Passing the 'So What' Test

2009-05-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

Ron Jacobs' comments last Tuesday night pulled the social media explosion into focus. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, mobile messaging, tracking, friending, tagging, searching, blogging, posting, tweeting. Bring it on! But why should I care what you have to say? It's not relevant to me! And therein lies the key. The hard part is directing and measuring traffic to a site from any number of channels. The harder part is in initiating and sustaining a dialogue. The content has to be relevant to me, for example, or I'm gone. This social media frenzy will shake out as did the rush to 'get a web site out there' in the mid-90s. Companies spent much and gained little from their digital brochures. Now is the time to demonstrate lessons-learned from past technology mistakes.

In the 80s, Dr. John Cragan, a former professor, introduced the Symbolic Convergence Theory, a communication tool used to guide corporate strategic planning. Simply put, and with apologies to Dr. Cragan, it posits that people will naturally converge around stories that mirror their reality and offer meaning, emotion and motive for action. The community shares a wealth of language, symbols, values, visions, and morals. Conversely, banality and lack of clear focus will prevent the communities from forming. Fast-forward and consider this through the social media lens to see the possibilities. As marketers we have a unique opportunity to foster the development of online communities around any number of desired outcomes, from Obama's election to the purchase of Skittles. While our clients may be interested only in 'getting on Twitter,' it's up to us to ask the tough questions such as who will you be talking with, how do you know that what you say will be of any interest, and are you able to make the commitment of staff necessary to sustain the effort?

To successfully implement an online strategy that will integrate with current offline tactics and meet their objectives, CTC/McCormick Foundation will need to demonstrate an understanding of who their donors are as people. It will no longer be possible to understand their audiences solely as donors, currents, LYBUNTS, PYBUNTS, SYBUNTS, off-seasons, chiefs, majors, cores, basics, and through predictive donor behaviors. No doubt, we will all be offering spot-on programs for measuring the channels from which these folks are coming, how often, for how long, and to what end. The key to creating impressive metrics will be in CTC's ability to initiate and sustain relevant dialogue. Twitter et al provides CTC an unprecedented opportunity to listen critically to what vast numbers of their individual constituents are saying. CTC will have a tremendous responsibility to identify the symbols, themes, common emotions and visions within these conversations and around which online visitors have converged. As threads, they represent the elements that bind the group and illustrate the CTC community's most relevant issues and concerns. They will drive content that is spontaneously posted and offer guideposts for content that CTC will deliver in order to sustain the dialogue and provide motive for action.

Ron Jacobs' comments last Tuesday night pulled this social media explosion into focus. For me.

Great article from NY Times on 4/15/09

2009-04-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

Not sure I'd want my surgeon to be Twittering during surgery though...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14twitter.html?_r=1&em=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1239811279-fzpqKiW76TALD5MVFrVAmw

Thinking Online

Passing the 'So What' Test

Great article from NY Times on 4/15/09