Have you recently connected with anyone from your past? If you have a facebook account, the answer is probably a big fat resounding “Yes!” If you want to frame Web 2.0 as a paradigm it can be done thusly:
We don’t say goodbye anymore.
Back in the day, if you wanted to stay in contact with someone, you had to be “pro-active” — call them, schedule something, etc. If you graduated high school, moved on to a new job, or moved out of state, you also lost touch with those people you shared space with. Today, the act of staying in contact with someone is “passive.” Just log onto facebook, myspace, or twitter and read what all your friends, old and new, are up to.
Case in point, I recently tweeted the following:
“Incidentally we are going to see @average_jane‘s band this evening at the lake “whatever” pub by Lake LottaWatta. c’mon out. no big whoop.”
Because I use my twitter account to auto-populate my facebook status, two of my best friends from high school instantly knew what I was up to and surprised me by already being there before I arrived.
It was one of the most pleasant surprises of my adult life.
And as the paradigm shifts for individuals, the same thing is happening for business. Companies are becoming defined more and more by identities, (i.e. people who actually work for the company). For instance, the twitter world recognizes “Frank” as the man behind comcastcares. jgoldsborough is the man behind Sprint. GaryVee is really the brand, WineLibrary is just where he sells wine. And for their companies/business, these identities are becoming of premium value.
If one of these people happen to say “Goodbye” to their respective companies, who will you say “Goodbye” to? The company or the person?
Social Media•
on March 19th, 2009•
I appreciate the social media communities’ high expectations. We agree that if you are going to do something then you should do it 100%. However, I wonder if our bar isn’t too high sometimes. I recently read a post about Charles Schwab’s “embarrassing attempt” at social media. I checked out the site and yes it is internally focused and makes attempt to monitor the conversation by having comments sent to their PR department for consideration. You could say they are only testing the waters by just dipping their toe and not fully embracing social media. If you have never worked in a big corporation then you may struggle to understand this approach.
Why don’t corporations get it?
When you are a big company with millions customers you analyze every move. You spend lots of money and time with “experts” (many of whom are traditional in their thinking) to decide how you move in the marketplace. Especially in this economy, you are diligent and prudent prior to making any kind of splash as there is no room for costly mistakes. So, you can imagine that getting a company to adopt new practices is like getting a huge ship to turn. Often times, getting a company to just “dip the toe” is a big accomplishment. I speculate this is why we have seen such a slow adoption of social media by companies.
The social media community hasn’t been that accepting of those dipping their toe (Charles Schwab) or patient with companies that may have made mistakes (Motrin) trying something new. I understand the frustration both on the part of the community and the corporations, however we need to find some middle ground or both sides lose the influence they so desire.
Why the control?
The social media community has a disdain for anyone who attempts to control their conversation. The corporation has concerns about losing control of their message since they appreciate the significant risk in doing so. The social media community understands that there is no such thing as message control and have proven time and time again the impact to companies who get caught in the negative viral channel of social networking sites. The corporation senses the need for change and transparency but just like many of us who approve comments on our own blogs to protect us from spam, they want to protect themselves by maintaining some approval control.
It is one thing to understand what to do and another to take action. An analogy might be that I want to get in shape but instead of committing to the $1000 treadmill and the room it will take in my bedroom, I’ll challenge myself to work out every day for 30 days before making the purchase. I do this to justify the investment and risk of cluttering my room with something that I may lose interest in a few months. Nothing is black or white and those of us in the social media space have seen where a few key influences can cause a lot of negative feeling when it might not be justified. As various sites become more mainstream this risk only grows. We have also discussed the long-term sustainability of various platforms…what is hot today may not be tomorrow. Trying to prepare contingency plans to minimize the risk is what scares the hell out of corporate America and is why they tend to move slow in to the space. They don’t want to spend big dollars on something that might negatively impact their brand and/or no longer be relevant tomorrow, hence they test by dipping the toe.
Accelerating adoption and INFLUENCE
To understand why open conversation is so important to us we must understand the value we get from it. Ultimately, we want to participate, be heard, and matter…we want our voices to mean something and be valued…we want to INFLUENCE. The more opportunity to influence the more power we have to get what it is WE want (almost sounds like control doesn’t it? Ahh, the beauty of irony). The more people/companies that are listening the more opportunity we have to influence. We need to accelerate the companies’ adoption of social media space and not slow it down. I am not saying we shouldn’t be critical and demand better, smarter efforts by companies, we absolutely should…it is our responsibility to do so. I am saying we need to be more mature about it. Triggering an assault on companies that might have taken a mis-step or are moving too slowly isn’t going to help with adoption. Quite the contrary. We need to offer solutions, suggestions to improve, and encouragement by welcoming their efforts vs. slamming the door. Think of it as an opportunity to introduce yourselves and offer quality help.
Inviting us to email our opinions to the PR department is better than nothing at all and companies who are giving us an opportunity to influence their decisions should be applauded. Let’s give those companies who are trying the benefit of the doubt that they are listening and attempting to practice new ways to engage with us. Those that don’t will begin to lag behind because our money will be spent on what we want anyway and not what they shout at us.
Before you jump on the next corporate bashing bandwagon think about the very sermon you preach … are you listening? Are you engaging? Are you helping? Or, are you just shouting?
Social Media•
on March 9th, 2009•
With the rise in Twitter usage and the publication of a plenitude of stories on influential news sources, there has been lots of guidance provided recently on how to get thousands of followers using “follower-pumping” practices. These usually recommend using “pyramid-scheme-” type tools, following people with similar interests who will follow you back, writing press releases, among other approaches. The more followers you amass, the greater the likelihood that the new people that you follow will follow you also. The use of Twitter-related rating services like Twitter Grader can also work in tandem with having a large number of followers to attract even more people, since numbers of followers is one method such tools use to calculate influence scores.
So what is the downside to such approaches compared to getting followers organically? Getting lots of followers increases your influence, right?
These tactics can be likened to startup companies that obtain venture capital funding early in their existence but don’t have a compelling value proposition. Just like VC funding can speed the development of promising platforms, rapidly increase a company’s market share due to spending on advertising and help a company grow rapidly in size, tactics to increase followers using schemes do work well enough to guarantee that one builds a large following.
But what happens after that? What do you do after you get a few thousand followers? Are your tweets interesting enough or valuable enough to sustain that number? Have you interacted directly with enough of your followers that they’ll remain with you even as you focus on gaining more followers? Are you producing enough content on other channels to sustain the number of followers you’ve amassed?
If your answer to these questions is “no” then you run the same risk as a promising startup that has created initial market momentum through outside funding, but doesn’t have a good enough product or management team to continue building profitable growth. Inevitably the funding runs out and since the company doesn’t generate enough revenue to remain profitable with a less-than-compelling product, it goes out of business. Likewise, on Twitter your followers will eventually leave you if you cannot sustain your follower count with authentic and useful interactions and you’ll be left with little credibility. Building a new audience when your reputation has been compromised is even more difficult than building that audience organically, one person at a time, through authentic and direct interaction.
Social Media•
on March 9th, 2009•
Most social media articles cover the marketing side of social media. How marketshare can be gained, products sold, reputations built on the savvy use of web 2.0 tools. But as with any compelling new technology, this medium can also be used for other purposes. One of these is the social media bomb. Defined as a series of coordinated acts on social media networks, the social media bomb is intended to attract attention through a viral dissemination of a specific message. Recently, Amnesty International asked it’s supporters to send out a message at 1:10 p.m. on Friday, March 6 on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The message: “Each year, 1 in 10 women in Britain experience rape or other violence,” was intended to raise public awareness of this issue. The results of this social media bomb are not yet known, but one can see a difference in impact between Twitter, where pages of retweets still appear and MySpace and Facebook, where nary any evidence of the message exists. Nonetheless with the profusion of social networks, and the ability to communicate on them ubiquitously, one can imagine more such awareness raising efforts in the future.