Archives for March 2009

The Continuum Theory of Social Media

Recently I enjoyed? a great conversation with Tom Cunniff on Twitter. It revolved around social media definitions and how brands and voices could be heard across the sphere. I was so intrigued by Tom’s views I asked if he’d guest here. I’m thankful he said yes.

People talk about Social Media as if it’s one thing. This is the source of a lot of “you-just-don’t-get-it” arguments online: people fight holy wars to defend their “it” vs. someone else’s “it” and never see that two sides can never agree because they’re not talking about the same thing.

I don’t think Social Media is one thing.? I believe it can be more accurately described as a continuum, with “Social” at the far left and “Media” at the far right.

On the “Social” side of the continuum, it’s all about the conversation.? So, let’s start there.

THE SOCIAL SIDE OF THE CONTINUUM

For small businesses – especially consultancies — Social Media is 99% social and maybe 1% paid media. In fact, there are so many conversations going on that some people need assistants to help them manage all those conversations at once. This is the world of Twitter and Facebook and FriendFeed: a very human, very time-consuming world.

Social Media works brilliantly for consultancies because these are and always have been relationship businesses. Start with light conversation, spread some thought leadership, and build a few important business relationships.

The intimacy of scale matches the intimacy of the sale.

Because it works so incredibly well for small businesses, a lot of social media experts seem incredulous when you ask whether social media can scale.? Surely if a tiny business can have huge results with social media, a big business would surely have even bigger results, right?? Are big clients insane? Why aren’t they all over this? I mean, duh!

Well…? not so fast. The physics out here in big-bizland are dramatically different. So much so, in fact, that the time investment can balloon out of control while the payback shrinks so small that you can’t measure it.

THE MEDIA SIDE OF THE CONTINUUM

Large product businesses can’t survive selling to dozens of people per year. If you’re a consumer packaged goods manufacturer (think Crest toothpaste), you need to sell to millions of people, and you have to do it fast because you have to drive fast product turns at Wal-Mart.

A dozen conversations won’t cut it.? A hundred won’t do it either.? Even thousands of conversations won’t do it.? You literally need millions of conversations and you need them fast.

Here’s the point where everyone trots out the “influencing the influencers” argument: win over a few key influencers and the rest follow.? In some extremely high-involvement categories, this may work. But in low-involvement categories, I don’t see it.? Imagine you work for Charmin bathroom tissue.? Who are the key influencers for toilet paper? You get the idea.

So if you work for a CPG (consumer packaged goods) company, it starts to be necessary to consider buying Social Media at scale.? But once you start looking at that, it rapidly turns into 99% media and maybe 1% social. Why? Because one of the only ways to get massive scale is to buy space next to somebody else’s conversation.? This is the stuff we used to call “advertising” back in the day.

To understand why, you need to understand the currency.

WHAT’S THE CURRENCY OF SOCIAL MEDIA?

The currency of social media is a human conversation. Those one-on-one conversations don’t scale well. A million very shallow conversations would require 10 million individual, costly, well-trained human minutes. This goes double (quadruple, actually) if there are regulatory or safety issues.

Another hurdle: the intimacy of the medium requires a slower pace. Jumping right into a sales pitch is seen as a violation of trust. And automation is problematic, because people feel (correctly) like they’re talking to a robot.

WHERE ARE YOU ON THE CONTINUUM?

What do you think about this continuum idea? Is it consistent with what you’re already thinking, or do you find it challenging? If you buy the idea of a continuum, where do you think you can offer the most value? Where do you offer the least value? Who does the social side best? Who does the media side best?

I’m curious to hear your comments.

Tom Cunniff has been an ad agency creative director, an interactive agency owner, and is now on the client side. “The more perspective I get,” Tom says, “the more I appreciate the scope of what’s still left to learn”. You can find out more about him by reading his blog or connecting with Tom on Twitter.

photo credit: Ferran.

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Personal Superheroes

Subterranean Mutants Are you a hero to someone? Do you make your business superheroes to every one of your customers, or treat them as heroes? Going that extra mile can make all the difference.

I found that out last week when two people who I already respected immensely joined the ranks of superheroes.

Michael Schechter, someone I’ve connected with through Twitter yet never met personally, is a superhero. As some of you might know, I recently won a tagline competition where the prize was a Nintendo Wii. I thought it’d be a nice idea to donate it to the local sick kids hospital when it arrives later this week.

Michael knew what I was doing, so he sent me some of his own Wii games that were gathering dust at his home. As an additional gesture, he also included three pearl bracelets and a pearl necklace for my wife as a thank you for me helping him out on his blog earlier this year. (Michael is Director of Retail Marketing at Honora Pearls).

He didn’t have to; I was happy to help. But his gesture made him an instant superhero.

John Haydon is another guy I’ve connected with on Twitter, through the 12for12k charity challenge. John has come onboard and used his non-profit experience and networks to gather bloggers that have written amazing posts for our charities. His help has been a Godsend at helping to spread the word.

Last week, I received a little Thank You card from John in the mail, thanking me for getting him involved with 12for12k. Even though it’s me that should be thanking him for all he’s doing. And he also mentioned to say Hi to my wife and hoped she was well. John is a superhero.

Even though I know both Michael and John already, that kind of thinking would immediately make me keen to recommend them to anyone. Michael didn’t need to offer games and he certainly didn’t need to send my wife pearls, and John didn’t need to offer that personal touch.

But the fact they did makes me confident anyone using either of them will always receive amazing service.

How’s your superhero status? Do you wear your cape with pride or does it need some new threads?

photo credit: Zeetz Jones

Introduce Yourself

23,29-duoprism stereographic closeup One of the things I’ve always said about this blog is that it’s as much yours as it is mine – community is everything.

I may be the bus driver, but you’re the passengers that make the journey so enjoyable.

So, just to cement our community that little bit more, I’d like to get to know you better. For the community to get to know you better. So here’s the deal:

If you had to choose one blog post to offer everyone a view of who you are, what would it be?
Why this post?
If you don’t blog, where else can we find you online? Do you mind sharing and connecting?
Tell us one thing about you that might surprise us.

That’s it. But here’s another quick favour to ask. If someone shares a blog with us, let’s make sure we visit it. And if we like it, let’s make sure we subscribe. After all, isn’t that what our community is all about?

Over to you – the comments are yours. Tell us about yourself. I’m going to get comfortable so I can enjoy getting to know you.

photo credit: Ethan Hein

One Way Streets

The way ahead Recently David Henderson was kind enough to invite me on his blog to offer my views on traditional media and its relationship with social media. I’m really grateful to David for allowing me his space – he’s an incredibly smart person so giving up some of his real estate for my ramblings was particularly appreciated.

Like any view, there will be some that agree and disagree.

And, as I mentioned in the post itself, I’m far from an expert in any of the areas I was discussing – I was just starting the conversation.

Michelle Belaski disagreed with my view and instead of taking up too much space in David’s comments section, decided to write what she disagreed about on her blog. Fair enough. She was also kind enough to let me know about this post via Twitter. Great – I read it and had a few points I wished to clarify on the post.

But I can’t. Nor can you (if you wished to).

If you check Michelle’s blog, there isn’t a comments section. There’s a little voting section that allows you to say whether the article is “funny”, “interesting” or “cool”. But no comments area.

This is a shame. I can’t respond to Michelle’s views (some of which are incorrect from a factual point of view) so instead of offering a chance for some discussion, it’s simply Michelle’s point of view that’s on show. Which, fair enough, it’s Michelle’s blog and she can run it how she feels best.

But isn’t she missing an opportunity here? Don’t points of view benefit from the debate they can open up? What’s your take – do you prefer discussion or just one way streets?

photo credit: Incessant Flux