Member-to-Member

Organizational Identity in the Age of Social Media

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."

Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream

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

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.

Web 2.0 - So 2004?

I wanted to respond to John Redmond's post and comment on last week's post about my use of the term "Web 2.0" and "how 2004" that is. He's right of course, that the term that sounded so hip four years ago is now four years old - decrepit in Internet years. Plus, it has been a questionable phrase since inception as it refers more to a trend in perception than an actual thing (as the name itself would imply.)

All that being said, is it my imagination or are we just resigned to use "Web 2.0" now because it's:

• more broadly understood by the non-digerati (also an outdated term) to mean "all that social media and new technology stuff I don't get but know I should be able to talk about;" and

• a simple shorthand word+number combo, which is easier to write/say than actually trying to describe what is fundamentally a sea change in technology architecture, human interaction and cultural power share?

Maybe I'm lazy, but I'm not a good enough writer to weave all that actual and implied meaning into every sentence that references that new fangled technology and sea change. As a result, "Web 2.0" works for me until someone invents some other shorthand term.

Thanks, John, for the comment. Gave me a chance to think about it and decide that if I'm ever going to lead a revolution, it won't be to overthrow the term "Web 2.0."

Social Media Press Release - "Controlling" the Message in a Web 2.0 World

I hear it all the time when the subject of social media marketing comes up with executives, particularly in the B2B (business-to-business) space, "but how do we control what people say about us?" The answer is, "You don't, but you can influence what they say if you're smart and play by the same rules your audience is playing by." Of course, i usually don't have a nice pithy comeback when queried on just what "rules" I'm referring to - Web 2.0 being hardly about rules at all - but now I have an actual example I can point to to explain what I mean!

A new tool called the Social Media Press Release demonstrates a sophisticated way to shape what others say about you without controlling anything. I suppose some would argue it's not that new (first introduced in 2006 by Shift Communications and now updated by Social Media Group's Digital Snippets), and perhaps not all that revolutionary (being primarily a web page not unlike PR Web's press release format) but the concept of the SMPR provides insight into how marketing in the era of social media and networking is evolving.

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.

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?

Signs of Life: Web 2.0 Investment is Up & Diversified

Dow Jones has reported that "Web 2.0" investments have doubled in the first half of 2007 over the same period in 2006. Interesting to note is that this increase has been fueled by greater global investment and though U.S. investment has been flat, it has been more regionally diverse... i.e., Bay Area investment has decreased as the first wave of risk-taker VCs step back to watch where their initial investments go.

I thought it was really interesting that in the U.S., many of the new companies receiving capital are in the "Enterprise 2.0" space - concentrating on B2B and organizational collaboration technologies while international investors continue to look at consumer applications.

So what? Greater diversity among investors and investees is certainly a good sign that the sector's growth will be sustained. The increased focus on the business and productivity applications for these technologies is also a good sign since the business models in these sectors are typically more stable. What this means to membership organizations is that we should begin to see less technology risk from vendors and more focus on meeting the business needs of serious social networking customers.

Will this risk-reduction happen overnight? Of course not. But when you're planning your technology strategy 3-5 years out,  knowing that investors are starting to look at making sure you have solid and successful vendor options in the Web 2.0 space is a good thing!