During my workout today, I listened to a recent DFJ Entrepreneurial Though Leaders Seminar. This is a podcast that is co-sponsored by BASES (a student entrepreneurship group), Standford Technology Ventures Program, and The Department of Management Science and Engineering (Standford University). The speaker for this session was John Seely Brown.  John has a technical background, having served as a Senior Scientist at Xerox. His bio is impressive, but I was far more interested in his discussion about the ‘Collaborative Innovation and a Pull Economy‘. I was so impressed by his remarks that I download his latest book,  “The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion” (Sponsored link).   

In the space I have here, I cannot begin to discuss everything Mr. Brown discussed. His comments, contrasting the 20th century business model, to what will be required in the 21st century are insightful. In a couple of paragraphs I thought I would attempt to tie a couple of his comments back to education, and even ‘new media’.

First, an observation: The 20th century model is founded on principles taught by Alfred Chandler. Mr. Brown called it the ‘Push Economy’. This model is hierarchical, with a ‘center-out’ approach to business. The goal of business in this model is “Scalable Efficiency”. Mr. Brown noted that the infrastructure was key to creating this economy (roads, cars, trucks, ships, and airplanes .. etc). Organizational architecture were built around this infrastructure, leveraging it, generating scalable efficiency. The goals of this were (and largely still are):

- Predictability
- Hierarchy
- Control
- Organizational routines
- Minimizing variance (can you say Six Sigma).

He said, “Build a lot, use transportation mechanisms to distribute it, bah bah bah”.  What he said next ties back to my last post. He briefly contrast the 20th century education system to this model. He said:

Our K through 12 schools are built on scalable efficiency, a factory model. Basically, we can predict for you what things you’re going to need for ten to 15 years away, and we’re going to build you a stock of assets for you to learn, to acquire so that eventually, you get to use them, very much like how corporations work.

This reminded me of a chapter in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (sponsored link) by Seth Godin: “Indoctrination: How We Got Here”. The chapter starts with this quote:

We’ve been taught to be a replaceable cog in a giant machine. We’ve been taught to consume as a shortcut to hapiness. We’ve been taught not to care about our jobs or our customers. And we’ve been taught to fit in”

There has been a fundamental and long-term change that will ripple through the business world for the next few years. In the new economy, the Pull Economy, will be built around ‘digital infrastructure’ and collaborative innovation. What we call social media today is just one element of the pull economy. This change will require that we think differently about everything from intellectual property to education. Take a few minutes to watch the video and consider what he has to say. I know it made me think hard about many things. I look forward to reading Mr. Brown’s book.

Watch the video and let me know what you think.

Rick

I have always been a bit of a trekkie. One of my favorite Star Trek phrases is Captain Kirk’s, “Engage”. I prefer it to Captain Piccard’s “Make it so”. Engaging customers is on the mind of most everyone in business. One of the key differentiators between new media, especially social media,  and more traditional ‘paid media’ is that the former offers a greater ability to engage. Most brands have a real desire to engage the customer, but fail make the investment required to create more than a one way conversation.

Traditional mass media has always been a one way conversation. I love Seth Godin’s first law of mass media: “Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.” Last June, Chris Brogan blogged that, “the difference between audience and community is which direction the chairs point.”  Many organizations understand the benefits of social interaction but few used the tools available to built a community.

This is not an exhaustive list, but here are three keys to building community through social media:

Produce consistent, regular content: I have observed that many brands have jumped on the social media bandwagon, but fail to generate consistent, regular content. They may ‘drop’ a blog post or a tweet here and there, much like a bird flying over on a summer day. You never know where it will drop (they quality may be about the same as the bird dropping too). No follow-up, no discussion, and very inconsistent. Folks, if you are serious about building community, generate consistent, regular content.

Authentic content: Is your message self-serving? “We want you to buy x” or “Join us at x to see y”.  Post like these to any social media portal will not build community. Engage the audience and build trust. The audience can see through a non-authentic content. (Check out Important Steps in Building Authentic Social Media by Graeme Newell).

Relevant content: Liz Strauss wrote in November 2005 that “Content without “relevant” is less than content.” She was specifically talking about SEO techniques, but this is a profound statement. SEO is important if you want to build a community (they have to find you). Ultimately your content will engage the audience only if it is relevant to their interest and values. I frequent several blogs and blogs. By frequent, I mean daily. Why? I am part of the community and those communities are focused on content that interest me. Be relevant!

If you want your social media strategy to be successful and if you want to build an enduring community: be consistent,  be authentic and be relevant. Transform your audience into a community.

Rick

Have you been watching the Olympics? I have not watched as much as I would like, but that has not stopped me from keeping up with events. I just follow along on Twitter.

Check out some of the stats: It is 7:30 PM EST on February 18, 2010. In the last 10 minutes, there was some 900 tweets on the Olympics. Now, this was NOT during a peek time. Followers of @Olympics is just one measure of the traffic surrounding events in Vancouver. My personal favorite tool is NBC’s Olympic Pulse.  Perhaps as interesting following the athletes themselves. You may want to read their latest tweets:).

Social Media has forever changed how we learn about news. Think about any major world event – Social Media was there well before the major news outlets. It’s amazing – it is now and it is the future. The tool(s) may change, but I we are witnessing a lasting shift. 

Rick

I just read an interesting Forbes.com article on how the Symbian Foundation is using crowdsourcing to solicit product ideas from customers. The Internet, and Web 2.0 has given us some great tools for understanding customer needs. I would suggest that it has never been easier to engage customers. In the case of Symbian, they are using a system that “borrows features from Wekipedia, news aggregator digg.com, and a product from Procter & Gamble [...].”
  
I am not suggesting that traditional qualitative, quantitative and other research techniques are obsolete. The message today is that the web and social media allows companies to engage customers and learn about their needs like never before. If you really listen, you will be amazed at what customers are willing to tell you. The cool thing is that you do not need a big pot of cash to start engaging them. Even more important, you can start today.

If you look around you can find a great deal of information on how to use social media tools to have this  conversation. I am sure you have read, heard about, or visited Twitter, Facebook or some other social media site. I want to share one example.

I have been experimenting with foursquare.  Maybe ‘experimenting’ is not the right word. They have made this into a game and I am a willing participant. The game, tool or whatever you want to call it, has some interesting implications for businesses.  In describing how foursquare works for business, the company write:

foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics – our users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites.

[...]

We’d be thrilled to have your bar / cafe / coffee shop / restaurant / store as part of our foursquare specials program. This can happen in a variety of ways, but essentially comes down to rewarding customer loyalty based on the data behind foursquare usage.

For example, foursquare can tell you how many times a customer has been to your venue or the frequency of their visits. Many venues are now using this data to reward their most loyal customers with freebies or discounts.

This is cool, but only the a starting point. Just think about how your business could use a tool like this to engage customers and learn about their like and dislike. What can you improve? What do they saying about your business and about the competition? It is so easy to communicate directly to customers. Lead off by listening – engage them!   

What will you do to engage your customers? What new tools are you using? 
 
Rick

I read yet another article on the New York Times plan to charge for content. This one appeared on VentureBeat.com with a very provocative title: “Will The New York Times meter kill traffic from social media?“.  What interested me most was this comment:

The New York Times is the leading print newspaper website according to Experian Hitwise, and accounted for nearly 15% of visits to all newspaper sites for the week ending January 16, 2010. But visits have been declining — Experian Hitwise data showed a year over year market share decline of 20% compared to a category average decline of 12%.

Clearly, the NY Times is loosing market share in a category that is already challenged. The Editor & Publisher reported that the NY Times has lost it’s on-line news position to the Tribune Newspapers and Fox Digital Network (“Upset in Top 10 New Web Sites as Tribune Newspapers Leapfrog ‘N.Y. Times’“). Yes, for the NY Times this trend is disturbing, and it appears it will get worse. I don’t think this new model is going to increase the relevance of their content but it will certainly decrease accessibility and therefore is likely to further erode their market share. Advertising revenues will likely take another big hit. This, my friends, is a problem.

My thoughts .. what do you think?

Rick

OK, I am not going to blog about politics. I did find this blog post interesting: Atwitter in Mass.: Brown’s Social Media Strategy Tops Coakley’s. It looks like Scott Brown took a page right out of President Obama’s campaign play book. 

Here is the data from the article:

Facebook Posts since Jan. 1: Brown (128), Coakley (58)

Facebook Fans: Brown (70,800), Coakley (13,529)

Tweets since Jan. 1: Brown (142), Coakley (144)

Twitter Followers: Brown (9,679), Coakley (3,385)

YouTube Videos: Brown (57), Coakley (52)

YouTube Video Views: Brown (578,271), Coakley (51,173)

Again, no politics, I just find the numbers provide a lesson in how social media can shape politics.

Rick
 

Love or hate Twitter, one thing for sure, users of Twitter are innovative.  As an example, consider the ‘Retweet’, or simply the ‘RT’.  During a recent New Media Dayton Meetup I overhead someone say that they would RT someone. Of course, for those of us that use Twitter, we know what she was talking about. For many others, this sounds like a strange, new new language.

The ‘Retweet’ is a powerful tool for creating word of mouth campaigns. It is how we pass on topics of interest that are shared by friends to other friends (friends = followers on Twitter). How did it work? If you wanted to RT a tweet, you simply copy the message, add an ‘RT’ in front of the message, and then post it to your followers. It is that simple!

A few weeks ago, a new RT feature was added to Twitter.  There are a few differences in this implementation compared to what we will call the ‘old’ process.  For me, the biggest difference is that the old process allowed the user to add comments to the original tweet. I often add comments or in some cases modify the tweet so that a link or some important content is not truncated. Mashable recently conducted a poll to see if Twitter users preferred the ‘old style’ RT or the new function. They reported that 64% of users preferred the old style RT. What can we learn from Twitter’s response to the RT innovation.

I am sure there are many takeaways from this case-study. The observation that hits home for me is that the innovator should not ignore current process. This act of editing or commenting on tweets is part of the ‘process’ that adds real, or at least perceived value for the user (or, the customers). To get broad adoption of technology or innovation, you need to consider the current process. How will your new innovation change the process? Will the new innovation be viewed as intrusive? Does it prohibit some valued activity?

I am not suggesting technology or innovation is bad. I am suggesting that understanding the current process can help in launching new technology in a way that will result in higher levels of adoption. What do you think?

Rick

With all of the excitement and hype about Twitter and Facebook, what about LinkedIn? What is it good for anyway? it seems that LinkedIn is not well understood. For example, Current.tv recently ran this video (this should have a PG13 rating):

LinkedIn is so much more than what is portrayed in this video. A couple of quick thoughts:

Career Management
LinkedIn is a great tool for managing your career.  It has never been easier to locate people within organizations. Check out these stats on LinkedIn users:

Check out the number of senior and middle level managers on LinkedIn. Over 3.7 million LinkedIn users work in companies that employee between 50 and 500 people. Over 7 million users are Director level and above. (See more demographics here).  It is relatively easy to locate and connect organizations using LinkedIn.

Social Media & advertising
Check this out … if you want to use word of mouth and other social media techniques this is compelling:

Professional Brand Building
I don’t think there is a better tool for building your professsional brand. Complete your profile, recommend others (and you will receive recommendations), jump into groups and participate, and use the status update. For a few tips, see Guy Kawaski’s post on making over your profile.

The tool is only as good as you make it. If you want a return, you need to invest time and energy in your network. Try it out … it’s worth that investment.

Rick