With the virtual/physical, online/offline worlds becoming so merged together, not only through the mobile, but through other home media devices, advertising, in store displays, and so on, there are new opportunities for your business to be at the water cooler – to be where conversations are taking place, capture and showcase those conversations and make something out of them, and actually provide your services to your customers when they are using these devices and be ‘the elbow of the deal’.

Where are People?

To do this, we need to answer the question, where are people? Not just “which social networks are they on?”, but where are people online, offline? For example, football fans at a game. People on the bus. In fact, where are they offline, like on the underground, where they can take what was gotten online, offline with them?

Where is not just a spatial term, it is a time term, an emotional term, a participatory term. We need to deeply understand our customer to really know where they are.

Once you know where they are, how can you get there? How can you socialise the channels that you use in order to get your content and service there?

A fine example is Absolute Radio, who take their Baddiel and Skinner radio show and turn it into a podcast, live stream, iPhone app, Nokia app, Sony Ericson app, etc. It’s a great move by them, because when someone can’t be online, the content has been put offline on their mobile device, which they use to listen to the podcasts in all those empty spaces throughout the day.

I consider their app-driven approach all the more pertinent as apps will take over browser use on mobile devices. When you’re using the iPad, you’ll quickly note how much nicer it is to use an app in many cases, than using the browser version, even on a desktop. (Full review of this here.)

Another way to be where people are is by having a platform that is trans-platform, i.e., it cross all other platforms. Absolute Radio touch on this above by having their content on multiple channels, however those channels are fixed. I’m really talking about the concept of a hashtag as a platform.

I was quoted in AdWeek last week, in a peice called ‘Learning to Speak on the Social Web‘ (penned by my friend Neal Rodriguez), where I described that the hashtag is a trans-platform platform, that means the platform exists where ever it is used. Ubquity comes through this, because we can tag anything that we say or do with “#likeminds”, and it becomes part of the platform.

What About Location Gaming?

There’s a big discussion to be had here (my fiend Carl Haggerty most recently adding some interesting thoughts), and many of the points are obvious: “people can check into your locations”, “people can see you exist when visiting your town”, etc etc.

Let’s answer the where question on this instead. Where are people? They are on their phones, when they go into any area that warrants a check in.

Do these people use it to find new places? No. They only use it to check into places.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. Let’s begin by asking ourselves the question: where are you?
2. What kind of services to you want to be ubiquitous? Do you want services to be with you, where ever you go?

Photo courtesy of ViaMoi

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

Your Business, Ubiquitous

1. They write as if they are teaching you, and you need them to say everything for you to understand, rather than appreciating the wisdom of their readers.
2. They write very much as if what they say is the authority, without drawing from the authority of their readers.
3. They tell you what to do, rather than ask what their readers think could be done.
4. They broadcast out ideas, rather socially discuss ideas.
5. They tag on the social cop out, “what do you think?“, rather than really drawing out from you, “what do you think?”

I used to write very much like this. In fact the peice on Innovation Over Tradition had the same prose feel that I think goes along with the above. Normally here, we’re talking things through.

The trick to much of this is what I learnt from Robin Dickinson – “under bake the issue.” In fact, we had a great discussion about this a while ago.

What I Don’t Know

The thing is, Monday’s post was an interesting read that got quite a few retweets (as I get so few), and certainly, there is a place for explaining things and being an active authority. But I think that can still be done without talking down to someone. I’m not sure.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. Do you notice different tones of blogging? Can we categorise them a bit?
2. Which writing do you respond to? Are there some blogs that you notice this “talking down to” in?
3. Are there, conversely, some bloggers who you can’t respect because they don’t speak with enough authority.

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

I Don’t Talk Down To You

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mmnh3_aOVk

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

We talked yesterday about Innovation Over Tradition, but there is a danger is that in not understanding what the ‘traditions’ here are, and then moving away from anything that doesn’t seem ‘techie’ or ‘new’.

I believe that Social (the mindset before the media) is our default form of communication. Two ears, one mouth. Can’t follow a discussion of more than 10 people really. Some lead, some follow. The conversation changes as each person speaks. It’s fluid, dynamic, guided, adapting.

Then, we package the discussion up, put it on CD, ship it, and we have broadcast. It doesn’t change anymore.

Social is always changing, which is why I believe all innovation comes from social. Social innovation, broadcast duplication.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. Do you agree? Can you look at your own history and find agreement with this theory?
2. If so, what are the repercussions of this?

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

Social Innovation, Broadcast Duplication

Have you ever wondered how on earth moving your mouse makes a little pointer move across your screen? I actually don’t know, but I do know that the mouse, and the idea of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) were both controversial and criticised whilst they were being developed. Why? They changed the way things were in the name of moving towards something better, and both helped make computers accessible to the masses. In other words, they valued innovation over tradition.

Sometimes it’s easy for us to get lost in the hype of technology, especially in an age where talking about technology is made easier by the very technology we are talking about – it creates a perfect circular, the most pertinent example today being “I’m using social media to tell you how great social media is.” But as thinkers, we need to be able to step back from the buzz and think about the bigger picture – otherwise we run the risk of becoming clones and drones.

Clones and Drones

You know what I mean by clones and drones. The countless score of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ and ‘consultants’ out there, creating more noise than a batch of early 90′s servers. I’ll be honest with you – when I started out, I was one of these. I bought the myth of the digital personal brand and was trying to ‘create product’ to ‘ship’ to those who read my blog. I was using Twitter to ‘influence’ and ‘network’ in order to get exposure and sell my product, because someone else had done it successfully and now I was buying their 10 steps to do it myself.

This copycat behaviour has created a flocking effect that has widened the gap between those who are what I call ‘digitall’ and those I call ‘digicool’ – something some aliens once noted about us. The digitall are those who use tech for ‘all’ – their iPhones and iPads are filled with apps, their blogs overflowing with widgets (well, hey, they actually have blogs), they check Twitter infinitely more than they do Facebook, and they know what Augmented Reality is. The digicool, on the other hand, are those who use technology solely based on how ‘cool’ it is – like my wife who has an iPhone because it’s cool, is on Facebook because it’s cool, but doesn’t use Twitter because, unfortunately, it isn’t cool.

At the head of the digitall are the digeratti – the princely likes of Scoble, Rubel, Gray and the rest, who akin to the developers of the mouse, are challenging us to think in new and innovative ways. In actual fact, Scoble et al are just the ones telling us about the innovations – like the early days of Techcrunch where every Web 2.0 site was listed and reviewed. These technologies have changed the way the internet works – Wikipedia, Skype, Facebook, eBay, WordPress, Google – and in doing so, they have changed tradition.

The thing is, it isn’t the digitall that helped change tradition. It was the masses of digicools – the general population, if you will – that helped Facebook spread, realised the worth of Wikiepedia, and used Google because they couldn’t remember URLs (unlike the digitalls, who did). And here lies the decision for us all: are we going to talk about innovation and tradition, or be the ones who actually help put innovation over tradition?

The former only requires us to tweet, like, comment, retweet, blog. The second requires us to think. To think how we can take the wonderful innovations that are being used by a comparative handful of digitalls, and present them in an easy to understand way the digicools.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s the gap that needs filling, and the hands that fill it will not go unrecognised.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. First of all, confession time: which are you? Where are you? Are you talking, or innovating?
2. How, practically, can we fill this gap?

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

Innovation Over Tradition

The image below is a screen shot of the last 7 posts on this blog in PostRank’s Analytics platform. We’ll discuss this tool a bit more in a moment, but the main features are that it tracks the number of engagements per post – most pertinently, the number of Tweets, Google Buzzes, Delicious Bookmarks and other social networks, in addition to unique visitors, reading time, etc.

Look and see how many comments this post gets, compared to how many tweets:

This isn’t just a trend over the last week. Almost every post I write has more comments than tweets. Also look at the reading times. I’ve highlighted the highest ones. This average time means people are reading the posts and reading the comments.

This means that my RSS subscribers are the real source of engagement for me. According to Feedburner, I have 148 people subscribed in Google Reader, and 48 who have subscribed to this blog in email.

So, time for some analysis:

Value Analysis 1: Keep Your Retweeets

A value based blog doesn’t need lots of retweets to get engagement. I want you and need you to understand right now that whilst more tweets about your posts will get it more coverage, lots of retweets are not necessary for and do not guarantee engagement.

If you were to ask me for my number one metric of success on my blog, I’d tell you instantly it’s comments. It’s the number of the them, and it’s the depth of them – because it means we actually have participation, not just blind retweeting.

Value Analysis 2: Backwards Engagement

According to PostRank, “80% of the conversations about your content happen off-site” (link.) Well, PostRank tels me that for my blog, 60% of the conversations about my content happen on-site. Value-based blogged is totally contradictory to standard volume-based blogging. The engagement is totally the other way around.

I don’t know of any top blog that gets more comments than retweets. In fact that only other blog that I can find that does is Robin Dickinson’s blog.

There are sometimes when admittedly, I wish I had more retweets. Sometimes it annoys me to see how many shallow blogs get so much coverage. But I will tell you this:  no blog post that has received lots of retweets on my blog has ever had lots of comments.

80% engagement off your site is … well … worthless in my opinion.

Value Analysis 3: It Works

It’s one thing talking about a value-based blog if in actual fact it didn’t work. But it does. On an average of 10 tweets per post and 15 comments per post, this blog:

1. This is the 5th ranked blog on leadership on PostRank (last week I was #3)
2. This is the 2nd ranked blog on social business on PostRank and 9th ranked for social media marketing.
3. This is 185th ranked marketing blog on the AdAge Power150 (I would be higher if more people linked here. My InLink score is very low.)

For 10 tweets, this is very good. Most of the blogs on AdAge get a very high number of tweets per post. My AdAge rank is lower, as it takes PostRank (which focusses on engagement), and also considers other measurement platforms that track InLinks, volume of tweets, etc.

But more than these stats, the proof it works is that Like Minds works and engages hundreds of people because of the discussions we have here. It works because someone saw this blog and was so warmly invited when they commented that they saw a link to the Like Minds Club and bought membership right away. It’s also got me a lot of recognition and love.

It works because authors have found the ideas here (that we formed together through the comments), and put them in their books (they tell me so!) It works because the thing that we discuss have changed lives.

Your Leading Thoughts

I know I’ve kind of preached us full here – but there is room for a very important discussion here. Many of you guys are likely discouraged, distracted by wanting to get your content recognised with retweets and such. I’m keen to know

1. If you’ve been blogging for 6 months and over, what are your statistics on engagement?
2. Be honest – how much are tweets and ‘attention’ a motivator for you?
3. Where on the web do you enjoy engaging in value-based blogs?

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

Case Study: Value-Based Blogging

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

In the vein of sharing videos over the weekend, this week I have is an exceptional presentation from Sam Ford, Joshua Green and Henry Jenkins that looks at “moving from sticky to spreadable: the antidote to viral marketing and the broadcast mentality.” (You can find out more about the guys at their blog, PepperDigital.)

I love it for a few reasons:

1. It clarifies what “viral” really is, and what “spreadable” is. This is useful because it is hard to make a “viral video”, but it is a lot easier and more intuitive to make something “spreadable”. You’ll see what I mean as you watch.
2. I love it because it uses language that we’ve been talking about here – spreadable, broadcast, social, reach. I’m right there!
3. It gives me some great case studies.
4. It helps me to not think of people as single individuals but as nodes in a network – meaning I should consider what is the best for their network, not just for them.

Your Leading Thoughts

• I want to know what your number 1 takeaway is, and how you can use it tomorrow.

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

Video: Not Viral, Spreadable

Think Olivier Blanchard. When Olivier talks about brand management and social media management, people stop talking and listen. When he’s finished talking, people start repeating adapting what he’e said. Why? Because he’s the authority on it.

Now I wrote sometime ago on 5 ways to use Twitter as an Active Authority, but a comment on Wednesday made me see this in a new light, and I’d like to open up the discussion.

On the discussion about the myth of the personal brand, Codi Spodnik commented:

I am re-entering this space after a 5 – 6 year stint as a stay-at-home-mom in a small metro area. I do want to start my own consultancy, sharing the experience I gained before motherhood, helping clients find the right fit for executing their products, helping them articulate their needs and strategize solutions….. still working on the details.

But I have found this space to be cluttered with this talk of “personal branding.” To me, it has the appearance of a cult of Self. After perusing my local “experts” and similar consultants all over the web, I am finding the same talk and catch phrases, regardless of their level of actual experience or competence. I was really struggling with finding a way to create my own genuine identity without engaging in this practice or having that appearance.

I totally feel where Codi is coming from, and so I wanted to get your feedback for her so that she can glean insights from the wealth.

What I want to know is this: If you had to start again, what would you do?

I know what I’d do: I’d create content on a focussed subject that provides people with very clear and practical takeaways, and then engage with anyone who interacted with me or the content at any level, and do my best to help them make the content work for them.

Your Leading Thoughts

• How about you? If you had to start again, what would you do?

Photo courtesy of Emiliantha

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

If You Had To Start Again

The Social / Broadcast Matrix says that there are four configurations for media, based on whether your channels and your content is social and/or broadcast.

There are two polar opposites when it comes to media: Social and Broadcast. In fact, these aren’t the polar opposites of media, they are the polar opposites of communiction.

Broadcast is about one-way, push communication. Social is about multi-way, pull communication.

Social is in actual fact our default communication method (a conversation where both people speak and listen in turn), whereas broadcast is what happens we begin to duplicate communication and push it out.

If you follow the axis in the Social / Broadcast Matrix (full post on this model), you’ll understand that there are four modes:

Broadcast/Broadcast is where both the channel and the content is pushed (like traditional TV.)

Social/Broadcast is when we find broadcast content socially distributed and consumed (like a PR blog or Passive Publishing Twitterfeed.)

Broadcast/Social is where the channel is broadcast, but the content is social (like reality TV.)

Social/Social is where both channel and content are social (like Facebook or Google Wave.)

We can then see that there are three social strategies:

Watercooler Strategy

For a Social/Broadcast environment, we must make sure we socialise our channels. This is what I call Watercooler Strategy.

Social Channels means that you get your message to where people are – the watercooler – by simply asking yourself: where do my customers congregate online?

Perhaps it’s on Facebook. Perhaps it’s on Twitter. Perhaps it’s on a country specific network, or blog, or by searching Google or consuming video. You need to profile your audience and find out, and then get your content there.

Showcase Strategy

In a Broadcast/Social environment, we must make sure we socialise our content. This means showcasing people’s content – crowd sourcing.

The trick with Showcase Strategy is that by putting people in your content, then invite their network to see it. So here you must focus on inviting people to comment/create/curate content for you by blogging, tagging, taking photos and video, etc.

A great recent example of this is the Orange Glastonbury ‘Glastotag’ photo that you can tag yourself in. By showcasing people, Orange has gotten people’s attention.

Elbow Strategy

In a Social/Social environment, we enter the stage where we socialise out culture. This means that we provide a platform for others. We find ourselves being at the ‘elbow’ of our communities’ actions.

I regularly find myself, or Like Minds, as a lynchpin that brings others together. I make it an effort of mine as well to help people as much as I can. I live to make it matter for others, essentially.

Your Leading Thoughts

I’ve really thrown out a bunch of thoughts here to you. I’ve got this framework down a lot tighter than I show here, but rather than waiting to put it on Slideshare, as I’m still working on it, I wanted to share a bit of it now.

• When have you successfully carried out these strategies? (They are nothing new, I know that!)
• Do you see this framework as something you can follow?

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

3 Social Strategies For Small and Big Business

We talked a while ago about ‘building the kingdom’ – looking at how a strong team is made up of individuals who strongly compliment one another. This is the type of thinking that I’m saying our youth aren’t getting so much of. It requires putting down your ego, and making others kings instead of yourself – being a kingmaker. Contrary to this, most young people want to be the king. Hey, I did, you probably did too.

My concern is, however, that the ‘be the king’ message is way out of hand, and I think it most subtly appears in the whole personal digital brand movement.

What I mean by this is that there is an inordinate emphasis on image and being ‘the social [insert area] guru‘, complete with logo, branded blog, branded avatar, slogan – and then complete lack of actual work. The idea of beefing yourself up is something that Jim Connolly is actually debating right now and is well worth getting in on the discussion.

Again, I’ve been here and made this mistake MANY times. For years I had the issue of having a better logo than actual business, and for years I made myself look bigger than I was. Thankfully, I’ve grown and balanced out somewhat through the mentoring of you guys and others.

But many young people lack this mentoring, and to be honest, we so focus on content online that it makes sense that it would be there starting point, rather than actually creating substance. It seems following is more important than delivering.

What Young People Say About The Myth

I want to share two good pieces on this to get our mind juice flowing a little. The first is from Daniel Agee, who wrote “Make Me King” recently:

I have a photographer friend who is determined to be the most well known photographer on the face of the globe. He is underselling workshops and speaking at as many conventions as he can. He is getting his name out there with abundance. He’s been turning down actual photography work to speak about his photography.

The problem is, his photography is mediocre at best. Where he shines is the experience his studio offers. While he is fighting to show how great he is and how much he can help others, he’s killing his own studio. By no longer walking the walk, he’s become an annoying bastard that must likes to talk about how great he can make your studio. His priorities are shot, and if he’s not careful, it will kill his business.

Instead of being the best, he’s trying to show he’s the best.

These people are too concerned with being king. One day, they’ll realize being king isn’t what’s important. It’s about making a kingdom worth being king of, not making yourself king.

Then, Annie Syed said this in a comment:

Moreover, I am discovering that the internet is really round and there is almost an incestuous circling of the same old people, again, and again, and again. Like really? How about you (not *you*) step out of your comfort zone and perhaps change the flow. I do see it happen here and there and it is refreshing. I see you in that line of creating a new momentum. And when I do, I am a religious zealot trying to “convert” others unto these humans. But for the most part it is disappointing.

And you know what is most disappointing is this masquerading of “I can help you” which is really another way to sell your services, product, book, etc. Now, you may be saying, “Well, Annie, people have to make money. We can’t live in a free-for-all society.” I agree. But just keep it authentic. And if you “truly” have no desire to connect with another beyond the talk of the product (or “work”) then state that too. It’s okay.

I guess my biggest realization is how rarely people tap into the humanity of one another. This doesn’t mean one has to spill all their personal stories. Not at all. But here we have a medium like the world wide web, shouldn’t it be beyond a reflection of how “business as usual” is happening on Earth? Or am I right that it is just a reflection of how we function on Earth?

Your Leading Thoughts

• Where, culturally and historically, do these false images come from?
• Rather than trying to modify behaviour, what are the roots behind this thinking, and how do we shift those mindsets?

Photo courtesy of francistoms

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

The Myth of the Personal Digital Brand

I’ve written a bit over the last months about spreadability being the way that people are marketing today. Spreadability vs Reach is in fact something I speak a lot about at events (you can see the slides here.)

One of the things we said in particular was that spreadability is like scattering seeds, in so much as every bit of your message that you put out, no matter how big or small, has a only a certain degree of predictability to it as far as a return on your investment goes.

Scattering is a volume game, and we play the volume game because we don’t know who is of value out there. We don’t know which relationships will end up returning the greatest to us, which tweets return the deals, which bits of marketing make the biggest difference – and trying to carefully plant our seeds rather than scatter them neglects all the potential relationships that we could have, that we’d never normally pick.

You can watch a video of me sharing a great recent example of that from Like Minds Conversation Helsinki.

What we can’t do is live in the volume game. This creates burnout, and means we have width but no depth, and it is in a deep, valuable relationship that we really begin building.

The conundrum is this: how do we go from a volume approach to a value approach? How do we filter all that we scatter, and know what relationships or opportunities to begin investing in with greater value?

The way that we go from the volume game to the value game is to go from scattering to gathering.

What do I mean? I mean that if I scatter my message by sending out a tweet, then those who are valuable to me are the ones that respond – they participate. I then begin the process of gathering those people to me at the level at which they are participating.

The best way that I can explain this is this: if a farmer scatters his seed, and some of that seed begins to yield fruit, then he doesn’t just leave the fruit out there – he gathers it.

If you want to read excellent insights into this, I advise you read this post on the subject last week, and in particular, the comments from Robin Dickinson on how he only follows those who he had a value-based relationship with. It is inspiring stuff.

Your Leading Thoughts

I’ve got a lot formed in my mind about this, but I want to get your feedback on it to balance it out.

• Do you agree with scattering and then gathering? Can you see truth to this?
• How do you go from volume to value?

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

Gather what you Scatter