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The Insight Of Why

insight [ˈɪnˌsaɪt]

n

1. the ability to perceive clearly or deeply

There's a lot of talk about insight in the social media sphere these days. Much of this talk is centered around tools that propose to deliver those insights. Radian6 for example recently launched their "Insights" product, which is an incredibly impressive tool for segmenting and layering demographic information about the social data you've collected via their platform {Full disclosure, Radian6 is a client}. And if we go by the definition above, it certainly allows you to perceive more clearly and deeply so the name is apropos.

Why?

However, much like my discussions on influencer marketing and its related tools like Klout that attempt to measure influence, a tool can only do so much. Lazy marketers and researchers desperately desire to buy off the shelf that which cannot be bought. These tools (well, some of them anyway) do a great job of uncovering the "WHAT" and quantifying it. What measurable things happened on x platform today and by whom? No matter how good the tool however, it cannot deliver the critical measurement so important to business success...and that's understanding the answer to "WHY". "Why did this person interact, post, converse, make a choice, etc.?" And that's just the explicitly discoverable measures. There are also the important questions like "why did people *not* engage?"...try having a tool measure that sometime. Demographics are great, but in the world of social Psychographics play as big if not a larger role (or if you subscribe to Sociographics then that's closer to the mark).

Asking The Right Questions

For some reason we have no problem spending $100k on a piece of software that produces a nice shiny report, but we balk at spending an additional sum on actual people...those that can make that shiny report *truly* make sense. Make no mistake, I love my tools as much or more than the next guy. I simply view them differently. To me they are the things that remove as much of the laborious, expensive, time consuming things as possible and filter them so that I can then *start* the real process of making sense of it. These tools help lead me to the most pertinent questions, they don't answer the questions for me.

I see bogus 'research' all the time that reaches the mainstream. "100% of people would not pay for Twitter". Really? What if it cost a dollar? How about one hundred dollars? What if I took it away from you tomorrow unless you paid something? Or "When is the best time to tweet?" Don't get me started on this one.

My point here is that if you simply take data alone, and try to parse it in different ways all you really get is 'filtered data'. Useful? Sure. Interesting? You bet. Insightful and/or Meaningful? That remains to be seen and is arrived at only by human investigation *and* the context of the objective.

A Scenario

To put it into a more real life context let's look at the scenario of "A person shopping for a stereo" and dig through the information in progressively more complex ways.

The average basic demographic breakdown would be useful for knowing something like "This person is 20-30 yrs old, unmarried, lives in blue collar region". I could surmise from that a likelihood of "Lower income, but more of it is expendable than the avg. in the region, with a higher priority on having a good stereo". Useful? Of course... for direct marketing...which doesn't work so great in social, and it's going to also have a relatively high 'out of bounds' rate. It's a good starting point though.
Now layer in some logical social filtering like only looking for people in that demographic who mention some combination of "stereo, radio, where to buy, anyone know" etc. More useful? Absolutely, this gives us an engagement path with prospects in social (or depending upon need could also be R&D, Competitive Analysis, Product Development, Customer Service, and so on). It's also roughly the extent of what you can derive from tools today even though it will still require humans to confirm and act upon the information.
Now. What if I went through that data digging deeper layer by layer through the various "Why" questions and then answering them. Mind you, that might mean picking up the phone, going to a store, emailing a survey, reissuing a new set of filtering criteria to something like Radian6...whatever it takes based upon the potential value of the answer. What if I came back to you and said "It turns out that your ideal audience actually makes its stereo purchases as a *secondary* decision while they are furnishing their homes". That's true insight. It changes the game completely. Who you look for online and the keyword filters you use to find them, who you partner with in your supply chain (exclusives with furniture stores), your marketing efforts, the value-added content you create, etc. The only thing that can provide that is biomechanical energy expended over a period of time (aka hard work)
There's a further step that goes into discovering motivations and behavioral analysis but frankly it's just too broad a topic for a blog post.

Critical Thinking Required

So the next time you pick up a report, do yourself a favor and see if a *why* is being attempted for each statement. If not, ask it yourself. If the response you get is a blank stare or 'there's no way to know that!' then you need to find someone else. If it's because you're not willing to pay for someone else, ask yourself what the value of knowing those answers might be.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

Image © Hans Hillewaert

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What You Need, When You Need It - Contextual Relevance In Social Influence

We no longer surf the web, we shape the web.

Contextual Relevance. The alignment of what you need when you need it.

It's nothing new. Targeted banner ads and recommendation engines have been trying to get more and more granular about figuring out the topics you're interested in for years. And now with mobile smartphones and geolocation being common, contextual relevance has taken on a whole new level of meaning. Want to know what restaurants are open of the type you like within walking distance of where you are right now? Done. That's contextual relevance.

In the world of leveraging Social Media Influence however most of the marketing efforts today do things exactly backwards. Typically that means finding the most appropriate 'mass influencer' with the most followers/friends and having them praise your product or service in some way.

Singular Definition Of Influencers

There are exceptions to every rule, I've run those types of shotgun campaigns before very successfully. But in most cases they are better suited to advertising objectives like awareness, not marketing objectives with a call to action. The problem we have is in the definition of an "influencer". Or rather, in our singular definition of what constitutes an influencer in social media. I have no issue with the idea that a rock star, a book author, a funny person, or someone who simply pumps out regurgitated information all day are 'influencers'. What I do have a problem with is our incessant focus on them. There are few products and services, and few matching mass influencers that can be put together to achieve the equivalent of putting you on Oprah's book club.

Why do we do this? Have you ever seen the actual number of responses when these folks request an action out of their multitude of followers. I have. It can be disheartening to say the least (which is most of the time). Or sometimes, rarely, magic happens. But chasing the storm hoping for lightning to strike you is rarely the best use of your money.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

I know why we do it. It's easy. It seems like a shortcut. It's easy to measure potential reach and become enamored with those numbers. They are easy to find. Easy to segment to some broad topic that isn't time sensitive. It's easy to treat it like an old school campaign and not worry about the long haul. Those mass influencers stand out like sore thumbs against the backdrop that is the 'normal' user. Want to know who they are? Go to Klout, BlogDash, or any other number of other services. Done. Now you can go take a wad of cash, some free products, or just a good smile and begging methodology, whatever works for you. Regardless, it's quick, and it's easy...it just doesn't work very well.

The reality is that what works, with a high percentage likelihood, is really hard to do. Why? Because success, particularly in social media, is derived from contextual relevance. But in a relationship driven, real-time stream like Twitter or Facebook, that changes moment to moment. Like the example I gave in my last post, the influence that a plumber has when your sink is clogged is profound, but on the days when it's not clogged? Not so much. So trying to segment in advance down to that level of need is impossible, or at least not cost effective. But due to that 'relationship' angle in social media it's also difficult to just pop into someone's stream and say "Hey! I heard you need a plumber" without any prior relationship or third party testimonial.

No Substitutes

So what's that mean? It partially means that in all businesses there is no true substitute for the hard work of delivering a great product/service and then being directly involved in your community...online or off. Big surprise right? Influence is about trust. You depend on leveraging the trust your customers have built up and advocating on your behalf. I don't know about you, but most of my customers don't have a million followers. But what I *can* do is figure out who my most likely customer base is (you should already know this anyway) and then use a lot of listening, a lot of parsing, and a little sideways intelligence to filter down those people to a manageable group and develop relationships with them. Genuine, true relationships. Reacting to someones 'point of need' (help, I need xxxxx) will garner you a very small percentage of the success that others reacting on your behalf will (you should go talk to xxxx, he's a good guy/company). Besides, directly reacting yourself doesn't scale very well.

I Apologize In Advance

So, who are your *real* influencers? When we're talking marketing objectives they are those people with their measly little 400 followers for the most part. Joe and Jane public. Those are the people you should be spending your time building relationships with, not Lady Gaga. I prefer to call these 'Advocate Programs' not influencer programs, but it's really one and the same. Doing it this way takes time (sorry). Doing it this way is hard (sorry). Doing it this way requires thinking ahead of the point of need (sorry). Doing it this way works.

It's just a good sized piece of Word of Mouth Marketing combined with a dash of Relationship Marketing and a smidgen of listening tools (don't forget to season properly). Ok, maybe that's not the simplest concept in the world, but unlike Influence Marketing in social media there are a ton of great books and articles out there on those other topics and they are completely relevant. You could do worse than picking up Brains on Fire as a starting point (just don't tell Spike Jones I said that, his head is already big enough).

You Need Both Sides Of The Coin To Spend It

I was recently having a brief conversation with Chris Brogan which led to a larger one with Amber Naslund in regards to how this industry is divided amongst the perceived 'Fluffy Cheerleaders of Social Media' who only talk about relationships and engagement, and the 'Stick In The Mud ROI Contingent' who only talk about how something doesn't exist if you haven't measured it. The reality is that to maximize your return you have to be, and do, both. It's a long tail activity that requires a lot of effort, both to do and to measure (CRM anyone?). Get used to it.

Long story short, if it's easy, you're probably doing it wrong.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

*Photo Credit: Automania

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Engagement, Influence, and Communal Experiences In Social Media

Humans seek out communal experiences. It's hardwired into us. All those people with laptops you see at the coffeeshop? They could just as easily be working from home. We go to movie theaters and share the experience with a hundred other people, and never need to speak a word. We crave these shared experiences, they provide a sense of belonging, a sense of greater purpose. Churches, fraternities, town halls, tweetups, the list goes on.

You cannot measure the value that each person receives from these communal experiences, only the tenuous correlation to the impact on your bottom line when you are providing that experience better than others. Ray Oldenburg, Ph.D., says

“What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably — a ‘place on the corner,’ real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile.”

He was not talking about Social Media but rather how the creation of shared public spaces can facilitate those desires.

The Virtual Sidewalk

I would argue that these same traits are what makes Social Media so attractive to so many. Social Media is our 'virtual sidewalk' where we serendipitously pass by neighbors within the community. Some professional, some personal. While it's true that there will always be persons in the community whose general influence is greater than others, each walk along that sidewalk gains us access to individuals whose import varies upon the context with which we experience them.

If your sink is clogged and a plumber walks past, his relative importance has skyrocketed. Combine that with the influence of the people who walk past and vouch for that plumbers expertise and you have the makings of community value. Trust, reliance, shared values, diversity of belief, etc. are all in play.

Won't You Be My Neighbor

Now back to marketing, brands, and social media. Brands should never forget that while they may not be explicitly engaged in a dialog with an individual, they are *always* engaged with the medium. The brands that understand that they are a neighbor in this global community, that their level of trust is built on a long series of small contacts both direct and indirect, and most importantly that understanding contextual relevance is paramount, will have a leg up on their competition. Social media is not a shortcut, it is simply another means to establish your trust so that when the consumers proverbial 'point of need' arrives you can be that plumber that the neighbors recommend.

Humanize Your Business

Don't treat social media as a direct marketing or advertising tool, treat it as a medium that allows you to humanize your business (large or small) and *earn* your place at the neighborhood picnic. Gary Vaynerchuk would say we are returning to the 'small town rules' of business. I can't say as I disagree.

Influence is earned, or borrowed from your advocates. Engagement happens in public and must be appropriate to the context at that moment. Values and a statement of greater purpose must be demonstrated in actions and not on mission statements. The community is a global giant with the behavior patterns of a local neighborhood.

Keep your lawn mowed, keep a cup of sugar handy for the neighbor who runs out, and whatever you do don't act like a door to door salesman in your own neighborhood.

Matt Ridings - @Techguerilla

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The Wizard Behind The Social Media Curtain {Series}

We focus on the impact social media is having on marketing, customer service, and PR. We talk about the revolutionary shift in how its enabling peer to peer relationships between organizations and their customers. And while all true, there has quietly been a convergence taking place at the periphery of our vision. A bogeyman that companies are already grappling with but can't quite bring into focus.

Social Media As Catalyst

The reason for this ephemeral enemy is that we are looking in the wrong places for answers. Social Media instigates the challenge to the organizations yet it does not contain the solution. Social Media is the catalyst, a tipping point bringing together the perfect storm of culture shift, organizational design, and communication model changes that has been brewing for years but never had enough incentive to fully gain traction. It is the tail wagging the proverbial dog.

As social media maturity in organizations increases it begins to become clear that they must have a holistic, top-down approach. People require new skills; Communication infrastructures can't cope; Organizational design and dynamics must be improved; Agencies are attacking various elements of "social media" from their unique disciplines perspective, but sometimes at odds with the other corporate silos and their respective agencies. Social media in itself does not provide answers for how to react to these shifts.

It's A Business Revolution

Yes, this is a revolution, but it's a business revolution not a social media revolution. Social media has led us down the yellow brick road and opened the curtain to expose the weaknesses in our business structures. It has helped us frame the proper questions, but now it's back in the hands of the wizard to find the answers. We are now challenged with how to make our businesses flex and adapt to this new age much like the Wizard of Oz when he was exposed and forced to think of new ways to get Dorothy home .

A Combustible Mix

Who are these new wizards? How should the challenges and opportunities be characterized and grouped so that they can best be dealt with? What disciplines and types of firms should we be looking towards to enlighten our corporate strategies?

Culture development is the fuel, organizational design is the oxygen, and social media is the spark. It's time for combustion.

I sincerely hope you'll tag along for the ride as I address each of these areas in a series of upcoming posts.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

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Top 10 Social Learnings Of 2010

Looking back over my writings in 2010 here are a few of the things that stood out to me. Note that these are not focused on a particular practice (marketing for example) but rather as a view towards social business in general with a leaning towards large enterprises. I actually hate "Top x" lists where 'how-to' information is provided, but these are generic enough that I'll succumb.

I may attempt to either put a large single blog post together with some explanation to provide clarity for each item, or a post per item. That may take place as guest posts elsewhere if there is interest, but I'll leave a pointer from here if so. Let me know your own thoughts in the comments.

Social Learnings Of 2010.

Transparency Of Intent = Authenticity
The Big Bang Of Social adoption will necessarily segment into The Big Contraction of micro groups
Monitoring and Collection tools must evolve basic insight capabilities to realize their true value
Context is critical to evolution of social thought
The bottom-up grassroots of social adoption must evolve to top-down strategic implementation
Leveraging social concepts for internal collaboration breeds value equal to external efforts
Advocacy is the only way to truly scale social media customer service and most effective way to market
Culture shift, and its associated change management efforts are paramount
The less sexy technologies facilitating cross-integration and connectivity become primary in social tool evolution (API, Middleware)
Education in concepts, training in tools, and staffing in expertise becomes critically important to successful business adoption

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

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Fluffy Words Are Bad, Mmmkay? (Or Are They?) | Brass Tack Thinking

Today’s post is a guest post from our friend and tack-minded cohort Matt Ridings, Founder of MSR Consulting, and a thought leader on integrating social media into the realm of Relationship Marketing. He blogs over at Techguerilla, and you can find him on Twitter at @techguerilla

Fluffervoidance

I have an aversion to “fluff”. I don’t mean that jar of creamy marshmallow awesomeness that sometimes sits in your pantry, I mean those words that get thrown around that sound great but rarely contain much actionable value.

Social Media gets far more than its fair share of this type of language, and that’s to be expected, after all a big part of social media is about relationship building. Where relationships are concerned words like “significance”, “harmony”, “trust”, “being real” are par for the course. But when I write them (and I do) a little shiver goes down my spine and I can feel the bile rise in my throat. My body reacts as if I’m a lifelong vegan who has decided to shove these words made of cow parts down my gullet.

Are these words really ‘bad’ however? Do they really only contain feel-good rainbows formed from the glitter ashes of old hippies? I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the issue isn’t the words, or even the meaning of the words, but rather how they are applied to an objective.

Businesses want control.

First off, realize that this isn’t a bad thing. The only way to predict and plan for something is if you maintain some control over the variables involved. And say what we will, but the consumer wants them to have that control.

Consumers want standardized experiences, they want to know that they can walk into a Starbucks in one city and get the same coffee, in the same cup, with the same familiar layout and product names. That only happens with a lot of carefully controlled variables. So when we start saying things like “all your employees should be in social media and represent your brand” what they hear is “dude, that drooling dork Jerry from IT could say some embarrassing stuff and there’s nothing you can do about it”.

And when we make the big statement “you’re not in control, your customers are”, well Mr. CEO needs a new change of underwear. That doesn’t make these statements more or less true, but they are snippets of a much broader conceptual discussion that are being provided without context. If you turn them into black and white statements they don’t hold up. “Should you put *everyone* in your company on social media in an *official* capacity? No”. “Is your customer in control of everything in your company? No.”

So why do we bring out all of these fluffy words that elicit the same visceral response in executives that they do in me? A company controls its own destiny. It either responds and shapes itself to a market demand, or it doesn’t. It just so happens that the market demand this time is about customers wanting to be made to *feel* in control, and to accomplish that requires some cultural change in companies that necessarily uses some ‘fluffy’ terms.

Methods are not Objectives

The social media world needs to learn that methods are not objectives. We’re still capitalists here. ...

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Evolution Of Social Consultant

Things bouncing around in my head today.

I'll try and evolve this post over time as I get my head around what I'm trying to say. It was originally inspired by a discussion I had with Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) over drinks the other night. My comment was how people who speak/write/consult in the social space can seem to be saying some of the very same things at each end of the evolutionary spectrum I've displayed above. Engagement, relationships, time, etc. exist as priorities at each end. Yet the context in which they *mean* them can be very different, and that concerns me when we utilize these great, tidy, tweetable hooks that make it out into the wilds of twitterdom but without any context.

To try and put it more simply, if you are at the beginning of the curve looking up these items are perceived in a very different manner than if you are at the top of the curve looking down. The experiences it required to achieve the top of the curve and reach these conclusions dramatically shape the intent behind the words. It's the difference between knowing *why* something should be done vs. simply being told to do it.

While I'm couching the concept with that of a consultant it's really a generalized idea of how we've gotten to where we are, and where we're going.

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Judgment Day: Social Media and Your Front Lines | Brass Tack Thinking

Today’s post is from our friend and frequent guest contributor Matt Ridings, Founder of MSR Consulting. He’s a thought leader on integrating social media into the realm of business design and relationship marketing. He blogs over at Techguerilla, and you can find him on Twitter at @techguerilla.

Take a look at your front lines for a moment. Those initial contact points within your organization that create a first impression. An impression that will either give you an advantage, or that you must struggle to overcome.

A lot of attention is placed on customer service when this topic comes up, and rightfully so as it represents the highest volume of direct contact with your customers. But you must remember that all of your personnel once had their own ‘first contact’ with your company.

Actions Speak Loudly

When they applied for a job how were they treated by Human Resources? Did HR seem genuinely happy to be talking to them and helping them through the process? Thankful that someone would be interested enough in your company to want to work there? Or were they made to feel like a checkbox among a litany of procedures? Like they were lucky to be even considered for a job?

How you treat these future employees directly establishes the overall tone of the organization, and demonstrates the value you place on your business relationships. This is their first impression, and how they are being ‘trained’ in the ways of your organization. Why should you expect them to treat your customers any differently than you have treated them? Culture is something you demonstrate through your actions, not something you build procedures around. A fake smile can be seen quite clearly over a telephone or a tweet.

Enter social media. An environment in which the pace, and its public nature, put your people and their communication skills on display like nothing that has ever come before it. An environment that requires people to use quick judgment, something that you don’t currently give them very much opportunity to use. You put those few people whose judgment you trust at the top of escalation ladders, and rely on process to bubble the problem children (your customers) up to them eventually. Yet that type of escalation process does not, and cannot, exist in social media.

Creating Scenarios

More and more you will be dependent upon trusting your front lines to exercise sound judgment. As a result, you’ll need a different kind of approach to inducting these people into your organization, because judgment is difficult to simply teach or train. It’s typically built upon experience, and experiential skills do not come cheaply or quickly. But there are ways to create experiences that can help hone and shape judgment and critical thinking skills. ...

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Doing Good For Business' Sake

Those of you who have had the questionable honor of spending a lot of one on one time with me already know my feelings on this topic. For those of you lucky enough to have avoided such an occasion I'll try and summarize my views:

As transparency into companies increases, the underlying tone and culture of those companies becomes more critical to its success
Integrity, ethics, and social responsibility should be rewarded where in existence, strived for when needed, and demanded by management and the consumer
The notion that "Doing Good is Good For Business" should be a core part of the business culture
The consumer should accept that it is ok for a business to both do good and benefit from those actions at the same time
With these elements in place, a great deal more funds can be made available, particularly for smaller charitable initiatives, than currently occurs through the donation/sponsorship environment

Let's start with a few simple universal truths.

Universal truth #1: Companies are in business to make money.

Universal truth #2: They are also filled with people who would like to make a difference.

Universal truth #3: If you can find a way to combine the first two truths you have the opportunity to create a great deal more funds to apply towards making a difference, and the incentive for the company to do so.

All too often we as consumers criticize anything which benefits a business (or person for that matter) while in the process of being charitable. There is this benchmark of pure altruism being applied. And while honorable that may be, there is only so much of that that a company can do before the impact on the bottom line issues a cease and desist order.

From my humble perspective, I would much rather see companies finding ways to leverage these efforts to sell more products or services. The flow of funds outside the company at that point has no finite end point.

Should we really care if the Pepsi Refresh project ends up selling more soda for them? If it does wouldn't that mean they'd be more likely to continue funding good initiatives? Do occasions occur when a company is using a charitable initiative as a sleight of hand tool to distract you from some less than savory facts? Of course, but is that really the norm?

Cynicism where big enterprise is concerned has spun out of control. Take them to task when warranted, but a company garnering benefit from a charitable activity should not be one of those times to be critical. It is in no ones best interests, particularly those who could be helped.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

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Is Our Addiction to ROI Killing Social Media | social media ROI | Social Media Consulting - Convince & Convert

Guest post by Matt Ridings, founder of MSR Consulting, a Digital Relationship Marketing Agency in St. Louis. He’s @techguerilla on Twitter.

I had an interesting phone call with a prospective client. I didn’t know him, and hadn’t worked with his (large) company. He was looking for a social media vendor, and was referred to me by a mutual contact who had attended one of my training workshops. In that workshop, we discussed social media ROI realities.

Our mutual friend has apparently emphasized the importance of well defined, realistic, ROI. And his belief that if an agency couldn’t provide that, then they weren’t any good. Sounds reasonable, right? Not so fast.

Read the rest at convinceandconvert.com

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The Insight Of Why

What You Need, When You Need It - Contextual Relevance In Social Influence

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Engagement, Influence, and Communal Experiences In Social Media

The Wizard Behind The Social Media Curtain {Series}

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Top 10 Social Learnings Of 2010

Fluffy Words Are Bad, Mmmkay? (Or Are They?) | Brass Tack Thinking

Fluffervoidance

Businesses want control.

Methods are not Objectives

Evolution Of Social Consultant

Judgment Day: Social Media and Your Front Lines | Brass Tack Thinking

Actions Speak Loudly

Creating Scenarios

Doing Good For Business' Sake

Is Our Addiction to ROI Killing Social Media | social media ROI | Social Media Consulting - Convince & Convert