Series: Social Strategies «

Being vs. Using Social: Acumen

by Jay Deragon on 01/27/2010

This entry is part 31 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

An important element of individual and organizational ability to build productive market relations is the possession of social acumen. Acumen implies a keen understanding of a subject matter or knowledge set required to accomplish a goal.

The new dynamics of the social web is accelerating organizational and individual needs to gain social acumen. Social acumen reflects a keen understanding of the dynamics caused by interactive communications and relational connectivity fueled by social technologies and the subsequent impact on business as unusual.

Most organizations are using social technology today without consideration of “being social”. Subsequently their acumen reflects a lack of understanding of “social dynamics” or the knowledge set required to use social technology to accomplish a specific goal.

Go to 99% of the websites used by brands and organizations. What will you find? A clear intent on selling us something and making the process very difficult. Follow a sample of businesses and individuals on Twitter. What will you find? A clear intention to push out their message instead of listening to what the buyers are discussing and engaging with an intent to serve buyer needs.

Caring about buyers ought to be foremost in every business owners mind. Being social means you care about serving people’s intent. Using social does not require you to care rather using it for the wrong purpose demonstrates your lack of social acumen. Without demonstrating social acumen all you are doing is demonstrating your organizations inability to hear the buyers intent and your lack of being able to fulfill those intents. In this case you are only hurting the results you are chasing rather than enhancing the potential for results in the long term.

What Is Required?

The requirements for using social are simple. The requirements for being social are complex. Sometimes doing the simple things can create complex problems if you do not have the ability to understand the difference between using and being social. Doing simply things doesn’t require much thinking. Managing complex things requires lots of thinking, skills and a different kind of knowledge.

Starting and driving my car is fairly simple. Working on what makes my car run is complex and I do not have the knowledge or skills to do so. Social media is no different. Anyone can use social but few understand the real power lies with being social. Being social requires acumen of what, when, where, how and why people want to engage with you or your organization. Get it?

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Are Social Media Marketers Learning?

by Jay Deragon on 01/23/2010

This entry is part 30 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

The world of marketing is learning that old models, old mindsets and the intents of marketing are changing. As the world adopts “social stuff” marketing is taking on a new model and the intent of the buyers is changing.

EMarketer reports in an article titled :What Working For Social Media marketers: Unsurprisingly, buying ads—even targeted ones—was the least effective type of social media marketing overall.

Like those on Facebook, marketers using Twitter were also most interested in increasing traffic. Driving traffic by linking to marketing Webpages was the most common activity on the microblogging site, followed by driving sales by linking to promotional pages. But again, the most effective tactics were different.

B2C marketers had the most success with monitoring Twitter for PR problems (done by one-half of all respondents) and contacting users who posted negative comments about their brand (done by only 22.4% of total respondents). B2B companies also succeeded with brand monitoring, as well as with using Twitter invites for in-person events (the least common tactic of all).

Being vs. using social are two totally separate intents. Being social is a reflection of how well the organization serves people’s intent (internally and externally). Using social media has become a primary function of marketing departments and the intent is to pull us into a transaction.

Serving buyer intents, whether that means a sale or not, is what drives brand loyalty, market sentiment and buyers that brag about your service. Is it better to have the marketplace bragging (consider Zappos) about your intentions or complaining about them?

Marketing professionals continue to try and use social media as yet another marketing channel. In essence it is but “how” you market to your audience is more about serving them than messaging them. Buyers come ready to find value, meaningful engagement and convenience. Marketing may get their attention but when they come to you the subsequent experience loses their attention at the click of a mouse. Buyers have always been attracted to organizations who pay more than lip servie to customer service. Customer service begins with the initial engagement and continues on throughout the experience. If you haven’t learned that yet well either you are blind or simply ignoring the buyer.

Ask not what the audience can do for you rather what will you do for the audience.

Think about it.

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Travel: An Abysmal “Social” Experience!

by Jay Deragon on 01/21/2010

This entry is part 16 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

When it comes to air travel today, no one enjoys it.

Recently I had to be in New York City. My meeting was scheduled for 10:00 am EST. I live in Nashville TN and none of the commercial airlines had flights that would get me to New York that morning early enough for my meeting. Subsequently I was forced to fly in the night before.

I had to leave two hours early from my home to get to the airport then park my car and get through security in time to catch my flight. The flight to New York took five hours because of delays and connections. Upon arriving I had to spend $75 on a cab and 45 minutes to get to my hotel which cost $210 for one nights stay. The next day I spent $25 on a simply breakfast and $40 to get from the hotel to my meeting place in New York.

After my meeting I had to take yet another cab (for $75) to get back to the airport two hours early in order to get through security. Then the flight was delayed. The trip home took another five hours because of delays and connections. Then I had to pay $20 for parking my car and I got home late that night, tired and worn out. My productivity level the following day was affected and it took me a full day to get back into my normal healthy routine.

The airline ticket was $589, parking, hotel and meals totaled close to $500. Out of pocket cost were over $1,000. However, the higher cost was my time. From start to end I spent a total of 18 useless hours (not including sleep time the night before) traveling to a two hour meeting. The cost of my time and the inconvenient experiences far exceeded the out of pocket cost of travel.

The cost to the U.S. public for a broken air travel system is enormous.

over 140 million hours of loss passenger time per year. Over $4 Billion in cost for businesses.
U.S. tourism industry has lost 200,000 jobs and $98 billion in revenue because of the poor quality of our national transportation service.
loss in U.S. travel time productivity is only the tip of the iceberg. Billions are lost every on our personal well being and the stress caused by the existing “system” of air travel.

Is There A Better Way?

I am not sure there is a better way for the commercial airline industry. However, having once owned my own jet I know that private aviation is much more productive and a much better experience. But private aviation is too expensive…..unless the entire private aviation industry changed it’s system. Social technology will enable private aviation to become social for the masses if the industry could see it.

Watch the video below and give this alternative some thought the next time you think about using a commercial airlines. This alternative would have enabled me to go to New York city and back within the same day and total travel time would have been roughly five hours instead of 18 and at less cost!

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Is “Social” Changing Politics?

by Jay Deragon on 01/20/2010

This entry is part 4 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

Yesterday’s Senate race in Massachusetts disrupted politics as usual. Scott Brown’s win over Democrat Martha Coakley in a state dominated by Democrats for 50 years has political pundits scratching their heads wondering “how could this happen?”.

Today’s “talking heads” will dominate the new channels with analysis of the race and opinions on why Scott Brown was able to win the senate seat when just three weeks ago he was behind Martha Coakley by double digits and no one expected him to be able to actually win.

The pundits will talk about how Martha Coakley ran a poor race and how she failed to rally the base to get out the vote. Others will say that Scott Brown’s message tapped an angry and concerned voter base which desired “change you can believe in”.

But What Was the Biggest Factor?

David Merrman Scott writes and excellent article yesterday in the Huffington Post titled : Coakley v Brown: The Social Media Divide May Decide Election. In this article David points out the difference between the candidates in terms of how the used or didn’t use social media to propagate their message. David writes:

So it’s fascinating to watch Martha Coakley’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts basically ignore new media in favor of the old playbooks that elected Ted Kennedy to the seat.

Of course there is much more to the race: Politics and platforms and personal connections are important. But didn’t Obama for America teach us that the Web has the power to push a candidate over the top? Obama also showed the importance of young people (whose communications of choice is digital).

Let’s look at a few numbers. As I compare the morning before election day, @MarthaCoakley has 3,520 Twitter followers compared to @ScottBrownMA with 10,214 followers. Coakley counts 14,487 Facebook fans Brown’s 76,700 fans. Advantage Brown by more than three to one. to

The Coakley campaign underestimated the importance of social media and the new rules of marketing and PR.

You would think that Democrats would have taken notes from the playbook of Barack Obama (see Barack 2.0, a compelte study of Barack Obama’s use of social media by David Bullock)and how we used social media to beat John McCann. John McCain relied on what worked to elect George W. Bush and he lost mainly because of social media. Martha Coakley relied on the playbook that elected Ted Kennedy and she lost because of social media too.

Social media will continue to influence politics because of its reach and richness in propagating a message to the marketplace of listeners. Scott Brown didn’t win because of social media but because he used social media to get his message to voters who weren’t tuned into news media rather they were tuned into the real voice of the voter. All Scott Brown did was seed the conversations and let the conversations flow to a larger audience.

Political intentions are the means to attract voter support. In the old days intentions were expressed in sound bites propagated by ads and news stories. Today the political intentions are now expressed 24/7 by the people and for the people. The voice of the audience made the difference in the Massachusetts race .

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Got Social Sense-Ability?

by Jay Deragon on 01/19/2010

This entry is part 19 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

The word sense-ability implies an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something of vital importance. In business the most vitally important issue is people: buyers, employees and suppliers. Without them there is no business.

People have a voice used to express wants, desires, needs and intentions. This has been so since the beginning of time. Yet the majority of us either ignore or forget how important it is to listen to the “voice of people” we aim to serve.

Corporations are people containers. Leaders and managers execute strategies and tactics with the aim of serving a business purpose. However history has demonstrated the fallacy of management methods used within “corporate containers” aimed at executing the intent of leaders and managers who do not listen to the intent of the people they aim to serve. Not listening and executing on “people’s” intent means your corporate container is out of alignment with the marketplace.

Common Sense Would Say “Listen and Learn”

A CMO White Paper Titled Creating Market-Sensing Corporate Cultures says: Organization-wide Attention to Customers, Competitors and Market Conditions is Critical to Being an Ever-Alert, Nimble Enterprise That Better Anticipates, Addresses and Acts on Both Business Opportunity and Threat. A recent CMO Council study on Giving Customer Voice More Volume found that:

Two-thirds of more than 400 companies surveyed do not have Voice of Customer program in place.
Only 10.7 percent of companies have deployed real-time systems to collect, analyzeand distribute customer feedback.
While 75.3 percent say they receive customer feedback via e-mail, only 23.1 percent say they track and measure the volume and nature of these messages.
Customer voice has gone online, but only 16 percent track word of mouth on the Internet.

Today’s Chief Marketing Officer is a change agent and more than 50 percent, according to our Define & Align the CMO research, are hired to fix broken marketing organizations and lead transformation across all functional areas. This includes measurably impacting and influencing company culture, customer experience, competitive differentiation, brand recognition, sales effectiveness and business performance. To drive this transformation toward greater market sensing, customer intimacy and competitive alertness, the CMO and the CEO have to engage the C-suite in a collaborative, systematized and sustained process to create a market responsive mindset and “Cultural Sense-Ability” across the extended organization.

Forgive me if I sound harsh but the above research results and subsequent statements of intents strongly suggest that most corporations do not have or use common sense and aren’t thinking sensibly. How long have markets known that the most vitally important issue is people: buyers, employees and suppliers. Common sense would indicate that satisfaction improves productivity, brand awareness, market sentiment and revenue. Yet the majority of businesses clearly do not think the “people’s voice” is strategically, relevant or relative to the success of business.

Social-sensibility means fixing all the dysfunctional thinking, wasteful efforts and tearing down “corporate containers”. Tearing down the “container” means let the people out and the market in. Doing so makes sense, that is if you have any common sense. Isn’t it sensible to see this?

If you need a counselor to help you see this and change this, call someone who can help or simply ask the people.

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Social Value: Strategic vs. Tactical

by Jay Deragon on 01/18/2010

This entry is part 26 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

Use of social media is like a game of chess. Some people understand the how to play the game and some simply don’t.

The game of chess is based on a strategy concerned with the evaluation of positions and setting up goals and long-term tactics for future play. Social media is similar in that you must evaluate what position you seek (reputation) and what tactics will you use to gain that position.

When evaluating the game of chess a player must take into account the value of the pieces on the board and the possible moves the opponent will make after any move made. When evaluating the use of social media one must consider the intent of the market and that of your competition.

The most basic way to evaluate one’s position in the game of chess is to count the total value of pieces on both sides. The thinking used for this purpose are based on experience. These basic values are modified by other factors such as the position of the piece , coordination between pieces, and the type of position.

Social Media Positioning Factors

Like the game of chess the factors of success for using social media are similar and include:

Position of Your Place in the Market: Whether individually or organizationally we have positioned ourselves on the web both intentionally and unintentionally. Our position is reflected by how well we use technology and whether the use of it properly to reflect our intent. If you or your product and service cannot be found easily then you have no position. If the marketplace finds you will the experience reflect a “social” intent? If the experience does not reflect a “social intent” then you have not gained a position over competitors who are creating “social intents” from the users on-line experience. Unless your position (on-line and off-line) is strategically designed to reflect a “social intent” then your “position and place in the marketplace” is diminished.
Coordination of Places & Pieces: While most of the emphasis about social media is being placed on marketing functions unless the entire organizational experience is designed with a “social intent” marketing alone cannot fulfill the “social experience” desired by the marketplace. Your organizations social intent is transparent to the marketplace of conversations. Marketing your intent is one thing while delivering on that intent is a much bigger thing. Unless your organization’s intent is coordinated and all the pieces are in sync you will not be able to deliver on the intent of your message.
Type of Position: Social value is relevant and relative to intent and scope. Type of position is reflective of collective resources that represent specialized or unique value. Your organizations “type of position” in the marketplace is relevant and relative to the value created for consumption by the marketplace. Zappo’s was known not for shoes rather for outstanding service. Zappo’s success was fueled by the value of service and not the value of shoes. Thus their type of position was relevant and relative to service. Your “type of position” is reflected by the core value you aim to deliver to the marketplace. High or low value isn’t the factor rather it is how well you deliver on the value.

Social value comes from both strategic and tactical considerations. The driving factor is one of intent and given the nature of social technology your intent is now transparent. Use of technology to drive your social value starts with a sound strategy and is reflected by tactical delivery of intents experienced by the marketplace of consumption.

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Which Media Is More Relevant?

by Jay Deragon on 01/16/2010

This entry is part 32 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

The majority of businesses have yet to awaken to the power of social technology. Many do not think it is relevant to their business. At the same time most continue to use old marketing and advertising techniques for their business. Relevancy is created when you can get people to think in terms they understand. Many do not understand social media.

What Is Relevant To You?

Relevance is a term used to describe how pertinent, connected, or applicable something is to a given matter. A thing is relevant if it serves as a means to a given purpose. Something (A) is relevant to a task (T) if it increases the likelihood of accomplishing the goal (G), which is implied by T.

Given the above definition one must ask if use of social media is pertinent, connected, or applicable to accomplishing business goals and objectives? Before answering that questions one must ask what are your business goals and objectives? Most businesses would answer:

Increase revenue
Reduce expenses
Reach the market with our value proposition
Expand the market of buyers
Demonstrate our market differential over competitors

So the answers to accomplishing 1-5 above is another question, How? “How” reflects methods, knowledge, communications and people. Meeting or exceeding 1-5 above for any business requires new methods and knowledge which can be effectively communicated to employees, suppliers, customers and the markets which have an affinity to your business. Thus anything that enables a business to learn new methods and new knowledge that enhances communications with people and the market ought to be considered relevant.

How Important Is It?

In an article titled Ford’s social-media campaign gives next Ford Fiesta a huge head start Farley, a former Toyota executive, said he learned a lot about the effectiveness of social media and grass-roots marketing through his involvement with the launch of Toyota’s Scion brand several years ago.

The marketing world has changed dramatically both for Ford and for all major corporations in the past year, Farley said.

“Online has become mass media,” Farley said. “A Yahoo or Google page takeover actually gets more eyeballs than a network TV commercial now. That hasn’t happened before.”

Now, Farley said the importance of communicating through online social media platforms as well as through public relations, has become far more important due to the evolution of technology.

But We Are Not Ford

Most business would read this story and discount it because they don’t have the resources that Ford does or they may say “we don’t sell cars”. Read on.

I have a small business client who has a unique card marketing technology. They have zero budgets for advertising and marketing and have relied on physical “word of mouth” to sell. I did a series of post titled “Social Media Card” in which I described their technology. The post “pulled in” several interested parties. One was a marketing agency in California for several national associations. The associations offer affinity rewards and discount to their membership which happens to be millions of people.

To make a long story short, my post pulled the marketing agency in to inquiry about the technology. I turned the inquiry over to my client. My client formed a partnership with the agency. The agency sold the association on the card platform because it was innovative and enabled the association to allow its members to “download affinity discounts, rewards and coupons” directly to their members credit card. The platform also allowed direct communications of relevant offerings to members. No paper and no traditional advertising needed.

The association will be able to cut their traditional advertising cost in half. The association members will get merchant brand offerings at discounts simply by the click of a mouse from the associations web site. The marketing agency will make money. My client will make money. How much? Millions upon millions of dollars will flow and every party in the transaction will win. Social media will be built into the campaigns for the brand merchants, the association and for its members use so they can share the value they receive with “friends”.

A series of only three post created the opportunity, brought relations together, created knowledge of an innovative offering, created value for an associations members, value for the agency and for my client. How is that for an ROI?

My client was a small business which just got much larger because we used social media. How relevant is that?

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Are We in the Drivers Seat?

by Jay Deragon on 01/15/2010

This entry is part 28 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

I am a terrible passenger. If people don’t drive like I do well the ride becomes irritating. I like driving and have my own style of maneuvering safely through traffic. Driving takes us from point A to B and the experience teaches us the terrain, the routes and the landscape.

Our social content is a lot like driving. Creating content gives us experience in thinking about topics that are in context with out interest. Content enables us to share out thoughts with others and together we create our own terrain, new routes of thought, the routine of thinking and future landscapes. However most of all this “social stuff” does not allow us to drive rather we are passengers of the latest “social technology” that acts as the intermediary and “drives our content“.

Doc Searls writes: “The title of this post plays off the 1971 poem/song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, by Gil Scott-Heron. The passage that stands out for me is this one:

The revolution will not be right back after a message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.

The lyrics were not addressed to me, a white guy from the suburbs, but they spoke to me all the same. Especially that last line.

We still seem to think that progress on the Net is the work of “brands” creating and disrupting and doing other cool stuff. Those may help, but what matters most is what each of us does better than anybody or anything else. The term “content” insults the nature of that work. And of its sources.

The revolution that matters — the one that will not be intermediated — is the one that puts each of us in the driver’s seat, rather than in the back of the bus. Or on a bus at all.”

Doc Thinks Differently

Content reflects how we think about stuff. What we think creates an attraction to those that like what we think or think like we do. I like reading Doc’s content because it makes me think differently. Doc thinks differently that the market thinks. The market wants us to think their way and wants us to become their intermediaries of their thoughts, their technology and their message. In other words the market wants us all to be the passengers.

The time will come when the market will have to ride with us. That will be fun, disruptive and revolutionary. We will arrive when we are enabled to publish our intent to drive a purchase and the market will have to decide whether they want to ride with us.

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Being vs. Using Social: Do You Care?

by Jay Deragon on 01/14/2010

This entry is part 25 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

It dawned on me that if you really care about fulfilling market intentions then your media must reflect a caring attitude. A caring attitude wins the hearts and minds of people when the intent is matched with a real desire to serve. Using social media to push out your proposition to the masses reflects that you don’t care at all.

What Do You Care About?

Sellers are consumed with selling. Their media reflects their obsession with selling. The buyers media reflects an intention to find solutions and they care about how much care sellers put into helping them find solutions. Most businesses care about results but they don’t care how they get them. The mindset of today’s seller is to capture the buyers attention using old and new media. Their model is based on getting the markets attention so they can convert 2-3% into a sale. This model is reflected by the sellers behavior. 97% of the ads on Facebook never get “clicked through” because buyers don’t care. Sellers ignore what buyers want and continue to follow models that satisfy what they care about….short term results.

Brands are driven by results. All businesses are driven by results. However the methods of getting a result determines the quality and quantity of results. Using social media for quality and quantity are two different things. You can buy followers and show how popular you are by having the most followers but what is the quality of those followers.

How Do We Know You Care?

The word “care” reflects an attitude which is concerned about fulfilling others needs. To care about someone or something means we make provisions to fulfill their needs. It means to have an inclination, liking, fondness, or affection for someone’s intent. When we look at the thinking and subsequent behavior of today’s marketplace of sellers few are concerned about our intent rather their behavior screams of attitudes aimed at fulfilling their intent.

Do you really need examples? Go to 99% of the websites used by brands and organizations. What will you find? A clear intent on selling us something and making the process very difficult. Follow a sample of businesses and individuals on Twitter. What will you find? A clear intention to push out their message instead of listening to what the buyers are discussing and engaging with an intent to serve buyer needs.

Do you really care? Guess what? Everyone, your employees, suppliers and customers know. If you don’t buyers will reject your message. If you do you can use social media to demonstrate just how much you care. But you can’t demonstrate unless you are indeed being social. Get it?

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Being vs. Using Social: Intention Conflicts

by Jay Deragon on 01/13/2010

This entry is part 24 of 58 in the series Social Strategies

While brands are using social the majority of them do not understand that being social has to match up with using it. The different between the two is transparent to the marketplace of “buyers” and they have little time to waste when attempting to interact with you.

Using social to market your stuff while not being social is considered anti-social and not in alignment with the intent of the marketplace.

What Is Considered Anti-Social?

There is a host of behaviors reflected by what, where, when, why and how you either take or give people value in the way you enable or constrain an engagement. While many are now touting engagement marketing the fact is that the very word “marketing” doesn’t imply “social” to most people whom you try to engage buyers. The reality is that people are actually trying to engage with you and their intentions are not relevant or relative to what you call “marketing”. Marketing, and its related practices, is and never has been considered a relational process for buyers rather a mass messaging process for suppliers.

Buyers Are Trying to Engage You

Marketers trying to engage buyers is a reversal of the intent of the buyer. When buyers want something their intent is to first find it, assess its value, determine a price point and to see what others have experienced in the relationship with the seller. For the seller to truly engage the buyer they must focus on:

Enabling the buyer to find you easily without traps, tricks and delays (the first engagement)
Providing relevant and relative information that is in alignment with the buyers intent. (attention)
Provide “value” in terms of the experience, information and in a relational manner. (attraction)
Being transparent in terms of other buyer experiences (affinity)
Demonstrate intent to serve the interest and intents of the audience (relational)
Enable buyers to act according to their intents, whether a purchase, a referral or simply a desire to engage for informational purposes (actions)

The internet has enabled buyers to find things fairly easily. However when they find you most of you create barriers to allowing buyers to engage. Your web site has pop ups, forced registration, the content is not in context to buyer intents and their first experience constraints them from engaging with you for whatever purposes. Still motivated to engage buyers may simply decide to call you only to experience:

Difficulty in finding out how to actually contact you.
When they are able to contact you they end up being put on hold
Then they are passed from one department to another
When finally engaged with someone that person cannot fulfill the buyers original intent
Motivated to share this experience with you they are forced to send emails to info@company.com which reflects no real person receiving the buyers communications.

Buyers see and experience your use of “social media” to propagate your message, your deal of the day or their email was spammed with your message (all considered anti-social). Even with these anti-social engagement methods a few may respond when your message matches their intents at any given time. Then they attempt to engage with you and experience 1-5 above.

You might have gotten buyer attention by using social media but their desire to engage was met by your inability to “be social”. My father used to always say “walking the talk is different that talking the talk.”

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Is “Social” Changing Politics?

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