Time 21:36

The tables have turned in five years. Back then social media zealots were telling company execs, “you don’t get it”. They loved to bring out charts of percentage growth and the ever referenced “if Facebook was a country…” It took among other things, two election cycles, (the US and Iran), numerous gadget launches, a pop star’s death, a golf icon’s fall from grace, the year-long roll out of the first “social” car (you can comment which car you think I’m referring to here), and a World Cup for executives to retort, “We get it now.”

And now it’s their turn to say to the social media business community, “you don’t get it.” The it for them is how companies work for anyone to move from side project freak show to bonafide, no snickering business function. The holy grail for social media practitioners is Engagement, the holy grail for corporate executives is Process. The mutual nirvana are the key performance indicators (KPI) that give each side a reference point for their work.

Engagement means dialogue, participation, exchange of ideas

Process means your work is part of a decision oriented workflow system with predetermined actions to be taken based on certain events

KPI means “a metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives.” This definition is from Avinash Kaushik from an excellent post on different types of measurement.

In this Marketing Edge podcast with Brain Solis, we discuss how to support the social media champion in an organization by understanding how to fit social into the company’s goals. Even the smallest pilot project needs to be structured in a way that will assimilate into the larger picture if it is to succeed.

I love when Solis says every champion hits a ceiling. You can’t just walk into a meeting of senior executives, say the world is going this way, and they will come along. His latest book Engage Solis peels the onion back a few layers than most social media books by examining how to work social media into the corporate process. The journey to achieve getting social media included in corporate processes is what Solis calls the last mile. He has written about the last mile in social media on his blog BrianSolis.com

I look at the culture of the business to determine whether the last mile will be a walk in the park or the last mile of a long journey across a desert. I highlight social culture vs social tactics in a podcast called, Is Your Company Social At Its Core ? It’s the story of a small, but growing premium ice cream brand, Izzys Ice Cream, and how their culture is spawning sophisticated uses of social technology.

Fun for Listeners

We are going to do a few neat things with this podcast and post.

First we have a drawing to win Solis’ book Engage. Email MarketingEdge AT providentpartners.net and put Engage in the subject line. This is not just a copy of the book, but it is the copy I have read and included comments in the margins, kind of like a combination book and blog. The physical replication of social media, only slower with fewer people, but unique nonetheless.

Second, we invite you to join Brian Solis in Minneapolis, July 27 at 6PM at Solera in Minneapolis. It’s an event An Evening with Brian Solis, sponsored by the Minnesota chapter of PRSA, register for the event today, it will be enlightening and inspiring. Hat tip to Jen Kane for leading this event.

Disclaimer – this is not a shot at the USA on its birthday. This is not a political commentary because this is the Marketing Edge podcast and Blog. I hope it will be a quick eye opener to acknowledge that the citizens of America and the world, live in an interdependent world.

Let’s separate Independence the apple pie, flag waving idea from independent growth.

Independence is the beautiful way Americans have been able to worship as they choose, to roam our vast land without “papers” (with some exceptions over our very short history), to assemble, start a business, build an idea into reality, have children etc. etc. etc. That’s our society, warts and all that we choose to celebrate today. I’m in favor of it. Happy Birthday.

Now let’s look at independent growth. This is the notion that we glamorize for individuals who achieve certain levels of accomplishment. You know top ten lists, richest people, All-Star teams, A, B, C, and D Listers. We love to refine things and people to lists, without appreciating how those on the list came to be, how they were impacted by other people and events.

The social web has put a spotlight on the amazing gifts we give to each other, some of which contribute to personal gain and recognition. The concept that we learn from others in this or past generations is not new. One that comes to mind today is the electrical engineer Nikola Tesla whose work was trumped by Thomas Edison in his day, is the foundation for today’s energy saving light bulbs.

Let’s apply that interdependent concept in the area of social media authors. For example. today’s social media thinking by Charlene Li of Altimeter Group on Open Leadership, a wonderful book about the new participating consumer and how companies can embrace them. It’s a premise based on the work of Shel Israel and Robert Scoble in Naked Conversations or the Cluetrain Manifesto Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and McKee Jake. Can we trace some of this thinking to Ralph Nader and his early consumer empowerment? On the marketing side do we owe some recognition to Neil McElroy the Procter and Gamble marketing executive who advocated the concept of brand managers, market segmentation, and several brands under the same parent company?

How about that patio furniture, your sitting on or the grill, or lawn chair at today’s Bar-b-que. My bet is one of them was made by a worker earning $5 a day instead of $10 or more an hour. (Not a political statement just an economic fact of life) What about the house, car, boat for today’s activities, likely owned by a bank now or at some point in the past. This consumerism and ownership is based on the interdependence of individuals and institutions.

America is a nation built on economic and intellectual interdependence. Our roots grew on blood and sweat of willing and unwilling Europeans, Africans, and native Americans (for the most part). Independence – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

In pursuit of these rights we are an interdependent people of the world. Social media brings this to light with each minute on twitter, each shared cause on Facebook, each entry in Wikipedia, and on and on. It has never be clearer to me that our Independence is based on our interdependence which is now expanding beyond our nation as the social web grows. Our fast-paced society likes to pedal short lists of everything, from recipes to
people. I hope that with every list read today, there is a mental asterisk with the caption *this list compliments of the contributions of many other individuals.

Time 14:20

This was a fun piece to put together, let’s face it I went back to Izzy’s Ice Cream three times to research all the different flavors. Izzy’s Ice Cream is a premium, delicious ice cream with unique flavors, some of them available on a limited basis. Izzy’s co-owner Jeff Sommers realized the loyalty his customers had to certain flavors. He also puts great effort, ingredients, and love into the product. The combination of a quality product and loyal customers, gives a business owner great confidence to do what is best for the customer.

Izzys Ice Cream – Flavor UP from Albert Maruggi on Vimeo.

Sommers created a system where customers could subscribe to a flavor and be notified via email, on Twitter and Facebook It’s called Flavor Up – pretty interesting stuff. As the ice cream server replaces the flavor in the dipping case, they also replace the sign with the appropriate flavor name. The sign has an RFID tag on the back which communicates the new ice cream flavor name to a database which in turn updates, well everything. The system was a Sommers brainchild and the Nerdery did the development work along with contributions from other service providers from laser cutting signs to RFID tags.

Izzy’s is famous for “The Izzy” - a delightful little dollop of ice cream to taste on top of most any selection you choose. The concept of the Izzy’s scoop is to allow people to discover new flavors at minimal risk, to reward customers for remaining loyal to a premium product and to potentially engage the conversation about ideas for new flavors.

Sommers brilliantly comments in the podcast and video about the power of the social web crowd to come up with solutions that may not otherwise be achieved, and for individuals from that same crowd to advance an idea that is beneficial to the community at large. This concept and the way Izzy’s has grown a mom and pop shop into a taste playhouse of retail innovation is an example of a social culture in a business. Whatever social tactic Sommers uses will be a success because he begins and ends with the two most important ingredients. They are - a steadfast dedication to a quality product, and the belief a customer engaged with the Izzy’s experience will always look forward to their next time there.

The takeaway of this podcast for other companies is to determine whether your culture is social. After listening to Sommers’ comment on the Izzy mission statement, do you have a similar perspective about your customers. Social media can be used as a marketing tactic, but without a social culture my experience is it will have a short term impact of limited success.

Special thanks to David Erickson from Tunheim Partners for including me in the Flavor Up news conference. David is the author of the e-Strategy Blog.

A number of posts recently about privacy has prompted me to write this post.

Can you trust Facebook? really, no more than you can trust any one organization with many investors. One person is easiser to trust or at least determine if they are worthy of your trust, with larger institutions it gets a little harder in a capitalistic economy.

Second – Privacy on the web is a facade, gone with the credit card, internet, mobile phones, terrorists, ATMs, and our unquenchable thirst for deals, reward zones, frequent flyers, buyers, stayers and everything elsers.

Consumers have opened the door to their own behaviors. We then swarm onto free platforms, Facebook is the 4th largest country. We complain about the ads that subsidize those free platforms, essentially biting the very hand that feeds our free desires to post about private lives then cry foul when those at risk, those being Facebook management and investors, dare to figure a way to pay for the servers in which our data is stored. That’s rich.

Be forewarned, if you jump my case about Facebook not telling us, changing the rules of the game, etc show me your copy of the Terms and Conditions that you read thoroughly. Yes, I’m being snarky to highlight how we have created our own cycle of addiction.

A society so consumed by consumption and connection, so impatient to get to the next thing, through our actions we have relinquished our privacy and attention to details. Oh yes I’m sure there are 100 of you that read T&Cs etc, and can argue the point. It’s a false argument because it’s not the way the majority of people engage with the social web.

Many marketers know this and act accordingly. This leaves a void for government to “save” us from our own impatience and irresponsibility.

I say the system works. You’ll never have true privacy again, and when the social mob screams loud enough, those dependent upon us to actually exist will listen. Facebook is no more if there is a mass exodus of Israelite proportion from the fourth largest country. The plans for this exodus are being developed by the Diaspora great name BTW. I’ll join Diaspora, but I won’t leave Facebook, competition is good – Hey My Space where are you in this!

No worries Facebook lovers, Facebook is circling the wagons they will repsond to the latest political bandwagon. The yelling pendulum will swing back to Facebook investors and the general crowd of those who want to boost revenues. Then Facebook management will come up with another way to minimize their screaming. Look at it this way, through privacy, advertising, or fees, the residents of the fourth largest country will need some taxation. Through it all, the happy middle will include a a degree of suspension of privacy, willingly or unwillingly to feed our addiction.

This is the conundrum of a socialist information society in a capitalist economy.

Time 17:20

All the social media talk in the last year or so is like gnats on a humid, summer day at dusk. It’s time to get inside, take a deep breath and consider the state of social media. I did that with business communicator and IABC Fellow Award winner Shel Holtz. Holtz and I had dinner at Smalleys 87 Club in Minneapolis after his keynote presentation at the IABC gala.

We share some concerns about the state of social media, they are:

1) The continued blocking of access to social sites by more than 50% of companies.

2) Still too many voices echoing the fear of negative comments about their brand or company. (clearly denying access to the social web will shield those ostriches from their critic, sorry just had to slip that in. the timing seemed perfect)

3) Chasing the A list is not the same as gaining influence, it’s about niches and communities.

4) Over promising that social is a replacement pitting communication functions and their practitioners against each other. Business communications is not a zero sum game, nor should social media advocates do so at the expense of other media which will contribute to the ultimate business goals.

So what does stimulating conversation about business communications over a quiet dinner and a couple of beers get you. Some ideas for consideration what it means to integrate social media into a companies strategy.

1) Drop the word social and approach the communications strategy from the end objectives, essentially what do you want the recipient to do, feel, believe. As you plot out how the recipient of your message will interact with that information, who they do so in a digital way? If so, then social will naturally work it’s way into your effort. No big fanfare necessary.

2) Social cultures are easier to create from scratch than insert comfortably in an established institution. Patience and flexibility are key to bringing about change, incorporating social will require rewriting some company policies along with believing in them.

3) Social media is a communications support function, communications is a business objectives support function. Holtz raised this simple concept as a reminder of how the pieces of this puzzle can fit. Credit given to Shannon Paul for the reference point.

What are the chances of social media being implemented as a standard practice? Is it a fad or a true evolution of business in America? Catch more of Shel Holtz on his podcast For Immediate Release with Neville Hobson.

Disclosure: Smalleys 87 Club is a client with good burgers and beer selection. I suggest all consultants have at least one client with these qualities. Follow Smalleys87 Club on Twitter for fun stuff.

Time 32:21

The eMarketer report How Retailers Handle Negative Buzz caught my eye. eMarketer senior analyst Jeffery Grau and I talked about what we are learning from the first phase of retail social media. According to a report by Dynamic Logic and Milward Brown, AdReaction 2009: Brands + consumers + Social Media” 71% of respondents which were social networks users say they follow companies and brand in the retail space compared to 33% who follow restaurants, or 23% who said that follow banks or financial brands.

Grau singles out Best Buy for having success in social media because they are using it across the board. From promoting products and services, to crowd sourcing new ideas about to to customer service. Based on that report I engaged Grau in some of the experiences of retail brands.

Social Media Tactics for Retailers

1) Build a group of supporters who are socially savvy either as an inner circle group or by giving some kind of value. I’d recommend added access compared to a quantitative remuneration in dollars, discounts or products.

2) Expand any PR crisis communications plan with something a little less menacing, such as defining an escalation and response process for public consumer complaints.

3) Extend social media processes to capture new product and service ideas, criticism of competitors and other market research or product development information.

4) It is an “Always-On” environment sad to say, but a party-induced online rampage from consumers late on a Friday night can get pretty messy by Monday morning.

5) Twentieth century structure corporate structures won’t work. Some parts of the corporate retail structure may not reflect the way consumers on the social web behave or expect companies to behave, for example geographic sales territory, delayed responses, and not having access to certain types of consumer data will disappoint and confuse consumers on the social web.

6) Answers Please – If you have a consumer product that is somewhat complicated, it is becoming necessary to have dedicated “answer people” or at the very least respondents to engage those posing questions on Twitter. You especially see this in these products mobile device, computer, and software. Also with these services, travel, finance and taxes, and real estate.

What are your lessons learned during the first phase of experiences with social media?

I’ve been in communications for 25 years spanning all types of the functions associated with organizations “getting their message out”. Those functions included journalism, grassroots campaigns, legislative lobbying, technology marketing, and public relations.

Perceptions are a largely based on perspectives, so laying out this experience I thought would be helpful to appreciate the lens through which I see these transformations. I’ve also experienced working in large companies and venture capital start-ups and mid-size growth organizations. I share this because it plays into the context of the obstacles facing marketers over this second decade in the 21st century.

Marketing Transformation #1 – Naked conversations leads to naked behavior. Gaining insights to consumers as they willingly (or unwillingly) act transparently by giving up their privacy. This data with be cross referenced and used in proactive programming.

Marketing Transformation #2 – Marketing Rhetoric vs Reality Reconciliation made simple with social media. Careful with your company puffery, there plenty of people and chances to call Bull.

Marketing Transformation #3 - Companies as media properties. Contribute to the stream of conversation that surrounds your company without being the center of attention (don’t be that guy, very difficult for some companies to do). Those that do will gain respect and leadership.

Marketing Transformation #4 – Consumers as marketers, really? When the novelty of social communities wears off, and the reality of the time commitment necessary to be social sets in, be ready to answer the consumers’ question What’s in it for me?

Marketing Transformation #5 - Social Culture vs Social Tactics. Plenty of companies will not make the transition which is OK, social culture will be similar to systemic corporate change like Total Quality Management and Six Sigma. There will be a divide between social companies and social hacks.

Marketing Transformation #6 – Greater consumer participation necessary. As the dismemberment of old advertising continues, companies desperately want to know what motivates you, the more you interact, the better the relationship.

Marketing Transformation #7 – Yesterday’s direct mail lists are today’s personal brand networks. Regardless of FTC blogger regulations, established individuals are conduits of word of mouth as being social on the web has significant overlap between helping and being helped, it’s the ultimate form of interdependence.

Marketing Transformation #8 – 2010 is the year of social media skeptic, have a contingency plan. The more social media is absorbed by the mainstream, the more people will try to game the system causing all kinds of turmoil among the ranks of advocates, enthusiats, and critics.

Marketing Transformation #9 - Less about convincing and more about delivering. Taking a page from the World of Mouth adovcates, companies with enough confidence in their ability to build products and delivery services that consumers are comfortable recommending will spend less time having to “message” their way to growth, they will listen their way to profits.

Recommendations

I don’t see the current format of social media being the end game. It’s extremely time and labor intensive and unless companies are willing to commit to those elements of participation, they will merely pay lip service through this initial adoption phase of social media.

Some believe the data is circumspect, sure if Facebook was a country it would be the fourth largest, but what does that mean? What kind of country exactly? Will its inhabitants grow weary of sharing their data, lobbying each other for worthy causes, and doing the work of marketers who were laid off because friends don’t make friend buy bad things? Or will they unify in a community of users of like mind, feed off of their shared new experiences, and expand to improve their current condition?

I caught up with the director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project Lee Rainie after his presentation at the University of Minnesota Social Networks Research and Creative Collaborative. Rainie’s presentation was entitled the The Rise of Networked Individuals .

The lighting was poor in this interview, but the content timely and perhaps a bit of a conversation starter here. The questions are these, as the networked individual takes root in our new economy, do we begin to see interdependance among each other or do we break off into packs of networks? In the early adopter phase of the social web there was a sense of creating something new, contributing to something greater. As the adoption curve progresses, there is ample information to create what Rainie refers to as a culture of amateur experts who are now in competition selling their expertise and services. This is an information imbalance that can put significant pressure on companies, agencies and individuals. An imbalance where you may believe you give more than are getting back or taking more than you are giving. Interesting in that this is a similar situation that impacts personal relationships.

My perspective for many industries is for companies and individuals to give their way through this imbalance. Be as generous as you possibly can because technology and access to information are a breeding ground of new competition.

Networked individualism also has a stealthy side. As you look at an individual who is networked, you get the perspective of a single person reach out to hundreds even thousands of others. The less visible network, is the one where individuals combine for the gain of the group as a whole and individual benefit. For example the way wolves assemble in packs to hunt their prey. The network of the like-minded, the network of the ad hoc project team, are other ways individuals gain access to business, achieve their individual goals and create some of the scale that was once the exclusive domain of large companies.

Rainie posits that the following big forces are pushing/pulling us toward networked individualism

1. Affluence and affordable technology
2. Changes in family composition, roles, responsibilities
3. Expanding consumer options
4. Income and wealth volatility
5. Job security and longevity
6. Rise of free agency and freelancing
7. Employer changes pushing workers towards management of retirement and health care
8. Rise of DIY politics and religion

Do you believe social media is making us interdependent or highlights that we are independent entities?

Time 33:34

Ideas are wonderful things, especially when they are the basis for action and evaluation. Creative marketers can be a tad like the Jackie Gleason’s character Ralph Kramden in the television series The Honeymooners. (this show will resonate with boomers, TV fans, and New Yorkers). The video below is a classic, a live advertisement of Kramden’s new kitchen gadget that does supposedly everything. Ed Norton, his best friend and in this case calm presenter.

Regardless of the outcome, ideas are the seeds of innovation. Those who till the soil and nurture ideas, whether successful or not, are advancing knowledge for everyone who learns from their experience.

In this podcast we share a real life example of how a marketer (me) and a developer (Justin Dessonville aka @iamdez can work together to test an idea that I have simmered for a long time. We explored whether it was possible to get real-time data on Twitter followers. I realize there are several apps that report on Twitter counts, followers patterns, ( a great resource for this is One Forty.com I am interested in something similar to the chat feature in Facebook where I can see who among my friends are present and engaged. Why does real time twitter follower persistence matter?

1. More accurate quantification of exposure of tweets and to whom
2. Indication of audience interests that are currently following (a subset of a tweet chat if you will)
3. Increased accuracy of follower engagement during times of the day

We’ll also get a better sense of whether this type of information is necessary as the data promoted tweets program being run by Twitter is evaluated.

Dessonville IAMDEZ also authors the increasingly popular Tuesday Blogversations

Some of the lessons learned about objectively evaluating ideas include:

1. Be brutally honest in the midst of being hopefully energetic
2. Being overly focused on competition will paralyze
3. Not understanding the competition will waste time
4. Don’t be afraid to fail and admit it, the next idea is right around the corner

Have you tried to develop an application, or product or service? What are your tips on getting the project to a go no go decision? Provident Partners gives a food item for every comment we get on this blog. Also as a special just for this post, Justin will match our food item contribution. Your thoughts are worth a lot more than a penny.

Innovation can only come from ideas and that’s what the Big Omaha conference is about, innovation. Big Omaha is a Big Deal Conference – May 13-15 (OK the 13th is a party night but hey what’s a great conference without a party, then a day and a half of substance) The Silicon Prairie News is producing a conference on innovation, technology, and social media in Omaha with Tony Hsieh CEO of Zappos and Dennis Crowley CEO of Foursquare among many others. I don’t have discounts because it’s a great starting price, give a look, but you can tell them we sent you. Why? no financial kickback, just the marketers’ joy of knowing the decision path.

Time 25:36

The topic of social media among marketers and PR professionals is awash with business and non profit examples, case studies, and the ever available blog post on the latest shinny new object. In this podcast we take a break from the immediate urgent and important concerns of our close circle to focus on the long-term implications of social media. Those things that we avoid talking about because they have little material gain, they deal with part of the population that we avoid, or the mere raising of the issue makes you a “social party pooper”. At the risk of being unfollowed and defriended, we’ll talk about issues of the digital divide being created, the lack of understanding being created by like-minded filters, and the little idiosyncrasies being created by new social norms (this includes multitasking at meetings, taking a call in the middle of an in-person conversation, and increasing custom of taking pictures of your food)

Our guest on this episode of the Marketing Edge podcast is educational researcher Christine Greenhow, who currently serves as the research collaborative chair of the Social Networks Research and Collaborative at the University of Minnesota. The collaborative is an interdisciplinary look at the uses of social media in society. Greenhow is joined by several other academic colleagues including, Susan Walker Associate Professor of Family, Youth and Community in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Minnesota, Joan Hughes is an Associate Professor of Instructional Technology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Loren Terveen is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Minnesota, among others.

The work of the collaborative is focused on adoption of social media, how networks are forming and how all populations are using or not using social media. The collaborative’s work and events are available at www.socialnetresearch.org

I have the good fortune of being on Greenhow’s mailing list which delivered me an invitation to a presentation last week by Lee Rainie the director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project on the rise of the Social Networked Individual.

According to Rainie a recent Pew study showed 53% of online adults use social networks and 73% of online teems use them. Slides from Rainie’s presentation highlight the growing use of social networks and the questions of raised by potential isolation from a broader body of information and contacts, the golden age of the amateur expert, and the state of partial attention created by the increase of information inputs in our daily lives.

Are We Addicted to Social Networks

Social networks may not be as mysterious as all this discussion warrants. Some suggest we get a little shot of dopamaine with every text ping or Twitter mention, yooohooo, that explains it.

We are becoming addicted to our social networks which is a self-feeding circle. You stroke it and it stokes you back. A far reaching documentary on our digital behavior and a must-see is the PBS Frontline show called Digital Nation

Things to Think About But You Usually Don’t

• Digital divide because of economic access or privacy concerns
• Topical isolation filtering the broader culture out
• Altruistic facade the ultimate in giving to get
• Displacement of supply and demand economics by an abundance of information

Now that you have a forum to talk about these issues, which gives you the greatest concern about the future adoption of social media?