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I truly believe that we have social media and the emergence of social brands to thank for saving us from this scary future where every image in our towns and cities is a logo.
What do you think? Do you think this is a bad thing and do you feel that social media is saving us from it?
Special thanks to Jose Martinez for pointing me to this video clip.
A few friends have told me that they're enjoying my book but feel a little embarrassed to be carrying around a book from the Dummies series. In fact, ValleyPR's nice book review also alluded to that fact. Well, I've got two thoughts - don't be afraid to be a Dummy and keep in mind this is Un-Dummy Dummy book!The Dummies series is the number one selling book series in the world primarily because these books lets you learn a subject in a quick, easily digestible and engaging format really quickly. It is not necessarily about learning the absolute basics only. People like the books because they bring you up to speed on a topic quickly and give you the confidence that you've learnt everything you need to know.
Secondly, with this book in particular, it is probably one of the more Un-Dummy Dummy books as someone pointed out to me. What he meant was that it puts a lot of emphasis on explaining advanced, fresh and exciting social media marketing concepts in easy to understand language. In other words, its taking some very new concepts (especially around influencer types and how they matter at each point in the funnel) and makes them accessible and available. Remember,this is not a book about social media or how to use Twitter but one about the evolution of marketing with social influence across all of digital.
I was interviewed by Mary Ellen Slater of SmartBrief last week on key social trends for 2010. I'm a member of the SmartBrief Social Media Advisory Board and was excited to do this interview. Below is an excerpt of those trends. Find the full interview over at SmartBrief.
Social media is evolving quickly. What are the three trends on the horizon that business leaders absolutely must keep up with?
Social brands. The most successful brands in 2010 are going to be the ones that evolve into social brands. This means that brands that have social voices -- real people participating and talking on their behalf to customers in an engaging, conversational manner. The company must be willing to let its employees and its brand advocates become the face of the brand. Consumers demand that, and brands like Best Buy that are evolving into social brands (think Twelp Force) will be the ones that win. Every brand is going to need to become a social brand at some point.
Real-time brands. Companies that become dynamic and responsive in real time to their customers and their needs will be the ones that succeed. This doesn't just mean real time customer service but real time market research, real time product development, and real time customization and personalization of products and campaigns alike. This also means that the products will need to have a digital pulse in them.
Identifying, nurturing and managing relationships. Customers increasingly are also influencers (expert, positional or referent), and companies will need to know who those people are and how much influence they actually have. A lot more effort is going to go into this. Along those lines, understanding how customers come together as communities and make collective decisions will be important, too.
Read the remainder of the interview at SmartBrief on Social Media and don't miss their year end report.
This is a much watch interview with Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody. The twenty four minute video clip is well worth the time.
Absolutely loved this graphic that I had to republish it here. Click to this Barcelona blog for the original.
Every now and then I read an article that startles me. It is usually not for the deep insights (though there are many sometimes) but for the brutal honesty and humility. Here's a perfect example. Reading the excerpt below in the latest Businessweek is somewhat shocking. Coming from a 15 year Professor at the Harvard Business School gives it all the more gravitas -
I have come to believe that much of what my colleagues and I taught has caused real suffering, suppressed wealth creation, destabilized the world economy, and accelerated the demise of the 20th century capitalism in which the U.S. played the leading role.
We weren't stupid and we weren't evil. Nevertheless we managed to produce a generation of managers and business professionals that is deeply mistrusted and despised by a majority of people in our society and around the world. This is a terrible failure. - Shoshana Zuboff
The articles goes on to explain that by focusing too tightly on economic value and encouraging students to think about shareholder value above all else, HBS did a disservice to its students and to society. She's probably right and the problem extends beyond HBS too. Interestingly, some people probably feel that we do not have a strong enough alternative model in place. One that can rebuild the trust of Americans (only 10% of Americans trust big business today) in the corporate world.
I believe that trust has been weakened forever. It will never be the same again. That's not bad as instead we're going to trust each other - peer influence is going to rise in importance everyday especially as we're able to organize collectively, tap into each other's intelligence and harness collective wisdom for individual action.
Today's New York Times has a great story on Aardvark and how it uses your social graph to help you find answers to questions. It works rather simply - you pose a question via email or IM and Aardvark channels the question to people in your social graph (currently that's just your social graph on Facebook) and then brings back the answers to you. Users who don't respond aren't exposed so there's no discomfort created. As a result no social capital is expended either.Currently, Aardvark works only with Facebook and pings your friends and their friends for volunteers to answer the question. So it take the question to ties that are once removed from you. But it just doesn't ping everyone automatically, using its proprietary technology it pings only those friends who are most likely to have the answer and to respond to the question. It also organizes the responses and determines when it has received enough feedback. If no one in your network answers, the question is extended to second and third generation ties.
Why is this special? Because it leverages human capital and algorithms to determine who are the most likely people to be able to answer a question as well as who will be most willing to do so. It makes your social influencers work for you. It's built fundamentally around the concept of strength in weak ties recognizing that people in your network (and maybe the weakest ties) are most likely to be able to answer the question and will probably bring back the most trusted answers.
Is it more of a decision engine than Bing? Time will tell but what is certain is that by applying an intelligent filter on my social graph it is making it far more meaningful to me beyond the obvious social, entertainment and networking purposes that the social graph serves. Check out Aardvark and ask yourself what else would you like filtered through your social graphs. Or ask Aardvark to ask that. Maybe which ads to watch....33Across and Media6Degrees are already exploring that territory. It is just a matter of time before we see the world through the lens of our social graphs. It'll make life easier but here's a warning - it may limit our outlook on everything too.
Can this be the Future of Advertising?Quite possibly but in my and in some sense the future is already here twitpic. My only question is how much is it going to displace traditional advertising. And is this advertising or just consumer behavior?
Grant Owens who's a friend of mine at Razorfish and a planner wrote a piece titled, "Looking for a Pulse Online in 2009." He's a planner who believes that there's a lot we can learn from radio. In his language, radio holds the pulse because unlike the iPods it keeps us alive, and connects us to our communities and the world around us. It's not a lonely device.
Interestingly, he explores that concept to put forth the notion that in 2009 it is technologies that have a pulse that will succeed. Those are technologies that are social but instantly reactive too. For him the technologies that have a pulse include activity feeds, micro-blogging, distributed sampling, live streaming media, data centric media devices and real time analytics. He asks companies to focus on pulse taking products this year.
I like the concept but what I find most interesting is that the first two technologies that he mentions are social applications - activity feeds and micro-blogging. Arguably, some of the others like distributed sampling also leverage crowd-sourcing an inherent social concept too. I feel that the most pulse taking technologies are the ones that are social - we're interested in each other pulses (to use that language). That's what drove the social media explosion. Something else for us to consider. Philosophies around social will take many different forms in 2009 and may not be instantly recognizable as being tied to social. That's a good thing too. What do you think?
For the other Slant articles that cover microblogging, cookies, online video advertising and email marketing click here.
