Posts Tagged ‘social networks’

Building Relationships: Choose Your Social Network Wisely

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Today’s world is fast-paced, uncertain and becoming even more demanding.  This goes for businesses certainly but also for individuals.  Consumers’ lives are packed with real-world complexities and more online and offline distractions than ever before.  Some believe this is why we have had such a strong uptake on social networks as studies show that 1 in 4 people have no one they can turn to in a time of need.  Overall, a recent Pew study reveals that, on average, people have only two people they are comfortable confiding in.  While people may have very few confidants and sometimes may not have anyone to turn to in the physical world, many take solace online with social networks. 

According to the study:

“Internet users in general score 3 points higher in total support, 6 points higher in companionship, and 4 points higher in instrumental support. A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day tends to score an additional 5 points higher in total support, 5 points higher in emotional support, and 5 points higher in companionship, than internet users of similar demographic characteristics. For Facebook users, the additional boost is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married or cohabitating with a partner.”

Along with companionship and emotional support the study makes a case for an increase in trust as a result of online social networking activities citing that heavier Facebook users are more than 3 times likely to feel that most people can be trusted.  If you combine these factors, you can start to get a much deeper sense of why people go online.  Whereas many like to dismiss social networks as a place to waste time and play senseless games, there is growing evidence that online social networks are as important within a person’s social graph as any other activities.  Understanding this consumer psyche as a Brand can bring a much different perspective to how to engage and approach building relationships through social networks.  If consumers are going to be more trusting online, one might also conclude they will be less forgiving if that trust is broken.

Are all social networks created equal?  According to the Pew study, Facebook users seem to be more supportive and trusting.  Other social networks that were mentioned included Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.  What was not included were networks related to health, fitness or other hobbies.  It seems these networks might even carry higher levels of focused companionship and trust.  Does this information affect how Brands should approach building online relationships?  Brands have different reasons for participating in social as some are looking to promote a new product, better manage customer service and even develop better relationships with their customers.  Are some social networks better for developing relationships than others? It probably depends on the type of Brand you represent and what you are trying to accomplish.  To help us work through the topic of building trust online through social networks, we got the most trustworthy person we know (at least online).  Chuck Hemann is currently VP of Digital Analytics for Edelman Digital. For the past six years, he has provided strategic counsel to clients on a variety of topics including online reputation, social media, digital analytics, investor relations and crisis communications.  For today’s chat, Chuck will cover the following topic and questions:

Topic:  Building Relationships: Choose Your Social Network Wisely

Q1:  A new study from Pew says Facebook users are more trusting than other people, Agree? Why/Why not? 

Q2:  Which social networks are best for brands to develop relationships on?

Q3:  Developing online relationships, do Brands have to message 1-to-1, Brand-to-1, Brand-to-many?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, June 21 at noon ET.  Follow #sm116 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, Listening | Comments Off

Are We at the End of the Social Side of Networking?

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

As I consult with enterprise companies there is always a question of participation.  It starts when I land and managers tell me (some proudly, some ashamed) how many people participate in their current efforts.  I don’t give this much weight because usually the initiative was set up once and never touched again.  This is hard to draw any conclusions from.  Then as we begin deploying or re-deploying an initiative, everyone wants to know (magically) what to expect. 

That’s when I pull out the old 1% rule, make some calculations, and come back (magically) with some numbers.  Funny thing is that no one ever asks how I got the numbers or where they came from, they are just happy to have a goal.  Interestingly enough, the projects that have matured a bit are always very close overall to those numbers.  One caveat that I have seen is that the broader the audience, the closer the rule is.  The more focused the audience, the more that rule turns up-side-down.

The 1% rule (1/9/90) as defined by Wikipedia: 

The 1% rule states that the number of people who create content on the internet represents approximately 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content (e.g., For every one person who posts on a forum, there are at least ninety-nine other people viewing that forum but not posting). The term was coined by authors and bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba[2] although there are earlier references to the same concept[3] that did not use this name.

The “90-9-1″ version of this rule states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.

The actual percentage is likely to vary depending upon the subject matter. For example, if a forum requires content submissions as a condition of entry, the percentage of people who participate will probably be significantly higher than one percent but the content producers will still be a minority of users. This is validated in a study conducted by Michael Wu, who uses economics techniques to analyze the participation inequality across hundreds of communities segmented by industry, audience type, and community focus.[4]

This can be compared with the similar rules known to information science, such as the 80/20 rule known as the Pareto principle, that 20% of a group will produce 80% of the activity, however the activity may be defined.

A case in point:  I have a sample of data from a Fortune 50 company who set up an external Yammer network.  A look at X Company Yammer participation bears this out. Currently there are over 2,050 members of the XYZ Yammer network. Of that number, 1.29% of those, or 27 people, are responsible for 57% of the total posts. And 1972 people, 94% of the member population, are responsible for only 26% of all posts – each of those people have posted less than 25 times. This data was from January of 2010.  I looked at the recent numbers (1 month ago) and while the number of participants has increased significantly to over 7k members, the number of active participants have risen ever so slightly to 38 people that are responsible for 57% of the overall posts.

So what’s happening to the network?  Employees are reporting higher amounts of value from the network and IT dept is taking notice at the, (now) statistically relevant, number of people migrating onto the network.  Yet, the number of power users as a percent is down.  One behaviour that I noticed was that the network has transformed in use.  In the “new shiny toy” phase, employees were posting everything from musings, to rants, to accomplishments, etc.  Now the network is being used more as a shortcut to get things done, get access to the “right” people and generally as a utility to collaborate more efficiently.

 This coincides with a recent research report from Forrester onGlobal Update of Social Technographics that found a slowing of the Creative class while the Joiner class was in an upward climb.  Interesting, I know!

Which leads us to the topic for this week’s chat.  With this topic of the decline of the “Social” in Social Networking, we went right to the horse’s (nothing meant by that) mouth.  One of Forrester’s most prolific Senior Analysts, Augie Ray, has agreed to moderate this insightful topic.  This issue has many implications that we will cover including the decline of participation and what that means to communities and also if communities decline what does that mean to the digital marketing arms of companies who are transitioning entire departments to better manage social.  This week’s topic and questions are:

Topic:  Are We at the End of the Social Side of Networking?

Q1:  Is there too much content being created?

Q2:  What will marketers do if fewer are willing to generate new content?

Q3:  How will social networks change with more joiners and less creators?

 Join us this week on Tuesday 10/5/10 at noon eastern for this lively discussion.  Follow along with #sm80 from your favorite Twitter client or check out the new features in our recently updated LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live

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Facebook Blowback: What's the Upshot for Social Media?

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

A hot topic this week that will be the beginning of a series of events around data privacy and social media.  To start it off, it’s helpful to understand the consumer point-of -view and how privacy is perceived and how the major social sites are addressing privacy and data security.

Facebook appears to be the poster child right now for their approach and response to privacy concerns from the industry and from their members.

“Your information can’t be made safe on Facebook, but you can make it safer.” says Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ITworld

While I could provide my opinion on Facebook, Google’s data privacy mis-hap, etc I think there are enough viewpoints around it to simply pull the best thoughts together as a resource.

Sephoria, from Blogher did a great post on this topic and had this to say:

“….What pisses me off the most are the numbers of people who feel trapped. Not because they don’t have another choice. (Technically, they do.) But because they feel like they don’t. They have invested time, energy and resources into building Facebook what it is. They don’t trust the service, are concerned about it, and are just hoping the problems will go away. It pains me how many people are living like ostriches. If we don’t look, it doesn’t exist, right?? This isn’t good for society. Forcing people into being exposed isn’t good for society. Outing people isn’t good for society, turning people into mini-celebrities isn’t good for society….”

and Jeff Jarvis from his blog, Buzz Machine has this to say:

“They confused sharing with publishing. They conflate the public sphere with the making of a public. That is, when I blog something, I am publishing it to the world for anyone and everyone to see: the more the better, is the assumption. But when I put something on Facebook my assumption had been that I was sharing it just with the public I created and control there. That public is private. Therein lies the confusion.”

Our moderator JD Lasica points out that now the activist organization MoveOn.org is lashing out at Facebook attracting support from its over 5 million members to promote the following:

“Facebook recently made a number of changes to its privacy policy that make your profile information public – even if you thought it wasn’t. Many people aren’t even aware of these changes. So we put together a chart to show you what these changes mean for protecting your information.

If enough people understand what these changes are and how they affect them, we can convince Facebook that this is not how we expect our personal information to be treated. Click the buttons below to share this chart with your friends via email, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.”

To make sense of all this, JD Lasica will be moderating today’s chat on the topic of privacy specifically on Facebook.  We are pleased to have JD as he is one of the founding fathers of social strategy it seems and has been at this well before it was ever referred to as social media.  The topic and questions are below:

TOPIC:  Facebook Blowback: What’s the upshot for social media?

Q1) Has Facebook gone too far with “Open Graph,” infringing on our notions of “private” information?

Q2) What’s the disconnect between the elites and the 425 million users who could care less?

Q3) Marketers are salivating over the troves of FB members’ personal information that has become public. Is this a land mine waiting to go off?

The chat will take place Tuesday 5/18 at noon eastern and you can follow along from any Twitter client by using #sm60 this week or by simply following along at our LIVE page which provides a unique chat experience.

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Posted in Privacy | 1 Comment »

Should Businesses use Social Networks or Communities…What's the difference & Why should I care?

Monday, July 20th, 2009

First off – I want to acknowledge that we understand using a social network or a community is a tool approach and not a strategic approach to developing a complete internal social media strategy.What's the Difference?

With that said, suppose you are wanting to experiment and don’t have a huge budget, if any.  Say you have to prove out the medium before you can have access to real budget dollars. 

This week’s topic is a little granular but still very important.  Companies are eager to jump in and try out social tactics but often stop short of actually funding a project.  When employees at a tactical level “try out” new marketing approaches they are mostly one-off and not tied into a particular strategy whether at a campaign or a corporate level.  With little amount of thought tied to the actions, it’s no surprise that when the boss asks what the benefit was…the project usually ends there.  So what’s a person to do?  Well, for one thing – MAKE IT COUNT!

If anyone can make it count, it is this week’s moderator Rachel Happe.  From her vast experience in corporate product management to a highly touted analyst, she operates from a position of true hands-on-knowledge that is difficult to match.  This is why her insights are a perfect fit in helping companies determine not only why to participate but how to derive value from the experience. 

There are a lot of ways you could take this conversation and we still find that companies are still perplexed in what to do first.  Many times it’s as simple as having a real test bed for executives and employees alike to engage and interact and get their “hands dirty” a bit.  So here we go with the 3 questions for today:

1. What’s the difference between a social network and a community?

2. What should a business or company focus on…Developing a Community or developing a social network?

3. What are the success metrics to look for in each?

This week’s chat will be flying (you might want to stretch first) so join us early at noon est using #socialmedia.

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Posted in Content, social media | 1 Comment »

The Thorn on the Rose of Social Media?

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

rose-thorn

“ROI” is an  acronym that draws huge emotion in the social media space! Some say it’s a necessity, some say it’s impossible to measure, while others are indifferent and would rather just ignore it. This coming Tuesday during our Hashtag SocialMedia Chat we will be exploring the illusive ROI along with the use of social media. I am far from an expert, but I have some thoughts and insights that just might help you next time your VP of Finance asks you, “What are you doing on that Twitter Thing?

Before we start the chat, I would like to observe some of the more important findings that I have made over my time working professionally and playing in this space:

A. Never approach your network or the individuals in your network with a selfish one sided agenda!
-This is especially true if you are trying to build a network or community online. You won’t have to worry about measuring ROI if you’re bringing the old “shout about” model to your social media presence.

B. Set clear goals and objectives
- Figure out exactly what measurements are important to you and what they are worth. An example might be Hours spent engaging online vs. leads produced. In all of this remember rule #1. Be of massive value to your network and they will extol your virtues to the holders of the checkbooks

C. Create Reporting Channels
- Have ways to track and generate reportable results. if you spend 5 hours on twitter this week, calculate the number of quality connections and the leads that are generated through your presence. After you have quantified your leads you can figure out how many convert and connect that back to the bottom line. Tools like Salesforce.com can be beneficial for this type of interactive tracking.

Enter The Hashtag Social Media Chat

I am honored that I was asked to moderate this chat and I hope everyone comes away a little smarter in the understanding of how we can leverage social media in your company or business. I was asked to come up with three questions that we will address during this chat and they are:

1. Are you setting up benchmarks and tracking systems in your use of social media? How are you proving your worth?

2. What types of things are you measuring in social media and how do they add overall value to the organization?

3. There is no “R” without the “I” what types of investments are you making in the social media space?

I am looking forward to the discussion and hope you will attend!

-Keith Burtis

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Posted in ROI in Social Media, social media | 3 Comments »