A quick funny thanks to The Oatmeal reminded me of one of the challenges of interacting on social networks; namely getting through to people who are weary of being spammed, annoyed and stalked by their own connections. What is surprising is the lack of ’unfriending’ that happens on Facebook as a result. Even when I get annoying content, it takes quite a lot of time before the offending person invades my social space so much that I have to give them the heave-ho. I tend to leave groups if they overdo the email reminder function, and I always turn down fan pages that bear no relevance to my life. Apart from that I’m relatively placid. I find that having too much of a stringent policy means you sometimes miss the ‘good crap’ – namely the event invite that was actually really good, the link to the blog that inspired an idea I had at work, the party in another country that you find out a friend of yours is actually going to and maybe you could go there as a birthday treat. It’s what I call the TK Maxx Theory – namely that you wade through loads of dull stuff and in there you’ll always find a few jewels. But not every user is as open to random information as me. It would be interesting to get your views on how avoiding the ‘Facebook annoyance’ tag affects your business activities on that medium?
Reading articles from today’s Economist report really brought home the extent to which not matter what the ’social media echo chamber’ on Twitter likes to say about the effectiveness of web 2.0 approaches in comms, the fact is that most of the rest of the business is in no way prepared for interaction. We have moved from a ‘tell me’ society to a ’show/speak with me’ society; requiring greater proof of companies’ brand ’proof points’, more consideration of their services’ relevance to customers’ daily lives. What’s more, new competitors are entering the market constantly who do ’show me’ really well.
Marshall MacLuhan’s refrain, “The medium is the message” has never been truer – ’social media’ is indicative of this show me culture.
Therefore our real role as consultants is not just to execute campaigns that impress the central marketing function, but also to coach and strategically guide the business as a whole to become more social, that is: empathetic, authentic, responsive, conversational… like a group of humans committed to a common goal rather than relying seemingly entirely on the communication of a ‘brand’ or USP to its stakeholder communities. We need to teach a man to fish, that is, to get people in HR, R&D, customer service listening and interacting (regardless of whether that is on or off-line) on their own, rather than being their ’social media arms and legs’, which regardless of rhetoric, is often still the case. Like ‘digital management consultancy’ if you will.
Couldn’t help but to send out a quick post after reading about ‘Twincentivising’ – I do it a lot as a PR, but I chose to work on my current clients so it’s a moot point. But consumers? Hmmmm…. Let me know what you think:
I’m sleepy, so I’ll keep this short. After procrastinating over whether I get a Sony Vaio netbook, or this, I *might* go into the Apple store and have a peek. Enjoy the video of the iPad in action thanks to TechCrunch.
The wires have been awash with articles decrying the much maligned Digital Economy Bill, for seemingly criminalising internet users, hamstringing broadband providers and leave unsuspecting users vulnerable to Wi-Fi hackers, who could then get them in trouble for using P2P services on their network. What immediately springs to mind is the fact that this bill misses the point: piracy is a market signal; it suggests that one should create an alternative service, that is ‘better than piracy’, based on flexible and inventive revenue models in order to make headway towards a solution.
ThinkBroadband has already rightly pointed out the fact that the bill will likely produce a cottage industry for web developers making apps that hide filesharers’ tracks, boost the use of darknets, and drive money away from music publishing houses in the longer term anyway (which might hopefully boost the attention given to smaller, independent artists and labels that promote themselves directly using social tools). And yes, of course I see why rights holders are pushing for this legislation. We’ve all got to eat. But coming up with a compromise that works for all wouldn’t hurt either…
Following the news that the New York Times is going to start charging for its content using a ‘metered’ system, meaning they will “offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number.” – like they do at the Financial Times. It all kicks off in 2011. The Guardian News and Media has attacked this current trend and the belief that it will solve the revenue slump from online advertising as ‘crazy’. Is it?
YES: Steve Buttry gave a good view on why this is is the case; Umair Haque has the best reasoning as to why: content itself and how it is presented to us has to change so as to justify the value of news, particularly to consumers, whose needs are constantly evolving. Otherwise, they will simply drive readers into the welcoming arms of the community news sites, group blogs and grassroots news agents.
NO: Professionals I believe will pay. The Economist, the Financial Times and niche periodicals that have access to a specific form of knowledge that their competitors don’t, will be able to justify erecting paywalls. They’re already finding ways to maximise commuity interaction, which I imagine may be a preparation for changes in payment models. If this trend continues (which i believe it will) it’ll be a test of whose content is truly valued by its audiences and whose isn’t. If a paper like the Sun wants to charge (which doesn’t have that niche content that Umair speaks of), they’ll need to create other incentives, like an online members club with giveaways and gifts to go with their subscription.
I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while now, so here’s my potted list of reasons that point to why I was delighted when it was announced late last year:
1) Use the ‘reply privately’ button to reignite relationships with those LinkedIn contacts that you’ve been neglecting. It’s sometimes easy to forget the amazing network of relationships that you have on LI, and Twitter is the ideal way of warming up that channel of communication. Send some retweet love.
2) Get better tweets. The most talkative people on your stream may not be the people sharing the best information – the Status Updates summary of a LinkedIn page allows you access to your ‘inner circle’ of Tweeters; you can also reply to tweets so they land in your contacts’ LinkedIn message box (I’ve had too many experiences with people that never check their DMs!) which means it’s more likely to be pushed their work, rather than personal email inbox.
3) Hunt down Twitter contacts to add on LinkedIn. I wish there was a ‘LinkedIn connect’ function that allowed you to add followers on LI, but the nature of the relationships are very different, so that probably won’t happen. It would just be useful to me as I have good online relationships with quite a few of them! The next best option is just to look your most valuable Twitter contacts up and adding them, ideally after a good DM exchange.
4) Get more visibility for your blog posts. Do you auto syndicate your blog to Twitter? Because the WordPress blog integration tool is so far down my LI profile page that I’ve never got any clickthroughs from it (so says Analytics) you’re more likely to grab readers off LI by syndicating your posts to Twitter instead. As an aside, be sure to add those posts to ‘news’ pages in groups, if relevant!
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