I made another presentation, and overview of social media. Here are those slides:

Finding the optimal balance between the social needs of employees and management needs of the enterprise must be a core design assumption for identity management strategies. As employees redefine, extend, or contradict these formal identity assignments, there may be unintended consequences to identity management practices of the organization at-large unless action is taken to view identity as a shared responsibility. Increased use of social tools and applications that span internal and external environments will only compound the situation unless organizations begin to act now.

opens his review with the clever idea of searching for “google” at Bing and for “bing” at Google. He says Bing gives you a concentrated dosage of stuff about Google, while Google is all over the map with its “bing” results. Well, sure! “Google” is a made-up word with only one dominant meaning, so of course Bing gives you concentrated Google goodness. But “Bing” has lots of meanings, so Google’s right to return a mix of bingy words…with Microsoft Bing as the top result. Now, it is true that, as Hiawatha says, Microsoft gives its “Google” results in convenient tabs about Microsoft the corporate entity as well as listing sub-pages within the google domain, while Google’s top return on “Microsoft” only gives you a set of sub-pages. Microsoft looks more like WolframAlpha in that regard, and that’s a good way to look. But, Google also recently added easier ways to refine and expand searches (by timeline, by WonderWheel), etc., as Hiawatha points out. So, it really depends on what you’re trying to do. As always. (Type MSFT into either and you’ll get similar boxed stock data.)

But it’s complex, and the appropriate strategy could be markedly different from one brand to the next. Before beginning the virtual barn-raising in a new community initiative, tread carefully and consider what success means to you.

He goes on to say that

From a marketer’s perspective, the idea of a brand community sounds great. The expectation is that it will be a petri dish which will virally grow customer engagement, and this type of engagement will lead to sales. The problem is, few customers jump into that petri dish, fewer still will stick around, and the community interaction usually has no contextual bridge to purchasing. That’s three strikes. Most brand communities serve a very, very small set of customers (in relation to their customer base or market size) with either a lot of passion or a lot of time on their hands. And let’s face it, not every brand has the potential to inspire lasting passion and sustain a Facebook-type community. Exceptions are cult brands that have passion and community built into their product ethos, such as Harley Davidson or Apple. But you can’t create that by putting up a community. That starts way upstream, with the product and the brand.

I wouldn’t call Facebook a community – it’s a crowd within which communities can emerge. I would define community (following Cliff Figallo, former director of the seminal online community, the WELL, as shared relationships that persist and gain a history of interaction. Social network systems like Facebook are more fragmented. Facebook has a group-forming facility which can work as a platform for intentional community, but many of those groups don’t get a great level of adoption and participation. I say all this to make the point that Sam and I probably don’t agree about what constitutes community, and how or whether community can scale. The most successful online communities (e.g. the WELL) have scaled through the emergence of smaller subcommunities as the number of active participants grows, and that’s a good thing if you can meet the community management challenge it presents.

He says “when the community audience is small and unfamiliar with one another, a prospective visitor’s motivation to build social capital or help others dissolves.”

If visitors are not passionate about the topic, they are less likely to jump in. And for both reasons the vibrance and participation in the community are next to go. Which causes the next visitor not to join. This is the domino effect that leads most brand communities to turn into a ghost town.

I don’t disagree here, but there’s a solution to this problem. From my comment on his post: “seed the community early with members who will commit and persist, who care about the subject(s) of the community, and who are articulate.”

I think the thrust of Sam’s post here is that the Bazaarvoice social commerce model – which “creates interactions and contributions around the product or service they’re trying to sell” – is the most effective solution – but I don’t know that it’s a community solution. This model “fosters opportunities for the creation of content that helps others make purchasing decisions, driving more sales and resulting in a quicker ROI.” He goes on to say this:

This type of strategy needn’t require a person to register or become a full-fledged member — they should be able to write a product review, ask or answer a question, or write a story without feeling like they have to make a commitment. Whether that contributor feels like they’ve joined a community by participating is not the point. Their contribution is useful for the visitors to the site, who came to learn more about the brand and get their questions answered — not to “friend” people or help others. And yet, once a critical mass of content is shared, a community of shared interest will start to form. People will write the 101st review because there’s a community around a product! This “accidental community” starts to form, which amplifies the engagement to the content and profiles.

I don’t see much chance of persistence or relationship in this context – this is more of an interactive audience than a community. This is not to diminish the proven value of the Bazaarvoice product – the growth of the company suggests they’re creating real value with their approach.

This leaves the question whether “brand community” is desirable and worth the effort required to make it happen, and I would say that depends on the brand and the goals for the community. You might want to create a community of advocates – or critics – to work as something like a focus group, and that community would not necessarily have to scale large to be effective. You might want to support a very active affinity group – an example is the platform for its community of riders created by Specialized Bikes, where you could find other Specialized writers and set up rides.

If you think community is a good fit for your business, you should pursue a well-considered strategic conversation – make sure your goals are clear and that they would be served by a community solution, and how that would work.

In the contemporary world of social media, we advise clients to start with what we call a listening platform to track and understand online conversations, determine who has influence within those conversations that are most relevant, and create a strategic analysis to drive a smart social media strategy.

Here’s the video, just listen:

1. Listen (really listen) to what people are staying about you.
2. Be clear about your business objectives and goals.
3. Step into the social web – find a platform and give it a try.

Read more at ClickZ.

Contact Social Web Strategies for more information on getting started in social media.

Fabulous Social Web Strategies colleague Honoria created a wonderful set of paintings during Interactive Austin 2009, including the one above, which is her impression of the Emergent Leadership panel including David Armistead and I with Clay Spinuzzi from the University of Texas.

Thomas Baekdal created this visual history of information. He presents a pretty good summary of the evolution of media, and an assessment of the future that sounds right.

…information will not be something you ‘consume’ a certain times – like you did with prime-time on TVs. The information stream will be a natural part of every second of your life. It is not something you get, it is something you have.

That’s a complete evolution to “pull” or on-demand media and information. Good summary question:

Are you still trying to get journalists to write about your products? Are you still making websites? Is your social networking strategy to ‘get a Facebook Page’?

…or…

Are you making yourself a natural part of people’s stream of information?

With the number of airline-issued credit cards, grocery-store club cards, department-store credit cards, and reward accounts with hotels, airlines, and car-rental agencies, companies have tons of information about their customers and their purchase patterns. But almost no companies use that data strategically. By “strategically” I mean using information to identify their most profitable customers and figure out, by running experiments, what to do to capture a larger share of the customers’ expenditures on a given category of product or service.

I suspect companies don’t do more with customer data because rigorous analysis and experimentation can be costly. Is there an efficient and less expensive way to “know your customer”? Perhaps through informed and strategic use and assessment of social media?