Seth Godin on social networking.
Having a focus purely on numbers makes sense in broadcast, here Seth Godin talks about why it doesn’t make sense in Social Media.
Having a focus purely on numbers makes sense in broadcast, here Seth Godin talks about why it doesn’t make sense in Social Media.
Look at this picture. It’s a wall of coffee cards at a cafe around the corner from us.
I was staring at it today and realised ‘this is social media’. It may look like a plain old loyalty program (buy 6 get one free) but what distinguishes this in my mind is a couple of things;
- everyone has their name on thier card, and can see everyone elses, and if you go there a few times you’d like to see your name up there also so you feel part of the group.
- the cards facilitate conversation between the cardholders.
- there is a triple value add, first: I’m hopeless with remembering to carry these cards when I need them, second: I get a free coffee, third: I get to feel like a part of this small community and given that we only moved down here six months ago this one is not inconsiderable.
So to me it looks like social media before we started calling it social media.
I’ve recently completed my minimum skills training with the CFA, and whilst my firefighting contributions so far have consisted of getting to the station first for a call and forgetting the entry code, I’ve also discovered that the CFA has a terrific social media presence. It’s called CFA Connect.
The CFA is one of the worlds largest volunteer based emergency services with 1288 Brigades and 58,000 volunteers, information dispersal and volunteer engagement are crucial. When I first joined the CFA I was thinking that there is a lot more they could be doing on-line to facilitate this, someone else was obviously way ahead of me.
CFA Connect has a clean simple interface – it encourages site members to not only view content but to add – video, photos and blog entries as well as forums. Registration is open to serving members and general public who are interested
None of the site is extraordinary in deploying new web technologies or with any startling new SM inisghts – it does the basics really well. I’m curious to see what kind of useage it is getting with such a large base of potential users and will see what I can find out from them. In the meantime though have a look at a great example of a large organisaiton utilising SM to connect it’s members with each other for the sharing of knowledge and the building of community,CFA Connect.
Last week Apple announced the impending update of the iPhone operating system. Watching the Apple video outlining the changes I found myself picking my jaw up a few times. The iPhone may be the thing that makes Social Media a mainstream phenomenon.
13.7 million phones sold last year. 800 million downloads from the App Store in 8 months, and now the new Operating System.
The key elements of the new OS that I can see enhancing Social Media type applications are;
Peer to Peer connectivity - not just great for gaming but there’s a potential mountain of apps for all sorts of data sharing.
MMS – overdue, but with the addition of being able to send audio files this gets a little more interesting.
Custom applications for accessories – where do you start with this? As discussed in the video imagine your home blood pressure reader being able to update your medical files then make an appointment for you if you’re running a little high! Providing an interface between the web and currently disconnected devices should see the phone put to an amazing array of new uses.
Maps – allowing developers to place the maps within the app. Should take geocaching to a new level.
Push notification – auto-updates of kety data just quietly ‘happening. Again on the video the ESPN example was terrific, game score pops up, you click VIEW and the video starts. This would be great combined with location awareness.
Apple claims there are 1000 new API’s – toolkits for developers to add functionality to their apps, a lot of which could have a very Social Media feel to them.
Apple has again changed the game – this thing you think is a phone is a whole lot of other things.
Making these powerful tools available in a personal portable device suggests to me that Social Media will be untethered from the desktop and become far more a part of peoples everyday lives
Yesterday Torrent Freak reported on Norwegian State TV embracing BitTorrent to distribute their own TV shows.
There are a number of interesting things to note:
NRK’s Erik Solheim is reported as saying,“With our own tracker we will get better statistics and gather important data about how this technology works.”
Measurement
“This type of distribution is reliable, cheap and popular with our audience,” Solheim told TorrentFreak. “The main problem is the rights issues. We hope to be able to make television shows with a creative commons license in the future. That will make it easier for us to allow full freedom for our audience”.
Sharing/adding value.
“It is important for us to start experimenting with new distribution methods. We don’t want to do like the music industry. Running around thinking that people will keep driving down to a record store when they can have the content delivered with the push of a button at home,” Eirik Solheim said in an interview last year.
Working with the audience they way they consume media.
Currently the BBC has iPlayer and ABC has iView – both terrific services but still with some limitations from a user point of view (e.g. limited windows of availability). With all three of these services being offered by State owned channels it will be interesting to see what, if anything, commercial networks can adopt from these content management models. You would think they would watch very carefully given that at least one TV station in this country has already been valued at $0. 
Looking at the points highlighted above, Measurement, Sharing/adding value, and working with audience consumption habits, and adding on other online support for their material (websites. forums etc) has NRK just set up the ultimate social media campaign for itself?
Ultimately it is another move away from the broadcast mentality and moving to a more fluid definition of what TV actually is. It’s a move away from platform significance to platform agnostic media brands.
(Image by: dailyinvention)
I’m finding myself saying this a bit lately. Not out of any need to be overtly critical but in answering a fundamental question – why does your business have a website? I see a lot of sites that are built purely with the objective of having a net presence instead of really thinking it through as a marketing tool. That begins with thinking about your sites visitor.
It’s not an interruption medium – they are there for an immediate answer to a problem and if your site opens with you, you, you they’ll be another bounce statistic on your Google Analytics (you are using analytics of some sort, aren’t you?)
Firstly, eliminate all the weasel words and phrases;
Company X is a leading provider in…
..we employ best practice to…
…results oriented…
…maximize…
You get the picture.
Obviously the language you use should be what suits who you are trying to sell to, some sectors may require a degree of obtuseness (but I doubt it). People are not buying your product/service, they don’t care about your product/service, they care about a solution to one of their problems.
Some other things to consider when looking at your site and assessing if it needs a refresh:
Has your site been reviewed in the last three years?
You’re not using brochures from three years ago are you? What on earth makes your website any different? Your website should be the most dynamic piece of marketing you have leading onto the next point.
Does your site have a CMS that allows you to quickly and easily modify content and add pages if need be?
This need not be expensive and it is crucial. How can you test landing pages or different copy if you have to call your designer every time you want to do something?
Is your site built in Flash?
Get rid of it. Unless you are well known enough that people are going to type your exact name into search engines to get to your site then a building your site in flash has just made you invisible to search engines. If you want fancy graphics with nice transitions then make it a PART of your page but building your whole page inside Flash will nullify any potential marketing benefit to having a website – that is what you have a website for, isn’t it?
Has it been optimised for SEO?
URL names, meta-data, keywords, file structures, alt tags. There’s a whole range of on-site SEO that should just be standard in your sites build. Ask your designer about this. In looking at peoples sites I have seen designers that have put only THEIR details into the meta-tags for a clients site – not polite.
Then there’s the whole Social Media bit, but that’s what the rest of this site is about. This is just a few things to get you thinking. If your copy is about YOU, if your site requires a third party to change something as basic as contact info or add more pages, if you have no idea what SEO your site has had done, you may want to think about a rebuild.
(Image by: ttstam)
You’d think a TV station would be worth more then $0, wouldn’t you? Apparently not.
Laurel Papworth posted yesterday about reading in NZ Herald on Sunday “This week the Seven Network confirmed it had cut the value of its 47 per cent holding in the Seven Media Group from A$793.9 million to zero, following Packer’s similar valuation of PBL Media when he dumped his residual holding of his family’s former Nine Network flagship. The Ten network is also struggling, and on Thursday Fairfax halted trading in its shares as it considered raising funds following the announcement of an A$365.2 million net loss for the final six months of 2008.” (Greg Ansley)
Laurel’s piece goes on to quote more traditional media woes from The New York Times, and this quote in a piece titled End Time from The Atlantic:
“Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as sources of original reporting.
But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?”
I have been in the comfortingly long wind down camp in relation to the future of industrial media mostly because of the stupid sums of money involved, I could not believe it would just go away. But it just might.
Are we in the transition from platform based media to brand based media?
My favourite example of brand based media is Triple J – it was a radio station, now it is a radio station, TV show, magazine, web-site, live events, vodcasts, podcasts, blog, and yes, they are on Twitter. Triple J is a platform agnostic media brand with a tightly defined niche. This is the future of media.
The idea of the focus being on the medium instead of the media made sense until now. Today though we see the end result of trying to tie your audience to your medium and be as broad as possible – flaccid, lifeless content that means nothing to no-one (there are of course exceptions but I think you’d agree the bulk is garbage). Broadcast, that is trying to get as broad an audience to your platform as possible no longer works.
Ok, so you’re thinking about employing Social Media for your business, what does this mean?
Narrow focus – if you have three distinct buyers for your product/service then you will need three distinct social media approaches. Maybe not all at once, however one size fits all marketing will do you a disservice. If you try to make your marketing mean everything to everyone it will end up meaning nothing to no-one.
The numbers wont be as big – broadcast media style numbers of the last 70 years are history. But that’s ok. An actively engaged audience base that cares about what you add to their day is worth far more than a larger mostly disinterested inactive group. Chandon Craft has a small audience that reads their blog every single day and is an active customer base.
It’s a Media Meritocracy – yes one of my favourite themes, as a business you now have an unprecedented ability to connect with your customer base, not to shove your message down their throat but to really forge a relationship. Your market is not getting what it wants from mainstream broadcast media, this is your opportunity.
I don’t believe that newspapers and TV stations are going to disappear, but I do think they are going to have to evolve, and part of that evolution will be in creating focused channels that roll out across a number of media with the content brand being the star not the channel itself. Channel 10 is dipping its toes in the water with their 24hrHD sport channel – to my mind still too broad. When it’s 24 car racing (for example) on TV being added to by all other media formats then I think they’ll be onto something.
The big creatures didn’t survive the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, it was the small and adaptable that went on to repopulate the earth.
(Image by: Infomofo)
I have finally created a page with the Social Media books I recommend.
There are nice big Amazon Associate buttons on there for you to click so if you purchase I make around a half a cup of coffee.
The books there have all been a source of inspiration, ideas, or practical advice and are an excellent starting point to get a grasp of Social Media.
If you get them I’m very interested to know what you like, don’t like, what was useful and what else you would like to see?
(Image by: Phil Moore)
“It’s not always commercial to be honest with the marketplace”
I heard these words in a meeting with a potential new client and immediately knew it would be a while before we would be working together.
These were not bad people, or minions of an evil corporation. They were expressing the constructed reality of the culture they worked in.
I’ve been thinking about that comment a lot in the last week or so, it’s not enough to merely walk from that client because I have no doubt it will be a sentiment I come across again and again. I’ve also been reading The Cluetrain Manifesto and this morning the two combined to belt me with a blinding flash of the obvious – you only hear these comments from people who have not yet engaged in any significant way on-line.
If your on-line experience has not gone much past web surfing and email then of course you will see the internet as a broadcast tool, but there is other stuff going on, stuff that once you get a taste of will not let you go back in your thinking. It’s the paradox of the technology of the internet being a humanising experience through sharing and connection. Social Media mavens can lecture about this stuff and blog about it as much as we like – but until our potential clients tangibly experience it, it is as quoted in The Cluetrain Manifesto “like trying to explain rock’n'roll”.
Our job then is not to show, but to lead into experience. Not to lecture, but to facilitate.
Yesterday a business associate (thanks Gary) sent me the link below to a video from Australian Anthill on-line where the title for this post came from. It’s well worth your time.
“Why executives fear social media” – video
Posted using ShareThis
(Image by Jeremy Brooks)
Two things to cover today:
1. ROI is a big issue for any activity undertaken by a business.
2. Not everyone has unbridled enthusiasm for Social Media, especially as it is all (relatively) new.
This morning through Twitter I was made aware of two posts covering this area in far more detail than I could ever hope two so rather than kid myself that I could do the topic justice I’ll repost.
First up: How to sell social media to cynics, skeptics & luddites (yes I like the pejorative title).
Next: Social Media metrics superlist: Measurement, ROI, & Key Statistics Resources
Now these are both very big lists to get through.
I’ve noticed with people I first introduce to Social Media that there is enthusiasm quickly followed by anxiety as they process exactly how much stuff is out there.
Here’s the key.
Don’t even think about trying to take it all in.
You don’t read every article in a newspaper, you skim and dip in and out – treat this stuff the same. It can be hard with services like Twitter where you feel a pull of obligation because they’re YOUR followers.
Don’t.
I think Chris Brogan wrote, and I agree completely – ‘You don’t drink THE stream, you drink FROM the stream’
(Image by Skibler)
