Dec 7, 2010 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
It is amazing how many sites I visit claim least one of a few hyperbolic options:
We have a “unique” solution,
We are the “industry leader”,
We have an “innovative approach”
We offer the “best value”
These claims mean little, after all, there is only one industry leader, innovative approach is meaningless, value often just means price, and a unique solution remains unique usually only in the minds of the site owner.
Surely a better way is to be memorable by being different, be disturbing, be extremely focused, and the sales pitch needs to be about the outcomes of applying your solutions to their problems, not about how great your solutions are.
Nov 30, 2010 | Branding, Collaboration, Social Media
One of my consistent themes has been the power of a group to get stuff done, and the ways the web facilitates, and empowers the processes needed to get the stuff done by the group.
However, which is the chicken, and which is the egg?
There are no groups without members, and the “members” need a motivation to form, be a part of, and contribute to a group, in a way that enhances the outcomes for the group.
As a marketer, it is our task to find that motivation, and use it to build a network, group if you like, of those to whom the value proposition of the product/service being marketed adds value.
Nov 29, 2010 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Marketing, Social Media
It is pretty clear to most that the number of connections in a network grows more quickly than the number of people in the network. It is a mathematically consistent relationship captured by Metcalf’s Law, but in summary, you double the size of a network, you quadruple the number of potential connections.
This relationship between the nodes in a network, and the number of (potential) connections is the foundation of social media, as the increase of the potential connections comes at little or no cost.
This is in complete contrast to the past, where these added connections added cost at a consistent rate, each new potential connection required someone to spend the time to make the phone call, mail the brochure, meet, discover if there was a potential value in devoting the resources to nurturing the relationship. All this cost prevented the development of the relationships that creates a network.
The relationship maths is the same, but the transactions costs associated with the “old economy” ensured that many things that now can happen, simply could not because of the costs involved. Hugely successful sites like Flikr simply could not have evolved with the transaction costs of the past involved.
The new challenge is harnessing the potential energy in these connections, and leveraging it to benefit the individuals in these potential networks enabled by the removal of the transaction costs.
Nov 26, 2010 | Change, Collaboration, Communication, Social Media, Strategy
I am indebted to Alan Rustbridger, editor of the Guardian newspaper whose recent Andrew Olle lecture articulated many of the challenges facing traditional media owners as the new social media destroys their business model.
Among the gems in this lecture is a list of 15 uses of Twitter, as Alan says, it is far more than useless information on what Twits are having for breakfast, and should be considered for what it can do that has value, rather than just the nonsense accumulating in some places of its ecosystem, it is a disruption of the first order.
Here is an edited version of the list, with a few bits of my own thrown in, it is a fascinating view of a tool many over 50’s see as just a piece of nonsense our kids play with.
- It is an entirely new form of distribution, it may be 140 characters, but the power is in the linkages it can create
- It happens first. Then contributors to twitter, millions of them, have the power to be in the right place at the right time. News of the London bombings a few years back came in first from social media, predominantly twitter.
- It is a search engine, one that uses the algorithms of Google, and adds human curiosity, ingenuity, on top of the maths
- It is an aggregator of information. Set your tweet deck to a subject, and it will assemble the “wisdom of the crowd” to your device
- It is a reporting tool, that can find and communicate and co-ordinate knowledge, insight, and news, almost instantaneously
- It is a marketing tool of great power. Anyone can put a link to their website, alerting the community of followers, and others looking for info on a subject to the post, or information, and then encourage linkages. It is a tool that both drives traffic to a site, and can engage at the same time, the slam dunk of marketing.
- It is a series of parallel conversations, real conversations where you can agree, disagree, bring more information to the table, express ideas, and have views shaped, and it all happens in almost real time.
- It is a place where diverse voices can be heard, a place where the views of those who previously had no hope of being heard have the potential to find an audience
- It has changed the way the written word works. No longer are we as serious as we were in the days of “proper journalism” now we know much better the impact of pictures, humor, and diversity in the way we write
- It is a level playing field, anyone can be heard, no longer do you have to own a printing press or a TV station to get your message out there
- It has redefined what is and what is not news. No longer do we rely on a few editors curating what we see and hear, there are now thousands, millions out there putting stuff out into the ecosystem, and we can pick and choose which bits we pick up
- Twitter has a long attention span, much longer than a newspaper, whose headline today is wrapping paper tomorrow. Twitter can build, and build as more people become engaged, and bring information to the table for consideration, and as an argument evolves, move in directions and into spaces a 24 hour news cycle would never consider.
- It creates communities around thoughts, ideas, and causes.
- It changes our notion of authority, everyone is equal to start off, and it is the value of an idea or view that attracts authority, not the role played in an organisation that gives authority
- It is an agent of change, harnessing the power of collaboration, at potentially lightening speed.
Pretty good for a tool whose only redeeming feature was that is allowed us to find out what some wannabe celeb was doing right now!!
Nov 24, 2010 | Change, Communication, Management, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
The power in commercial relationships has shifted dramatically since the net. It has removed the power previously held by companies and institutions and handed it to individuals who choose to use it.
No more can an enterprise afford to ignore or annoy an individual without cause, or even with cause, as the individual now has the capacity to publicly respond with twitter, facebook, linked-in, et al, and have an impact inconceivable just a few years ago.
This is not evolution, it is revolution, as the constraints on the ability to communicate and coalesce around an issue is unprecedented, and represents a fundamental re-ordering of the balance of power. The changes in the external environment are changing much, much quicker than the average organisation is able to change in anticipation, creating a significant short term risk for many of them.
Nov 22, 2010 | Change, Communication, Management, Social Media
Corporations default to functional silos, despite the efforts of most to recognise the horizontal cross functional nature of processes, the things that gets stuff done. This is because in the past, you required hands to move things around, make calls, stuff envelopes, travel, all adding to the cost of completion.
Individuals personal networks tend to also run in silos, the football group, the school friends, workmates, and so on, but the demarcation is a bit more blurred than at work.
Social networking tools have further blurred the demarcation , and networks can go way beyond the face to face relationships of old, and those networks can be leveraged across many tipping points and considerable social energy can be built, simply by harnessing the dynamics of the group.
Corporations are coming around to this self-evident (if you happen to be under 35)fact, but they are largely run by people not engaged with social networks so the evolution is far quicker outside corporations than inside them. Remember the huge embarrassment of Nestle a while ago, in relation to use of non sustainable sources of Palm oil, embarrassment that could have been easily mitigated had someone in a senior position watched their own facebook site, twitter, or even listened to someone who was.
The formation of groups around a question, issue, or cause is suddenly quite easy, and for corporations adds a huge risk to their intangible assets, and they usually are blissfully unaware in the boardroom.
The risk can be mitigated, but it requires individual with the organisational power to cede control of the details of “management” of the on line groups to individuals who are engaged in the processes, as the risks can emerge almost instantly, and requires instant response.
