Brands, and putting twitter word of mouth in context

An interesting study of twitter's viability for eWom, or electronic Word of Mouth marketing, has been making the rounds (Twitter Power:Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth
). The research involved analysis of 150,000 tweets, treated as natural language expressions, or "talk". The aim of the research was to study tweets in which brands are mentioned for a number of attributes relevant to brands, including sentiment, purpose, frequency, and so on.

I found this interesting for several reasons. First was that I've been arguing of late that the conversational turn in social media (twitter, status updates, et al) makes everyday speech into a commodity. That the medium's translation of talk into a form that can be captured, saved, studied, mined, and so on only points to the further use of consumers for marketing purposes. (While I don't personally like this, it has a whiff of inevitability about it. The frontier having shifted from what we consume to what we say.)

This research is a rich study of the tweet in its commodity form: removed from the context of twitter user relationships and from any kind of transactional or conversational context. (Tweets used were extracted for their mention of a brand names studied.)

Secondly, the research finds that "most tweets that mention a brand do so as a secondary focus." I described this in much less precise terms last week, arguing that brands might focus less on how they are reflected in consumer sentiment and more on how the consumer seems to identify with and through brands in online social contexts. The research seems to have found, in other words, that brands are not the sole object of tweets that mention them. Brands are mentioned in passing, in conversation, yes, but not with the intent of soliciting interaction with the brand.

Interestingly, the research cites an assumption examined elsewhere that "consumers engaged in relationships with brands in a manner similar to the personal relationship they formed with people," adding that in online branding "These brand relationships may be the result of participation in brand communities."

I think there are nuances here worth some investigation. A brand's significance to a consumer may in fact have little in common with human relationships. Of course this changes if the brand community manager and consumer interact online. But the "brand" seems to me more likely to involve values, interests, and personal as well as social meanings associated with a brand but not directly caused by it.

Perceptions, reputation, trust, admiration, coveting... these are aspects of human relationships but are not in themselves relationships (to me, at least). And I think they are shaped socially, not in direct reflection on the brand's messaging and image-making.

Also of interest to brands in this study would be the preponderance of positive sentiments expressed in tweets that mention brands: "more than 80% of the tweets that mentioned one of these brands expressed no sentiment. This indicates that people are using Twitter for general information, asking questions, other information-seeking and -sharing activities about brands or products, in addition to expressing opinions about brands or products. Of the 268,662 tweets expressing sentiment, more than 52% of the individual tweets were expressions of positive sentiment, while ≈33% of tweets were negative expressions of opinion."

If I were a brand manager I would want to see these tweets in context. A research or monitoring tool able to show me context of conversation and something of the relationships that leap to life in the course of that conversation.

And I think it's important here to note that "relationships" can be fleeting, transient, and as they often are in conversational media, a sign of the medium's "coincidensity" and speed.

Referring to the brand model of Esch, Langner, Schmitt, & Geus, the authors write of online consumers, that "current purchases were affected by brand image directly and by brand awareness indirectly."

This will be obvious to a brand manager, but current twitter and social media analytics tools can derail the most disciplined analyst. Mentions are the most easily captured signs of social media relevance to branding. But "indirect awareness," which I read as "socially-mediated branding," is harder to track and quantify. Lest the ROI debate threaten to rear its head here, I still think that a softer, more subjective, "sociability" review belong to the social brand's marketing efforts.

Of the four types of brand-relevant tweeting listed here, for example, it would be interesting to know who sentiments were shared with; who was information solicited from; who was it provided to; and in what was the brand comment a reference to?

Furthermore, and I know that these questions aren't yet supported by tools, and so don't scale well: can the brand learn from how it is identified with, whether its social standing is increasing or slipping, or what kind of person the band information is sought from? Are users with social status, fame, success, knowledge, credibility as experts or reputations as critics, solicited or offered brand-relevant tweets?

I suspect that the types of expression listed here would need to be read closely for how they are addressed, and for how they might reflect on their authors. For tweets that mention brands are often a reflection of social relevance. A tweet asking for ticket information on a band is also a sign of an excited concert-goer: a sign of support and interest as much as the need for information.

• "Sentiment: the expression of opinion concerning a brand, including company, product, or service. The sentiment could be either positive or negative.
• Information Seeking: the expression of a desire to address some gap in data, information, or knowledge concerning some brand, including company, product, or service.
• Information Providing: providing data, information, or knowledge concerning some brand, including company, product, or service.
• Comment: the use of a brand, including company, product, or service, in a tweet where the brand was not the primary focus."

It's good to see research on this, and especially good to see research that regards tweets as utterances. If we are ascending the ladder of meaning and complexity from the word through the search phrase, on to the utterance, then perhaps it's not so far out to hope we will reach the rung of conversation in the not-so-distant future.

More from Twitter Power:Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth:

They report that: "Of the 14,200 random tweets, 386 tweets (2.7%) contained mention of one of the brands or products from our list (Table 1). There were 2,700 tweets (19.0%) that mentioned some brand or product, inclusive of the brands that we used in this study."

And of greater interest to brands, would be the preponderance of positive sentiments expressed: "more than 80% of the tweets that mentioned one of these brands expressed no sentiment. This indicates that people are using Twitter for general information, asking questions, other information-seeking and -sharing activities about brands or products, in addition to expressing opinions about brands or products. Of the 268,662 tweets expressing sentiment, more than 52% of the individual tweets were expressions of positive sentiment, while ≈33% of tweets were negative expressions of opinion. This is in line with prior work such as that of Anderson (1998), who showed that there was a U-shape relationship between customer satisfaction and the inclination to engage in WOM transfers. This suggests that extremely positive and satisfied and extremely negative customers are more likely to provide information relative to consumers with more moderate experiences."

"As can be seen from Table 7, most tweets that mention a brand do so as a secondary focus. These tweets account for just under half of the branding tweets in this sample. Users expressed brand sentiment in 22% of the tweets. Interestingly, 29%of the tweets were providing or seeking information concerning some brand. This shows that there is considerable use of microblogging as an information source. This would indicate several avenues for companies, including monitoring microblogging sites for brand management (i.e., sentiment), to address customer questions directly (i.e., information seeking), and monitoring information dissemination concerning company products (i.e., information providing)."

Socially-mediated branding: Revangelism?

I have been talking about socially-mediated branding without having really offered a description of what I mean by it. In follow up to yesterday's post on consumers and their identification with brands, I want to just unpack this idea a bit further.

I consider socially-mediated branding the smart business response to the disruptive effects of social media. It is a call to businesses not to reclaim control over their brand identity across social media as powerful new channels, but rather a suggestion that marketing, PR, advertising and other brand-related efforts shift their frame of perspective when considering the social media space. Namely, that brands see themselves from the consumer's perspective. And try to find there what interests the consumer about the brand.

I suggested yesterday that brands might think not in terms of brand or consumer identity, but in terms of how we identify with each other (brands and consumers). Brands ought to start from what the brand means to the consumer, and let that inform what the consumer means to the brand. Not the other way around.

I made it sound simple. Consumers identify with some aspect of a brand, and that's the basis from which they might express their tastes and interests online. Faceted branding and conversational strategies with multiple story lines would then factor into brand strategies as a smart and pro-active integration of social media into brand messaging. Different strokes for different folks.

And in examining the brand's sociability, a business might also be pro-active by listening and learning from how its audience picks up the brand in talk amongst friends and peers. This approach is qualitative, subjective, and contingent on the brand's own sensitivities and perceptiveness, not to simple mentions and responses but of what interests consumers. Social media give away an incredible amount of information. But the real meaning of what all that information offers a brand can only be read by humans and made actionable by flexible organizations.

The fact that people talk to each other using social media, and that they offer up what matters to them in the process, represents a massive improvement in what any organization can know about itself. Not just in how much of its own brand image is seen, but in how its brand message has conversational value. Brand sociability, in short.

But not all consumers identify directly with a brand. Take, for example, Disney versus, say, a tire company. Well clearly Disney's got it pretty good insofar as sociability is concerned. It's an experience brand. It's entertaining, and it's fun — and it's for the whole family. The tire company, on the other hand, is woefully disadvantaged by comparison. I don't identify with the tires on my car any more than I suspect you do — unless you have a penchant for the weekend tractor pull competition or an expensive fantasy involving F1 track racing and the flutter of the checkered flag.

If one of us were at a tire company in social media branding, and spotted this post, it would be ridiculous if we ran upstairs and proclaimed: "let's sponsor this blog!" Blogger relations would be driving blind if they took this post and drew the conclusion that I was a tire blogger. That I have mentioned tires doesn't mean I have a tire relationship, nor even a passing interest in tires.

But I did recently have an experience with a tire company. Traveling to hog island for an all day feast of freshly-farmed oysters, our crew sustained a high-speed flat. After what seemed like eons of tense this-is-not-my-family roadside pleas and ultimatums delivered to a hapless rental agency customer service agent, I proffered the alternative to immediate rental car replacement. Which was to drive on the donut to a tire shop and just have the tire replaced instead of the car.

Which went over so swimmingly that we were hardly late to our destination, relaxed, and dare I say, soon happy as clams. I still don't have a relationship with a tire company but I have had a memorable experience with a flat tire. Now as it turned out, the imminent violence manifest in our sudden appearance at Big O tires warranted a canny move on the part of the manager in charge that morning. To wit, we were bumped to the front of the line, hoisted and affixed while no less than one loyal local was left longer to wait.

And we found the place using an iPhone. There was no app for that, but google maps, but if it hadn't been for that we might have spent even more time placing desperate customer service calls, and coming ever and more speedily closer to the brink of family outing meltdown.

So if you or I were at Big O tire company in the social media marketing department of one, reading this post might suggest a different take-away. Flat tire is the experience — not tire, tire treads, or tire technology. We might run upstairs and a across the floor to the marketing department and proclaim: "Flat tires! That's the consumer experience related to online! To hell with blogger relations (wait, that's me), let's ask to use this guy's story and see if we can find more. People tell stories about flats, not tires!"

We might then bank around the corner and ask for a moment with the IT group. "Big O tire locations: Do we have an app for that?" Hey, ho, no we don't! And perhaps zip up to the C suite and declare: "Here's this guy who had a flat tire, the rental car agency reps dropped the ball, and we solved their problem. I'm thinking, why doesn't the rental car agency realize how much it could save if it offered to cover tire replacements with us. Instead of shipping out a tow truck, why not we and the rental car agency roll out a new tire program: share the cost and market together. Rental car customer service reps will have locations and numbers of Big O tire shops, and offer to help get the customer first in line in case of emergency flats?"

That would be organizational learning, of the kind that we often mean when talking about social business design. Learning from the consumer's experience and stories, rethinking the experience and finding inspiration. And we could take this further, for there are many other consumer tales out there, including the ones about the tractor pull and the checkered flag.

And I haven't even unpacked some of the other ways in which consumers relate and identify, not with the brand directly perhaps but with what its product means. The crushing power of the monster tire, or high performance precision of the Formula 1 racing treads. The teamwork of the pit stop, the rumble of a lowrider, the car modifications of a Pimp My Car, the green branding of recycling retired tires. All of which are much more social than the personal tale told here.

So socially-mediated branding capitalizes on the re-tale-ability of retail stories originating in the marketplace, amongst consumers whose experiences and interests are authentic and authentically told. I'm tempted to call this "revangelism." Or brand evangelism retold.

Socially-mediated branding: identify yourself

If one did a semantic analysis of the language I use in my blog posts of late, I'd not be surprised if two of the words I use most are "many" and "different." I much prefer many and different to "one" and "the same." Which is where I think there are some ideas worth noting about identity online. Identity says to me "one" and "the same."

We think of identity as the identity of a person. But people are far from one thing only, just as identity is far from always the same. In fact we could debate, and many do, whether or not there even is such a thing as identity.

It's been said, I don't recall by whom, that we experience ourselves as complex and differentiated, but that we see others as whole. I don't know if this tendency also permeates how we think of users and consumers. But in the interest of pushing a little on the assumptions we in social media make about the user and his or her interests, I'd like to unpack this a bit.

Philosophically, I'm more interested in becoming than being. Much more interesting, to me, is not the identity of who we are, but the question of how we become. For we become not by staying the same, but by relating to something different. If identity is a valid concept, then to me it is still a process. If identity ever "is," then it becomes so by identifying.

The aims of socially-mediated branding are to capitalize on the many and different ways in which companies can leverage relationships. Relationships through which consumers identify themselves, with or through a brand, friends and peers, values, and other kinds of interests.

The relationship is formed on the basis of identifying with something. This might be the brand itself, or its products, but also its principles, reputation, or values. In the case of a popular brand, and a lifestyle brand in particular, this relation usually involves relating to social perceptions of the brand.

Brand identity is not how the brand sees itself but how consumers relate to it: how they identify with it, and which facet or brand attribute it is that interests them (again: product, brand, values, reputation, etc).

Let's take the example of a user interested in a football team. We say the fan identifies with the team. If this fan is a particularly fanatic one, then this identification may even be called an identity. It's not who the person is, but how he or she sees themselves.

Identity might also be how the person represents him or herself to others, may be clear in how they talk, and will most certainly be involved in who they relate to and how. Other fans will be said to have the same identity. Fans relate to each other as fans of the same team, sharing a common identity.

Identity then is social. How we see ourselves is social. We see our own identities reflected in the social scenes we relate to and with which we identify. It's never enough to ask "what's the consumer's passion" and stop there. Passion is social. It is expressed in how the person relates to others and to the social world of things that he or she identifies with.

We have left the information age and are now in the age of communication. That's where our technologies and "industries" currently show much of the most interesting innovation. And in this age of rapidly socializing media, communication itself becomes a commodity.

Online talk, once it's been captured, can be circulated and distributed, and can attract the value and attention that drives non-money social economies. As social currency spent, and as social capital accumulated, communication on social media represents a very disruptive shift to the uses of media for marketing, branding, and sales.

Whether we like it or not, the commodification of communication by means of social media will be used. It will be used to the consumer's advantage, in some cases and by some brands. And exploited in others. This is how media work, when bound to the math of the bottom line.

As users identify themselves by means of media, as their relationships expose both individual tastes and preferences, as well as social affinities and common social identities, we should be advised that identity is not a fixed property. It is a work in progress and always in play. A dynamic of social identifications by which many and different relationships take shape through interactions and communication.

Brand identities, too, are socially determined. And brands interested in socially-mediated branding would be well advised to spend less on their identity. The brand's view of its identity is not the same as the consumer's. Brands, instead of communicating their identity, and identifying themselves, would do well to embrace the dynamic of identity through identification. Which is, in short, to identify with their consumers.

Social Media PR Playbook: Thoughts

I've been gestating ideas for the past several days around ways to use social media for PR purposes that would exceed the normal use of social media tools to print and distribute PR messaging. It strikes me that PR agencies are well positioned to understand client needs and interests, brand and message, and also how best to craft and roll out story lines. That's a skill, and a valuable one, for the combination of care attendant to a client's image and reputation, and the means by which to caretake it, are not intrinsic to consumer audiences. But the agency's self interest in demonstrating success can result in demands on social media (such as the ongoing debate around ROI and how best to calculate it) that may hamper creativity and low-level risk taking.

To wit, a PR firm may tend to view social media as outreach tools, means of distributing a campaign across yet another medium. A PR firm may wish to translate traditional messaging to social media, and monitor results for signs up pick up. It may wish to influence influencers, as it does in its offline campaigns, and again count the results. To which end tools like Radian6 and Visible Technologies can be used to validate success.

These are the things we do when we're uncertain of the value of both our effort and of our methods. Which has me wondering aloud about crafting a "playbook" for social media marketing strategies. If we could take some confidence from our methods, perhaps we might ask less of the metrics and measurement we use to confirm results.

A playbook, not unlike the highly-guarded clipboard many coaches hold tight to their chests on the sidelines, would articulate options best suited for specified needs. Perhaps some for "offense" and some for "defense" (ok, and special teams). Plays for image branding, for event announcements and invitations, for appeals to area or domain experts, critics, and reviewers, plays for building up a campaign launch, and plays for carrying it through. And so on. These plays would, in theory at least, provide a measure of confidence (rather than a measure of results) and could help the PR firm in client pitches as well as in facilitating creative approaches to social media engagement.

The playbook I've been mulling over would of course start with a definition of goals and objectives, many of them, and define appropriate means of execution. Branding, visibility, news, crisis remedies, customer support, resident expertise and help desk operations, product tips, lifestyle branding, and much more might each be pursued according to different strategies and tactics. Street, buzz, and affinity marketing. Sales, incentives, and offers. Best of breed reviews and recommendations. Long tail associations and links. End user reviews, expert reviews.

Or more creatively, putting product in the hands of a good cause and lifestreaming results. Creating transparency between product and consumers through product co-creation and "crowd sourced" feature requests and changes. Sneak peaks at future product, service, or other kinds of release (tv shows, movies, music included!). Back stage passes and special invitations to participate or engage with insiders. Twitter-based narratives and story lines (I like Family Guy -- I'd follow Stewie on twitter if his posts were written in character and revealed upcoming plot elements. I like Charlie Rose -- I'd follow his posts, or his producer's, or even those of his interviewees....)

If the goals of a social media release or campaign are the same as those of any commercial use of media -- distribution -- then why not give audiences something to tweet about. Why just package the same old and then count "micro-blogging" mentions? (Because it's safe? Because we know how to do it? Because we're lazy?) There's an opportunity here for creative revitalization of social media marketing for those who can see that this is a new, direct, immediate, and multi-media channel of communication. Used for talking and sharing. Not just for repetition but for invention.

Old media maintain a separation between the brand and its audience. And all PR, marketing, and advertising seek to cross that gap by appealing to audiences' attention and interest. Well, social media break that "fourth wall" (theater metaphor, the fourth wall is what separates what's on stage from the audience, and sustains the "suspended disbelief" required to keep the audience believing what its seeing while unaware of its production.) Break the fourth wall, expose or provide access to means of production, and I'm certain bountiful mentions and audience interest will follow naturally. All brands have willing fans, all have great stories customer stories posted by the wall alongside the water-cooler. All have internal brand champions whose ideas for getting product to non-profits, causes, and other beneficiaries would make for great PR and audience re-tale-ing... Brands and their agencies of record should be engaging in new and note-worthy efforts, not just repeating brand-centric messages.

I'm working on the playbook. Truly, I think that if commercial interests want audiences (read: users) to follow social media campaigns, they have to give us something worth talking about.

Reflections on Social Media's Next Phase

While it may be tough times for many social media startups, there could be a silver lining in the industry's future. Interest in social media doesn't appear to be waning, and in fact this week there's been a growing realization in the mainstream media that social media played a significant role in Barack Obama's campaign success. If the history of technology innovation is any guide, the next phase of industry growth will come from the markets and industries that adopt social media for their own purposes. And the same can probably said of the media's evolutionary path, too. In fact mass media, which is an industry that observes events, news, and by necessity, itself, is practically destined to assimilate social media.

But added to historical tradition is another obvious but rarely noted reason for social media's ongoing durability. It's in social media's DNA: that social media collapse the distance between production and consumption.

Unlike traditional (mass) media and in contrast to past modes of production and manufacture, including information production, social media co-locate the means of production with means of consumption. Video is recorded, edited, posted, and viewed on the same platform. Opinions, news, and stories are told, shared, commented on the same platform. Music is made, distributed, branded, and listened to, on the same platform. This conflation of means of production with means of consumption not only presents a threat to mass media (and one which mass media will respond to by co-opting the social), it promises opportunities for those who can see them.

All commerce involves some amount of marketing, whether it's based on brand identity, "real" utility and value, pricing, or whatever else comprises a marketing message and campaign. Social media disrupt marketing by eliminating much of the distance between the marketing/sales/branding medium and its audience. In social media they are one and the same: the audience does the branding and marketing, through communication, and often without the brand's direct intervention or participation. Distribution by means of communication among friends and colleagues (social media users) is not only natural and organic (non-commercial), it reproduces itself without any help from commerce required. In other words, it's self-referential and non-commercial.

This might cause palpitations for those who make a living by imagining, imaging, wrapping, crafting, and distributing brand and marketing campaigns, but it shouldn't. Conventional branding requires that value be created away from an audience, to then be introduced to an audience, resulting in (hopefully) consumer interest, desire, and spending. The distance between the brand and audience not only allows those on the brand side to finesse their presentation, it allows them to control its release. Traditional means of course are print, television, radio, and outdoors advertising. Lifestyle, affiliative, demographic and other types of market segmentation and targeting serve the purposes of campaign management. The whole process relies on a separation of brand from its audience, and time during which to conduct, refine, and steer the campaign.

Social media disrupts all of this with the sheer immediacy and proximity provided by its tools -- tools that serve the needs of talking and communing. "Word of mouth marketing" is a fancy way of saying "we let it go and our fingers are crossed." Control over the marketing or brand message is but a residual inclination to stay one step ahead of the market, to use the distance between traditional media and their audiences to steer outcomes in a company's favor. But control is precisely what is sacrificed in a medium that conflates means of production and consumption; a medium we sometimes call an "echo chamber" because there's no telling where the noise is coming from.

Future and successful marketing campaigns that leverage social media will benefit the startup and social technology space by extending what's been designed for daily use into soft commercial use. The budgets, while trimmed, are there. It would behoove social media companies to consider the ways in which soft commerce may play along. Just as mass media should entertain new forms of conversational and social marketing, from new types of creative, to compelling serial "talkies": brand stories, interactives, games, and other new forms of what I'll call "participatory branding."

Social media are notorious for giving rise to unintended social practices, and those of us who design and build social applications should not for a minute think that we know everything that can be done with them. Any more than television manufacturers would be expected to develop the TV programs shown on them. Current market conditions make this a perfect time for creatives to get inventive, and for social media companies to reflect on where they will fit in.

Utilizing Social Media for Marketing: Tips

In our never-ending quest to define social media -- whether for ourselves or for our clients -- there's one tendency that stands out, and I think it's the result of a simple semantic slip. We refer to social media as if it were a thing, an object or technology, in short, a noun. Well yes, social media applications are tools and technologies. But social media is also a verb: : experiences, practices, conversation, talk. We switch back and forth sometimes between describing social media and its industry applications: social media marketing, distributed conversations, social networking. But in general, and in part because we are hail from the technology industry, we stand by the noun.

I'd like to explore the verb.

There are four views of social media that organize most of the industry's conversation:

• The builder's view from the perspective of technology


• The startup's view from the perspective of adoption


• The user's view from the perspective of experiences


• The marketer's view from the perspective of distribution

While each of these is valid on its own terms, none is sufficient by itself to describe "social media." But there is one view that is privileged, and that is the user's view. If an application fails to deliver a compelling user experience, there will be no application worth speaking about. No application adopted, no business funded, no market reached.

Now, social media are not just used by users. They're used also by the companies built around them; used by the advertisers advertising within them; and used by the designers and architects who build them. Since not one of these groups "owns" social media, and since none takes the position of the end user, who knows best what a social media tool should be like, how it works (in practice), or for what it is used?

If there's one thing in the way of PR, marketing, and advertising professionals succeeding in their use of social media, it's that many of us are limited by the interests that govern our perspective. Thankfully, we can learn a lot by taking positions other than our own. The builder learns from the user. The founder, from the marketer. The marketer from the user.

I'd like to attempt the marketer's perspective. How might social media best and most successfully serve their purposes?

In conversations with marketing professionals I often hear of the need for real case studies and examples. SNCR has many to cite. Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang continue to dig up gems. But for all the tools out there, we suffer a shortage of best practices and success stories.

A marketer might easily conclude that social media are not ready for distribution. But I think the challenge for social media in the marketplace is not in their lack of utility. Rather, I think, they're simply being under-utilized. Under-utilized not because the technologies are incapable of meeting the marketer's needs: but that the creative and campaigns deployed misuse the media.

These are tools and applications built by the people for use by the people. They were not not intended as new distribution channels for commercial messaging. Therefore any successful social media marketer should pack away the commerce and converse with authenticity. Users are not there to receive the messages of marketers, but are there for their own purposes. There's a connecting line between the phone line and online, and that line is drawn between the commercial and the personal.

Social media serve highly local, personal, and episodic purposes. Conversations are fast, disjointed, and discontinuous. In other words, they have little in common with mass media and broadcasting. Talk starts with the user more than with published content. It unfolds in front of an audience on the medium, not outside of it. Commercial participation needs to come off the screen and embed itself.

Can it? I think yes, if the marketing perspective takes the position of the user.

We're talking about a shift in marketing from impression to expression, and from image to relationship. Messages will get recognition if they are meaningful. And they will get "distribution" if they are retaleable. On blogs, PR and marketing want to be contextual. On social networking sites, marketing and advertising wants to be actionable.

Social media and mass media have one thing in common: communication. So let's look at the communication needs of the industries most interested in reaching social media: PR, marketing, and advertising.

PR

• the content is news, the mode is the release, the form is a brief (narrative), the connections possible are to the company profiled, the news announced, the testimonials offered, the persons involved.
  

Marketing

• the content is image, mode is a branding campaign (image + message), the form can take multiple media, the connections possible are consumer interest, impressions, and associations with the message's connotations and thrust.
  

Advertising

• the content is an offer, mode is campaign with call to action (image + call to action), the form can take multiple media, the connections possible are the relevance and appeal of the offer, and means by which to act on it.
  

The above are descriptions of how commerce seeks to benefit from communications media, be they mass or social. But if we believe that users run social media according to their own interests, how do commercial concerns ply their craft in an industry that is user-centric? What do they do differently to participate in the language of social media users?

Let's take a look at three distinguishing aspects of social media: their transformation of how we talk, how that talk is distributed, and what kinds of relationships we maintain while talking.

Social media provide new forms of talk, using multiple media types, across many different platforms, in long and short form, in front of different kinds of audiences, and appearing of course in a diverse number of forms: from pages to "streams." Commercial interests need to learn these forms of talk, as they would need to learn any new mass media format. Because most campaigns still rely heavily on banner and display advertising, the opportunities ahead for embedded and conversational advertising are great.

We might consider, for example:

• New socially-interactive ad units


• New types of content, group, event, and conversation sponsorship


• New advertising units to take advantage of the medium's many kinds of talk: reviews, recommendations, invitations, questions and answers, tweets, feeds, and so on


• New types of social games with embedded and actionable (playable) ads


• New kinds of narrative, including branching and participatory stories


• Feed-based marketing that offers event tickets, time-sensitive discounts, and so on to friends


• Sponsored reviews and recommendations appealing to those who spot trends and share discoveries


• Question/Answer formats appealing to end user expertise

Social media provide new means of distribution, using many social platforms, on which different kinds of audiences are assembled, for talk that is fast or slow, structured or loose, categorized or streaming, and using all media types available (text, message, video, game, animation, audio). Commercial interests might implement campaigns in multiple media types and for different applications. Here again, interactive and online ad agencies are still using conventional web 1.0 approaches, so there are wins ahead for new creative efforts.

We might consider, for example:

• Feed-based marketing


• Feed-based and direct-action advertising offers


• Social applications built around popular online social activities


• Social ad networks


• Mobile promotions tied to location or social networks


• User interest-based and targeted promotions

Social media offer new types of relationship, including closed groups of affiliates, colleagues, co-workers, and friends, friend-networks, follower audiences, blog subscribers, and more. Commercial interests can appeal to the network as well as the individual, or to the audience and context in general. And again, many departments would rather run their campaigns from the sidelines, and opt out of directly engaging the social media conversation space. The opportunities for success here, I suspect, are a matter of the depth of engagement commercial interests are willing to test.

Here we might consider:

• Commercial marketing to and through influencers


• Event offers and promotions distributed through inviters


• Branding and advertising to the social graph through top recommenders and influencers


• Group sales and promotions to social networks and trust circles

I feel that I have only touched on what can yet be done. With the user's permission (and that is a big "if," I'll admit, but that said, we love brands and we identify through commodities, so...) there is room for a new kind of "adversation" or "convertising." Consumer interests in consumption and things consumed are real, and genuine -- the threat of spam or commercialization is a matter of how it is handled.

I began by claiming that social media were as much a verb as a noun. Well, so the contents of media are people. People are fragile. But they can be moved. Simply handle with care.

News and Feeds: Power Curve to the Long Tail?

The web, and the social web in particular, has been hailed for its contribution to a new economic principle: the long tail. It was brought to our attention convincingly a couple years back by Wired editor Chris Anderson, and has since enjoyed its own long tail of popularity. The argument goes, basically, that the web's connectedness, combined with its increasing use as communication among users, not only sustains but often accretes visibility to qualified products and services *over time*.

The marketing blitz favored by short-term and launch campaigns (the power curve) calls upon the attention supplied during a curious and enthusiastic audience. The long tail offers the opportunity for a much more slowly accumulating span of attention, which is the attention brought to the product or service by the interested user. Where the power curve delivers newsworthy results, the long tail delivers powerpoint-ready follow through.

Long tail is the discovery economy. It's a sort of "socialization of search results" -- it works by qualifying the value of results by means of social participation. The big stories in long retail have been entertainment and media consumption, e.g. Netflix, Yelp, Amazon, and so on: sites that enable discovery along the lines of "what I like" by means of meta data captured through site use and social participation along the lines of "things that are alike" and possibly "liked by members who are alike" and/or "liked by like-minded members" (the difference is associating people on the basis of what they like or whether they seem alike: interests vs. identities)...

Long tail works by talk -- a kind of structured talk (because it captures the declaration of like, the level of like, the likes associated, and then of course cross-indexes those with item data and meta data such as category, genre, etc). So it works because it happens when users are interested. And a user who is interested, like a user who is searching, is a good indicator of value and relevance.

Now let's consider the dramatic growth in conversational media: represented by tools like twitter and friendfeed. These are not tools designed to capture content in depth. Nor do they extract much by way of meta data, taxonomic relations, etc. They're designed for simplicity and used for a faster form of talk than we get in walled-garden social networking sites. But as there is a great deal of activity in the conversation, much of it highly relevant and most of it uniquely particular to its users, it behooves us to ask: what value can be extracted from the content and relationships of conversational media?

Where in these media would an advertiser wish to be? In the tweet? Between tweets? Alongside the twitterer, his or her stream, with or without friends? Or perhaps in search results? Hashtagged? ... You get the picture. Advertising always wants to be placed in the best context possible -- but the context of conversational media is highly biased towards use and utility. If twitter were ham radio, the context of use would be the microphone; the context advertisers know to recognize is not the microphone, but what comes out of the speaker. What gives conversational media their utility is their functionality. To use another analogy, we don't use phones for listening -- hence our resistance to tele-marketing. Of course, I have a suspicion, unproven, that far more attention is paid by twitters to the tweeting than to the tweet reading. That's a bias I think is shared by all posting media, and a reason for their high redundancy of communication.

There is enormous interest by third parties and by media-related businesses in the rise of conversational media. They want to know how to leverage these tools for their own purposes, be this through participation and engagement, or by monitoring and tracking. Social media marketing and advertising will mine status, news, activity, and other self-talk and conversational feeds for the kinds of valued relationships (people to people, people to things, events, etc) and associations (people in groups, audiences; things in groups, categories) they contain. The strategy here, however, may not be long tail.

Indeed the coming feed market may want to think in terms of the power curve. The personal and social news-making they are mostly used for have more in common with the power curve of news in general than they do with in-depth discovery. You might argue that discovery is surfaced through conversational tools, as in the blogs we read and then tweet to. Conversational monitors, and tools like Radian6, Buzzlogic, and smaller twitter monitoring apps, might then combine deep blog crawling for long tail value, and feed/conversational content for the power curve (breaking news, memes, viral, etc).

It will be interesting to see where this goes. I don't think that the influencer approach most often cited as a model for conversational value is the be all and end all. It comes out of social networking models, and misses the conversational dynamics of talk tools. I suspect that the best mining applications will take a time-oriented approach over a network-based approach. (The network of followers is no network, it's a list, and there's no guarantee that the audience represented by a list of followers is paying attention to the stream).

Conversational media are short on content and long on activity. But if the medium is the message, the message value of conversation media may be on the envelope.

Let's talk about social media marketing

To extend my thoughts on people vs content further, let's consider the opportunities for those in marketing, PR, and advertising who hope yet to realize value by engaging social media. In spite of their differences, one thing these industries have in common is a taste for volume. Their taste for success is a taste for more, and their appetites sated best by high calorie helpings of servings that perform.

That said, we all know that high volume advertising across social media are just *this* far off the bottom of the feed trough. Just ask Scott Rafer of Lookery (here's Allen Stern's interview with him, dated but relevant). CPMs are notoriously low on social media because users are disinclined to pay attention to ads whilst they're busy with friends. But sites like MySpace and Facebook serve up a huge number of pages, and are the equivalent of the outdoor advertising marketplace online.

Richer, more embedded, better targeted (by means of micro-targeting to the user, social graph targeting to the group, or social context targeting to audiences of followers) marketing is a better indicator of the future of online marketing. But as anyone in this space knows, ROI is not yet measurable, as is performance. In order for one-to-one or relationship marketing to make their comeback in the guise of social media marketing, industry and application standards will need to show success. And those successes will need to be evangelized by the social media community as case studies and best practices. The phase of application and service innovation is maturing, and is ready for adoption by those who can see a path to engagement.

And now back to my point on people vs content. It strikes me that there's a fork in the path to adoption, one that possibly reflects a choice between people or content.

On the People side are those of us heralding the cause of influencers and influencer metrics, supported by social media practices like following and friending. Industry speak on the social graph, on conversation, on feeds, lifestreaming, flow apps, and so on all suggest that marketers should get in with the people doing the talking, by means of course of the talk tools we all use (twitter, friendfeed, etc).

And on the Content side are those of us who champion the visibility and relevance of social media news, supported by social media practices like content rating, digging, aggregation, blogging, posting and commenting. Industry speak on the value add of socializing the web, of user generated content, of conversation around published and wired stories, videos, images, and more all suggest that marketers get in front of the context in which social media content is produced and consumed.

These are possibly just two sides of the same coin. Marketers can approach influencers and through them obtain exposure to more relevant audiences, and by means of more valued and trusted sources. Or marketers can buy exposure in the sites, on the pages, and possibly in the feeds that get the most traction, thereby and presumably reaching those most influential and attentive.

I've seen more discussion around influencers and the need for a measure of social impact than I have around their content. This could be that content is covered by web analytics and page rank, search, etc already. Or it could be that social content still awaits robust and reliable sentiment and semantic tools (yes, there are some but social talk is notoriously lacking in the context and meta data that content analysis needs for accuracy).

So I don't know if the distinction I'm making is material in the end. Current marketing and advertising practices continue to emphasize exposure: messages are placed alongside audiences and their activity. But merely being contiguous to the social isn't good enough. One wants to be in and of the social. So perhaps the industry still needs its paradigm shift. From being in front of the audience to being in the audience, and from being associated with the consumer to talking with the consumer, attentive both to who she is and what she says.

It's all words, but some words are more equal than others

Words. Wrapping up west wing last night (I had left the final episodes of season 7 dangling unseen for months, obtaining, as is the law of desire, more pleasure from anticipation than from the satisfaction itself, though I hope this does not apply to the current election year), I got a real kick from the show's depiction of political campaigns, and messaging in particular. The show's characters, brilliant beyond what is possible in the swift repartee and back-channel corridor correspondence they so effortlessly carry on, day after notable day, in the hallowed halls of the White House, drop political messages as culturally on target as they are tactically on point. Practically inventing policy from the wings of power, they print flights of fancy on poetic updrafts that, as if in winged migration, rise above the current political climate's spin cycle like the bouncy air that escapes a laundromat. Their words lift, and with them, our spirits.

At risk of overburdening the better angels of our nature with the heavy load of worn laundry, however, I'll cut out the preamble and let old Uncle Abe be.

All words are equal but some are more equal than others.

A philosophical moment here, then, on social and conversational media , on what we do with them and how analytical tools can make sense of them. And on the differences in both Kinds of Talk and the markets that are moved by them.

Strategic talk: this kind of talk wants to move the recipient, the listener, the audience, and without sincere concern for what s/he/t/hey *think*, produce a response or action.

Communicative talk: this kind of talk wants to maintain a relationship, create and build understanding, if not agreement. And even if it fails to produce consensus or peace, at least bridge differences and create some common ground upon which might grow a common wealth.

Professional and business needs and interests: are PR, marketing, advertising, branding, sales, and so on, and have an interest in distributing their message as well as in tracking audience follow through.

End users: more often than not, simply want to use the tools without hassle from the salesforce, for the purpose of coordinating daily realities and building and enjoying friendships online

Problem: Arriving at what is the unit of meaning that matters.

Solution: Varies by the profession, business interest, in other words the beholder in whose eyes value takes recognizable shape.

Current conversation and social media analytics still focus on words. Words can be searched. Sentiments cannot be searched. Opinions cannot be searched. Friendships cannot be searched. Influence cannot be searched. And attention cannot be searched. Yet.

Words look the same because the medium flattens speech into text, eliminates genre, idiom, style, and relationship from the form of writing analyzed.

In the case of speech, the utterance, utterer, and meaning uttered do not coincide: what a person says, and means in saying it, offer two distinct acts, and the listener can watch the person talking, or take what he says at "its word." But the speaker is not present for the production of meaning online, and only the words remain. Context, stylistics, intent, and so on can now only be inferred.

Words. We search them and from the results, try to obtain narrative, message, opinion, recommendation, review, conversation, even relationship, expertise, and psychology. We find the patterns we can see, and miss those we do not yet know how to map or model. The use of conversational and social analytics across social media is still focused on words, and the patterns we use rely on a coincidence of word use across all forms of online writing and talk. What we see is often what we want to see, what we can do is what we can think of doing.

The needs of PR
PR is about articulating messages that both define facts and seek to shape opinions. It's a form of impression management in which the burden is placed on the messaging to present the best face, the most appealing story, with the least controversy, and yet in a voice of measured integrity and with as much corporate sincerity as possible.

PR is an art -- the art of practicing strategy and executing tactically in forms that border on the personal. The press release is not so much a statement issued by a company as it is a statement already written about the company. Produced by an inside or outside department or agency, it takes the public's position on the company. This alone makes it interesting, for in taking the position of the consumer, outsider, market or what have you, the press release is highly suggestive: "here's what we would like you to think about us, in words you might find easy to pass along or quote" -- the release heads off controversy and anticipates challenges to the extent that it can, and is already a first cycle in spin.

I say this without judgment -- PR is an interesting form of discourse, and not a simple one. It requires a certain amount of knowledge not only of the company being written about, but about the audience being written to. PR is useless if it doesn't fly. But PR is even more valuable if it is picked up by end users, consumers, and so on, and passed along that way. There's no competing with the power of a message voiced in the first person consumer.

Some of the ways in which PR can benefit from social media and conversation tools like twitter would include:

distribution: how far has the message been distributed?
influencers: by whom?
pickup: with what kind of impact and pickup?
citations: where has it been cited/linked to?
On message quotes: where do we see direct citations, and by whom?
Off message quotes: where do we see topical citations, but reworded (and why? for credibility? or as a challenge to our message?)

Speed and acceleration: how quickly does our message get out? is it rapidly reported and then tails off, or does it accelerate? can we map that distribution path?

Tracking PR through social media:

• track messaging
  
• track mentions
  
• track links
  
• track circulation
  
• track comments and commentaries
  
• track reactions (sentiments)
  
• track influencers
  
• track social media pickup
  

The needs of branding

Branding has to do with the impression a brand makes on its customers (as well as a broader audience). This impression is part image, part message, part feeling, part tone, style, class, taste, and so on. Some brands want to be easy to identify with. Some play hard to get and out of reach. Some brands enjoy broad popularity, others seek to stand at the pinnacle of perceived value... Brands have historically sought out the advertising and branding media that suit their messaging and brand the best. And the internet has not historically been a site of deep value. Rather, it's seen as a medium that flattens out the differences between brands, that reduces margins to zero, laughs at loyalty, and which replaces the market of scarcity with one of surplus. It is hard, brands may feel, to rise above the sheer volume and availability of goods sold through commerce online. 

Might social media offer new possibilities? Audiences that want to show their brand allegiance publicly? Groups that enjoy brand affiliation? Markets that subscribe to a brand and buy with affinity? Consumers able to show their brand identities -- motivated by the social rivalry and mutually reinforcing "desire" that capitalist forces are meant to unleash when more people want the same thing than can  have it? 

Would users make brand announcements in their status or feed updates? Would they place brand decals on their facebook or myspace pages? Create slide shows, animations, videos, and other mashups in which they recontextualize pop culture, friends, and brands into one living and dynamic expression of co-branded personality and style? Or sign up to brand pages on social networking sites, track and subscribe to feeds, event announcements, participate in boards, forums, and so on and so forth?

Branding is about listening, watching, and possibly about leading consumer messaging and uptake -- but with an interest in seeing one's brand embedded in common discourse. So in this sense, yes, a brand wants to track conversations on social media: for the impressions made, for expressions in which it is embedded, for the phrases, images, and other kinds of statements that end users (consumers) add to the brand. For sentiments expressed about the brand, to whom, in front of whom, and so on.... Some brands may want to become conversational -- that is, reduce the separation between themselves and their consumers, and instead welcome and participate in dialog, trust-building interactions, and mutually enlightening exchanges. Not all, in fact most brand will not do this -- it is risky (or seen as risky), it takes control away from brand managers, and it can be seen to reduced brand equity (insofar as equity is "distinction" not provided by the common person)... But many may try, and those to do so first stand to benefit from the novelty of social media branding the most.

Tracking branding through social media:

• track impressions
  
• track sentiment
  
• track propagation
  
• track social media mentions
  
• track authentic speech for phrases, expressions
  
• track markets for affinity groups
  

The needs of market research

• track competition
  
• track trends
  
• track culture
  
• track society
  
• track mass media hits
  
• track social media cultures
  

The needs of sales

• track sales
  
• track seo
  
• track propagation
  
• track clickthroughs
  
• track interest
  
• track social media links, feed, profile page mentions
  
• track competition
  
• track reviews
  
• track recommendations
  
• track ratings
  

The needs of event promotion

• track word of mouth
  
• track reach
  
• track influence
  
• track trends
  
• track anticipation
  
• track sentiment
  
• track buzz
  
• track social graph adoption and pickup
  
• track changes over time as event nears
  

Note: this post is "ongoing".... 

Social Analytics and Understanding the User

I've been having a fascinating time reading through papers on NextStage Evolution, a company in the business of metrics and online media analysis. And I'm compelled to write briefly on some core methodological principles, primarily because the methodology behind social analytics warrants careful consideration. All of us in this space want to know what the user wants, does, and might likely do. That would be valuable information, and having it would allow us to anticipate and deliver, and engage, with users. Unfortunately, user's don't declare their motives or intentions, and so it is up to analysis to model user interests from user behavior.

I sincerely believe that social media analysis needs to account not only for the user's proximate activities, those being his or her online behavior and actions as trackable by analytical tools (be they within a walled garden social network, on and around blogs, in conversation tools like twitter, or even through social applications and widgets), but also deeper and less available interests. These are the interests that underlie interpersonal interactions, communication, and relationships. And no matter how near or far interactions, communication, or relationships may appear through social media applications, they form the basis of user agency.

Agency is a sociological concept, and it underlies user actions and activities. Agency, to me, involves intentionality and motive, as well as content (information), and is interested (identifies or attaches to an object or subject). User experience is about agency. Interaction design is about agency. And inaction can be about agency, too. Fundamental to the concept of agency is that of self-reflexivity -- that we know what we are doing.

In social situations, activity and interaction are framed. That is, they unfold within a frame, which is to say that they make sense within context, and over a stretch of time. And in social interaction, the frame is often mutually constructed -- two or more people know what they are doing and if asked, would describe the situation they are in with a high level of agreement. Their recognition of the frame would agree even if they are in disagreement with one another.

This contextuality of action, I think, applies to mediated interactions as it does to face to face encounters. The difference is real, but is understood. Some interesting misinterpretations of intent, motive, interest, and so on of course occur online, and indeed can enrich the experience with a touch of play, self-reference, and so on. But as is the case of the comedian who tells a joke about a pope in an airplane telling a story about an ace fighter pilot.... frames can be layered and embedded within one another, and we come out the other end for the most part still making sense.

I bring all of this up because it informs how we read and interpret, and thus also design, anticipate, and model, social media user experiences and social practices. Users provide more than just information and at the same time are less than informing. Our models need to interpret, for example, whether a user has recommended a movie to somebody, in front of a community, to be shared among friends, because she enjoys writing reviews, has a reputable movie blog, is considered (or believes herself to be considered) a movie expert, or believes in the principle of contributing reviews to the common good.

Would we get this from the review itself? Not likely. From envelope information (to whom it's addressed, how messaged, where posted, how delivered)? From comments and their agreement/disagreement? From past movies reviewed? From movie categories covered (e.g. new releases vs film noir). I belabor the point -- it's complex (though do-able). In all cases, however, agency is neither explicit nor stated. ("I hereby submit this movie review to this esteemed blog for the sake of my reputation as a budding film noir critic and blogging habitue".)...

Designing social media to engage users is much simpler than accurately interpreting their actions, for design succeeds as long as users are compelled by their own experience. Users will remain engaged even if the experience is riddled with theft, robbery, and deception. To wit, Vegas. Social interaction designers don't need to know what compels a user, as long as they understand that there is a range of users, and that their system facilitates communication and interaction, as well as an experience of presence which varies user by user, and which leads to social practices in the aggregate. Users work with what is given, on the screen and architecturally, as well as with those others who are present, and participating. Online interactions don't have to be efficient, or even effective, to be rewarding.

But like the anthropologist studying a culture from the outside, or an archaelogist interpreting the meanings of cultural artifacts and found objects, analytical software, as a non-participant, is confronted with a more profound challenge: reverse engineering the artifacts, button presses, posts, comments, ratings, bookmarks and so on left behind by users whose mindfulness or mindlessness would be impossible to measure, and at times difficult to distinguish.

Information about what users do is not available in the information about what users have done.

This is where I tack differently from models based more squarely in data analysis and user activity tacking and measurement. Those methods, and I'm not a qualified statistician, may observe the disaggregated and yet predict in the aggregate, and successfully so, if we are to place any faith whatsoever in the long tail. Metrics may serve purposes of campaign analysis and even management. But engagement (social media marketing) tools would require a communicable messaging and engagement platform. The difference? Agency. Communicable engagement seeks not the acceptance of the user but his or her participation -- it anticipates the significance of agency.

I so strongly believe that social analytics ought to be rooted in an intersubjective framework of action, and not one of information gathering alone, that I'll close with a few quotes from Erving Goffman, master observer of social interactions and mentor in spirit:

"Given a speaker's need to know whether his message has been received, and if so, whether or not it has been passably understood, and given a recipient's need to show that he has received the message and correctly—given these very fundamental requirements of talk as a communication system—we have the essential rationale for the very existence of adjacency pairs, that is, for the organization of talk into two-part exchanges. We have an understanding of why any next utterance after a question is examined for how it might be an answer." Erving Goffman, Forms of Talk, P. 12

"Note that insofar as participants in an encounter morally commit themselves to keeping conversational channels open and in good working order, whatever binds by virtue of system constraints will bind also by virtue of ritual ones. The satisfaction of ritual constraints safeguards not only feelings but communication, too." Erving Goffman, Forms of Talk, p. 18

"And just as system constraints will always condition how talk is managed, so, too, will ritual ones. Observe that unlike grammatical constraints, system and ritual ones open up the possibility of corrective action as part of these very constraints. Grammars do not have rules for managing what happens when rules are broken." Erving Goffman, Forms of Talk, 21

"Uttered words have utterers; utterances, however, have subjects (implied or explicit), and although these may designate the utterer, there is nothing in the syntax of utterances to require this coincidence." Erving Goffman, Forms of Talk 3

"The rules of conduct which bind the actor and the recipient together are the bindings of society. But many of the acts which are guided by these rules occur infrequently or take a long time for their consummation. Opportunities to affirm the moral order and the society could therefore be rare. It is here that ceremonial rules play their social function, for many of the acts which are guided by these rules last but a brief moment, involve no substantive outlay, and can be performed in every social interaction. Whatever the activity and however profanely instrumental, it can afford many opportunities for minor ceremonies as long as other persons are present. Through these observances, guided by ceremonial obligations and expectations, a constant flow of indulgences is spread through society, with others who are present constantly reminding the individual that he must keep himself together as a well demeaned person and affirm the sacred quality of these others. The gestures which we sometimes call empty are perhaps in fact the fullest things of all." Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual, 91




To put this simply, if it were Prime Suspect (or my favorite, Cracker), vs CSI -- I'd pick Prime Suspect.

Mining social media

I had some compelling conversations with Joseph Carrabis of Nextstage Evolution this past week at SNCR's NewComm Forum where I was also formulating what I'll be doing this year as a sr research fellow. Joseph's company has a patented method for predicting or anticipating user behaviors online. As described, the patent sounded quite broad, but with or without patent his approach was interesting.

It's based on a number of user profiles based on information. I'm a relational and communication-oriented person, so I took some friendly issue with his approach. Insofar as the social web is a communication space, and social media facilitate talk -- in varying degrees of speed, depth, persistence, contextuality, and topicality, I can't see how a model can ignore characteristics of communication and interpersonal psychology.

When our interactions are mediated, ambiguities of intent, trust, sincerity, motive and so on seep into online communication. Psychology and personality differentiate user behavior as they do in any social encounter, and people engage and respond according to their tendencies, sensitivities, and blind spots.

A combination of user psychology (developed perhaps in the form of personality types modified to suit communication styles online) and information-centric interests and preferences might make for a powerful tool. And as the glut of information online is intensified by the sudden popularity of talk tools like Twitter as well as feed-based applications, anyone interested in reaching users/consumers by interest, affinity, or taste, will need intelligent engagement tools.

This will be a huge market. And the companies that not only succeed on the analytical side of monitoring, tracking, and measuring user behavior but also on the engagement side of giving marketers, publishers, and advertisers targeted, social graph-informed, and actionable campaign management tools will pull in some serious cash.

The social web is a gold mine. And as was the case during the gold rush, it's the guys selling mining tools that will make a killing.

Of Military and Men, or Influencers in the mass and social media

<embed> Influencer </embed>
<type = "military man">
<look = "uniformed">
<display = "next to anchorman">
<play = "when Iraq goes poorly">

<repeat = "as necessary">


According to a feature-length story in the New York Times this sunday it seems that the military has been using Influencers to get its message out. These are the guys that you see on TV news and talk shows extemporizing on their personal and professional experience to lend unique perspectives and insights to what's happening "on the ground" in Iraq. Some of them speak to military strategy and tactics, appearing on TV, and sometimes in uniform, to guide news anchors and civilian discussants.

Apparently these guys have been courted by the Pentagon for years, and during the Rumsfeld years even provided him with talking points. How to reach the audience and simplify the story for them (us).

The military's been doing Influence marketing-style, but in mass media. (There was no mention of these guys having blogs, and I haven't the time to check.) A couple questions spring to mind: Are we surprised? (probably not.) Could this happen in social media? (probably not.)

Mass media according to the rules of corporate media, which is to say that they are owned by large profit-making concerns. While they are as keen on making the news interesting as the blogosphere, their tendency will be to weave new information into a tight and closed narrative form. They tell stories. We in the blogosphere opinionate, bug, goad, poke and disclose. However, the mass media still believe that their best narrative structure is the story. And when the story itself lacks a clear beginning, middle, and (in this case particular) ending, use of experts and authorities shifts the burden from narrative to narrator.

In this they have the gist of Influence nailed, absolutely. But in that Influence is embedded within official and even ideological, partisan, or agency dogma, its utility as promotional speech is exhausted on behalf of official and biased needs and interests. The influence of (ex) military consultants borrows from the professional role and position. It is not the same kind of influence that social media marketers, for example, use when embedded in messages among cultural influencers. These military experts must be brought into the mass media if they are to have and exercise influence. It's not influence borrowed (as in social media) but influence regenerated. Influence not from self-presentation but from re-presentation.

The common challenge facing those of us in mass media is commerce and maintaining the line between commercial and everyday speech that separates advertising and sales, which are discourses lacking authenticity, and ordinary talk, which do lay claim to authority and credibility. The type of influence used in the case noted by the New York Times, however, is one of "officialdom" and the power of position and normative authority.

If in mass media, influence of position and authority can be better maintained than in social media because mass media are top-down talking head news and reporting, sustained by the credibility invested in the medium and business of journalism and broadcast news. The medium, as well as its mode of distribution, more easily maintain the cycle and engine of legitimation that culminates in the appearance of professional experts on broadcast talk shows and the evening news. This is legitimation by control, by production, and by fabrication. It's expertise subject to the editing room.

Social media seek (in theory and in word, at least) a different kind of influence: peer review and approval. The medium and the form of discourse that it supports are wide open. In fact they can approach forms of conversational talk, even. This is no medium for the accreditation and credibility of the role and position -- it's a medium in which credibility is obtained from the risk and exposure of participation and interaction.

All influencers are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Psychological profiling and forensic analysis -- in social media?

Ever since Fritz Lang's "M," featuring a maniacal performance by Peter Lorre in the role of a marked man (literally - ! ) furtively evading a public stirred by published reports of a child molester on the loose, we've had a dark fascination with the mentality of criminals. They are pursued by cops, private eyes, private citizens, mobs and mobsters, and more recently, forensic professionals. Witch hunts aside, the two most common methods of capturing the criminal are with deductive or inductive reasoning: the analysis of evidence, or psychological insight. The pursuers either read the signs of the crime for the criminal behind it, or figure out where he's likely to strike next based on a grasp of his motives and obsessions.

It would be interesting to apply this to social media analysis... One might use site and user behavior and activity to form a bed of evidence, and accompany that with insights into user psychology, habits, tastes, preferences, and other interests, for predictive purposes. With a solid framework marketers and advertisers might more successfully reach the right consumer at the right time. A multiply-targeted and designed campaign, scripted to appeal according to user interests, and launched into the user activities most likely to reach that consumer, and to provide the greatest benefit to the marketer, would eliminate some of the wasted effort of today's online marketing.

It's worth the thought. After all, it took decades for the film industry to produce the genres we're familiar with today. At this time we're still in the nascent stages of creating genres of social activity online -- and truth be told most of them have been designed and engineered by, well, designers and engineers. Content owners and producers, those in publishing and entertainment for example, have yet to engage broadly in using social media tools not only to promote and distribute but to create and develop their properties. So what we know of social media is a reflection still of what the end user does with them -- unencumbered by scripts or production value, but also perhaps wanting for more compelling experiences and narratives.

It wouldn't be difficult to imagine a marketing industry that takes advantage of the bridging opportunities here. Social media marketing vehicles might emerge that are far more interactive, narrative, engaging, and content-rich than the simple viral and pass-along popups and widgets we're seeing even today. This might be a case of wishful thinking, it's hard to tell. But it's safe to say that we've yet to push the frontiers here.

We may still be in social media's era of silent film. Could it be that we've yet to think of what we'll do with the "talkies?"

Hashing through twitter hashtags -- a look at structured conversation

In my ongoing binge to ferret out the social mechanics of twitter third party sites and tools, hashtags deserves attention. It's small, and by all appearances might die on the vine, which would be sad. But if the great culling whose season draws near were to remove hashtags from the social media dna pool, it would be for reasons owing less to the operationaI think and more to fundamental problems with the user experience.

Hashtags make a big demand on the twitterer. They ask that she tag up posts while writing, which requires a) added effort, b) a pause to reflect on meta while composing, c) a sense of the benefit provided to folks who search by tag in the future. (A) and (b) pull the user out of the immediacy of twittering -- not much, but maybe enough to matter.

I remember working with a startup that was into the idea of tagging up chats for better discovery -- of like-minded chatters and of topically-related chats. I thought the idea was great, especially because chats aren't logged, and in theory at least the promise of social web is to connect people around what they talk about (in common). But to get meta from talk requires either automation or a change of user behavior. Either sites and services mine talk for the meta, and build links and suggestions of topics and talkers, or the user declares meta while talking (or just after, as in tagging).

Chat was one problem, twitter is similar. Because twitter is a kind of slow-moving chat. And like all other feed-related sites and tools, twitter I think aims to do more than provide dis-intermediated chat channels. Unless I'm completely mistaken, there are a lot of folks out there who believe that there's value in fast web conversations, call it feeds, micro-blogging, or what have you.

And because it's always hard to structure a conversation and to keep it on topic, not to mention expect users to follow topical threads, the goal of hashtags was to capitalize on what's said *inside* of posts. Their benefit would be to extract topical continuity and consistency from disparate flows (conversations) -- to re-flow if you will, by tag.

The benefit of exposing and surfacing common topical threads from talk accrues primarily to those who come along after the posts have been published. That's the purpose of topical mining, and it's an approach to making the web useful that Google has mastered for pages. But for posts, or conversational turns, the challenge is huge.

Conversation is notoriously poor at providing explicit meta about itself. It's just not how it works or how we talk. We know what we're talking about when we talk, and it involves the person(s) with whom we're talking. We don't declare what we're talking about if it can be already understood. Seo is built on this -- embedding meta in copy and pages for better search results. If you're talking about orchids you're unlikely to speak "flowers" in the same breath. We don't supply meta while talking (Dave Sifry used to describe this as getting meta out of the exhaust).

A lot of social web sites live on the principle of using a small number of active participants to produce content that can be enjoyed by those who come later. The good ones, like Yelp, offload the member-to-member communication from the topical content as much as possible. In Yelp's case, with gestural tokens, a questions page, etc -- to keep the reviews as clean as possible. (Could tweeted reviews work even? They'd devolve into highly subjective recommendations probably.)

Two challenges face hashtags. First is getting the user to tag as an act of talking. Second is that all tags are equal. There's neither vertical hierarchy (tag, subtag, subsubtag) nor modal organization. The latter is interesting, and worth a note, and since I just made it up I need to think out loud here a minute.

Talk is not all equal. Statements of speech can be declarative, performative, can be a form of request or appeal, and so on. Just think of the differences in the kind of utterance that are: invitation, recommendation, flirt, factual declaration, opinion, observation, question, answer. Modal organization of tweets would suggest that in addition to semantic tagging we have statement types: question, recommendation, announcement, link, flirt, and so on. You can see where this goes: Yahoo has Answers, Facebook has social apps, Linkedin has recommendations, Yelp has symbolic tokens, Google has (wait, google doesnt seem to get social. oops), etc etc.

So on hashtags, if you root around, you'll find some totally unorganized examples of this. There are (and oddly or not so oddly enough Germans seem to have gotten into organizing talk -- I lived in Berlin for a year and a half so I've had fun comparing German and English equivalents...). On hashtags there are posts tagged "now," "love" "jokes" -- tags that suggest the modal type of tweet. "Now" is not a topic but leads to conversations about what users are doing. "Love" is as much an expressive identifier (I'm in love, who's in love?) as much as it is a factual identifier. "Jokes" is topical, but it also is an attractor for quips and humor -- and joking is a performative form of speech unto itself if anything is.

When social media work to produce informative content for those who primarily consume, it's because they are a means of production. By analogy to the industrial age, the communication age (our era) uses information technologies as means of production. Communication acts leave behind content. Interaction tools that simultaneously publish to a public, as are all social media, "manufacture" a new form of talk. It's mass media gone social. But we know this already.

Is there a soft or hard threshold, then, for social media tools that ask the user to produce meta while in the act of posting/talking? Believers in the public utility of the social web as a means of democratizing the media and information might say no. Believers in connectivity, communication, and the social utility of social media might say yes. Hashtags sits between the two.

Much of my work involves helping social media companies to engineer interactions and communication for the purpose of producing leftover utility to latecomers and consumers. It's a social engineering challenge -- call it the art of generating unintended utility out of useful socially practices. It's an art because it requires engaging the user's motivation. Incentives (to benefit consumers by writing restaurant reviews) only work for a handful of users. For most, the byproduct of added value has to be in the exhaust -- and the act of participation should be enough in itself to motivate engagement. Users simply have to like using the tools -- for their own reasons (which are many indeed, but that's a whole different story).

Let's quickly take a look at this from a different angle -- social media marketing. Twitter offers the promise of mining and tracking conversations, if not participating in them, with an unprecedented degree of proximity, directness, and immediacy. Twitter search engines and meme trackers currently offer more breadth than hashtags for the simple reason that many more users simply type "movies" than type "#movies." But check "movies" on a site like summize (say you're a social media marketer), and results will include this: "Uncle. I can't work on this paper anymore. Let's go to the movies!." Use hashtags and you'll get better posts, though far fewer, because users have declared their topical selection of "movies." Intent is among the metrics measured by those in social analytics, and you can't get better than hashtags for that.

If only users could be asked to declare their intentions while conversing so that mining companies could extract the gold! No, it seems far more likely that the success stories and serendipitous moments ahead for web 2.0 will be found among those tools that can engineer social interactions such that the meta is an accurate but unintended byproduct of talk and engagement. (Beacon?) We'll have to watch this unfold and keep testing the frontiers. Either way, there's a lot to talk about.

Hashtags

Twitter for social marketing? Tweetvolume, Summize, and the Holy Grail

Checking out some of the innumerable twitter third party apps with an eye to the use of twitter in marketing and branding. If the social media marketers have it right, twitter ought to be an ideal social marketing tool. It's a street-level conversation tool, it's authentic and is used (still) by users for users. Unpolluted so far by commercial messaging, it ought to offer the promise of direct engagement with consumer audiences.

I'm still unsure of how close marketers can get to everyday talk without the serious risk of losing face and credibility. My gut tells me that there's a cultural wall (to wit, Beacon's Faceplant?) or threshold beyond which marketers and advertisers hoping to feed on the Feed risk losing face for their overzealousness.

Branding and marketing campaigns want to preserve some control over their message -- that's only natural. Facebook members want to determine their appearance, too. But the awe inspired in marketing departments at the occasional viral success story still shines, like a beacon of hope, and the grail they seek is none other than the same enlightened redemption any good capitalist dreams of when the light strikes just right.

Can one quest for the grail if it means heralding the masses towards a destination already known? Or is the grail a serendipitous discovery that awaits only those leaders willing to be swept up in the giddy abandon of a gathering mob? Is the allegory I'm reaching for Monty Python or Full Monty? The marketer who leads his people to the grail risks being discovered as the Emperor with no clothes. The marketer who is misled by his people, too, may wind up disrobed before his audience.

If the consumer who feels she can trust a brand as she trusts the naked truth, that is, she's in conversation with a brand and the brand is in conversation with her, then there would be truth in advertising. And that would be a leap (of faith?!).

It strikes me that social media marketing and advertising want to be in "the flow," but from what I have seen of the social media release so far, participation in social media is not yet truly conversational. Twitter would be used for social media releases, for PR, in other words for a form of public "direct" messaging. In the hopes that it is picked up womm-style and passed around at street level.

But twitter and other talk tools are conversational, and there might be fundamental constraints on how easily a non-conversational participant (brand) achieves success if it remains only the author of its messages. Sure, twitter is a faster flow, but it's also a slow chat. And conversations cannot be controlled.

As you can see from the results on TweetVolume comparing Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and Puma, Nike is the clear winner.

A quick comparison of posts on Summize mentioning Nike, Reebok, or Adidas, however, shows more negative twitter commentary on Nike about its labor practices, more earnest complimentary tweets about Reebok, and more fan tweets about Adidas.

What would the social media marketer to get an accurate view of buzz on twitter for his or her brand? At this point, read and click. Sentiment analysis would be tough on twitter because the messages are so short. Conversations would be hard to find because messages and replies are loosely coupled at best, and the density of coupled statements-responses (which would indicate conversational durability) is extremely low on twitter. One could find influencers using current metrics, but to date influencers are measured by activity more than by content or domain expertise -- so finding a mover and shaker in sneakers would require head-banging queries at a minimum.

Anecdotal signs of throughput and pickup for social media marketers, however, could be gleaned from twitter and used to supplement other forms of audience survey, polls, and online market research.

It strikes me, again, that the market for good social analytical tools would be huge. That is, if social media marketing doesn't mind a wee bit of truth.

Related twitter tools and sites:

Twitterverse A cloud view of talk on twitter
Tweetscan Like Summize.com, twitter search

[Resist] [Submit} ... advertising in facebook dialog boxes?

Here's a bug worth noting, if only for the fun of it. I've always wanted to see a dialog box pick up the cause of users everywhere by offering a choice of "submit" or "resist." Utterly useless of course. Perhaps an idea for a t-shirt.

Well this one must be a bug, because the I had just removed the exact same event successfully with options of "remove" or "do not remove." If this is social media marketing, it earns points for creativity. Whether it would count as user choice, however... Maybe if I opt not to remove and then try again I'll get a different ad in place of the "remove" button? Or is this the only sponsor the event organizer has lined up? If so, and the option is to go to the event or check out the Qbox player, I should take the latter. But will it show up in my activity feed? And if it did would my feed state that I'm going to the event and checking out the Qbox player?

Will users submit to advertising of this form? Methinks they'd rather resist!

New slideshow on social media user competencies

This slideshow introduces a view of the social media user that emphasizes the sociability, communication, and interaction skills and competencies. In it I make the argument that user experience and interaction designers approach social media with the user's social interests in mind -- and not "needs" and "goals."

I set the user's interest in his or her self image, interest in others, and relational interests. These can be used to build a set of social media competencies, from "telling" about oneself to moderating conversation. Based on social skills but modified to fit the particularities of web and social apps, these competencies might offer a better approach to grasping the user experience than concepts based in a model of user needs.

The big idea here being that social, communicative, and relational "interests" are radically different than the interests based in a cognitive science-based view of the "rational actor." That said, the presentation's light on theory!

A follow-up presentation will look at psychological personalities and propose alternate "personas" for use in social media design.

Downloadable versions of this presentation (keynote, ppt, and pdf), and on slideshare.

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