The Social Way - Servant of Chaos

The Rise of the Social Media Mechanic

Despite our strong desire to resist it, one of the great, unwavering facts of life is that things change. We, ourselves, go through cycles – or phases – where our interests, preferences, passions and even tastes change. You will have noticed these changes in yourself. Just consider the things you thought were important as a teenager – look particularly at the music that you were so passionate about. How many of those songs do you still love? How many would you still play for your new, more mature friends?

The same happens in business.

Ideas, technologies – and yes, even people – come into and fall out of favour. They often burst into our consciousness with great fanfare, gather hype and momentum and then drop lot a hot potato. The most tenacious ideas, technologies (and yes again, people) face up to this loss of prestige, gaining a new level of maturity and capability, eventually reaching a point of optimisation. Great examples of this are sites like Google+ … where initial interest was huge. This was followed by a rebound as the inert weight of user habit rebounded, seeing people maintain their account, but return to Twitter and Facebook. And now, we see the gradual maturing and more understated growth of the product – with users now finding substantial, specific value in its use.

Analyst firm, Gartner Inc, have described this process as The Hype Cycle for over 15 years now. It identifies peak points in visibility over time for technologies:

The technology trigger
Peak of inflated expectations
Trough of disillusionment
Slope of enlightenment
Plateau of productivity

I have always loved the Hype Cycle. It explains a great deal not just about technology, but about human behaviour – behaviour that we can clearly see in the real time streams of sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But the challenge for business – especially with social media – is that there is never a SINGLE hype cycle. They always come in successive waves – for we also need to remember different people engage with, and adopt, change at different times. (And as David Armano points out, we need to deal with multiple complexities when it comes to change management – perception, thoughts, behaviours and outcomes.)

What we need within our businesses are different types of champions at different times.

I have written before on the rise of the Business Designer – a person uniquely adapted to optimise your business processes. But in line with the Hype Cycle, the Business Designer is most effective later in the cycle – as you climb out of the Trough of Disillusionment. Most businesses are not in this space as yet. And many are still facing the ascendant forces of the Peak of Inflated Expectations. It is in the way up this peak (and the way down the other side) that you need an individual uniquely suited to “getting s#@t done. You need the Social Media Mechanic.

This is the person who can implement your strategy, find the right bits and pieces and bolt them together. This person will know what needs to be done to make the right things work – and sometimes even do the wrong things (let’s face it, we’re still making mistakes and learning from them, right?).

But without the Social Media Mechanic, you’re just going to be left with a whole heap of unconnected parts. So once you’ve got your continuous digital strategy underway, start seeking your Social Media Mechanic. You’ll never get out of the trough of disillusion without one!

The Social Business Comes First

Flaneurs, Innovation, Social Media, Strategy, The Social Way

In the coming months and years we will hear a lot more about “social business” and what it means for your organisation. There will be infographics, presentations, blog posts, tips, tricks and links galore. Those who have been working in social media – say, as consultants – will begin to transform themselves into social business practitioners, just like many of us from the “dot com” boom transitioned from web to marketing.

Over time we will also wrestle with the “place” for social media. Each line of business will claim ownership – as will your advertising, media, PR and creative agencies. But like all things business, ultimate responsibility lies within your organisation – and arm’s length social media will become more difficult to manage as it scales beyond your borders.

David Armano has been at the forefront of social media’s integration with business over the last five or six years. And as EVP of Global Innovation and Integration with Edelman Digital, he has access to big brands with big challenges. This deck on Social Business Planning is a great starting point – especially as a credentials deck for Edelman Digital.

Social Business Planning

View more presentations from Edelman Insights

But there is still a lot of focus on the marketing/branding side of business. That is understandable given both Edelman’s history and the strong adoption of social media pioneered by marketers the world over – but as I have suggested many times – social brands follow the lead of the social business. And in most cases the heavy lifting of the social-focused innovator – what I call the digital flaneur – is (or should be) focused internally. On enablement. Transformation. Getting. Shit. Done.

Your job is to drive that innovation. Enable it in your teams. Encourage it in your management. Take a critical eye to the slides in this deck and apply it to your business. Use your business nous. Use what you know about the workings, machinations, politics, processes and directions of your organisation and build a small plan. Own it. Change what you can. Discover collaborators. Find the way to make it work.

All the rest is just window dressing.

Social Brand or Social Business: Chicken or Egg?

Social Business, Social Media, The Social Way

The Pivot Conference, to be held October 15-16, 2012 is shaping up in a very interesting way. The focus is to move from “social brands to social business” – which I find exciting – but it also makes me wonder. Do we really feel that we are in a world of social brands as yet? And I am also wondering, can you have a social brand without first becoming a social business? What comes first, chicken or egg?

In the lead up to the Pivot Conference, a research report has been released: The State of Social Marketing 2011-12. You have to register for it, but it is a great summary and well worth it.

Throughout the report, there is a consistent theme – the gap between the business and your customers is wider than you think. My experience bears this out and is reinforced by IBM’s recent Social CRM report (2011). The gap, which IBM terms “the perception gap” is a real and persistent challenge for organisations and needs to be seriously addressed in the coming months.

Take a look, for example, at the business focus for social media for 2012. The State of Social Marketing report indicates that sales, consumer engagement and lead generation are at the top three priorities.

Yet how many businesses have closed the perception gap? How many can deliver on their customer’s expectations – or worse – how many have even begun engaging with their customers about these expectations? The report states that only 34.8% have asked their customers. That’s not a gap. It’s a gulf.

Social Business Comes First

At the recent Social Media Plus conference, I described the challenge that we are facing as being similar to the difference between playing 80s arcade game Space Invaders and Angry Birds. On the business side, we are happily engaged with the invading hoardes – identifying the opportunity then firing off a response. The problem is, is that the game itself has changed. We may be playing Space Invaders – but our customers are playing Angry Birds. It is a profound mismatch.

The idea of a “social brand” sounds good – and there are plenty of examples of successful social marketing now available. But my view is that we have the cart before the horse. Before we can truly claim to have a social brand, we need to engage in the hard work of transforming our business processes and practices first.

We need to become social businesses first – and the social marketing will naturally follow.

Awarding #QantasLuxury with a Downfall

Bad Customer Experiences, Memes, Social Judgement, Social Media, The Social Way

Customer loyalty programs are funny things. They often walk a fine line between promise and flattery, between exclusivity and exploitation. These programs are laced with words and imagery that reinforce the sense of entitlement, achievement and reference “awards” and benefits.

But in a socially connected world, awards, entitlement and even exclusivity can be turned on its head. Right now, Qantas is at the heart of this new brand experience.

A few days ago I wrote What Qantas Will Learn from its Social Customers. There were five key lessons:

The social customer is ubiquitous: it’s not just Facebook or Twitter. They write blogs, publish stories and photographs. They share these with hundreds – if not thousands – of friends with the click of a mouse and a glare of disdain
The social customer wields influence with a swagger: they have grown up with the internet and have more tools at their disposal than you let through your firewall. They move fast and do so with intent. If they can impact the decisions of others (to not purchase with you) they will do so.
The social customer is not your friend: they don’t want a platitude and they won’t go quietly. They will remember your words and your actions and they will choose their purchases carefully and with deliberation.
The social customer is the 99%: they can smell inequity at a hundred paces. You’ve just given them a reason to chose another brand who understands their lifestyle and their priorities.
The social customer is developing a social conscience: it’s taken decades, but it is forming. Just take a look at the Edelman Trust Barometer. Brands will be judged by their actions.

But things have progressed, and by “progressed” I mean “become worse”. Yesterday’s promotional efforts using Twitter and the #qantasluxury hashtag have been widely regarded as a failure or PR disaster. But I think it goes deeper than that. It’s a malaise that goes to the very heart of the brand and the disconnect between Qantas the brand and its customers.

You see, social media can become damaging to your brand when you ignore the real messages of social media – the wide cultural and personal transformations that I call The Social Way. Without understanding and translating these into your business the gulf between your brand and your customers will continue to widen. If Qantas (or their advising agencies) had understood, for example, the Five Stages of Social Media Grief and had applied this to understanding their customers, then perhaps, #qantasluxury could have been a completely different campaign.

What we are seeing is a widespread “falling out of love” with the Qantas brand. And with this comes a sense of loss. Grief. The Australian public and travellers, in particular, are having to come to grips with a changed reality – where the relationship and trust that they once had in the Qantas brand has evaporated through purposeful direct action of the Qantas management and Board.

And when the audience, formerly known as “Qantas Customers” have not yet moved into the “acceptance” phase of the grieving process, any brand activations must be carefully considered, planned and executed.

The Twitter stream of conversation (as shown above) seems to be still accelerating and now #qantasluxury appears to have been awarded the ultimate social media honour – the production of its very own Downfall spoof (see Parodies in this Wikipedia entry). When your customers go to the trouble of producing media like this, it’s the equivalent of entering the social customer hall of shame. It’s not an award that Qantas would like, I am sure, but I have a feeling there is still a way to go before this peters out.