Series: The How Series «

The Social Overton Window

by Jay Deragon on 06/15/2010

This entry is part 16 of 16 in the series The How Series

Social media is causing markets to react to the open discourse about everything, anything, everyone and anyone. It is the open discourse and reactions that create “windows” of public sentiment towards everything.

The Overton window is a concept in political theory, named after its originator, Joseph P. Overton. It describes a “window” in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on a particular issue.

At any given moment the “window” includes a range of discourse acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, with “acceptable” defined as something people can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public support.

When the window moves or expands, it means that ideas previously not considered publicly acceptable have become so, and possibly that ideas previously considered acceptable are no longer.

The Social Overton Window

All things social are just beginning to gain mass market acceptance. However the initial acceptance is still at the early stages of understanding of the related dynamics. Ideas and innovative approaches to the use of social technology fuel the intrigue and pull more of the public into the dialog. The degrees of acceptance of the public’s use of social technology can be described in six behaviors as:

Unthinkable: Some firms do crazy things with social technology that do not fit into the “norm” of public sentiment. Consider some of the things that the young adults have done on MySpace that are “unthinkable” i.e sexually explicit videos and trash talk. Think of some of the stupid things brands have tried using social technology only to create a negative response from the public. On the other end of the spectrum of Unthinkable are those individuals and organizations that do innovative things that no one else even considered, i.e. Pepsi Refresh. The Unthinkable applies to both the good and bad things people and organizations end up doing. Consider Facebook’s attitude towards privacy.
Radical: Social media are creating radical changes in publishing, broadcasting and traditional forms and models of media. Radical uses of social media are marked by a considerable departure from the usual or traditional tending or disposed to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions. Many industries and individual organizations from all business segments are just beginning to feel the impact of just how radical social media can be when they discover what their customers are saying about them
Acceptable: The initial uses of social media have been aimed at marketing and PR. Traditional practices are being applied to the radical nature of social media. What marketing and PR professionals are learning is that what was once an acceptable practice is no longer acceptable. The consumer now defines what is acceptable and is now “connected” to others with a collective voice.
Sensible: Social media initiatives designed around having, containing, or indicative of good sense or reason. The sentiments of “sensible” are influenced by the human network in response to institutional messages and marketing tactics applied to use of social technologies. While consumers understand the old school marketing methods most are not responsive to these same tactics applied to social media. Subsequently brands that do not understand the relational dynamics of all things social are considered nonsensical. In other words the message has no importance or value to the consumer.
Popular: Messages of or relating to the general public’s interest. If your message doesn’t fit with the market you are trying to reach then you are not likely going to create a “popular” appeal. Consider the unpopular BP response to the oil spill. Then consider the response generated from a non BP person who started @BPGlobalPR on Twitter and ripped the mask off of BP’s PR Efforts. What was once a “popular” methods for managing public relations, marketing and advertising is now becoming unpopular and new methods are being introduced by the populous.
Standard Practice: When more and more people and organizations do the unthinkable and radical things the more the general public considers such things as acceptable, sensible and popular then ultimately they become standard practice throughout the entire marketplace.

The Social Overton Window is a means of identifying which ideas define that range of acceptance people’s ideas and media fall into. Media is used to persuade or educate the marketplace so that the window of behavior either “moves” or expands to encompass them. Opponents of changes caused by media, policies and politics seek to convince people that these should be considered unacceptable.

The social sentiment can be moved (the window) by deliberately promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous “outer fringe” ideas. The idea is that priming the public with fringe ideas intended to be and remain unacceptable, will make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison. Over time what was once unthinkable becomes standard practices and the cycle continues which fuels even more social changes, good, bad and indifferent.

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A Guide To Learning Google Wave

by Jay Deragon on 11/11/2009

This entry is part 14 of 16 in the series The How Series

Chris Voss shows you the new Complete Guide To Google Wave. Here is his link to learn more.
Link to Complete Guide To Google Wave.

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Is Your Culture Transparent?

by Jay Deragon on 11/11/2009

This entry is part 13 of 16 in the series The How Series

The “voice” of an organization is indicative of its culture. Organizational culture is an idea in the field of Organizational studies and management which describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of an organization. It is defined as “the specific collection of values and norms shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.”^[1]

Notice the definition emphasizes that culture controls the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization. Interaction between people is largely enabled by communications. Communications reflected by attitudes, actions and the tone of conversations. Now the attitudes, actions and the tone of conversations has become “open source” fueled by the power of social media. Open source communications show an organizations culture for the world to see and experience.

What Does The World See?

The market of conversations seek value created from an exchange of communications. Values are reflected by relational attributes and the context of content that creates an affinity to a market. The affinity creates an open source culture driven by trust fueled by shared experiences. The culture of social media is described as the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of people connecting with like-minded “crowds” who offer free value exchanges. There is no one person or organization trying to control the way they interact with each other.

Social media affords the crowds to interact without the oversight or control of any one organization. Perplexed by this phenomena traditional organizations jump into social media not realizing that their own culture will become transparent and the market of conversations will expose the character of their culture. If the organizations culture isn’t “open” then it cannot say trust and value to the market of conversations. Subsequently the market will not engage because the culture of social media rejects any attempt to control or manipulate the conversations.

Magnifying The Need For Change

Organizational cultural change has evolved for decades. Studies after studies prove the value of an “open vs. closed” culture and evidence abounds from those organizations who have made the shift. Awareness of an organizations cultural attributes are communications. People share their experiences with other people. People are the power of any organization and unless empowered they will feel powerless.

Empowered people represent enormous power. Unified for a cause, a mission or a common goal people can and will do uncommon things. Uncommon things are about achievement of the impossible, unexpected and not planned but realized. On the fringes of uncommon things is innovation. Innovations comes from creating ideas that solve common problems and then creates new solutions that serve a market.

Social media affords the means for people to unite and exchange ideas, knowledge and creates solutions for the “crowds”. For any business to succeed they will need to learn and understand why this happens, how it happens and who makes it happen. Doing so is the solution to create innovation which markets will consume and create new capital. However unless business leaders can first change their own culture they cannot tap into the “open source” culture of social media. Attempting to do so without fixing their own culture is a direct path to failure. Get it?

What say you?

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Do You Know Why?

by Jay Deragon on 10/30/2009

This entry is part 1 of 16 in the series The How Series

The question of why about anything indicates an interest in understanding why. Young children ask a lot of “why” questions because they are curious about everything. Adults then ask their children “why did you do that?” and when others ask us why we want to know “why do you ask?”. In organizations success is influenced by a common understanding between people as to “why” things are done the way they are and why do we continue to do things that simply don’t work or matter to anyone.

Learning the answers to “why” about everything is a life long journey of experience and study. Unless people know the answers to why they cannot apply the right knowledge to the right circumstance and subsequently responses and actions may not yield the right result. Ever wonder why you don’t get the right answers? Just maybe it is because you are not asking the right questions.

The Right Questions About Social Media

In an earlier post we discussed “5 Things You Must Ask About Social Media” in which we addressed some fundamental issues to consider before using social media. Additionally we’ve created a “How” series which begins to address what,when,where,how, who and why questions which we should never stop asking. The relevant questions are proposed collectively in a white paper titled “Social Media Directions” available here.

As more and more individuals and organization continue to use social media effective results will be realized by those who know “how” to ask the right questions and subsequently never stop seeking the answers. What is today’s answer to market needs can change at the click of a mouse as consumers find more relevant and relative answers from their “friends” on a daily basis compared the ones you provided yesterday. The science of social technology accelerates consumption of answers to questions the market has relevant to anything and anyone. Your answers can become irrelevant unless you are monitoring the relative questions that consumers are asking. Worse yet is that if you are not engaged in “the market of conversations” then you are not likely to even “know” what,where, when, who, how and why the market is conversing.

Back To “Do You Know Why?”

Not knowing why social media is so powerful means you won’t know how to use it effectively. Not knowing “how” means you are likely to use it out of alignment with “what” your market wants. If you are communicating out of alignment with your market then your market isn’t likely to know “who” you are “when” you communicate. If you don’t know “where” your market is then you are not likely going to reach them. If social media isn’t working for you then you must ask the question “why“. The answer to this question may not have anything to do with social media rather it has everything to do with “how” well your people relate to the organization, your processes, products and technology.

Fixing your organizations “connectivity” to your internal and external market requires you to ask the same questions but in a different context than social media. The answers to those questions will lead to why social media doesn’t work and why it does. Having the right social media directions is always a good thing. Get it?

What say you?

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Are Your Directions Wrong?

by Jay Deragon on 10/27/2009

This entry is part 12 of 16 in the series The How Series

Social media doesn’t come with directions. Instead it is a never ending process of learning what, where, when, who, how and why you individually and your entire organization should use it purposely.

Social media doesn’t come with a manual and it isn’t something you should learn by simply copying others. Social media is simply a new communications system and instead of thinking about social media people should think about how communications has changed as a result of social media.

What Has Changed?

In the past communications was a one way marketing system aimed at getting people’s attention. The old system “pushed” out messages and offers and the consumer had one decision, respond or not. Social media now makes communications a two way exchange and people have been enabled to connect and collaborate with others who have similar experiences or opinions about anything, everything, anyone and everyone.

Consumer feedback is now instantaneous and rather than one by one it is crowds of people who desire to be heard. The subject matters threaded throughout all these interconnected conversations is all relevant and relative to any business, institution, celebrity, government, product or service and people’s daily experiences with anything and everything. The market intelligence embedded in these conversations is strategically significant to those who know how to listen and take action accordingly.

What Direction Should Your Organization Follow?

The direction of any business is set by leadership. Most leaders engage in strategic thinking before finalizing an organizations plan or direction. Strategic thinking encompasses assessing relevant issues that impact an organizations ability to deliver value propositions to specific markets better than the competition. Once a strategy is concluded then it all about execution of related initiatives and activities. Execution involves people, processes, technology and last but not least communications. Without effective communications the cost of execution rises which then creates the need for new “directions”. Changing directions adds complexity. Complexity increases cost. When communications fail an organizations cannot progress towards its strategic aim efficiently.

Social Media Can Cause A Change In Your Directions

If you don’t have good market intelligence than any effort to propagate your value proposition to specific markets may be a wasted effort. Market intelligence is about knowing what value your markets seeks. Where your market is, who is your market, when your market engages, how do they engage and why. Knowing what, where,who,when, how and why is relevant and relative to monitoring market sentiment and subsequently focusing your message around the markets of conversations. However, if your organizational design, culture, knowledge and communications is not in alignment with the markets conversation then the market is not likely to respond. A market that doesn’t respond is a market that is likely responding to someone or something else.

Even if you have the best market intelligence you cannot effectively respond without having an organizations that:

Cares to respond
Knows how to respond
Believes in your response
Is capable of responding
Enabled to deliver actions that satisfy your market

Without enabling your organization,(people, processes and technology), to properly and effectively respond you are doomed to fail because 1-5 above is what all markets want from the supplier.

Social media magnifies an organizations capabilities. The market of conversations are quick to point out companies that fail to meet the criteria of 1-5 above. Being able to meet this criteria is a function of organizational design, culture, management and communications. Social media cannot fix these issues rather all it does in magnify how well they perform. Not being able to perform to the expectations of the market has never been as transparent as it is today. To maximize the power of social media companies must first assess organizational design, culture, management and communications or face the consequences of ignoring that which has become transparent to the market of conversations. The directions needed to fix these issues is different than marketing and PR. Get it?

What say you?

What Are Social Media Directions?

View more presentations from Jay Deragon.

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Why Do You Use Social Media?

by Jay Deragon on 10/15/2009

This entry is part 11 of 16 in the series The How Series

My six year old ask a lot of questions. Most questions start with “Why?”. The reason children ask why a lot is because their minds are geared to learn why things are the way they are and why people do the things they do.

A lesson we can all learn from the minds of children is that asking why is a good question to ask about anything and eveything. However the older we get, the more educated and the higher position we have in a company we assume we know the “why’s” about a lot of things and in reality we really don’t know why but we pretend we do.

When I look at how brands and people use social media it becomes obvious that they never have asked them selves why before they started using social media. How can I tell this? Because what they use it for and how they use it isn’t connected to why people use it.

We must understand why people use social media so we can better define why we, as individuals and organization, should be using it.

Why Do We Communicate?

In an earlier post titled “Again, What Is Social Media?” we said that fundamentally social media is a system of communications. The process of social media involves:

Use Of Technology
Identifying and providing valuable conversations
Distribution of conversations to appropriate and relevant markets
Methods and messages that create pull an engagement
Building and sustaining an audience (relationships) of listeners
Continually feeding the audience with conversational currency; value they can use

Now if you agree with our definition of what social media is and the process of use then the answer to “why” is relevant to thinking about why and what you communicate to the market of conversations. However to determine why you or your organization should use social media it is best to understand why others do first.

So Why Do Others Use Social Media?

I am a consummate student of social media. I call myself a student because my primary motivation for using social media is to learn how “the market” is using it and what methods create what results and why.

The word study means : a state of contemplation : application of the mental faculties to the acquisition of knowledge : a careful examination or analysis of a phenomenon, development, or question. Notice the last word in the definition, question. If you haven’t noticed 99% of my post start out with a question and the reason is I am seeking to know why. I learn why based on what others do and what the system is meant or enable us to do.

People and organizations are producing varied results from use of social media. As you can imagine there are numerous methods being used and because most view social media as just another marketing channel they are getting the same results as other marketing methods, terrible.

When you study why, what and how the crowd of sincere “people”, not institutions, are using social media you’ll find different methods and different results. What I’ve noticed about this group is that the primary reason why they use social media is centric to learning or in other words the acquisition of knowledge. Whether it is learning about new tools and the application of use or simply answering questions about anything, everything and anyone people find utility in learning from others.

The results from learning are much different than marketing. Learning pulls people which enables and enhances relationships. Marketing pushes people and is not centric to relationship building.

Learning has always been and will always be a powerful force that draws people. Whether an individual or organization the answer to why leads to another question. What can you communicate that enables people to learn something of value they can use and share with others how they used it? In order to find out why you must listen to the markets needs and wants. Your response to the wants and needs may not have anything to do with your own product or service but it has everything to do with building market relations. The results of doing so will surprise you. Get it?

What say you?

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Why Don’t You Know Why?

by Jay Deragon on 10/14/2009

This entry is part 10 of 16 in the series The How Series

When managers are confronted with a new initiative from on high rarely do they ask why. Instead management executes because those above them gave instructions and often the instructions rarely come with why.

Even when the powers to be think they know why the primary motivation is to produce more results. However leaders fail to take the time to think about why and the people below just execute on an idea and yet they don’t know why.

In a mad rush to produce better results business leaders “push” their organizations to do things they think will produce better results. The irony is that “pushing” for results doesn’t produce results, thinking about and knowing why and how is what produces results.

The problem with thinking is it takes time. Time to acquire the knowledge necessary to “think” and time to formulate a plan to insure everyone knows “how” to do something well. Managing for results requires you to understand why and what produces results. Any shortcut to the process only ends up producing the wrong result.

You Think You Know What You Don’t Know

Every major news outlet, brand and even government institutions are using some form of social media. A day doesn’t go by where “follow me on twitter” or “join me on Facebook” is pushed out by everyone and anyone. Like herds of cattle people react to the proposition and everyone pushes the message without asking why. What everyone ends up with is more distractions, more confusion and an overload of irrelevant media. So why does everyone want everyone to follow them? What do they think they’ll get from following or followers? The answer to this question ought to lead one back to the question of Why?

Everyone seems to think that just because they’re using social media they will eventually get something. What is the something that everyone expects to get? Wisdom of the ages suggest you’ll get what you give so to get something of value you ought to think about what value you can give. Giving the market value is no longer relative to pushing a message that is centric to your product, your news or your service. Giving the market value is centric to sharing information that is relevant and relative to your markets needs.

The market has lots of needs. News fills certain needs but it has limited value. Advertisements fill the advertisers need for market awareness. Market awareness may not be what interest the audience or satisfies their need.

Why Is Everyone Jumping Into Social Media?

Like the trend of the day most people and organization jump in because others are jumping in. No one wants to be left out of something that attracts lots of people. Many times a market is drawn simply because others are drawn without understanding why. When markets are formed around something that attracts lots of people the creation of new value comes from asking and understanding why.

To find out why means you have to learn new knowledge to understand why and how to leverage why to your advantage. Otherwise you are simply following the market without knowing why. Know why is the first question you need to answer. Get it?

What say you?

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Why Use Social Media?

by Jay Deragon on 10/04/2009

This entry is part 9 of 16 in the series The How Series

Besides answering the “What and How” of social media many business leaders are still at the fundamental stage of asking Why?. This very questions begs another question. Have you been paying attention to the marketplace?

OK, so they say yes then they say it seems everywhere I turn I am hearing about social media but I still have the need to understand why are businesses using it and why is it creating so much attention. The answer to why is related to “how and what” a business does to engage in market relations with the aim of creating an opportunity for a transaction. Why do businesses exist? Primarily to create value, attract a market who wants the value and engage the market in transaction. However, the “how” of doing this has changed from “push marketing” to “pull marketing” via relevant and relative conversations that attract the market you seek to you.

Why And What Others Will Tell & Sell You

There are a lot of people tagging themselves as social media experts, gurus and “certified specialist”. Most people saying so are individuals and organizations who offer “basic skill sets and copy methodologies” which in the end will get you lots of the wrong connections, lots of the wrong followers as well as a bad reputation in the marketplace of conversations.

If you think about the real reason “why” you really need to engage in social media it boils down to forming the right relations and doing so the right way. Social media isn’t effective if you use it to simply “collect” people so you have large numbers. Collecting connections and followers is a numbers game and it is very easy to do so. However just collecting people doesn’t mean your creating valuable relations that are relative and relevant to your business. Just “collecting people” means you’re likely to end up with a lot of spam mail filling up you social networking accounts or spamming your blog post. Do you outsource your conversations? Unlikely and highly questionable so why would you hire a social media expert to do that for you?

The Real Reasons Why To Use Social Media

There are dozens of reason why but we’ll keep it to the top ten.These are:

You will find whomever you want to do business with somewhere online
You will find whatever knowledge you need about any market or any person online
You can reach your market by simply engaging in the right conversations with the right people. This is more effective than advertising.
If your business can’t be found, isn’t engaging with the market or worse yet ignoring the market you are not likely to be creating transactional opportunities while your competition does.
Communications is a system to leverage your organizations ability to communicate with your market. Social media is the new communications system.
Social media saves time and money if you use it right for the right things
If you learn “how” to use social media correctly then you’ll understand “what” your market is looking for and “where” they are looking. You’d want them to look for you.
“When” your customers and prospects are engaging about you, your industry or your products and services you need to be there listening. Otherwise how will you gain the necessary market intelligence, be enabled to respond or even be aware of problems or needs. If you are not present when and where the conversations are occurring you are basically out of touch with your market.
Communications is about reach. Communicating is about relational dynamics between people. Social media provides the means to effectively communicate with your market. However communicating in human rather than institutional terms.
If you are not communicating (listening first, initiating second) then how in the world do you expect to create relationship with people and businesses that may want the value you offer?

When people need or want something in the old days they’d look up information in the yellow pages. Today people turn to search engines to find what they want or need. Each day on average Google gets used 235 million times.

When people are looking to purchase something they want and need more and more they are going on line to find out what other people think or say about a product, service or brand. The relevancy that influences people’s buying behavior is other people’s conversation, including yours. That is if they can find your conversation and if it provides value people are looking for.

To sum up: For many, the Web isn’t a place to look for information, it’s the only place.

Now do you know why?

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How Do You Learn How?

by Jay Deragon on 10/03/2009

This entry is part 8 of 16 in the series The How Series

While everyone seems to be rushing into using social media for whatever purpose the constant question people ask is “How” to create something with it. Subsequently there are thousands of people “pushing” out advertising messages claiming they “know how”.

Since the market is still very immature individuals and organizations jump into the process following, and in most cases, copying “how” others are using it. Here is the problem with copying. It doesn’t produce anymore than others have already produced.

What Are Others Producing?

I’ve done a simple analysis of “how” the bulk of the market is using social media. This study is based on an assessment of 8,000 followers on Twitter, over 10,000 connections on Linkedin and Facebook and a sampling of brands who have engaged in this process we call “social media”. Here are my findings:

94% are using social media to “push out” old messages trying to catch someone in a transaction
95% of the brands are simply using social media to “push” out their offerings, sales and marketing messages with little if any human interaction.
Of over 8,000 followers on Twitter 96% of the communications have no relevancy to anything relative that would “pull” a market to them for whatever purpose.
Of 50 groups I am a member of on Linkedin 95% of the group discussions do not represent new knowledge, new insights on new methods and more specifically “how” to create innovation and differential using social technology.
100% of the offerings I found proclaiming “how” to use social media effectively were in context to use of the technology not “how” to engage and build an audience that “sticks” and leads to “convertising”.

So with this data I asked myself “how” do people and institutions learn “how” to create new value, conversational currency and ultimately new transactions that motivate others to share why the new value created is better.

Where Can We Find “How”?

To properly answer this question we have to ask another question. The question is “what person or organization has captured “how” to do anything better and where did they find the knowledge to do so?” Now take a minute and think about “how” you would answer this question.

The first part of the question “what person or organization has captured “how” to do anything better than what the current market produced?” The answer leads us to recall industry leaders who have created new markets with innovative products and services. How did they do this? With the knowledge that lies between their ears and the input from people who believed in their vision of what could be done but wasn’t currently being done and if done would satisfy a market yet in demand.

The second part of the question “where did they find the knowledge to do so?” The answer is that these people didn’t find the knowledge to do so rather they created it. What? Yes, they created new knowledge which lead to new innovation in products and services that filled a market demand that their application of the new knowledge created.

Back To The Question Of “How?”

“How” to use anything effectively comes from learning what is currently working and why then applying creativity and knowledge aimed at how to make things work better than the current methods. Learning what is currently working is readily available for those willing to read and listen to those using the current methods for whatever purpose. Applying creativity and knowledge to make things work better than the current methods cannot be copied or found because it doesn’t exist until somebody creates it and uses it to produce better results than what the current market produces.

So how do we learn “how”? We can create it or copy it. Which produces the results you want?

What say you?

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Where Do You Find “How”?

by Jay Deragon on 10/02/2009

This entry is part 7 of 16 in the series The How Series

When you want to find something most people use search. The results are always relevant to what you typed in for words that reflect what you are looking for. When you type in “how to use social media” you get 239,000,000 references. This many references is indicative of how many papers, people, videos and post have been written on the subject of “how”. The problem is that most of this content says the same thing.

How is always in demand especially when things are in a constant state of change. Change disrupts how old things are done and forces us to learn how things are done now. The problem with social media is that now things change constantly at the click of a mouse. So the question remains “Where do you find how?”

When you look up the word how in the dictionary it provides the following definitions:

In what manner or way; by what means:
In what state or condition:
To what extent, amount, or degree:
For what reason or purpose; why:
With what meaning:
By what name:
By what measure; in what units:

Now these are words to define the word “how” but the relevant definition is to know “how” to apply knowledge to something so in doing so it creates more value than the previous state or condition.

As previously discussed social media is a communications system which enables that which you communicate to attract an audience based on the value of what you communicate. The system has massive reach and efficiency over the old system if you know “how” to use it effectively. The system has real time statistics that can be used to verify whether your communications and what you were communicating was effective.

The problem with this new system is that there are no manuals to reference the needed knowledge to understand it in its entirety rather the knowledge rest in the minds of those using it regularly and creating the most value.

Finding those who use it and finding those who use it effectively can be somewhat of a challenge. The first challenge is finding a reference point to that which you seek and finding the right answer or right person can be a daunting task.

Many are able to show you how the technology works. Few are able to provide you with the knowledge of why and how people use the technology for specific business objectives. The irony is you can find “how” by using the technology to find the knowledge and the people behind it. However, most of what you’ll find is people copying methods of others which in turn will produce the same results as others. Consider that 98% of those using it aren’t producing relative and relevant results because they don’t know how. Get it?

What say you