Becoming a Content Mill is Not a Viable Social Strategy

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Morgan

A revolution is coming, and it won’t be televised. This, according to Michael Malone’s piece in Forbes, which is based on his research for his latest book, “How Companies Win: Profiting from Demand-Driven Business Models No Matter What Business You’re In.” Malone refers to an upcoming industrial revolution that America misses out on:

The biggest structural economic shift, the one Venky has discovered and which is the launching point of the book, is that over the last decade, the global economy has experienced a fundamental and historic shift from centuries during which supply and demand were roughly balanced, to our current situation in which supply significantly outstrips the demand available to absorb it. This is largely the result of the relatively new science of Supply Chain Management, which systematized the process of marshalling resources to bring products and services to market. The implication is that most modern business strategies are now obsolete, as the new competitive battlefield has now shifted from supply to that of finding remaining pools of profitable demand. (emphasis mine)

That alone is enough to provoke a radical change in how businesses are organized and how they behave. It suggests that most companies, including the most successful, no longer have a lock on survival because the ground has suddenly shifted beneath their feet. That, of course, is the recipe for a business revolution.

The article is eye-opening and has me thinking about the day that my son might leave the US to go work in Brazil, because “that’s where the jobs are, Dad.” But it also got me thinking about the here and now and our own information revolution that continues to shake the ground beneath our feet. Take the above quote and apply it to social media marketing, broadly defined as trying to reach consumers across the new publishing tools responsible for this flood of information, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I think the analogy of the global supply chain in producing manufactured goods applies nicely to the information economy as well.

Blog platforms, low-cost hosting, Facebook and Twitter are the Supply Chain Management pieces of the information economy. Before them, brining content to the marketplace was hard and expensive. This barrier to entry made information scarce and valuable. But the technology improved to make the supply of information to the market more efficient, turning information into, in many cases, a commodity. This isn’t news to anyone reading this of course, but it does continue to have broad implications for businesses and brands trying to reach customers on an ever-crowded Web.

And the reason that brands are having trouble is because the market of information continues to evolve rapidly. Companies are still trying to figure out how to contribute content to the marketplace so that they’re found in Google, so that they can drive thought leadership, so that they can be heard. The problem is, the market timing for that is past. The technology has made the creation of content so efficient and cheap that we’re swimming in it. Business models like Demand Media’s and other the other commodity content producers are making the content market more and more crowded and less valuable. And a traditional company can’t keep up and can’t win in that type of battle.

In a over saturated market, putting more supply out there is like pushing on a string. You can do it, just don’t expect anything to happen because of it.

While it’ll always be important as a company to communicate with the market, just creating content is no longer enough. When your social strategy is based on content creation, you’re sure to fail; because consumers aren’t looking for content – they’re looking for content they want.

This is where Malone’s premise provides insight on how to succeed in our new information marketplace. It’s not about adding to supply, it’s about identifying areas of the conversation that still have profitable demand. And that’s why most traditional marketing advice about reaching customers on the social web is dead wrong. It’s not enough to create blog posts, videos and infographics if they don’t address some remaining or untapped demand in the marketplace. And this is where marketers need to do a better job. As a marketer in the social web you have to look at areas where demand still exists, and if you don’t find any you have to test and probe until you find it. Because your company will only win when it finds and leverages that untapped demand.

So how do you find that demand? That’s the tough part, as often the market doesn’t know what it wants until it sees it; and as a brand you have to continue to test and learn to find it. But there are a few constants that always are in demand, in one shape or another. Looking at how your brand can aid people in achieving the following is a way to suss out potential opportunity.

Making people’s lives easier
Making people happy
Making people feel good about themselves
Making people successful

Those are the areas of continual demand in our information economy. As a social marketer you should be looking at your programs and determining if what you’re contributing is advancing the above goals of the people you’re trying to reach. If you’re not doing any of the above, it’s likely that you won’t tap the demand that will drive your business success.

The information revolution has brought us the technology that has made delivering content to the marketplace efficient, 140 characters-efficient, but too many of us are still seeking for success in a market which doesn’t have much room for stand outs. Instead of focusing on the tools and technologies we should focus on finding the untapped demand, putting our time and effort into creating the messages and products that will make people’s lives better, easier, happier and more successful. Only then will we find the success in our social marketing programs – viva la revolucion!

Social Business Means Redefining What Business Is

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Morgan

Brian Solis talks about the bigger social business opportunity that is ahead of businesses and social media professionals:

When you look behind the scenes, you actually see more duct tape and rubber bands than fluidity and polish. Business units are still siloed and even the chief executives have gone on record saying that the acts of engagement do more for the company’s PR than it does for the improvement of products and services. Just look at your favorite social media source and you’ll see an endless array of examples of how brands are succeeding in social media. Again, most of them are basking in the brilliance of individual victories, some are actually breaking through the internal barriers that prevent collaboration, and others are simply stunts designed to spike conversations, sales, and PR. Nothing wrong with it…especially if it work as intended.

You and I are here together, right now, to do something greater. It’s up to us to lead the way for the socialization of business, understanding that it’s an uphill journey for the foreseeable future. But in the end, our experience and triumphs are unparalleled.

What Brian is talking about here isn’t social media marketing. He’s talking about redefining what it means to be a business. It’s an ambitious vision, but has a few nascent successes that point to what could become the new corporate structure (Zappos comes to mind, 37 Signals, etc.)

For as long as the corporate entity has existed the model has been command and control. Ground troops up on the front lines taking orders from well heeled Generals sipping tea well back from the front, who are ordering air support via massive branding campaigns on television, radio and print. All in an effort to convince the public that their product was just a little bit better, cheaper or faster. And this worked well, for a long time. But not any more.

With today’s connected, real-time landscape, business leaders and brands are in the thick of it. They’re being pulled in every direction, flanked by conversations, complaints, kudos, competitors and their own internal chaos as they try to respond to the changes in the way business gets done. And respond is all most have been able to do. Not think, not plan, not leverage. Merely react. Often these knee-jerk reactions are head-in-the-sand denials. Across the country there are conversations going on that start like this “Maybe we should just kill our Facebook presence,” because these leaders and brands aren’t fairing well in this new reality.

And even those that choose to engage in this new arena, as Brian points out, are doing it via smoke and mirrors, not necessarily through any enlightened state of corporate prescience. But hey, if you’re one of the brands that hit the jackpot in connecting with customers online; well, by all means, don’t leave the girl you brought to the dance. However, it’s important to understand the distinction between achieving success with social media marketing and reconstructing your business based on this new world order.

The marketing changes wrought by social media platforms have been hashed over ad nauseum for the last few years. Most socia media successes can be boiled down to tactical executions of providing customer service and compelling experiences on the social web. And that’s all well and good and interesting. The evolution of marketing from spray and pray, one-size-fits-all messaging to actual conversation is welcome indeed; but in order for businesses to fully leverage the changes afforded by the social web they must embrace this new reality outside of their marketing department. And that’s where I think Brian gets it right.

It’s not about redefining your message, it’s about rebuilding your company. Breaking down command and control, creating better flows of information capital, creating more authentic and meaningful customer experiences and touchpoints, and empowering employees to put in their best to work for the business and customer every day.

This transformation starts when the business owners realize that the game has changed, that they in turn need to adapt. Businesses must be willing to flip the megaphone around and put the wide end up to their corporate ear. And then do something with the data to rearchitect their fundamental infrastructure to better serve the market. Because it’s not enough for a company to come up with the Old Spice Man campaign if customer feedback isn’t driving product development. It’s not enough to launch a Facebook page when you’re customers are all active on a BBS somewhere. It’s not enough to have branding, product, customer service, loyalty, global marketing, product teams, etc. all off experimenting with Twitter; when what’s needed is leaders who can to drive the new social way of operating on the Web through the organization to create a new way of thinking about delivering value to the market place.

A favorite metaphor for corporate dysfunction and disorganization is that the left hand isn’t talking to the right hand. Well this problem is amplified by the challenges created by a real time, messy, loud market place full of demands. And if organizations insist on relegating social media to the PR/customer service silo, without truly embracing the power it can bring them in terms of insight, innovation, customer and employee satisfaction and bigger and better shareholder returns, than the vision of social business is left unfulfilled, and we as champions of the space will have come up short in our mission to change how business is done.

Did Google Miss the Next Big Thing by Chasing Social Media?

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Morgan

Facebook announced a new messaging platform today that combines all of your communications into one inbox and uses your social graph to prioritize and validate inbound messages. Email, IM, SMS and social messages in one place. It’s a unified approach to communication and focuses on the relationship between people, rather than between messages as its foundation. And I can’t help but wonder, Why didn’t Google do this first? And, did Google’s obsession with “catching” Facebook and Twitter leave a blind spot to this new way to bring efficiencies to digital communication?

In retrospect, Google was better positioned to unify communication types than Facebook. With Google Voice, Gmail, Wave, SMS-enabled GChat, YouTube and Docs, it had all the components in place and ready to go. Voice, Docs and Wave aren’t even available on the Facebook platform as viable options and Gmail is much more mature than Facebook messaging. But instead of tying these various forms of communication together they were busy chasing down the social grail; fumbling the Buzz launch, botching Wave and trying to court Twitter and roll out real time search.

Now don’t get me wrong, real time search is indeed important, and a big business to be in; but the bolted-on Buzz failed, Wave failed, Google Friend Connect didn’t take hold, and before those, Jaiku and Dodgeball died in-house too. And now, their nebulous new Google Me effort looks foolish compared to the innovation coming out of Facebook. In this mad quest to catch Facebook they’ve overlooked key strategic advantages that they’ve now fumbled to their biggest competitor.

When you’re focused on organizing the world’s information, it’s a pretty big miss to let your sworn enemy get to organizing our digital communications first.

The severity of this blow will take a bit of time to play out as more people become accustomed to getting their texts, IMs and email all in one place. And not just any place, but the place they spend more than 5 hours a month online (that’s 2.5x longer than users spend on Google properties, btw.) But once people realize the “cognitive load” savings realized by this centralization Google will start losing Gmail users and growth will slow.

Think about it, is there any reason to leave Facebook once messaging gets integrated? And with the orientation around individuals and not subject lines, communications will become easier to manage. Why would I go to GMail, then to docs, then to my phone, then to Chat when I can have it all in one place? (note: a Hacker News commentor astutely pointed out that these things _are_ in the same place on Google. What I was referring to here, and rushed too quickly to articulate is that if I’m already spending 5.5 hours per month on Facebook looking at photos, commenting, liking things, etc. Why, once the functionality was available within the interface and on my mobile device, would I jump out of my default environment to use a series of other tools that don’t integrate at all w/my preferred online service. I hope this clarifies this a bit.)

Now, emails from my mom about traveling to see me for the holidays will be in the same place as her text messages about being delayed and where to pick her up. I’ll have flight info in the email with the real time info from her text message all in one place. Plus, with Facebook phone book I can call her from that same interface.

This is a powerful new way of handling communication. Or is it? Some early analysis likens Facebook to the old AOL, opining that Facebook too, will suffer the vagaries of time and evolution of the Web.

And while this may seem reminiscent of AOL in the days when many regular users considered AOL the Internet, I think we’re looking at something fundamentally different for a few reasons. The first has to do with scale. The sheer number of connections on Facebook make it a far more sustainable platform than AOL ever was. At it’s largest, AOL had 30 million members – that’s less than a tenth of the Facebook population. Second is APIs. The connected nature and ubiquity of the Facebook Connect and Like integrations (not to mention automatic personalization) have woven Facebook throughout a large portion of the Web. And third, the time. We, as a population are more digitally savvy than ever before. My parents have cell phones, my grandparents have cell phones. My 4 year old son texts my mother. We’re connected in a way that we never were in the AOL days – all playing into the hands of Facebook.

We’ve also heard the early rumblings of the privacy issues this new platform brings into question. And the privacy debate is an important one; but one that will happen at the fringes. There will be plenty of handwringing by pundits about what Zuck will do with our SMS and email data; but it’s an argument that won’t resonate with your casual user, even if it should. Let’s face it, the moment we accepted Gmail as our email client we gave up that inbox privacy ghost. This is just another step, and one that won’t raise the flags of rebellion among the proletariat.

So what’s next for Google? They’re now in the position where they have to play catch up again. Nothing they ship for Google Me will put them ahead of the game. They were sitting on a massive opportunity and missed it. While they’re out building self-driving cars, Facebook is building the true OS of the Web. And while privacy advocates and open Internet advocates will cry foul, the denziens of the Web will enjoy the cozy confines of their Facebook home and appreciate their newfound ability to have a single point communication interface that lets them manage all their relationships on the Web. And all of it will be hidden from Google.

As more and more of the world’s information gets organized by Facebook, the venerable search giant will need to stop chasing and start looking more at what opportunities their strengths provide if they want to be more than just the yellow pages of the Web.

Lexus Hopes for Another Social Media Fiesta

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Morgan

Lexus is the latest car manufacturer to tap influential Twitter users to promote their new line, the Lexus CT. Car makers took note of the successful, Scotty Monty-led Ford Fiesta Movement campaign and are trying to replicate its success by tapping Twitter celebrities to help spread the word online.

Brands are smart to connect with these online influencers. Even with the networks small size and their lack of mainstream visibility, these Twitter tastemakers can direct the brand sentiment on a network that thrives on being ‘in the know.’

As social media become a growing force at generating attention, marketers are increasingly turning to the less famous to help them pitch products. Auto makers and ad executives say tapping social-media stars can give a brand more credibility with younger shoppers than hiring high-priced celebrities.

“People trust people like themselves, and when we can tap into these people, it will sound less like Ford tooting its own horn,” says Scott Monty, Ford Motor Co.’s global digital-communications manager.

There are dangers, of course. Brands have to invest in an ongoing relationship to see real results. A few test drives and Tweets aren’t enough to sway the long term sentiment of the Twitterverse. An ongoing relationship with a genuine desire to win the hearts of those on the network is how Ford won with it’s Fiesta Movement. And as more Twitter influencers are tapped as brand spokespeople, how long will it be until the Twittersphere is nothing more than one person shilling for this or that brand? Dilution of message and results is inevitable.

via Car Makers Recruit Social-Media Savvy for Ad Campaigns – WSJ.com.

The Marketing Game Layer

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Morgan

: Image via CrunchBase

In this TEDxBoston talk, Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR talks about the coming decade of games and building a game layer on top of every day life. It’s a compelling talk (minus the sunglasses on the head and the Chief Ninja moniker) and one that should have all marketers thinking about how games work in marketing their products. If Facebook has reached a point of non-displacement, (which Seth argues it has) then what do marketers focus on to get the jump on the competition and win customers in today’s market place? When everyone has a Facebook Page the answer might just be games.

From location, to loyalty, to rewards, we’re playing games every day. Some are well designed, others not so much. As marketers we need to think about what we’re asking our customers and potential customers to do and how we can make that a game that’s worth playing.

Video Search Engine Optimization

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Morgan

A while ago I gave a talk on video search engine optimization, or VSEO. I never got around to putting it up here on the blog, so I thought, what the heck! If you’ve ever wanted to learn how video can help your search rankings this isn’t a bad place to start. I’ll be talking more about video at C.A.R. Expo in Anaheim in October and PubCon in Las Vegas in November. I hope to see you at either one of these events.

Enjoy!

Video Search Engine Optimization: VSEO FTW! from Morgan Brown on Vimeo.

Video Search Engine Optimization VSEO FTW!

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The Marketing Game Layer