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Just reading Kyle Lacy's post on 20 Reasons Why You Cannot Ignore Social Media. He outlines the importance of understanding the impact and importance of social media in reach and engagement opportunity and references Universal McCann's latest research on Social Media Wave 3.
As a follow up to our earlier post today, we came across another good article further emphasizing the need to actively monitor and protect your brand.
Tim Lynch, senior experience design specialist at Molecular, explores the concept of brand-jacking. "If your brand is online, it's susceptible to consumer influence -- both benign and malicious. See what steps your company can take to mitigate the risks."
The Economist tells a cautionary tale of companies who find out after the fact that their employees are revealing or misrepresenting their employers' brand online with their own posted indiscretions, gossip or exchanges on community sites like myspace, Facebook and Twitter.
It's a must read for organizations who currently have not addressed social networks usage policies - not only "at work" usage policies, but also "general usage guidelines" that are highly recommended to manage your brand and online reputation. The article has three important recommendations to consider:
Today, Forrester Research released its report on The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption, which includes 2008 data from around the world. Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research and co-author of Groundswell writes a great follow on post on this report and his findings in, New 2008 Social Technographics data reveals rapid growth in adoption. He writes, "Data is my secret weapon. ...But data gets old, especially in the rapidly changing social world."
With extraordinary tools like the Social Technographics Profile, Bernoff's team from Forrester Research were able to get data from 11 countries by age and gender.
"Looking at the US data, the big news in 2008 is that, not unexpectedly, social technology participation has grown rapidly. Inactives -- people untouched by social technologies -- have shriveled from 44% down to 25% of the online population. Spectators -- those who read, watch, or consumer social content -- have ballooned from 48% to 69%. If you think social technology is about to become a universal phenomenon, we just handed you a nice little bundle of evidence," Bernoff writes.
Bernhoff outlines this migration from inactives to creators in the Social Technographics Ladder. This visual representation clearly shows the evolution in the human experience today online.
"As you can see, there was also a nice healthy jump in Joiners (social network participants), Critics (those who react to social content they see), and especially Collectors (those who organize social content). None of these are quite as popular as being a Spectator, but I think there’s plenty of growth ahead for these groups. (If it’s bothering you that the numbers add up to more than 100%, remember that these groups overlap – this is not a segmentation.)," say Bernoff.
A great point, Bernoff makes in summary notes that not everyone must/will work up the ladder to become a "creator" to engage with social utilities. There's room for all levels of participation.
Be sure to check out Groundswell's blog where Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff share great research and insight on how the world is being transformed by social technologies.
The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption - Executive Summary
Social technology adoption increased tremendously this year. Three in four US online adults now use social tools to connect with each other compared with just 56% in 2007. What else changed? Ratings and reviews, "voting" for Web sites, and peer-generated video experienced the largest growth, while blogs and tagging closely followed. Older adults are now also more likely to participate socially as Spectators and Critics, placing them in the active rungs of our Social Technographics® ladder. Marketers have to get on board with social now — more advanced marketers will speed up customer-driven innovation, sharpen metrics, and improve customer experience. Those who wait to join in will find it increasingly hard to catch up.
As I ended my original post on My Friends, I realized there was a natural follow up for brands engaging in social media to connect with partners, consumers, fans, etc.
Within the context of social networking, the definition of friend comes with the responsibility of a trusted and responsive relationship.
As brands and brand representatives are connecting more intimately with their followers, there has been much discussion about the appropriateness and community effort required to cultivate and sustain a conversation and trusted relationship. When you think about making a connection at this "friend" level from brand-to-consumer and/or consumer-to-brand - setting clear expectations of what this relationship means and how it is cared for, trusted and valued will reveal the true sincerity of transparency and authenticity in this relationship.
If there was one brand representative who completely excels at this naturally is @Comcastcares on Twitter. Frank Eliason, the "friend" at the heart of @Comcastcares lives and breaths a responsive, "we can help" presence on behalf of Comcast that to me is remarkable and the perfect case study in being "brand friendly" in social networking.
Brian Haven writes an interesting post noting all media is social. He outlines that sharing, connecting, opining, broadcasting and creating are not new behaviors as a result of social media, but original behaviors that now have been influenced and enhanced technologically.
What I like most about Haven's post is that he looks at how Social Media has influenced these behaviors to "make new again." Haven writes today's technologies have changed how people connect and communicate, particularly in terms of reach, accessibility, usability, transparency, and recency.
Nick O'Neill of Social Times has authored a series on the Social Web Economy. O'Neill's post yesterday, The Social Web Economy: Social Web Agencies, raised interesting commentary from Seth Goldstein, CEO of SocialMedia regarding the paradox of social advertising.
Goldstein notes, "The social media user has evolved to become immune to the very ads that are supposed to subsidize his online experience... There is now unlimited inventory of impressions that users have come to ignore, but very limited inventory of commercial experiences that users are opting in to engage with."
The State of Social Media 2008
Today, Brian Solis of FutureWorks, published a report on The State of Social Media 2008. Solis comments on several key points to consider about Social Media, including:
Social Media Takes a Community Effort
Solis also dedicates a section of his report to the important point that Social Media Takes a Community Effort. I found this section of particular interest because we often shepherd our clients through this organizational debate - Who governs the conversation?
As Solis notes, some argue that advertising or marketing own the conversation, while others claim that it’s the job of public relations or customer service. We also see other stakeholders vying for a say, like information technology (IT) and Legal - because it's not only about the message, but how the message is going to be delivered and where?, who's going to monitor it and how?, and what level of support will be needed to manage, aggregate, mine and ultimately report on this "conversation."
Often so many logistics and an overly complex governing structure can stifle the conversation, but as we agree with Solis' point, every department can/will have a positive impact on creating and sustaining the conversation, if there is a clear and concerted effort to do so.
It has been our position that shared goals and shared responsibilities foster a healthy culture around communications, particularly in context of the Social Web. If the organization as a whole clearly embraces every aspect of their brand promise and understands the responsibility and obligation to the brand (and the customer) in the Social Media context - the natural conversation can be enriched and flow appropriately with diversity in expertise, ideas, perspectives - and even "personality."
Not to oversimplify the complexity of creating a dynamic structure around sustaining communications as conversation, but every organization has come to understand that the Web itself is a necessary business and communication channel. As it has evolved, it is no longer one dimensional, but dynamic and social. The conversation is now more democratic and de-centralized beyond an organization's own "domain." (I mean this in the sense of an org's own dot com, for example.)
Understanding the responsibility of total ownership of a conversation needs to be defined, requires diversity of thinking and response and a strategy which clearly identifies, defines and adopts a mutual understanding of the commitment to engage and participate in the "conversation" - 24x7. In a more traditional sense it may look and feel like "centralized management," but ultimately, as Solis says, it's a community effort, whereby no single department (must) own and operate the conversation, but the enterprise (in this sense - a community) collective relies upon every subject-matter expert to contribute to the benefit of the message and the livelihood of a sustained conversation.
I read a great blog post by David Berkowitz today on Blog Search Stuck in Beta and it really captured a long-time complaint I've had about search engines, specifically for blogs and blog content. Whether you use Google or a micro-search specifically for blogs, overall they have been very ineffective in my experience.
Taking a look at the blog search landscape, Berkowitz finds there is a lot missing to the search experience, particularly "a sense of understanding a user’s purpose." (Big cheers! Smiles! Total agreement!)
Ending my day today, I learned of SocialMention, which I feel starts to address the Social Web and how blog and micro-blog content is out there and in the mix. Not unlike other cool search tools, like Lijit, SocialMention really does everything on my "nice to have" wish list for a Social Web search engine. SocialMention provides search results that are organized by blogs, micro-blogs (like Twitter mentions, Brightkite and Posterous posts, etc.), bookmarks, comments and so on.This is not just a search for blogs, but when we searched one of our own, Extraordinique we were so pleased with the immediacy and comprehensive return of results.
Our experience with SocialMention exceeds any results we've ever been able to extract from Google, Google Blog Search, Technorati and others.
In seconds, SocialMention had every post we've done on Extraordinique, all of our micro-blog conversations involving "Extraordinique," social bookmarks in Digg and Del.icio.us, comment threads, including FriendFeed, and the list goes on. It is the next great aggregator of numerous social media sources remixing it into a single stream of really useful and valuable information.
It is a thing of beauty to see all of this information indexed so quickly and so well organized. It will be such a useful tool for brand and community managers to keep up on all "SocialMentions."
Great idea. Great execution. Great results!
I imagine this will show up in SocialMention's "socialmention search query," so while I have your attention -- Thanks! You rock! And why no @SocialMention? Your fans and your critics want to include you in the conversation while they learn about you and endure some of the heavy loads. :)
Tonight's historical acceptance speech by Barack Obama for Democratic nomination for president has been captured in a word cloud by GraphicDesignr. It strikes me because of the meetings we had today covered everything from keyword optimization for search, the art and science of tagging, and then watching this evening's speech with iPhone in hand refreshing Twitteriffic to the max. I was able to experience a historical speech, and monitor as well as participate in the discussion on the back channel for #DNC08.
Experiencing the 2008 Summer Olympics and now this election in the era of Web 2.0, it's clear that we have more access, more organization, more ways to track, convey, collaborate and develop meaning for any given message, event, and opportunity.
I thought instantly, a historical speech captured in a tag cloud, the perfect conveyance of form and function!
Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Gottfried Vossen: Unleashing Web 2.0: From Concepts to Creativity
Robert Brunner: Do You Matter?: How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company
Bryan Eisenberg: Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi: Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means
Duncan J. Watts: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Open Market Edition)
Mark Buchanan: Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks
