialog and information , and regardless of the actual facts and culpability in this particular case, I respect CACI's decision not to engage on these weighty issues in the constantly recorded town hall meeting of the social web. They had little to gain from, and on behalf of, the folks who mattered most to their business and the potential downsides to employee spokespeople going "off message" were (and are) very high. As a result, the company's more traditional public relations strategy of press releases, journalist relations, a painstakingly researched book, congressional information meetings and legal action - while appearing mild to some social media mavens - was both aggressive for the previously low profile government contractor, and appropriate for the situation and audiences that mattered most.

(Un)usability: The Social Web's Dirty Little Secret

2008-05-23T17:08:22-04:00

I promised myself I wouldn't rant, but I will admit to being frustrated. I finally have to admit that "this social networking stuff" is not so easy to use.

While I try to design and build the functionality for my own social network site, B2B Expert's Forum, I find myself explaining almost daily the advantages of blogging and SNing to my friends and associates. And as I explain it to them I'm forced to confront the fact that lost between nonstandard functionality and the sheer newness of concepts like 'tweets' and 'trackbacks' lies the still unrealized promise of the social web. I'm not the only one, even Charlene and Josh have noticed it.

Why do I call these ancient (in web years) concepts new? Because in my general social media evangelism, client work and social network building I am committed to finding ways to bring the rest of the population into productive uses of this technology, uses that facilitate their day jobs instead of eating up their sleep time. In my very unscientific analysis, this means the 83% of the "mostly mature" population with whom the social web has yet to entrench itself. And to these people, who I think of as the "Unsocialized Web," tweets, trackbacks, friends lists, tags, RSS readers and ganks really are new.

In calling out the Unsocialized Web population I'm referring to the 35+ year olds who currently run the majority of our society. Though unscientific, my identification of this market segment is based on both personal experience in my real world business and social circles cross referenced with a liberal interpretation of Groundswell Technographics Profile data. According to Groundswell, only 17% of the 35-44 year old U.S. population are considered Creators. In the social web context - especially if applied to their productive work life - I would argue that becoming a Creator indicates an individual's true adoption of the social web (I accept that this argument is open for debate and am happy to elaborate if people are interested). Even fewer individuals in the 45+ age bracket fall into the Creator adoption category. At best, then, this age bracket of my 35+ year old peers* has just begun to move out of the 15% Innovator and Early Adopter population, which is the percentage of people who need to have adopted a new technology in order for that technology to start to ramp up to general adoption levels (i.e., Early Majority).

In other words, when us old folks buy into it, the social web goes mainstream.

I have sympathy for these Unsocialized Webbies and soon-to-be Early Majority people. It's not unusual for them to be flummoxed by the typical social network dashboard screen with apparently random (and thus chaotic) information on it and who don't have the time, patience or knowledge of what the social network application they're logged into is supposed to do to guide them in poking around until they can find the conversational threads and social connectively buried within. For these stressed out and already overwhelmed individuals, the social web ain't easy. I consider the primary issue usability, but there are some more fundamental issues buried beneath even that explanation.

What do I mean when I say it's a usability problem? Let's take the ever-so-important "friends list." A fundamental principal of usability is that expectations are met when an action is taken. For example, when I click on a hyperlink, I get a new page displaying something new and generally foreshadowed by the words or graphic I clicked on in the first place. Thus, I expect hyperlinks to give me new stuff I anticipated and for the most part on the web today my hyperlink usability expectations are rewarded. When links don't look like links, or take me to places I didn't expect to go, the usability of that site is violated. Calling the same thing by different names (or different things the same name) is also a violation of usability because it confuses the users' expectations. This naming convention principal is commonly violated on social network sites, as demonstrated by the friends list functionality.

What are my usability expectations when I join a social network and find a friends list? First of all, it's not always called "friends". Facebook, MySpace, Live Journal and other socially focused sites call them friends. LinkedIn calls them contacts list and connections. My ASAE profile calls them my network of contacts. Are these naming conventions different because the model is different? The former emphasizing informal connections (i.e., friends) more while the latter has a more formal directory orientation of business contacts? Maybe, though Plaxo, also a directory-oriented tool uses the terms friends, which it wants to import from my Google contacts list. But wait, Google also has a friends list. Google allows me to share articles I like in Google Reader with my friends. But who are my friends on Google if they're not my contacts list? After a little digging on my Google Reader settings page I learn that the folks I have in my Gmail chat list (which, by the way was imported from my AIM friend's list) are considered my friends on Google. Hm. But I have a Google Talk account also, so is it just my Gmail chat list or a consolidated Chat+Talk list I'm sharing articles with through my Google friends' list? And, wow, how do my Google friends "see" me vs. the way my Facebook friends see me? The former can see my favorite articles, online status and goodness knows what else (I haven't taken the time to figure it out). My Facebook friends can see that I'm drinking coffee yet again (if I've updated my status truthfully), who I've friended, who I've hugged, who's thrown a sheep at me lately and a host of other silly stuff. Oh. And they can see some of my blog posts, but not all (at least as far as I can tell now that I've gone and fiddled with all my privacy settings).

As you can tell (I hope), I'm a reasonably sophisticated user of all this stuff, and I find myself usability challenged when it comes to fully understanding what it means to have a social network friend. I've shied away from becoming a Twitter for this very reason. I know I'll be able to figure it out and probably have a blast when I get around to goofing off in the Twitter world for a while, but in the year-plus I've been toying with the idea I haven't found the time to dive in and roll around in the usability of it until I figure it out well enough to decide how I want to Twit myself out on the web. Nor have I wallowed around in Digg, del.icio.us, Newsvine or scads more. Is it any surprise that the Early Majority population gets stymied by even the most user friendly social networking application?

Beyond even usability issues of using the new verb, friend, having a friend in a social networking context implies things that you either understand through experience or you don't. Once the average person experiences being able to keep up with acquaintances' activities on an asynchronous feed, viewing activity that is both consciously published and automatically monitored, they begin to understand the friend concept, but the kind of relationship you can have with your "friends" on these different communities can vary really widely. My Ning community is a good example. I have friends there, but they are just listed on a page; unlike my other networks, I can't subscribe to a consolidated feed of their activity or posts (at least I haven't figured out how to yet). As a result, I hardly ever interact with my Ning friends and when I do I don't go to Ning, I do the modern equivalent of picking up the phone - I send them an email. When there is a certain amount of standard "friend" functionality out there on the social web and more people have used it once or twice and understand how it can connect them to new networks in new and interesting ways, I think we'll see some momentum build. Until then, I'm not so sure.

Much of this stutter-start to social web usage among the Unsocialized Web is not the fault of social network developers. Let's remember another factor in the usage of social networks which is a very human one. When you go to a party and don't know anyone, don't meet anyone you click with and feel like a wallflower, you leave feeling very unconnected. Similarly, if you join a social network and don't find people you care to interact with a lot, all the functionality in the world won't help you feel connected.

Ok, maybe I ranted just a little bit, but getting this out of my system has left me even more committed to building social networks "for the rest of us" where there is some level of utility for even the most unconnected individual and which eases them into connections easily and by providing clear value right from the get go. People are social creatures and when pulled by real value that helps them meaningfully in their real life, and which really connects them to others (real world and virtual world) in a genuinely fulfilling way, they will overcome the awkward usability quirks of our fine feathered technologists and bring the social web to its full fruition.

In the meantime, I'm going to see the opening of Indiana Jones tonight, and according to Rotten Tomatoes, that means I can stop angsting about all this, sit back and enjoy an old fashioned one-way, noninteractive entertainment experience while physically surrounded by my most important social network of youngsters and other folks who are young at heart.

*Ok, I'm a little older than 35-44, but only barely and certainly only physically.

I hope everyone (in the States) has a wonderful holiday weekend.

Organizational Identity in the Age of Social Media

2008-04-30T17:12:12-04:00

I’m very late in picking up a conversational thread with Ben Martin that I dropped in Feb(!) about how organizations can and should participate in the social web. I need to set the record straight if nothing else that Ben and I are in strong agreement on the problem – if not the solution.

In short, Ben and I agree that, as he says so eloquently, organizations are becoming "conversationally impotent in today's marketplace" to the extent that they don't let their employees and customers champion them in personal and individual ways from within the social web (and in the real world as well). Where Ben and I may not be in agreement is that I do not think the solution is to send these employees and customers forth unprepared, unmonitored and unchecked to shape the public image of the organization according to their own personality because there are very real downsides to the organization in doing this, and because some of the potential upside may be missed as well.

This fundamental dilemma - how to enable an organization's broader audience to carry forth its identity while still maintaining some level of control over the dialog and "company line" is the essential challenge for strategic marketers in the days, months and years ahead; and how we handle it will render us either essential or irrelevant to our organizations' success in the marketplace. Personally, I plan to be on the side of "essential."

My discussion with Ben started with a conversation about how organizations encourage people to act as individuals so they don't appear antisocial on the social web. I had commented that “[organizations] can’t just traipse out into the social realm in the same way that individuals like you and I can.” In response, Ben said (in summary):

“These vestigial theories [of traditional marketing and branding] are ingrained with concepts that are rendering most organizations conversationally impotent in today’s marketplace. The new marketers know this: that in the customer’s view, every person employed by an organization is the organization. This is true whether at the cashier’s desk, on the phone with the call center, and even in the web’s social media hangouts. So although organizations themselves are not living, breathing individuals, they are made up of living breathing humans. So I say organizations should give their humans the right to act like it. I’ll take it a step farther: organizations should encourage their humans to act like it - express their personality, show some empathy, deviate from the script and so on.”

I agree with Ben that traditional marketing theories are rapidly becoming useless in the social media world. In a socially mediated environment, it’s not really possible to control most of the organizational messages the way we used to - carefully crafting the puzzle of our message and presenting a tidy picture to public perception as a cohesive, perfect and compelling whole. We need to adjust. And we need to do so while also communicating to those stakeholders that still engage with us in old (unsocial) media ways. This challenge will create a lot of opportunity for smart marketers in the future, but it may not be easy getting there.

I also agree with Ben that the fundamental solution lies in enabling humans with an interest in representing the organization, including customers in addition to employees, to be themselves. (For a great example of this, read Toby Bloomberg's interview with Richard Binhammer of Dell.) Utilizing these individuals’ own creativity, talent and yes – quirks – will be critical to all organizations’ marketing success in the not-too-distant future.

Of course, this personality-driven approach sets off alarm bells for most marketers, worried that the message will become garbled in some strange game of telephone as thousands of individuals run off on their own saying whatever they want to about the organization. To some extent this is already happening and can only be managed. I'm just starting to read Rohit Bhargava's new book Personality Not Included which I expect to give lots of good ideas on how to handle this "opportunity". I also agree with Ben (and Rohit) that these uptight marketers need to chill out to avoid ulcers and inappropriate policies which will get in the way of their effectiveness. As a profession, marketers need to find new ways to enable the customers, employees and stakeholders that can help us, not muzzle their creativity and enthusiasm. I think this approach will be successful because I believe in the fundamental goodness of human beings, in their desire to participate with us in return for what Charlene and Josh call “psychic income” in their new book, Groundswell.

But here’s where I struggle with Ben’s perspective as he's articulated it. Those of us that call ourselves professional marketers (and are aware of the social media phenomenon at all) have a problem in this new world where social networks are like air (to quote Charlene Li): how do we do our jobs, promoting and presenting organizations in a cohesive and valuable way to all their stakeholders when some of them are looking to exploit its vulnerabilities? This is particularly challenging for publicly held companies which have investor communities to manage in addition to customers and employees to keep happy. Further, in a global economy where certain competitive commercial intelligence literally becomes industrial espionage, the downsides to competitive information leaks go far beyond public perception.

In the new social web reality, the vision of employee and customer enthusiasts running all over cyberspace is wonderful and we want to enable it, but it's somewhat Utopian to think that good will alone will keep us safe from negative consequences of humanity unleashed. If your organization has ever suffered a malicious public relations attack, a gut-wrenching stock drop immediately after an accidental exec misquote or a competitive product launch two weeks before your own super-secret launch, you know what I mean. The downsides can be devastating. For a peek at how the social web can enable such serious challenges to organizational survival, read Charlene and Josh's account of how the social web has already turned on its very creators: Chapter one of Groundswell documents how Digg angered its users when it complied with a legal challenge to remove a popular Rudd-O blog entry publishing protected information.

There's no going back to the good old days of marketers crafting organizational identity, I agree. Marketers no longer control (if they ever did) the message with spiffy copy and culturally appropriate graphics and have to turn to new techniques. I think these new techniques will have more to do with shaping the message and then passing it on to others in ways that enable them to expand on it most accurately (e.g., the Social Media Press Release and its evolution). But here's the catch: Marketers don't run most of the parts of the organization that will be carrying the organizational identity forward in the new world, and too often they are mistrusted by the very champions they need to enable.

Here's a perfect example: Geoff Livingston (Buzz Bin) had a problem with JetBlue last week. In a Twitter exchange with JetBlue's customer service blogger, Geoff found a sympathetic ear attached to a person who was unable to solve his problem. Is Geoff being overly critical by blogging about this and making JetBlue look bad? I don't think so. He had legitimate customer service issues that needed fixing. Is JetBlue to be completely trashed because it hasn't figured out how to give individuals using social media tools the power to fix everyone's problem immediately? Not necessarily. Granting customer service fix ability to individuals (on a responsible and trackable basis) is complicated on the back end and can easily be abused. Further, the marketing department's ability to drive customer service policies - and the procedural, training and systems changes that go along with them - is usually arm's length at best. Despite the blinding speed of social media, turning the ship of a large corporation's customer service infrastructure without tipping it over can take time and marketing doesn't always have the clout needed to prioritize these changes in the first place.

As a result of this kind of internal company dynamic, the marketing department is going to struggle to be an effective enabler of company identity in the new social media world. For marketing professionals to play a leadership role, then, things need to change. How? I'm still working on that part. It's part of my Branding in the Round theory, which is still incubating. Let's just say that I think the marketing department of the future looks a bit different than the one we all grew up in. More to come on this point.

Thanks again to Ben for keeping the conversation going. Comments and thoughts welcome. This is a conversation very worth having.

It's the Community...

2008-04-23T10:38:24-04:00

I have a good friend who I give marketing assistance on a pro bono basis. I've convinced her to blog, set up the blog for her and turned over the keys and she's blogging, but we still get into discussions about "why do people do this social media thing?" Recently, she helped me rediscover an obvious truth as we discussed why some social media is just not worth participating in.

"It's the community, Stupid." (My words, not hers.)

As I prepare to set up the B2B Expert's Forum, it's something I need to pay attention to all over again.

Over our weekly pro bono coffee (we go dutch and I give her free advice) I was waxing eloquent about how I found most people I came across in the social media world very thoughtful and responsible. But her experience has been very different and she referenced running across "whackos, nutcases and browbeaters." What explains our opposite experiences? It turns out she's reading the blogs on major media sites and her experience tracks with feedback I've gotten from my big media journalist friends who would not dare go near responding to comments they receive on their stories posted on the web for fear of being inundated by email wank they don't have the time to delete from their inboxes.

My friend and I are operating in totally different online communities and the more we talked, the more it became clear to me that the sites she frequents were using social media technologies (namely, blogs) but are serving such vast audiences that they really weren't all that social. This allows for the participation of the Anti-Social Web 2.0 participant who spouts off without any real personal accountability to other participants who, if they really knew them, they might feel the pressure to exhibit basic manners around. This "mass social" phenomenon explains why so many in my offline circles don't get social media because they haven't been caught up in a true social network yet, where people know each other by name and interact on a personal basis. A blog is not a social media phenomenon, it's just a web site that's got a nifty built-in content manager and that makes it easy to post frequently, organize your content and reference other people's sites. It's a great soapbox to yell from and/or be yelled at, but it's not inherently social unless you use it to carry on your part of a larger conversation.

And that's when it hit me. For the four hundred thousandth time in my 20something year career in technology marketing, I said to myself, "it's not the technology, it's what we do with it!"

This thought would have gone into the total "duh" category until it also occurred to me that in starting up the B2B Expert's Forum I was going to be confronting the challenge of actually building one of those "larger conversations" that I so enjoy in other realms. We expect to grow it past the "everyone knows everyone" stage and this may present us with challenges as we exceed the size that is relatively easy to keep civil due to basic tribal laws of human behavior.

Based on my experience in other communities, I plan to closely monitor the Forum in order to make sure people are getting value out of it and can easily participate in the conversation. I don't intend to do any censorship, but I expect my moderation activity will put me in the position to know if there is any abuse of our Terms of Use (based on Ning's) or other questionable behavior. It's a community of business professionals so I don't expect many issues like my friend encounters at the anti-social big media sites, but it's also a community of human beings and we all know what that means.

I've participated in groups on professional groups on LinkedIn, Facebook and Ning but I'd like to learn from others as well. What works for you in a professional social network? Anyone out there had success or failure already in building professional communities? Advice to share? Bring it on, please!

Yes, I'm still here....

2008-04-17T01:12:21-04:00

I've been scarce on the subject of social media lately, but I'm stll here.

And just for fun, I took this unofficial quiz to plot myself on the Forrester/Groundswell Social Technographic segmentation scale. I think it pegged me - unofficially, of course. I do quibble with one conclusion it draws about my personality, which is that I'm a good target for social media marketers. I'm so busy "creating" I don't have time to read/view/absorb nearly as much as I'd like to - which includes ads and marketing aimed at me. Oh well, can't have everything.

Discover Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile Your Result: Creator With all the blogging and video making you do, I'm surprised you had time to take this quiz. Whether podcasting or maintaining a website, the amount of content you create makes your Groundswell Social Technographic group a valuable target for social media marketers. As a creator, you join an elite 18% of the US online population. Now turn off the computer, your family misses you.
Joiner
Spectator
Critic
Inactive
Collector
Discover Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile See All Our Quizzes

I do encourage anyone interested in the Intellectual Property issues associated with social media to read Josh Bernoff's post and to follow this discussion about this quiz.

Edited: October, 2008

Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream

2008-03-22T09:08:38-04:00

Looks like the "new is old" yet again. How do we know the rush is over? Social media's demograhics are starting to look more like the regular web (did you know almost 40% of social network users on Facebook, MySpace and Friendster are between 35 and 54 according to Comscore?) and investment is predicted to slow (after stunning growth last year, it should be pointed out.)

Frankly, I think this is great news because it means that we'll get down to really figuring out how to integrate this wonderful new technology into our economy more fully, explore real revenue models and probe the essence of why it's valuable to people. This 'big shift' in influence from top-down to around-and-around that we all talk about, fear and welcome will begin to become real on a broader scale as well. Already I hear more "buzz" about Web 2.0 in the product development meetings than just the marcom meetings, and that tells me companies are looking more seriously at social media as revenue generating instead of simply a froth machine.

All that said, I still like a little froth on my cappuccino. With social media's ability to give voice to the 'common wacko' and to the independent expert alike, I doubt seriously we're in for a bare-topped cup.

Influencers - Dynamics Thereof & Whether We're Learning Anything New

2008-03-10T18:44:18-04:00

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for once again highlighting research being done into the dynamics of influencers in his blog post today. There is this debate out there in the blogsphere about who really counts - the highly connected influencer or the regular guy or gal who knows a bunch of people and talks to them on a regular basis? New research, by Duncan Watts and now CNET, is challenging the "traditional view" that a few highly connected influencers hold the key to market opinion. The research seems to show that there's more to it than that.

Hello? Duh.

Maybe I've been in a backwater for the last 20 years of my marketing career, but who says "the traditionalists" stop marketing after they've reached the influencers? I think there's some great information in this new research and recommend that everyone go and read it, but I don't necessarily agree with the implication that it somehow invalidates years of marketing theory, if anything it validates it. Specifically:

The Influencer Marketing Plan should always be one of many channel strategies integrated into a larger promotional strategy that includes the customer - who has always been the most desirable Word of Mouth (WoM) advocate anyway. This is why a highly connected influencer like Walter Mossberg is so valuable. Not only is he paid to reach millions of other highly desirable consumers, but he (and his staff now) goes out of his way to use the toys he writes about, making him more credible than a lot of tech reviewers out there. Will Walter Mossberg always be important to a consumer tech marketing plan? You bet. If you can reach some of his more enthusiastic his readers/product-brand champions at the same time you reach him, should you? Go for it. (Just be sure your product is awesome - you might be able to have a conversation with Mossberg about it's drawbacks that mitigates a total slam in his column, whereas many of the others with whom you have a less personal relationship maybe be less knowledgeable or forgiving.)

In a Media 1.0 world it was expensive to reach the larger middle section of influencers and thus more cost effective to reach them by targeting the "more connected" few at the beginning of your campaign. The fact that we can now reach the second tier - the larger tier - of moderately connected influencers doesn't invalidate the fact that the highly connected and visible folks have influence, it only reinforces what we've always known, that people are influential in their own circles and the more people talk about you the better. That's what Word of Mouth (WoM) marketing is always about and always has been.
Media 2.0 changes the economics of this reality - because now it costs the about the same to reach the highly connected people as it does to reach the moderately connected. This isn't a change in human behavior or our understanding of it, it's a change in the opportunity that Word of Mouth in Social Media (WomiSoM) brings us. Now we can dramatically expand our WoM reach at no (dramatically) greater expense. Cool. Let's do it. [Note: This "no increase in cost" statement is only partially true to the extent that there is a variable cost in maintaining each individual influencer relationship no matter how connected or unconnected they are. If your influencer strategy includes personal relationships, which is should to some degree, there will be some natural limit on how much you can scale it without the quality of the relationship management suffering.]
Let's look at what the research tells us:
- that most "influencers" (of all levels of connectivity) are motivated by a desire to share information and help others;
- they are interested in multiple subjects; and
- that they value information that is "unique and trusted."

What I find interesting about this information is that it tells us that much of what we know about marketing to the top tier of highly connected influencers applies to the larger segment of moderately connected people too. This is good news because it doesn't mean we change our tactics as much as expand our concept of the target. We still have to give them relevant information that's accurate and validated so they won't look bad if they pass it on, and we have to make it easy for them so they will and can pass it on.

The CNET research draws this conclusion by recommending, "packaging creative in a way that is easy to forward and share" (p. 8). See my last post for ideas about how to provide them information to easily enable WoMiSoM. The Social Media Press Release is a start in this direction, but I don't think it goes far enough for reasons I articulate there.

Is this rocket science? Nope. Just plain old marketing. What's all the fuss about?