If you can’t see the above slideshow, click here, or see it directly on Slideshare.

This is a short 12 slide presentation that explains succinctly what the difference between social and broadcast as – as mindsets before they are media – and then three lessons that we draw that help us understand social.

Social is a big topic for me. Everything I do keeps coming back to it – whether it’s learning, event design, social media, marketing, church, relationships – social is right in there. And it’s not that social is a new thing. Far from it. Social is our original and default method of communication. As our default method, it also is ruled by our default physical limitations (how loud we can speak, etc), and it is from these limitations that we create broadcast, which is a one way extension of what is socially created, for wider reach.

My basic premise is that we have social innovation and broadcast duplication. Social is the fluid conversation that is a real-time co-crated product. Broadcast is the recording of that conversation and duplicating it so more people can hear it. In social, the conversation can change. In broadcast, it does not.

What the book will then lead into is a discussion of the Social / Broadcast Matrix, and the three social strategies. And true to these three strategies, the book will function on one: socialised channels, socialised content and socialised culture. In other words, it’ll be available everywhere you’ll want to consume it, it’ll be full of UGC (i.e. YOU), and it’ll be open for you to use and build upon.

(You can watch a video of me discussing Social on a larger scale here)

Your Leading Thoughts

1. Do you see holes in my premise? Given I’m basing a book on this, I need you input!
2. How would you like to contribute to the creation of ‘Social’?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

What Is Social? Well…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gRvtVSMB0E

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly.

I had a great chat with Sam Ford from MIT yesterday about spreadability. Turns out he and Henry Jenkins are writing a book about it, with the same ideas that I’ve been having over the last 6 months -- and we didn’t know about each other until very recently. Funny to see how that happens.

One of the things we talked about is that for something to spreadable, it has to be guided not governed. Reason being that if a peice of content is governed, then it is so heavily guarded and restricted that it can’t be taken into new channels and filter into new areas that are beyond their reach.

This video, with Ben Huh -- the maestro of spreadability who runs ICanHasCheeseburger, is excellent as Ben talks about what makes media spreadable -- lower barrier to entries and the lifting of restrictions. He’d know about that.

The lesson? If you want things to spread, you have to let go.

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Spreadability and Guidance vs Governance

The Dream Team – hanging out with some of the people at the Like Minds Summit 2010 at Bovey Castle.

Around the end of the last year I wrote a series of posts on ‘free from the factory‘, in which we talked about the shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy, and the change in business and society that followed.

The main point is that in a knowledge economy you don’t manage people like parts in a machine – you lead them and guide them, because unlike parts in a machine, they have the ability to develop and grow, rather than rust and break. It’s this difference in mindset, between managing production and leading people, that is the reason why most companies don’t get it.

The organisations that will thrive and are thriving are people-to-people. They value people, not parts. The news yesterday was that YouTube now has 2 billion views a day. Facebook is about to hit 500 million users. What causes their success? Factories that churn out products faster and cheaper (the way we compete in an industrial age), or are they teams of very skilled, highly motivated people whose synergy and vision creates communities and platforms with depth that better provide customised experiences that meet the emotional needs of other people (the way we compete in a knowledge age.)

What Separates People From Parts?

• Parts need replacing to be better. People can learn new skills and develop themselves to become better.
• Parts are designed to do one function. People can multi-task and have multiple facets.
• Parts can’t create people. People can create parts.
• Parts can do reproduction of tasks. People can create new tasks for parts to reproduce.
• Parts clone. People customise.
• Parts create volume. People create value.

Practically Investing In People

When we talk about innovation, people-to-people is perhaps one of the biggest fronts that it is happening on. Not because people haven’t always been important – but never before have people been this important. To compete on industrial differences - availability / cost / quality – is a hard game to dominate, especially if you are starting out. Costs have been driven so low that products and services are mostly commoditised.

Everything rises or falls on the leadership of your team. The way to differentiate is in your people. How?

• Make self development part of the job. Create a culture of reflection and improvement.
• Remove the one-function wizards. Create opportunity and exposure for new experiences – so that your team can apply their real asset to more situations.
• Emphasise creativity. Expect people to create parts to replace what they used to do, so that they have time to innovate themselves.
• Review how you do things, and get your team to observe and feedback on daily lessons. Have weekly “what did we learn” meetings to report findings.
• Have your team figure out how to customise what you do to deeper levels. Let them write case studies.
• Emphasise value in your language – show they how create an asset they are.

Being a leader of many teams for many years, I can attest to these things working. I just wish I had done a lot of them sooner.

The Main Point

You need to have a strong team, not a faster machine.

Your Leading Thoughts

• What is the greatest thing you have done with a team of people? What is the lesson there?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

People, Not Parts

I wrote a while ago about the issue with Social Media events being that they aren’t Social. I suggested a few reasons why this is – but they really boiled down to two core problems:

1. Ego
2. Ego

Ego in the first instance is like speakers like to hear themselves talk, and Ego in the second instance is that we love to say we heard ‘so and so’ speak. (Thank you, Jeff Jarvis, for inspring me to tell the truth, and use the word Ego here.) Unfortunately, these aren’t conducive to effective learning.

Cue the above image, that Josh Chandler keenly pointed out to me (thanks Josh) which displays some very pertinent statistics on our discussion of social events. (Josh informs me he got this from Social Media Examiner, so thanks to them.)

In short: if you are interested in creating an attendee-centric event that places the attendee’s learning as the priority (and I plee with you to do so), then you’ll realise that after 2 weeks, if you attendees just hear talks they will only remember 20% of what they heard. But if you get them to discuss it immediately, they will remember 70% of what they say. This isn’t new – Edgar Dale did this research back in ’69 – but one thing is sure, the higher up the scale you go, the less broadcast you are, and the more social you become.

Of course, this means you have fewer attendees, and more participants. As Anne Marie says, Learning Is Social.

In shorter: People remember 20% of what they hear and 70% of what they say. We don’t let people say, because of our egos. We love our own voices too much. Attendee-centric events let attendees say, and turn attendees into participants.

The shortest: Let attendees be participants.

Confession: I’m still failing at this. With the last Like Minds, we were still around the 30% – 50% area, except for the Like Minds Lunches, which were discussions and took us into the 70% bracket, but only for a short period. For our next outing (I’ll share the news with you this week), we are aiming to spend a lot more time in the 70% backet.

Thanks also go to Jeff Hurt and Dave Lutz, whose blog Midcourse Corrections I again recommend as a great source for anybody designing events of any kind. In fact, you can catch a free webinar with Jeff today, which you can get details for here.

Your Leading Thoughts

I value your thoughts, as leaders in your areas. Use these questions as a guide for comments below:

1. If we are talking about being virtually present, where do you think that sits on the scale? How can Social Media facilitate this?
2. What events have engaged you on the higher percentage of that scale? What did they do in order to do it?
3. What are the challenges to breaking from the ‘Verbal Receiving’ area?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Let Attendees Be Participants

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed5vJeaEuzA

If you can’t see the video, click here. You can see the video on YouTube.

At the moment we’re having a lot of discussions on the Like Minds LinkedIn group, and one of these discussions recently was about Facebook’s new Social Plugins and how people felt this created a new level of trust and social authority.

As you know, I did a video about this last week, in which I use lots of long words and jokes to basically point out this is move means we trust something more if we see our friends have liked it.

My friend Stuart Witts added the above video to the conversation, in which Levi’s have just used two of Facebook’s plugins to enable people to:

1. Like individual items in their catalogue
2. Invite their friends to connect to a storefront

This must’ve taken a developer no more than an hour to integrate into their site, and to be quite honest, doesn’t really do anything new: it just simply shows people what their friends like, and let’s their friends know when they like something.

Of course that in itself is very powerful. James Poulter, who I met at Like Minds Immersive in March, wrote yesterday about this new form of consumerism (what we could call ‘click-consumerism’?), and asks how this changes the purchase=self definition model that rose in the 60s and has been with us since.

My thoughts in the comments in James’ post were that this universal like button will also track what we like, as opposed to what we think we should like or say we like. Certainly, we’re seeing the early stages of Social Shopping.

How Can Local Businesses Use This?

The boast of social authority (the proof that their friends like, therefore they should like too) that this gives local businesses is huge. Seeing that 159 of my friends like Nike is no big woop -- we all know of Nike and like Nike.

But seeing that 45 of my friends like that restaurant that I haven’t been to, or buy from that store that I’ve only just heard of, or are business people who use that service on the industrial estate -- that has a lot of value.

Social authority is what big brands already have plenty of (they are well known), and is what local businesses are often struggling to get (they aren’t as well known), especially businesses that are off the beaten route.

The Main Point

If you’re skim reading, here’s the main point: the like button shows friends what you like. This gives that website more social authority, because if someone you know likes you, you will probably like it too.

Your Leading Thoughts

I still think that the like button is a pretty simple thing and that Facebook’s plugins aren’t feature strong -- but there is certainly a lot of depth here, we just need to mine it. I value your feedback, so how about answering a question to draw the wisdom out of us?

• As a consumer, do you like things on Facebook often, and do you now like things on the web too?
• Would you ‘connect’ to a site like in the Levi’s video? If so, why?
• Scaling this up -- where do you see this going? (with the tools we already have)

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Some thoughts on Social Shopping and Click Consumerism

Being true to the form of curation, I’d like to point you to two great posts from this week. First is Loic LeMeur’s post on “The end of the traditional campaign = reach model“, in which he talks paid vs earned media and a few other things. What the post and his video both come down to is the misuse of terms and the confusion that is created by the melange of ideas around Social Media.

Next up is Olivier Blanchard’s follow up on Loic’s post, which in true Olivier fashion is entitled “What silly words say about people who use them“, and looks closer at some of the language and confusion that he have going on. One issue is with the idea of Social Media and Mobile being “emerging medias”, which Olivier deals with accordingly (“emerging” describes a state of adoption, not a type of media, and neither of their are emerging anymore, they are in mass adoption.)

Unfortunately, I’m not following up with a video, but I did want to remind us of the Social / Broadcast Matrix and how it helps us clarify media types, the language we use, and gives us a framework for understanding where we’ve come from and where we are going.

Social as a Consumer Mindset

The mindset that as a consumer, I have a say in media – by calling in, doing a phone vote, writing letters, the ability to be in the programme – has been a dominant consumer mindset for the last ten years now, especially since Reality TV exploded after the first Big Brother in 1999. This relates to the content of the media being social.

The most predominant social channels, the mobile phone and the internet, also gained such dominance around the same time, marking the 2000s as the turning point from broadcast to social as a mass consumer mindset.

As Olivier says, this is no longer emergent in adoption curve. With over 60% of the world using a mobile phone, and an estimate 20% of the world using Social Networking sites, multiway communication is well and truly adopted.

Clarifying Social

Social is the opposite of broadcast, and the product of a post-modern epistemology. In other words, our knowledge does not come in a top down format, where knowledge is pushed out to us from a single, absolute, one-way source that then forms our opinions and informs our lifestyle.

Instead, we have a web of knowledge – a multi-way structure were we are pulling information and pushing information out from various media nodes, each of us ourselves adapting this information as we receive and then re-emit it.

Example: the recent Leadership Debate in the UK General Election. As the three main parties were on TV, debating and doing what politicians do best, people were researching policies and checking facts on Google (see this) and debating the issues themselves on Twitter (see this). This would never happen under broadcast, and indeed, it couldn’t.

You know that I’ve written and spoken a lot about Spreadability vs Reach (there’s a Slideshare here, a framework here, and a case study here). The way I see it, a social mindset and Social Media thrive under a spreadability model. A broadcast mindset and Broadcast Media thrive under a reach model.

Your Leading Thoughts

I’ve only really presented a few ideas here and you’re expertise could flesh them out a lot more. If you’ve watched Olivier and Loic‘s videos, then I’m keen to know:

• How do you think paid and earned media as Loic describes fit into the Social / Broadcast Matrix, when we consider the effects of paying for Social Advocacy, like in the case of Loic’s Virgin Facebook Fan example?
• Where does Trust fit into this?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

‘Social’ as a Consumer Mindset

Today I’d like to just discuss a few thoughts on #hashtags as platforms, as well as point to what I think are the issues that we face with this.

Statistically, let me just point out the trend that I’m sure most of you are experiencing:

1. More is said about you on Social Networks than on your blog comments
2. Twitter is your main traffic source above Google
3. Your #hashtag has more users than Twitter followers, RSS subscribers and unique visitors.

This for me means:

1. A home base is important, but people are talking more about you than they are with you (Conversation With vs Conversation About)
2. This means people are using the tools they already have, in the social spaces they already occupy, to discuss you
3. This means a platform must be light touch (especially as passports are becoming more common)

The Solution: #Hashtag as a Platform

In my model on The 6 Social Media Presences, I say that the Platform Presence is useful because it gathers. Previously we have thought of Platforms as a place where we must sign up, get connected, engage, comment, etc – essentially all acts that require us to come. But I believe that we are entering an age where platforms are of such a light touch that they automatically gather, rather than requiring us to gather ourselves.

When we think about a hashtag, it uses the tools and social spaces that I currently inhabit, with the simplicity of a typed word, to gather me with like minded individuals, who I can simply track using the tools I already have in the spaces that I already inhabit.

What Do You Think The Repercussions Are?

When I think about Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups, I consider most of them to be very static, with people only ever leaving one or two messages on the walls and then leaving them as badges on their profile. This model of a platform is antiquated.

The new #hashtag platform is dynamic, constantly updating, completely user generated, and truly social. It doesn’t require months to build up forum stars. it doesn’t require a page that must be visited (like Facebook). Instead, it can used immediately, and sits as a search in our client.

Let me hear from you – I’m sure you can expand this idea:

1. What other benefits are there?
2. Is there a more powerful, yet as simple to use platform out there?
3. How much can the #hashtag scale, given that already some #hashtags are very noisy?

Photo courtesy of the wonderful Britt_W

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

A #hashtag As A Platform

One day, Jim decides to stop trying to market his idea, and instead decides to show his idea in action. Rather than trying to promote his idea, he lets uses his idea to promote an entirely different idea altogether. The result is that in doing so, people got to see Jim’s idea in action.

Ok, so Jim is Me.

In fact, Jim is a lot of people. Headfake marketing – the method of using one thing to teach another thing – is as old as, well, the Karate Kid. Remember Mr. Miyagi teaching his young student to ‘wax on, wax off’? By teaching him how to clean windows, Daniel actually learns to block punches. We can use the same techniques today when articulating the ideas that we have.

This mechanism is used a lot in sales. When people ‘sell through’ rather than ‘sell to’, they are pulling a mild form of this (you know, the old “You might know someone who needs this”, rather than saying “You need this” trick.) Or how about getting kids to eat food by pretending it’s a plane flying into a tunnel?

The headfake above means you are selling to someone while giving them a safe way to exit, which is generally more pleasant. But there’s more to it than that.

How To Wax On, Wax Off

The reason why you have to pull a headfake is because, unfortunately, when people are too familiar with you they often won’t learn from you. That’s why Jim (and the rest of us) get annoyed when people suddenly ‘get it’ when someone says what we’ve been saying for ages already. So here’s how to start going about it:

1. You need to create some kind of distance, or magic curtain. You can’t let people see how you put it together, because that breaks the transformational effect when they see what you’ve done that finally shocks people into admiring what you do. Remember when Daniel realises that ‘Wax On, Wax Off’ was the actual moves? Thats the transformation you want.
2. Transfer your passion into the headfake. If you’ve ever visited HSBCreviews.com, you’ve seen the headfake in action. The lesson we learn from thrudigital here is that the headfake needs to be around a passion or a pain in order to provoke emotion. It can’t be bland, else people don’t get it, and don’t want it.
3. Make the headfake a mindshift. Do it to such a high standard that people are hungry for the next thing you have. You can do this most powerfully by making mantra and creating a phrase that people start using. If everyone in your proximity is using your language, then you are the master of that language, and can do with it as you will (just don’t abuse it.)
4. Tell stories. This makes it memorable. People forget what was said but they remember what they felt, and stories create feeling because we use our imagination to put ourselves in the story, rather than passively just listening.
5. Followup with by packaging the idea to take home. After the headfake (if you do it well), people will want you idea. You need to have a simple, clear packaged idea that they can take home with them. After you’ve worked so hard to make your idea clear, don’t make it unclear again with your amorphous mist of services. Present a clear, packaged productised idea for taking home.
6. Convert it. You have to master it, close the deal, and convert the headfake into your idea. This can be uncomfortable, but people are hungry for it. If people are complimenting you, then you need to just decide to have the confidence and go – stop worrying over whether people will buy into your idea or not – and stop waiting for people to come to you.

A Living Example

Randy Pausch carries out his famous last lecture here on the subject of “Achieving your Childhood Dreams.” What follows is an hour discussion on headfakes, before the final revelation that the whole talk is a headfake itself. It has passion, the magic curtain, stories, mindshifts, language and wholly converts the headfake into the idea.

Watch it here.

Your Headfakes

I want to hear about the headfakes that you’ve pulled, and the best ones that you know of. Let’s get a list going in the comments.

Photo with thanks to tico24.

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Wax On, Wax Off: Headfake Marketing, Without Marketing

Think about it. Direct reach gets you in front of eyes. But with so much coming in front of eyes everyday, why spend so much money to be just another message?

The things that gets word of mouth and word of mouse today becomes what we call viral. The message is one that lends itself to being shared amongst friends, amongst networks, and amongst communities.

Things that are viral and high spreadability are often very sticky. They stick in front of your eyes, as opposed to being one of the many messages that pass them.

The Cost of Spreadability

The great news about Spreadbility as the new sensibility is that it costs far less than reach. Direct reach on TV, radio, print, etc, will cost you a lot of money for a crowded moment in front of the eyes. But spreadability doesn’t cost that much cash – it costs time and thought.

The local restaurant doesn’t have to spend money it doesn’t have on reach if it can creatively make a special offer spreadable. And how will it spread? Though the existing network of brand advocates (Seth Godin calls them sneezers) who pass the message on.

In order to have higher spreadability we need to stop governing the message and start guiding it. As long as our hands are tightly holding the message, others can’t take it and share it to others. The sneezers can only sneeze the message if they can catch it and get it – own it – in order to pass it onto others.

Again – this is placing an emphasis on people not parts. Reach is really tied up in managing the process of the parts. Spreadability is about leading and developing people.

The Surprise of Spreadability

We’ll talk in the comings weeks about it more, but for now, you can read the whole article over here. My question to you though, hinges on the surpise of spreadability.

I often find that the things I want to spread don’t, and vice versas. I wondering if any of you have any thoughts about what makes something spreadable – and what surprises you’ve had over the things that did spread, and the things that didn’t.

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Spreadability: The New Sensibility

So I’m sat here at the Like Minds Summit reflecting over the last few days at Like Minds where we’ve played host to over 300 people, and I don’t know where to start.

First off, I’m not one to chest beat and bang my own drum (as much as Chris was telling me I should), so I’d rather you watched this incredible video put together by the always excellent Documentally.

I guess that main thing I want to say to everyone is what I’ve been saying for a little while now about Connections Over Community. Community support is great – but it only gets you so far. If you really want to do something, and achieve something, then you need to begin building connections out of that community,

The takeaway from Like Minds, then, is to go and pick up the phone, or send an email or a tweet, and get some face-to-face time with the connections you’ve made. There’s too much much talk and not enough action these days – so often because we’re so busy building our own communities rather than developing connections that enable to us to really be helpful.

Surely all the talk of ‘social’ needs to come around into this?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Are you build Community or Connections?