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House of Tweets, Source: How MPs use Twitter (Globe and Mail)
I blogged a couple weeks ago about the need for a cultural shift before people start accepting various metrics for social media measurement. Well, it seems like that shift has already begun. Here’s an article from the Globe that talks about how MPs in Canada are using twitter to propagate their messages and engage in conversations with their followers. It’s interesting to notice that the analysis in this article was done by looking at a free tool called “Twitalyzer”. Metrics such as “Clout”, “Influence” and “Generosity” were taking seriously in this analysis. This is great news for all us social media geeks and junkies. This is only a sign of great things to come.
Word?
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Here’s a fantastic presentation that you must check out, if you haven’t already! Its the Social Media Study for 2009 By People from Cossette.
Here’s a fantastic presentation that you must check out, if you haven’t already! Its the Social Media Study for 2009 By People from Cossette.While the presentation talks about a lot of great statistics, I had one key take-away from it. If you’re looking to figure out whether nows the right time for your organization to get serious about social media – you may want to start by trying to understand your Transmitter/Receive make-up (refer to slide 31). As the slide indicates, there will be 2 types of Transmitters and 2 types of Receivers. On the Transmitter side, you might want to involve people from your organization, people from external agencies that work closely with you or even certain customers. By figuring out who falls into what category, you might be able to get a better sense of the kind of content you will be capable of producing. The same goes on the Receiver side as well. However, you may not always be able to find clear data. In many industries, social media adoption has been so slow that one can’t base decisions on existing patterns. So, in cases like that you might have to rely on your gut feeling as well…but at least you’ll be able to set better expectations and hopefully meet them one step at a time.
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Here’s a link to a great article by Andrew Mcafee from HBR Voices.
This article really got me excited, and I have a lot of things to say about it. Hopefully I can cram it all in here.
I completely agree with Andrew that content is no longer limited to that produced by a company. Consumers have found an easy way to express themselves through the means of social media. Hence, Andrew’s argument about it being an illusion to control conversations about your brand holds good. While I don’t disagree with Andrew, I do think there are other ways to control brand conversations in the web 2.0 era. So I’m going to take a crack at explaining how one could actually not only control what people say about a brand but also influence it, in a positive way!
1. Understand your consumers’ subculture – their behaviour, identify key influencers and study them. Remember in school when you always looked up to the kid who was awesome at sports and always had the cutest girl in class as his girlfriend (I did!). Your brand needs to be him! (Apologies for a very male driven analogy…but school was hard!)
2. Once you’ve nailed down your brand’s essence, stay true to it….no matter what! When your consumers see you acting a certain way, using a certain vocabulary and behaving a certain way – they will choose to follow you, thereby becoming brand ambassadors.
3. Finally, be a brand asshole!
Think that your brand is the best in the world and that you know more about it than anyone else on this planet. This confidence will help ensure that only you (or your company’s key spokesperson) are taken seriously when it comes to news about the brand/product.
Think Steve Jobs (man, I was trying to avoid Apple’s example for once…but it always catches up to you!).
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This post actually reaffirms my desire to live in Canada (for those of you who are unaware, yes, I am an immigrant and I moved here a couple years ago).
Here’s a map of certain key countries in the world and their internet advertising markets. You’ll notice that in India only 0.24% of the population has access to Broadband Internet Services! I actually imagined it might be higher today but I guess not.
For those of you interested, Canada is not actually on that map (as usual) but I recently read some IAB reports that said that internet penetration in Canada is actually over 80% – which is phenominal ! So, my conclusion: If you want to be at the cutting edge of whats happening in the social media marketing sphere, Canada’s not a bad place to be!
On a side note, I was actually very surprised to see Germany lacking in online advertising spend. Any comments?
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The crowd sourcing phenomenon
The WEB 2.0 magic spins again! The Guardian in the U.K has managed to crowd-source an investigation into MP’s expenses by getting almost 20,000 of its readers involved in shifting through 160,000 pages of government documents. This is a great example of how the web2.0 sphere is allowing communities of people to come together and work towards a common cause. Companies are now looking to crowd-source their market research. I personally am in search of real examples of projects where that was done efficiently (I’ve heard of examples where crowd-sourcing actually ended up costing more than the traditional outsourced model). If you happen to know any, please feel free to post it on the site (in a way I’m trying to crowd-source information collection). Anyway, its an exciting time to be alive and I’m curious to see how this space turns out over the next few months.
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Supporting Net Neutrality
The CRTC’s decision on New Media has been extremely sensible and fair. Overall, the rights of Canadians to share and communicate across the internet is unaffected. Free Speech prevails, for now.
Here’s a great quote from CRTC Commissioner Tim Denton:
The rights of Canadians to talk and communicate across the Internet are vastly too important to be subjected to a scheme of government licensing. If more Canadians were aware how close their communications have come to being regulated by this Commission, not by our will but because we administer an obsolete statute, they would be rightly concerned. Fortunately, good sense prevailed and the evidence for intervention was not yet present. But this confluence of facts may not always be there. Thus the call for a government review of a digital transition strategy is both wise and opportune. Let us fix this problem.
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In its verdict yesterday, the Swedish court has jailed 4 people linked to the popular file sharing site Pirate Bay. Further, Pirate Bay has been asked to pay $3.6 million to various entertainment companies for damages. This verdict marks the beginning of the end!
Pirate culture has been responsible for a lot of the modern day innovations that we see around us today, be it the invention of commercial radio or the web 2.0 sphere (which is allowing me to do this!). Pirates have transformed the media industry, given birth to the remix culture and consequently to Hip Hop and even made available, cheaper anti-HIV drugs in the developing world. Yet we continue to fight this culture.
Today its Pirate Bay’s prosecution, tomorrow it could be the end of “net neutrality” as we know it. I am not saying that piracy is right. All I am saying is that pirate culture has had a remarkable impact on innovation in our society and instead of fighting it through prosecution, we must look to compete with it, on a level playing field (Apple, Apple, Apple…). We must look to provide outstanding value to consumers every step of the way (Look at what Hulu.com has done). In his book ‘The pirate’s Dilemma’, Matt Mason says “Pirates highlight areas where choice doesn’t exist and demand that it does. And this mentality transcends media formats, technological changes, and business models. It is a powerful tool that once understood, can be applied everywhere.”
We need to understand that piracy is a business model in itself and in the words of Steve Jobs, “If you want to stop piracy, the way to stop it is by competing with it”.
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Jun 10
21
Interest-driven social networking will change the world.
Our usage of social networks has evolved in the past couple years.
Aside from making use of social networks such as Facebook to keep in touch with friends and stay on top of events, users are increasingly becoming involved in “interest-driven networks” – networks who’s members are brought together due to a common interest or passion. Common examples of such networks include social platforms such as change.org and socialvibe.com and Facebook groups dedicated to certain causes.
Source: Flickr User: Dulk
The shift towards interest-driven networks has led to a gradual change in the makeup of peer groups on social networking sites such a Facebook [2]. That is, peer networks have started exhibiting common characteristics, similar to one’s friend network on Twitter – a platform where social connections are primarily built based on interest.
The gradual allocation of our “social networking time” into activities that are interest driven has brought about two very positive changes:
1. Its increased the number of “do-ers”
Since peer groups are becoming more interest-driven, users who’ve traditionally been action oriented are having a positive effect on their peer networks and as a result, are driving more users towards action. This is good news for communities looking to drive social change who’ve traditionally had problems getting people to donate, especially their time.
2. Its increased the number of “listeners”
Those who aren’t driven to action are getting influenced by peer groups to listen. In my own ethnographic research, I found a 40% increase in awareness of social and political issues primarily through information shared on Facebook.
The net result of this shift is very positive. Facebook has over 400 million active users. A community such as this has the power to change the world. The only barrier standing in the way is that of education and empowerment. This shift toward interest driven networks is helping break that barrier. In my personal opinion, we haven’t even witnessed 10% of the power of social networks, to drive social change.
References:
[1] Digital Youth Project – Living and Learning with new media.
[2] Digital Ethnographic study on 25 users between the ages of 19 and 32 between 2008 and 2010.
Posted in Marketing Commentary by Ujwal Arkalgud. 1 Comment