Preaching to the Converted?

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

You might have the feeling if you’re using Social Media that you’re preaching to the converted. I often do. Question:

How many more case studies can we read?
How many more times can the same common sense be reinterpreted in 5 different points?
How many more summarises and digest emails can we look through for the same content packaged in new ways?
How many more comments can you leave saying “Great post”?
How many more events can you attend?

Lessons from Church

I’m an assistant pastor at my church. We have similar issues: How many sermons can you sit through? How many times can you come to church and hear the same basic principles (change, love, give, help) said in different ways?

There comes a point when you realise you are preaching to the converted. At this point you realise that it’s no longer about what you say, it’s about what they do.

Check out the diagram below. I’ve adapted it from Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren (affiliate link) so that the language is more business orientated.

It’s pretty obvious, but let’s break it down.

The Crowd are the people in your general vicinity. This could be your city. In Social Media this used to be everyone on Twitter. But now that people follow so many other people, your crowd is probably those that either you follow or who follow you – people that you are linked to, but don’t engage with. These often are not aware of you.
The Community are those who in my case use the #likeminds hashtag and attended the last Like Minds Conference. You may speak with them occasionally. They are aware of you.
The Connected are the ones that you speak with semi-regularly to regularly. You comment on and subscribe to their blogs. Sometimes you collaborate with them. They are engaged with you.
The Committed are those you speak, discuss, update, collaborate and work with regularly. They are builders with you.
The Core are those with whom your life is share. They lead with you.

You see the change here. At the crowd level, you aren’t aware of each other. At the core level, you are leading with each other. The difference is action.

The tipping point is going from community to connected.

If you feel you are preaching to the converted

Then stop preaching. Instead, start working with them.

A few ideas for you to turn community into connections.

Schedule a skype call and get talking about your passions.
Agree to work together on a small project
Go out of your way to refer or make an opportunity for them
Do something extraordinarily special for them
Meet them

How about you? Are you preaching to the converted?

Scaling The Levels Of Social Communication

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a tweet worth?

One of the things I persistently tell my staff is “get on the phone!” When trying to get information, sort something out, or close the loop on a contract or task, I really do hate it when people leave things to email when they could so easily pick up and phone and do it right there.

Even when my wife says to me “I’ll text them” I say to her, “why text and wait for an answer when you can get one right away if you call!” The other day I even had someone say to me that they hoped so-and-so got their tweet about their meeting. My answer again was, “Phone?”

We seem to have forgotten sometimes that our mobile phone does indeed make phone calls on top of email and tweeting! Continue reading →

Broadcasting Hypocrisy

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Scott Gould

I think Seth Godin is reading my blog. Yesterday he wrote on ‘Losing Andrew Carnegie‘ and talked about investing in people over parts. Anyone who has been reading here a while knows I’ve been talking about this a lot since October, and gaining new levels of growth by getting free what I call ‘Factory thinking‘. The idea is that parts in a factory will break, but if you lead people, they can develop and grow.

Of course I know Seth isn’t reading my blog, nor is the idea mine to begin with – we’re just standing on the soliders of giants who’ve been discussing this since the beginning of time.

However it is an opportunity to discuss something that’s really on my mind right now and will require me to be painfully honest.

Are We Really Focussing On People In Social Media, Really?

So confession time. Claiming that Seth Godin is reading my blog is attention seeking. My blog is getting less comments and retweets and I find myself at times wondering what the point is. I’ve been doing things like writing blog titles like this, trying to promote my own stuff as if it’s someone else’s. All the dirty tricks.

But then I catch myself: this is factory thinking. It’s treating my blog is a machine that has outputs – rather than a place to serve and lead people.

What really shook me up was spending a bit of time with Chris Brogan at Like Minds. I don’t want to play the name game, but I was profoundly impacted by the time I spent with Chris. I’m pretty good with people and good with names – but Chris was on a whole other level.

I saw him meet people in the morning, meet a tonne of people during the day, and then call that person by name in the evening. Every person he spoke to I watched him converse with genuine interest, and never flip open his phone or excuse himself like I know I so often do.

When I asked Chris what his secret was, he gave me the simplest, yet most painful answer: “I just have an insane passion for humans”

Are We Broadcasting Social Media?

I wonder how many of us are broadcasting the message of discussion? The whole idea of Social Media is that it is two, three, four way communication, yet I know my behaviour of late has been one of broadcast.

What hypocrisy!

One of my friends is Robin Dickinson. He and I talked a few months ago about a comment-driven blog, a place where the blogger was actually a facilitator – and rather than forcing his readers to read his content, he instead used the blog as a place to draw comments to form the content.

Well Robin went away and did it. What he has going on right now at RADSmarts is something I’ve never seen before – a community that is commenting on each others comments based on a short, 50 word blog ‘question’ with a picture.

I’ve got no point to round this up on, and to be honest I’ve lost the expectation of getting an discussion going below. But that doesn’t matter. This isn’t a machine that I’m churning – it’s a place to lead people. And if what I’ve seen last week with Like Minds is anything to go by, leading people will build far bigger things than managing machines ever will.

My thought now is, how much of what I thought was ‘discussion’ and ‘social’ was just broadcast?

Local Charities Doing Good – With Social Media

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4aIj0rp5rM

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

I was taking a break on Dartmoor this week when I started seing lots of collection boxes for Devon Air Ambulance Trust (DAAT) in practically every shop, hotel or restaurant that I went to. The woman at this shop told me that everyone in the town (Chagford in this instance) had at the very least a family member who had been directly helped by DAAT.

So I flipped out my camera and started rolling. It was a moment of synchronicity – let me tell you why:

We had Heléna Holt on the first panel at Like Minds last week, who is the CEO of Devon Air Ambulance Trust, and I know the campaigning that she and many others do through Social Media to not only get funds but to also increase awareness. Having Heléna on the panel was another local person who we had in the diverse mix of people speaking. I hear people talk about ‘local’ in Social Media, but few do it.

The local goodness doesn’t stop there. In fact this whole thing is a local affair – because it’s our local partners Optix Solutions who developed Devon Air Ambulance’s website and Social Media campaign. In fact having ‘local partners’ is something that just isn’t really being done by conferences that have a global voice. Anyway, moving on…

Heléna sat on the panel that Jonathan Akwue from Digital Public had keynoted on minutes before – the very keynote where Jon boldly said that “Social Media saves lives.” The Guardian were there and concured with Jon, and thus ran the first of two articles on Like Minds, titled ‘Like Minds: Social Media can save lives‘. You can see the interview with Jon and how they reduced teenage pregnancies using Social Media here and then the keynote here.

And there’s one more thing: before Like Minds, not too many people knew about Jon – something he blogged about quite openly here. But his opening keynote has been praised over and over. We knew that he had something to give, even if he didn’t shout about it.

There are plenty of examples of local charities doing good with Social Media. But more often than not they are behind the scenes rather than jumping to get attention. Take our like minded endeavours for example – I never knew any of them were functioning at such a level.

Let me hear from you – what local charities do you know of using Social Media to do good that we should be promoting?

Spreadability: The New Sensibility

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Scott Gould

In my article PR 2010 I discuss a framework that looks not at reach, depth or views but spreadability as the new sensibility for 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.

First, Make Everyone Feel Special: Social Media Ethics 101

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Scott Gould

I’m struggling to pick what to write about after the incredible weekend I’ve had with those of you at Like Minds. There’s so much to say – not about me – but about the mix of people from all over the world who attended both physically and virtual, both on the day and in the weeks leading up, who made this gathering of like mind what it was and is.

My aim with event planning Like Minds was to not make as much of a conference as it was an experience. It’s something I’ve been doing and talking about for a while, and out of all the incredible remarks people have made about Like Minds (thank you all, so much, by the way), I was thrilled by how many kept echoing my sentiment and agreeing that it was an experience.

Make People Feel Special

Chris Brogan said both on Friday and his blog post on Saturday that Social Media is about making people feel special. I’m so glad he did that. Like I said above, I’ve been hammering on and on (and getting criticised) about experience – but perhaps now that Chris has spoken people will wake up and listen.

I feel silly as I write this because I feel like I’m performing some kind of rank-pulling by using the big names (and while I’m at it, John Bell also agreed) – but I have to get this out and into the community.

If anyone wants to know the secret to our success with Like Minds, I can tell you it in one word: experience.

Experience is what separates the everyday from every day – a compelling experience separates what is so remarkable that you use it every day from the things that are common and just plain everyday.

What Was Said, and What Was Felt

People forget 90% of what was said by the time they reach the door. This knocks all of the arrogance out of you because you realise that saying profound things isn’t as important – or memorable – as making people feel profound.

I think that many things are an experience waiting to happen – they just need to stop making people listen more than people can, and make them feel things instead.

UPDATE: I should’ve said that Like Minds Alumni Vanessa Warwick wrote the same words before I did here.

Photo with many, many thanks to the dedicated Paul Clarke

People Don’t Care

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Scott Gould

John Cass was asking some great questions recently about Transparency in Social Media. Rich Baker was asking similar ones too with regards to Film Four and Vodafone. My response to both was what I say when consulting on Social Media integration for my clients:

People don’t care.

No pretty picture today. No flowery language. Just let the reality hit you: people don’t care.

Remember Eurostar?

When everyone was angry, they went to the Twitter account for answers. The Twitter bio said “Official Eurostar Twitter feed. Not Eurostar customer service but trying to help get information out to our customers as received. Thanks for understanding.” But the truth is, people did’t care. I labour the point here.

If you represent the brand, you are the brand.

If people need anything from the brand, you better be ready to give anything they need -whether it’s your department or not.

The idea of customer care is so your customers don’t have to.

And that calls for some integration. With all the talk of strategy, engagement, conversation and the rest, too many people now vastly exaggerate what they can offer, and unfortunately don’t offer the basics of having something that works.

I learnt that lesson for myself again this week. We are taking registrations for Like Minds Lunch Time Talks and someone complains that the process isn’t easy. It doesn’t matter that it’s because they have to pre-order their food, and is part of us measuring how we are raising £100k for the city. They don’t care. And the truth is, they shouldn’t. They just want it to work.

Question

If you had to offer 3 pillars for integration – and no more than 3 – what would they be?