The Anti Social Irony of Social Media Monetization Models

I’m tired of hearing that building a business following in social media is unavoidably hard work and that fans and followers have to be earned in Facebook.  Why must the work of building a marketing channel in Twitter or LinkedIn be so difficult and so unrelenting?  Why do we have to sweat blood for years to associate and share with our fans, followers and contacts?  Why is this new digital work so hard?

I hate to break it to the cheerleaders for the hip, new, digital work ethic, but the main reason it’s hard to raise fans, followers and contacts in social media is because owners of the large social media applications have made it hard.

The social functionality of social media applications, or lack of it, mirrors the broken designs of the current monetization models applied in social media.

As well as having to endure the dumbed down social functionality, we also have to endure the self righteous cacophony of naive digital romantics and the mantra that building networks wasn’t meant to be easy.  The authenticity and engagement evangelists are urging us to accept our digital drudgery in the spirit of a new digital work ethic.  Shades of Max Weber and the Protestant Work Ethic.

Two monetization models dominate social media.  Both of them anti social, unproductive and causing restricted functionality around search, association and sharing of content.

In the first of these models, users pay to access additional functionality after embracing the initial concept of the application.  That’s the LinkedIn ‘account upgrade’ model.  In this model, users are systematically frustrated by the lack of social functionality in the basic or free account.  The design is to have them ‘upgrade’ to buy relief.  Start with a free ‘basic’ account and pay to go ‘pro’.

This model struggles not only because many users resent being forced to upgrade.  It has failed because users have ways to sidestep the cropped social functionality of the basic account by joining the LinkedIn open networking culture inside and outside of LinkedIn.  There are now so many ‘open networkers’ that LinkedIn just couldn’t get an acceptable financial outcome from the account upgrade model without introducing advertising.  After all, why pay for something you can access from the free basic account type?  That’s not to say that recruiters and those marketing B2B aren’t upgrading to increase search entitlements and in-mails…but not in sufficient numbers to support LinkedIn’s pending IPO.

In the second model, advertising is introduced.  Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all now rely on advertising.  In Facebook, only business pages can advertize while in Twitter and LinkedIn, there is no distinction between business and personal accounts.  Anyone can advertise in LinkedIn and take a sponsored tweet in Twitter.

So, what’s wrong with advertising?

The problem with relying on advertising as the keystone of revenue raising is that the application has to simultaneously strangle any social functionality which would allow brands to communicate with their marketing demographic or targets by other means within the application, and any functionality allowing users to search and associate with brands.

For example, business pages in Facebook offer primitive social functionality.  They can’t reach or communicate with personal profiles in any way other than through the few loop holes which Facebook has inadvertently left open. These include tagging posts to other business pages that have the same market demographic and swapping ‘likes’ (liking pages whose owners have liked your page).  Other than that, they can only communicate with personal profiles which already ‘like’ them, or if their followers spam their own networks by sharing business page posts.

Will this drive brands to advertise? Facebook hopes so.  Maybe it will, but only after the owners of business pages exhaust less expensive options to drive traffic to their Facebook pages from outside of Facebook including using existing email/sms databases, twitter, and point of sale advertising, etc.

Also, personal profiles can’t search Facebook for businesses by any means other than typing in their account name.  Facebook search is primitive for personal users.  The fact that it’s primitive is not a natural phenomenon.  It’s failure to evolve is by design.  Considering the data Facebook holds regarding business pages (see the Insights package), the types of directories and customizable searches which could be conducted (if Facebook was actually focused on assisting personal profiles to find the brands they want to follow and use) are myriad.

A primitive search function makes perfect sense in the context of trying to force business users to advertise in Facebook.  Hence monetization models define the nature of social functionality and the evolution of social functionality.

The anti social design of both monetization models is clear.  The free ‘basic’ account is slow and tedious with limited functionality.  The paid advertising model is based on the need to ensure that networks which are built through advertising can’t be built by accessing freely available functionality in the application.  It’s meant to be hard work.

One application’s cropped social functionality is another’s business opportunity.  LinkedIn and Twitter both have strong ‘follow back etiquettes’ which will conflict with attempts to raise revenue from advertising.  LinkedIn’s excellent search criteria option together with Twitter’s hash tags will also make it harder to drive users to paid advertising.

The ‘follow back etiquette’ is now dogging the heels of Facebook too.  It’s a recent phenomenon for Facebook and totally due to the introduction of advertising.  The owners of business pages are seeking relief from the restrictions on network building functionality driven by the current monetization model.

The micro network tapestry of social media connects all the major applications. Facebook ‘like’ exchangers are holed up in LinkedIn groups and out of reach from Facebook recrimination.  LinkedIn open networkers meet in open defiance of LinkedIn at URL’s like TopLinked.com.  Networks seeking to restrict social functionality will be choked of ‘blood’ supply and bypassed.  Marshall McLuhan was right.  Social media, like all media, is an extension of human sensory perception.  Humanity has fused itself within a single digital organism comprised of millions of micro networks.  Just as no nation State can isolate itself from the global economic system, no social network can isolate itself from the total fabric of cellular digital society.

The market for social functionality in digital media is beginning to behave like the global market for capital.

If US interest rates are near zero, investors may use their US dollars to buy the currency of another country where domestic interest rates are higher and invest local currency in those local markets for a superior return.  This is called the ‘Carry Trade’.

If the return on effort made to build a social network is higher in one social application than another, or the ‘black markets’ of the ‘follow back etiquette’ offer huge returns for the network builder, users will move their time and effort to those applications and those URLs.

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

Why brands should ignore ROI in online and social media for now.

Management seems confused about why they need to deal with social media.  Most of those with responsibility for profit performance are missing the point when it comes to new media and ignoring the history of past media revolutions.  Consumer markets are going through a transition phase regarding their media preferences.

Right now, ROI isn’t necessarily about new revenue and new sales.  It’s more likely to be measured as the market share a company doesn’t lose.

All other things held constant, the rise of online and social media hasn’t created new markets or consumers (with the exception of those buying and selling stuff needed to engage in social media).  Social media is a new communication preference for existing customers in existing markets to engage, assess and choose the brands with whom they will transact business in future.

Future being the key word.

One facebook account may take over 4 hours a week from the available time of a mother of 2 children.  That’s 4 hours a week less one mother has to spend in other communication channels in future.  Less time in stores, magazines, newspapers, TV and radio.  The same goes for the mobile platform and the sms/mms channel.  Time is a finite resource.

So, not only are we moving into new online and social media, we are moving out of pre-existing communication channels.

Spare us all the engagement and authenticity romanticism.  Spare us all the finger wagging and pious recrimination over brands being unable to demonstrate concrete ROI from social media.  It’s all either pseudo ethical or pseudo academic drivel.

The reason brands must market and engage in online and social media is that the customers they already serve are shifting their preferences as to how they will engage with all brands in future.  If a brand’s existing customers arrive in online and social media and find the brand they have been dealing with is absent, alternative brands with comparable offerings will take future market share.  End of story.  That’s why every media revolution is an opportunity for new brand start ups in mature consumer goods and services markets.

This always starts off sounding like a distant cry until marketing programs through traditional communication channels start showing reduced ROI.  By then, the damage is already being done.

It must have sounded like a distant cry in the early 1950’s when TV appeared on the horizon with few channels, limited broadcasting schedules, little content and small audiences.  I still remember watching the ‘test pattern’ as a kid while waiting for the screen to come to life in the early 1960’s. By 1979 there were 300 million TV set in operation.  By 2001 there were an estimated 1.75 billion TV sets worldwide.  The most notable observation we can make here is that the move into online and social media is much faster than was the revolution into TV.

TV broadcasting licenses and advertising must have seemed expensive and unsupportable investments for some time in comparison to radio, newsprint and cinema.  But look at how market share changed hands after the transition phase to TV got going, and look at the monumental consumer brands that were forged from advertising in the early years of television.  The curse is on the laggard.

That’s the catch with social media ROI.  During this transition phase between traditional, web 1.0 and web 2.0 communication channels, ROI in social media isn’t necessarily measured in new sales revenues.  It’s significantly measured in avoiding the loss of existing market share as existing customers shift their communication preferences to new media.

For new brands, it’s an opportunity to take share from established brands lagging behind in the transition.

If you decide to stay largely out of online and social media until clear evidence of ROI is on the table, you are making a mistake.  You’ll pay for it with lost market share.

The next phase of this revolution will be the competitive phase where the fight for market share will be between those who have entered social and online media.  Then we will see a more relevant and conventional assessment of ROI from within new media channels.

Until then, as the song says, “don’t count your money while you’re sitting at the table”…especially when other players are moving to new tables.

facebook marketing : the new network dilemma

How do you build a new network in facebook (FB), when without fans (‘likes’), the customer doesn’t receive your message or content?  How do you break free from this circular causal dilemma?

Every day, excellent brands offer outstanding value through FB, yet many fail to extend their network in FB.  Some slug away, clueless as to the reasons for their failure, while they post, link, follow, upload and micro blog (yes, whether it’s 140 or 420 characters, it’s still a micro blog) for months and even years in FB without any significant growth of their fan base or their related sales.

When a business page is created in FB, the means to broadcast, consume and share content is created. Nothing more.

To exercise those means, other networks in FB have to consent to receive content from your network.

‘Liking’ a business page and becoming a fan is the equivalent of giving consent to a brand to publish content into your network.  When a business page is ‘liked’, consent is given to receive the brand’s message in a personal newsfeed (and from February 2011, the newsfeed of another business page).  Business pages have achieved equality with personal profiles in network politics.

In order to obtain this consent, the brand must demonstrate relevance to the customer.  In order to demonstrate relevance, contact between the brand and the customer has to occur.

How can this contact occur when the customer has yet to give consent to the brand and the new network has no fans in FB?

Provided the brand promise offers value, in social media marketing, 80% of success is overcoming this causal dilemma.  The other 20% is a lot of things including content, consistency, sanity and karma.

So, the brand doesn’t have a social network in the beginning.  It doesn’t have much of anything.  It certainly doesn’t have a significant audience or any form of consensual engagement with potential customers. Following others and consuming their content isn’t the answer.

The noise made by a brand posting to its own FB page is like the noise of a bee buzzing inside a glass jar with the lid firmly affixed.  That’s no noise at all if you are standing outside of the jar.

There are literally millions of small brand curators buzzing away inside their little glass jars inside FB.  FB is not one social media network.  It is millions of interlinked network private networks coexisting within one software application and URL.  Some much smaller and much less interlinked than others.

If a bee buzzes inside a sealed glass jar and there is no one inside the jar to hear it, does it make a sound?  A web 2.0 application for an old existentialist riddle.

As far as social media networks are concerned, the answer is “no”.

So the new network dilemma in FB is:

“In order to build a new network in FB, a brand has to demonstrate its relevance and gain consent to publish to other networks in FB.  However, the new network can’t demonstrate its relevance because it has no connections and is unable to publish to other networks. So, how does the brand build its new network in FB?

To wit, when you first realized you needed 25 ‘likes’ to get a unique URL in FB, what did you do?  Did you post to your page wall where no one was listening in pious hope that if you posted, the network would come?  Did you pick up the phone and start sending emails to ask people you already knew through your existing networks and channels to clock up those first 25 ‘likes’?  Maybe you joined LinkedIn and the Social Media Marketing Group where you could find a list of 7,000 people who will ‘follow back’ your page in FB.  Maybe you ‘arm twisted’ all your personal ‘friends’ in FB?

Whether you have zero ‘likes’ or 5,000 ‘likes’, new ‘fans’ are  best reached outside of your fledgling network in FB and very likely outside of FB itself.  The only edge offered to you by your initial tiny following in FB is the marginal possibility that your few fans will ‘share’ your posts and content within their networks.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for this viral miracle.  There is a powerful FB etiquette that rails against spamming friends with shared posts from business pages and creating viral content is a hit and miss affair at best.  Buy a lottery ticket instead.

Suffice to say, hoping the ‘share’ button gets used is not a viable FB network growth strategy.  Larger brands will grow organically as they are searched for and found by existing customers in FB.  This type of organic growth doesn’t amount to a proactive marketing strategy either.

Sure, you can try FB or LinkedIn advertising too.  Use ‘pay per click’ and target your customer using your page ‘Insights’ data or target using LinkedIn profile data.  When you are done, calculate the cost of acquiring a new ‘like’ and ask yourself what it would have cost if you had reached out through your existing channels first. Email, direct mail, direct marketing via telephony and point of sale (POS) to name a few.

This causal dilemma has numerous implication for the intending FB network builder.  Chief among them is that if you are building a network in a particular channel for a brand, you had better get the message out using a dynamic combination of alternative social media applications and traditional, web 1.0 and web 2.0 based communication channels. Relatively few are listening to you inside your new FB glass jar (even if you are the greatest orator since Pericles).

When TV appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the owners of fledgling TV networks had little content, few channels and small audiences.  Where did they go to market their TV content offerings?  Radio, newspapers and cinema. Competing and preceding content distribution channels.  You’ve seen advertisements by Living Social on TV.  So it has been through numerous revolutions from one communication medium to its successors or usurpers.

This unsophisticated dilemma is a condition belonging to the transition phase from traditional media and web 1.0 to web 2.0 applications like FB.

As social media applications mature and develop, more brands will move into a competitive phase where large scale inflows of customers into social media have subsided and the task of growing a network becomes a matter of fighting with competitor brands for relevance and engagement in the eyes of their customers.

So, give some thought to shouting through loud halers, using email, surface mail, leaflets, radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, conferences, trade shows, FB & LI advertising, networking events, web sites, blogs, groups, point of sale, marketing alliances and other social media applications to bring attention to your new FB network.

Definitely employ giveaways, coupons and sweepstakes to drive traffic from other networks and channels into FB.  Just remember, if you just post, they won’t come.

SXSW Interactive Festival, 2011 Core Discussion. Trust in Social Media: Is Censorship Succeeding?

What is Trust in Social Media?

Why is trust in social media important?

If we accept the importance which Brian Solis, Chris Brogan and others attach to social media as an agent of profound change in human relations, it seems that leaving the custodianship of it to Mark Zuckerberg would be akin to leaving the drafting of the United States constitution to Richie Rich. 

It seems almost intuitive that users of social media would want to trust the content of the posts, tweets and blogs of their peers and friends more than those of brands and people outside of their personal network.  If not wholly intuitive, it’s been confirmed by a million surveys over recent years.

Indeed, the difference between social media and traditional media is our new ability to link up horizontally to the networks of our peers and monitor their comments and content…and to circumvent traditional networks where we probably knew no one personally who was responsible for creating and publishing content.

Most of us used to be passive consumers of traditional media content.  Now all of us have the opportunity to both create content and publish it independently of traditional networks.

As Marshall McLuhan said in 1964, the medium is the message.

The message of this medium, or social media, is that everyone is now a potential broadcaster, publisher and creator of content…or is it?

With so many now empowered to speak, the pressing question has become who will listen?

In November 2009, prominent author and social media evangelist Brian Solis had said “Access to free and expansive media platforms and distribution channels has democratized influence and shifted the power of authority from those who previously controlled the media to those who disseminate it.”

Brian Solis was not saying this would happen.  He was saying it had happened.

In December 2009, he continued “This is our industrial revolution and its reward for participation is relevance. The socialization of online societies democratized the publishing industry and equalized influence.”  Again, he cites these changes as historical facts.

He concluded “those who can participate or permeate these trust communities must first earn the prominence of what Chris Brogan and Julien Smith call ‘Trust Agents’…those individuals who are deserving of your time and attention as demonstrated through their actions and words.”

Solis continued “It is these concentrated communities that ultimately form the premise for a much larger and more meaningful human network…a collection of trust networks that represent the market and exchanges for your focus, investment, participation and ultimately your actions.”

So according to Solis, Brogan and Smith, trust is the currency which enables an exchange of value in social media.  Conversely, a lack of trust precludes an exchange of value between people and networks.

Trust is the key that opens the door to influence.  Without trust, nobody will listen.

This Core Discussion at SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin Texas in 2011 asks whether censorship has succeeded in enhancing and sustaining a culture of trust in social media. It also asks whether expectations of a new “trust economy” in social media are naive in the context of the socio-economic framework of the United States.  It raises different perspectives on censorship and proposes ideas about how we may enhance and sustain trust in social media.

The Naivety of Social Media Romanticism

When Solis said “The socialization of online communities democratized the publishing industry and equalized influence”, I wondered briefly if I had missed a pivotal reshaping of the political economy of the United States. Equal influence by virtue of access alone?  Where’s mine?  Theoretically, I can buy prime time advertisements during Super Bowl.  I’ve got access. What’s stopping me?

Sure, many more individuals may now publish in a very limited scope using social media.  There are legions of voices and points of view, each one like a bee trapped in a tiny glass jar.  Who can hear the buzzing?  Anyone can make and post a video or photograph.  Anyone can publish a blog or opinion. There are a handful of great success stories where companies or individuals have shot to prominence and popularity by viral ascendency to the realm of the digital self made man.  But equal influence?

Beyond those brands and personalities which have come to new prominence because they are part of the social media industry itself (the social media applications and their supply chains), the same brands and personalities which dominated their markets before the social media revolution continue to dominate those markets in 2011.

It appears accumulated capital has the same power to acquire pervasive influence in this medium as it has in preceding communication media. Money buys audience, influence, repetition and sophisticated content.  Additionally, it is clear that the private companies which literally hold social media life on their servers are in the process of being bought. Goldman Sachs funding of Facebook for $450M lays the framework for the absorption of this new media into ownership by all the same entities owning traditional media.  LinkedIn will go to its IPO in 2011, and there are strong rumors that Twitter will be acquired by Facebook in 2011.

So, does talk of unique social media where trust is the currency of relevance amount to pious hope? .  Are the proponents of this hope themselves hopeless romantics?  Perhaps the mantra of trust and authenticity is a money spinner in its own right?

One thing is for certain.  If social media is on some path to a cultural equalization with its predecessors, that can mean only one direction for the fortunes of trust and authenticity.  Down , down, deeper and down.

Is this social media Woodstock over? Do we now take the path of the baby boomers after the dizzy intellectual masturbation of their decade of hope, the decade of television, the 1960’s, and climb on the gravy train to build our own stash?  What lasting cultural advantage can we salvage from this latest media revolution?

More or Less Trust in Social Media in 2011?

I’m calling it.  I’m calling bullshit.  If there ever was a social media revolution,  if social media ever was the new communication channel where trust and relevance were the currency of engagement and democratized influence was the outcome, I’m pronouncing it dead… or on life support and in critical condition.

Some users do thirst for trust and authenticity in social media but if they get it, it will be in spite of the current owners of social media and only with considerable future intrusion from government regulation, oversight and court rulings. The owners of social media networks simply aren’t getting the job done.

Everything appears to be up for sale in social media.  Rankings in the search engines, tweets, posts, blogs, opinions and recommendations.

I don’t believe any of the major social media applications are really focused on maintaining a culture of trust or authenticity in the long term. They may wish to maintain order in their digital digs so as to ensure businesses run uninterrupted and raise no red flags to groups like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  As for sustaining an attempt to improve human relations or promote trust and authenticity among users, the major applications seem terminally distracted by their search for the business model that will drive revenues, profits, IPOs, mergers and acquisitions.

While I share the desire of Solis, Brogan and Smith regarding the creation of a “trust economy” and the potential of social media to lead to a profound change in human relations, I believe it’s farcical to expect that “democratized influence” in social media should or could ever exist solely within the confines of a few private companies and their web sites.

If we accept the importance which Solis and others attach to social media as an agent of profound change in human relations and influence, it seems that leaving the custodianship of it to Mark Zuckerberg would be akin to leaving the drafting of the United States constitution to Richie Rich.  Zuckerberg is a hugely successful businessman.  That doesn’t necessarily equip him to defend or sustain ‘democratized influence’ in social media.

The revolution in social media now seems largely a headlong rush by a new generation of private media network owners and their financiers to fill a partial vacuum of power, influence and profitability created by the rise of new interactive media (and the contraction of traditional media).  Now that a new crop of consumers have been lured in to the digital landscape with the promise of a new, open and trusting community and economy, the scene is set for commerce interests and amorality to roll right in…and maybe that’s just the way things are in America.

The social media revolution is looking a little like the revolution in Libya from Moammar Gadhafi to the interim government of his Justice Minister, Mustafa Abdul Jalil.  If it happens, it’s likely to have very little to do with installing democratic principles and much more to do with sponsoring a new river of money and influence to a new cadre of worthy beneficiaries.  It has to look different, doesn’t it?  Every revolution needs to wrap itself in a justifying rallying song or catch cry.  Long live democratized influence!  Hail the trust agents and protectors of authenticity!

The gulf between rhetoric and resource expended to sustain trust and authenticity is looking a lot like the gulf between the Federal government’s pledges to secure the border with Mexico (and end illegal immigration) and its real investment of resource and capital for that purpose (putting aside your position on the issue of immigration itself).  Tell it to the US border guards getting their backsides shot off.

Anecdotally, and as measured by instruments like the Edelman Trust Barometer 2011, trust is declining with both our peers and in the media.  Especially in the United States.  That’s in line with my personal experience in LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere generally.  However, ask yourself about human relations in the application you use.  More or less spam?  More or less trolls?  More or less salesmen and sales pitches?  More or less scams, phishing, privacy intrusion and advertising?  More or less undisclosed payment for opinion and comment?  More or less frustration when seeking help and consultation with the owners of the applications and brands you use regarding the functionality you require?

If you answer “more”, how can the owners of social media applications not be culpable?

The authenticity mantra and its principal mandarins have served well to populate the digital landscape with new ‘consumers’.  Now they provide the veil behind which the new social media barons can focus on building accommodation for digital commerce.  As long at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) doesn’t come knocking and the users don’t revolt, who really cares if the happenings in the application engender trust and authenticity?  Let the users sort out the definition of ‘netiquette’, truth and authenticity!

It struck me as being a fateful moment when Facebook recently rolled out their new pages functionality, allowing pages their own news feed and the ability to shape shift and shed skins with the click of a “switch”.  There was a time when the personal profile was the center of the Facebook universe.  That shoe has since moved to the other foot.  Now it seems that your personal profile is a staging point for the various business pages you administer.  It’s not difficult to see in which direction the gaze of Facebook is riveted.

Nobody can see the future with absolute clarity, but I would not be surprised to hear that Facebook finds itself in the courts in future defending against demands that it be broken up subject to anti-trust laws.  Perhaps those calls will go out if Facebook attempts to acquire Twitter in 2011…then again, probably not.

We have had anti-trust laws for the banking industry since early last century.  Look where that got us.  The Federal Reserve System and the privately owned regional Federal Reserve Banks, derivative financial products and unregulated speculation, the merger of monetary and fiscal policy, the miracle of elastic currency and the Great Recession.  On that point, let me just say…end the Fed.

What is Censorship?

Censorship is more than one entity deleting or editing content published by another entity.  Censorship extends to decisions an entity makes to self censor… and the reasons for those decisions.  That raises factors like law and regulation together with court rulings and self interest.  Censorship can also extend to simply denying an entity access to a communication channel.  That raises factors like control over social media and the cost of access together with the cost of manufacturing content.  Censorship is also often applied subject to mob rule by users in micro communities.  The source and means of censorship is by no means obvious.

We seem to fixate on the classic censorship events and conspiracy theories that usually involve government intrusion into social media.  It makes for sensational reading and involves larger than life characters.  It usually also tends to sit in the province of political conspiracy theory, which is always tantalizing.

There have been plenty of celebrated examples in the last few years, ending most recently in 2011 with alleged attempts by the national governments of Egypt and Libya to pull the plug on Twitter and Facebook, just as the downtrodden Arabic masses look like they want to embrace democracy (so we are told).

When WikiLeaks allegedly leaked thousands of documents in November 2010, repeatedly embarrassing the US government, elements of the government allegedly responded with cyber attacks on the WikiLeaks web site and global extra judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks Director Julian Assange.

Then there was the alleged flotilla hash-tag controversy in May 2010 in Twitter where the US government was supposed to have leaned on Twitter to mess with trending issues relating to the #flotilla.  It trended popular after several boats were sunk off the coast of Gaza by Israeli forces killing many innocents.

Other examples include Wikipedia owner ‘Jimbo’ Wales allegedly purging his site of graphic sex images after complaints by co founder Larry Sanger and interest from Fox News which led to unrest among Wikipedia contributors.  There was also of course YouTube (then recently acquired by Google) being attacked for censorship of 9/11 truth sites, allegedly under political pressure from Senator Lieberman. It was also applying veiled algorithms which searched for and led to the deletion of allegedly copyrighted material.

Sure, these are important events and questions, but how have they impacted trust in social media any more than other media?  Is government always the boogeyman in matters of censorship?  What about the censorship right in front of our faces?  What about failure to censor?  Is it possible that we need more censorship rather than less?  We know that the Government has the power to censor here in the US and elsewhere.  There’s more to the world of social media than government.

Self Censorship?

Has regulation and resulting self censorship acted to sustain and improve trust and authenticity?

Many social media evangelists and influencers became persons of interest to companies who wished to purchase influence and raise their brands to viral prominence in the new social media marketing channel.  This raised the old specter of a financial conflict of interest where, without full and frank disclosure, trusting consumers could be easily confused and misled in a new communication medium.

Up until October 2010, social media was literally a free-for-all marketing channel where purchased opinion was right there alongside obvious marketing content.  Any influencer with a large following could offer opinion, publish content and make recommendations while being paid to do so on behalf of a particular brand.  There was no clear legal requirement to disclose.

Enter the Federal Trade Commission in early 2009 and its recommendations to update existing Guides concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising and public relations.  Suddenly, all about us we heard social media evangelists and influencers engaged in a prayer like incantation or mantra of “disclosure”.  Was this a forced addendum to the evangelical vision of authenticity, or was there another reason for the change in behavior?  What had changed?  Clearly, the threat of penalties and prosecution had appeared, and this immediately had an effect on what people thought they could and should say.  We were seeing self censorship driven by Federal regulation…in the interest of consumers!  Good or bad?

The guidelines had not been updated since 1980, which was well before the advent of social media (aka ‘web 2.0’).  The connection between guidelines and the practice of blogging in social media were made explicit in the revision in October 2010.

The revised Guides also added new examples to illustrate a long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers, connections that consumers would not expect, must be disclosed. These examples addressed what constituted an endorsement when the message was conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specified that while decisions would be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who received cash or in-kind payment to review a product was considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who made an endorsement must disclose the material connections they shared with the seller of the product or service.  

Enter also the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent federal agency charged with safeguarding employees’ rights and holding employers accountable for their labor practices.  It ruled in 2010 that an employees’ use of Facebook is legally protected by free speech under many circumstances, even when it expresses negative sentiment about their employers.

The ruling came in response to the case of a medical technician named Dawn Marie Souza, who was unhappy that her supervisor would not let her get assistance from a union representative in responding to a customer’s complaint. Ms. Souza reportedly “using several vulgarities” to mock her supervisor on Facebook and compared him to a psychiatric patient; her co-workers chimed in, leading to “further negative comments about the supervisor.” While Souza did all this on her own time and on her own computer, her employer ultimately fired her over these Facebook posts.  According to the NLRB ruling, this action was illegal.

The board compared protected speech on Facebook to water-cooler discussion around the office.

Did this ruling have an effect on self censorship?  Would any ordinary employee who harbored ill feeling toward an employer now take comfort from the outcome and post on Facebook accordingly?

Censorship by Social Media Applications

Have the social media applications themselves actually made a concerted and serious attempt to defend trust and authenticity?

Facebook itself censors or at least proposes rules for engagement and acceptable content within its application terms and conditions.  This, however, leaves enforcement and compliance unresolved.  Like texting while driving, it’s one thing to have a law banning or requiring a behavior and entirely another to enforce the law and obtain compliance.

Facebook is undoubtedly in a race to remain the largest single force in online advertising and the hub for interactive digital communication.  It has recently taken funding from Goldman Sachs for $450M subject to a valuation of $50B for Facebook’s business.  Even a blind man can see the public listing of the company looming (get in line behind the bankers’ cartel).

Is Facebook really interested in preserving the ‘trust economy’ of Brian Solis, or is it instead focused on the growth of its own business revenues?  Does it want to upset its commercial constituents?

Facebook have clear terms and conditions prohibiting the use of personal profiles for commercial benefit.  Yet, an examination of personal profiles in Facebook would reveal tens of thousands of personal profiles being used to represent businesses and their users to be in breach of Facebook terms and conditions.

Facebook has long been accused of censoring mentions of Twitter and inconsistently censoring the prodigious numbers of “Fuck Islam”, “Fuck Christianity” and “Fuck Judaism” groups, legions of which continue to stain the site today.  Facebook allowed the creation of groups who included the word “fuck” in their name and who existed to propel religious or racial intolerance.  Paradoxically, users were likely to be censored if their Facebook status updates included the word “fuck”.

It seems censorship is not only rife but apparently arbitrary due to a simple lack of policy and management focus.  Is Facebook simply distracted by the growth of its own business?  Is the effective governance of human relations in Facebook the furthest thing from its mind?  Does this explain the inconsistency in the administration of censorship?  If trust is a casualty in Facebook, is it a case of too much censorship or not enough?

Facebook revenues were estimated at $2B in 2010, and many believe 2011 may see the acquisition of Twitter by Facebook.  It’s easy to see how Facebook could be distracted from its social governance responsibilities.

Other applications like LinkedIn and Wikipedia are also under the influence of commercial considerations…the strain of trying either to cover costs or rise out of a sea of red ink.

LinkedIn, sporting net revenues of only $10M, is coming to market to raise $175M from an IPO in 2011 after losses in 2009, marginal profitability in 2010 and forecasted losses in 2011.  Wikipedia’s money troubles continue, and in 2011 it has returned to its tin-cup approach to funding.  Wikimedia (the non-profit which owns the site) remains a conspicuous holdout against adding advertizing to its site, reputedly the 5th most popular site in the world with over 400M users.

Both LinkedIn and Wikipedia threw the nasty and expensive task of censoring content and moderating behavior to their users.  Wikipedia Sysops (system operators) and the LinkedIn Lynch Mob certainly censored content, but censorship in those applications is largely subject to the control of anointed users like the Sysops  or the first three LinkedIn users who choose to flag a question or answer causing it to be deleted in LinkedIn Q & A forums.  The approach by the owners of these applications seemed to be to avoid the expense and pain of enforcing anything by simply empowering users to decide when censorship should be practiced…and, more importantly, why it should be practiced. Visions of a digital Pontius Pilate washing his hands in a virtual bowl of water ensue.

As a long time user of LinkedIn, it always felt to me like users were kept in a prison complex where the jailer would only intervene if the brawl unexpectedly turned deadly.  LinkedIn seemed to simply allow the prevailing balance of power in its forums and the owners of groups to dispense arbitrary justice.  All the same, it was dispensed.  Consequently, the forums frequently erupted in internecine warfare.  Users were left to vent their frustration against the censorship of other users.  The most interesting Q & A forums in LinkedIn were those dedicated to asking why other users had flagged and deleted questions and comments.  Users debating the censorship of other users.  Groups were simply placed under the authoritarian stewardship of their ‘owners’.  If you didn’t like the form of censorship practiced in a group, you were simply out of luck.  There was no appeal from Caesar to Caesar and Caesar may not have been interested in trust and authenticity.

Twitter, which lost money in 2010 on a reported $45M revenue, is perpetually struggling to find an effective business model,  In Twitter, the Trust and Safety team are paid employees attempting to stamp out spammers, phishing scams and users gaming the application to assemble ever increasing numbers of ‘followers’.  I don’t see any evidence of their final success.  None at all.  Is the Trust and Safety Team a genuine attempt to preserve Trust, or is it paying lip service to the authenticity mantra in deference to the deluded romantics in its fold?

For many marketers, Twitter has become a cost effective alternative to indirect marketing through mail and email. The micro blog darling of social media was fighting a revolution from within….fighting for ownership of its own soul.

The Twitter brand seems publicly pointed at maintaining a platform for authentic and private interaction between people who need not invest significantly in order to become engaged in social media.  After all, that was its genesis and that’s the whole point of only needing 140 characters in order to participate.

But all the while, it has found itself ranged against users that wanted to use the application as a one way broadcasting platform to mount digital indirect marketing campaigns to millions of consumers.  Authentic and social interaction seemed the furthest thing from the minds of these users.  Enter the spam bots, the automated follow and un-follow applications and the buying and selling of followers.  Will the real Twitter please stand up?

Censorship had been applied to solve problems and maintain trust among users and in the media generally, but it could be argued that trust and authenticity were casualties of applying censorship, or applying it without effect.  It could also be argued that trust was becoming a convenient fiction behind which to extract profit in a new and lawless digital frontier.

Is the Twitter Trust and Safety Team an act of lip service toward netiquette correctness?  Do they represent a credible attempt to stop spam and sustain trust and authenticity?

If there’s a Problem, What’s the Fix?

This time around I think government oversight on the important issues like privacy, ownership of content, fraud and conflict of interest are front and center and need to be accelerated.  Bodies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have begun to move into the space with Guides and statements concerning both privacy and trust, like disclosure in sponsorship, advertizing online and freedom of speech.  However, they are slow to have impact, and I would urge individual Congressmen and Senators who have an active interest in social media to support and guide these bodies with appropriate legislation.  The answers will not come from profit focused private companies, and bodies like these can only really react to situations.

After having grown up in a closed environment with a handful of large media networks dominating culture and communication in Australia, I believe publicly funded organizations like the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) are essential.  The ABC doesn’t advertise.  It runs under an independent board and so much valuable content that would never have found access to a widespread audience in Australia if money was the price of access, owes its success to government funding through the ABC.

The big fix in my mind would be a government funded social media network option where we aren’t waiting on the pleasure of a profit focused private company and its executives to do something about the shortcomings of user functionality, privacy, trust and the enforcement of terms and conditions.  Maybe something like a government funded Diaspora where information lives on the user’s server and development of functionality is in the hands of the user through an open sourcing.

I know I’m going to be attacked for saying this when the GOP are banging the pot in the US trying to starve out government funded broadcasting by cutting funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).  However, in my opinion, supporters of government funded broadcasting should be pushing back hard to increase funding to CPB and establish an online interactive division under its management.  Rather than cutting funding to groups like the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in television, funding should be increased to support publicly funded broadcasting and to embrace a public option in interactive media.

Ultimately, it’s in all of our hands, and it’s just absurd to argue that trust in social media should be left in the hands of a few private companies, individuals and their financiers.

facebook: 6 reasons not to use a personal profile for business

After looking at many businesses in facebook, social media outsourcing company ‘We Engage’ is surprised to see how many are set up as personal profiles. These businesses are extremely vulnerable to losing their accounts and wasting enormous time, money and energy in the process.
So, what’s wrong with using personal profiles to represent a business in facebook?

Here are 6 excellent reasons not to establish personal profiles in facebook to create a presence for your business:
 

1. Use of personal profiles for personal commercial gain is expressly against facebook terms and conditions . If you use your personal profile for personal commercial gain, facebook may disable one or all of your accounts. Then you lose all your ‘friends’. That would be a tragedy. So why risk losing your valuable social media assets?

2. Although difficult to establish officially, it appears that personal profiles are limited to having 5,000 ‘friends’. There is a long running petition to remove the limit, but thus far facebook isn’t budging.  They seem to hold the view that anyone with over 5,000 ‘friends’ isn’t really dealing in friendships. They’re probably right. Do you want to invest all that energy into getting to the magic 5,000 ‘friends’ for your business and find you can’t accept any more? We think not. Better to start your commercial presence using an official page where you can gather an unlimited number of followers for your business as ‘likes’.
3. Personal profiles can’t use facebook advertising. OK, you may not want to use facebook advertising right now, but that’s just one more door you close when you use a personal profile for commercial purposes. Are you saying you never want to use the advertising function? Never say never.
4. Personal profiles can’t make use of the facebook statistics package called ‘Insights’. Insights has become a very valuable adjunct to facebook functionality and can provide great information on the demographics of visitors to your page as well as the volume of visits and interactions.
5. Personal profiles have only one owner. Official pages may have unlimited administrators. facebook is crammed with duplicated and abandoned accounts because people set up personal profiles and business pages with only one administrator on behalf of businesses. Then, for one reason or another, the account originators become inaccessible leaving the business owner with no way to access the profile or the page. This can be avoided by simply setting up an official page with several administrators rather than having only a personal profile. Also, although not the subject of this blog, it is possible to set up an official page without having a personal profile.
6. Only pages can be merged with facebook places. Right at the moment, facebook is struggling to merge pages with places successfully. There are serious bugs in the merge process and We Engage recommends you don’t try it until facebook fixes the problems. However, even if the merge process was reliable, you wouldn’t be able to use this geo-location functionality in facebook to market around your physical location if you represent your business using a personal profile. Again. you may say you don’t want to use facebook places right now, but that’s one more door you close when you use a personal profile for commercial purposes. Are you saying you never want to use Facebook Places? Never say never.

facebook: remember, if you don’t like it, you can’t participate.

In recent months ‘We Engage’ has looked at dozens of companies marketing in facebook as a part of our initial complimentary reviews of company engagement. 

While our central focus has been to catalogue weaknesses in the scope, quality and velocity of overall brand engagement (including customer service and marketing), we are seeing several ‘wrecking ball’ issues that defeat efforts being made to engage and build the social network, no matter how brilliant  original promotional concepts may have been.

Two issues that come back to basic brand development and marketing ‘101’ are:

First, the number of companies that don’t require (I said require…not ask for) a ‘like’ in return for allowing participation in promotional offerings.

Always make sure that ‘liking’ your business page is a prerequisite to the customer or prospective customer being able to participate in any form of value based promotional activity.  That means, ‘like’ first or don’t participate.

While posting on a business page wall to discuss a brand may require a ‘like’ subject to the basic options in the facebook user interface, downloading/printing a coupon, an e-book, acquiring a unique reference number, or following a link from a wall does not necessarily require a ‘like’.  There are several different ways to make a promotional offer that are contingent upon receiving a ‘like’ in facebook.

For example, after creating special tabs for ‘offers’ or ‘discounts’, it is possible to include some simple code on the page for revealing the content of the page only after a ‘like’.  It is also possible to restrict the downloading or printing of coupons until the ‘like’ has been given. (see this example)

Please don’t forget, the purpose of the promotional effort is two-fold.  One is to put the customer in contact with your brand and to experience your product or service.  The other is to ensure that once the promotional investment is made, customers are accessible for additional offers and promotions.  Building the accessible network is a fundamental goal in all media including social media.  Each promotional event should widen your reach for each subsequent event and increase the potential for reference based participation.  This is not new.  The same principles applied to email and telephony and capturing the contact details of customers with paper coupons or gift cards at the point of sale.

Second, if your business has more than one facebook account (many franchise businesses, multi-brand, multi-product and multi-national businesses fall in to this category), make sure you have set precise standards for naming and logo usage.

Many significant organizations now have major ‘search ability’ and recognition issues in facebook because of variations in the way their page names are spelled or the failure to adhere to standard brand marks or logos…or both.  Call me crazy, but I thought we had supposedly put this one to bed when librarians worked out standard procedures for storing and recovering papyrus manuscripts in the libraries of Ancient Egypt.  If not, then certainly more recently in  libraries using index cards and microfiche (remember microfiche?).  Standard procedures for filing/cataloguing any thing, anywhere are not new.   The problem didn’t arise because of social media.

I look now at organizations like the Los Angeles Times and marvel at how some of their facebook pages (they have over 20) will only come up in a search titled “Los Angeles Times” while others will only come up in a search titled “LA times”.  Additionally, choice of logo seems to be a ‘free for all’.  These people are journalists for goodness sake.  If you catalogue and mark your page correctly (consistently), they will come.  If you don’t, you will be invisible and gather dust while sitting on the shelf.

Do any of these issues affect your brand?  If so, perhaps you should devote some time to reviewing the fundamentals of your engagement efforts in social media with ‘We Engage’.

Diaspora: A fledgling move towards owning our own acreage in web 2.0?

I believe the idea behind Diaspora represents a watershed of development in web 2.0 (aka social media).  However, the revolutionary principles behind this embryonic open sourced application seems obscured by the language of its own technical innovation.

I’ve read a few articles about Diaspora and watched a video of the four founders trying to convey the ideas behind the new application.  Most efforts to explain the application in the context of social media as it presently exists don’t succeed.  Why exactly is Diaspora innovative?  Why is it important in the history of the developing social media?  Why do we want it to succeed or at least survive at the level of its concept?  What is the problem with social media as it now exists?  Why do we need a ‘Diaspora’?

Diaspora makes me think of all those old western movies where the railway line ends and a lawless railway and mine worker’s camp pops up out of the mud.  You have a station and telegraph office (linking towns), a hardware store, a livery and blacksmith, some bars, one or two casinos and hotels.  All of it is housed in bleak wooden construction.  You either sleep in one of the wooden hotels or you sleep in a tent camp.  Not much of a choice. You take your life in your hands because the only law in town is the law of the railway, the innkeeper and the mob.

Beyond the wooden town is an endless expanse of pristine countryside. Rolling plains and hills. Mountains, creeks and rivers.  Room enough for each person in the hotel and the canvas city to take up an acreage.  Unfortunately, there is no infrastructure.  You can camp or build your log cabin at your site outside of town ( at your own URL), but you have to come into town to socialize and get supplies.  If you live outside of town, nobody knows you exist.  You can’t communicate with those in town…unless you go to town.  Those in town don’t know you exist.   The telegraph doesn’t connect to you and even if it did…no one would know you were there.

People cling to the measly shelter, toxic proximity and imposed regulation of life in the wooden hotels and the tent camp because they need to be social.  Yes, we could live like hermits, but it doesn’t make for a quality life.  Yes, we came here for our piece of the acreage.  We also came here to establish ourselves in communities of our choosing.  If society is held up in a bunch of crummy wooden hotels and ragged tents, we are probably going to suffer the accommodation in order to be around other people and close to the basic infrastructure of a social existence.  It doesn’t mean that’s how we want to live…right?

The wooden hotels in the wild west town at the end of the line are a pretty good analogy for the current state of accommodation, infrastructure and social life presented in the ether of web 2.0 in 2010.

Most of us left the known security and sophistication of traditional social technologies and networks to extend our social personas into a vast new interactive digital wonderland.  We were looking for something better.

When we got out at the last stop…web 2.0…we found one large wooden hotel and one tent city.  Maybe Facebook and Twitter respectively?  Sure, there is other accommodation where the wandering minstrels (myspace) and people who have those new fangled photographic machines like to hang together (youtube & flickr).  Boutique wooden hotels abound in town.

But these are just more hotels owned by more innkeepers…right?  We have to entrust the innkeepers with our data.  Who owns data when it is in the ‘cloud’?  We have to abide by their rules for handling and storing property and how we communicate.  We have a shotgun in our backs every second that we are in their space…just in case we step across the innkeeper’s ‘line in the sand’.  Haven’t we experienced enough of this in the history of broadcast, cable and satellite networks of traditional media?  Do we really want the same model applied in web 2.0?

The hotel innkeeper on the other hand answers to no one.  He can run the saloon and card games all night.  He can change the layout.  He can move you to another room.  He can have a steady parade of pimps, prostitutes and patrons streaming past your door or traipsing past your tent flaps in to the wee hours of the morning.  He can boot you out at his whim and leave you in the street if you don’t like the noise.  He sets the rules.  He is the law.  His way or the highway…right?

The owners of Twitter and FB and the other significant social applications all have their rules, terms and conditions.  We don’t really know how our possession are protected or even if they are really our possessions.  The law is murky to say the least.  We can all identify a list of things we hate or dislike intensely about each application…but we don’t have any real influence over user functionality or the business model used to ‘monetize’ the application.  Additionally, we have to leave our valuable data in the innkeeper’s safe and pray it’s still there in the morning and hasn’t been loaned out to third parties for purposes we know nothing about.

Diaspora seems to propose that each of us move to our ‘acreage’ outside of town…to our own URL.  There, we can store our valuable data at our server.  That means the innkeeper can’t get use it for his own purposes.  The code that determines user functionality (and the basic infrastructure) of the application is open sourced.   That means an open community of users can develop the infrastructure and functionality of Diaspora more fully along the lines of user requirements as time goes on.  Apparently, we will all own a “node” (or seed) of the application which will allow us to find and communicate with others in the digital acreage outside of the hotel.  This Diaspora “node” could conceivably have all the features of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube combined…but it would reside on our servers together with our data.

That means we can move out of the ‘wooden hotels and tents’ and be social without the need for the autocratic restrictions.  We will control our data.  Diaspora is allegedly going to sell us a ‘communications room’ that we can build onto our own house on our acreage at our own URL.  Everyone else who uses Diaspora will have the same communication room and functionality.  So why be crammed into a hotel sock drawer with duct tape over your mouth (Twitter).

This would be a big move in the right direction, but one wonders what the monetization model is for Diaspora will be and what restrictions that will impose on us out at the ‘ranch’.  I guess, we will have to buy or lease the  “node” to find out.

The next bold step in web 2.0 would be either a ‘not for profit’ ownership structure for an open sourced social application, or (God forbid in the land of the ‘level playing field’…ROTFLMAO) a government-run agency run along the same lines.  The Australians did it just fine with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)  Not likely I grant you, when the US doesn’t even have a State or Federal owned broadcast network to its name.  But, maybe we can get it right in this new and revolutionary communication medium.  That’s the wonderful thing about a revolution…nothing is written.

social media ‘skunkworks’: under resourcing engagement.

In an ideal world, no company should rush to outsource control over their activity in social media.  The social media revolution is just beginning and this new communication medium is arguably the most powerful public communication medium of all time.

There are simply too many questions with strategic implications not to want to keep accountability and responsibility for social media strategy and tactics within the company community.

Having said that, many companies will struggle to fund the cost (including overheads and the costs of employment) for a permanent internal social media or community manager.  Some will have no option but to buy in strategic facilitation or insight from external consultants, agencies or contractors.

After the strategic compass is set, companies will also need to set up a presence across multiple applications and generate content for the insatiable appetite of hungry followers and fans.  Again, many companies will need to buy in the expertise of designers and programmers who can customize and integrate social media applications and web sites.

But what about engagement itself?  The whole point of entering social media is to execute strategy…monitor, analyze and respond to customer needs and execute the marketing plan.  The end goal is to engage with consistent standards and create trust and brand advocacy in the online community…right?

Even if an internal full time professional is within financial reach, there is a difference between bringing a savvy social media or community manager on board to develop strategy, coordinate internal communities and oversee the standards of engagement…and having the time left over to conduct the ongoing work of engagement at an acceptable standard.

One person may not be able to carry that load effectively.

Many companies seem to be short changing the engagement process after having spent lavishly on planning and set up.  It’s like building a mansion and then cutting corners on maintenance and gardening.  It’s a bad look from the street.

Many companies are basically creating social media departments as a ‘one person band’ with some remote part time workers conducting the work of engagement.  The inevitable cost of that decision is the absence of acceptable engagement standards…the reduction of engagement scope, or the failure to reach acceptable standards in dealing with the online community.

Under resourcing online engagement is the ‘skunkworks’ decision.  Hire someone and make them responsible, but don’t ask with too much veracity whether they can pull off the engagement objectives with the resources they have available.  Put them somewhere where their pain won’t be too audible.  It’s the social media strategy you have when you don’t have a social media strategy.

Some current company practices for monitoring and response online would fall below standard in an Indian telephone call center, let alone in the new public spaces of the social media.  Consumers in social media are rewarding companies that respond in real time.  There are plenty of Fortune 500 companies with 24 hours or even days between postings or tweets.  Many will only respond to those community members posting on their branded social media accounts or at their web sites.  That’s the ‘castle’ engagement mentality which is a hangover from the days before web 2.0 where the digital ether contained only web sites and static ‘bill boards’ or ‘grave stones’.

Don’t believe me?  Pick a fortune 500 company and search negative comments mentioning that company’s brands and products (whether directed to the company’s accounts or not) in Twitter and Facebook.  Try Hewlett Packard or Western Digital Corporation.  Go to their brand accounts in Twitter and cross check to how many of those consumers with problems or issues were ever approached by the brand.  Some large companies aren’t even responding to negative comments in the comments sections and discussion forums of their own web sites and FB walls.  The reason…many don’t have the available time to monitor and respond at an acceptable standard and they have missed the point about engagement as the real focus of social media.

Outsourced providers like ‘We Engage’ are focused solely on performing the work of engagement to a defined standard.  An engagement specialist will achieve far better utilization of human resource and better overhead absorption for the cost of management and expensive technical platforms, than a company that has low or fluctuating levels of engagement work and high fixed costs and overheads.

This is true of smaller organizations with low or intermittent engagement requirements and larger organizations with large peaks and troughs in engagement work.  Outsourced providers like Bill James at  ‘We Engage’ have all the pieces in one line up including creative, marketing, public relations, set up and strategy focused engagement.  Outsourcing can lift engagement standards and increase the scope of engagement.  That’s a tangible ROI.  The ‘We Engage’ model is to reward who have long term engagement contracts with affordable set up and easy access to creative, marketing, technical and public relations advice and support at prices that are way below traditional agency or consultant costs.  That’s another major cost saving against the internal engagement model.

Social Media: The Consumer is Dead. Long Live the Network.

The consumer is dead.  Individual consumers have joined millions of private networks, and by doing so have metamorphosed to become something new.  The private network is more now than the sum of its consumers.  The consumer, like the tadpole, has found its path to new sophistication as a higher order of consciousness and being as the private network.  The migration to existence as a network is in full swing in the digital ether.  The consumer protoplasm at the base of our socio-economic system is restructuring and enabling itself.  The process has only begun.  What will we become?

Why are we changing?  Technological advances in the speed of data transfer and the capacity for data storage reached a critical mass where network communication online was viable.  The choice between network communication in real time and consumer communication at the whim of the owners of broadcast, print, wire and cable infrastructure is a no brainer.  The private digital network offers more power, influence and freedom.  It’s a better life for a former single celled organism.

Marshall McCluhan wrote in 1964 that the electric light was a perfect example of a new medium devoid of content.  A new bright space in the former darkness. The digital social medium is the newest bright space in a former darkness, and now as before, the medium is the message.  Everybody it seems is on a path to take up  residence in the digital ether.

Don’t be confused by the shabby condos and hotel rooms you have to live in when you arrive in digital.  Twitter and Facebook aren’t the message.  The space in which they can exist is the message.  Like all migration, better accomodation will be built down the line.  140 characters is the equivalent of living in a hotel sock drawer with duct tape over your mouth.  However, its a place to set up while we work out how to network from our own URL’s.  Why are we living in the the digital ether in borrowed accomodation by the way?  Curious behavior when the digital ether is an infinite space and we can all have our own URL’s. I think it may be time for the networks to build their own social applications so they can engage from their own URL’s. They couldn’t do worse in the design of functionality, that’s for sure.  Why are we allowing a couple of companies with the imaginations of trailer park sites, to monopolize and dictate the terms of network social relations anyway?

Time for the social application to come home to the private networks?  Time for a non profit owned and open sourced application to bring the social functionality and the revenues home to the private networks?  Mmmmmm.  That sounds good to me.

Through this metamorphosis, the aggregation of consumers into private networks has resulted in the network, and therefore the consumer within it, acquiring volition.  It may be the volition of an infant at this time, but it is volition all the same.

Private networks may now receive and distribute information without dependence on the pathways of traditional media networks.  Private networks may now create private content without dependence on traditional media networks for reward or distribution.  Private networks may now influence, amplify and accelerate opinions and preferences without dependence on the pathways or owners of traditional media networks.

In fact, as we have seen many times recently with events like the problems with the Apple iPhone 4 antenna and the subsequent censorship of Apple’s Facebook wall, there is rarely a day which passes now without the machinations of social media making news in the traditional media networks.  Black as white. Up as down. Effect as cause. The consumer as newsmaker and distributor.

The owners of broadcast and print media must now compete with private networks for content, distribution and market share.

Our socio-political wiring diagram is in a state of magnificent flux.  It may or may not be a political revolution, but is most definitely a metamorphosis of the psyche. From Id to Ego and Super Ego,  I am network.  Long live the democratization of content and distribution.

The omission or inclusion of content by traditional networks no longer means a black out for the hapless consumer at the base of the information distribution pyramid.

Private networks can now direct information horizontally and independently of traditional media channels. If information or opinion is ignored, omitted, emphasized, underemphasized or distorted by reference to the interests of private networks, those networks can and do act independently to share information.  It’s harder to keep secrets.  It’s harder to wait out consumer’s memories by keeping a controlling silence.  The truth as an idea has become even more opaque  It’s harder to determine the objective basis of information, if only because of the inherent number of sources and their interests.

All the old structures for the accreditation of opinion as truth are in decay.  What does it mean to be a journalist?  What does it mean to be a scientist?  What does it mean to be a doctor or a teacher?  In the digital ether, possession of information offers its own accreditation.  All brands take heed.

So why are so many companies still either ignoring these private networks or treating them as if they were undifferentiated consumer protoplasm?  It is clear that at the moment that the best most companies can conceive is to roll out the old telephony model in answer to this new digital realm of customer relations.  I constantly see Fortune 500 companies approaching unhappy customers online in Twitter and Facebook only to ask that they contact Customer Service using the telephone or email.  Really?  You are going to ask me to make a private call to an outsourced Indian customer service backwater, when I have 22,000 followers on Twitter and each of them has a following averaging 1,000 people.  That’s an extended network of 22,000,000.  Really?  Are you out of your cotton picking mind?  I’ll tweet before I call.

I constantly see Fortune 500 companies fail to even acknowledge brand advocacy online.  You have a potential audience of 22,000,000 and you won’t thank me or acknowledge me when I say I am happy with the brand in public.  What are you thinking?

A digital network needs a telephone to communicate like an airplane needs rails.  Networks need to be engaged where they engage (not only at your web site, Twitter account or Facebook wall), human to human and in real time.  So start stroking and start spending now, as are your competitors.

I am network.  The potential risks and benefits relating to delivering or failing to achieve my satisfaction have increased geometrically.  My dissatisfaction can mean network dissatisfaction.  My satisfaction may not only make me a brand advocates, it may make my network a super brand advocate.

Companies seem to have largely missed the underlying promise and threat of this metamorphosis.  There is a monumental potential scalability to relay both positive and negative information around your brand in social media over accelerated timeframes.

I suggest we all reevaluate our investment and commitment to network satisfaction and brand promise.

The consumer is dead.  Long live the network.

social media: what should you outsource?

To answer the question, let’s lay out an imaginary continuum from brand ‘goals’ to brand ‘tasks’.  The path from defining a goal to delivering the goal must pass through these stages :

Brand Goal

Move the restaurant brand share from 30% of overall market to 70% of market in 12 months.

Brand Strategy

While the above goal is a total business goal, the strategy for social media might be “to contribute 20% of the overall growth goal from marketing, promotional and customer service initiatives within social media”.

Brand Tactics

The Brand tactics for the social media strategy might be to lift the utilization of individual restaurants in the chain by raising the average occupancy of seating (‘covers’ for those in the trade) to 89% from its current low of 52% by offering a combination of promotions and discounts.  This could break into three elements:

1. A campaign to target competitor customers (especially disaffected ones), in specific social applications including Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Friendfeed with promotional offers and discounts (33% conversion goal);
2. A campaign to create brand advocates by offering a combination of exemplary customer service and promotional offers to fans and followers (33% conversion goal);
3. A game based loyalty campaign where frequent check ins through Foursquare , Gowalla and Facebook (yes, Facebook is location capable now too) are rewarded with promotional offers and discount (33% conversion goal).

These tactics would rely on a pre-calculated pricing for lowly utilized capacity in specific restaurants which takes into account improving the overhead absorption.  In other words, the tactics would rely on a type of variable pricing model that would change the value of promotional and discount offers as capacity was filled (much like the airline model of pricing seats).  Promotions and discounts would be very attractive at the outset of the campaign and would tail off toward the end.

Brand Tasks

Clearly, the work needs to be planned and laid out in a critical path with allocated resources and clear accountability and responsibility.  Hence the need to break down the tactics into tasks.  Tasks for just one of these tactics could be numerous:

Let’s imagine just some of the tasks required to apply tactic number one (1):

• Monitor in real time all competitor accounts in specified applications and all generally accessible customer comments where there is dissatisfaction with service or quality;
• Develop pricing/promotional model indexed to available capacity and existing bookings system;
• Develop Standard Response Procedures defining the manner and etiquette of approach to customers;
• Respond to competitor customers with a promotional offer within 15 minutes of them expressing dissatisfaction on-line.

So, what should you outsource?

If you are thinking “Oh God, I haven’t defined this strategic continuum, or distilled the tasks supporting the goal” and “what exactly are my people doing out there…and how does it support the goal?”, you may need first to outsource the process of distilling tasks from goals in order to arrive at a project plan for social media.

You don’t need to give up ownership of Brand Goals and Strategy to seek assistance with the process of distilling action plans, metrics. structure and accountability for engagement.  It makes sense to drive through this with external help and a sounding board.  Additionally, provided you are enabled to manage your external providers effectively, social media engagment can be more effective and less costly than internal engagment.

Distilling the goal to task continuum will help you to see the big picture of what has to be done and over what timeframe.

If you don’t have brand goals and strategies, don’t outsource anything.  You need to have the goals and strategies worked out before you engage…whether under your own steam or by means of an outsourced provider.

You will notice that at each level of the continuum, there is a measurable goal.  This is essential for getting at the plan and actual ROI of the strategy.  The reason most campaigns fail is that goals don’t connect to tasks and the metrics required to plan and measure ROI aren’t incorporated into the various levels of the Goal to Task continuum.  If you don’t understand ROI or the application of Conversion rates in comparing action and reaction, you may also want to outsource the entire metrics and reporting aspect.

If you are satisfied pouring water into sand by having no particular measurable goals in mind, don’t outsource. It will simply result in the blind leading the blind.

If you are thinking “the reason I haven’t done this preparation is that I am too busy trying to remain in control of the actual minute to minute engagement in Social Media, you may need to outsource the implementation.  Don’t forget, you are committing to responding and approaching people in real time all day long.  Sure you can hire and train people, bring in the necessary technical platforms for monitoring and response, make space available in the office and define all those procedures protocols and pricing models and guidelines.  But how long will that take?  Do you have that time to spare?  Shouldn’t you be focused on the big picture? What utilization will all those assets achieve if applied only in your organization? How productive will internal implementation be?

Could an outsourced specialist working with higher utilization of those same assets, deliver the same outcome more effectively, and with less expense than you could internally?  Could a tight analysis of essential tasks result in identifying activities which are adding no value to the goal?

In conclusion, assessing the outsourcing option requires you to evaluate the comparative cost and effectiveness of internal versus third party provision.  That assessment often requires consideration of the timelines involved in putting rubber on the road.  It also requires you to assess some of the risks associated with outsourcing.  One thing is for certain.  You need to know the goals, strategy, tactics and tasks of social media engagement before you decide what to do and who should do it.