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Social Media

The year in review blog style…

: Image via Wikipedia

So I always like to take the time and read stuff I wrote earlier in the year to see if I have gotten any better and to see if there are opportunities for improvement. As part of this annual continuous improvement exercise I find pieces I like more than others and numerous areas for improvement. I really should do it more often, but this is time of year when I have the time and the inclination.

On critical thing I did notice was I may have went back on the Less Fluff promise. To rationalize a little, I no longer define links and videos as fluff, so there. I know I’m changing the rules a little, but it is always about context and at the time my links WERE FLUFF. Now that I have finally found a more crisp focus on Marketing, Brand and Product, it’s easier to transition these into value, than random stuff I found.

I guess there is the off chance I’ll publish something in the next couple of which should be on the list, but probably not. That that end, below are 10 posts I really liked, some y’all liked too, some you probably haven’t read. No particular order

10 Tips for Dealing with the fact you will never leave your job – A piece on how to continue to look for ways to improve your job satisfaction, even if you have been there a while. A little off topic, but one I really liked writing it.
$1 coffee a sustainable model – This might be when I really started to think the economy was goofed. When an ROI model for buying a fancy coffee pot is interesting to other folks.
Complexity: The context of Identity – A piece I didn’t on the overwhelming burden of identity management and the rewards for engaging in as meaningful a way a possible.
Enabling Persona Based Sales – This is about when I started moving towards a theme here.
Stories in the Village: Everyone Must Understand the Brand – I’ve spent a good deal of time this year working on positioning and the ability to scale positioning and this piece is probably when I realized that the whole org has to be able to tell the story, not just the smart folk.
Principles: Shading Strategy and Execution – Situational definitions and personal world views can change what you do when it comes to principles, but it shouldn’t.
What’s Your CRM strategy? Social media is really interesting, it develops and help enhances relationships, so this piece posits that maybe you need a little social media in your customer relationship management strategy.
Who are these people and why are they Following me – I was goofing with Em and talking about Widespread Panic not being around for New Years and I regurgitated a thing we always say at shows: “Who is this band and why are they following me?”, next thing I know I’m cataloging profiles on Twitter.
Steve Johnson Interview – The whole Marketing IS in the Middle series was great, as I got to connect with friends, thought leaders and former colleagues, which was a great time all around.
Chris Brogan Interview – This is also from Middle series and was an interesting take from an accidental marketer with some great insights.

Hope you find these of interest and there are some new one’s you haven’t read. Cheers!

~jon

December 26, 2008 by Jon Gatrell

A real-time voice: Hack the Debate and Where’s my Gas?

Two really interested things have happened of late around Twitter which has had me discussing Twitter in odd situations. With references in the AJC on a fairly creative use, Twitter may become an inventory management system for the CONSUMER. Consumer based demand management might be another way to look at it – regardless it could change market the landscape. The other interesting Twitter advance is the real-time insight into political feedback, not online but integrated with TV for your Mom to see. Sure Twitter has broken news, provided updates from natural disasters, and even has resulted in the occasional “brand jacking”, but recently it transitioned to being more of an interesting app, now that it has empowered the community to take action, rather than listen to stories, share ideas or just chatting. Twitter sometimes has been thought of as a built to flip entity, but it may have just found a problem solving niche – not just reducing latency of communication but reducing transactional friction and opportunity costs for consumers and voters alike.

The Consumer Has Access

I recently suffered through the Atlanta gas crisis and had used Twitter to aid in finding out where gas was. This use of Twitter solved a critical need for consumers – where and when can I find fuel for my car. The real odd thing, is the use of Twitter came up multiple times when I was New York, merely because I was from Atlanta and specifically because of this pragmatic use of the platform. I spent more time talking about the gas crunch and explaining Twitter with one editor than one would have thought for a guy that blogs, but it made for a nice segue into a community concept which I was there to speak on.

Essentially for many, Twitter has become their main social network or at least more folks are using it now and getting comfortable using it. Whatever the reality – it’s now main stream stream media and successfully connecting people to solve problems. With continuous updates and shared experiences some folks were able to get gas just a little quicker and avoid the opportunity costs of trying to find it yourself. On that concept alone, Twitter appears to be able to produce an ROI. Not only is there now a way to frame a value prop around that use, it allows consumers to rally around opportunities in the marketplace whatever it may be. So I wonder what other use cases folks are going to think of. Could Twitter be used to find out where the latest supply of a cool video game/toy is for Christmas?

Twitter seems well positioned to solve other real consumer problems involving not just presence, but place as it relates to goods or the supply of goods. People already use Twitter for place for a long time for place – think conferences, but introducing access to goods is a new take. So if consumers share information on the ability to access services or goods it could significantly influence consumers choices at a local level.

Where do I go tonight for drinks is already being answered by #happyhour so what else could be solved for in the Twitter community? Perhaps Twitter can effectively manage place, supply/access, precense and quality of experience/managing of opportunity costs.

I wonder what the people are thinking?

I could never see a presidential debate live, not sure I couldn’t react one way or another. Knowing this about me, I was certainly excited to see the integration of Twitter and TV around the debate. Twitter’s 140 characters has become an interesting cross channel feedback for not only users, but non-users. Feedback on a story which just happened for Rick Sanchez or sharing real-time impressions of the debate is no longer visible just to those on Twitter, but also the viewing audience. The integration of Twitter for Hack the Debate is the most recent melding of community and communication which most folks don’t know about. Current TV has integrated Twitter into the debate with real-time streaming of tweets on the broadcast of the debate. Yup what people think in real time about the candidates and their answers. This integration means that users can actively participate in the debate in a way that even those AT the debate can’t. Odd concept – people 10 feet away from the candidates can’t influence, but people 1000’s of miles away can. Below is an example what you might see should you watch the next debate on Current.

It never ceases to amaze me how technology developed for one use can quickly morph to deliver on new/emerging needs with the existing capabilities. Do you think Twitter could help coordinate aid relief, donations and needs for natural disasters? FEMA should maybe get a Twitter account.

October 10, 2008 by Jon Gatrell

The Social Marketing Construct: Evolving Brands and Emerging Realities

Download the Social Marketing Construct

Why we wrote it:

After sitting in a Pragmatic course taught by David Meerman Scott, I came up with the idea that I just might wanna write something a little more substantial than a blog post. David spent a good deal of effort in his New Rules of Marketing course on the value of an eBook, so I thought that might be a lofty pursuit. I clearly needed some help; so I engaged my personal advisory board for input and volleyed ideas. We centered on brand as a construct in the context of social media adoption, more or less.

Sheryl Altschuler was kind enough to offer her experience in launching brands online for this project. Sheryl was critical in simplifying the concepts in the eBook and developing the Social Marketing Contract. Chris Carfi was kind enough to write a foreword and to provide his thoughts on what would be helpful to marketers given the emerging business realities. Clearly interesting things are afoot in the evolving social marketplace. The social impact on brand management and equity represents an opportunity for marketers to re-align their focus against The Social Marketing Construct.

Many thanks to those who helped as well as those who take the time to download and take a look. If you find it particularly useful, feel free to let some folks know about it. The concepts in the book are a continuing area of interest for both Sheryl and me, so feedback appreciated.

Cheers!

~jon

September 16, 2008 by Jon Gatrell

Less fluff, more value?

So I’ve spent a good deal of time talking to some people I respect and the input they have around the Social Media Club. Some great input for Sherry and Aaron and some other input that made me get more introspective than my ego likes, but ultimately that is required to get a little better and understand more.

So while doing my outreach around input on how to aid in the standards efforts for SMC, I just got smacked in the head a couple of times about my blog fluff. The problem with friends, they have no shame in calling you out… careful what you ask for…. but it made me think more abstractly about the fluff in general.

Conclusion-ish: Social media is a little fluffy – everything is fluffy clouds, rainbows and unicorns – just a little right? Just how much fluff is there in the whole social media thing? Depends on where you are I guess.

The fodder which fills my blog on my lazy days is definitely adding to the fluffy perceptions of social media. Since most of us marketers have those “ah – maybe I’ll do X today” days, we don’t need any more fluff to be added to the stereotype.

C’mon – we all get the marketers malaise. You know the one….the one that settles after the “basics” are done. It’s that whole phoning it thing that marketers get to sometimes which doesn’t help the perception of marketers. “Lazy Roboto Marketer” executing on a check list:

Logo – check
Tagline – check
Customer presentation – check
Sales needs yet another sales tool for a single account which will never be used again – check
Half hearted review and formatting of customized off message corporate presentation – check
Discount not approved – check

Oh the life of Riley indeed as a marketer. …right up until you are on that checklist treadmill again for another brand. The curious thing is the checklist for social media folks appears to be an even lazier checklist on the surface:

Tag some stuff – check
pitch cluetrain concepts again – check
blog post – check
at least 12 tweets – check
write the 3 comments of the day – check
respond to most of your email – check
turn grammar check on – overdue

So with all this busy work, social marketers must be doing good things. But I think there is just a bunch of filler material which is part of the social media noise out there. A good deal of this filler is from folks who are “creative commoning” their way to content and expertise. That just makes “give-away” selection look like work.. Then you look at how often do social media folks just push out fluff? How often do you?

David Meerman Scott thinks voice is an imperative and so is focus, which is what started this post in the first place. Plus, to ROUGHLY paraphrase Carfi – “can you just give me another yonder Mountain video, it saves me time searching YouTube”. Subtle…

Well, I won’t do the ADD dance on this and take full accountability of fluff contribution to the social marketplace. As a marketer that kind of hurts my soul to type/admit, but integrity counts.

Come on feel the NOISE!

So if voice is important and so is focus, what do you do in a crowd? Well just as in real life, you find folks you know and like and strike up a conversation, regardless of how noisy it is. If you think about the core metaphor of conversation the challenge is to participate, not to monitor or metric. I spent the better part of a day this week in a Pragmatic Marketing course searching for a process, a new way to look for a return in social media and how to just plain feel good about my world view. I didn’t get it during the class, but fast forward 14 hours or so-ish……and a couple pieces fell into place….

I spent the next couple of days working on conceptualizing messaging themes, throwing concepts away, bringing them back, understanding priorities and action plans which resulted in a fairly coherent way to look at social media. What I realized is that noise is the norm, no hard metrics (yet) and no way to engage with out setting a tone/establishing a voice. Ultimately so long as your voice is heard, it doesn’t need to be accepted or even appreciated just be present and reasonable in the conversation. On many levels if your are active, responsive and REAL good things just might happen as a marketer. The voice of your brand, the voice of the customer and market are all out there, but you can’t listen if you aren’t there.

Ty Webb: Just be the ball, be the ball, be the ball. You’re not being the ball Danny.
Danny Noonan: It’s hard when you’re talking like that.

The Message is the Medium

Social media isn’t about the strategy so much as it is being part of the medium, tactics. Prior to social media marketing was far more a spectator sport. With an inside out brand reality emerging, the traditional investment and measurements just aren’t going to work. So the perceived need to relate social media to revenue, to tangible metrics or share of voice equivalent is not the right to approach it from a business perspective. Customer might be a reasonable measuring stick…

Social media’s value is sorta binary – you’re either in or you are out. Not being in the game is a clear loser. It has that old school carny “You can’t win if you don’t play” reality. So with that baseline, I was able to get over the hump mentally on metrics with 3 questions:

What is the downside of participation
What is the upside of NOT participating
How can you remain relevant without contributing to an industry

silence is golden?

Meander to Your Message

So while I on a personal level will be reducing the fluff around here by at least 64%, I’m still going to meander around the areas interest I would like to cover. Just like in any given business process or market activity you just need to find your “flow“.

I’m still gonna do the random Wilco or Panic video on occasion, but I’m just going stop the link posts. While I don’t know yet where this is going to go and never really have, I think meandering towards a message is more important that randomly meandering to a post.

So there it is – stop the links, relax a little and communicate ideas. I’ll try my best and not contribute to the noise and make this whole social media thing just a little better. What are you doing to reduce the noise and increasing the meaning of your message?

feeling less light and airy already with my Postalicious plug-in inactive….

July 24, 2008 by Jon Gatrell

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