Social Media Lure And Limits

KeyContent.org Bill Albing

Social Media: Its Lure and Limits

by Bill Albingfor open discussion Raleigh, NC May 16, 2009

or“Everything I Ever Learned about Social Media I Learned from the Web”


How Social are You Now?

• Do you Twitter frequently? Do you follow and allow following?

• Do you get Google Alerts?

• Do you rate or review items on Amazonor movies on Netflix?

• Do you socialize on Facebook or Ning?

• Do you list books on Shelfari?

• Have you connected with others on LinkedIn?

• Do you share information about yourself?


Examples of Social Media

• Make Google Alerts• Start an account with Twitter• Edit Wikipedia article• Post a news item on Digg• Get invited by a distant connection with

LinkedIn• Join a discussion forum• Enter a profile of yourself in any of the above• Get an OpenID• Share personal information on Facebook• Share what you like on Amazon, Netflix, etc.• Start a community


What is Social and Why Now?

• Not just about posting picture or text butalso ratings, comments, feedback and analytics

• All of us are involved – practically as equals• Social, Web 2.0, is collaborative in extreme way• Critical mass of enough of us online all the time• On Web – really one BIG medium,

but also implies multiple forms of media • Social means involvement by more than a

single publisher; group involvement (go team!)


Can Companies be Social?

• Social is primarily for individuals but groups can be too


Lure of Social Media

• Instant fame – everyone around the world sees your content - Global audience

• Curse is also the blessing: Everyone (around the world sees it) (the world is “flat” ala Thomas L. Friedman)

• The promise of all content always available• Of being notified in real time when new content

appears• Connections with others online has value• Not a big price tag• Immediate touch with customers, etc.• Sounds easy


Limits of Social Media

• Can't take it back, only publish a correction

• Eternal Sunshine of the Social Media – which way is time going? Because you can’t go back to a simpler time

• Are you afraid for your privacy?

• Can’t charge for content (for long) – Web is free even if books/movies/etc. are not

• Must develop culture not set rules

• Not as easy as it sounds


Stories (Exercises Really)

• Riddle: When is Media not Media?

• Scientific Question: How Small is Micro?

• (Not so) Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

• How to be Heard above Crowd

• Grandparenting (Never Too Old)

• Limbo (How Low or Social Can You Go?)

• Everything I Learned… I Learned from…


Riddle: When is Media not Media?

• When is a door not a door? When it is a-jar.

• When is media not a (traditional conventional broadcast) media? When it is a social media.

• When it is not about push (or pull)but about sharing and collaborating.

• But most Web sites are like doors - we see the door and not the doorway.

• We stop. We see it as a barrier, like the person at the front desk, instead of as an open entrance into more interaction.


Lesson: When it is Social

• Not after quantity - we're after more direct interaction with the people who need and want the content and respond.

• Tampons, Viagra, and toys – direct your message

• Comments and rating and trackbacks and tweet-backs.

• Focus isn’t on the medium but on the content!

• But not a systematized content but on immediate interactive content


Lesson: Drinking the Kool-Aid

• Not just Press Release but Social Media Release

• Not just online help but put on Web and allow comments

• Not just FAQ but forum with customer content

• Not just tech support forum but online social community


Question: How Small is Micro?

• What fits in between emails, in between small tasks, in between one window of work and another, and is smaller than a blog and faster than a wiki?

• Answer: micro-socializing.

• Smaller chunks: pages > blogs > tweets

• But that doesn’t mean it’s not work!


Lesson: Small Enough to Do

• I can't interrupt my work to view web sites and read blog entries or even scan a page

• I CAN read and respond to the micro-est blog (Twitter) in about 20 seconds.

• I CAN scan a list of RSS feed headlinesin about 30 seconds and get a sense of any trends that affect my work.

• Even Email isn’t that good!

• Kind of like Agile – small enough to make Potentially Shippable content!


Lesson: Small but Big Audience

social = collaboration (but not just one or two colleagues, but a much larger sphere)

• microblogging is micro because you only are allowed 140 characters per "blog"

• but it's not micro in sense of who can see it or how often you get tweets or the number of people you connect to

• It's small enough to help you see how a blog could work

• And it’s social because it leads to other connections and more interaction


Test: Being Heard above the Crowd

• Ask 3 people to start saying something –• “Buy our products!”• “Buy our services!”• “Hire us, we’re really good!”

• Now ask those 3 to introduce themselves to each other and to the person next to you

• Which is more effective in a crowded room?


Lesson: Don’t Shout

• Social networking involves not just a two-way street but a busy intersection – don’t all honk.

• Get to know each other and get to know others that each other know.

• Don’t try to boost your visibility on Google

• Don’t force it!


Story: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By day, Mr. Hyde:• Uses email as his work flow tool• Authors in FrameMaker • Produces beautiful PDF files at work.

After work, he goes home and Dr. Jekyll:• Publishes photos and a newsletter of a club on

the web• Gives tips to friends on Twitter• Connects with relatives on Facebook

Apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson


Lesson: Work is Social Too

With the PDFs (Mr. Hyde):• We're not sure who reads them. • Only paying customers get them, and • Only the ones who install the product and• Make the effort to call up the files see them

But with social media (Dr. Jekyll):• He communicates instantly with friends around

the country (or world) and • He shares with relatives on less urgent things

so they can keep up with each other.

• So why not use these tools at work?


Grandparenting (Never Too Old)

• Grandparenting Conference Keeping in touch with kids by email

• “Email is for grandparents”• “Twitter is for old people trying to be young”• Transition is the hard part• Those in the mobile era don’t think about it


Lesson: Media is Media

• Social media will be invisible; we won’t think of it as social – it’ll be the only media.

• A car isn’t a horseless carriage – it’s different than carriages in more ways than horsiness.

• Wikis probably won’t exist as separate – there will just be editable web pages.

• Microblogging may not be called Twitter – but publishing bits of content will stay.

• RSS feeds – working across display devices and machine-workable will stay


Exercise: Limber and Limbo

• In the Limbo dance, how low can you go?In social media, how social can you go?

• Is Web 2.0 an ideal or really the direction?

• Each year the bar is lowered: Google, more tools

• Facebook opens more Sun Microsystemssold, more open source

• How limber can you be?

• Is Enterprise 2.0 enough?


Lesson: Social is not spelled out

• Zappos (www.zappos.com) gives all new staff a culture book, created by employees. They use smart social tools like twitter/blog and let employees respond,CEO is also talking/living social media daily

• Management fear of "giving up control" should be "sharing control“

• Help your organization break down silos. Get your company to think about customer in a holistic way. Every silo (front and back end) has to care about the brand

• Intel has Social Media Guidelines, as another example


Everything I Learned …

• Everything I learned about social media, I learned from the Web

• It’s all online AND it’s all social

• You don’t take training to learn Twitter

• There are no classes on Facebook

• You learn the Web by being on the Web

• You learn social media by being online AND social


Oh, the Places You can Go


Rules of Communication

1. Tell the truth.

2. Communicate data first.

3. Build consensus around the data.

4. Label your judgments as such.

5. Praise freely.

6. Be slow to give bad news.

7. Comm. to stakeholders before the public.

Seven Rules of Communicationhttp://it.toolbox.com/blogs/original-thinking/

seven-rules-of-communication-28408


Top Tips and Tools

42 Top Social Media Tips And Toolshttp://davefleet.com/2008/01/41-top-social-media-

tips-and-tools/

43 More Top Social Media Tips And Toolshttp://davefleet.com/2008/04/43-more-top-social-

media-tips-and-tools/


12 Rules for Taking Business Social

1. Social means people. (Social businesses are made of people.)2. Right tools and infrastructure naturally enable good social business.3. Foster conversations with customers, partners, employees, any

interested.4. Popular social channels and services are important

but are the smaller part of the social business story.5. Put the community first. 6. Add a social dimension to your business processes. 7. Rethink your views on intellectual property in a highly social world.8. You manage to what you measure; use a social yardstick.9. Do not use social channels for traditional push communication.10.Censorship kills participation; respond to criticism constructively,

quickly.11.If you're not sure where organization ends and network begins,

you're doing it right.12.Healthy social businesses explicitly extract value from the network.

from Dion Hinchcliffe http://socialcomputingjournal.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=833

(see his diagram of social business circles)


FLATNESSES


Enterprise 2.0 vs. Web 2.0 (Social Media)

Enterprise 2.0 Web 2.0 /Social Media

Internal Facing External FacingFirewall Open to the worldBusiness Socialknowledge capture sharing random thingsproductivity & efficiency time-suckreduction of email email producercollaboration 67 comments on farkwiki, blog, social bookmarks, chat social networks and

"cool interactive" websites

The Difference Between Enterprise 2.0 and Social Mediaby Andrea Baker, April 19, 2009 http://socialcomputingjournal.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=802

BTW: I don’t agree completely with this summary!


Venn Diagram of Science


Twitter and Blog Guidelines

• Remember, being social means not having everything written out

• But, that being said, here are some general guidelines

• What to say and do, sort of


Socializing Guidelines

How to interact


Handling Change Management

• Only works if the whole organization participates

• But there will be some who don’t want to change


Encouraging Social


Analytics is Part of the Game

• Don’t think it can’t be measured

• Analytics is definitely part of the game


Conclusions

Any?


Contact me

• Bill Albing• [email protected]• LinkedIn.com/in/BillAlbing• Twitter: @BillAlbing• www.keycontent.org

Social Media Lure And Limits

Business

Transcript of Social Media Lure And Limits