Posts Tagged ‘Chris Brogan’

When Social Media Rewards the Mindless and the Elite

Posted on: November 17th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 59 Comments

Writer’s Note (11/20): Trackbacks on this post have been turned off.  Links/SEO were not my objective.

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Elite social media performer chart from Brian Solis’s Three Cs post.

Let’s be honest. Online media is just a collective mass of live and static expressions representing society as a whole. It should not be surprising to any of us that social media has evolved to reward immediate mindlessness and elitism. In that sense, it is just like our popular culture.

How else can you explain the rises of Ashton Kutcher and Kim Kardashian as top Twitter accounts? Or within the communications sector, the widespread dissemination of “unique” best practices that will get you the largest, most elite position in the social graph possible?

This represents a huge problem for us — excuse me, those of us who want to affect more deep, meaningful outcomes with our online interactions. When Bill Gates — a global luminary of immense stature uses Twitter to disseminate ideas on change — is outfollowed 3-1 by B-rate actors and porn stars, our society’s views are clear. And those views lack depth and thought.

Sex Pistols and New York Dolls Manager Malcolm McClaren stated this very well in his Handheld Learning Keynote last year when he discussed the public education systems’ chief challenges. McClaren’s primary thesis: Pop culture rewards stupidity and immediate desires instead of intelligent or experienced thought. McLaren’s views are spot on (though I do feel that people are not stupid, just mindless and without long-sighted purpose). McClaren calls this desire a demand for instant success. This “karaoke world” flies in the face of real authenticity, the meaningful depth of life that some of us are trying to work within.

Even our corporate and organizational communications are geared towards trying to set up elite structures to propagate this structure. Consider our “thought leaders” online that clearly emulate this ethos.

The above chart from Brian Solis was used in his extremely popular (and painfully long tome) three Cs post on “Consumption, Curation, Creation.” Says Brian in reference to the chart, “Businesses must join the elite and integrate the creation of compelling content into the social marketing mix. Doing so gives consumers reason to share, expanding the role of curator within the 3C’s of Content and earning authority and influence in the process.”

Similarly, top marketing blogger Chris Brogan tweeted a recommendation to read this Harvard Business Review blog post: “How to Become a Thought Leader in Six Steps.” Unfortunately, no where in the article does it teach you to think, or about developing something valuable worth sharing with others. While some of the steps have good promotion advice, the overall exploitative instant success approach to the post is objectionable (see Doug Haslam’s outstanding post).

Thoughts on Thoughtlessness

Smart Has the Brains
A Diesel storefront ad in New York City

Should Brian and Chris be chastised for their individual statements, or their general blogging directions, which generally support this quick road to success ethos? Clearly, it’s what people want. That’s why both bloggers are elite “A-List” marketing bloggers. And they are no different than the other formulaic, drum-beating, top-tier marketing bloggers.

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For me, I find the A-List to be a condition of general society’s values. While I understand that this is inevitable, it’s not for me. I prefer the Bill Gates form of notoriety. Substantive, earned relationships and real leadership matter more. I prefer to achieve and reward others with thought leadership because my/their acts are truly worthy of respect, and thus, are remarkable. This is opposed to demanding accolades.

Some A Listers follow formulas, sharing and content mechanisms to achieve their best practices. The Karaoke Show is on all the time. And they are rewarded for it with popularity and, in some cases, financially. Maybe this is exactly what they need. Maybe this makes them happy.

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So to each their own. For me, in business I prefer developing core communities of followers, people that truly care about the organization’s business or cause, and feel a part of that organization’s extended enterprise. Zoetica clients are getting direct service from experienced communications professionals, and these clients are achieving acclamations for their work (as opposed to us taking credit for it). As communicators, isn’t this the right path… Achieving/doing something other than creating vapid fame?

Professionally as an individual, when I speak it’s because people want to hear what I have to say. When people comment here, generally it’s because they have something to say, rather than an accolade to deliver. When I fail — and yes, I do fail — I can live with and even better learn from it rather than worry about the Karaoke Show image hit.

I prefer the education, the experience and the thoughtful approach — the longer road to online and real-life success. As McClaren suggested, I prefer to use online technology as a tool and to achieve things, and I don’t use it as a replacement for experience and learning.

Yes, it’s less sexy, it’s a harder journey, and you get less back slaps. Having had a taste of the karaoke lights in the past, I can tell you it’s immensely more rewarding.

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The Long Tail of Media Grows

Posted on: July 8th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 7 Comments

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When I wrote Now Is Gone, Long Tail theory was prevalent throughout social media conversations. Applied, WIRED Executive Editor Chris Anderson’s economic theory did a great job of visualizing the ascent of new media forms in context with old traditional media. Since that time, social networks and mobile media postings have arisen to assert their place within the world of media.

Just to recap what Long Tail theory that with a large population of customers the selection and buying pattern results in a power law distribution curve (Pareto distribution). A market with a high freedom of choice will create a certain degree of inequality by favoring the upper 20% of the items (“hits” or “head”) against the other 80% (“non-hits” or “long tail”).

Head of the Tail

Let’s go back to the power curve for media now that the dust has settled with the ascendancy of some new media forms. The above chart plots the effectiveness or the weight of various media tactics in the current 2010 media environment.

Red hits have the most impact (top 20%), while the long tail (yellow, 80% of media) still makes up the majority of the media marketplace. This chart defines the marketplace as word of mouth power and readership.

Like my original chart three years ago, this is subjective and various earned media forms have disparate degrees of weight. General classification is the best we can do without the correct measurement tools using a real world full on case-study with all types of earned media opportunities. Further, this assumes PR owns social media within a company. As we know, social media is often divided amongst the larger marketing department.

As you can see at the head of the tail we have the following media forms:

National broadcast – ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX

Major newspapers – New York Times, USA Today, etc.

Top magazines – BusinessWeek, Fortune, WIRED

Major social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, etc.

Top cable channels – CNN, ESPN, etc.

Top 100 blogs – Huffington Post, Techcrunch, Treehugger, etc. Generally speaking, blog content can vary from print to video.

The Turning Point and the Tail

At the turning point in the tail, roughly the 20 percent mark, you have several other forms of traditional media, which reflects the fall of some media, and the rise of new online and mobile media.

Major trade journals – Obviously, the powerhouse in any industry still holds sway, but the secondary journals have suffered quite a bit

Secondary social networks – For every FourSquare, there’s a Gowalla, not as popular, these secondary networks still drive tons of traffic

Regional newspapers: You don’t hear about the Denver Post much nationally. Still very powerful in the Rock Mountain region.

Secondary cable & TV: A&E, TBS, VH-1, etc.

National radio: ESPNRadio, FOX, etc.

Leading vertical blogs: And the winner here, no question. In PR for example, Brian Solis (who wrote Engage, and the intro to Now Is Gone), will get as many or more reads as a Secondary PR journal.

Major “influencer” profiles: Finally on some of the social networks, you have highly “influential” profiles which either through mass followers or strong engagement can set of tidal wives of action via their profile

After that, you have the long tail, the vast majority of content. From the old world, I think you can list the following: Local TV, local radio, local newspapers, secondary journals, corporate web sites, email newsletters, and press releases. From the newer social media world, you can list: Social network profiles, secondary blogs, videos, photos, maps, and mobile updates & check ins.

The Taxonomy Problem

The issue with this chart is the taxonomy, which seeks to isolate individual media forms and tools and their weight. In reality — given today’s fractured media environment — one hit in any of these areas can trigger successive hits in others. When a word of mouth campaign has actual substance it usually cascades. Smart communicators understand this. That’s why integrated outreach — not just social media or traditional PR & advertising — matters so much.

In Chapter Four of Now Is Gone, we talk about this “ping pong match” between traditional and new media outlets. From the draft material in June of 2007:

One great way to promote your new media initiative remains traditional media, who often use well-respected blogs as sources or even the subject of stories… [Social media attention] drives information into the spotlight forcing traditional media to pay attention – or look like they’ve missed the news, and most importantly the conversation. Blogs [can be] a more effective way of reaching and inspiring traditional media to react than most PR professionals and wire services combined.

Ping pong matches demonstrate that weighting one tool by its actual total community and eyeball impact fails. As Seth Godin said in Meatball Sundae, “It doesn’t matter if the socially generated earned media only gets one percent of the hoped for attention if it’s the right one percent.”

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The History of Influencer Theory on the Social Web

Posted on: July 6th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 6 Comments

A Packed Room

This weekend’s F@st Company The Influence Project gaff sparked a great discussion about influence. It’s a fascinating conversation because influence means so much to all of us online. Successful online word of mouth or grassroots marketing usually requires community influencers embracing and spreading the message.

The discussion about what influence really is has been ongoing since the social web first began. Eight years ago, Malcolm Gladwell’s the Tipping Point (2002), served as a great starting place to discuss influencers. We talked about Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen.

Yahoo’s Duncan Watts had a well-discussed counterpoint to Gladwell in F@st Company (woops) a couple of years ago dismissing “The Law of the Few”

…in the large majority of cases, the cascade began with an average Joe (although in cases where an Influential touched off the trend, it spread much further). To stack the deck in favor of Influentials, Watts changed the simulation, making them 10 times more connected… But the rank-and-file citizen was still far more likely to start a contagion.

We’ve seen other critical books come out discussing the influencer, and in particular their online role:

There are those who swear influencers can be limited to a much smaller group, Dunbar’s number, roughly 150 people (the concept was first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar). Dunbar’s theory acknowledges a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.

So who’s right? Where’s influence, the uber-connected one percenter, trust agent, free agent? Or the person who lights the spark within his/her community of 150? Well, both are. Many A-List influencers (and even traditional journalists) won’t notice an idea until lesser, yet influential peers write about it. This “Magic Middle” tier of influencers — as David Sifry dubbed them in 2006 — often break stories, which trickle up until a “Connector” discovers the story.

At the same time, what starts as an ember turns into a raging inferno once the major influencers starts magnifying a larger story. The Groundswell as Charlene Li called it (2008) begins in earnest.

My personal experience is that many times you have to tickle an idea or story up the grapevine into the major A-listers, who are often late to embrace a story. However, once they do write something up there is great potential for word of mouth to occur via their trusting communities, either through traditional media or further social media conversations.

You really don’t know what’s going to go “viral,” but you do know that you need to talk to the few and the passionate — your influencers, often leaders in the community. A social media groundswell takes time as opposed to a flash flood of media hits. For organizational social media, this means building credible relationships with contacts that have the right people in their network, not necessarily the most people. And then if their community believes it, well, things can happen.

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