Everyone needs no babysitter

I am halfway through Clay Shirky’s latest book “Here Comes Everyone.” The treatise has many great insights into the social front of the ongoing digital revolution.

Here are the top three points from the first half of the book, as well as my questions that we as marketers must be asking in regards to each:

1. Massive amounts of energy previously spent on passive media consumption are now being redirected into social networks and digital spaces such as Wikipedia. *
Question: Does your organization understand the relevant ways and places this is happening?
This is not about discussion boards or CEO blogs, rather it’s about where your customers are now in charge and where they will take control next and how you must change and prepare.

2. True democratization of expression and communication, nearly unparalleled in history even by tectonic shifts such as movable type, are taking place.
Question: Are you playing it too close to the vest?
Newspapers did, and look where they are today. How can you let go and be a part of the wave? If you don’t, it is very likely your brand/cause will drown.

3. Everyone needs no babysitter.
Question: Are we looking at our organizations and markets as managers or as facilitators?
Yes we must advertise and we must drive revenue, etc.; however, to excel I believe it’s an imperative of our roles to provide platforms, environments, and tools for our organizations and markets to collaborate together. If we don’t, they will go elsewhere.


* I cheated on this one a bit, this is actually from a speech Clay gave recently and not from the first half of the book (although they are related and I am expecting to see this at least implicitly before the volume’s end). You can find this video here, its well worth the few minutes.

Democratic vs. Social

Reading in Google Reader earlier today and ran across a reference to blogs as “social” media. Interesting. For me they are not so much social as they are democratic. I think that this is an important nuance in our dialog concerning the evolution of digital marketing.

Democracy can be defined as:

“the doctrine that the numerical majority of an organized group can make decisions binding on the whole group”

reference

Thus, democratic media or marketing would be concerned with control of media, pricing, marketing, etc, being in the hands of the masses more so than in the hands of executives or corporations. I believe this is indeed part of the impact of the blogosphere (and digital media/access generally).

So for me, blogs are more democratized-media than they are social-media.

Social can be defined as:

“living together or enjoying life in communities or organized groups...”

reference

So social media or marketing would relate more to places where community happens, where people aggregate to enjoy and share common interests. Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn all come to mind.

Perhaps at a macro level a set of blogs on the same subject with lots of linked and shared topics may be a social phenomenon.

A little analytical? Sorry. But being very clear on this distinction could be useful as you try to determine whether or not you are leveraging both forces to your advantage.

J

5 Digital Musts

Here are Five things that you need to be testing or doing now:

1) Loosen Your Grip

Find some area of your business, products, or brand that you can loosen your grip on. The most powerful force in business today is democratization. By ceding some control to your customers you will gain far more insight, buzz, and loyalty more that you will risk. Connect with your customers via dialog and collaboration. Let them create your next commercial. Look to Amazon's user reviews and Apple's iMix for inspiration.

2) Be Social

It is no accident or teenage fad, social is a force. LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and others are for real. Can you allow customers and prospects to share, discuss, explore, and contribute to your brand? Can you leverage what is happening already in those spaces? See the Microsoft Student Group on Facebook.

3) Speed Up

While still developing, real time or instant marketing is coming on fast. Email is slow by today's standard. I have to notice and open an email. IM, mobile, micro blogging, and other touch points are compressing time. If it's hot, get it out there right away. Check out Dell on Twitter.

4) Get off the Page

User experiences based on clicking from one HTML page to another are going away. Broadband is here in a big way, already in 48% of homes. Your website and digital marketing experiences need to be rich. Customers should be in an experience that moves smoothly and that transitions and updates seamlessly. Check out Kayak's great shopping interface.

5) Do It

Get yourself and staff involved in this stuff. You need collaborative workspaces for your teams. Thought leaders need to have blogs. Play around with Twitter, start a social network of your own with Ning. Only by living with these things will you be able to understand their value, challenges, and be able to implement them to your advantage.

J

Digital as a Verb – Part I

We have all heard it, but maybe not noticed, “Google it” (check Wikipedia) , “Hit the Space”, “Blog”, “Surf”, “Post”. The web is about action, it is about doing and experiencing. Many web-age brands get this, Yahoo for example got it early and played to it with their “Do you Yahoo” campaign. Of course, it may have done well for the Yahoo brand but we all “Google” and I have never heard anyone say they were going to “Yahoo” something, but it was a good attempt to harness this phenomenon.

So what is it that moves a brand into this space? From being an abstract product or service provider to being a part of what we do, a verb? For Google is seems to me that it is very much about the way they started. In 1998 Google was just a logo and a search box (check WebArchive.org). One word, one page, one function (and a few links that I had forgotten about, Linux...) . For this reason the brand name is forever tied to the activity. They were relatively early into the space also, and had at the time the best search algorithm. It is worth nothing that it appears the search function is still what we think of as “Googling”, not so much the newer services they have rolled out.

Also, many web brands are so wrapped around their services it is hard to separate them. Used to be that we would see an ad on TV, billboard, or magazine and we would go visit a store or make a phone call. These activities are separated by time and by medium. Enter the web and it can all happen within minutes and all in the on line space. So even if your product is not purely web based it can be closer to this model than you might think.

But why are all on line brands not experienced as actions, used as verbs, or social powered waves? This is the mystery to crack. We have identified here a few factors:

1. Be a pioneer or at least early into a space

2. Be sure that the service or product is from the heart of your brand

3. Simple is better than complex

4. Be surprisingly good, better, or different

In installment two I think we will take a look at some other companies that have some of this happening right now, Apple is worth a look. Also, we will talk about this phenomenon outside of the actual verb usage proper; what are the essential elements of this phenomenon and how can brand and product marketers create the catalyst to spawn and harness them?

J