I guess it’s striking to get a reminder that work I consider to be localized finds its way to the masses with the help of WordPress and Google. Today, my post about taking a screenshot on Android ranks fifth on Google for the keywords “android screenshot” and of course, by linking to it, I’ve raised the PostRank of this post.
The stark reminder here is that content matters more than brand. Note the fact that visits to our base page are less than half the visits to the Android screenshot post. The people who found that post don’t know who we are or what we do. All they know is the post either helped them answer a question or it didn’t. Then, they were gone like Kaiser Söze.
Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.
When using Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools, is having any army of followers/friends the most effective strategy? Two recent articles offer interesting insight into that question.
As reported by TimesOnline journalist Chris Gourlay:
Robin Dunbar, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, has conducted research revealing that while social networking sites allow us to maintain more relationships, the number of meaningful friendships is the same as it has been throughout history.(See: OMG: brains can’t handle all our Facebook friends - Times Online)
Add to the mix this from Wired columnist Clive Thompson:
When you go from having a few hundred Twitter followers to ten thousand, something unexpected happens: Social networking starts to break down.
The operative word in the phrases "Social Media," "Social Networking," and "Social Computing" is -- three guesses... -- "Social." Dictionary.com defines "social" as:
pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.
seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.
The effective use of social media is all about sustainable connection, about participating in conversations with individuals, as opposed to making speeches to crowds. That seems to be a difficult transition for many marketers.
"I used to talk about manipulation," said Bob Cargill, creative director for Nowspeed Marketing. "Now I preach the truth and nothing but the truth. That's a big shift."
Writing in The Groundswell of Social Media Backl, ZDNet columnist Oliver Marks hits on an important issue regarding the evolution of social media and the hype surrounding its use in marketing:
The awkward ‘brought to you by‘ conversational tone of past generations of TV is increasingly being mirrored by ‘trying to hard’ social media mavens butting into conversations within social media technologies. I’m not even going to address the nonsense being peddled under the rubric ‘branding’ recently.
I've written about the what passes for "conversational tone" in this blog and elsewhere (see The Catalyst for Connection), so I wholeheartedly agree with Marks' point and his criticism elsewhere in the column about the army of social media "consultants" that has swarmed like ants over the landscape, especially since Twitter's launch in the spring of 2006. From what I've seen, far too many of those consultants are nothing more than marketing hacks trying to foist the same old crap on people using these new tools. That just won't work.
The term social media has emerged to provide a broad categorization for a collection of unique, Web-based tools for personal expression and communication, including blogs, podcasts, video and photo sharing sites, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, and the latest social media juggernaut, Twitter.
The rapid evolution and extraordinary popularity of these technologies has not gone unnoticed by marketing professionals. However, the challenge for marketers who wish to make effective use of social media is in recognizing that these technologies do not constitute yet another channel for the same tired message. (Every time I see a press release disguised as a blog post I want to stab myself in the brain with a pencil.)
What makes social media so uniquely powerful as a marketing tool has far less to do with the technology than it does with an entirely different approach to connecting with an audience. That connection is defined by its one-to-one-to-one nature, a cascade of individual, personal connections that stands in contrast to previous perceptions and definitions audience engagement.
Stop Selling – Start Talking
The problem — well, my problem — with “traditional” marketing communication is that it’s so obviously fluffy and phoney and too often absent any signs of humanity. Yet in my experience so many marketing people seem to think that the audience won't notice. The audience notices. The audience has always noticed.
Despite its startling violence, that routine from comedian and social critic Bill Hicks elicited enthusiastic applause in performances in the early Nineties. At about the same time the World Wide Web launched on a trajectory that would do for long-established business and communication models what a very large comet is believed to have done for the dinosaurs.
A few years later the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto brought into sharp focus the nature of the dysfunctional relationship that had emerged between business and the newly networked consumer in the early days of the Web.
Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked...Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do. - From The Cluetrain Manifesto, 1999
In 2009, despite the explosion in social media, how many businesses have evolved beyond communication that is official, artificial, and superficial? What those business fail to understand is that businesses don’t communicate, people communicate. The use of social media makes old-school faceless, sanitized, “official” communication obsolete. And the issue isn't just about what's being said -- it's about who's doing the talking.
Be a Mensch
A business is a collection of individual people, a kind of techno-organic network within the larger global network. The use of social media tools allows individuals within one network to engage with individuals in other networks on a more personal, and thereby more effective level.
For a business, the power in social media centers on the ability to allow individual audience members to tap into the thought processes of the individual people behind the products or services a company provides. For that reason the conversation that connects a person from within the business to members of the customer community must be a genuine reflection of the legitimate interests and passions of the individuals involved. The pursuit of those interests and passions rarely follows a straight line, and the creative spark that triggers innovation might be wildly off-topic. That's the nature of human conversation. The challenge for the business is to get out of the way of that conversation in order to allow a genuine human connection to form, a connection based on mutual value to the individuals.
Look at these two equations and let me know which one has the most benefit to you? 1. Message 1,000,000 to possibly reach 100 2. Personally reach 100 who influence 1,000 who influence 10,000 who influence 1,000,000. From Redefining Reach: The New Marketing Equation, by Matt Dickman, 2008
That connection is unlikely to form if the people representing the business in the conversation behave like an under-quota insurance salesman at a cocktail party. You wouldn't want to get stuck talking to that guy, so don't be that guy. Talk shop, talk about projects you're involved in. Share your insight and expertise, but don't abuse your connections, and never, never, never resort to fluff.
Each of us is an individual node in an ever-expanding global network. Social media tools allow us to create and manage our own connections. The level and extent of that personal interconnection is unique in human history, That's a tectonic shift in the business environment, but businesses can survive the resulting tremor if they learn to unleash — and trust — the individual voices within and learn to participate in, rather than attempt to control, the conversation that is the catalyst for that connection.
In a post on her small business blog, Rochell Paul admits to not yet using Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, and that's fine -- though I have to admit that I'm surprised that a small business blogger would be entering into the SM game this late. But that's not what I want to talk about.
What I want to talk about is this quote from her post:
We all need to understand that a major part of Social Media is transparency. Honesty. The idea that we are open and honest about our role, and intentions.
Of course, I agree completely with that statement. Who wouldn't? But I guess I'm just a bit flummoxed that this honesty and transparency business is treated as such a strange new idea in Web marketing. The Cluetrain Manifesto raised this issue a decade ago. I don't mean to single out Rochell in this; the information she presents in her post is worthwhile, and she is very upfront in her admission of social media newbie-osity. And she's certainly not the only blogger to address the issue.
But the big, obvious question is: why do honesty and transparency attract so much attention in the currently relentless discussion about social media? Why are honesty and transparency treated as innovative marketing concepts? Why do some people and some organizations struggle with those ideas? What does this say about "conventional" marketing practice?
Of course, Twitter and Facebook and other social media tools aren't immune to the kind of dishonesty and opacity that can make conventional marketing so annoying. So maybe posts like Rochell's deserve more credit than I'm giving them. Human nature being what it is, maybe we need to be reminded again and again that honesty is good marketing practice, that it's good, period.
In a recent post about Twitter's inevitable infiltration into enterprise IT, RIA Developer's Journal blogger @strukoff hits on what has been my longstanding soapbox issue regarding the corporate use of social media:
But as with blogs, Twitter is now part of the enterprise IT discussion as well. Sure, most corporations blog about as creatively and effectively as members of the National People's Congress or the NCAA. But don't blame the medium, blame those who use it ineffectively.
