Servant of Chaos

Ditch Your Fans and Find Your Lovers

UPDATED: Almost any article about social media that you read will focus on “likes”, “fans” and “friends”. At first glance, “social” media appears to have equated positive relationship terminology with relationship.

But when you look at the motivation behind “liking” a brand on Facebook – it’s decidedly transactional. There is a focus on discount and promotion, exclusive content and so on. Now, while a strategy addressing these desires will build your “fan base”, I’m increasingly sceptical that it will build you anything more than a glorified mailing list. In fact, researcher Dan Zarella has shown "The amount of 'conversation' that happens on your Facebook posts has nothing to do with the number of people who will see it" - suggesting Facebook Conversations Don't Achieve The Marketing Boost You Desire.

For those brands that want a little more from the investment they are making in social media, you need to dig a little deeper.  You need to look for those whose pupils dilate at the mention of your name.

It’s time to ditch your fans and find your lovers.

This is no easy task. You need to listen. Monitor. Pay attention. Dig. Analyse. Engage. Converse. Respond. And measure. You need to rinse and repeat. What I call continuous digital strategy.

But thanks to Sean Howard, you can now follow a step-by-step guide to using social media monitoring to find the people who already love your brand. The approach uses live data to help you truly understand who your real brand advocates are – and as is almost always the case (as is shown in the Nikon case study) – your most powerful advocates are rarely those with high klout scores or large follower bases. They are the people who consistently generate content and comment around your brand properties and digital assets.

I know this will make you cry – we all love the large numbers and the occasional mention from a social media superstar. But if you want to build lasting social media value for your digital properties, it’s time to ditch your addiction to “fans” – because when it comes to social media, it’s all about the love. Baby.

Social Media Monitoring - Finding Relationships

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What Makes People Follow a Brand?

When I first really became interested in social media, I was working for a marketing and promotions agency as head of their interactive division. This gave our work a particular skew – we were always looking at the performance metrics of our efforts – how could we drive trial, influence people to consider and love our clients’ products – and how do we measure and improve on this over time. And since that time, it has been clear to me that social media really is about promotion – in that industry sense.

And now the GetSatisfaction team have put out an infographic that confirms at least part of this theory – the largest proportion of people surveyed follow brands so they can learn of special offers and deals (36.9% on Facebook and MySpace, 43.5% on Twitter). So if your online strategy doesn’t have a promotional component you’re going to be disappointing much of your audience.

Global Map of Social Networking 2011

The folks at Global Web Index have investigated the patterns of consumer adoption and pulled together this infographic map. On this scale, it’s easy to see where (and how) trends become markets and how patterns of use become opportunities.

Look for example at China’s massive online population, sitting at 155 million – dwarfing Australia’s paltry 7 million. Look also at the behaviour types – who are the sharers, which populations join and create groups? Then think about how these behaviours impact your marketing:

• Are there already existing behaviours that you can incorporate or amplify?
• Are there social and digital channels that you are ignoring?
• Are there opportunities that you are leaving on the table?

The data may not have all the answers – but it should prompt some questions for you. Or for your agency.

Via Mashable.

Help Young Writers Be Published

I can well remember the excitement of seeing my first piece of writing in print. And yes, even in this age of easy access to web publishing and on-demand printing, there is still something visceral that comes with your own name in print. On a page. In a book.

And that’s exactly what Vibewire is now working on. Their quarterly anthology captures captures the short stories, articles, art and photography drawn from the Vibewire community. And you can help make this a reality! By supporting the Vibewire Anthology you will not only receive a beautifully produced edition, you will be providing vital support for young people starting their creative careers. Isn’t that what we all wanted way back when?

The Perfect Landing Page

One post that consistently garners traffic here on my blog is Every Page is a Landing Page. It’s not really a post about marketing, or branding, or strategy. It’s just a post about the most important page on your website – all of them.

So, if every page on your site is important, what does it look like? What story does it tell? Here’s an infographic from the folks at Formstack.

Facebook Bait and Switched My Life

Today is Quit Facebook Day – and I am in two minds. On the one hand, Facebook has been great, I have been able to easily connect to people all over the world, keeping in touch with their daily updates, their photos, the changes in their lives and the things they are reading, watching and thinking about. And it is not that I can’t do this in other ways, it’s that Facebook made it so easy for me (and for them).

But on the other hand, I have been a marketer and a technologist for over 20 years, and when I look at Facebook, I see a goldmine. I can see millions of people logging on, interacting, sharing their interests, their behaviours, their likes and dislikes not just with their “networks” but also with Facebook. And maybe even with Facebook’s partners. It is this latter form of sharing that concerns me.

The Age of unPrivacy

Anyone you speak with will have a view of privacy. Governments create legislation to enforce minimum standards on businesses, individuals join “do not call registers” to maintain some distance from brands and marketers and all the while, commentators announce the “death of privacy”.

Clearly as we shift more of our behaviour to the web, it becomes searchable – the great Google web spiders reaching out and collating the minutiae of our lives like the all-seeing eye of Sauron. If the Devil is in the details, then the scattered breadcrumbs of our online lives provide more than just a glimpse into our behaviours – they can be aggregated into patterns, codified and predicted.

This is even more pronounced in the walled garden of Facebook where our tastes and interests can be fed back to us – by Facebook ads, recommendations and suggestions. Take a look for yourself – create your own Facebook ad and you’ll see how minutely targeted your personal advertising campaign can be.

What Facebook are doing is pushing its members to allow ever more public access to our private information. It is doing so, not out of some grander view of the shifting nature of “privacy” as CEO Mark Zuckerberg would have us believe – there is real money to be made. As Chris Saad points out:

Most of Facebook's very mainstream users, however, still just want a private place to keep up with their friends and family. In short, the economic interests of the service are not in line with the interests of its users. Despite this, Facebook has been forced to smashed big cracks in its privacy blanket and started forcing its users, en mass, to adopt more transparent and public online personas.

Forrester analyst, Josh Bernoff suggests that Zuckerberg may well be right – that privacy isn’t a cultural norm anymore. But my view is that those active in their concern over these changes at Facebook are well ahead of the mainstream – that the issues presented won’t impact the early technology adopters in a significant way (after all, the Reclaim Privacy site has been doing a roaring trade for weeks). It’s the other 99% of Facebook’s 500 million members who are either confused by the changes, unaware of what the impact will be or simply don’t engage with these types of issues.

The Bait and Switch

At the end of Simon Mainwaring’s article on this subject he asks the question - “do you believe Facebook is to blame for a bait and switch?”. To that, I’d say yes. What was on offer has now materially changed.

For most of us, joining Facebook meant entering a social compact – we’d share the content, context and contacts of our lives – and we’d do so using Facebook’s social networking platform. We’d be able to control who had access to what we share and Facebook could monetize this in ways that worked in good faith. Accordingly, we (the public) joined en-masse. We tagged ourselves. We made Facebook the #1 photo sharing site on the web. We made it the largest social network in the world. And we helped it to transform from a bit player in the crowded social networking space to it’s leader.

Changing this compact now is difficult – and has not been communicated well. Rather than being transparent about their intentions, Facebook have opted to spin the changes, suggesting that the world has changed and that Facebook is moving to accommodate this.

As Bruce Nussbaum suggests, Facebook’s challenge is not to do with the purchase or products or services, but the exchange of value in what has become a cultural product.

Ownership in the social media world of networks is different from selling products and services in the traditional marketplace. Understanding the underlying cultural context of "free," "gift," and "creation" is important to businesses, including and perhaps especially high tech companies. It is not impossible to monetize that which is free. Apple did that with 99 cent songs on iTunes. But it is difficult.

I am always amazed to see that social networking sites such as Facebook (and to a lesser extent, Twitter) undervalue or misunderstand the importance of trust and transparency in the prosecution of their businesses. The TRUST that once existed between Facebook and at least some members of its user base has been seriously damaged in recent weeks – and the Quit Facebook Day is yet another milestone that will be marked.

So, Will You Delete Your Account?

I have a feeling that the Quit Facebook Day will come and go without a great deal of impact. At least initially. But for me, it is a turning point. It is the day on which Facebook reached its zenith – and from here the long, slow slide from prominence will begin. It happened with MySpace (which of course is still around). It happened with Friendster. And it will also happen with Facebook.

And now, I am off to delete my account. It will be replaced with a business account to manage aspects of my work – but the connections, the flavour and the personality will disappear. It’s time to find a new way to share.

Social Media: Who's On Your Blogroll - And Who Cares?

What we loosely call "social media" is built on shifting sands. When I first started blogging what now seems like eons ago, blogrolls were a hot topic. Even now I still get the occasional email from someone asking for a “link exchange”. (And if you are reading this, please note, I will link to you as long as you write something worth reading.) 

Blogrolls - those long lists of websites scrolling down the side of a blog were the equivalent of gold, achieving four things at once:

1. Roll call: It is an easy to use way of reading your favourite blogs. Simply click through and read
2. Inbound links: Creating an inbound link for another website pushes it further up the Google search rankings
3. Social capital: When you link to another website it provides an easy way to drive traffic to another’s website. Just like you share your ideas and content on your blog, links on a blogroll allow you to share your readers
4. Social proof: A link on a blogroll shows your readers (and the authors of linked websites) what you consider worth reading. It’s an endorsement and acts as a form of social proof.

Over the last couple of years, the practice of updating and actively managing a blogroll has fallen away. In my case, it is to do with the sheer number of quality blogs that I read – I have effectively moved my blogroll to a feedreader – so it no longer functions as a roll call of my favourite blogs.

However, the remaining points hold true. Inbound links are still important for website rankings, creating context for your readers via links to other sites is essential and in the great sea of anonymous web analytics, it’s great to know that YOU read ME.

So it is in this spirit that I am making a concerted effort to update my blogroll. Today I will be adding the following blogs to my long-neglected blogroll.

• Matthew Gain: Writes a great blog on PR and the changing media landscape. He provides deep analysis on interesting topics (well, interesting to me, anyway). His blog (and Posterous) site are a great filter – it’s what you need without the distraction
• Dave Phillips: The Cafe Dave blog is a lovely mix of personal thinking and coffee reviews. A regular of coffee mornings here in Sydney, Dave is to go-to guy when it comes to getting a latte just right.
• Gavin Costello: Opinionated and pithy, the franksting blog dissects a range of social media and product marketing topics. You’ll love it.
• Vocal Branding: The always charming Tim Noonan has a special gift. He can hear the way your brand makes people feel. And if you come to coffee morning he will read back the personal brand in your voice. Scared?
• Sales Habitudes: I was lucky enough to meet Jeff Garrison during a recent trip to the US. I was amazed to be introduced to an energized group of bloggers and social media folk living and working in and around Des Moines, Iowa. Jeff’s blog brings a refreshing focus on sales – yes, social media + sales. Believe it.
• Rob James: The blog of local startup Posse’s CTO, is full of tech, gadgets and tips. But I am hoping for some behind the scenes storytelling as Rob helps Posse take on the big players of the music promotion world.
• My Proactive Life: The energetic Andrew Blanda has stopped talking and started walking. It’s a great blog (and personal diary) about transforming your life … from someone who is in the midst of doing just that.
• A Cat in a Tree: Cathie McGinn’s intriguingly titled blog muses on topics close to her heart – from work to life and all the things in between.
• B2B Marketing Insider: Michael Brenner’s prolific blogging on B2B topics is a must read for the serious marketer. How he finds time to also write the B2C Marketing Insider blog as well is anyone’s guess.
• Happiness We Share: Nicola Swankie has the curious ability to weave marketing, social media and personal history into compelling blog posts. Definitely one to watch.
• Warlach’s World: Lachlan Hibbert-Wells is a self-confessed geek. More on the cultural studies side of the fence than technology, he shines a light on the strange dance that we people do with the gadgets and technologies we love.
• Marc Jarman: Promises to blog more. Of course, promises are cheap. I am hoping to see more on the orchestration of social media!

Tweetdom & Gomorrah: The One Man Show

If you happen to be in London next week (April 10, 2010), then you may just want to check out The Kaiser’s new one man show. Tweetdom & Gomorrah. It’s your chance to spend some quality thinking time (on the Kaiser’s Toilet) with one of the web’s sharpest minds. Just this time, it is in the flesh. You can RSVP here on Twtvite.

Tweetdom & Gomorrah - Show Notes

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The iPad Welcomes the None Percenters

For the last couple of years marketers have been chasing a dream. The great promise, the Holy Grail of social media, is user generated content – the marketing that is produced by the advocates of your brand. In a utopian world, this user generated marketing “goes viral” – registering millions of impressions/plays/hits on sites like YouTube or Facebook. But I am here to tell you this – we’ve been chasing our tails. We’ve been focusing on the wrong thing – and the iPad is going to prove it.

In social media, we struggle with the immutable 90-9-1 rule. Basically, we have found that when it comes to user participation, only 1% of our social group will CREATE content. Jakob Nielsen calls this participation inequality. Ben O’Connell and Jackie Huba evangelised these one percenters – the citizen marketer and changed the way that we thought about our audience. But even Wikipedia – the great user generated content success story of the Social Web – butts up against the 1% participation rate.

And yet, we constantly search for ways to overcome this barrier – to drive up participation. If we could double our productive audience, then imagine the power and the crowdsourced creativity! We could unleash Clay Shirky’s cognitive surplus. We could transform the world. Now, there are undoubtedly ways to improve participation (you can get significantly higher participation in internal enterprise transformation projects for example), but the real revolution is not in the creation of user generated content, but in its consumption.

One of the things that I have been interested in recently is the principle that EASE OF USE drives CONSUMPTION. I discussed some of my work in this area with Christina Kerley for a B2B case study (subscription required, but hey, it’s MarketingProfs and totally worth it). By removing the barriers to use – of your website, your product or service etc, you are actually able to quickly and demonstrably drive its use. Not only that, by changing the pattern of usage you are also changing the buyer behaviours associated with your brands and products, and this in turn changes the way that your brand or product is perceived.

And this is where the iPad comes in.

With almost zero functionality for content creators, Apple is turning its back on the the one percenters: the creative classes who have evangelised their products for years. The focus now is on CREATIVE CONSUMPTION, making the mass of user generated and branded content more easily accessible, more relevant and useful and bringing it to an audience who – in my opinion – have yet to openly adopt web technologies and the promise of the Social Web.

This will challenge agencies and brands alike. Some are responding already – like the work that BBH are doing with Cool Hunter and Cadillac. But this is just the beginning. The iPad app store is bound to explode in the same way that the iPhone app store did. Importantly, I expect this to open NEW markets – with non-computer users such as my parents and grandparents to finally begin participating in online markets.

But this is a whole new market. The focus is no longer on the early adopters – the one percenters – but on those who have NO INTEREST in content creation. Our ongoing focus will need to be on the NONE PERCENTERS – those new audiences attracted by the ease of use and social cachet attached to the iPad. Perhaps, for the first time, marketing attention will fall on the zeros – those who sit outside our 90-9-1 demographics – and I have a feeling they will prove far more valuable than the 100% who have dominated our lives more recently.

Are you and your brand ready to deal with the zeros?

Say Yes to Twitter

I was watching this video from the Kaiser’s Toilet on Twitter and Google’s new Buzz – and it got me thinking. Much of the discussion that we see around social media, marketing and new technologies relates to yes/no decisions. The conversations are framed in terms of scarcity – of time, resources, budget and so on. But one of the fundamental transformations that the social web has driven is that of abundance. Of information, knowledge and connection.

So we are seeing a fundamental disconnect between the way that we VIEW this emerging world and the way that it OPERATES.

Say yes to Twitter from Marcus Brown on Vimeo.

The idea of VIEWING a website or social platform is a behaviour that has created a world view. It comes from 50 years of broadcast TV. It places us, “a user” (and therefore a dependent) in a passive mode. The newer, social web places us, the PARTICIPANT at the centre of a hub. It requires choice, it engenders responsibility, and presupposes action. It PLAYS to the concept of abundance and see scarcity as outmoded, traditional, passe.

But as Mark Earl’s Herd has taught us, it is behaviour which changes thinking, not thinking that changes behaviour. So perhaps, surreptitiously, our engagement with the social web may have wider implications. Or maybe the social web is more chaotic, playful and unpredicatable than our marketing and IT “use cases” would suggest.

This interesting article by Alan Wolk shows how the #thuglife meme has made Twitter into a purely experiential platform. More importantly for marketers, perhaps, is the scale of this type of participation – which far exceeds the early adopter circles that characterise much of the social media debate:

It's an interesting use of the medium, and the people participating in these hashtags seem to be getting as much value out of them as the Twitter-Is-a-Serious-Business-Tool types who busily append words like "Genius!" to their retweets of a fellow blogger's "Top 10 Reasons Location-Based Services Are the New Twitter."

What we are seeing is the logical extension of YES. We are seeing the “crowd” embracing abundance and participating in a way which is consciously unselfconscious.

What would happen if we did the same? What if we said YES to Twitter? What would happen if we followed everyone? Would our world change? Maybe not. But maybe WE would.