Social Flare

Loose Communities

It might be useful to have a web-based "loose" community, one I can join and leave with ease, one that's designed from the ground up for loose affinity.

For a real life example, imagine a cocktail party, or better, a great wedding reception. For that evening, I am part of the "community" there. I have "friends" after a fashion, we cluster together, share, and then after that night our community disbands.

We go our separate ways, though sometimes you connect with someone special enough to keep in touch with.

I am not thinking about organizing a web-based loose network around wedding receptions ( but hmm ), I am thinking about the idea of a network that enables and supports other loose social interactions; my stay at a hotel or resort, my cruise, my conference. I've blogged in other places about these ideas, but it seems that Mr. Brogan's post would indicate the idea is becoming more and more visible.

As websites became more and more then norm, it said something very definite about a business or establishment that didn't have one. "Oh...  you don't have a website? Hmmmmmm." There might be legitimate reasons for a business not to not have a website, but if you are dealing with the public, selling anything to anyone, or have a message to communicate to others, I can't think of one. I have this suspicion the same thing will happen with social networks.

But not every business or organization has the same social network need. Sometimes your members are transient. Sometimes -you- as creator of the network are transient.

Right now we're in a place where more and more large-scale "permanent" networks are setting up. That's how you build them- to last. To have people come in, and stay. To use a physical world analogy, the whole place is built around the idea of a condo; we build, and you move in, and stay. But what about the space where that's not the best case? What if I need a hotel? or a large tent?

Maybe the idea is that I don't stay for long. The network might last, but my membership is definitely temporary...  this is the case for networks centered around a hotel or resort, or around a cruise. Maybe the network itself is not permanent, along with my membership being temporary...  conferences, family reunions, and one-time events could benefit from such a loose network.

To enable this, a few things would have to be solved for...

You'd need an easy way to join these networks, or at least a feeling that my investment of adding myself to one is worth the payoff of belonging. If I have to spend 20 minutes to join my hotel's social network, it's probably not going to happen. So to a person with my background in usability and IA, this means I'd need a place to host my "profile" in a more or less permanent and very portable way, that I could just apply to these networks as I saw fit. FoaF and other XML dialects for personal profile storage come to mind.

The revenue model seems obvious; who wouldn't want to be able to advertise to such a targeted group of people? Or maybe, who wouldn't want to be able to sell such targeted advertising?

The right tools for the job - choosing a Social Media app that will help.

So, I did a bit of consulting, again in retail. This concerned an internal project, and the consultation was casual and precursory, fitting the state of the project; it hasn't really gotten out of the paper napkin stage.

The idea is this: many very smart MBA-types at this large company sense of see real value in social computing, and would like to introduce some concepts to their company for very good reasons: to effect a cultural change by introducing a social computing app that demonstrates clear value to not only decision makers, but also to the masses. The MBAs themselves are young Facebook-grads newly minted from college, and so they maybe swim in the sea of social computing.

But swimming here, or being native, and developing implementation strategy are two different things.

THe MBAs have access to a wiki solution, and see a lot of potential value in the tool for their organization. Their plan is ( was? ) to introduce it to the higher-ups, let the value speak for itself, and then have use trickle down from the top to the masses.

I advised against this, for a number of reasons:

I have never seen a working example of top-down, mandated social computing. I've seen plenty of grassroots stuff, starting from teh bottom and getting a critical mass of obvious value. Ive seen a few examples of partnered effort, developing a solution that works. But never top-down. It might work, but I get this feeling that mandated social computing ( "now we all need to use the wiki" ) is not a recipe for success. It seems to me this kind of technology needs adoption that can't be mandated.

This is accepting the premise that the MBAs could -get- the higher-ups to adopt the technology. I was not convinced of that, but why strike at pride, when you can appeal to practicality?

Also, and much more important, I opined that it seemed to me that the group had it's heart int eh right place, but might be going about their goal the wrong way. I asked what goals are you trying to acheive? Meaning, what problems are you trying to solve? When you know that, and who you are trying to benefit, then which tool ( wiki, or something else? ) becomes a much easier question to answer. Deciding that you're going to use a wiki because you can afford to keep it up is kind of like going into a hardware store, telling the clerk you have "some work" to do on your house, showing him or her $20 and asking what you can get for that?

You might get a spiffy hammer. But what if you really need to drill some holes, or paint a wall, or grout some tile? Your hammer might not be all that useful.

The same applies for social computing, of course. Except instead of $20 for a hammer, you spend thousands and thousands of dollars in capital, time and other resources chasing after a hazy goal with the wrong tools and a tactical ( as opposed to strategic ) plan.

The ideas of effecting social change, or implementing social media and computing, and solving a tough problem with amazing solutions are all admirable goals. But the planning and thinking things through before hand, with someone who knows how, is essential.

Now, where did I put that hammer...?

You see, I have some pctures to hang. In doing this, I know I have nails to pound. And although I could use the side of a drill, or the flat of a saw, or the bottom of a paintbrush to drive the nails,  a hammer really is the best tool for that.

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.

Knowing who your friends are

At Social Flare, the kind of work we do involves developing an understanding of who you are as a business, and how you are perceived by the people who see you on the web. This is usually a bit different than how you -think- you are perceived, and definitely different than how you would like to be seen.

A large chunk of our skillset comes from past work in experience design and architecture. When doing this kind of work, you design total experiences for clients. This is more than just whipping up web pages; it has to do with an almost intimate understanding of how different groups of people approach your content and how they use it, and how to help them do this. It's as much art as it is science, and involves some leaps.

"Of course people will use our page commenting feature- it's so easy."
"Why wouldn't they call us if they had a problem? We get no calls, so everything must be fine."
"We've been doing things this way for years; it works just fine. We just want a total new look."

And so on.

You may recognize the above statements as ones you've made as a client, or what you've heard as an experience designer. Whether you're developing communities or single page sites or blogs, you need to be very careful about the assumptions you make about how people use your content and apps.

Google found this out, the other day. In an excellent article on one of the NYT blogs, Miguel Helft illustrated this very issue. In an effort to better position itself as a major force in social networking, Google is innovating it's own applications and putting the social spin on them. Google Reader is an app that allows you to read various blogs, and before a few days ago it let you specify other people ( Google Account holders, of course ) who you could share this content with. A few days ago it became known that Google changed this slightly; now everyone that you had IMed with using Google Talk had access to what you had read using Reader, as if you had shared the content.

The assumption of use was this: if you had IMed with someone, then certainly they were your friend.

It would therefore be fine for Google to assume that it was cool to open up sharing of all the things you'd read to your "friends" that you've IMed with.

This probably isn't true for some.

A fundamental precept of  user experience is that, as much as possible, you should let the user define the experience. in the framework of what you offer, certainly, but the user should have as much control as possible. An important point here is that Google didn't offer Reader to start with, in it's initial form, as something that shared with everyone you IMed with. This was a change, and thus not something "factored in" to the user's experience. When people found out that things were different now...  many had a problem.

One can make several reasonable guesses as to why Google did this; it wanted to make its apps more "social", because it believes that in doing so it positions itself as more of a leader in this type of very popular computing. It also sets the exprience trend for future Googel applications.

The problem comes in assuming how users experience your app; Google assumed it'd be just fine to give all the people you IM with access to what you read in Reader. Apparently this is not the case.

It's hard to beleive that Google did not research this point first; it's always interesting when something you assume would have showed up with a bit of user research seems to come as a total surprise to an institution like Google.

Even the biggies can make this mistake.

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?

Always On, and going vertical

So, the most recent Stanford Summit came and went. Innovators and technologists ( a Who's Who, of course ) gathered for two and a half days to discuss, among other things, future trends. Of interest to me was a discussion about the evolution of the space occupied by social network sites. Predictably, the voices from the Summit speaking on this topic thought it "very unlikely" that another biggie such as MySpace or Facebook would come to dominate across the whole of the web.

That is to say, the future is probably with more niche-oriented social networks; people looking for other rabid pulp SciFi fans or canning enthusiasts or renfaire participants ( not to mention personal finance aficionados,  usability professionals, and other such non-hobbyist communities ) will likely gravitate towards their own corner of the social network webspace.

Duh.

For a time now, various entities ( WalMart, Microsoft, etc ) have attempted to develop the "next MySpace", dreaming dreams of going head to head with that phenomena and competing in its own space. After the first few got there and expanded beyond all  prediction, the space is proving exceedingly difficult to penetrate, just like any market dominated by  major players.  Not impossible to be the Next Big Thing, but desire and millions of dollars are not a guarantee you'll succeed at getting a place to the table.

The point of my post, and yes I have one, is that technology that supports portability between networks is going to be coming into its own, and someone smart will become quite rich helping to facilitate this.

We, members of the social networking masses, have one or two presences on the biggies like MySpace or Facebook. Maybe one on something more specialized or in a different area like Virb or Digg. I'm not giving up my membership in the communities I've been a part of for some time now, and there's a definite bandwidth limit, here: I can't track my info ( let alone other people's info ) on more sites.

So, what to do?

As vertically-oriented social networks emerge and grow, some way of making "me" ( that is, my online presence ) portable would sure be helpful. FoaF is a tiny step in this direction. This is a first step in a Rosetta Stone for all the different social networks I might want to participate in.

Don't make me learn 5 or 10 languages; help me learn one, and get me a good translator.

What is Social Media?

So, what’s “social media”, anyway?

Wikipedia describes social media as “…the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.”

Simple, eh?

Well, let’s put it another way. Most websites and web pages you can find on the web can be described as “flat”, meaning they’re written once, rarely change, and cannot be interacted with.

These are search returns, company homepages, member lists, maps, and so on. These pages are not meant to be interactive or change over time; they simply put some information out there that someone ( hopefully ) might find useful. This is “static media”, and much like a printed brochure, once it’s out there, that’s it.

Read it if you find it useful, print it out or bookmark it so you can come back to it if you need it later.

Social media is different.

Social media  web content is created by people with the express purpose of being “portable”, or shared, as well as commented on, listed in various indexes and maybe even changed and  evolved over time. Platforms that enable or support social media include many things you’ve heard about in the news or from friends: blogs, wikis, social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook, immersive environments along the lines of Second Life or There, media sharing sites and applications such as Flickr and YouTube, and content sharing sites such as Digg and Technorati.

Social media is content created for social consumption with the express intent of having it change, bend, fold, spindle, and be mutilated over time. Blog postings are commented on, social network site profiles change and evolve, movies on shared media sites gets tagged, linked to, discussed, reposted in other places, and so on.

Put another way, social media or content for social media platforms is ripe for spreading around the internet and through society in a viral fashion. It’s almost always made with the intent ( express or implied ) that the content can be passed along, referred to, reposted, and otherwise carried on the wind of public interest.

This can happen on accident, certainly. Think about almost every fad you’ve heard of. But it can also be an intentional act, something that’s managed, although this is a bit trickier.

Traditional PR material such as a press release is like shot out of a shotgun; blasted in one general direction, with the hope of hitting as many targets as possible with the intent of getting some few people “hit” to respond back. This usually means buying something, paying for services. To use traditional media to spread your message, you do a bit of research on the people that you want to hear your message, put some effort into crafting it in a form you think they’ll respond favorably to, and then release it in whatever medium you can afford- TV, radio, billboard, or newspaper.

Social media is different.

Social media is “grown”, when it’s done well. Just like traditional marketing messages it’s written with someone in mind, but it’s also written expressly to be portable, as above. It’s also often delivered via some social media platform such as a blog, wiki, content list ( such as Digg or Del.icio.us ) instead of more traditional marketing methods such as flyers, ads, or email.

Marketing via social media is meant to take on a life of it’s own. With social media, it’s not how many people you reach with your initial “blast” of publicity, but rather how your message takes off of its own accord. With social media, you craft it well, and watch people share it amongst themselves. They do all the marketing work for you.

Let me say that again: They do all the marketing work for you.

This has several advantages to traditional marketing.

• First off, it’s marketing smarter, not harder. It enables people to do your marketing work for you. People like to be empowered.
• Secondly, think about who hears your traditional marketing. Anyone who drives past your billboard, or happens to listen to the radio when your spot airs hears it. Most of them forget it seconds later. Social media on the other hand is passed on only by people who are interested, most likely to people who are interested.
• Social media marketing ( social marketing? ) is almost always cheaper, especially when compared to traditional media staples such as TV ad campaigns or national print efforts.
• Information conveyed along social media lines is “processed” differently than traditional media. Out of habit I ignore most commercials and billboards and flyers and web banner ads. But when a friend passes something along to me, I listen and give the message consideration. I am also much more likely to pass this on to others I think might care.

Social media marketing can be done in tandem with more traditional marketing. It usually gives a more human and approachable voice to what you’re doing than your corporate website or official brochures do. People respond to this.

There are a few caveats here, certainly. Just like growing a garden, you have to keep an eye on your social media efforts. They need to be managed, as it’s possible things can take a sudden turn you didn’t originally plan for. Also, as I’v esiad before the message needs to be crafted a bit differently than almost all traditional marketing matter. It’s more casual, more honest, and must be more interesting and “sticky”.

This is not as easy as it sounds, but the benefits can be outstanding.

More on social media to come. I'll leave you with my current favorite quote about social marketing, by Seth Godin:

"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 then get out of the way and let them talk"