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”.

Learning from Failure

Failure is a fascinating concept. Not only does it attract our attention (think of the term "like watching a train wreck"), keep us in thrall and keep us awake at night, it can also be a source of great creativity. Indeed, the Age of Conversation 2: Why Don't They Get It? devotes a whole section to marketers brave enough to own up to their own "marketing tragedies" - and how these have transformed the work that they do.

It is in this vein, that Adrian Ho has pulled together an outstanding presentation on the benefits of failure. Not only does he recount the painful truths that come from doing good work and having it lead to an unexpected outcome, he also neatly wraps this up into a discussion on the future of agencies and of advertising. Makes me think that my perfectionist streak needs some tampering with.

Strategy: beyond advertising

View SlideShare do cument or Upload your own. (tags: strategy zeusjones)

Happy Birthday Ian Lyons

There are some great people working in the advertising and marketing industry. Many of them are super smart, more talented than a hat full of Ogilvies and, my-oh-my they are prettier than a zebra on a prairie. Some don’t even have blogs to link to! But I am lucky enough to call these people “friends” (you know, the REAL kind).

However, there is this one chap that I have known for a while now who really defies classification. He has boy band good looks. He is generous with his time and his intellect. He is friends with more people than Robin Dunbar could possibly imagine. And it’s his birthday today. Have a good one, Ian Lyons!

(Thanks to Pablo Jeffress for the great "ianovation" picture.)

Like OMG, If You Are Not Careful Those Clever Gals will Neek Up On You

The social media world can be a surprising place. It can be filled with joy, snarkiness, horror and even insight. You can read blog posts that make your heart ache and others that will lift your spirits – but no matter where I look, I see all about me, a seething mass of creativity. I smell the stench of humanity.

In the last year I have had the great opportunity to meet some fantastic people. I have read their blogs, followed their conversations (on Twitter) and watched their online shows. I have spent time in their company and been endlessly entertained by their views on the world. But recently, two people have captured my attention.

They write with wit and charm. They make me gasp and laugh out loud – really, there is no affectation here. I am constantly bowled over by their candour and by their courage. I hope you find Annik Skelton’s blog as delightfully shocking as I. And trust Heather Snodgrass’ sharp personal observations will keep you coming back for more.

Changing the World, Bit by Bit

Some months ago, when I began talking to Isadore Biffin about her plans, I was shocked. Here was an eighteen year old girl working on a major project for her final year of high school, and she had a mind to change the world.

Isadore’s idea was to raise funds for charity. Great, I thought. But it wasn’t just ANY charity. You see, a couple of years ago, Isadore had done her Year 10 work experience (senior school) in Ethiopia – working as an aid worker; and while there she learned of the plight of a large number of children who were being recruited into the military in nearby Congo. She was determined to do something about this. The plan was to raise funds to help rehabilitate these kids – to give them a chance to heal from the horrors of what they had seen and done.

During 2008, Isadore began with some fundraising – she gave speeches at local community organisations and schools, she made cakes and so on. But she had a bigger idea bubbling away - what about a concert – like Live8 but smaller? That meant a whole lot more planning and effort … it meant funding, organising bands and speakers, finding a venue (and convincing them to support it); and it meant getting people along to a concert.

Over the last few months, I have been mentoring Isadore … helping her with a marketing plan and advice on how to execute it. We have discussed logos and designs, posters, advertising, social media, competitions, mobilising communities and so on. In all this, Isadore has shown tremendous resolve to move outside of her comfort zone – speaking with journalists, sorting out the various issues that arose, committing to contracts and gaining the support of businesses. She has shown true leadership.

On Sunday night, the Article Thirty-Nine concert was held at The Factory Theatre in Enmore. Over 250 people attended and over $6000 was raised for the Jesuit Refugee Service (the agency running the rehabilitation program). There are some great photos of the event on Isadore’s blog – and Moshcam will soon have streaming video available on the web (Moshcam generously supported the concert by filming it for free).

It just goes to show what CAN be achieved by a strong purpose and a supportive and interested community. And if you would like to contribute to the Article Thirty-Nine cause, leave me a comment.

Out-Viralled? How Does It Feel?

Stan Johnson calls out the neat viral work of Droga 5 for their Guitar Hero YouTube video. But then Freddie Wong shows what can be done with limited resources, some creativity and a passion.

Of course, this is part of what can be considered “viral” – where a piece of work mutates by coming into contact with other forces. After all, the “aim” of a viral is not necessarily simply to spread (ie deliver reach) but to prompt conversation and participation. While Freddie only has one-seventh of the views that the original video has, I daresay, the production costs were much lower ;)

How does it feel to be out-viralled? The answer: it rocks.

Social Entrepreneurs at Vibewire

Running a startup business is a challenge. There are ideas to prioritise, investors to meet, technologies to implement and yes, even work to do. But what about budgets? What about planning? What about marketing? And is there somewhere that you can go to meet up with like-minded entrepreneurs? Yes, entrepreneurship can be an isolating experience.

But what happens if your efforts are not designed around a profit motive? What happens if the outcomes that you seek have a social or a change-oriented focus instead? This is the world of the social entrepreneur – a business that is “for more-than-profit”.

Here in Sydney, Vibewire provides residencies for young social entrepreneurs and creatives. Their sQuareOne space in Ultimo is an incubator where social entrepreneurs can come together, learn from each other and receive support from a small, but flourishing community. sQuare One offer scholarships and host workshops designed to kick-start your social business.

At the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Opportunity even held at Vibewire, we heard speeches from Annie Le Cavalier, Janine Cahill, Jackie Ruddock and Anna Rose. Annie spoke about the changes underway with Vibewire, Janine discussed the role of vision and futures, Anna explained how she is working to have climate change recognised as a youth issue, and Jackie talked about the School for Social Entrepreneurs which is launching in March 2009.

If any of these activities sound interesting to you, contact the folks at Vibewire, or leave comments below and I will put you in touch.

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?

Vote for the Moggies

2008 has seen a significant amount of change in the Australian social media landscape. There has been a veritable explosion of new creative and critical thinking around the topics of advertising and marketing – not only have our coffee mornings received a fresh injection of energy courtesy of Julian Cole, Jye Smith and Scott Drummond, they also come armed with sharp thinking and blogs packed to the brim with social media goodness. Julian even took it upon himself to dream up a Top 50 list of marketing blogs.

But now, in celebration of this new found blogging enthusiasm, Craig Wilson is asking for nominations for post of the year. Christened “the moggies”, it will work out as follows:

Submit your nomination for the best Australian media and marketing blog posts of 2008. It can be one of yours, or it can be written by someone else. The only conditions are that the post must:

• Be Australian (Craig, does this mean “written by an Australian” or “written by someone living in Australia”?)
• Have a media and marketing focus
• Be originally posted in 2008
• Be original work.

Craig will take nominations until midnight Friday, December 12 (AEST) then shortlist the Top 10 posts before announcing the Gold Moggy at a Gala blog posting (Craig is going to stream himself eating pizza and drinking beer) on Monday, December 22. And the prize? Craig says it best:

In true web style the winner will receive….no compensation or prizes but lots of kudos, links and well-deserved praise.

Experienced journalists and new media analysts Mark Chenery and Mark Jones have agreed to help judge the Moggies. I guess that means Craig is sharing the pizza.

Get your nominations in to Craig by leaving a comment here.

Mainstreaming Social Media

While I normally don’t like using nouns as verbs (perhaps I am linguistically conservative?), I quite like the word “mainstreaming”. It implies that social media is in a state of transition where widespread acceptance and uptake is occurring with the general public. 

Paul Chaney suggests that the rising popularity of social media, while strong, will still take some time to become fully integrated into marketing practices. Interestingly, the social technographics profiling from Forrester shows that consumer adoption levels are high, especially in the “spectator” category – but this reinforces the sense that innovation is being driven not by business but by consumers in their quest for creative interactivity and engagement.

In Australia, Forrester’s Steven Noble’s recent analysis indicates that only 24% of Australians DON’T use social media in some way.

Peter Kim has a great post over at MarketingProfs providing some excellent insight into what these figures mean for bloggers and/or social media consultants:   

On the upside, it's more likely now than before that:

• You, your customers, your prospects, and your competitors are reading and writing blogs
• Better tools to interact with the medium exist for reading, filtering, authoring, and tracking
• You can say the word "blog" in conversation without feeling silly

On the downside, it's more likely now than before that:

• Spam related to your business interests lives in "splogs"      
• Traditional marketing approaches will find new ways to make consumers hate the medium
• Your "regular" friends know what you mean but still think blogging is for geeks

For marketers still finalising their budgets for 2009, I would recommend setting aside a small experimental budget for social media. Hive off 5% or 10% of your MEDIA budget and contact EXPERIENCED agencies and consultants (email me if you need recommendations).

With pressure to perform in tough economic times, it’s time all marketers stop ignoring the spaces in which consumers are ALREADY playing. In this Age of Conversation, it’s time for brands to stop shouting and start participating. Welcome to the mainstream.