Not sure what I’ve been waiting for but tonight I realized that’s just it… we wait for something and really, it’s within us already, so we are waiting for the moment we uncover our truth.

Tonight I was asked what my practice is. My answer came immediately, without thought or script. “My practice is being awake daily. I remain in one aspect with harmony with my child – I continue to always notice the color of the wind, and the smell of the light. I see and feel the street, and only then do I notice the people and only then do I notice the cars and buildings. So, I suppose my practice is to feel before seeing.

This does not mean I have a calm mind. Far from it. My mind has the ebb and flows of a dish washer at times, but I do know how to turn off – its just choosing when to. So, how does this help with my communication? Well as I see it, if we listen more intently, we communicate more effectively. If we communicate more effectively, we stay awake more truthfully as we are seen and therefore feel worthy of seeing.

Good night and thank you.

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• The overconfident rebel leader
• The party seeker and connector
• The Geek
• The student
• The non-conformist

The Overconfident Rebel Leader
Full of self-belief, cocky self-assurance and a certainty that he has discovered the true path, he is confused, disappointed and sulky that the grown ups will not listen to him, or that they insist on applying their outdated rules or asking irrelevant questions. His followers love him, they can see his genius and they speak or assume his language. “If only those pesky grownups would listen, the world would be a better place”.

The Approval Seeker and Connector
She lives to be popular seeking as many props and symbols as she can to show her popularity. The more the merrier. Life is about being seen and talked about. She feels validated by the chaos and sheer weight of numbers. She’s invited to all the parties, and if not she makes sure she gets in. She knows somebody who knows somebody. She knows she is living a dangerous life and has to be on the ball: one indiscretion and she could be dropped from the “in crowd”. Being herself will not do. Keeping the charade up is hard work.

The Geek
Gone are the days when the Geek never got the girl. The ability to analyze, create and mold technology is now recognized as a valuable skill. The Geek loves to problem-solve and find solutions using technology. Shiny new toys are heaven. It is not unheard of for a Geek to be held in high regard and celebrated. “With my new toys I can perform spectacular tasks and tricks”. Keywords such as “techniques”, “processes” and “tactics” often feature.

The Student
The student loves to lap up all the techniques, tips and tactics that she can. She reads widely on the subject and loves to quote her latest source. The student becomes the “expert” through association and applying newly learned techniques to the letter. Not all students are the same though; some take best practices, add value and context and get the A+.

The Non-Conformist
Not to be confused with “the Rebel” the non-conformist sees the world differently. Often discounted for not excelling within the system, he has a set determination to prove himself. His strength comes from understanding the system, acknowledging the points of differentiation and seeing the gaps. The non-conformist works to objectives, setting out to satisfy or resolve those objectives using the tools and resources available to him. Success through proving himself is the reward. This comes through keeping an eye on the objectives, using the right tools and resources for those objectives and closing the gap between the established and the new.

Yes. This is rather tongue in cheek. No, it is not to be taken seriously. I guess one central message here is that we, as social media practitioners, marketers and online entrepreneurs need to take some responsibility for how social media is perceived and how we integrate it into the mainstream. A mature approach towards satisfying the critics’ concerns and demonstrating value will go a long way towards integrating social media into mainstream or traditional marketing and business initiatives.
I am sure there are more teenage stereotypes that fit the bill. Feel free to add your thoughts.
I for one am looking forward to Social Media growing up beyond the teenage years. Perhaps 2010 will bring more control, a more mature attitude towards social media and a more harmonious dialogue between the young and the old.

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It is not so much that these opposing views are at different ends of the same spectrum, the fact is they operate on completely different tracks and there are few bridges linking the two.

There are many points where the two tracks follow different paths. A good example is the blind conviction of command and control structures that if we find something that works on a small scale we need to scale up in order to achieve greater profits and return. This is not to say that scaling up is wrong, or does not have its place; it is the approach that is fundamentally flawed.

From a command and control point of view it is important to control the inputs in order to control the outputs. Scaling up allows an organization to reach economies, streamline operations and ultimately control processes. This works ok in situations where resources are infinite or at the very least not scarce. It also assumes that the outputs are universally demanded and relevant. We are increasingly finding that resources are scarce, people are searching against need and objectives and new markets are organizing themselves differently.

The open source philosophy sees this differently. They will not argue against the need for scale, but the approach to scale is different. In order for something to scale efficiently the process must be opened up. Through opening up the process , each contributor is able to use what has been built so far and add to it in a way that makes it relevant to their needs, objectives, resources, experience, context and knowledge.  The scale element comes from sharing and building upon existing knowledge through an open model.  In simple terms this equates to taking the elements that work successfully within a localized solution and applying those while changing specific elements that relate to context, resources, needs, learning styles and so on. Often when we scale up universally we lose many of the elements that led to success in the first place.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘this is specific to software’. If we consider that software is produced in order to facilitate solutions to problems, to satisfy needs or attain objectives, rather than for the sake of producing software, we can see how this philosophy can be universally relevant.

One of the barriers to understanding and adopting the open source philosophy is the need for profit or revenue generating models. If I give something away for free, how am I going to make money? The answer lies in changing the focus of commerce away from:  ‘How can I get people to buy my product or service?’ to ‘How can I service people’s needs, objectives and demands?’. The open source approach looks at creating the right environment in order to provide relevant, contextual solutions, products and services that people are looking for, or that meet their needs and available resources.

There are numerous examples of open source initiatives that are doing just that. Ken Bank’s FrontlineSMS is a great example with its global adoption across thousands of separate initiatives, all based upon his open source software but adjusted to fit specific purposes and solutions, from development projects to larger spin offs such as Frontline SMS Medic and FrontlineSMS:Credit.

There are many examples out there. Feel free to add yours here. I would love to hear your views on the subject.

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Content no longer sits on a website and hopes for people to come along. It travels. Not only does it travel from the website, smart websites are putting relevant content in front of their website visitors according to their profiles, preferences, searching and navigation behaviour. Social media tools, analytics, CMS, LMS and CRM are being combined to ensure audience and content relevance. The form content is delivered in, video, audio, photo, graphic, text etc. is no longer seen as merely innovative or a gimmick, rather as aligning to learning styles, expectations and delivery mechanisms. Context.

The relationship between content and context is two pronged.

1. Content is created in relation to the context it will be consumed in
2. Context directs content.

For content to be relevant it has to be created in the context of your social media strategy. Understanding the following is a great start:

1. Who are your audiences?
2. Where they live online?
3. What are their learning styles?
4. How they are influenced?
5. What are your competitors doing?
6. How can you differentiate yourself?
7. What is your USP? (Unique selling point)
8. What should you be doing online?
9. What are the rules?
10. What resources and tools do you have at your disposal?

Aligning your available resources and tools to your content goals seems obvious, but so much content is cobbled together in a piecemeal fashion. How many times, for example, have we seen a company start a YouTube channel and not update it?

Context rules social media. Keeping this in mind ensures we prepare, research and create strategies that align our goals with our audiences and resources. Relevant content and content delivery strategies will follow.

This post is reproduced from the original which can be found here

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It is no surprise that the most discussed social media networks are the ones that have excelled from this model, creating a following and infusing themselves into the very fabric of our online lives. Here their determination and vision have created mass following and buy-in, and from that revenue models have been created, or in some cases are yet to be created.

For every Facebook or Twitter, there are thousands of start-ups which have not made it. Not much has been written about them. We prefer to applaud the mighty. We love to pick at, dissect and analyse the ones that have made it. The ones we all want to emulate. How many times have you seen battling niche social networks describing themselves as “The MySpace of Christianity” or “The Facebook of fishermen”? (Ok I made that up but it has a certain poetic quality to it).

This has perpetuated the “build it, create a following and then figure out your revenue model later” strategy as the one to copy. We all like to document why these networks are successful, what lessons we think can be derived from them and applied to our businesses, and how we can maximise our use of them in order for organizations to gain.

Don’t get me wrong, there is much to applaud, and lots to discuss, however, to avoid stagnating there is a need to step away from this and look at the topic from alternative perspectives.

It is this view of social media that has prompted such a fierce reaction to the executives who calmly and quite understandably ask for some ROI data for social media. “They just don’t get social media” is the combined cry from 10 million of the 10 million 7 hundred thousand #socialmediaprofiles on wefollow. “How do you quantify a relationship?”

I think most of the executives get that. It is a valid answer, but it misses their point. From their perspective, the build it, get people to engage and then figure out how to make it valuable later is not a model that they are familiar with. (I know I am oversimplifying things here, and yes there is more to this argument than this) Just because the innovation, thinking and construction of these tools are derived from this model, does not mean they have to stay in this model.

Organizations already have business models. They have processes set up to ensure that they reach their goals and that they are adding value in a manner that allows the business to continue. Taking the tools, applications and software that drives the social media we know and love and bringing them into established business models in order to facilitate a greater overall ROI requires a shift in application.

Social media does not only exist “out there”. Bringing the tools into the structure of an organization in a way that aligns with their objectives, culture and purpose ensures that value is brought with them. Helping organizations to see the shift happening in relation to stakeholders, collaboration, connections and content, and how social media tools and processes can bring it all together for the benefit of the organization is key.

Thinking about User Generated Value (UGV) verses User Generated Content (UGC) is important. It is not always appropriate for us to engage or discuss overtly or for inappropriate people to alter content. Using filters and permissions based profiles to ensure relevance, or mapping how people navigate your site can add more value and relevant understanding. Allowing the right people access to the right content, and getting them to add value through tagging, flagging, bookmarking, rating etc can help streamline efficiencies, and add more relevance than sifting through reams of comments, suggestions and text. All these tools exist. The fact that they are becoming easier to integrate into legacy applications, CMS and LMS ensures that this is easier and cheaper to do. The gaps between what we want to do, the cost of doing it and the time it takes to role it out are getting smaller.

Too many people are driving the social media vehicle in automatic. Look under the hood, see what tools make it go and adapt that knowledge so it allows organizations to meet their objectives, goals and unique business rules.

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UGC is evolving too. We are producing content online in various forms. The question now is not whether we should be producing it, but how it can be used. Organizations are adapting their business models and taking a serious look at how social media tools and software can add value to their business models. One of the central questions concerns how to deal with UGC.

We know that engaging with and learning from our audience, be they customers, partners, employees or other stakeholders, is important. Who better to tell us what our audience wants than our audience? But we are also aware that the resources needed to continually monitor conversations and act on them can be prohibitive.

The way we view content has evolved. Websites are no longer static, or indeed the destination or focus. What we are all looking for is content. You just need to look at RSS feeds or the way we use twitter search to know that targeted buckets of information are the destinations. From an organizational point of view, these buckets of content need to be able to travel, grow, expand and have value added to them. This process results in User Generated Value (UGV).

UGV differs from UGC in that the content, or the momentum for the content has originated from the organization. This UGV is also distinct in that the value added by the stakeholders or audiences can be, but does not have to be, overt. Comments, blogs, stories and use case are all valuable. As is internal collaboration on content and content editing through tools such as wiki’s. However there are a whole set of tools that can add value to content, without altering its form.

Below are some examples of how UGV may play out.

• Tools such as rating, tagging and flagging allow organizations to understand how people view their content.
• Monitoring how a person moves through your website or content can highlight new product connections.
• Incorporating your website, your intranet and your extranet through a combination of using a CMS or LMS, permissions based profiles and social media tools allows for a seamless experience for your users. This also helps make monitoring, assessing and analysing easier to do.
• Allowing people to rate a search based upon their search words and phrases for example means that the next time someone uses the same search terms the most relevant result will be at the top.
• Knowing which products or services are compared or analysed, and in what order gives an organization a unique view into the workings of customers minds.

Integrating social media tools and technologies into an organization goes far deeper than allowing comments and engaging on twitter. Understanding how users can add value to the organization requires an in-depth look at what your objectives are and how you manage your content. Ensuring that the tools you use add value in themselves, and that your audience’s experience of your organization is open, seamless, painless and intuitive will bring the interaction and added value you seek.

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Following our previous post, The ROI of Social Media – Get the Biggest Bang for Your Buck, several thoughts need to be added in light of comments, reactions and conversation.

There are two camps, one saying that trying to establish the ROI for social media is wrong and goes against the very nature of social media. For this camp social media is about fluid, open conversations and the building up of relationships. To reduce this to mere measurement and numbers is wrong and represents everything that is wrong with how organizations have worked in the past.

The other camp says that measuring the ROI of social media is the right thing to do. Adhering to a plan or social media strategy requires measurement and analysis. The people who argue against this approach often argue that the two are mutually exclusive, that a quantifiable mindset kills the qualitative spirit. It is this assumption that is creating the problems.

I think we are getting caught up in semantics. The whole ROI debate is riddled with controversy because people are using the language and mindset of a previous paradigm. When at the beginning of a shift, as we are, the old paradigm’s language and mindset remain predominant while the new paradigm has to find a way to express itself. Often the new paradigm has to use the language of the old paradigm to gain attention. Entitling this topic as “How to ensure you are engaging in an effective social media strategy” will not grab the attention of marketers in the same way as using the term ROI. Yet using this term brings with it a whole history, one that has traditionally been about control, admin and justification.

Absolutely. You cannot measure the effectiveness of every social conversation. Yes it is difficult to quantify the good that comes from real customer engagement. But this does not mean you should not use analytics and measurement.

Measurement is not to be approached as justification and measurement should never inhibit the flow of social conversations and connections. But in order to be effective for business, a social media campaign has to be built on a strategy. Part of that strategy is all about engagement, participation and openness. It is about starting the conversation and seeing where it goes. Yes we should encourage people within our organization to participate freely, with no expectation or obligation. The other part has to include measurement and metrics. There is little point in having these conversations if they are not going to inform you. Here ROI is measured in relation to goals and objectives rather than in terms of money.

If you are integrating social media and social software into the very fabric of your organization, incorporating your CMS and your LMS and using analytics and measurement can turn your website or web presence into powerful tools. Not at the expense of your fluid and open social conversation and interactions, but in conjunction with it.

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A consistent mistake many online commentators are making is equating ROI to money. As a CEO, I understand the link. Marketing dollars, especially now, are precious and it is responsible and prudent to ensure that every dollar you commit to marketing shows a measurable and positive return on your bottom line. As a CEO who runs a Social Media company it is imperative we have simple case studies to help our clients understand the importance of relevant social media strategies and implementation. In addition, we also use Social Media to promote our company. Like most CEOs, I do want to find out if I commit x dollars towards my marketing what return I am going to see on my bottom line and how I am going to measure that. By the way, I want to see this information efficiently too.

This current economic climate leaves little room for experimentation. No company can afford to gamble on something that might bring huge rewards, but might just as equally fail.

In my research for this post I came across a blog post that I think sums up where many people are going wrong. Jay Deragon suggests that you cannot look at social media as having an ROI. You can’t quantify it in monetary terms, and if you are trying to do so then you are approaching it incorrectly. Jay argues that trying to establish a definitive ROI for social media is wrong, and he suggests that you spend your energy on ensuring you are participating and engaging with your customers.

While I appreciate what he is trying to get at, I disagree with his argument. Measurement and analysis are key to any social media strategy. ROI refers to Return On Investment, and this return does not necessarily have to be measured in money.

Take, for example, the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Obama, as part of his comprehensive marketing campaign invested heavily in social media for his campaign and his return on the investment was winning the election. Another example can be found in the increase in social media around sustainability. The return on investments here can be identified as the change in people’s behavior and the rise in their level of awareness.

If achieving your goal is the ROI, then start off by understanding your objectives and setting your goals. Understanding how you will define your ROI has to be the starting point.

I teamed up with Alasdair Munn to create this checklist on how to get the most out of your social media campaigns, in short, the best bang for your buck. Every situation is different and requires a different approach. The following serves to illustrate how a typical campaign might be approached.

1. Start with a full analysis of your current position.
   1. What are you trying to sell? To whom/who cares?
   2. What marketing is working for you?
   3. How are you measuring the success?
   4. What is not working?
   5. What is your , 1, 3, 6 month, 1 year or 5-year plan?
   6. Do a SWOT analysis.
   7. How strong is your brand? How are you measuring it’s strength and weakness?
   8. Is using social media the right decision for your company?
2. Look at what your competitors are doing.
   1. What is your positioning statement?
   2. What are they doing right?
   3. What are they doing wrong?
   4. What is your USP?
   5. How can you leverage that?
   6. Where are the gaps? And/or how are you going to go about identifying the gaps?
3. Understand your audience, their learning styles and how they are/are not using social media.
4. Set goals and objectives. What do you hope to achieve from your social media campaign? Do you understand social media? It’s a good question to look at.
5. Engage an agency or person to create a social media strategy. There are few entities/individuals who can truly do this well: Your strategy needs to align to your social media goals and objectives, your organization’s 5-year plan and all other marketing initiatives. Your strategy will also need to assign roles and responsibilities as well as set budgets and action steps. Elements of your strategy might include:
   1. Understand which social media tools are best for your goals and objectives. These may take the form of social networking (Facebook and LinkedIn), sites that allow people to discover and share content (Digg, Magnolia, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Newsvine, Reddit, etc.), video clips or photos on YouTube or Flickr, branded software, images, blogs, forums, user comments, and much more.
   2. Who is responsible for executing the strategy? What resources can you afford to dedicate to your strategy?
   3. Understand which measurement and analytical tools work with those chosen social media tools. For example, Google Analytics, AideRSS, Xinu, and Feedburner are useful, helping companies leverage SEO efforts.
   4. Integrate the social media campaign into your entire organization (get buy in). Terry Starbucker has written a good blog post about the effectiveness of social media in a business context. His view concentrates on SMO (Social Media Optimization) and how, among other things, it has to be relevant to the organization and how the people within the company need to truly understand social media and how to “speak in it”.
6. Integrate your social media strategy into your CMS and/or LMS. This is not appropriate to all social media strategies and companies; however, through integrating social media tools into your CMS and your LMS you can create effective communication tools, both external and internal, that have measurement, analysis and functionality built in.
7. Start by listening and understanding the rules. Different social media sites and tools have different rules of engagement. They have their own norms, rules and protocols. Jumping straight in without understanding these, or without first gaining trust can be costly.
8. Engage your audience. Catch their attention and provide compelling content that fits your message, goals and objectives.
9. Measure
10. Participate/build relationships. Allow users to fully engage with your brand identity and spend time fostering new and established relationships to expand your user base.
11. Measure again.
12. Analyze. It is no use gathering all this information and measuring it if you are not going to let it inform and guide you.
13. Adapt strategy to reflect customer attitudes and responses.
14. Measure once more. Your new strategy and direction needs to be measured against your old strategy. Is the new strategy working? Are you achieving the results you had hoped to? Do you need to refocus?
15. Re-engage, measure, analyze, and re-focus. Continuing to engage, measure, analyze and refocus are key to any lasting social media strategy. It is a dynamic process that never sits still.

Jacob Morgan’s blog post entitled, “Why Social Media is More Measurable Than Traditional Media” is a good read for people who want a simple understanding of why you should be measuring your social media campaigns and how you can go about it.

In closing I do wish to offer a few thoughts. Setting goals and objectives, measuring against those goals and objectives, analyzing results and revisiting strategies are all important. However, do not lose sight of the following:

• ROI is a trailing indicator, not a leading indicator. ROI focuses on historical data. This helps us make sense of where we have been and allows us to make informed decisions as to its historical effectiveness. Any future direction cannot be made solely on historical data, especially when you consider the pace of change within social media and its qualitative nature.
• Do not overanalyze. With social media, over analyzing each individual part will make you lose sight of the whole. There are too many variables to consider. We do need to remember that we are dealing with people and people do not always make sense. They say one thing and do another and their emotions come into play. The Pepsi Taste Challenge leading to the introduction of New Coke, followed hastily by the reintroduction of the old Coke under the name Classic Coke, is a testament to the fact that pure data and research does not take into account loyalty, perceptions and human behavior.

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