This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 5:30 am and is filed under Advertising Factor, Attention Factors, Business Factors, Change Factors, Communications Factors, Disruptive Factors, Industry factors, Influence Factors, Information Factors, Innovation Factor, Relationship Economy, cultural factors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
11 3rd, 2009
- What Does 1,000 Post Get You?
- What’s A “Certified Social Media Specialist”?
- Enabled or Stimulated By Social Media?
- Is Social Media Strategically Relevant?
- Can You Explain Social Media?
- Again, What Is Social Media?
- An Agency For Agencies?
- The Enemy Of Social Media
- Is Social Media Relevant & Relative?
- Will Social Technology Change Business?
- Who Gives Us The Web?
- How Much Is Twitter Worth?
- Do You Like Clutter?
- Social Media Ignorance?
- What Does It Cost To Think?
- Guru’s, Experts Or Stupidity?
- Do You Copy Or Create?
- Social Media Counterfeits?
- Why Do They Want Our Data?
- New Spin On Old Ad Strategies?
- Nobel Prize Goes To Social Media
- What Is Your “Real” Network?
- Can You “Restrict” Communications?
- Does Social Media Fuel Agility?
- 5 Things You Must Ask About Social Media
- Social Media And Management
- Are You The Example?
- Who Has Social Media Directions?
- The Irony Of Social Media
- Social Media Force Fields
- The 3rd Element of Social Media: Affinity
- The Devaluation Of Social Media
- The 1st Element of Social Media: Attention
- How Do You Sell Social Media?
- All Of A Sudden It’s About Culture?
- Is Your Organization Ready?
- What Is Off Line Social Media?
- What Will Happen To Business Week?
- Is Social Media Shifting?
Social technology is being devalued by labels and sophomoric uses being applied by most of today’s users. It is also being devalued by the current pricing of “social media” products and services offered by early adopters claiming to be “social media” experts and guru’s.
Lets put things into context. Devaluation is a reduction in the value of a something with respect to its initial or potential value. In common modern usage, it specifically implies an official lowering of the economic value perceived by the market. The opposite of devaluation is called revaluation. Revaluation means a rise of a the price of services or products which is usually created by the markets perception of new value created. Revaluation is usually created by the introduction of new knowledge or innovation created by or from the previously devalued product or service.
A market that doesn’t understand the value of something or “how” to create value with something usually demands to understand the ROI from something. Trying to understand ROI from something without understanding how to create value with something is shortsighted. Sound familiar?
Social media is getting a lot of attention, maybe the wrong attention. Much of the online and off line media is positioning “social media” as another marketing channel and their usage reflects their beliefs. Everyone is talking about the ROI from social media or trying to define it. Most metrics and examples are all tied to a response from marketing and advertising messaging using social media. While applicable to those vertical uses organizations are missing the larger value that can and should be created and captured. By narrowing the markets view and use of the relevant technology the value is being limited rather than expanded. In other words devalued.
The Revaluation Of Social Media
McKinsey Consulting looks at social technology as more than social media. As the premier management consulting firm in the world they view “social technology” as a significant enhancement to collaboration and communication processes. An enhancement that changes everything a business does, not just marketing and advertising. How much can be saved from improving communications and collaboration?
In an In article titled “Using technology to improve workforce collaboration“ James Manyika, Kara Sprague and Lareina Yee write: Consider the collaborative creative work needed to win an advertising campaign or the high levels of service needed to satisfy public citizens. Or, in a similar vein, the interplay between a company and its customers or partners that results in an innovative product. Raising the quality of these interactions is largely uncharted territory. Taking a systematic view, however, helps bring some of the key issues into focus. Our research suggests that improvements depend upon getting a better fix on who actually is doing the collaborating within companies, as well as understanding the details of how that interactive work is done. Just as important is deciding how to support interactions with technology—in particular, Web 2.0 tools such as social networks, wikis, and video. There is potential for sizeable gains from even modest improvements. Our survey research shows that at least 20 percent and as much as 50 percent of collaborative activity results in wasted effort. And the sources of this waste—including poorly planned meetings, unproductive travel time, and the rising tide of redundant e-mail communications, just to name a few—are many and growing in knowledge-intense industries.
To put this in better perspective consider what happens when organizations use social media solely as a advertising and marketing channel. They are likely to initially get the markets attention and in doing so increase the cost of responding to said attention. Worse, the market takes notice then criticizes the brand or organization for terrible service, poor customer relations or “spamming” the market. Worse yet is that the organizations employee attitudes reflected in their online conversations produce a negative sentiment about the organization. These incidents are happening everywhere because organizations do not think systemically about social technology. Rather they think about marketing and advertising. A big difference.
ROI is driven by efficiency, effectiveness and innovation. Communications and collaboration creates efficiency, effectiveness and innovation. ROI is an end result of doing things right and doing the right things. Measuring the wrong things and measuring them wrong doesn’t create a return on anything. It’s time to create a revaluation of this thing being called social media.
What say you?
Highlight any portion you want: 
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Related posts:
- How Do You Sell Social Media? If you haven't first figured out what your market wants...
- Again, What Is Social Media? Before you ask about what social media is or what...
- Social Media Force Fields The reason is that the power of communications has been...
- Who Has Social Media Directions? It takes time, talent and knowledge to find the...
- Why Do You Use Social Media? We must understand why people use social media so we...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Stumble it!
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:01 am
Twitter Comment
New blog post: The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:57 am
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:59 am
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media: Measuring the wrong things and measuring them wrong doesn’t create a return on.. [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:14 am
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post]
Social-Media.alltop
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:24 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by JDeragon: New blog post: The Devaluation Of Social Media http://bit.ly/1Vg78L...
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:03 am
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:30 am
Twitter Comment
An excellent excellent post to see social media as something different RT @tacanderson The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:19 am
Twitter Comment
The revaluation of social media: [link to post] via @Armano #socialmedia #marketing
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:23 am
Twitter Comment
RT @Armano Excellent [link to post] bt there r areas SM will impact:1.customer participation 2.Collaboration 3.Business optimization
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 am
I completely agree ROI is a questionable metric to focus on alone: it is a post hoc measurement, not a future decision-making tool.
Saying that, I’m not sure a brand can completely dismiss it for the possibility that the public will shout and scream if it’s not done to a superior standard.
Unlike previous business challenges which could be solved by inserting MBAs or freshly-skilled talent, the knowledge brands require for harnessing social media requires fundamental, DNA changes within an organisation. There is, sadly, no shortcut; we learn by doing.
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:29 am
Twitter Comment
RT @Armano Excellent! [link to post] but there r 3 areas SM will impact. 1.customer participation 2.Collaboration 3.Biz optimization
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:34 am
Twitter Comment
Excellent! [link to post] but there are 3 areas SM will impact. 1. customer participation 2.Collaboration 3.Business optimization
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:36 am
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media | The Relationship Economy…… [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:49 am
Twitter Comment
RT @tacanderson The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:12 am
Twitter Comment
This is a very sagacious article on the value of social media: [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:32 am
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post] #socialmedia #news
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:33 am
Twitter Comment
[link to post]
The Devaluation Of Social Media | The Relationship Economy……
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:43 am
Jay – another very informative and spot on post!
Your point that it is time to revaluate the impact of social media on a business’ marketing strategy is very interesting, given that social media is still considered a “new technology” and many struggle to assign it quantifiable ROI.
I would be most interested to see how an executive level marketing person would value social media considering it requires a complete evolution of their practices, relationships and inevitably their comfort levels.
I would love to hear your thoughts on that topic at some point as it I think it would be very interesting to your readers.
Again, another great piece!
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
FriendFeed Comment
T… [link to post]#
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:19 pm
[...] Original post: The Devaluation Of Social Media | The Relationship Economy…… [...]
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media | The Relationship Economy…… [link to post] #fb
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
[...] The Devaluation Of Social Media | The Relationship Economy…… [...]
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post] (via @fruchter) Brands thinks they can just market on Twitter.
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by glennsnews: The Devaluation Of Social Media | The Relationship Economy…… http://bit.ly/2sYH5...
November 4th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Twitter Comment
RT @tweetmeme The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 4th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Twitter Comment
The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post] (via @JDeragon)
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 4th, 2009 at 12:33 am
Twitter Comment
RT @Liberatelloyd: The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post] (via @JDeragon)
– Posted using Chat Catcher
November 4th, 2009 at 4:15 am
The comments on this post are a good example of the devaluation of social media. Instead of a solid bunch of comments and dialogue all I see are a bunch of RT from Twitter. Poor use of this technology and the reason why social media is moving towards spam media. Juts a bunch of noise being shot out a fire hose by people who are not even volunteer firefighters. Actually, with the technologies out these days it is more like giving a 6 year old a loaded uzi.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:50 am
[...] something’s just cannot be measured by traditional processes. When we try to do this we end up devaluing social networking and social media because in many ways this is a human process, and intangible as to the value it adds in [...]
November 4th, 2009 at 11:07 am
[...] something’s just cannot be measured by traditional processes. When we try to do this we end up devaluing social networking and social media because in many ways this is a human process, and intangible as to the value it adds in [...]
November 7th, 2009 at 8:23 am
Twitter Comment
time to rethink social media to better exploit its potential? – The Devaluation Of Social Media [link to post] #socialmedia
– Posted using Chat Catcher