Member-to-Member

Associations: Leadership and Missed Opportunities in Social Media

"Why would I want to read blogs and learn about what some high schooler had for breakfast?"

I've heard this too many times from professional colleagues who seem to take Andrew Keen's view in The Cult of the Amateur, that all that blathering from anyone who wants to speak isn't necessarily a good thing. And as those of us who watch social media know, organizations far and wide have responded to the scary no-one's-in-control reality first surfaced by the Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) with trepidation and concern. [Cluetrain Wakeup Message to Organizations: No organization or individual is in control of their marketing conversation anymore now that customers, employees and whackos can blather very loudly in cyberspace and can influence anyone who likes what they have to say, regardless of its veracity or tact.]

Despite their hesitation, however, anecdotal evidence in my corner of the world points to the fact that organizations are beginning to experiment with models for how to move beyond the "control paranoia" to leverage the power of social media for their stakeholders. Nowhere does the potential for social media seem as great as in the marketplace for trade and professional associations, yet association executives are generally as conservative, if not more so, than other business execs when it comes to their comfort zone on sharing the megaphone. And it's for this reason that I give ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, credit for helping take a leadership position with their members to help them figure it out. This month's ASAE monthly magazine includes a special Social Media supplement which has some excellent articles, including a cover story article by Keen himself.

[In the rest of the article (1722 words) I discuss Keen's article and look at what Associations are doing (and not doing) in social media adoption.]

The Psychology of Social Media - Some things Never Change

I've been harboring a theory for a while now that human beings don't change very much when they go online. We watch some of our communication behaviors change as we become addicted to various technologies (Twitter seems to the be the most annoying recent addition to this habit, though I'll admit I haven't tried it... see more on why below). But fundamentally, we use online tools to do the same things we do offline - kill time, learn, play, work. When it comes to social media, just like in the real world, we move between networks depending on which other friends are there, what they're doing and why we want to interact with them. If we're loyal to groups offline, we're probably loyal to them online. If we're fickle, well - we hop networks online too.

[Under the link I muse on about MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google's OpenSocial, Twitter, LiveJournal and Ning with more opinions about the psychology of the human species.]

B2B Social Media - Real World Research

I attended the New New Internet conference last week in Washington D.C. (Tyson's Corner, VA actually - we here in D.C. are trying to create a regional feel to the large but fragmented tech community). I had the good fortune to see a presentation by Janet Hall, CMO of TMNG Global on some qualitative research they did into B2B uses of social media. As serendipity would have it, I had been introduced to Janet virtually the week before and so this week I followed up with her in person to discuss some of the more detailed findings, including the importance of companies' Return on Engagement (ROE) and some actual examples of how companies are beginning to experiment with social media in a B2B context. First, Janet's summary of the "so what?" on B2B social media.

"Why should online communities matter so much to the B2B sector? For one thing, the opportunities from social media offer a perfect alignment with the key objectives B2B marketers cite most often: transforming customer relationships, expanding brand identity, and lead generation. Secondly, the ability to leverage the collaboration and participation in online communities – which is at the heart of what Web 2.0 is all about, after all – is becoming a critical differentiator in the B2B marketplace and is likely to define a successful marketing strategy in the future. Customer collaboration, a form of user generated content (UGC), is the ultimate value-added data for a company; harnessing that data is the Holy Grail for the marketing department. It’s as much about knowledge management as it is about marketing."         

-Excerpt from Janet Hall's TMNG GLobal blog entry Why Social Media Matters

Behind the link, I've summarized some of the other interesting findings from the research, and provide a link to the full study.