Servant of Chaos

Always Getting Started with Social Media

Image by Funky64 (www.lucarossato.com) via Flickr

When I first began blogging over three years ago, it was completely new to me. There was etiquette to learn, tools to master and people to reach out and connect with.

To be honest, I was sceptical about blogging. I had tracked it as a type of communication for years – reading and being inspired by Seth Godin and the group of expert bloggers at Fast Company – but I could not quite see how it would work, say, at a corporate level.

On a personal level, however, the Wordpress and Typepad blogging platforms provided a simple way of publishing regular material on the web – and they were a perfect fit for my objectives – to build a discipline around writing every day.

And so it began.

I started with poetry, but within days, had shifted my focus to websites and storytelling. It was not intentional. My subject matter simply overwhelmed me. I would begin to write creative work and find, instead, that there was something else on my mind. After a month of blogging I asked, Does Anyone Read a Blog. If I remember rightly, I would have had about FIVE readers – and like many bloggers, I became obsessed with web analytics. However, I was already thinking about the nature of blogging and influence, suggesting that not all audiences are created equal:

It reminds me of a quote by Howard Barker (the great British playwright) - "Because you cannot address everybody, you may as well address the impatient" (49 Asides for a Tragic Theatre). This is what sets the web apart from other revolutionary communications platforms - it is both a catalyst for change and the method of transformation.

The idea of transformation is important in social media … and it is something that we easily forget. What I have learned over the last few years is that I must resist the easy options with blogging. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of blogging as publishing … of seeking readers rather than conversation – dreaming of reach over influence. It is important to stimulate, engage and challenge myself and my readers … after all, there is PLENTY of great content available on the web.

So while measurement is great, reader figures are gratifying and even humbling, the real opportunity is impact. How does YOUR blog change or inspire the people who read it? What do they take away into their worlds as a consequence? As Richard Huntington eloquently explained:

So long as the digital community clings to its obsession with accountability over effectiveness it will remain in the unedifying position of creating engaging brand fluff on the one hand and highly measurable but largely pointless direct response advertising on the other.

It’s important to “get started” with social media – but remember, we are always in a process of getting started – there is always something new to learn. And as this great list of social media case studies shows – while there is some fantastic work being done, there are also plenty of social media mistakes. If in doubt, remember, “change” and “transform”.

When Finance Brands Go Wild

After MyFutureBank’s a well publicised “experiment” and withdrawal from social media and the surreal and poorly contextualised Truthpod (courtesy of Westpac), it would be easy to suggest that finance marketers had had their fill of the social media space. Or perhaps, had bitten off more than they could chew.

Yet it seems this is not the case.

Clearly, with Forrester research indicating that 75% of Australians participating in some form of social media, consumer brands have LITTLE CHOICE other than begin to engage with their customers in this way. After all, it is where we are CHOOSING to spend our time and precious attention.

But what happens when a finance brand escapes into the wild? What happens when a business truly asks for the input of its community? Companion Credit Union decided to find out. The Financial Brand blog has some great coverage of this rebranding campaign here.

With a new theme of “We’re Listening”, Companion put their brand on the line and asked their members to vote on a new logo. As the CEO, Ray O’Brien said, “The credit union is really owned by the members and therefore we decided we should invite them to actively participate in helping us decide”.

Over 1000 votes were received (from a member base of about 12,000) … and a new blog has been setup to help the credit union really “get back to it’s roots”. They are even supporting Movember. So what does a customer selected logo look like?

The real opportunities for brands and social media are for those looking to transform their relationships with their customers … so it is encouraging to see brands from a relatively conservative market capitalising on these opportunities. And in a tight market (well, really, in any market), a social media strategy can not only help you stand apart from your competitors, it can also drive value back to your community – which is a great fit for credit unions and other member-based businesses.

Companion is certainly one financial service brand to watch – and as their ongoing marketing and social media strategy evolves, I expect there will be some real insight and proof points around the way that brands can grow and extend their reach and engagement via the micro-interactions that we take for granted. And this is one of the core values of social media for brands – that the difference between what your customers INTEND and the way they BEHAVE disappears – and you are left with a sentiment that contributes to (or detracts from) your brand promise. More power to the community!

The Fail First Strategy

There are many lessons that marketers can “borrow” from the IT industry. “Open source”, for example, has changed the way that many of us conceive of ideas – they are no longer considered the proprietary property of one company/business (or they aren’t in most cases) – after all, ideas are the easy part, execution where it gets difficult. (In fact, we can really wonder whether ideas EVER were owned or whether this was just a convenient illusion.)

Most recently, I have been pondering the concept of “failing fast” -  see the wikipedia entry here. It is a systemic approach to programming that aims to identify and report on failures – or events that are likely to cause failures. The focus of the programmer is on passing the message “FAIL” up to a system that is built to respond. There are two important aspects (that I can see):

1. The program escalates the issue or failure to another level of responsibility
2. The program also halts before the failure replicates, spreads or becomes embedded in other systems

From a marketing point of view, there is much to learn from this. And in light of the debacles around Motrim Moms and MyFutureBank more locally, the lessons could and should be absorbed by marketers very quickly:

1. Listen. As Amber Naslund points out, there are plenty of free tools that can be used to begin monitoring what is being said about your brand, products and services. Start with Google alerts. But please, start.
2. Step-in. If you are not listening to the online conversations, the echo chamber tends to get louder and louder. As this escalates and draws more voices into the conversation, the absence of an “official voice” means that there is no way to diffuse the conversation. This leads, as Alan Wolk suggests, to overreaction. Once you are at that point, there is no return.
3. Participate. When you start actually participating you will make mistakes – you may need to slay some sacred cows. But that’s ok … it’s the way we learn. By building relationships you are also creating a community/network. These are the folks who will let you know if someone else it talking about your brand.
4. Learn. There is much to learn by following the first three steps. Take this information and share it with your product development and customer service teams. Use this to transform what you deliver to your markets and how you treat your customers.

Despite the benefits of the fail-fast approach, however, the brave brand manager may want to take a more tangible, proactive and accelerated path – to FAIL FIRST.

Under a fail first strategy, you already accept that there will be mis-steps. You acknowledge that issues will arise that you won’t be able to control. In fact, the approach means taking a POSITION that people can buy into or work against. It is drawing a line in the sand.

Then, once the controversy starts or the conversation begins, you work them both equally using the same four steps above. Those who like what you are doing will converse. Those who don’t will cause chaos. Engage with both and use them to cross-pollinate ideas. Learn from the nay-sayers how and where you can improve your products. Activate and empower your evangelists to tell their stories.

Now, I don’t advocate such a strategy for all brands. But there are some who could do it. And for those who can stand the heat, there are great benefits to flow from failing first and learning. But remember, you need to PLAN a fail first strategy. You need the systems and fall-back strategies in place that can help you overcome the failure. You need the management support to hold course.

The Motrim debacle could have been turned around. Many similar “crises” could. What would you do differently? Would you dare to fail first? What do you think it takes to create the most successful failure in marketing history?

Institutions struggle

Understanding the aspirations and expectations of the emerging “millennial consumer” can no longer be considered a peripheral concern. The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States was accelerated by the tremendous energy and commitment of a new generation of voters. Exit polls indicate that Obama received 66% of the youth vote and 68% of the new voter vote.

And while the Obama campaign has successfully employed a wide range of communication devices and technologies, the political party machines are streets ahead of the majority of social institutions. Government departments across the world still largely struggle with technology and integration, businesses outlaw the use of social networks in the workplace and education institutions offer courses that are outdated by the knowledge and skills that students can obtain online.

This fascinating post by Alana Taylor, an NYU journalism student and blogger clearly demonstrates the gap and the sense of frustration:

What is so fascinating about the move from print to digital is the freedom to be your own publisher, editor, marketer, and brand. But, surprisingly, NYU does not offer the kinds of classes I want.

Where once innovation occurred mostly from within the walls of the enterprise, consumers are now iteratively experimenting with technologies and applying them to their real world problems. This means that businesses and brands are struggling to keep pace with the changes that are occurring within their marketplaces. It also means that there has been a role reversal in the dynamic in what marketers traditionally call “B2C”. The same applies to other “institutions” such as universities, colleges and government departments.

Despite the economic slowdown, it is clear that behavioural patterns have shifted. Institutions will continue to struggle in the face of this widespread change and the gaps will widen between brands, consumers and the “promise” that should bridge the two. There are very interesting times ahead of us all.

What Can Planners Steal from IAs?

One of the best forms of innovation is to transplant a practice from one knowledge domain to another. What this provides is a proven method -- but one uprooted from its original context. However, it is in this re-planting where the real opportunities for innovation can be found.

For some time I have been convinced that there is much that marketers can learn from the technology community. From the "promiscuity of ideas" and open collaboration offered by "open source" through to the benefit of systems thinking captured in development lifecycles, there are ripe fields that will prove fertile ground for marketers coping with changes sweeping the industry. A great case in point is the overlap between information architects and planners. Matthew Milan shares a great presentation on the subject and reminds us "a planner is not their brief".

Stealing From The Information Architects

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design design thinking)

Enterprise 2.0: It's Not Your Dad's Company

Take a look around. Look at the people in your office, at the desk next to you. Look into the faces of the people who you pass in the corridor. They look the same, right? The same faces have greeted you year in, year out.

Well, get ready, because the workplace is transforming, and it is happening right under your nose.

Those peppy Gen Y kids who were brought into the business to inject some life and energy are moving up. That’s right, they have been steadily building their experience, lobbying the line management and pushing through the KPIs in the yearly 360 degree reviews … and guess what? They are now making business decisions. Yes, indeed, Gen Y are reaching the management level, and working the matrix -- and they will bring a new style and a new approach to your business.  This will transform the way that we all work. Indeed, it has to. 

And one of the biggest transformations will be right there on the desk in front of you. That locked down desktop that has served you well for the last couple of years will soon be replaced. Gradually that sparse Desktop will be replaced by a series of icons and widgets … and horror of all horrors, you will find the work computer looks increasingly like your kids PC (or dare I say it, a Mac!). The new management will be prising the dead-hand of the IT group off the controls and installing new applications and adding new links. There will be Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Friendfeed. There will be various shades of SaaS (software as a service) delivering on-demand enterprise scale business processes and systems that you can reach no matter where you are, all courtesy of “the cloud”. Sure there will be the in-house enterprise systems … but they too will play nicely with whatever you need them to. After all, it’s not your Dad’s company anymore. 

But while this sounds like a madhouse of change for the sake of change, stop again, for a moment. Get up and walk down the corridor. Your workplace is about to undergo a large-scale transformation … millions of baby boomer workers are set to reach retirement age in the next few years, and the next wave of Gen Y knowledge workers are stepping in to replace them. It’s not that the systems, processes and business models are being changed on a whim – they are being changed because the people who DO the work are changing. Like any living organism, the organisation is also transforming … shedding its skin in a kafka-esque tribute to the new age.

And while these new systems and processes may raise your eyebrows and your blood pressure, there is actually some as-yet unrealised business value in platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Aaron Strout and Joe Cascio clearly explain where micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter can deliver business value:

• Emergency broadcast system
• Knowledge management
• Training
• Expert identification
• Seeing the connectors
• Inclusion of external stakeholders

All of these elements will be of increasing strategic importance as the composition of the global workforce turns over on itself. And while there will be issues and questions around security, scalability and so on, they pale into insignificance against the larger challenges of global competition, attracting talent and delivering value to customers. And who knows, the widespread adoption of these tools may well inadvertently fullfil the promise of the Cluetrain Manifesto -- "humanising" the brands and businesses that we come in contact with every day.

It really is not my Dad's company.

Update: Marigo Raftopoulos has a great post encouraging us to understand this business transformation as a change from economies of scale to economies of (I presume personal/professional and social) networks.

Social Media Saturation Sees the Rise of the Business Designer

While we continue to see cycle after cycle of new applications and services arrive in the Web 2.0 space, it seems for the most part that we are seeing incremental innovation. This type of innovation builds a new step on top of an existing innovation.

We are also reaching a certain maturity in the way that marketers work with social media. There are now case studies on the effectiveness of social media, there are tools that help us measure and react to conversations and there are an increasing number of corporate roles for "community managers" or even "directors of social media".

So where does innovation go?

In this environment, the focus is no longer on learning the tools, but on refining the way that we interact with them. It is about bringing social media into our businesses, integrating it with our other marketing efforts and focusing efforts in a way that deliver business results. This will see ongoing debates about "where" social media belongs -- PR, corporate communications, marketing, customer support, innovation etc -- as well as a scramble amongst agencies to deliver "social media services" to clients.

It will also see a rise in the importance of the "Business Designer".

The Business Designer does not sit in a creative studio. Rather, she operates across business units -- touching marketing, customer service and new product design. The BD has a finger on the pulse of finance and lives cheek-by-jowl with the legal team. There is the touch of the management consultant in the way that the BD navigates the org chart -- but also the fervour of the evangelist. She may be T-shaped. She may be a green egg. But above all, she is an experienced business professional. That's right -- she knows how to get things done.

Social media saturation is not going to kill innovation in the Web 2.0 world. It is simply going to commence the heavy lifting required to move social media with all its benefits, some of its quirks and much of its energy into the "enterprise space". The BD will perform the important role of "change manager" or perhaps "transformation manager" -- for the domino-like changes that will occur in every facet of a business will change the nature of the enterprise. What has been rough and ready in the consumer space will become refined and repeatable in the business world for the BD will select and orchestrate the practices, tools and approaches that correspond with a company's business strategy. Of course, this will breed a whole new round of innovation in the technology space -- we have already begun to see this with Yammer, the business version of Twitter.

And there will be a corresponding transformation in the process of business, and the goals and approaches of groups charged with managing brand touch points. This goes without saying.

But by far, the most radical transformation will be the one thrust upon us by the generational change that is now under way. With 60 million baby boomers about to be replaced by 60 million Millennials, the workplace will never be the same again. Managing the "knowledge transfer" that needs to take place over the next 5-10 years will be a fundamental responsibility of the Business Designer.

Plurking Great

I am always surprised that the makers of Web 2.0 tools don't fully understand the dynamic and challenging nature of the communities who populate, use, build and evangelise their systems. For example, why would a hugely successful Web 2.0 property like Facebook carelessly launch Beacon? Why would Twitter NOT respond more unequivocally to claims of harrassment? Given that the business model around Web 2.0 platforms is about leveraging the mass of aggregated user data to generate insight/targeted advertising etc, how is that these platforms seem unable to gauge the temperament of their communities? Could it be that they are ape-ing big brands and are simply not listening to the abundant digital voices?

Clearly these leading Web 2.0 platforms have built what we could easily consider unassailable user bases. Facebook carries millions of users each day and has the backing of Microsoft. Twitter appears to be hovering around the 2 million user mark and has attracted a great deal of goodwill. However, what happens when shifts occur? What about extended downtime?

Twitter has successfully modified the behaviour of its user base in such a way that we have all come to rely upon it to fulfil a range of communication needs. But ongoing reliability issues has seen a number of defections to other services that have followed quickly on Twitter's heels. One such service is Plurk.

However, when people who are used to using Twitter arrive at the Plurk interface, they encounter problems. They don't get it. They find it confusing and unintuitive, maybe even over-engineered. I also experienced this ... but felt that there was something different about Plurk. And anyway, I realised that I was looking at Plurk through my "Twitter Goggles" -- and I was finding it lacking (as were others). -- but I knew that I needed to allow Plurk the benefit of the doubt.

Over the last couple of months, the Plurk team have been slowly but surely improving their system. New features, improvements and so on have been appearing regularly. And earlier this week we were given a new series of selectable key words. One of my favourites is "wonders" ... I found that I was using it quick consistently to communicate with my small community of followers -- "Servantofchaos wonders what is going on today". "Servantofchaos wonders why he is still up late writing a blog post". It seems that the Plurkers have been  surveying the most popular "freestyle" words and have added them to the drop-down list. Great!

But while I was impressed with the simple addition of the word "wonders", I was a little surprised to see that it was coloured a dull grey. That seemed like an uninformed decision. So I wrote a message wondering why this was the case ... and in the space of a couple of hours, the word "wonders" was transformed into a beautiful, vibrant colour. Were the Plurkers listening? Was it just coincidence? With my Twitter Goggles on, I would claim it was coincidence ... that there was no-one listening. But I have a secret hope ... that they certainly were listening to the conversation, and they went a step beyond and used this intelligence to change (ever so slightly), a system that is going from strength to strength. If they were listening, it's plurking great!

Measuring the Hybrid Car ROI

A car purchase is the second most expensive investment that an individual is likely to make (the first being their home). And in that respect, consumers come close in behaviour to their B2B counterparts -- after all, vehicles are expensive, have ongoing cost requirements and (whether we like it or not) reflect on our own sense of self. Accordingly, when it comes to purchase time, we shop around, do our homework, check blog posts, search engines and customer satisfaction ratings. We ask friends for recommendations, take a keener interest in the cars we pass in the street, and think through the implications of this major purchase.

Recently though, the greater awareness (and concern for) the environment, coupled with ever spiralling oil prices has seen a massive spike in the popularity of hybrid cars. (Some US states have gone so far as to mandate the production of eco-friendly cars.) But, even a cursory glance at the prices of hybrid cars shows that they are significantly more expensive, meaning that you will need a longer timeframe before your hybrid car breaks even with its petrol equivalent.

However, there are other factors at play in the calculation of ROI -- and Todd Andrlik has developed a great online tool that brings carbon emissions into the calculation. Originally developed to assist his employer, Leopardo Constructions, in calculating the ROI impacts for their fleet of company vehicles, the calculator has now been made widely available. Simply enter a few variables about the vehicles you are comparing, press calculate, and you will receive data about fuel savings, unreleased carbon emissions and ROI timeframes. Check it out here.

It is a wonder that companies like Toyota or Honda, makers of leading hybrid vehicles have not produced something similar.

The Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 Work

Make no mistake, there are some challeging times ahead for companies. And one of the big ones is dealing with the influx of new employees and the successful transition of young managers into the ranks of decision makers. Beth Kanter discusses social media as a form of innovation within NGOs here and points out this great slideshow from Sacha Chua. A taste of things to come? It is only a matter of time ;)

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