Andrew Lark

Converting Followers to Activists

Ask a marketer how they are doing on the social media front and you are likely to get a long list of data points. Many of these centered on followers. You’ll hear comments like - “Oh we rock on Twitter, like XXX gazillion people are following us”. Or, “our Facebook community is amazing, XX have joined”.

The question is, how many of these people are real activists vs, ‘slactavists’. Now, I’m defining slactavists pretty liberally here. I’m speaking about the large number of people that with the convenience of a mouse click join or subscribe and rarely, if ever, engage. They might not even follow. Really.

I’ve seen this more extreme term -- slactivists – popping up more. They are the folks that join, subscribe, friend only to do little or nothing. Sure, you have permission to market to them. But can you convert them into active followers or better still, activists – people engaged in your brand.

The issue for marketers is balancing this small army out with activists. People who will activate demand, interest, and excitement. There are a couple of keys:

1. Relate to causes. At Dell we learnt this through our ReGeneration project. We gave our followers a chance to get express themselves on all things green. The key here is that the reason they join might not be the reason they move to being an activist.  You need to work hard to figure out what really motivates your communities – and then become a source of insight and information
2. Give them a platform and vehicle to get engaged. Ideastorm is our vehicle for doing this. As are our communities. But don’t understimate the ability of left-field ideas to drive engagement. We learnt this through our project with Grafiti on Facebook where thousands drew images of what green meant to them and tens of thousands voted. We achieved amazing engagement by allowing people to express themselves in a non written way – and at almost no cost to us.
3. Make everything social. Social isn’t a point strategy that can be confined to a discrete project. Everything, internal and external needs to be be made social. Transparency doesn’t just breed accountability, it also drives engagement.

Every marketing effort will need to look at drawing a line between slactavists and activists. Building the base of slactivists will be important – converting them to activists will be even more important.

INFLUENCEABLES

Johnnie has a bit on the coverage of Duncan Watt's ideas on Influencers vs. Influenceables... If you haven't read it, you should... His view is that that ordinary people have just as much influence as influential people have in making something popular. Cory, Guy, Seth, Spike, and scores of others have all chimed in.

On The Media interviewed Clive Thompson who wrote the Fast Company article that compellingly explains Duncan Watts’ word-of-mouth randomness theory. In the radio interview (available online here), Clive summarizes Duncan’s complex theory this way,

“It’s not how influential each person is, it’s how influenceable everyone else is. If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start it.”

It really got me thinking.  I'm ready to hold Gladwell's ideas and Watt's in my head at the same time.  I don't think they are exclusive.

What I don't agree with is that society is "ready" to embrace trends - especially commercial trends.  That's what marketers do.  They prepare society for trends and then activate those trends... Kind of like Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm.

There are instances where society becomes ready to embrace a trend - like Green -- and smart marketers figure out how to leverage that.

Corporate Journalism

Stowe flags a contender for word (or phrase) of the week: Corporate Journalism.

[...] In conversations with another McKinsey colleague, Tom Hayes, a former NYT reporter, we came up with the term “corporate journalism” to describe what we were doing inside of the Firm: applying classic reporting techniques inside of an organization to determine what, if anything, was “interesting” and deserved attention. That filter, “interesting” is subjective. Through McKinsey’s lens it meant information that could enrich the firm through more client engagements and increase the effectiveness of its consultants.

This takes me back to a phrase that Mark Tolliver used lots when I was at Sun: "evidence based marketing". In short, get rid of all the platitudes and well-worn phrases and start with the evidence - then back into they hype if you must. These two concepts together are powerful - communications, message-making, marketing, the act of business, all should start with investigative rigor and evidence. From there, a fair dose of honesty and transparency is required.

The Speechmaker

Big speeches require a massive amount of effort.

Good communicators know this and smart executives commit to it.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece this morning on how Bill Gates developed his commencement address for Harvard.

What's intriguing is how committed Bill is to the process - this is rare in an executive.

A couple of observations:

1. Pick keynotes your execs can get passionate about. As much as you want to establish a sense of importance, it can only be important to them if it is important to them.
2. Pick issues, topics, themes that those same execs can get really passionate about. Chances are it isn't the industry you are in.
3. Models are useful - speeches by others provide good context and illumination. In Bill's case: "The speech, delivered at Harvard's commencement on June 5, 1947, outlined the Marshall Plan, the bold economic relief program that lifted Europe from the ashes of World War II. To Mr. Gates, the general was describing the challenges facing postwar Europe in terms similar to how the software billionaire sees his own, 21st-century crusade: using philanthropy as a catalyst for reducing global inequities in health, wealth and education."
4. Tone is as important as content. Don't confuse the Exec's tone with the tone required for the audience and speech. Bill groked that: "In late May, Mr. Gates tapped Mr. Buffett again. He wanted to press graduates to become more aware and active in helping solve global inequities but was worried about sounding "overly preachy." Mr. Gates went to Omaha, Neb., for the annual shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, Mr. Buffett's company on which Mr. Gates serves as a board member. After the meeting, Mr. Buffett gave Mr. Gates some tips on delivery and tone."
5. The notion of the single speech writer might work in Political circles but you are going to have a greater chance of success by bringing in collaborators. In Bill's case: "When he started working on the speech in December, he used as a sounding board a Gates Foundation staff member who had written for Slate, the online magazine started by Microsoft. The two traded outlines and drafts of the speech. By the end, Mr. Gates and his staff had met six times for brainstorming sessions, completed six drafts and traded many long emails. Mr. Gates wrote some of the longest ones himself."
6. And, no matter how good you are at collaborating and crafting the content, the exec has to be committed to molding the speech into something special. I'm not talking about the standard rehearsal the day or hour before. I'm talking about time spent on putting their thumb-print on it.

Why 47% of Campaigns Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeeds

Jon Beattie of Marker is up at the Future of Online Advertising Conference - he's put together a great summary of a keynote on why 47% of campaigns fail - a summary of the presentation by Greg Stuart at the Future of Online Advertising conference today in New York. Greg is the former CEO, IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and co-author of “What Sticks“.

He claims: Over US$112 billion ad spend is wasted out of a total of $295bn - Advertisers and agencies use the excuse of “publicity” to justify a failed campaign.

Here are the three highlights I liked:

1. Did the campaign message get through? 31% of campaigns failed
2. Out of 5 advertisers (P&G, J&J, Kraft, Nestle, McDonald’s) that did creative research of online campaigns: 1 was okay; 2 found half didn’t work; 2 all ads failed and had to start again
3. McDonald’s took 20 per cent from TV put 13.4% into online kept the rest and increased awareness by 5 per cent when it had previously leveled out using traditional media.

How The New Opinion Leaders Drive Buzz On The Web...

Another interesting piece, this time on how opinion leaders drive buzz...

Bloggers, discussion-board denizens, and social networkers are courted by marketers, who believe they build buzz that can make or break new products and Web sites. But there's growing controversy surrounding such efforts, and debate over just how much sway these opinion leaders really have...

... The notion that a small subset of individuals has disproportionate influence was formulated more than 50 years ago by academics Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz in their book Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. But it was Malcolm Gladwell's 2002 best-selling The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference that popularized the notion. Gladwell divided people into connectors, people who bring other people together; mavens, who get a kick out of passing along knowledge to others; and salesmen, who like to persuade others of the validity of an idea or product. When taken altogether, Gladwell argued, these archetypes create "epidemics" that spread like viruses throughout the population, triggering massive trends that couldn't be achieve by traditional top-down imposition of messages on the general public. The Influentials, by Jon Berry and Ed Keller, published a year after The Tipping Point, comes to many of the same conclusions.

It's critical to understand, however, that all these proponents of opinion leaders as drivers of social and commercial trends aren't talking about media stars or personalities, but about otherwise seemingly ordinary members of a community who, through accumulation of knowledge or number of connections with others, act as catalysts for change.

Why Code-of-Conducts Don't Have a Role to Play

It's simple really, because it is a conversation and conversations by there very nature should be free ranging expressions of interest.

While I do believe that anonymity breeds irresponsibility, leave that up to the Blogger to decide. Some blogs might benefit from anonymous posts.

I have a real problem with any formal codes of conduct. And screw civility. I expect people to be very uncivil regarding some of my views. Some very useful conversations can be very uncivil.

But I do draw the line, no hate-speech, nothing nutty or abusive. And, I get to make the call in the context of the conversation.

Code of Conducts exist outside the context of the conversation. The conversation that takes place here, might be very different to that to takes place elsewhere. Why subject them to a common standard?

I also find it particularly concerning that we would somehow, someway subscribe to a group policing mentally in which a few could potentially get together "When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.". This is deeply troubling. Who, for instance, gets to define the "believe" part of that? Sometimes it might be self-evident - such as the attacks on Kathy Sierra. I suspect most won't be. And the attacks on Kathy aren't a job for a bunch of self-appointed "blog vigilantes" - they are a job for the Police.

Blogs ultimately should be about transparency. We should revel in what they expose, not seek to limit or hide it. And lets leave the policing to the real police.

:: Backreading ~ ComputerWorld; Scoble; Techmeme; Jeff Jarvis

The Naked CEO

This great piece on the value of transparency and pretty much a must read for communicators. Clive's blog is worth a look as well.

As with most pieces on the rise of blogging and participatory media, Clive can't help but take a swing at PR folks and their craft. This marrs the story with causal assumptions. While I agree with the central tenet of the story - transparency is great and should be used to your advantage, the notion that you need to "fire your publicist" and "abandon the message" to be transparent is nonsense.

In fact, nothing in the story seems to support this or point to the fact that complete transparency is the luxury of the unlisted, closely-held start-up. Nearly every corporation other than RedFin cited in the story have an army of PR people encouraging and driving transparency. Not does it point to another real-estate brand - Zillow - that has achieved superior mindshare (albeit in a different segment of the real-state market) on the back of a great PR effort.

Now that's not to say I don't like Redfin. In fact, I love it. Redfin also has a PR rep and still seems to issue press releases... I wonder why...

Transparency and engagement are the hallmarks of all great communications - that doesn't mean they don't require publicists or messages.

I also find it hard to see Google as a "reputation management system". It does no managing. Customers, bloggers, pundits and the like all have a new found power to shape reputations. Google mirrors the popular vote, effective optimizer of search, and ranks sentiment that isn't necessarily a reflection of what your customers think but is a reflection of where the heard is running. Does that make it a "reputation management system" - I don't think so.

What I do agree with is that Secrecy is dead. And Google is a terrific truth machine. And that customers have become "working partners".

Thanks to Noel for the pointer... btw Noel, get a blog man!

The Beginning of The End for Newspapers

There is no question in my mind that we are at the beginning of the end for newspapers. Tim O'Reilly jumps in this morning:

[from SF Chronicle in Trouble?]

I hate to play Valleywag, but I'm hearing rumors that the San Francisco Chronicle is in big trouble. Apparently, Phil Bronstein, the editor-in-chief, told staff in a recent "emergency meeting" that the news business "is broken, and no one knows how to fix it." ("And if any other paper says they do, they're lying.") Reportedly, the paper plans to announce more layoffs before the year is out.

It's clear that the news business as we knew it is in trouble. Bringing it home, Peter Lewis and Phil Elmer Dewitt, both well-known tech journalists, were both part of layoffs at Time Warner in January (they worked for Fortune and Time, respectively), and John Markoff remarked to me recently that "every time I talk to my colleagues in print journalism it feels like a wake."

Meanwhile, Peter Brantley passed on in email the news that "a newspaper newsletter covering that industry publishes its own last copy":

The most authoritative newsletter covering the newspaper industry issued a gloomy prognosis for the business today and then, tellingly, went out of business.

Many newspapers in the largest markets already "have passed the point of opportunity" to save themselves, says the Morton-Groves Newspaper Newsletter in its farewell edition. "For those who have not made the transition [by now], technology and market factors may be too strong to enable success."

Buffett said that newspapers are "a business in permanent decline." Stowe also hits out hard this morning: "We should stop wringing our hands for the moribund local newspapers. They are going under. Period. Full stop."

There are several drivers:

1. We get information digitally, most newspapers haven't made this easy or convenient.I drive over what lands in my driveway. I read what lands in my inbox.
2. Information is live. Most newspaper sites aren't. We want live news, not dead news.
3. Content is a commodity (that doesn't mean it isn't unique or valuable - just look at all the money made selling pork bellies and salt). If I get content - even their content - from my personal network, why would I pay to subscribe? Doc says this well: "Stop calling everything "content". It's a bullshit word that the dot-commers started using back in the '90s as a wrapper for everything that could be digitized and put online. It's handy, but it masks and insults the true natures* of writing, journalism, photography, and the rest of what we still, blessedly (if adjectivally) call "editorial". Your job is journalism, not container cargo." Right!
4. Their content is mostly irrelevant or of no value to me. I'm less and less interested in what they write about. The local community I care about isn't geographic. It's a mash-up of topics, interests and locations that I build myself in my RSS reader.
5. Their business model is flawed. Print advertising has been replaced by more efficient mediums (CraigsList, eBay, LinkedIn). Better deliver mechanisms mean I don't need paper dropped in my driveway. My community is a better prioritizer of news, and feeder of content.

Doc has a good list of what Newspapers might do. His most compelling advise (for me) is that they have to figure out how to encourage participation from their communities. That means linking, pointing, incorporating bloggers, allowing photos to be posted to the site by readers. If you've got a printing press - even a virtual one - why not unlock it for all to use?

Gmail as a Killer Productivity App

Gmail is a killer productivity App. Steve has a series of terrific posts on how to get the most out of Gmail. If you don't have a Gmail account, go get one and take it for a spin. You can really turn it into your personal nerve center. Steve's piece has several parts:

• How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database (Gmail + the Google Toolbar)
• How to get real-time news updates in Gmail (Gmail+ Google Talk + Twitter)
• How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail (Gmail + del.icio.us + Yahoo Alerts)
• How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail (Gmail + Backpack + GCal +  GTalk + iMified)
• How to blog from Gmail (Gmail + Wordpress/TypePad/Blogger + IMified)