Logic+Emotion

Social Media's Top 10 Dirty Little Secrets

Image uploaded by Stinky Pinkie on Flickr

1. Social climbers are attracted to social media
That's right. The same people who climb their way up the social food chain in the real world tend to do well in the social media world. They'll be your friend for a while, until they find someone else with more Twitter followers to tweet with.

2. Most social media is bad marketing/PR
Few organizations really want to engage with their customers. It's just easier to slap together a blog, Facebook fan page or hire someone to tweet about your products and coordinate events that hopefully generate buzz. Participation is hard.

3. Everyone hates internet celebrities, but secretly want to be one
Yup, I'm sick of the whole internet celebrity thing too. But it's funny—sometimes I think the people who slam it the most actually want to be the next social media rockstar, whatever that is.

4. Social media burnout syndrome is real
We joke about it, but it's true. We're overwhelmed by technology which promised to make life better for us. Instead, most of us haven't figured out how to restore the balance we once had in our lives. 

5. Group think happens
Yes, social media connects us in wonderful ways. Yes, it can lead to innovation and often does. But if you're not careful, you'll find yourself saying and thinking the same exact things as everyone else in your social system and you'll forget to think for yourself.

6. Your manager hates facebook
A manager's job is to get the most from their people—which is tough to do if you spend most of your time connecting with your friends. You may actually be getting your work done, but tell that to your boss.

7. It's a goldrush
Yes, there's money to be made in social media. Sure there's a few true believers who wouldn't be doing anything else, but lots of opportunists who smell the money trail. It's up to you to separate the wheat from the chaff.

8. Social media is a threat
The reality of it is that social media will displace jobs, people and disrupt business models. Maybe this isn't a dirty secret—but for some, it's become a harsh reality.

9. You're tired of new technology
Seriously, you just want things to slow down a little and perhaps get really good at using some of the great technologies that are out there before you have to jump on another without even knowing why you're jumping.

10. You're over top 10 social media posts
Yes, I wrote this knowing it might generate some attention. And I've fallen into some of these traps, so I'm no better than you. But It's always good to pause, think and turn things on their head. So hopefully, this post will get you thinking—which is never a bad thing.

Brand U.0 on YouTube

I've gotten a lot of requests over the past year to have my talk on personal branding called "Brand U.0" posted on YouTube. The folks at the Chicago Convergence have gone ahead and saved me the trouble of doing this. So if you live outside the US in a country that didn't support Veoh, or you just want to watch the video without the pop up ads, you can bookmark the YouTube version.

Social Business Design @ Social Fresh

View more documents from David Armano.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to share a few high level thoughts about the state of social business at the first ever Social Fresh conference held in Charlotte North Carolina. It's been several months since I've joined the Dachis Group and the majority of my time has been spent helping to build the business, and positioning while working on some limited engagements with clients and planting seeds for future relationships. If you've followed my work in the past—you'll find a few familiar thoughts here combined with new ones which we will continue to develop as we move forward.

As for the event itself, Social Fresh was a unique conference which attracted social business practitioners, educators as well as large organizations such as Wal Mart, Bank of America, Duke Energy, Ruby Tuesday and Lowe's to name a few. Sessions ranged from panels on Twitter featuring Kathleen Hessert (the woman who put @the_real_shaq on the map), to real world case studies from Jim Deitzel of Rubbermaid on how his company leverages social business techniques to create customer advocates. See video clips of both below:

There were many great presentations and case studies and I got to greet old and new friends such as Spike Jones, Gia Lyons and Olivier Blanchard to name a few. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present the keynote in the afternoon. You can probably get the idea from the slideshow, but mainly what I had hoped to emphasize was that in order for social media to make the transformation to social business—change must happen deep within the organization and spill out into every way that the business operates—from how it interacts with business partners, deals will employees and allows it's customers to actively participate as part of the entire business ecosystem. Most of the presentation outlined some of the challenges we'll face but I also threw out some high level thoughts around potential organization model.

Me addressing the room at Social Fresh. Source: Charlotte Observer

Right now, a key theme is emerging for me through all of this and it's something I think all organizations will have to figure out.

Orchestration.

A business that operates in a socially acceptable way (think open, collaborative, efficient, participatory) will have to transform it's internal and external business practices and orchestrate social initiatives across multiple business units, groups, brands and functions rather than establishing new departments which operate on their own. That is if the business is really serious about these things as opposed to being merely interested in tacking on a new way to market their products or services. These challenges we face are here now. I've had several conversations where people in the trenches are about to launch revised policies influenced by social media and others who are just getting educated. We're heading into an interesting phase of this industry—moving away from awkward puberty to something more mature. In order to do that, we'll need things like employee training, guidelines, rules of engagement etc. As Peter Kim notes, we'll have to scale—and as my friend Spike Jones says, we'll need a "movement". So get ready.

Our Talks At SXSW

 

We've got three panels up for consideration as part of SXSW 2010.  The team would appreciate your consideration around the following ideas. And who knows—leave a vote and or comment and I'll consider wearing the hat again. :-)

Social Business By Design (Me)

• Description:  The hype around social media has become deafening. Organizations are feeling pressured to "join the conversation” or risk being irrelevant. However, a “social business” has to be designed from the ground up and the top down in order to achieve transformation which scales. Are we ready to move beyond lip service?
• Will address:  What is "social business design"? Why is this important to me? What implications does social business design have for my organization? Why do I need a "social business strategy"? What technologies are relevant? How will this help me with my current social business initiatives? What should I be measuring? Why is this different from what I'm doing now? How will advancements in cloud computing, open source, and mobile factor? Where do I start?

Stop the Insanity: Making Sense of the Social Web (Niederhoffer)

• Description:  As social technologies become woven into our lives, our breadcrumbs become more varied and dimensional. Making sense of this information is challenging- for users and marketers. Methods from social and personality psychology are potential antidotes. Enough with pages views to demonstrate value. How can analysis account for the rich depth of data?
• Will address:  How, besides traditional web analytics, can you demonstrate the value of social technology? Why is everyone obsessed with Influence and Engagement-- does either construct have any merit? What is a good framework to use when thinking about data available through social technology? Which constructs matter when you're "listening" online? As users, how can we make sense of the information we give and receive about ourselves everyday? Are there better ways to present myself online? Quicker ways to perceive others? What can you really know about someone based on their profile, blog, or tweets? What do marketers currently know about us, based on our online communication? What can social scientists tell us about social media? Are there any ways for marketers to go beyond buzz levels and sentiment?

Sponsored Conversations: Good Strategy or Spam? (Peter Kim)

• Description: Does sponsored social media content work? When it comes to pay-for-play, many bloggers see no issue with “sponsored conversations” and point out that it’s happened for years. Others decry this practice as payola and challenge the credibility of those who accept payments. Who’s right?
• Will address:  Should marketers support sponsored conversations? Do bloggers undermine their credibility by accepting payments? Will the FTC ruling have a material impact on this practice? How are large consultancies advising their blue chip clients on this issue? How do well-known bloggers see an impact on their approach? What standards should bloggers adhere to, especially vis-a-vis journalists? Can paying for conversation deliver unbiased content? Does this work as a form of advertising? From those who have participated, what's the ROI of sponsored conversations? Is this an inevitable trend, as Forrester claims? If so, how big will it get?

Thanks - and see you next spring in Austin.

A Comment About Comments

Increasingly I visit blogs and in the comments section I see, well frankly a lot of noise in place of valuable commentary. I understand the appeal of doing this—linking comments to Twitter, Facebook etc. and positioning them as comments makes your site look like there is a lively discussion going on. 33 comments? On the surface level, that's a great indicator of engagement. Or is it?

You want your site to be a social object. That means it makes sense to connect to whatever platform where people are talking about you and the content, value you provide. However, here's the rub. You are also a curator, and right now one of the most valuable things you can do for your customers, consumers, employees or business partners is to filter signal from noise. So while you may benefit from publishing every retweet of your content because it links to someone, you have to do this by design realizing that it may not benefit the person who is looking for value in your content.

So who is doing it right? Well, I've always been a fan of how Chris Brogan curates things over at his place. Not only is it easy for someone to comment, but it's personal using a service which provides the photo of the commenter giving them more incentive to participate. But specifically to the issue of integration with something like Twitter, Chris calls this out as "reactions". And yes, that makes all the difference.

Why? Because it's more accurate and has been thought through purposefully. Technology allows us to do all sorts of great things, but without purpose or intent—we can unintentionally provide a less than desirable experience. If I had more technical mastery and time to dedicate to this blog, I'd go the route that Chris has been paving when it comes to curating comments on your social properties. A simply label followed by hierarchy of what you display and how you display it can make all the difference. It might even be worth calling out the things that are not comments but reactions as a feature on the same level as comments. But this might require the blogging platforms to evolve. Until then, remember that you have to decide what your goals are for yourself or your organization before displaying how you integrate. Be mindful of your signal to noise ratio and what you vs. your participants get from it. And as Brogan's example illustrates, put some thought into how you display it.

5 Challenges Social Business Will Face

Published on Harvard Business Review
A recent survey conducted by Proofpoint found that 8% of companies had terminated employees due to social media usage (common causes including sharing sensitive information on a network). And while the statistic seems significant, it only underscores one of several upcoming challenges nearly every organization will face as changes in people, process and technology fueled by the collective movement we call social media begin to transform business. Here are a few challenges that every organization should be planning for right now. If you aren't you will be.

1. Integration
Becoming a social business can impact nearly every function of a business. Marketing, PR, communications—even supply chain and any function that deals with employees. So where does it live? Is it a department? Do organizations hire a "Chief Social Officer" much like they would a Chief Technology Officer? All organizations will eventually grapple with integrating social somehow into their entire ecosystem adopting either centralized, distributed or hybrid approaches.

2. Governance
Many organizations now understand that anything that can and will be said about them on the internet will be. The good, the bad, the ugly. And this includes content produced not only from the general public, but also from internal constituents such as employees. Organizations will not only need to begin actively listening so that they are in the know, but they will need rules of engagement for how they deal with multiple types of scenarios from responding to a compliment to dealing with a detractor to following up with an employee who just posted something inappropriate or sensitive.

3. Culture
All organizations fall somewhere on a spectrum of being "open" or "closed" meaning that they are either more transparent with how they operate and collaborative or they hoard knowledge internally. Consider that it's probable that the Zappos purchase by Amazon had a good deal to do with their notoriously open culture. Likewise, even Apple which can be notoriously secretive is benefiting by leveraging a strategy that opened up their iPhone application ecosystem. Sure Apple has a great deal of control over it, but for the first time in history—they have legions of people developing applications which run on their hardware. Organizations have the potential to benefit from embracing customers, employees etc. but will have to manage it intelligently and with purpose.

4. Human Resources
In order to transform from a business to a social business, (meaning true participation as opposed to leveraging social media as a new form of marketing), businesses are going to have to upgrade their HR protocols, as well as legal. And it's likely to be a never-ending process as new technologies continually hit the scene. Before there was Twitter, companies scrambled to publish blogging guidelines for employees, now the wrong tweet or Facebook status can get you fired. Organizations will not only need to update guidelines but actually train their people who may be leveraging social technologies for work. Customer service in particular comes to mind.

5. Measurement & ROI    
Every organization will continue to struggle with how results get measured and how ROI is reported. Philosophically, this question can be answered with another question: "what's the ROI of e-mail"? But it's a question that won't go away. New social constructs will be needed to measure social initiatives such as attention (the size or number of participants actively engaged) or authority (the amount of influence a participant has in the ecosystem). Because social business is enabled by technology, it is by definition measurable. However, tying it to revenue made or saved becomes more of a challenge.

There's more, but I think these represent some big ones. What are your thoughts?

The Day Social Media Stood Still

Twitter is down as of 10:00 AM, CST and Facebook is barely working (see error message above). People are freaking out that they can't connect. Think we're not addicted to dynamic signaling? Think again. It will be fun to follow the aftermath. It's only been a little over an hour as far as I can tell.

What Makes A Presentation Great?

SlideShare World's Best Presentation Contest 2009

What makes a presentation great? Something I'm thinking about as I've recently been asked to be a judge on the upcoming Slideshare Word's Best Presentation Contest along with Guy Kawasaki and Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior. I'm a huge fan of Slideshare (basically it's YouTube for presentations) as it provides a wealth of resources and knowledge in an open environment. Here are a few things I look for in a presentation.

Clarity
Clarity of communication is the first thing I look for. In thought, and how that thought translates the message you are intending to communicate to your audience. A great presentation is clear in intent, communication and articulates a specific point of view. Bonus points for presenting that point of view in a unique fashion.

Drama
Great presentations are delightful in some way. Drama means connecting with your audience in a way that taps into some emotional trigger at a human level—storytelling often does this. One of the most difficult things to do is to present information (even dry information) in a way that is compelling and captures the attention. A certain amount of drama will do this.

Design
Visual communication in presentations can really help them stand apart from others. You can take two presentations that have equal amounts of substance, but the one that is better designed is usually the one that has the advantage. Visual design matters in presentations.

Flow
Great presentations seem to have a natural cadence and flow to them that's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. It's not forced, transitions are natural and it all just seems to come together. Getting your presentation to flow well seems like it should take the least amount of time but often ends up taking the most, it involves editing, iterating and tweaking that can take your presentation to the next level.

Substance
Of course, a presentation is nothing without great content. If your story is dull, then no matter how great of a storyteller you are, it will fall flat. All great presentations should include a level of substance that make you feel like you've invested your time well after reviewing it.

There are other factors, but these are a few. Hope this helps. Many of my presentations can be viewed publicly on Slideshare here.