techguerilla talk

Matt Ridings

Filed under techguerilla original

View all posts on posterous with this tag »

Influencers and Change Management

Istock_000015806600xsmall

Importance Of Adoption

Most of the conversation about understanding 'influence' these days revolves around the work taking place in the Social Media arena.  I've spent an inordinate amount of time on that particular subject over the last several years.  However, my interest in identifying influencers evolved not out of social media but rather understanding the internal social structures of organizations for the work I'd been doing in change management.  One of the most intractable problems where large scale change management is concerned is 'adoption'.  In Social Business, that may be getting employees to utilize a new collaboration tool, having them leverage a new process or methodology, or simply evolving a new cultural mindset within the organization.  But participation, and creating the proper incentives for doing so, is always the toughest challenge.  It's also one of the most overlooked.  You'd be surprised how many initiatives (CRM anyone?) fail because the focus is on deploying the technology instead of the people who would be using it.  Setting a budget and spending it on a 'deployment' is much simpler than worrying about all that messy 'cultural stuff' so it often becomes an IT exercise.

 

Influence Characteristics

So what does that have to do with 'influence'?  When you're trying to break down communication barriers, or silos, in an organization one of the most effective ways to do so is to seek out internal influencers.  Much like we would search for them in social media, we can seek out those employees whose voice already carries across departments and business units.  Perhaps surprisingly, they can be found at virtually all layers of an organizations hierarchy not just senior management.  While it's too in-depth to go into here, you will find that there are different 'types' of influencers as well.  More accurately, influencers whose influence is derived from different characteristics.  Some garner their influence due to their passion, some through their ability to communicate effectively, some through their widely acknowledged capabilities/genius.  Every organization invariably has a pool of individuals that defy the norms and influence others well beyond their station and expected audience.  It should be noted that the most effective influencers for change management purposes are rarely those forceful individuals that may typically come to mind.  Yes, sometimes you need people who can just 'make it happen' through their force of will and their empowered position, but where lasting change is concerned those being asked to change must see purpose and meaning in that change if they are to truly adopt it for the long term.   I'm fond of saying that the best organizational change is one which you never realize is occurring, in other words it happens so organically that it doesn't feel like it's being directed.

 

Spread Horizontally, Don't Disseminate Vertically

Once the pool of influencers is selected they should be brought into the change management process at an early stage and made formal members of the team.  Their input into deriving the proper incentives for adoption, and assistance in the communication planning should be given the highest level of consideration.  Unlike todays more typical top down planning by a committee made up of the heads of business units alone, you'll find your long term outcomes much more successful (vs. the typical 1/3 success rate of large scale initiatives).  You'll also find that you've created a platform from which some of the strongest talent in the organization is viewed as an example of the type of culture you value.  One of the most valuable artifacts of this approach comes not from the explicit engagement with those influencers, but from the fact that they then organically spread information, passion, belief, and 'purpose' throughout their influence ecosystems via their day-to-day communications.  It's building that underlying perception that is so difficult in any change management initiative, and why internal influencers can be so critical to your success.  Obviously you still have to know methods of properly identifying and filtering these individuals to arrive at the right mix for the team, but I'd wager you're already nodding your head thinking of people who fit the kind if influencer profiles I've described here.  Word-of-mouth is as good a tool as any when it comes to finding these internal influencers, but if you'd like to discuss more formalized approaches feel free to contact me.

 

Cheers,

 

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

 

Posted by

BeanCast 160: God Hates Your Topic - The BeanCast | The Best Marketing Podcast Anywhere


 

A sad face because Angela Natividad was delayed by travel, but happy face that I had three extraordinary guests who could carry the show. And what a show it was!

 

We covered a lot of important ground in the topics. And we even got to hear Ann Handley do her best George Parker impression. It was amazing. And very edited out.

 

Hope you enjoy the program. And please remember, I'd love some more Twitter followers to continue the conversation there. Just follow @TheBeanCast.

 

 

GUESTS

 

C.C. Chapman, Author/Speaker/Consultant, CC-Chapman.com and DigitalDads

 

Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs (And read Content Rules, her book w/ C.C.)

 

 

Matt Ridings, CEO, The Tech Guerilla


 

 

TOPICS

Netflix Pricing Crisis

 


Google's Data Exchange

 

 

The Future of NewsCorp

 

 

Earn-Outs And Agency Value

 

 

Trouble With iAds

 

 

 

STORIES TO WATCH

 

  •  Coming Demise of Flickr
  • LinkedIn Passes MySpace
  • Spotify's Launch Campaign With Klout
  • Philadelphia Newspapers Launching Android Tablet Program

 

This week's show is sponsored by Newsletter.ie. Use the coupon code "BeanCast" to receive 500 FREE spending credits.

 

Thanks to Recursive Squirrel for bandwidth and Email Transmit for our newsletter service. Also thanks to Craig Jacks for providing music for both The BeanCast and Ad Age Outlook.

It's always a pleasure to be on The Beancast. Bob is one of the most professional podcasters out there, always prepared and supremely researched every week. But it's a rare gift to find that you'll be on with two of your great friends and all around good people like C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley. I don't think Bob had any idea what he had done by booking the three of us, it's a shame you don't get to hear the pre and post show.

Hope you enjoy,

-Matt

Posted by

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

Context

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
Posted by

Engagement, Influence, and Communal Experiences In Social Media

2179141514_c22b16130c

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
Posted by

Interviews With The Top Of My Head - Amber Naslund and The NOW Revolution

And now for something completely different....happy April Fools Day!

Amber Naslund, author of The NOW Revolution talks to me about her new book.  Sort of.

Nowrevcovertransparent

 

 

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

 

*The inside joke with her name is that when publishing the Social Media Club of St. Louis materials about her and Jay coming to town, Josh Kocurek happened to misspell her last name.  That precipitated hunting down all the locations where we'd put the information and correcting it so that no one would know.  Until now......

Posted by

Are You Casting A Shadow?

Shadow
When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 
“Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. 
~ John W. Gardner

 

Birthing Creativity

I was having a conversation with Matt Homann the other evening on innovation and creativity.  Or to be more specific, how to build activities that birth and harness creativity for business purposes.   Matt is working on doing exactly that by developing what he calls a "Creativity Camp".  I would encourage you to ask him about it.  

The following day while consulting with a client I kept hearing a common refrain from the staff that "we WANT to be creative/innovative but don't feel empowered to do so!".

Empower Me! 
I confess that while this is certainly true in some cases, my typical gut response to this kind of statement is that it's an excuse.  Call it tough love, call it being a bit of a hardass if you like, but I've always felt that if you're going to wait around for someone to empower you then you have a long wait in front of you indeed.  

However, the combination of these two conversations got me to thinking.  Perhaps the real benefit of having management engage in creative workshops and learn to value the less definable aspects of business culture is not so that THEY can be more creative.  Instead, this new open appreciation for the value of creativity gives implicit license to those around them to be creative.  Those who previously felt they were stuck in the shadow of an unbelieving leadership might now feel empowered, or even better, encouraged.

Tell The Story You Want To Be
My comment to Matt Homann the other night was about how the best tool to change a business culture was in teaching leadership to find and tell the right stories.  Storytelling is a sorely lacking skill in business these days, and a session on learning the art of it in a business context would be invaluable.  These stories become the examples of what is valued in the organization, and in turn others adapt and adopt their message into their own activities and behaviors.  Thus, a culture shift is born.  

Having leadership engage in these types of creative workshops and openly bring their learnings back to the workplace is one way of telling a non-verbal story, a means of management moving aside and allowing light to flow where once they cast a shadow. 

Are you casting a shadow on those around you or are you empowering a culture that supports both your employees desires and your companies productivity?  Are you telling the right stories?  I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla
Posted by

The Wizard Behind The Social Media Curtain {Series}

Wizard
 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
Posted by

Top 10 Social Learnings Of 2010

3916313312_ae6d73c480

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
Posted by

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

Brass Tack Thinking - Fluffy Words are Bad, Mmmmkay?

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. ...

 

  

-->
read the rest over at brasstackthinking.com

 

Posted by

Complexity and Resolutions

Complexity is a difficult thing to quantify (it's complex?), or rather it can mean a lot of different things to different people.

Complexity
What is complex?
For me personally, "complex" most closely resembles "nuanced".  Those things that can be comprehended, but not easily explained in simple terms.  That tends to mean I'm discussing concepts with variable implications, philosophy would be a good example of something I can find extremely complex.

Then there are "complex" systems.  These are the things we most commonly come across in our day to day lives.  Your car is one representation, a corporate marketing strategy might be another, biology, various ecosystems, the weather, and so on.  It is these everyday systems that cause us so much angst.  When we are overwhelmed it is most often due to the fact that we are viewing things through that macro lens of complexity, "I have SO much to do, how will I ever get it all done?!", "I've been made responsible for some huge project but I don't even know where to begin!".

The Complexity of Simple
Part of what I do for a living is consult for organizations who have large complex system challenges, and need to derive a strategic solution in very short order.  I'm a 'fixer' if you will.  A specific example might be developing an overriding social strategy that can be integrated throughout an organizations silos.  While there are a lot of tools in my toolbox for achieving that, I'll let you in on my biggest secret.  A complex system, is only complex at the macro level.  It is always made up of components that are relatively simple.  If you can learn to break systems down to whatever level of simplicity you require you can achieve virtually anything.  While sometimes not so obvious, you'll see this theme repeated over and over throughout my posts.

Resolutions
Given all of the new years resolutions taking place right now, I thought it might be more appropriate to frame this in more personal terms vs. professional.

Writing a book?  It is simply a linear aggregation of related chapters, which in turn are aggregations of paragraphs, etc.  Taking on a task like "writing a book" is terrifying, but can I start writing a few sentences today?  Yes, that I can handle.

Moving homes? How overwhelming is that thought? Where to start?  Break it down into tiny pieces that are manageable, tackle one small thing at a time.  This is the essence of project management the world over, we hear it all the time.  But I submit that learning to see these acts of simplification as part of your normal view of the world is much more valuable than extensive list writing and prioritization.

Relationships are also complex systems.  Don't resolve to "be a better spouse/parent/friend", make small tasks that represent pieces of that goal.  Put the dishes in the dishwasher, put down the toilet lid, make dinner one night, tell the person you appreciate them, whatever.  But make them *actionable* things, not big complex concepts that are difficult to wrap your head around when it comes time to try and execute them.

Perception Colors Your Reality
These complex systems vary in difficulty, primarily based upon the number of individual components/factors they contain but if you can start to see the complex systems around you as just a lot of simple things tied together it becomes a lot less intimidating and that tendency to 'freeze up' when faced with large challenges can go the way of the DoDo Bird.

Cheers, and happy new year!

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

p.s. - As an aside, we're mainly talking about 'organized complexity' here but if you completely dork out on this stuff like I do you might want to dive into Complexity Theory and its related cousin Chaos Theory.  Any of the classes of deterministic complexity hold a lot of nuggets of useful insight that can be leveraged in an organization, particularly in scaling a growing business.

photo courtesy of misterbisson
Posted by