Uniting People Around A Platform

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Scott Gould

If you don’t know, in exactly one week I will be running the inaugural Like Minds conference, on the subject of ‘measuring social media.’ I’m going to skip over the back story (which you can read here), and instead get to the point: Like Minds is an example of uniting people around a platform. And I’m going to show you some of the concepts I’ve employed in doing so.

In 2003 I started an initiative in our church for young people called Feedback. In just under two years we went from nothing to 1,000 young people attending our events every month. Of course, what I didn’t say was that the first year was a failure in terms of numbers – bouncing around the 30 people mark for 11 months. It wasn’t until we ran a Hip Hop event that we broke through 100 people. What changed? We found something that people cared about, and we just provided the platform. In this case, we provided a hip hop competition, some DJing, and let the youth come. Up until then, it had just been a nice evening, but there was nothing compelling or spreadable about it.

The following months, we let bands from high school and college play at our events, and not only did the bands unite around the platform we provided, but the bands brought all their fans too. We found something that young people united around, and we just provided the platform. Over time, we nurtured the bands and helped a handful of them get signed to labels and go onto greater things. Seth Godin talks about this – this idea of platform - but in a stunning act of triumph, I can brag that I discovered this truth before he blogged about it. Go, me.

The other lesson I learnt from Feedback was to allow people to take ownership. Every Friday, we had 40 young people who came to help build the event, plan it, and do the work for it – and believe me, it was serious work. Because they were building Feedback, the brand became far more compelling and spread to their friends and family. When it came to our monthly event, it was these 40 who set the tone in the building. And that’s another important thing. When you have people uniting on the platform you have built, it is easy for the message to become skewed, so you must set the tone.

Over the years since then, I’ve learnt a lot about building communities – not from studying them, but from actually building them. I have built up tribes of young people, tribes of men and women, media groups and student groups – and even to this day I nurture an ever growing group of interns at Aaron+Gould (including the current office star, @tuckshot ), where forward thinking individuals unite around the idea of growth, change and fresh thinking.

From my experience I have found that you must discover what unites people, and then provide the platform for them to do it. Seth, on the front cover of his book ‘Tribes‘, wrote “we need you to lead us.” It’s true. There are large groups of people who want to unite around a platform, but don’t have someone to impart vision, provide direction, and guide with conviction.

Let’s drop the nostalgia, head back to 2009, and we’ll find that Like Minds is the same model. Finding what people want to unite around – collaboration, innovation – and providing a platform.

What this takes perhaps more than anything else is leadership. But don’t quote me on that, I’m still finding out.

Delivering Multi Touch And Multi Sense Strategies

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Scott Gould

I wrote a while ago that you should cast your bread on the social media waters – in other words, get your message out there without too much prescription over where your message is placed – the reason being that more often than not you get growth from areas you did not expect. Today I’m going to address a way to do that through two strategies. But first of all, we need to define a few things:

A strategy is a set of projected outcomes that move your desired ‘thing’ from one place to another, be it a market position, car journey, a blog rank, increased wallet-share – whatever.
We fulfil these outcomes by employing tactics. In the case of driving from A to B, we require the tactics of driving a car. Note that tactics not are equal to the strategy, they are part of the strategy.
Therefore, in the realm of social media, for example, the tactic of creating a Facebook page and setting up a Twitter account are not a social media strategy. And creating posters and flyers is not a marketing strategy.

I say this because a lot of ‘social media gurus‘ and dodgy marketers across all boards equate hooking one free service up to another a strategy – but it is not – this is just a tactic. We must have strategies that plot where these tactics lead to other than paying through the nose for SEO, PPC, etc. There is more to marketing success than hits and eyes.

Now that we have that out of the way, you may be wondering why I have a picture of our recent Exeter Tweetup above, and thinking to yourself “why is that there?” – Well, I’m so glad you asked! Here’s the answer: every person in that photo is part of a multi-touch and multi-sense strategy that I have employed.

Shock, horror?!?! “You mean they are a part of a strategy?” Well, yes and no. If you mean whether I’m treating them all as a marketing project, then no. But if you mean, am I treating them all differently because of who they are and what we have in common, then the answer is yes.

See the reality is that we are all using multi-touch and multi-sense strategies. Some people that we know are more visual than others, and in order to communicate more effectively to them, it’s all about painting pictures and metaphor. You might not even realise it, but guaranteed there are people in your life that you act differently towards that have different dominate senses, and your relationship works because you are ‘translating’ from one sense to the other.

Making Multi-Sense

We all learn and think differently. Some people see a film and remember the lines. Others remember the car chase scene, where others still remember how they felt about the characters. Any event you hold, any website you have, any interaction you make, anything, is all being perceived differently by people with different dominate senses.

So the question is, are you making sense to all the senses? I look at this a few ways. First, out of the 5 senses, we rarely engage taste and smell in the normal course of marketing (when I run events, I make sure I engage them both.) So that means hearing, seeing and touching. Do you provide content in text, in audio and in video? Do you provide tactile workable examples, and do you provide inspiration testimonials? These are relate to these three senses. If you are missing one out, you are missing out some of your audience (don’t feel guilty, I’m missing out some of mine too – it takes time to build it up.)

Next up is people’s motivational sense. It is considered that people are motivated in two basic directions – either towards success, or away from pain. Given this, do you make sense to both? If you marketing is all about success, then what motivation do you provide for those moving away from pain? And if your products are all about alleviating stress, then what about those who want to move towards something?

Being Multi-Touch

Our second strategy involves how people can interact with you and find you. Last week, when I published my PR 2010 framework, I updated my LinkedIn status to say that I have just published it, and provided a link. It just so happened that someone I’m connected with on LinkedIn saw that, read it, and contacted me. If I have just stuck to my usual Twitter stream, I would’ve completely missed it.

Likewise, I became friends with someone on Facebook the other day whose business I have helped through some of these principles (and a few others too – there’s more where this came from.) As I accepted his friend invite, I look on his profile to see that he was having whole conversations with people on his profile where he had posted links to my articles. There was a whole conversation going on about me but I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been multi-touch.

Multi-touch, for many, means thinking outside of the goldfish bowl. Don’t just use your preferred channels and methods of communication – experiment with other forms and see how you get on. At the least, as far as social media goes, you should keep your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles active, and I suggest using Flickr to store all your photos, while using Posterous to link a lot of this together. I regularly get people finding me through all 5 of these services.

Multi-touch really worked for me when Aaron+Gould marketed Touch 09 – an annual Christian woman’s conference with a lot of style. Over the course of a year, but concentrated over a 3 month period, we marketed the conference through multi-touch, across multiple social networks, digital channels, and traditional marketing. Of course, every touch was integrated and holistic, and linked back to the hub – the website where all the information, communication, and bookings existed. This approach increased by registrations by 100% – in a recession.

You also need to escalate multi-touch. Don’t leave your interactions at just tweets. Sending an email is still more personal than a tweet or facebook, because it requires more effort and is kept private. Set up Skype calls with the people that you connect with, and if you are able to, meet new contacts face to face. By escalating the level of touch you have, your relationship becomes stronger, more personal and more unique.

I can quite honestly say that I feel closer to people who I have met face to face and shared only a few tweets than those I have shared many tweets with. When I worked on a fashion start up, I sourced our designers by finding them on forums and emailing hundreds of potentials. After hundreds of emails, I developed the expression that a phone call is worth a thousand emails. It’s true.

And Finally…

In a shameless act of self promotion, and in the spirit of experimentation, I want to let you know that I actually consult with companies and individuals on these frameworks, and believe it or not, it even works. And if you want to see how this stuff looks in real life, check out Like Minds, and run a search on it too. It ticks most of the boxes.

PR 2010

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Scott Gould

First I said this, then, I said this. Now, this:

If you’ve arrived at reading my blog for the first time, or the first time this week, then you’ve come in the middle of a discussion on what I’m currently calling New PR, probably until a far buzzier word gets made up. This diagram above is how I see New PR working in 2010. Let me explain.

Metrics: Spreadability and Relevance

We all know that word of mouth is a not a marketing technique, because you can’t create it. You can only create the environment for it – by giving words for mouth, making something remarkable, etc. Spreadability therefore replaces reach, because as the volume of channels increase, the volume per channel decreases, and we therefore need more than ‘reach’ in a channel at one given time, we need spreadability over time and across channels. In many ways, this is value over volume.

Relevance is the difference between personal relationship and public relations. The former is dynamic (as per yesterday’s post), the latter is static. The former is homemade, the latter is manufactured, or factory made. What this also means is public relations is mass distribution, whereas personal relationship gains uniqueness through mass customisation – by being personal, it is unique and not one-size-fits-all.

Two Sides Of The Same Triangle

We don’t want to sacrifice the old wine for the new (again, see yesterday). We want to preserve static, whilst adopting dynamic.

The right side of the triangle is traditional public relations – it is centrally governed. This means the message is sent out via a press release, onto TV, onto radio, but at every point the message is governed, entrusted to editors, camera men and reporters to use what has been provided, make their edit, and then we approve. In TV, for instance – and I have been on the TV sets – everything is checked to ensure it is in line with the message, i.e. governed.

The left side of the triangle is personal relationship, which is centrally guided. The message is put out, but all along the way, like a chinese whisper, the message is adapted, changed, retold, updated, and a whole host of other synonymous activity. This change is guided, not governed. You cannot control it, only guide it. Therefore the ability for the message to preserve its original intention is determined by how clear the message is. Continually, the conversation is guided through the beauty of realtime media. But note again, it is guided, not governed. Think: retweeting, posting on walls, reblogging, trackbacks, pings, etc – all of this is adaptation of the message.

Working The Triangle

By the very nature of governance (the right side), the message is restricted to safe and controllable channels. This is a hands on approach. Take TV as an example. The production team produce something that is within the guidelines, according to a script, with roles that are cast. The programme is televised on a fixed channel that can’t be shared or retweeted, commented on, except when the programme is discussed using those digital forums, or even through a ‘did you see this last night’ conversation. But none of this is real time – production, airing, and review are all asynchronous.

This form – traditional TV – as far as I am concerned, is the most spreadable static medium because of widespread adoption – i.e., who doesn’t own a TV. No static medium has more spread, and in order to gain more spread, TV has to become more dynamic, hence this capped corner in the triangle.

TV that is aired live, with phone in interviews, etc, begins to move from the static to the dynamic – such as reality TV that envoke mass public hysteria and text-votes. However, even then, to see the programme one must be watching their TV device, and that particular TV channel – at the exclusion of other TV channels being watching simultaneously.

TV has now gain increased spreadability by becoming more dynamic and personal through the likes of YouTube and the iPlayer. It breaks the governance of channel, device and time by becoming on-demand. Better yet, the spreadability of YouTube through the left-hand channels of Facebook, Twitter and email enables the programme to swiftly move past thousands, millions, and hundreds of millions of eyes, as in the case of Susan Boyle and all the others. No surprise that the news today, then, from Brand Republic is online spending is now greater than traditional TV spending.

In order to progress up the left side – centrally guided – one must take a hands off approach and allow users to edit, adapt, mash and spread the message through the channels and in the methods that they please. You simply cannot have your hands on the message. As long as you do, it is yours, and it can’t become personal to the user, and homemade. To be personal to another, you must give it, or share it at least. The reward is far larger spreadability because the message has become personal, not public – this of course is basic community building, where the cause has to become personal to the individual – they have to make it theirs.

Taking Your Hands Off

How does the New PR consultant, who desires to guide personal relationship (not govern public relations) do this? In fact, take a step back – how does the company / brand / business muster the courage to relinquish their governance, in the fear of mis-guided efforts? This article on Social Media Today lists the Top Six Reasons Companies Are Still Scared Of Social Media – a pertinent reminder of what the fears are. However, when I talked through the social media strategy that the board of a charity had paid me to lead, I found the same fears. It was both interesting and striking to see how many of their concerns were either ignorance, or imaging worst case scenarios. Petty things like ‘Can we moderate comments’, were both almost insulting and hilarious – ‘Of course?!?!’ was my response.

Our aim then must be to remove ignorance, and prove the rarity of worst case scenario by proving the abundance of good and even great scenarios.

Having worked through those fears and tried to think it through from the other side, I’ve worked on a framework that can be reproduced for yourselves or your clients. As with the above model, this is a draft, so feedback is appreciated.

Voice. Establish the core of your message, and in turn, your market differentiation. This is pretty much a branding concern. This must be potent to your audience, and your voice strong enough to be heard even when others have mashed your message up. However your message may be edited, adapted and redistributed along the left side, your voice is still heard because it is that distinguishable to your audience.
Listen. This helps you identify the advocates who will help spread the message, as well as identify the needs of the market, enabling to you to build a far more accurate:
PRE. All copy, images, tweets, comments, blogs, discussions must be personal, relational, and show your expertise in your market. This means, practically, that you create a 140 character PRE bio. You have a PRE paragraph, PRE about copy, a PRE avatar, and a full understanding of PRE is to your market, written down, for those who are later going to PRE tweet.
PRE will also determine what is Not-PRE – the non negotiable things that you do not do, based on impressions that you do not want to create.
Multi-touch strategy. ‘Users are stupid’ is a useful thought to keep in mind (no offence, BTW). They use odd search queries, they often don’t think with initiative, so a multi-touch strategy takes your message to them, or at least has your message in the place that they will find it. Practically, it means creating a Facebook page/event/group, LinkedIn company/event/group, Twitter account (keep it PRE – a person, not a business), having a blog that has share buttons, etc. These must all be synchronised – use Facebook notes to import your blog, use Twitterfeed or Twitter Tools for blog to Tweet publishing, etc. These also build better SEO.
All these social media outposts (thanks, Chris Brogan), use the 140 PRE bio, the PRE paragraph, the PRE avatar. And again – use personal names who represent the company or brand.
Multi-sense strategy. Different people have different prominent sense. Therefore you need video, audio, micro-media, blogging, events, and yes, press releases. All your social media outposts above should clearly link to all your content, making it simple for anyone to access anything you are producing, from any channel that they access it. Easily said and very obvious, but seldom done right.

PAUSE. Up until this point, this is already performed, in large or in small, by existing marketers, PR consultants, etc. Setting this up should therefore be easy, as you are working with what is mostly already existing content, but re-expressing it through PRE. Therefore, this is still somewhat goverened as opposed to guided.

What comes after here is guidance. In the same way paid production staff, under an employed director, edit and produce governed content that is ‘signed off’, guided content is mashed up by unpaid users, under an influential socialiser, and the content is ‘handed off’.

New PR creates the role, not of consultant, advisor or ‘contact’, but the role of a socialiser, who here after guides personal relationship. So;

Inject and Infect. I completely agree with Seth Godin’s Idea Virus and I’ve successfully used it for years. Here you must inject your ‘idea virus’ (the message) into sneezers (advocates) who infect whole hives of people on your behalf. You have to know who the opinion leaders are, and infect them first. They will then do a bulk of your marketing work for you due to the influence they have.
Add. As everyone mashes up your content and message, the best thing you can do is add to it, not subtract. The socialiser guides the spreading by adding value through PRE.
Escalate by Sharing Your Voice. As new mashups, and new influencers come to the fore, you must escalate the level of relationship with these influencers, and also escalate the mashups by linking to them on your blog. You must share your voice with those who identify with it in return for their support. Remember, these are the people that are informing others’ with their reviews and opinions.
These people are easily identifiable: they comment, they retweet, they blog, they use your language, they initiate contact.
Measure. It is too easy for social media, and will be even easier with its successors, to lose track of time and not measure your effectiveness. Combat this by measuring social media return on investment and measuring your metrics bi-weekly. To learn how to do this, visit Olivier Blanchard‘s http://smroi.net, or attend Like Minds next month.
Review, Adapt, Extend. Adaptation happens almost daily, but you must also adapt and extend your strategy from a higher level than the way you write your tweets. This reviewing looks at new markets, new channels, new methods, and even changing this framework.

How To Get The Boss Or Client To Go With It

If you are either a social media savvy person in an organisation, or an agency trying to get clients to look at social media, then my advice is thus: Use a small, containable project, and ask for a small part of the research and development budget, to use the above to create a proof of concept. Document it fully, review each step and then provide a review to the powers that be on the return on investment.

Phew!

Its taken me a long time to thinking this through, develop a diagram, and write it up – and I’m fully aware that this is not comprehensive, has holes, and needs to be reworked. Leave your comments, please, as I’m very interested to know what ya’ll think.

Now, with all that thinking and writing, it’s time for lunch.

Making Room For People

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Scott Gould

I, like many people, believed I knew everything when I was 16. And naturally, knowing everything meant that I needed no one, so meeting new people in my mind was a case of them getting on side with me because I was going places and they really needed to get involved. I certainly don’t think like that now, in fact, it’s quite the opposite: one of the most relaxing things for me to do is meet new people, and love making friends wherever I go.

This change happened largely over the course of two years. After finishing college, I became self employed, doing the majority of my work at my church, The River Dream Centre. In a strange twist of fate, I didn’t get accepted for university despite having the grades, and so for me this was divine intervention. I immediately began work on our youth program and created ‘Feedback’ – a monthly event initially aimed at 16 – 19 year olds.

Our first event was an utter reflection of myself (and certain obsessions of mine), and this wasn’t a good thing. We served no cold drinks, just gourmet coffee. No rock music: it was jazz. No games and shouting but more class and culture. But with each month’s event, I became more in touch with the team of people around me, and the audience that we wanted to reach.

It was at the same time that I was reading The Naked Leader by David Taylor, a very off-the-wall and alternative look at leadership that was contra the ’7 flawless and simply steps to success’ gimmick of most leadership books at the time. I didn’t get too much out of the book, other than enjoying my first steps into innovative thought (the chapters were not in order – you read them in different ‘tracks’). But the one thing I did get out of that book which has indeed changed my life was found in the chapter ‘How to build instant rapport’, where whatever it was that David actually wrote, I have always remembered as this simply axiom:

To build rapport with someone, talk about their favourite subject: Themselves.

The lights went on in my mind. I had finally found a way to assist me in building relationships – and boy, did I need it! I began changing my conversations with people from a subject line of myself, to them. I began to love learning about new people by asking questions – this wasn’t some mind trick I was using – I found such joy in connecting with people, and found that talking about them helped them open up and engage on a deeper level with me.

Over the course of one year, Feedback changed from middle class coffee-cocktail party to 350 teens crammed in a room for ‘The Battle of the Bands’ – 350 teens that a year ago, I would’ve have struggled to talk to and connect with, that now were 350 teens that I engaged with, found out all about them, and was able to help them. Our numbers increased month on month at an astounding rate – one month we had 400+ people in the auditorium with another 200 or so waiting outside – and my favourite place to be was at the door, speaking to every single one, remembering their name, and becoming a part of their world.

I needed to make room for them. They needed to know they could talk, they could share what was going on at home and at school, and that someone did care. I became a confident to many, and a leader to well over a thousand young people over that year. Feedback stood for more than fun and music, and even more than community. There was openness and honesty, a culture that wouldn’t have existed if I hadn’t grow from being self-centered to focussed on others.

Essentially, what I think I learnt was empathy. I became more aware of the person sat across from me than I did myself, and emotionally invested into them for a short while. This empathy has become one of my non-negotiables. Whenever I speak to someone new, I’m always thinking now “how am I making this person feel valued”, not because I’m trying to manipulate them or play them, but because I’ve discovered that every person has incredible value, but few people make room for it.

It’s All About People

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Scott Gould

I’ve had two interesting interactions with people I’ve met for the first time over the last three days. On Sunday I was preaching at our church in Barnstaple, Devon, and afterwards I was talking to a very sweet lady who came for the first time called Wendy. A woman who had obviously been through a fair bit of life, I was undone as she shared just a little of her heart with Faye and I. As I listened I realised that all my examples, doctrine, memorable phrases and effort was for one thing and one thing only: people. People like Wendy.

Fast forward to yesterday as Tom Lord from Bluegrass IT was at the office getting our PC’s to work (I’ve become PC incompetent after 5 years of Mac). As Tom was making this whole thing work properly for the first time in a year, I was watching him and had the same thought. He isn’t some machine tweaking some other machine to help machines as if we’re living in the Matrix – this whole thing is about people, and it’s helping people. [Disclosure: @Bluegrass_IT did a sweet job of getting our PC's in gear. And no, they didn't offer their help to me in return for PR.] The way Tom was dedicated to helping us, the fact that the computer was a tool to assist our work for people – the setting was an office and a Dell server – the input and the outcome was all about people.

Back in the spring I was sharing a marketing ‘formula’ I’d concocted with @kriscolvin , and what she said to me has been ringing in my ears since: “the thing that’s missing with your formula, Scott, is people.”

Wow. People. I wonder how many:

Individuals are living a life that’s missing people
Businesses are selling a product and building a brand, but missing helping people
Bloggers are writing to impress others, but not empower people
Opinionated critics blow hot hair but can’t lend a hand to people
Churches are running a ministry but have forgotten about the people
People like myself, that consider themselves to be helping people, but haven’t in the last week really got down in the trenches with people.

Perhaps if we stopped what we are doing and asked ourselves, “where are the people?”, then we’d be far more satisfied. I know that for me, meeting, helping and engaging with people is the most refreshing thing I do.

It’s all about people. Isn’t it?

Exeter Tweetup on Thursday 6th August

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Scott Gould

We are having a Tweetup. This means all of us Digitalls and Digicools who use Twitter are going to gather in a physical location, and most likely, talk about Twitter while using our phones to tweet little messages saying “I’m standing here with @scottgould !!!”

OK – if you don’t understand a word of that, then why not dive in the deep end and come? I’ll be there to hold your hand, literally. Plus, most of us guys are actually not that geeky. Especially people like @sophynorris @jamesmb @rokkster @ExeterCCM . Trust me.

It’s happening on Thursday 6th August, in two parts:

5:30pm – 8pm, Fresha Café, Sowton. We will be joining a networking event called TBX1. You can get more details by clicking this link: http://bit.ly/11XUuq.
Then, we will all be going to the Barn Owl, Sowton, 8 – 10pm for a drink after the networking event. You can get directions here.

This is the third official Exeter Tweetup (that I know of) and will be a barrel-o-laughter because all your favourite Exeter Twitter ‘celebrities’ will be there!

So what are you waiting for? Let us know you’re coming!

Digitall, Digicool, Digitool and Diginots

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Scott Gould

Earlier this year, some aliens visited earth. They came to do some research and enjoy a Starbucks – but unfortunately for them, they left this research behind at the table they were sitting at and I happened to pick it up. Lucky me.

I had a good read and discovered that they were researching social media. They mistakenly called us humans Digi’s, and accordingly they observed 4 different social media users:

Firstly, the Digitalls. I am, and some of you are, in the Digitall tribe. We use technology for everything. We use multiple social media sites, experiment continually, have lifestreams, and are on FriendFeed. Trouble is, most of the Digitalls – who are early adopters of technology – are trying to imitate the elite group of innovators. They copy their blogging habits, produce more and more content for other early adopters, and create plenty of noise. Thus, the gap between early adopters and the early majority is increasing in size because it is getting harder and harder for the average Digi (the ones with the money) to understand what the Digitalls are talking about.

Watch this video, made by the Aliens, which interviews the Digi on the street. I don’t just like it because the interviewer is called Scott, honest.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

Cue the Digicool. They are some of these people. They don’t know what a ‘browser’ is and they don’t care – but they do know that Google is not synomous with Internet Explorer. They have Facebook. And they have it because it’s cool. My wife has an iPhone, because it’s cool. They might have a Twitter account, and probably only make use of it if they can link it to their Facebook status – why? – because it’s cool.

Digicools are an a giant untapped resource. As the early majority, they appear smart to most people (largely, to parents), but appear slow and sluggish to the Digitalls. They would use services like Flickr for their personal photos if they knew about it – but, they don’t. Everyone is up in arms because a 15 year old Digi researched 200 friends and discovered that teens don’t user Twitter. But the reality is there is a huge gap between the Digitall and the Digicools, and only the daring few are stepping beyond Facebook or Bebo into these new waters.

The iPhone app Shazaam is a great Digicool product. As a party piece, my wife loves to use it. But unfortunately for Shazaam, she’s never bought anything through it, because once it’s told her the track, it’s no longer cool. She hasn’t parted with any money for a digital service. And Digicools seldom do.

The Gap Widens

In the late adopters crowd we have the Digitools. My father-in-law is a Digitool who uses Skype purely for the utility of speaking to his daughter in Australia. When he isn’t calling his daughter on VOIP, Skype is switched off. It’s a tool for a job. My mother-in-law uses Facebook to keep in touch with friends. If she isn’t thinking of that friend in Canada though, weeks go by without her status changing.

Digitools aren’t bound to generation. One of my brothers, a 23 year old in Australia, will also use Skype and Facebook when he needs to communicate, but no more. And this it he hallmark of the Digitools – need to. The aliens did observe that this need does change according to what the Digitalls did five years ago and the Digicool did two years ago – so it’s not absolute need. But the strange thing is there are few from the Digitalls who try to empower this majority – they are content to rather ramble with other Digitalls than engage with these slow, but faithful late adopters.

This group is confused over what a browser, Google, the internet and search is. The mixing of an address bar and a search bar also confuses them, and accordingly, they are subject to phishing from time to time.

Finally, it is the Diginots – not the ‘Digifools’, through it rhymed – who hear about everything all the other Digi’s are doing, and decidedly don’t understand it. They are not social media users, in the modern sense. A computer, Microsoft Word and the internet are all the same thing in their mind. And every time they sit down at a PC, it is the computer that does something wrong; not the user.

They peaked at DVD, and occasionally, with assistance, can navigate the website of their favourite sports team. But when finished, they call their teenager child technical advisor to close everything down for them.

In Conclusion

So that’s the report I found. I hope it’s been enlightening for you as it has been for me. The one thing I am convinced of, though, is I must start looking more at the Digicools and their market share, than pandering to the fickle nature of the Digitalls. Because if I start talking to them, I have plenty of opportunity to be the one who bridges the gap – because few others are.

Community Is Made From Two Words

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Scott Gould

The buzz phrase for the bloggers and online marketeers today is ‘community’, and has become the poster child for all things involving social media (a.k.a Facebook, to the average user). This, essentially, means for most of them: ‘create’ a community around what you want people to talk about.

Church – my first passion – is often made to work with this same principle. ‘Create’ community by doing church the way you want people to like it. Or how about small businesses that start out selling a product that they themselves are the ones, and the only ones, who’d buy it – and now are forced to ‘create’ an audience / community around this niche idea.

But, shock, horror, community is made from two words: Common Unity.

You don’t create common unity. You find it, and nurture it. For every wannabe blogger, engaging in the incestuous blogger-to-blogger economy, stop ignoring the massive internet audience that isn’t saturated with social media experts – the average internet user. Find out what unity you have with them. Find out what matters to them. Work with them to create change.

For every church member who wonders why they don’t have a full Sunday service – stop expecting people to turn up. Go and find out what common unity is shared in your community and get involved in it. Find the hurt, and heal it. Find the need, and meet it.

Finally, social media is changing the way we do this. If you aren’t a digitall but you’re a digi-not, ‘social media’ the snazzy word for Facebook / Twitter / YouTube – all media that is social. Start thinking outside of the ‘what are you doing’ box – and start thinking how you can find, or even be the one who brings common unity together online.