Elastic Thought

The Numbers Game

In our work in the UK, I've run across Tom Chapman and his analysis of social network marketing on Facebook and MySpace in the UK.  You can get a copy here.

There are some good key findings that will apply here in the States as well.  However, one caught my eye since I've been scribbling a blog post and contemplating this for a while now:

"Look beyond the ‘friend’ and ‘fan’ metric which is a simple numbers game and place more emphasis on the quality of conversations."

I say this because I've literally heard people pass resumes around the PR firms saying "he has over 300 connections in LinkedIn, or she maxed out her Facebook friends!"  This, of course, was meant to gather enthusiasm to the person as a great potential new hire, and the promising future of a fantastic social media group within the firm.  Or at the very least, a popular person to bring some notoriety to the firm.

(credit: www.toothpastefordinner.com)

The quality of conversations is key here, and I would add that the quality of the relationship is more important.  If somebody "pokes" me (and yes, even Super Pokes me) every three months, I would not count that person among my inner circle as much as those that I message, comment, and interact with on a daily or weekly basis.  In the last post we talked about relationships outside of the online world, so let's look to that as a comparison again.  Saying "Hi" to the guy in the hall every now and then is different than having lunch together, or drinks after work.  Question: if you needed to recommend those people and vouch for them, would you feel more comfortable with the guy you say "Hi" to or the one that you know better?

And so it is with the numbers game.  500 people doesn't tell me much.  Granted, you have been busy connecting with people.  And I'm sure you have more friends than me.  But what can you do with your network?  How close are you to those 500 people?  And how often do you interact with each and every one of them?  Are they quality connections?

So for business wanting to get into the social networking mix, know that when your campaign is up on Facebook, people are looking past your friend count.  They are looking at the comments, the people writing on your wall, the engagement of those people.  Active engagement is where the payoff is for the campaign.  I hope that your campaign looks past the posting of the site and includes plans to maintain them and actually use them.

So, who wants to be my friend?  I'm looking for some connections...

More later.  Viva Elastic!

What happened to the Big Picture?

Say what you want about "Joe the Plumber" but the question that he first asked Senator Obama showed that he was looking at the long term.  He wasn't anywhere near buying the Plumbing business he worked for, but he was looking long term at the possibility of purchasing it, and weighing the tax repercussions of it.  Or maybe it was a way to get on TV.  But it was a good segue to talk about the short-term perspective that a lot of people in business are working from.

This perspective reaches all levels.  I can't tell you how many project teams I've worked on where the project directors lost sight of the big picture and began making decisions based on the immediate needs and very quickly got caught up in a reactionary mode that veered the project dramatically off course.  And the same can be said of some small businesses I've consulted with.  The owners were in "fire-fighting" mode, and ran from the first fire to the next, only to look back at their strategic goals and find that they were far from achieving them.  This type of behavior frustrates teams and often feels like you are "spinning your wheels" and getting no where.

I keep hearing the financial advisors urging us to invest for the long term.  Why can't we work in business this way?  Instead, we have ROIs to calculate in mere months. We need to show value in the first weeks or fear losing the account.  We put band-aids on issues so that we can temporarily forget them to move on to the next problem only to have it rear back, worse than ever.  But we need to look for the the root causes, not the symptoms.  And sometimes that takes time and perseverance.  But who has the stomach for that?  Unfortunately, fewer and fewer or our leaders.

I focus on this because it has direct impact on social media marketing campaigns.  These campaigns focus on relationships between the companies and their target audiences.  They focus on conversations.  They focus on bringing value to your partners and customers.  They involve networking.

And they take time.

Social media is about humanizing communications by company, right?  (well, sort of).  So we can think about these types of marketing campaigns more like self-improvement programs.  These tactics aren't like an ad campaign that is over when the next month's magazine comes out, or you pull the TV spots from rotation.  They are fundamental ways of connecting with your audiences.  For instance, I've seen the recommendation of using Twitter in many a social media campaign.  It's becoming a staple in the diet of "pitched" social media.  But is it really a tactic?  Probably not.  Social media is more like hand-writing thank you notes  as a way of communicating with family and friends.  It's like joining the clubs at school to get more involved and meet more people.  It's "social."

Sure, there are ways to speed up the process.  Remember  "Can't Buy Me Love" back in 1987?  Ronald paid $1000 to date the popular cheerleader and gain exposure and friends in a shortened one-month engagement.  And there are plenty of "pay for play" tactics that we can use in social media that mimic this approach.  But unless you can sustain that type of budget, you may want to look at investing in the long-term.  You may just want to start looking at the bigger picture and working towards that goal.

It takes time to build a solid relationship.

One way that I recommend with clients is to build a map of where you are headed.  Map out the targets, map out the channels, and map out the ways to use those channels to reach the audience.  And then, map out a way to continuously engage in these channels over time.  Have a picture of where you are going.  And then, give that picture to everyone involved.  We've even put together process charts for help-line counselors to go to specific sites every day (in-between calls) and make sure they are just as engaged there as they are on the phones.

But remember, these things pay off down the road.  Answering questions in LinkedIn or Yahoo! Answers for one month is a waste of time.  Being seen as a consistent resource for good answers over time pays huge dividends.  Being seen as an uncaring, out of touch company can be bad.  But doing a reputation management program that only looks at "tactics" over the next few months is worse.  However, engaging with your customers in new ways and actually caring -- and caring over the long term -- will again, pay huge dividends.

So please, take the time to invest in these programs.  Have the stomach to ride out the bumps in the road of reworking your reputation online.  Have the long term perspective on how this will change your business.  Look beyond this month's P&L chart.  Envision the Big Picture and work towards that.  Don't let this afternoon's mini-crisis distract you.

Social-Ecological Model -- The "Other" SEM

The Social-Ecological Model Can Guide Non-Profits in using Social Media effectively in their campaigns.

One of the benefits of working with non-profits is that their work lends itself to social media in ways that make the tools available to us that much more effective.  I wrote earlier about how building communities around causes is much easier than artificially creating communities around commercial products.  How much can you say about 7-Up in a community built up solely around the product?  OK, it's bubbly.

That said, there are not as many resources, and for that matter, budget to help non-profits increase awareness, and the new tools online do allow for increased community building and connection with supporters if used effectively.  In creating an initial strategy for your campaign, look to the Social-Ecological Model.

For those that have worked with the World Health Organization or the CDC, this will be a familiar term for you.  For those that have not heard about or seen the model in action, here is a quick definition:

The Centers for Disease Control developed the Social-Ecological Model to help practitioners better understand (and learn how to create) effective prevention programs.  The Social-Ecological Model contains four levels:

• Individual — Identifies biological and personal history factors.
• Relationship — Includes factors that increase risk because of relationships with peers, intimate partners and family members. 
• Community — Explores the various settings — e.g., schools, workplaces and neighborhoods — where social relationships occur. 
• Societal —Examines the broad societal factors — e.g., social and cultural norms, and/or health, economic, educational and social policies — that help to maintain economic or social equalities between groups in society.

More succinctly, the Social-Ecological Model (SEM) was built to show that in order to effect behavior change, programs need to address the target audience at multiple levels. Preferably across all 4 levels.  These "levels" naturally augment each other and build on the other so that the impact is addressed through touch-points spanning several of the personal scenarios an individual engages in everyday.

So, in social media terms, we can use this model to help identify and build a community around the particular program you are putting in place.  A lot of agencies ask to put a plan together that in a sense, "dips a toe in the water."  However, I do not recommend the first step to utilize just one or two of the tools.  Rather, build a small network that spans the levels of the SEM and build from there.  As the community builds and takes root, more time and more tools can added to this initial strategy.  Conversations and communities are building up all around the Internet, you just want to continue to spread a wider net as you go and include those additional people.

So let's look at this more specifically.  How, exactly, do we use the SEM to craft a strategy? 

1. To begin with, social media is about community.  So the Community level of the model is a great place to start.  Tools like Ning make it very easy to set up a community online.  Beth Kanter points to a Ning blog that gives more background showing that several non profits are already doing this.  But to bring people into the new community you've built, you would need to insert yourself into other communities of interest that relate to your topic.  These topic or cause "adjacencies" will give you a great step to look for those that would want to join your community.  Comment liberally in these communities and show how the things in your community can help and add to their community.

2. Moving one step into the model, Relationships are more personal than the greater community.  These are the inner "friend" networks on existing sites and networks.  So to effectively build your community, build tools to allow members of your community and potential members to interact with their personal relationships.  This can be done through tools that you give them to help spread awareness.  Widgets and badges that can be passed through friend networks work well.  So, too, can "lifestream" tools or "friend feed" features of existing social networks.  When one person interacts with your non profit (use or download of a widget, commenting in a discussion, bookmarking relevant material) their activity shows up in the network of their friends, prompting their relationship level "friends" to see that interaction and perhaps click over to see what they were looking at.

3. At the core of the model is the individual level.  Social media is personal, and so too is the message going out from the non-profit to their audiences.  Blogging tools and micro-blogging tools like Twitter bring the message down to the 1:1 level and reach target audiences in the niche networks you need to tap into.  Start a blog as part of your community site and, again, look for those adjacent topics that you can connect with and comment in those blogs.  Look for Tweets in Twitter's Search Tool that address your topics, or build a list of followers in Twitter for your non profit and send messages directly to those individuals following your non profit.

4. The societal level of the model is a bit harder to address in building a strategy, but I look at this a bit like the Search Marketing part of any awareness campaign.  Activity in the blogs and communities, content contributions, and the building of a network is going to increase awareness in the search engines as well.  Since the search engines work hard on their algorithms to produce the most "relevant" links for any given search, they are, in a sense, defining the broader factors that define a topic.  In working with these search norms and embracing the workings of the greater internet "society" as defined by the search engines, you can bring relevant material to the top of searches and get relevant non-profit content visible in the macro-level of a defining search.

So, from starting at the individual tools like blogs and Twitter and moving out towards community and search, a simple strategy of 3-4 tools can reach audiences in different ways that build on each other and augment each other to help jump-start any non profit that wants to either start a social media program or expand on an existing one.  And, again, as the basics are covered, and as the network builds (as does your comfort level) expand outward to include new tools.  Using YouTube's Non Profit Channel, visiting and working with others on Non Profit Island in SecondLife, and taking a greater voice in existing communities (building out from those adjacencies) will all work together and expand your community.  Bookmark relevant material, post pictures in Flikr, and let others know what you are doing online with Plurk or Pownce.

Build the simple platform, actively engage in existing communities and conversation, and cross-reference your tools.  Let's start there and see where it goes.

More to come...

Social Media goes to Washington

Recently, I was discussing how social media could open a window into the procedures of legislation and increase communication in our democracy.  I got some great feedback on that, so, first, thank you.  Given some information and further research, I wanted to update that posting with some additional information.

The research points to two areas (as with any conversation, there are two sides) that need to be reviewed.  First, are the tools out there that allow for disseminating information to the public online and that allow for public discourse?  And second, are the senators and congress members allowed to communicate using these tools or others?

Let's start with online outlets for the public.  I'd like to point out the Sunlight Foundation for their work in this area.  Their site works "to help citizens, bloggers and journalists be their own best congressional watchdogs, by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and Web sites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency."  They have even begun a new project for working towards further transparency--The Open House Project.  This project was started "to study how the House of Representatives currently integrates the Internet into its operations, and to suggest attainable reforms to promote public access to its work and members."  And as part of that larger work, they have launched Publicmarkup.org to open bills to online, public review.  This is a great step towards the proposed tool of putting the legislation language online and allowing for discussion and debate in a public forum.  For instance, here is the information on the latest economic rescue plan.

There is plenty of room for improvement, but this is a great first step.  You can see that in a lot of instances, they have to look for the PDF posted by one of the parties or administration.  They then have to parse that information and quickly get it online.  To quickly accommodate this, the sections are put up in large chunks that are then open for comment like any blog posting.  On closer inspection, you can see that the House creates these PDFs from an XML document, so it stands to reason that there could be a more automated way of doing this.  And...if the metadata is put into the original XML, there could be a more organized way of posting them, so that smaller bits of the legislation can be categorized, organized, and tagged to create more poignant and relevant debate for each point in the bill vs. the large "chunks" we have now.

However, I have to reiterate that this is a wonderful first step in transparency and working towards a more open process.

Now, that addresses public debate, but would congress listen?  Or even be allowed to respond or act on that information?  That depends on current Congressional Franking Laws.  (Background on Franking here)  These are meant to create fairness in election campaigns and protect taxpayer dollars by not allowing Congress to post information (using taxpayer dollars) in ways or in places that can also link to or house inappropriate material. (well, the modern day definition--it started with Postal Mail)  The current rules were based on regulations/updates made in 1998 before any of the the current social media tools we use today were around.  Yes... a world without iPhones and Twitteriffic.

A recent letter by Rep. Micheal Capuano (D-MA), the chairman of the Congressional Committee on Mailing Standards attempted to update the rules to make them more relevant to the Web. In particular, the proposed rule changes dealt with uploading congressional video to YouTube.  

"The goal of Capuano’s letter ... wasn’t to create new restrictions for members’ web use, but to change the rules, which were originally designed to guard against tax-payers paying for political mailings, so that they actually apply to the new technologies. Right now, members who post on Qik, Twitter, or YouTube (among others) do so in violation of the rules."

Apparently, before a member of Congress can post public information on YouTube and real-time social media sites like Twitter, the sites must meet franking guidelines, include a disclaimer and be approved.  Texas Republican John Culberson states, though, that the letter was "to prevent members from using public money to communicate on outside Web sites featuring commercial and political advertisements," and continues to tweet about this from the floor.  The most talked about Tweet being:

"Before I could post a Tweet I would have to get approval of the twits that run the House!" And an hour later: "The Dems will do this unless the Internet community stops them."

But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (right, Physics majors?), so there is a Twitter campaign currently out there petitioning for its use by House representatives: Let Our Congress Tweet.  It has been successful and the site now is distributing a widget, "Capital Tweets" to keep up with the conversation.

In a bit of good news on this front, the debate is not going to quietly fade away.  Member Web use is being reconsidered.  And there has been some movement.  Marketing Vox reports that updated Senate Web linking rules include some of the major social media sites.  Sarah Burris also has some great background on this in her piece on Web 2.0 in Congress.  One other resource is this piece on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

So, we're getting there.  I don't think the debate on and subsequent changes to current Franking Laws would have happened had there not be exposure to the letter brought before the House leaders or the tweets of Rep. Culberson.  Heck, how many of us even knew there were Franking Laws in the first place?  So Tweets from the floor, Sunlight Foundation's Publicmarkup.org and all the great debate online can make a difference.  But we have to continue to watch.

It's funny, there is a lot of debate on the economy and healthcare with less than a month to the general election.  One thing that gets brought up consistently in the healthcare discussion is personal accountability.  That we each need to take an active role in our healthcare, to learn about and research our own symptoms.  That we should bring appropriate questions to our doctors and stay on top of our history because no one else (including your primary care physician) will (or at least very well).  And on the economy, we're still reeling from the credit swap craziness, the commercial paper market freeze-up, and the recently passed economic rescue plan.  With as large of a global crisis as this is, there is lots of blame to go around.

But one thing caught my eye.

Regulation vs. De-Regulation is the topic de jour, with many blaming the crisis on little or no oversight into the "exotic" and "over the counter" debt transactions that are at the heart of this debate.  Trust is shattered.  No transparency was called for.  But here's the kicker...our representatives voted to NOT  regulate these markets in 1998.  And it was not partisan, it passed by a vote of 95 to 5 I believe.  Now, ironically, (but probably not related) this was when the Franking Laws included not allowing Congress to use the Internet for communicating to their constituents.

I wonder if that vote would have passed by such a landslide had the public had any information on the contents of that legislation.  I wonder if "Main Street" would have agreed that the financial institutions were "too sophisticated and smart enough to manage themselves" feeling that guided such a landslide vote.

Let's open up the Franking Laws.  Let's support the Open House Project.  And let's improve the tools that allow us to communicate with our Representatives and allow for transparency to hit a greater number of Americans.  Heck, let our Congress tweet!  But most important, let's stay on top of what is going on.  Democracy is work, and instead of being lazy and letting our Representatives deal with the issues, let's make tools that make it easier for us to do the work that is demanded of the citizens of a Democracy.

I think we can do it, and I'd like to help.

(photo credit Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Columbia Pictures, 1939)

More to come....

Weblebrity and the Real World

A colleague of mine recently sent me the 10 signs you may be a Weblebrity.  Defined in the email as "...a new buzzword that has been spawned defining someone who's well-known online but perhaps not in the real world."  A few highlights:

#4. You stopped thinking about yourself as a person years ago.  Now you're a "brand."

#6. You've considered getting your Facebook photo shot professionally.

#7. Total strangers you meet at conferences know more about you than your significant other.

#10. No one in the real world has ever heard of you.

Several pictures came to mind when I read this.  Remember Saturday Night Live's "Nick Burns, Your company's Computer Guy?" (Recurring Character from 1999-2001 - Episode here)  But I also saw myself in some recent meetings where the client (or new business prospect) called themselves a "Dinosaur" and didn't understand what "My Book" (sic) was or any of that other "stuff."  I've had to be very careful to walk the jargon line, and not alienate the clients that are learning to jump in the waters of digital marketing, and social media specifically.  It was a very careful educational meeting most times.  At least they thought they needed "it" and trusted me to help them with their marketing programs, or I'd be blogging on a whole different topic.  But that's exactly why I write.  There are so many in this field that are so far on the bleeding edge of social media that they've left a lot of companies and executives behind.  As Chris Brogan points out "Our little close gooey center is comprised of people who think FriendFeed needs to adapt and improve, while most of our workplaces are still deciding whether to allow instant messenger clients inside the firewall. We blog about iPhone apps and aggregators where most of the world is reading about how digital cable in the US is going to impact folks who still have rabbit ears on their box."

Update:  In the few hours that followed that post Julie Roads added an internet/reality translator, a rosetta stone of sorts comparing traditional to web.

But I'd also like to point out Brian Solis' blog about the The State of Social Media 2008.  A must-read if you haven't already.  But, a couple of key points:

1. Immersion = incontestable experience, perspective, and knowledge.
2. The knowledge of the tools is one thing. But, it's what we hear, say, and learn, that traverses seamlessly across generations and technologies.
3. Social Media can best be defined through sociology, rather than technology
4. Listening, learning, and participating in a measurable and effective Social initiative requires you to look beyond Twitter and Facebook. Not doing so, handicaps the overall reach and effectiveness of your marketing, communications, and service strategies.

But most importantly, Brian writes that we are all still learning.  None of us is a true "expert" in the field.  It's those of us that have the successes, failures, bumps, and wear and tear (some more than others) that can bring recent experience and new ideas to the table.  But we're all still working this out, together.

But back to Chris.  He writes along the same lines at Brian when both say that we all need to be evangelists.  We need to embrace the relationships, and be human.  Talk to business in their terms.  (If business terms are, indeed, human) However, bringing this to the business side implies that the businesses are the "real world," and that the social media and online marketers need to remember they live in "the future world."

I'm torn on this and see two sides to that argument.

On one side, what he talks about is something we've had to do in many instances.  I cringe when I say this now, but a couple of years ago, we talked to PR account staff that blogging was journalism, and as such, they should approach those bloggers like they do any other media writer/reporter.  I cringe, because they left the relationship part out and went straight to the "pitch."  Not very human, and very unsuccessful.  But what was more successful was packaging online reputation management and online reputation monitoring as an extension of brand communications.  And sometimes we could package it as online crisis management.  Social networks became an extension of the WOM and grassroots practice groups, and so on.  So, yes, I can clearly see that a mouth full of jargon and pitching out of context can leave a lot of potential company advocates scratching their heads.  We've always succeeded when we made it about communication (message received) rather than the technology.

However, I'm not sure if the online world, or social media is really that far distant from the "real world."  We've always talked about the online channels within which these conversations are taking place simply as augmenting what is already going on, not replacing existing channels.  So it would stand to reason that social media is not the future world, but rather a new section of Todayland that is very real.  Lets look at it as tacking on a new country exhibit to Epcot Center.  These are not dreams of where we will all be in the future.  They are new places to address your customers today.  Businesses aren't necessarily the benchmark of the current.  Often, they are behind, and those of us that are ambassadors should be educating as Chris says.  Engage with and embrace those that are learning along side you as Brian points out.  But we should be addressing the need more like a tourism campaign educating about our landscape rather than as a time-travelling representative of the future.

"Discover Social Media.  Exotic landscapes, friendly people.  Book your Marketing Dept. today.  Low, low fares!"

So...welebrity?  I'm not.  People don't know me online either.  But I'm working to be the best damn travel guide I can be.

And you know what?  The best part about travel guides is that they explore the landscape.  Firsthand.  So, Chris Brogan, exactly--we need to teach, bridge, humanize.  Brian Solis, yes, we need to dig in and work together to map this new frontier.  Perhaps we should bring along some Social Media Cartographers?  Just a thought.

More to come...

Strategy, Tools, and Tactics - What's the Difference?

A quick Google search will show that this is an often blogged about topic.  And as always I'd like to bring it to the Digital realm as the difference (or lack of perceived difference) is creeping into too many proposals as of late.  Tactics are being disguised as strategies, and most recently, so are tools.

Let's start with the most recent: Senator McCain at the September 26th Presidential Debate in Mississippi---"I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy..." (full transcript)

Don't worry, Mr. Obama...whether you do or don't, there are many agencies out there confusing the two.

Now, let's go to the earliest clarification I can find on record: Sun Tzu circa 500 BC--

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.  Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

This blog post won't be a lecture on the differences, but know this:  there is a difference.  A quick recap:

Strategy is the "big picture."  This is the blueprint, if you will, the overall plan smartly crafted to guide the marketing program.  Whereas tactics are the specific activities that build on each other to execute on your strategy.  They are often immediate or short-term means designed to achieve specific goals.  The culmination of the tactics and how they are designed is, again, the strategy.

Everyone else likes to bring Seth Godin's description in their blog post, so I'll play along.  In reference to skiing (it was January when he posted) "Carving your turns better is a tactic.  Choosing the right ski area in the first place is a strategy."  

However, here is a more obscure analogy I'd like to pass along:

The objective is to win the war.
The strategy is to take the hill.
The tactics are "skinny guys behind the trees, fat guys behind the rock."

But there is a new confusion that has risen up with all the hype and gold rush mentality of everyone jumping into the Digital marketing arena:  Tools.  Not that tools are new, but tools are becoming strategies somehow.

Tools are not strategies.

Tools are tools.  Nothing more.  If part of a proper strategy, and used to achieve specific tactics, the new social media tools can do great things as part of any program.  But writing a proposal that simply states "social networking, twitter, blog outreach, and a facebook page" is not a proposal with a strategy, it's a laundry list of tools.  Twitter is not a strategy, nor is it even a tactic.  A tactic would be to use Twitter to search for recent Tweets on IT problems in your area and then Tweeting them back about how you can help them.  I'd like to see that in a proposal.  Now, granted, Facebook (or any of the social networking sites out there) is a tool and a page could be seen as a tactic.  But what is the strategy?  What goes on that page?  How does it fit into the bigger picture?  Or does it even fit in the bigger picture?

There is a bigger picture, right?

More times than not....No.  Chris Brogan has a nice post about how social media tools are like phones and in his recent keynote here in St. Louis, I chuckled when he asked "What's your phone strategy?"  Sounds kind of silly when you put it like that.  But that's what's being written in hundreds of proposals every week.  And, for the next 15 minutes I guess, they will continue to look like Digital rock stars for just proposing that their client use diigo.  Just do me one favor.  To get through this period quickly, simply ask them "Why?"

Seth Godin also said "It takes real guts to abandon a strategy, especially if you've gotten super good at the tactics. That's precisely the reason that switching strategies is often such a good idea. Because your competition is afraid to."

I'd like to add that it takes some intelligence and participatory experience to even have a digital marketing strategy in the first place.  That's why having one is a good idea.  Because your competition probably doesn't have one.

More to come...