New insights on the future of search, privacy and the inevitability of social media
Oct 2nd
Last week I had the honor of attending a “B2B Marketing Huddle” in London organized by Kerry Bridge, Neville Hobson, and Simon Hughes. The content was fantastic and I wanted to share with you a few highlights from one of the keynotes speakers, Dave Coplin Chief Visioning Officer – Microsoft. Here are a few quotes from this presentation that I think will get your synaptic connections firing:
Dave Coplin of Microsoft
“The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we work and communicate so why do most people have a better user experience at home than at work? How many people try to access the web at work and get, “Computer says NO.” How can any company block the social web today?”
“Companies who build up all these policies and firewalls to keep people from using the Internet at work are just wasting their time. Are they frisking you for Sudoko books? Here’s the real reason for these policies: They don’t understand, so it’s easier to just shut it off. Social media is inevitable. There will be a tipping point for every single company.”
“It’s time to end the Era of the Dumb User. These are the people who wear their disdain of computers like a badge of honor. Today, that’s like bragging that you can’t read. IT people have helped create this because they try to control it. We need to unleash the power to everyone.”
“It seems that every year is declared the ‘The year of mobile’ but I really do think it is the year of mobile. Look at it this way. I will lend you my computer but never my smartphone. This a truly personal device that delivers personal services. It gives you a window to the digital world wherever you are, whatever you are doing. This fundamentally is changing the way we work right now.”
“Bing is blending search results with the social graph. If you don’t have relevancy you have a cold, binary, alien algorithm. Web search is a needle in a billion haystacks. Can you even find a photo on your own computer? Blending search with relationships can make the search warmer.”
“Apps and search will be merging to create entirely new offerings. Apps keep search in context. It doesn’t take you where you don’t want to be. Wouldn’t you love to have “Dave’s Friday Night App” to lead you to exactly where you want to go without being at the mercy of ‘www?’ ”
“Having access to big data is going to lead us to fundamentally different conclusions about the world. Data science is the new rock and roll. Understanding how data comes together will be important for every single business of every size. This will be a key competitive advantage for those who are early on and master it.”
“Technology will eventually disappear into the background. Screens will disappear. Social TV will connect all the screens but that is just the beginning. Every single flat surface will provide contextual information. In a few years, Minority Report will be nostalgic. Information will not be plastic and glass. Every surface will be interactive, including your skin. Your arms and fingers will be the input devices.”
“The human side of social technology is behind and this will have to evolve. It has taken 20 years to start mastering cell phone etiquette. People feel anonymity makes them safe but it makes them bullies and stupid. It’s not funny. The lack of civility jeopardizes the potential of the technology. Facebook does not cause bullying. Shitheads cause bullying.”
“Privacy is a really difficult issue because the line between personal and private is different for every person. All we can do is be transparent about what we do. The ultimate search service is like getting the ‘usual’ at your favorite restaurant or pub. You can have local, personal service wherever you go, whatever store you visit. We all need to approach privacy as a journey and we are all involved in that.”
“The educational systems are not keeping up with the real world. We need to be teaching SKILLS not tools. If all you do is teach tools, you will continually teach obsolescence. Your education will be useless. We must be educating children for jobs that do not yet exist.”
“Critical thinking is the most important skill as we move forward and we’re losing it. Are you going to be satisfied living a Wikipedia life or will you seek to lead life that is based on something that is true?”
“Be human. Nobody cares about your company. How do I convince people to wake up and care what the second biggest search engine is doing today? We got our biggest Twitter following ever when we told jokes during National Cheese Week. I can’t talk about search all day every day. Don’t just engage — enchant. Do the unexpected. Connect on a level of basic human emotion — to our friends, our partners, our customers.”
“Here’s a wonderful example of a company being human. Marks & Spencer took a suggestion from one of their customers that they feature a Downs Syndrome child as a catalogue model. And they did it. Beautiful, moving. Human.”
I hope these quotes get your brain turning as much as they did for me. What has an impact on you? What got you thinking? Share a comment, won’t you?
Is there anything new in blogging? No.
Jul 31st
I walked away from the recent Blog World and New Media Expo a bit depressed and I haven’t been able to shake it.
Running concurrently with this conference — in the same convention center space — was the National Book Expo. Here is a rough comparison of the two events:
Blog World attendance: Maybe 2,000?
Book Fair attendance: 20,000
Blog World keynote: Chris Brogan
Book Fair Keynote: Neil Young
Blog World space: In the basement of the convention center, next to the taco stand
Book Fair space: The top level (with windows!), taking up tens of thousands of square feet of display space
Blog World schwag: Free frozen ice cream treat
Book Fair Schwag: Lunch with John Grisham
Blog World Tech: No wi-fi and maybe 30 exhibitors
Book Fair tech: Interactive exhibit produced by Disney and hundreds of industry exhibitors.
Weren’t books supposed to be dying? Isn’t new media supposed to be overtaking traditional publishing?
To be fair, this is probably not comparing apples to apples and the SXSW event is probably bigger and more star-studded than any book show. But it did drive home a point for me. I didn’t see anything ( repeat: anything) new or exciting at Blog World, one of our industry’s signature events.
Now of course I could not attend every session but I attended as many as I could and even looking through the program, I could not find anything that I had not heard many times before. Like …
What is the ROI of social media? Gag me.
How do I build a blog audience? This was a new topic in 2007.
How do I monetize a blog? Just Google it and find the 14.8 million hits on this topic, Bub.
My five keys to blogging success. If you read Chris Brogan’s blog, you would know the main points of his keynote speech by heart.
I interviewed Mike Stelzner about the biggest thing in blogging and he named “podcasts,” a technology that was introduced in 2001.
Instead of being inspired, I walked away with a sinking feeling that was only made worse by the pulsating energy and glitzy production values of the book event. I understand that for those who are trying to set out as a blogger for the first time, these are really important sessions to attend. But as somebody who has been around for awhile, I’m trying to distill some meaningful trend from this conference and I’m just not grasping it.
Is there ANYTHING new to be excited about in blogging? I’m not talking about a tweak to a commenting platform, a new way to schedule tweets, or a WordPress plug-in. What is going to change the game in blogging? What is going to take us to the next level? What IS the next level? What will replace blogging as a means to provide rich content and ideas to our audiences?
If we stagnate, we die. What’s next?
Community note: This post prompted a follow-up dissenting article by Mitch Joel and a subsequent podcast on the future of blogging where we debated this topic. This debate is not to be missed!
The Net Generation and the future of social media marketing
Jul 22nd
I saw Don Tapscott speak at SXSW and was inspired to read his excellent book Grown Up Digital
It’s a fascinating perspective and I began to think through the implications for marketing. Clearly, understanding these norms is essential to the future success of our organizations. So here are the trends he identified with a few of my thoughts on the impact this might have on social media marketing.
Customization
The Baby Boomers take technology for what it is and hope it works. Net Geners make the technology theirs. They want options. They love to customize, and even the option to customize makes a product more attractive.
- Impact – Have you noticed how people decorate their iPhones? What would it look like if your readers could customize their experience with your blog? Customize exactly what they see from your RSS feed? Why would they want your news stream when they can create their own? Ho do we enable our content consumers to determine HOW, WHEN and WHAT they receive from us?
Scrutiny
While there is an unprecedented amount of content on the web, there is also an unprecedented amount of unreliable content — spam, phishers, photo shopping, inaccuracies, hoaxes and scams. Net Geners have a high awareness of the world around them and accept few claims at face value.
- Impact – The irony is that the web is not as faceless and anonymous as we thought. The rising generation can sniff out a fake. There is little room for error. However Net Geners also are apt to forgive companies who apologize and try to make up for mistakes.
Integrity
Net Geners care about being honest, considerate, transparent, and living up to commitments. There may be some truth in pegging them as a narcissistic generation but they also care about community, close relationships, and security. The one exception here is an entitlement mentality when it comes to content. Next Geners do not want to pay for music, books and movies, even when they know it is wrong to go around the system.
- Impact - Net Geners live a double standard. While valuing honesty, they have been conditioned to steal content and think it is OK. This is the gathering storm — content publishers who depend on copyright protection for their livelihoods versus an entire generation who will not pay for it. The implications for the future of the arts and all content creators is vast.
Collaboration
Working together comes natural for a generation accustomed to chat groups, multi-user video games, and file sharing. They bring a culture of collaboration to work and the marketplace. Ubiquitous access to the web via mobile technology makes them feel they have a constant friend in their pocket. They value contributing to product design, and feedback unless they feel a company might misuse it.
- Impact — To win loyalists to our content marketing efforts, how do we involve this generation in the process? What does open-sourced company content plan look like beyond one-off contests and promotions? Collaboration is an opportunity for creativity, engagement and unprecedented loyalty.
Entertainment
Net Gener’s expect work to be play. At Microsoft’s campus, employees can play baseball, volleyball or soccer. There is a private lake, a gym, and 25 cafeterias. Xbox consoles are everywhere. They even sponsor whale-watching excursions. There is also an expectation of constant connection to web entertainment, even on the job.
- Impact — “Entertainment” is a value I have been talking a lot about in my classes. How do we institutionalize ”fun” as a content strategy? How many of our companies even think about being “more entertaining?” Three quarters of Net Geners agreed with this statement: “Having fun with a product is just as important as the product doing what it is supposed to do.”
Speed
Growing up wired means this generation is used to instant response. They have an expectation that their lives and careers will progress at the same fast pace as their online lives.
- Impact — To this group, delays of any kind result in irritation, creating an overwhelming expectation of service providers. If your typical service response to a complaint on Twitter is more than an hour, you’re going to lose customers.
Innovation
This generation has been raised in a culture of real-time innovation. Favorite mobile devices and apps improve – sometimes dramatically — every few weeks. Net Geners live to stay current. Owning the newest device contributes to social status. To stay cool, you need “new.” They are addicted to ideas and contributing to the latest innovations. Anything short of the leading technology is considered passe. Many teens I know will not even watch a movie if it is more than a year old.
- Impact — You can already see the impact on consumer electronics where product life is measured in months or even weeks. If you are in an industry that is slow to innovate, is this an opportunity for differentiation and competitive advantage?
These trends are coming at us fast and are probably already showing up in your marketplace. What ideas do you have to capitalize on this information and re-invent yourself and your company?
Illustrations courtesy of BigStock photo and Microsoft.
The link to Grown Up Digital is an affiliate link.
7 Ideas for Advanced Social Media Education
Oct 18th
For the past three years I have been teaching college or graduate level classes in social media marketing. Executives are clamoring for the next level of education in this area and so I’ve been wondering … what would an Advanced Social Media Class look like?
What new skills and ideas would go into the next level of social media education? Where do we go beyond the basic frameworks and strategies?
This is a real, live opportunity and I would love to have your input. In fact PLEASE help out with your ideas in the comment section. Let me prime the pump … here are some ideas I might include in an advanced social media class:
The politics of social media. Many companies are “checking a box” and doing social media (i.e. “we have a Facebook page”) but they are not being social because they have not adapted their traditional broadcasting culture to one that is real-time and reactive. Making the cultural change to really connect with stakeholders at the point of need is extremely difficult and it has to start at the top. Tactics to do this would make for an interesting class, don’t you think? How do you organize to optimize?
Internal applications — Last year I predicted that internal applications for social media would be the next big wave of opportunity for large companies and based on some of the successes we’re seeing this is probably coming true. Yet, this is an under-developed topic in most traditional discussions on social media. I think an exploration of how companies are realizing measurable returns on these programs would be energizing.
Exploring the Digital Divide — I’ve been touring North America with a new speech about the digital layers between companies and customers. A few years ago, every customer interaction was only between real people. Then as we started dumping customer self-service functions on to a website, we created the first digital divide between ourselves and our customers. Today, many customers prefer to be met in the social space instead of a website, creating a second digital divide and further fragmenting marketing efforts. In my speech I articulate four more layers beyond social media and we will need to meet customer needs in all these spaces. I’m working on a blog post on this topic but am having trouble keeping it short!
Return on Influence – In the post “Why Klout Matters” I presented an argument that the ability to create content, move it virally on the social web, and measure reactions to that activity represents an unprecedented opportunity. In the history of sociology, psychology, political science, and marketing, we have never been able to measure this thing called influence. Current measurements like Klout are imperfect, but they are good enough for companies like Disney, Audi, and American Express to use in new word-of-mouth influencer campaigns. This is a big deal and certainly something that should be included in an advanced class.
Integration — Combining social opportunities with traditional advertising seems like the next evolution in marketing but for reasons I don’t totally understand, it’s not gaining traction as fast as I thought it would. I remember watching the Super Bowl ads last year and thinking, “OK, this is going to be the breakthrough event for social and traditional integration,” but there was nothing. Literally nothing. In fact, has there been anything that comes close to the brilliant Old Spice initiative? Are companies keeping these efforts siloed? What are some case studies and best practices?
Beyond Business Marketing — I think it would be interesting to examine social media best practices in areas like HR, PR, politics, government, education, and non-profits. Could probably spend a whole day just on that. There are enormous opportunities in all of these areas.
International — The biggest brands are leaning hard into regional social media platforms such as Renren, Grono and Mixi. How do you navigate the increasingly complex world of fragmented national, regional … even local … sites?
OK, it’s your turn! If you attended a class in advanced social media considerations, what topics would you want to explore?
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
Groups We Believe In
