Member-to-Member

On Leadership

Jamie Notter accidentally started a meme on leadership for association executives which I've enjoyed reading. He didn't tag me but as I was reading people's entries, I realized that while working with executive teams, I've developed a few "themes" that - while grounded in my social media marketing view of the world - are applicable to organizational leadership more broadly. This advice is pertinent to commercial companies, non-profits and associations; it is targeted at CEOs and their direct reports but any leader should find it useful. Here are my three pieces of advice for leaders:

1. Lead Towards a Vision Impossible 
2. Try to Put Yourself Out of Business
3. Be the Best of Who You Are.

Twitter as Social Experiment

I, like everyone else I know and read in social mediaville, am still trying to figure out what's so compelling about Twitter. I say "compelling" with a grain of salt because I don't always feel all that compelled to hang out there (though I do so more now that I'm using @Tweetdeck). On the other hand, I do go back pretty regularly to decide who to return follow, check out links and reply to message; I even tweeted my first conference last week and it did make me feel more connected as well as helped me meet new people. Most importantly, I'm always thrilled when I get a reply or direct message; it adds a little spark to my day. I think that spark is what is so cool about it, and so I'll add my voice to the hundreds of others who have already lauded, puzzled over and trashed Twitter.

Here's my basic takeaway; to the TwitTrashers, I say - chill out. Twitter isn't a business model, it's a social experiment - a people mashup - and what it reaffirms is that people are addicted to other people; they like to hang out with each other, do business, share stuff and otherwise find excuses to communicate. This is true of the social web in general, and the reason that I agree with Doug Shumacher that the whole web will soon be social. But when it comes to people addictions Twitter is like the social web on speed because it accelerates the "fan ego boost" phenomenon and puts people in direct conversation which is where true communication happens.

The Medium Is The Experience - Inauguration 2009

"The medium is the message." - Marshall McLuhan, 1964

"The medium is the experience." - Me, 2009

I am watching the inauguration live on CNN.com and CNN TV with my youngest son, and chatting with my Facebook friends in the right margin about it, and Tweeting about it and watching #inaug09 tweets as well. My oldest son and husband are down on the mall trying to experience it in person. I have friends watching it all over the world and communicating via email. CNN is interviewing people on the mall, in Atlanta and in Afghanistan who are watching it on jumbotrons, and a Facebook person talking about all of us watching via FB. Who of us is having the more authentic experience?

Expert Advice: Humble Thyself Before the Paradigm Shift

Got an exec breathing down your neck wanting to know the ROI on your social media budget while you scramble around trying to develop monetization schemes and explain why social network ad revenue is down? Don't show her this video. Instead, grab yourself a big cup of something steamy, sit down, and watch it yourself. Watch it to be reminded that behind the curtain of the social media revolution you are monetizing your career on, is a cultural paradigm shift so fundamental that there is absolutely no way an expert or anyone else today can know what the marketing plan of the future really looks like.

Watch the video while anthropologist Michael Wesch (KSU Asst. Prof) takes you on a hour-long insightful and entertaining tour of the dynamics of social networks' popularity through the example of YouTube. The social media maven will laugh but the true expert will see that behind the fun Dr. Wesch is explaining how the social revolution in communication (not media) is building new models of human interaction and even self-identity that promise to shift our definition of community as deeply as the shift from tribe to nation state did thousands of years ago, but along entirely new dimensions (he doesn't' go that far, but I do).

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And after you've watched the video - all the way to the end, past the silly teenagers and babies spawning viral fun on a global scale to where the crotchety old man reveals his many selves and the people cry and feel betrayed to where the man who lost his child talks about how YouTube helped him live again - reflect on your own social media experience that makes you so sure you're an expert (ever mindful that even experts can disagree).

I Facebooked Myself

I did it. I set up a Facebook profile for myself.

What possessed me to do this? I was reading Charlene Li's Groundswell Blog about Facebook's potential valuation at $6-10 Billion (up from $1 B last year). This seemed kind of mindboggling to me - as was the calculation that this valuation meant that (at 42 million registered users/members) each Facebook member is worth as much as $138-142 in ad revenue.

This says a lot about the potential for social media sites & applications to keep the advertising model strong as these sites prove themselves both stickier (people staying on the sites longer) and more targeted (able to deliver more individually appropriate ads to viewers who have logged in). Online advertising revenue continues to show healthy growth although the rapid changes in users' behaviors as these new Web 2.0 technologies come online are keeping the ad companies on their toes.

My Facebook experience also demonstrated the power of these social technologies to both engage people with technology and to connect with offline friends through online channels. I initially signed up just to check it out, but w/in a few minutes, I had invited several friends - professional and personal - and they had accepted and - darn it if I wasn't facebooking! I started playing with the applications and found one for promoting causes which I thought was nice. And then I added a few more.

So what's my takeaway from my little Facebook experience?

Let's Talk!

This market is moving so fast that no one could possibly have a corner on all the interesting information and insights. I want to make the Member-to-Member exploration of social media an interactive affair. I encourage trackbacks to my posts, and I will be happy to link to your site or post if you have something interesting I can note in my blog.

Please feel free to comment on any post or email me to engage in dialog, provide information or critique or suggest ways we can help each other expand our networks and engage more fully in the human community.

Why Am I Writing This Blog?

After 20+ years in the business of technology, social media has piqued my interest over its predecessor techno fads and revolutions, because I am making the bold prediction that - more than any other technology wave before it - social media technology ties us each, member-to-member, more tightly into the human community by strengthening our relationships with our existing networks and helping us reach beyond them at the same time. The starting points are our existing, largely off-line, communities - companies, associations and networks of friends and colleagues - and there is no ending point.

Wow. Wouldn't it be cool if people were really that connected? Yes. It would be very cool because when people come together, amazing things happen!

Why should you read this blog? You should read Member-to-Member if you want to understand how and why social media will:

• transform the business of marketing by giving the customer a more prominent role in the transaction and renewal/repeat purchase process, providing forward thinking organizations unprecedented opportunities for brand experience success and brand loyalty;
• make organizations more effective in engaging their members to help accomplish their goals (whether membership is formal or informal and goals are commercial or not);
• empower members of organizations to contribute more of themselves to furthering their organizations' goals;
• put people in member-to-member contact, working together to make the world a better place (though beware, their definition of 'better' and yours may differ).

Scope - How broadly will we cast our net? Broadly. I expect all the following kinds of "membership" to be addressed at some point.

People:

• Marketing Professionals - skilled in the art and science of customer behavior and tasked by their organizations to turn that knowledge into greater business success.
• Employees & Workforce - formally tied to an organization by some kind of paycheck.
• Association Members - formally tied to their trade and professional organizations through dues and participation.
• Community Members - informally and formally tied to groups of all kinds through volunterism, activism, shared need, shared goal and shared desire (yes, this is broad but it's intended to cover everyone from the cancer survivor to the political activitst).
• Customers - informally tied to brands, products and each other through shared enthusiasm or dissapointment.

Technologies & applications thereof:

• Social networks (e.g., Linked In, Facebook etc.)
• Blogs, Blog Communities & Blog Directories (e.g., MySpace, Technorati etc.)
• Wikis
• Meetups, Mashups, Twitters and other interesting social media phenomenon
• Email, List serves and other innovative uses of old staples
• Collaboration software and services

Will we cover membership marketing, Web 2.0 and CRM (both kinds) and other industry buzz words we're all used to seeing? Sure, probably. But here in my blog (as opposed to my consulting practice) I am less interested in the industrial categories and dynamics of dominating them as I am in why they are successful in capturing users, converts and critics. Here I will give myself the luxury of trying to get underneath the dynamics of why this stuff works and what it means for us as managers of organizations and participants in the human community. 

Facts & Stats:

This blog isn't intended to be a comprehensive stats tracker, but I do come across some interesting snippets in my research and industry scanning. To help me remember it, and provide interested readers an easily scannable RSS feed of these bits and pieces of insight into the social web, I've started the Social Insights Micro Feed. The micro feed will include announcements of blog posts so you can subscribe to it as a one-stop feed to my brain on social.

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A note about me: I am a strategic communicator by trade (i.e., marketer, talker, listener) and a technology dabbler by interest and profession as well. Personally, I find the ability to use technology to enhance personal relationships fascinating and sometimes I'll just write about it from a personal point of view. Professionally, I believe that the best marketing happens through interaction that feels personal, even when it's not. I am not an expert on everything, but I do have good experience that gives me interesting insights into interesting things, as do you. I hope you'll come explore this brave new world with me by tracking this blog and commenting so that we can learn together .

Updated: Janauary 21, 2009

After 20+ years in the business of technology, social media has piqued my interest over its predecessor techno fads and revolutions, because I am making the bold prediction that - more than any other technology wave before it - social media technology ties us each, member-to-member, more tightly into the human community by strengthening our relationships with our existing networks and helping us reach beyond them at the same time. The starting points are our existing, largely off-line, communities - companies, associations and networks of friends and colleagues - and there is no ending point.

Wow. Wouldn't it be cool if people were really that connected? Yes. It would be very cool because when people come together, amazing things happen!

Why should you read this blog? You should read Member-to-Member if you want to understand how and why social media will:

• transform the business of marketing by giving the customer a more prominent role in the transaction and renewal/repeat purchase process, providing forward thinking organizations unprecedented opportunities for brand experience success and brand loyalty;
• make organizations more effective in engaging their members to help accomplish their goals (whether membership is formal or informal and goals are commercial or not);
• empower members of organizations to contribute more of themselves to furthering their organizations' goals;
• put people in member-to-member contact, working together to make the world a better place (though beware, their definition of 'better' and yours may differ).