Business

Every day I read about another promise of social networking to improve your business, increase your sales and give you success beyond your wildest dreams. And frankly, it won’t. In fact, it’s probably a big waste of time for many businesses.

I say that as someone who has been involved in developing marketing angles on social networking since Blogging, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and others first began to emerge. I say that as someone who evangelized the possibilities of social networking as the future of online marketing. I say that as someone who believed and still believes that all the rules of marketing and brand management have changed. I say that as a genuine devotee of the The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Social Networking for many businesses is like…

1. It’s like jumping off the bridge with all your friends.
The sheer force of group action does not make an action right. The first question you need to ask is, “Why am I interested in social networking?” It may or may not have relevance to your market. There are plenty of businesses that thrive with absolutely no web presence. Make sure your interest in social networking fits into a larger marketing plan and not the cool, hip new thing to do, or you might be wasting time and money.

2. It’s like throwing salt in the ocean.
People are bombarded by information in ways they’ve never encountered before. When news readers first came out, I had headlines popping up my screen in a continuos animation of never-ending content (sort of like twitter is now). The screen chaos almost equaled the absolute confusion of watching cable news for any given period of time (a talking head, scrolling weather/stocks/sports, scrolling news headlines, logos, and more). At some point, it’s simply too much information.

I couldn’t process all the headlines that kept battering my eyes while I was supposed to be working. The cool app of constant news updates was overkill for me. Then I began to be more selective. When I was at SXSW in 2006, many participants rightly suggested that the challenge going forward was sorting content. There is simply too much content (whether it’s videos, news stories or hair brushes. BTW, Google returns 3,600,000 pages for hair brushes, and what if the brushes I really need is past page 10? I probably won’t find it.

If you’re not working from a clear strategy (and possibly even if you are), your message (whether its a tweet, a blog post, a video or something else), may be one of umpteen thousand messages your targeted audience will have to sort through. If anything, you can at least enjoy the fact that you’re a grand participant in the never ending online chatter. I guess the question here might be, “What is your message doing or trying to do?”

3. It’s like pulling an elephant out of a hat.
I saw Harry Blackstone Jr. pull an elephant out of a bunch of silk flags when I was a teenager. The audience gasped in delight. Of course, being the aspiring young magician, my eyes were crawling across the stage while he was pulling those silks out of a giant drum. Turns out, his assistants walked that elephant out in plain sight and almost no one in the room even noticed until it appeared in the middle of the silks.

He was a master of mis-direction. Social networking tools may be masters of mis-direction. They may get you to look left when you should be looking right. Of course, they’re not the only tools mis-directing your attention. I fear analytics may do the same. Analytics may lull you to sleep and cause you to think you know more than you know.

Analytics may cause you quit seeing real people and start seeing numbers, and scenarios, and potential markets. None of that is a problem unless it causes you to forget that your marketing to real people with real families and real issues. When you forget that, you might be in for a sudden rude awakening. (And Cluetrain Manifesto may give you a few hints to what I’m talking about.)

Whether you’re tweeting, setting up a Facebook account or tinkering with a myriad of other socialnet tools, the idea is to speak to real people with real faces. So the question here might be, “Who are you talking to?”

4. It’s like sticking a square peg in a round whole.
Social networking has exploded over the last four years because of a perfect storm: a shift in trends from the early adaptors to early majority, the open source movement in software, leading to the convergence/mashup of various tools, making it easer than ever for “average Joes” to adapt and use those tools in unique ways.

What all that means is that housewives, grandfathers, children and people of all ages can suddenly customize a variety of applications to fit their personal preferences and explore their personal interests from chatting to blogging to making videos to connecting with old friends. I’ve introduced multiple people with little technology background or online experience to blogging, flickring, and more. Some became “masters” in short periods far exceeding anything I was doing.

Now this is all pretty cool. The problem crops up when you’re “forcing” an application that is not part of your natural flow. When that happens, you may be investing time and money that might not be worth the investment. Social commerce is cool if it fits your normal workflow, but if you end up expending too much effort for too little results or automating what should be real human to human interaction, you may kill the magic so to speak.

Not every person, business, group should be using twitter. And some who find success on one tool might not see the same success on another tool. So the question might be, “How can I best reach the person/people, I am trying to reach?”

5. It’s like whistling Dixie.
Depending on who you ask, “whistling Dixie” can mean talking about things in a more positive way than the reality or engaging in unproductive activity. It may sound good, but it may not be doing anything. Social networking is not some kind of marketing panacea. It is part of a strategy of engaging customers, and at it’s heart it’s about engaging customers. In other words, it’s not about shouting one more message to the nameless masses.

Social networking or should I say social commerce is about listening, interacting, adapting and evolving. There’s no one solution for all businesses. And some businesses  are probably wasting they’re time and money because they’re not really ready for the social part of the commerce.

Social commerce connects with another idea that is inherent to social commerce: the long tail. Reading wikipedia’s article on long tail was a bit like sticking my head into a classroom of physicists arguing quantum mechanics. I wouldn’t be sure if I was there or if I was there. But Chris Anderson makes it easy enough for goofs like me to see that there is a big difference between “blockbuster movies” and the straight-to-dvd-sci-fi flix that people like me like.

Long tail suggests that while “blockbuster” movies or products focus are reaching a mass of people in a short period, there are niche movies and products focusing on a very specific group of people can actually make more money over time. The relative explosion of the internet has made it easier than ever to connect very specific and unique groups of people. From Facebook to Twitter to Ning, these people are creating their own space and own forums for friendship and discussion. These micro-markets are the future. And if you’re willing to invest in time, you might build a long term conversation with some specific groups that will benefit you and your business as well as them.

So this last question might ask, “When do you expect results?” If you want a quick bang for your buck, social networking is the wrong place to look. But if you’re willing to start “seeding” your ideas, products, services, etc, in a variety of places. Over time, you might begin cultivating some unique markets that can yield some amazing results.

So before you go spending lots of time and money on social networking, you might ask yourself a few questions.

Popularity: 10% [?]

picture originally uploaded by e.g. gatsby

The 10 Words are embedded within the stories of the Lord delivering the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt and leading them into a land of promise. If we don’t read the commands within the story we may miss the rhythm. Within the actual commands, the Sabbath stands out as a command that has a story or two stories embedded within it. The Exodus 20:8-11Exodus 20:8-11
English: King James Version (1611) - KJV
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: ¹⁰ But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: ¹¹ For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.  

WP-Bible plugin version of the command alludes to the creation story: God creates for six days; at the end of the six days, He says, “Very Good!”; and then He sets aside the seventh day as a day of rest.

The Deuteronomy 5:12-15Deuteronomy 5:12-15
English: King James Version (1611) - KJV
12 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. ¹³ Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: ¹⁴ But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. ¹⁵ And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.  

WP-Bible plugin version of the command references the story of Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Some call this story the redemption story. I tend to think to think of it as the re-creation story. Slavery strips a human of personal status: no name, no status, no self control. These non-persons are called out of the grave and into new life. They receive a name, a commission (the Torah), and a promise: the people who are not a people become a people, a new creation or a re-creation.

I’ve already teased out a few ideas related to Sabbath Recreation. So now I want to explore another nuance: the aspect of storying. For six days, Israel works hard for survival. While travelling across the wilderness and settling the land, their days are filled with all the typical chores of nomadic cultures and then agrarian cultures. In other words, their busy surviving. Bot one day they pause. They rest. They thank God for His faithfulness. They remember.

They remember the story of creation. They remember the story of re-creation. They remember their own history. They retell the story. This regular habit of pausing and retelling their story in Sabbath thanksgiving and in festival celebration, reveals an essential element of identity formation in everything from personhood to tribal or ethnic identity to brand management. Telling our story again and again and again imprints our identity on our minds, in our bodies and ultimately in our actions.

Many companies spend thousands of dollars to develop a brand identity program, focusing their energy on design. Design is important but pales in comparison to telling and retelling and retelling the story. Companies need to tell their story. But first they need to learn their stories. Many people participate in a companies’ stories, including their customers. If they don’t learn to listen to their stories as well, they may discover the customer stories may turn against the company story, and then they’ll spend lots of PR cash trying to regain their voice.

But let me think about storying on a personal level. If there is a story to tell, I would suggest there is a story to hear. Many conference speakers are master storytellers. Many great filmmakers are also amazing story tellers. But I would also suggest we need to cultivate the gift of storycollecting.

I come from a family of storytellers, but I sometimes think my greater gift is storycollecting. People need to tell their story and someone needs to listen. I suggesting storycollecting or story listening is a part of Sabbath Hospitality.

Today while I was drinking coffee and reflecting on the 10 Words, a man walked up and immediately started telling me his story. I stopped and listened. Obviously that what was the rhythm I needed to pay attention to.

He was wearing a cross and two chains. I asked about the chains. He explained that they were cheap fan chains (for ceiling fans). He wore these chains with the cross as a sign of devotion without being ostentatious. Then he proceeded to tell me stories of St. Francis and his vow of poverty and service. In a matter of minutes, I traveled all through church history listening to tidbits about the lives and saints and lives devoted to service and obedience to the call and pattern of Jesus. As he was leaving the man handed me a gift. A book on the “Rule of St. Benedict.”

Everywhere we go, we are surrounded by people with stories to tell. If we are willing to listen, people will tell us their stories. We give them a gift in listening, and they give us a gift in telling them. In Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker stories, there is a character named Taleswapper. He collects stories and then redistributes them. I think this is an interesting way of thinking about stories. We listen and trade. As we listen, we may learn the hidden wisdom of Hebrew storytelling.

Their story is told from varying perspective based on the current circumstance. By telling their story in new ways or through new angles, they speak wisdom to the current crisis, challenge or opportunity. If we learn to listen rightly, we may learn the rhythm of knowing when to tell a story and what story needs to be told. I would suggest that a world of storytellers may bring more peace and healing than a culture of would-be messiahs pointing fingers at all the devils around them.

Popularity: 7% [?]

How can businesses thrive in the midst of fast-changing technologies and economic shifts? Rather than knowing the latest trend, or hottest online software, every business can benefit from learning to become better listeners and better talkers. In other words, entering the conversation that is already taking place. From fast-growing social networks to e-commerce websites to local grocery stores, every business moves within a world of social webs. I believe that companies who learn how to effectively engage in conversation with all stakeholders and act accordingly can thrive in the midst of this climate.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Last spring I made a presentation at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit about practical ideas for retailers in the social space. Looks like a quick summary of the presentation made it to their blog today. Thanks!

By naming the presentation “practical” I hoped to convey the idea of learning by practice. The best way to enter the social commerce space is not by reading books, blogs, and the latest banter online. It is simply to do it. We learn much more by doing than by thinking about doing.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” What?

His inverted aphorism was written to turn conventional expectation on its head by pointing out the value of acting and not simply watching others act. We jump into the middle of fray. We make mistakes. We learn. We perfect. We get better.

Einstein follows a similar appeal by suggesting, “A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.” While I am a great believer in market testing, I think we may sometimes drown in data while we could actually be throwing a lifeline to a drowning person. Knowledge and charts and graphs and profiles and ideas are not enough.

So enjoy the Bazaarvoice summary, but hopefully you also be willing to step out and trying some things. Who knows? You might even discover something the gurus haven’t stumbled on yet, and you might just create the future.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I have a bunch of audiobooks that I either imported from CD or downloaded from eMusic. One problem. These audiobooks don’t show up in the audiobooks section of iTunes. Why is that important? When I sync to the iPhone, my audiobooks show up like music files and I can’t bookmark my place. Big problem.

I skip around between different books (before finishing) and don’t like to lose my place. It was such a challenge that I had been keeping note everytime I paused an audiobook with the last chapter I was listening to. There’s got to be a better way! If I could get the books into the audiobooks section of iTunes, they would automatically bookmark the last place I stopped.

Finally, I did some searching in the iTunes customer forums and found two helpful things for myself and other audiobook listeners. Here are the steps I followed to move the imported audiobooks from the music section to the audiobook section on iTunes.

1. Highlight all the files for a selected book and right click (or control-click for us Mac users). Then select “Get Info.”

2. First, changed the generic “audiobook” genre to something more specific. In this case, I chose “novel.”

3. Then jump over to the “Options” tab and change file from “Music” to “Audiobook.” I also changed to yes the following: “remember position,” “skip when shuffling,” and “gapless album.”

4. Once you click “OK,” it takes a moment for iTunes to process your files. Now they show up in “Audiobooks” instead of “Music.”

5. In order to keep from syncing all audiobooks when I sync my iPhone, I select view by list. Highlight the books I don’t want to sync, right click (control click for Mac), and choose “Uncheck selections.”

6. Finally, I choose “Sync only checked songs and videos” under the iPhone sync screen, and I am good to go.

Popularity: 5% [?]

I wonder if a “political science” degree might be more helpful than some of the MBAs I’ve encountered. I know some MBA programs connect and support Drucker’s original vision of how business play an integrating role of social stability. But many MBAs seem to be nothing more than glorified Excel degrees.

Political science is the study of the art and science of the body politic. I think many businesses function much like a body politic. They deal with issues of governance, war (internal and external), human relations, social stability, and so on. Plus, their decisions often have ramifications that reach far beyond the business.

If you think about businesses, you might also see that some are run more like a democracy (some like a rambunctious Athenian democracy), some are totalitarian tyrannies, some some are republics and so on.

I wonder if have some sernior executive with a political science background might helpful bring a helpful accentuation into the managing and visioning process.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Jeremy shows an easy way to turn your place ride into a mini-movie theatre, using an iPhone and a magazine.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Tapping into the willing spirit of passionate customers and dedicated online users, Get Satisfaction is a giant help forum for thousands of companies. Ask a question and get responses from thousands of customers. The idea is not new but the application of combining official company pages with employee and customer responses as well as tagging and sorting topics makes this a pretty cool tool for customers and companies.

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you’re passing through the Bellaterra/Huntington Beach area in California, you might want to watch out for the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. The Consumerist hits them with a downright horror show story in customer service denial.

Not sure if I can bear to even eat chocolate after that story.

Update: The COO of Rocky Mtn Chocolate Factory called and apologized to the lady. Rock on! And hand me another chocolate bar.

Popularity: 4% [?]

As it turns out my credit union, the Knoxville TVA Employees Credit Union awards points for using the debit/credit card. I checked the Bonus Check Card site last week and found out I qualified for a $250 Best Buy gift card (or a free Apple TV).

I figure that if my credit union offers these points, your credit union/bank might as well. So I encourage you to ask or visit your bank’s website to find out if they offer any incentives for using the debit/credit card.

Popularity: 5% [?]