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Your Company’s Social Network: How Do You Know If It’s Worth It

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Much like the corporate land grab for a website in the mid 1990’s, the late 2000’s saw a similar land grab around setting up online social networks.  Both were created initially “because everyone else has one” with little regard to what it could do (or should do for that matter).  The first iterations of the website were no more than online versions of a company’s marketing material.  Over time, as forward thinking marketers began to test the limits of being online and the sites began to morph into something useful.  Today, corporate social networks or communities (as they are sometimes referred) are just now beginning to test the limits of how they can add value back to the company beyond branding and product marketing.

Initial metrics included things like page views, time on site, # of likes, # of comments, # of shares all of which are valid for marketers when comparing investments in marketing mediums.  Smart companies however, are starting to look beyond impressions and explore other ways to leverage the investments in community including IT, headcount to manage the site and the opportunity cost of not doing something else with those resources.

If there is one consistent thing that companies get wrong initially, it’s trying to copy the wrong competitor’s community.  The truth is that there is no one “right” way to build, manage and measure a community because every company’s needs, skills and platforms are different.  Companies have to identify a business objective or issue that can be improved by interacting differently, then go execute better than anyone else.  Setting up a community is the easy part.  Having the fortitude to measure/test/learn/rinse/repeat over the long term is the hard part.

The opportunity is one like never before.  If a company can re-imagine their business with these new ways to communicate and interact, they will have a distinct advantage over their competitors who take a long time to figure this out.  To better understand how to build and measure a community successfully, we went to the front lines with Lauren Vargas, the community manager at Aetna.  Lauren’s expertise is shining through in this emerging field and we are happy to have her experience to lead this week’s discussion.  The topic and questions for #sm129 will be:

Topic: Your Company’s Social Network: How Do You Know If It’s Worth It

Q1:  How do you measure impact within your community?

Q2:  How do you differentiate and/or blend quantitative and qualitative metrics?

Q3:  How do you measure community efforts if management is outsourced?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, September 27 at noon ET.  Follow #sm129 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Trolls or Contrarians? The Food Chain of Social Media

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

 We all have people who love us and what we do and we all have people who have different opinions of what we are and what we do.  Companies and Brands are no different.  If you have customers, you likely have people who disagree with other competing Brands.  They purchase your products for a reason and not someone elses’.  The same for contrarians to your Brand.  Those contrarians buy other things for a reason and complain about the way you run your business or make your products.  Before, those contrarians simply did not come to your store and said un-appealling things just in a way that you could not hear them.  And here is where I question the mindset of many companies and brands.

On the social web, you get to listen to what is being said about you (right, wrong or indifferent).  You have an opportunity to connect with that person in a way that was not possible before.  Companies who chose to ignore what is happening in the social sphere are missing an opportunity to promote their side, correct anything that is not factual and simply engage.  Not engaging is quietly agreeing with whom ever is posting negative information.  To be fair, this is not an enviable position at many companies however it is much needed. 

So what to do and how to get started?  This is a vexing question and certainly a conversation worth having.  Let’s suffice to say this is one of those instances where experience matters.  On this topic you definately want to avoid making rookie mistakes so getting someone who has “walked in those shoes” before is important.  This week, we are doing just that.  Peggy Fitzpatrick is a very experienced social media manager and has moderated many communities.  She brings a great perspective to this conversation around the following topic and questions:

 Topic: Trolls or Contrarians? The Food Chain of Social Media

Q1)  How should we address a troll like or contrarian type action within the walls of social media? Acknowledge it? or Let it go?

Q2)  From a marketers standpoint, is there any value to a troll or a contrarian?

Q3)  Have you ever experienced any negative or aggressive behaviors within Social Media? What did you do about it?

Q4)  Has previous negative behavior stopped you from attending chats or any other online activities?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, August 2 at noon ET.  Follow #sm121 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

 

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Posted in Branding, corporate, Customer Service | 4 Comments »

Welcome to the Big Data Era, How do Marketers Cope?

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

You may have heard a term being thrown around referring to the significant amount of data that is being produced most often called “Big Data”.  Here is a loose excerpt from the recent Future of Digital conference that explains the concept of big data pretty well:

“The explosion of data or ‘Big Data’ will give marketers the potential to mine data, discover new trends and learn more about the behaviour in their target market. If you took all the data in the world, cut them onto DVDs and stacked them on top of each other, you could reach the moon and back. This storage capacity equates to 14 Exabytes, where if you captured all the words ever spoken and digitized them into text, this would only occupy 1 Exabyte!

Labels on products will soon be talking over the internet as more sophisticated labels are attached or embedded into products. This could give business more insight into how and where their products are consumed. Big Data is about to get even bigger.”

The days of marketing via web, mobile and social by “gut feel” is over.   It’s not a matter of what you think your customer might like, it has to be what your customer is telling you they want, individually.  To stay competitive, Marketers need to begin adapting their marketing systems and their departments to include marketing analytics across every aspect.  Consider this: in order to make an offer (web, mobile or social could be display, search or even your very own web page) to a prospect, a marketer would take into account previous web visits to my site, recent posts made socially, checkins via mobile social and recent web surfing patterns before they visited you site.  From all that activity plus appending demographic and geographic information based on the IP address that is attached to the digital prospect, the new digital marketer will determine within milli-seconds what you should see when you come to my website.  For instance: A web prospect visited the product pages of my site last week.  After leaving my site, they went to two other competitive sites to their product pages.  On Twitter, they ask they network which is the best stereo system (you sell stereo systems) and then they come back to your website again.  This time you recognize their IP address from last week, append their geographic information (Manhattan) and adjust your homepage on the fly that compares your stereo favorably to the industry and has a big buy button on right on the first page.  Conversion goes up 120% and you start to gain significant ground on the web compared to your comeptitors.

This scenario is not fictional.  It is happening everyday, in real-time.  It’s not happening a lot right now but it is happening and will happen much more in the near future.  How does your marketing stack up?  To learn more about this topic we brought in the VP, Group Director at Digitas, Ken Burbary to work through this conversation.  Ken is a long time industry expert  and thought leader in the emergence of marketing analytics.  The conversation this week will follow the following topic and related questions.

Topic: Welcome to the Big Data Era, How do Marketers Cope?

Q1:  What types of data (digital, social, mobile) do marketers need to capture, track and analyze to effectively understand consumers in this era?

Q2:  Who (which group/function) should be responsible for the planning, collection and analysis of consumer data?

Q3:  How long will companies and organizations have to wait for the “big data” phenomenon to kick in and realize the benefits?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, July 26 at noon ET.  Follow #sm120 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in corporate, Measurement, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Develop Your Social Business

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

As the practice of social media continues to grow, companies are striving to evolve their operations and incorporate social media on their journey toward becoming a social business.  Just what is a social business you ask?  Not the business practices around societal needs, but the business designs that incorporate new models of intreractive communications using social tools, social media and social networks.  As employees and customers drive the need for open, transparent, realtime interactions, companies struggle to keep up with the demand.

While companies are still trying to understand the new phenomenon of social media, practitioners of social media are trying to understand business.  Many social media practitioners got into the field as it emerged from public relations and corporate communications.  While practictioners understand how social tools work and how to become a conversation evangalist, most do not have the ability to connect social media throughout business in a way that executives understand.

Executives make their mark by executing plans against managed risk better than most.  Sure there is leadership and specialties in finance, managment, marketing, etc but when you boil it down it is still about getting the job done more efficiently with less risk on the behalf of the shareholder.  Then comes social media with the promise to be more connected to customers, be more transparent and have better relationships.  Traditional executives cannot even begin to understand how to put their arms around this.

Everyone gets that people’s expectations are changing in the ways they want to communicate, purchase and relate to companies.  Businesses understand that it’s here and not going away.  There is still a missing translation layer of what companies need to do to meet the changing expectations of customers and employees in a way that is executable and that manages risk.  Thus the desire to design the organizational framework to match the changing needs of individuals, or, designing a social business.

Companies today are simply not set up to be a social business.  They are still designed the same way they were set up in the 1950′s and 60′s where experts hold-on to specialized information and company messages are funnelled through the marketing communications or executive ranks.  Lifting that veil involves a risk tolerance that is simply too high when compared to the benefits.  This post is designed to address the risk side of the equation not the benefit side just yet.

In managing risk across the enterprise, you need to have some staples in place like governance (where the accountabilities lie), escalation procedures, training for employees and purpose that maps back to objectives.  Your systems need to be proven to scale, you need to provide some consistencies in approach across departments and geographies.  Designing a social business is more than simply being conversation evangalists.  To help flesh this out further is our host this week Maria Ogneva (aka @theMaria).  Maria spends her time evangalising the business benefits of integration and social execution for the leading micro-collaboration platform, Yammer.  The discussion this week will cover the following topic and 3 questions:

Topic:  Develop Your Social Business

Q1:  What does it mean to have a social business?

Q2:  List some steps you need to integrate social into existing processes.

Q3:  How do you know when you have a Social Business (as defined before)?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, July 19 at noon ET.  Follow #sm119 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in B2B, corporate, social media | Comments Off

What kind of training / education / experience “qualifies” you to do social strategy?

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Ninjas, Gurus, Specialists, Experts – how do you hire the right person or develop the right skill set to develop your social strategy, implement it and then manage it long term?  Companies struggle with this very issue when looking to start managing social media.  Those who have attempted to set something up early on mostly went to the person who already used social in some way and put them in charge of strategy, direction, budget and gave them access to senior executives (including sometimes the CEO).  As crazy as it sounds when writing this, it is a reality that I see over and over.  It becomes quickly apparent that social users don’t always make the best business operators.  Another challenge is that every company thinks of social very differently.  It has become a bucket term for everything that is engaging or interactive and therefore difficult to pin down exactly what skills are needed.

First, let’s uncover what we mean by social media.  Social is a transformational way of communicating via digital channels.  Where that fits within the enterprise is subject to the needs, focus and objectives of each company.  This could include:

  • Marketing – both customer facing and internal campaign management, branding, promotion, research, product specific
  • Public Relations – social press release, incorporating rich media, distribution of content
  • Employees – Internal communications, communities of practice, knowledge management
  • Partner / Channel – dialogue with partners, suppliers, channels
  • Service / Support – manage customer issues in the channel of their choice, when they want help
  • Human Resources – recruiting, evaluations
  • IT - managing new tools, architecture to support, integration into legacy systems
  • Innovation – systematic way to incorporate innovation as an asset

Think about the list above and consider all the pieces needed to make any one of those social initiatives successful.  Skills might include:

  • Strategy – strategy development is very different than implementation or delivery
  • Content Development – from tweets, to blogs, to video, audio, imagery – it may all be required for different reasons.  Those who can blog, my not be good at instant tweets or creating compelling videos
  • Training – employees need consistent training and a framework by which to operate and measure performance from
  • Change Management – social communication and engagement is a seismic shift for many companies.  Policies, procedures, culture, expectations all need to be reset across the organization
  • Communicating – some people are good at public speaking, some not.  Some are good on video, some audio, some only written communications. These are all very different skill sets.  Tone is important, empathy and enough corporate knowledge to “speak” credibly.
  • Technical – to sign up for an account, manage a Facebook page, start a blog, incorporate collaboration tools internally, or anything else with social requires some capability to evaluate, choose, implement and run some type of tools

All of these skills are completely different career paths in many cases and require very different capabilities, backgrounds and experiences.  It is unrealistic to expect for one person to be able to truly be good at all of these skill sets.  It is important to understand the goal of your social efforts and the different skill sets required to develop, implement and manage it.  Only at that point can you begin to put together the resources needed to be successful.  To manage the discussion this week is Meg Fowler who is returning to host yet another chat for us.  Her take on the topic is below:

Individuals from a wide variety of educational and experiential backgrounds are taking on roles with social business components (social strategy, community management, managing social campaigns) and within the social business space. As a result, we’re seeing more debate over what actually “qualifies” individuals to take on these roles and tasks, and the ideal background to climb the social business ladder. On the other hand, we’re seeing debate about what skills and experience those in social roles might be lacking — holes that can’t help but have an impact on the success of their initiatives. There are many, many questions swirling around this debate, but we’re going to take on these three specifically today:

Topic: What kind of training / education / experience “qualifies” you to do social strategy?

Q1) If you work in social business / have social components to your job, what aspects of your background come in to play most often, day-to-day — and what types of experiences do you wish you’d had more of to prepare you for your current role?

Q2) Is a facility with social media more a function of temperament, or training?

Q3) If you’re starting a social media initiative in your company, would you tend to hire from within and train someone for the role (with consulting, workshops, conferences, etc.) or hire someone from outside your company with social business experience?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, April 5th at noon ET.  Follow #sm105 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in corporate, Human Resources, social media, twitter | 2 Comments »

Social Media Training: Who Needs It?

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Well, some weeks we just run a bit behind.  This is one of those weeks. 

The conversation will revolve around a great topic of training.  Our moderator is Carri Bugbee who is very adept at equipping your social media staff with the tools to be successful.  Our topic and questions this week will be:

Social Media Training: Who Needs It?
1.  What should training programs focus on?
2.  Who should provide the training?
3.  What staff members should be trained?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, February 15 at noon ET.  Follow #sm98 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in corporate, Human Resources | 1 Comment »

How To Plan a Global Social Media Initiative

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

Putting together a social media plan in general, is not all that difficult for many companies.  This is not because setting up a social media plan is necessarily easy to do well, just that most companies have low expectations and therefore low levels of execution and most importantly integration.  The other part of this is there are really no right or wrong ways to build a social media plan.  Ultimately, if it delivers enough value back to the organization to off-set the costs of time and capital, then the company can/should claim success, right?  One difference is in the company’s tolerance for incremental success vs. transformative leadership.  Often, social media is a way to achieve both, depending on the ability of the enterprise to adapt and execute in new and different ways than are comfortable or proven in the past.

Whatever your reasons for deploying a social media plan, just makes sure it maps back to your corporate objectives.  A plan and executables without demonstrable value back to key objectives will not be well received, funded or supported for very long.

What is not discussed often enough is the difference of having a social media plan for a local geography vs. a social plan across the globe.  First there are simply more small to medium sized businesses who only need local or country specific penetration, next, social is just now becoming “socially acceptable” as a key differentiator in the c-suite.  This new focus and attention is sure to stretch even the most senior social planners at global companies.  While trailblazers like Dell’s Vice President of Social Media and Community Manish Mehta are paving the way for global practitioners, there are still very few and far between.  Why is it so hard?  Developing a plan and developing a plan at scale at two completely different animals.  A few key reasons are:

  • Sheer volume of potential conversations
  • Vendors with a lack of multi-language support
  • Having enough quality personnel
  • Too many point systems and platforms
  • Differing behaviours of social usage (online, mobile, short messaging, etc)
  • Lack of proven governance models (managing risk, escalation procedures, training)

There are not a lot of good examples in the market on how to tackle a global social media plan and pull it off.  As companies attempt this, it requires some know-how, a lot of creativity, perspiration and follow through.  There are not a lot of people who know that as well as Ken Burbary.  Ken is the Vice President Group Director, Strategy & Analysis at Digitas and will lead the discussion on this topic for #sm95.  The topic and questions are as follows:

Topic:  How to plan a global social media initiative

Q1 – How is social media consumer behavior evolving globally?

Q2 – What model should companies use to manage social media initiatives globally? (centralized, decentralized, hybrid)?

Q3 – How can companies understand consumer social media usage across different markets & countries?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, January 25 at noon ET.  Follow #sm95 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in corporate | 2 Comments »

Facing Conflict On Social Networks

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

Conflict is a fact of everyday life.  Whether between family members, workers, or strangers in the coffee line, conflict is all around us.  Some people thrive on it, others shy far away from it and at work it can be a significant drain on productivity if it is not dealt with.  Besides productivity, conflict can result in increased levels of stress, missed work and, in extreme cases, even escalate into violence.  There are departments within companies that are set up to manage conflict, companies focused on solving the problem and employees who are better at managing it than others.

This type of conflict (in the work place), if addressed, is manageable.  If not addressed it can ruin your culture, destroy productivity andultimately drive down shareholder value.  There is a newer type of conflict emerging though.  You cannot see the people in this conflict or hear tone or voice inflection to see if they are kidding.  This conflict is often anonymous and most of the time relatively meaningless.  This conflict is digital.

Just like ignoring conflict in the offline workplace is imperative, managing conflict in the online workplace is just as imperative.  It comes in many flavors though.  Conflict can come from people who do not agree with your products, geography, employees, sustainability efforts or anything else and they can present themselves anywhere online at anytime.  Some of it is deserved (like this) and some of it is not, (like this).

If you have a digital strategy or not, the chances are, you have conflict online. Whether you know about it or not is a different issue.  Be certain that your customers, employees, stakeholders and partners know about it though.   As a company, you have to plan for managing online conflict and train workers across the organization how to handle.  Clear points of escalation should be in place as well as severity levels for types of conflict.  Response frameworks, filters and notifications and other tools should be in place as well.  Setting this up proactively before you have an issue is a better way to mitigate risk than setting up under the duress of a reactive situation.

You cannot plan for everything, but having certain precautions in place is always advised.  The risk to value ratio is much to significant to ingnore for any business large or small.  This week’s moderator is going to help us understand what’s at stake and how to handle when conflict in the digital or social space occurs.  The moderator is Meg Fowler from communications firm Sametz Blackstone Associates.  Meg brings a heap of experience and a knack for delivering value to this weeks chat.  The topic and questions follow:

Topic: Facing conflict on social networks

Q1: What are the key steps a business can/should take in dealing with conflict online (issues w/ cust. serv., reputation, PR, etc.)?
Q2: How do you face conflict when you’re managing a community? Can communities exist without it? Should they?
Q3: What is your personal approach for dealing with conflict online?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, January 18 at noon ET.  Follow #sm94 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40

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Posted in corporate, Human Resources | 2 Comments »

Social Media for Business: How Do You Cope With Online Distraction?

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

We come across topics that are very thought provoking, enough that we cannot do it justice by trying to cover it.  Sometimes it’s better to go direct from the source. Below is recent post from our moderator this week, taken from here http://blogs.hbr.org/samuel/2011/01/social-media-in-2011-who-will.html.  We will discuss this POV on our #socialmedia chat this week.

EXCERPT: “Here are the 6 most important choices for you to make this year — the choices that will determine both the quality of your life online and of your relationships offline:

What am I choosing to do on the Web? Imagine turning your computer off every time you turn away from it, and then using the next boot-up cycle to think about what you want to accomplish when you get back online. I’m not advocating that kind of wear and tear on your on/off switch, but I know that our lives online would be infinitely more satisfying if we each took 30 seconds to stop and think about what we want to experience or achieve each time we go back to the Internet.

The pace of our online lives intensifies the need for absolutely clarity about our personal and professional goals: the Internet hurls so many tasks, distractions and genuine opportunities our way that it’s easy to get blown off course. But if you’re clear about what you want the web to do for you — the kinds of relationships you want to build, the conversations you want to have, the ideas you want to express — your time online can actually support and sharpen your vision for a fulfilling life. Make 2011 the year in which the web becomes a means of pursuing your personal and professional priorities, rather than an end in itself.

Who am I choosing to be online? Anyone who has played a video game or hung out in Second Life has encountered the temptation to reinvent oneself as a seven-foot tall werewolf or a voluptuous cheerleader. But you don’t need a salacious fantasy to craft an online persona that is subtly or even dramatically different from your offline self. Your offline self is lumbered with a job, a set of expectations from friends, family and colleagues, and maybe some body image neuroses. Your online self can be anyone you’ve dreamed of being, or someone you already secretly are. And since the persona you create for yourself online inevitably bleeds over to your life offline, creating the best version of yourself online will invariably help you become the person you want to be, online and off. Start bringing that online person to life now.

What problems am I choosing to fix with the help of the Internet? The village that needs a new water pump. The prospect of climate change. The aunt who needs a new beau. The creative vacuum left by the implosion of your garage band. Whether it’s a problem for you, your community or the world, the Internet can help you fix it. Tithing 10% of your time online — from micro-volunteering to online activism to writing a heartfelt note to a lonely friend — is a structured way to ensure that the Internet becomes part of the solution instead of part of the problem. This can be the year in which you get serious about the Internet as the single most promising problem-solver in a world that faces many fast-growing problems.

Am I choosing to be a brand or a person online? Much attention has been paid to “personal brand management” or “reputation management” online. You can choose to live your online life as a brand, and commit yourself to a strategic online presence that is based on maximizing the ROI of your every online utterance. Or you can choose to be a person, committed to online authenticity not because it’s a best practice for social media marketing, but because it’s an extension of your offline integrity. You get to choose whether you live in an online world that’s made up of the interaction among brands or one that’s made up of interaction among people. The way you (and the rest of us) engage online in 2011 will set the pattern for our future.

How am I choosing to use boredom? Recent research reveals that our brains need a certain amount of downtime, that is, boredom, in order to be productive. Those moments when our minds wander are the moments that give us breakthrough thinking, insight and innovation. Reaching for the Blackberry when you’re stuck in a line-up, or processing e-mail during tedious meetings: these activities displace the former vacancies from which aha! moments once emerged. This is the year to commit to a minimum RDA of boredom, to foster habits that keep you from filling every moment with productive or engaging activity.

How am I choosing to live online? Your time online is full of frustrations, from web sites that crash to people who write flames instead of comments. You can let these frustrations turn you off of social media. But remember that in 2011, as in every previous year, the amount of time you spend online will increase. The Internet is woven into the fabric of your daily life. In a very real way, you live there. It’s up to you, to each of us, to make the choices that will make it a good place to live.

Where are you going to ask for help online? We’re all struggling with the choices that the web now asks us to make on a daily basis: choices that were unimaginable even a decade ago. Identifying the challenges where you need some support, and the specific networks or communities where you are going to look for it, is crucial to moving forward in your life online.

What are the online challenges you’re facing? Leave a comment so that we can start tackling them right here.”

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University and the co-founder of Social Signal.  Our topic this week and questions for the chat will be:

Topic:  How do you cope with online distraction?

Q1: How can you determine if something you are doing online is productive or merely distraction?

Q2: What strategies and tactics can business people use to focus their attention online?

Q3: When do you deliberately use social media as a distraction?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, January 11 at noon ET.  Follow #sm93 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40

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Posted in corporate, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Social Influence: Meaningful?

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

We know that being popular does not equate to being influential.  On the other side, being influential does not equal popularity either (consider Florida’s new Governor elect Rick Scott is now very influential, yet he is the first such governor since 1916 to win without the popular vote (<50%)).  So is this conversation is circular, another chicken and egg discussion?  There are a couple of ways to approach this topic. 

  1. the much covered approach of popularity vs influence and
  2. the more scientific approach of the forms of social influence. 

The difference of these two topics, especially across the enterprise, is that one conversation can add value and the other typically does not.  So to not bypass a good SEO opportunity, let’s cover both of them.

Influence vs Popularity: you can talk ad nausea about this topic but consider that having a lot of Friends, Likes or Followers online does not mean that you are either popular or influential.  It simply means that you paid a service to use bots to increase your presence.  for companies looking to find industry influencers, they typically rely on tools that mechanize a formula that compares the amount of post with the amount of people who see the posts against the number of people who act (like, share, retweet) on the post.   The point I’ll make here is that scheduling your message to be published at a time when everyone is online and looking for your message does not mean that your message will be popular or influential…only optimized.

Forms of Social Influence – when you begin to apply science to influence there is a chance you will be able to repeat success. First, when we use the term Social Influence, let’s make sure that we are not talking about how influential people are on social networks.  That’s the soft discussion.  We will use the term social influence to mean the study of influence in the context of a group (or social influence) overlaps quite a bit with the research on attitudes and persuasion. Social influence is also closely related to the study of group dynamics, as most of the principles of influence are strongest when they take place in social groups.  As an enterprise, if you are able to understand the science of how people affect the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others (influence) you could begin to shape your engagements much differently that pushing a press release to a group of industry bloggers and calling it a day.  According to Wikipedia, the 3 main forms of social influence come from conformity, compliance and obedience.

  1. Conformity – a tendency to conform in order to receive social acceptance – is generally defined as the tendency to act or think like other members of a group. Group size,unanimity, cohesion, status, and prior commitment all help to determine the level of conformity in an individual.  While conformity is generally disdained in American culture, there are many cultures in the Middle East and Asia that rely on conformity for social influence.
  2. Compliance – refers to any change in behavior that is due to a request or suggestion from another person.  Word of mouth marketing relies heavily on compliance behaviors with foot-in-the-door or bait-and-switch techniques. 
  3. Obedience – This is a change in behavior that is the result of a direct order or command from another person.  Special interest groups find this method popular.  When there is a chemical spill, toxins in a river, a new national healthcare plan…it is easy for people to follow a distractor based on socially accepted beliefs regardless of truths.

The default for companies trying to figure out who is influencing their “voice” in the market is a tricky one.  The only approach right now is the crop of online tools that have emerged from Klout, Edelman and Hubspot that formulate from forms of popularity that assume influence.  For some companies right now showing movement for the sake of motion is better than nothing.  What this does is provides a false sense of security though as there are no algorithms that measure passion.  Passion can drive tremendous influence if you think about the Bills that pass through congress with a child’s name attached to them.  They are driven by wildly passionate parents who do not want the same thing to happen to any other children.  These parents would never show up as influencers in the traditional sense though.

Where I like the discussion around the science of influence is it opens up broader discussions for enterprises who are looking to become influencers and not just rely on those who seem influential.  After looking at the forms of social influence, companies can uncover new meaning behind their approach in an effort to continuously make them better.  Think about recommendations.  If you understood that your site visitors were simply looking for conformity as a way to influence a purchase decision, you would employ product ratings and feedback.  To take it further, compliance is more than a simple “share this” button, it’s the Groupon model.  I’ve made a decision to purchase this product but I need you to also buy it in order to get the discount.

Sorting out social influence as a science will lead to a much better result than simply looking at people who have large followings or simply talk the loudest in the room.  To help us sort out our discussion this week is Shelly Kramer.  Shelly Kramer is the Founder and Chief Imagination Officer of V3 Integrated Marketing and Kramer & Co who has been written up in Forbes, American Express and the Wall Street Journal to name a few.  Our topic and questions this week will be:

Topic:  Social Influence: Meaningful?

Q1:  How do you find influencers?

Q2:  Can you create influencers?

Q3:  Is Social Influence a meaningful goal for companies?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, December 7 at noon ET.  Follow #sm89 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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