Social Flare

Where to build a Discussion Forum - Location Location Location

I have the opportunity to work with an individual, a potential client. He is highly placed in a retail company with a name you'd recognize, and he's -the- "Social Network Guy" for his company. He's led them into at least two debacles, public and Dugg, because he's never read Seth Godin's remarkable book "Meatball Sundae".

Well, I don't know that for sure. He might have read it, and then just disregarded all that stuff about using traditional marketing thinking when making forays into new media, and about how bad that is. Which was pretty much the entire book.

Anyway, this retailer now has a forum, a threaded discussion. The idea is that customers can come and talk about our products, collaborate and build content for the community. Experts would emerge, dialog would be engaging, and the company would reap the benefits of a win with this social media stuff, having their own barrel full of fish to shoot market to, so to speak.

The problem of course is in the first sentence of this description. Never never are people going to show up to your community just because and discuss your products, in any numbers approaching a critical mass.

Other companies have done this, yes?

Well, no. Not really.

For examples.... Dell & HP run forums that are dedicated to discussing their products. But these are support communities; people show up with problems, or answers, and these are traded. There's value there. Apple and Lego have strong communities around their products, but this is brand advocacy and serious adopters sharing with one another... something this retailer will never need to worry about. They make meatballs, to take a page out of Mr. Godin's lexicon.

What a tired , borrowed quote "If you build it, they will come" is, eh? But time and time again, stakeholders embracing traditional media views take up this concept, and lose track of a major reason why people come to, revisit, and stay at online communities. At every single successful community, there's some value for the visitors, there.

Very very few early villages ever sprung up in a place that was not a crossroads, or alongside a water source. People gathered in these areas and formed a community because it made sense; "Let's hang out while we exploit the resource."

What resource would "settlers" exploit in this retailer's electronic village?

None. There's no value there. No crossroads, and no water source. As it happens, 10,000 employees were emailed before the public launch, encouraging them to register and participate in the community, a few weeks ago. As near as I can figure, about 50 have posted, about 5 have done so regularly. The busiest thread is the one asking "What ( are we ) doing wrong?", by a factor of ten.

Such low-traffic or meandering forums should not use tag clouds, by the way.

In the book "Groundswell", Proctor & Gamble is held up as a shinning example of how-to start a community. P & G wanted to sell more feminine products. But they also realized you can't really announce a feminine product forum and have the groundswell show up, populate it, and carry your brand off into the future.

So what they did was start a community for girls that focused on their problems, and solving them. For details see the very good book. They made a subtle brand plug here and there, of course. But it was in the context of what was being discussed, and was never in-your-face. The short summary of this story is P & G attracted large numbers of their target demographic with something useful and valuable.

Not their feminine hygiene products and dreams of controlling a community of brand advocates.

...

A book that's waiting to be written ( by someone. Hmmmmmm ) has to do with organic social media; the parallels between nature and the principles of social media. It would demonstrate clearly with fables from nature such no brainers as "don't plan a city in the middle of nowhere".

Location definitely matters, and online that "location" is very similar to what it is in real life - proximity to something necessary, riveting, compelling, valuable, or scarce.

Participation in Communities is Key

Joining Reddit or StumbleUpon or Digg to surf is one thing. Joining because you're trying to acquire business intelligence is a good step up. But to truly reap the rewards of accessing such social media, participation is key.

To benefit your business or organization, join one ( or more? ) of these sites with a non-personal account, one created under your business's name. They are free, by the way. Set up filters or search for articles relevant to your business, post them in your account area, and discuss them; leave comments in the article trace, and discuss what you find on the site, on your site, and your blog.

Being part of the discussion is part of being an expert. If you're a surfer, you're just taking up time. If you're discussing the relevant topics of your business, and can point to this discussion, your status rises.

Paul Chaney at Practical eCommerce puts it very well:

"A basic rule of thumb in social media marketing is that, in order to gain influence, you must actively participate in the communities of which you are a member. That means commenting on blogs, participating in forums and message boards, joining fan groups at major social networks like MySpace or Facebook, and dialoging via online chat on sites like Twitter."

Mr. Chaney brings up a very good point... beyond the social bookmarking sites such as Reddit and Digg, there is ample opportunity for the same participation on the more general social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Niche Communites - Bigger not always Better?

Facebook. MySpace. Bebo. Orkut. Livejournal. Multiply.

These are all names of well known, heavily-trafficked social network sites. Hundreds of thousands of members and up. I once worked for a startup in Madison ( I believe I may have mentioned this once or twice  :  ) where Bigger was Better. If we could reach more people, that would be great. If we could build a Bigger community, that would be awesome and we could then sell it for Bigger Money.

In theory, sure. Maybe. But as social networking evolves and the masses settle into patterns, the old marketing thoughts along the lines of more-is-better for a message is not always the way to go, I think.

Consider niche communities.

If you're looking to sell your new gloves to beekeepers, you could certainly market on Facebook. There are zillions of people there, and some small amount of them love to keep bees. Probably. You could spend the money or make the effort to learn how to market there yourself, and draw the Facebook beekeepers into your message and brand with the power of your awesomeness. Or...  you could find the niche community MyGenYBeekeeperSpace.com It would be much easier to find many more people interested in your whiz new gloves, in this space; and your marketing pennies or effort would go much further.

I made this community up, by the way. But you get my point.

There are niche communities for triathletes, fisherman, lapsed Catholics, golfers, doctors, and canoe enthusiasts. These communities are -much- smaller than the biggies but the people who sign up there are -much- more into the relevant pastime, occupation, or niche.

When developing a marketing strategy that includes a market you can narrow down ( and yours should; who can really market to "everyone"? ) find the communities that cater to your target niche. Sign up, poke around, have some conversations. Then start doing some really effective messaging to people who care about your bee-proof gloves.

Or, if you're building communities, find an under-represented niche, build it up, and sell it. Or advertising.

Hmmmmmmm. There's an idea.

   

Live or Memorex?

I am finding myself increasingly interested in alternate reality games ( ARGs ). This is a game that uses the real world as the gameboard, with clues and actions being all present in real time, in real life. You might have to go to a certain website or a certain address and do something, talk to someone, or whatever. I played a kind of lame-but-still-interesting version of this kind of game at GenCon last year... and now I'm interested in making one go.

It would bring into one tight little package several areas of interest I have: viral flow of information across social networks, social media, game design, and writing in particular.

I have an idea for a sort of starter-game. We'll see what I can come up with.

Here's a story from Wired that discusses one such ARG.

Social Network Profiles - How much is too much?

Yesterday the Washington Post Online featured an article about Barak Obama's footprint on the social network sites. Sen. Obama has the big two ( Facebook and MySpace ) more than covered, but has also established more than a toe-hold presence on various racial/culturally-themed networks. Jose Antonio Vargas writes:

And as of Friday, he's the first candidate to have profiles on BlackPlanet.com and MiGente.com, popular soc-nets in the black and Latino communities, and also on newer soc-nets such as AsianAve.com (for Asian Americans) and GLEE.com ("GLEE" stands for "Gay, Lesbian and Everyone Else").

How much is too much?

At what point is an individual's online presence just advertisement, and how much is genuine expression, leveraging the power of the community in question? Is "just advertisement" okay for individual's profiles? Businesses savvy and not-so-much alike have leveraged the potential ROI these networks afford, should individuals?

Different points of view, here. Traditional marketing and advertising thought is to saturate the market to a point of providing maximum exposure, while not diluting the brand; use the power of very-minimal-cost exposure opportunities to grow the brand. Is this a violation of any network's stated purpose? Is it a breach of what the network's community "expects" as far as authenticity goes? Also, all of the networks mentioned above are businesses, run for a profit. It's probably not a stretch to say that even if use this way stretches the intent of the use agreement ( I don't know that it does ) or sidesteps the feeling of a particular community of members ( again, maybe, maybe not )... these networks are still benefiting traffic wise ( and thus dollar-wise ) from Obama's presence.

At what point is it a wiser decision to utilize the power of one community, rather than attempting to develop a coherent presence on many of them? Do the "rules" of traditional marketing apply here, where so many of them don't in other aspects of social marketing?

biz blog about anything

Well, maybe not about anything...   but what about Mahindra tractors?

Here's a great article on Rohit Bhargava's excellent blog about a company that makes tractors, one that competes in the same circles as John Deere, using social media to great marketing effect.

The value of this little tidbit for here on our blog: it's not so easy to imagine a business that can't use a blog to great effect.

Social Media cautionary tales

Social media marketing is very easy to screw up, if you don’t know what you’re doing.

We can look to WalMart or Sony for examples of what –not- to do, in using social media to market ideas or products. Both of these companies have an amazing amount of resources at their disposal; money, traditional PR talent, and so on.

And they still screwed it up. In a huge way.

As reported in several places, Earlier this year Sony sought to increase the buzz for their PSP game console by capitalizing on social media using blogs and YouTube to spread the word. Marketing history had been made by normal people uploading videos onto the sharing site, or by blogging about products from the heart. The traditional marketers at Sony felt they could emulate the success of grassroots examples by merely posting their stuff on the same types of sites, maybe trying to be a bit slick about it and being “hip” in a way they thought teens and young adults might find attractive.

They had an “if you build it, they will come” mentality, with a dash of “We definitely understand the young adult mindset” thrown in.

They hired actors to pose as “hip” young adults, allegedly blogging and videoing informally about the PSP, and sought to spread the seed of this message by using stealth tactics such as blog infiltration to spread the word about their product on various blogs popular with young people.

It was a classic example of misunderstanding. Traditional marketing people whose skills lay in traditional media such as radio, TV, billboards, and print ads thought they could jump with both feet into the slick medium of Web 2.0 and take advantage of the viral nature of how info travels there.

They though their expertise on traditional marketing applied to the new medium, to social media.

It doesn’t.

Sony was soon exposed for using actors, for using questionable business practices and for exercising extremely poor judgment. It damaged its brand by not engaging marketing people who were savvy with the medium they sought to use, and they suffered the consequences.

Word is out now on Sony, and now it’s difficult to say anything good about the company or its products because people think you’re doing stealth marketing work for them.

WalMart suffered from a similar lack of foresight and vision last year when it tried to field competition for MySpace; an online social network aimed at teen membership and branded top-to-bottom with WalMart merchandise. The community also featured near-draconian access controls for parents, perhaps in knee-jerk response to the news media’s treatment of the dangers of MySpace and similar sites.

WalMart spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours building a scalable online community, seeking to cash in on what makes MySpace so popular; but with all its resources WalMart made some very fundamental mistakes.

The heavy branding ( “Hey, I’m a WalMart cool kid, and after school I’m gonna jet on down to WalMart and pick up a new Such-and-Such hip pair of jeans, on sale this week for just…” ), the enormous amount of control taken out of the teens’ hands ( and given to parents in the form of controls to restrict or shut down a teen’s profile ), and the basic lack of understanding a large corporation usually shows when it tries to be “hip” and “cool” to young adults all contributed to the demise of WalMart’s community.

By the end of the week after debuting, it was the laughing stock of the online community world. Shortly thereafter, it was not spoken about publicly by WalMart and then mercifully taken down.

Both examples are cautionary tales. No matter how much money you have, no matter how much clout you think you have with a certain demographic, jumping in to marketing efforts in web 2.0 social media using traditional marketing thinking will get you in trouble.

At the very best, it will waste your money and time. At worst, it can damage your brand, your credibility, and severely hamper your ability to do business with the groups you were trying to market to such a savvy way.

The promise and potential of marketing with social media is real, and truly amazing. The rules are different in such online venues, and so many more people can be reached, can be turned into brand advocates with such little effort, if your campaign is executed correctly.

By someone who knows how.

Authenticity

On some Friday evenings, some mix of the Social Flare crowd can be found at what might be generously called a "nightclub"; a place called BG Fellows on the south side of Chicago. An older crowd of folks who jump to the dance floor when "Copa Cabana" or "September" starts up makes up most the the clientele early on. As the evening draws out, other places close and the younger crowd spills in. The music changes, as you might imagine, and it becomes a different club.

Age and mindset wise, I guess I am somewhere between the two target demographics. Me and whomever I drag along with me arrive early, and spend the first part of the evening socializing and being silly. Some business gets discussed as well.

Last night was Friday, and there I was. It was easy to spot me; I was the nerd taking notes of potential blog topics as they came to me, while the crowd filtered in.

I have always had an ear for music. I can appreciate it, but that's not what I'm talking about here. My ear is such that if there is the slightest variation in pitch, speed, or whatnot, I can tell almost instantly. This sense is innate, and I have stopped conversations I was having when the background music switched to a different version of a familiar favorite, or one played at a different speed for some reason. Or a cover.

last night, as I took notes and and worked on a strong OJ, some very familiar 80s songs came on. A strange thing, though...  they sounded very much like they were "supposed" to. Same pitch, tenor, and so on. Definitely the same music.

But something was a little off. Not quite right.

In the world of blogs, social network communication, and exposing your message to many people...  the question of authenticity comes up, as well. New thinking in marketing ( perhaps old thinking, merely revisited ) espouses authenticity and empathy. Some people can tell when you're full of it.

If you're the loudmouth at a party, perhaps there's no harm done. If you're the band covering and passing off 80s music as knock-off...   still maybe no harm done. Well, not much harm.

If you're a company...  doing business on the internet, and marketing there, this might be a bad thing. Being in-authentic.

People market on the internet because there are lots of easy eyeballs, there. This also means that your message goes in front of more people, and more people who can potentially sniff a bad thing out.

And online, inauthenticity can kill. Ask Sony, or WalMart.

So, maybe a better plan for spreading the word online would entail being authentic, and creating genuine advocates for something... a message or a brand. Not whispering BS in as many ears as possible, but rather whispering a good story in a few of the right ears, and watching the message go.

What a great business proposition.     ;  )

An alternative to common sense - social marketing

Maury is an old boss I had.

It was with a tech firm, and Maury believed that traditional marketing methods could be jump-started using the internet and new tech like social media to great effect. He was a great salesman, and convinced a lot of people of his way of thinking.

The idea wasn't exactly bleeding edge, but he was good at repackaging, Maury was.

No more stamps, collecting names from orders, and all that...  you could send thousands of people an email blast. You could build a MySpace, and they'd come. There were some problems with this, certainly; but Maury had sharp people working for him, and they generally smoothed the edges out.

These people being marketed to with the amazing power of the Inter-Web were the gentle souls who signed up for someone's service or website, and blew past the part of the User Agreement that mentioned by becoming a member there they were opting in to the email newsletter. As well as the  email whims and ideas of the CEO's friends and business contacts. Like my old boss Maury.

Traditional marketing has at its core a very simple idea: get your message in front of as many people as possible. -Someone- will send you money. If you can throw up enough trash onto the wall, something will stick, and out of a thousand people one or two will walk by, call it art, and put money in your hat.

We go with what we know, of course. Throwing trash on the wall was what Maury knew. It's a simple concept of numbers.

And that's what most people know, as it happens. If you have a wonderful experience at a restaurant, or an unsavory dealing with a certain auto mechanic, it's common sense that if you're going to spread the word, spread it as far as you can, isn't it?

"Do you know who I am? Do you know how many people I will talk about this with...?"

Makes sense, in a way. Or, at least it did before people started tuning out advertising. This might have been a few decades ago.

A better way to go about things might be to think about who among all your friends knows the most people, and which one of these few would be most inspired by your tale of woe or excellence. That way, you could spend a little time talking with your socially-connected friends, get the message spread, and have piles of time left over.

Hmmmmm.

That sounds like a better idea, come to think of it. And come to think of it more, to be fair to Maury, he would have been for it to...  if the money was pouring in that day. If things were going well. But in a crunch, like most of us Maury reverted to his training. "Get this in front of as many people as possible!" he'd yell, the dizziness starting to overcome him, his vision blurring.

Seth Godin put the alternative to "common sense" well:

"Marketing by interrupting people isn’t cost effective, anymore. You can’t afford to seek out people and send them unwanted marketing messages, in large groups, and hope that some of them will send you money.

Instead, the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and a process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."

Maury and his company didn't practice social marketing, really; it was more like regular old marketing, in fancy new venues.

With Social Flare, we'd like to do something much different. We'd like to find those few friends who talk, share our story in an insightful way, and watch the word spread.

So we have more time, for other things.