Scott Gould and Friends: A Whole New World

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Scott Gould

I’ve been thinking for sometime now about how you make a blog more social. I’ve talked it through a lot with Robin Dickinson, and we think that whilst the “I write and you read” strategy works for well known names like Seth Godin, it does not have the value in richness, application or networking that we believe blogs can have.

On the other side of the ditch, you have community sites where it’s guest post after guest post, and there is a lack of an evolving narrative that guides people over the course of prolonged conversation.

Hence, welcome to what I trust is a middle ground: Scott Gould and Friends.

I’ve rebranded this blog of ours (it’s always been our blog) as Scott Gould and Friends. The name comes from the fact that whilst I write the posts, I do so from the comments that come from the friends who participate here, and thus my role is to guide the conversation that happens here. There’s also conversation that happens on a range of other places – your blogs – where you are the one who guides the conversation.

But to be sure, it’s about the friends.

Not followers, by the way. Friends sums up the fact that we are not only mutually connected with one another, but we’ve entered into friendship with each other, and that is a precious thing.

What Does This Mean?

There’s a beautiful new redesign. It’s not done, but 80% of the way there – we’ll tweak as we go. The idea is to help people find the gold that there is on this blog of ours more easily, hence I’ve arranged things by category menus.
You can introduce yourself on the Friends page – you’re an integral part of the blog!
I’m looking for guest posts from you. You know the content here, and if you have written something that you’d like to contribute here rather than on your own blog (the same way I write posts for elsewhere as they’d fit better elsewhere), then please bring it forward. For the moment, we’ll arrange this through the Contact page.
This is also part of the way I want to introduce a platform to empower people to use the gold that is on our blog.

But other than that, things won’t be too different – still deep and thoughtful pieces, still Sunday videos and ‘Leading Thoughts’ attached to every post – just with more emphasis on our community, because that for me is the real asset.

Your Leading Thoughts

How does this idea sit with you? I haven’t run it by any of you, so now is the time to deliver feedback – ways to do this better, ways this will work well, design comments, etc.
On a futurist note, how do you see the future of blogs with regards to participation? I’ve been trying some things on creating comment driven blog posts, and I’m still of the opinion that a strong sense of guidance is required to make sense of it all.
Finally, how are you? It’s been a while since we spoke last

Cheers,
Scott

What Is Social? Well…

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Scott Gould

What with starting work this week on a manuscript for a book – “Social” being the working title – I want to share some of the content that I will make up the backbone of the book that I haven’t made public until now, as it’s been reserved for paying clients only.

[slideshare id=5063806&doc=whatissocial-100826163537-phpapp02]

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

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

Old Spice: Put All The Kids In The Show, and…

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Scott Gould

… and all the parents come to see them perform.

It’s a trick as old as time, and a trick that schools have been using for years. When it comes to getting people to attend the school play, there is no better way than making sure you give every kid a part – because then the whole family comes to watch them.

That’s what Old Spice did with their campaign last month. If you haven’t heard about, to save me writing all about it, you can read this post at ReadWriteWeb. The gist of it is that they created YouTube clips based on what people said on Twitter, in near-realtime fashion. You can see all the videos here. Below is one that they did to celebrity blogger Perez Hilton:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ive3vXv-XRk

According to the guys at We Are Social, the Old Spice videos were watched 11 million times in the space of 48 hours (plus other stats here). I don’t know how much product Old Spice have shipped as a result, but they got more views that Obama’s victory speech in the same span of time, and their PR and awareness goals have no doubt been met and exceeded.

Putting The Kids In The Show

So now everyone asks “How do we do it? What was its success?” John Bell wrote a very good post on the real time nature of the campaign, John Cass wrote on its transparent inauthenticity, and Molly Flatt on the power of brand anthropomorphism. They all agree however that this isn’t something that can be replicated successfully because this is a market that rewards uniqueness just once. A clone won’t get the attention this campaign did.

For me, the takeaway lesson must be in the power of putting all the kids in the show, doing it in a real time fashion that was unique, and targeted key influencers.

Putting the kds in the show is about socialising your content. Consider threadless.com, who are a community who design and rate t-shirts by the community. Each t-shirt is always bound to have at least one customer – the person who designed it. But as their community has grown, and the average level of participation has deepened, more and more of their content has been socially created and incentives of purchasing these items has increased. People buy the t-shirts and support the company because they are emotionally invested in it, because they have co-created it.

This is the same thing I did in 2003 when I started Feedback, a youth organisation that was run by youth, for the youth. When we started out, we found it really hard to fill up our venue. Putting up posters and handing out leaflets was time consuming and largely ineffective. I remember our first event had 35 people, and we slowly increased in numbers until we jumped to 89 in March 2004 when we got a popular band from our college to perform. We jumped then again to 250 when we had our Battle of the Bands later that year.

We quickly learned that the best way to market our event and fill our venue was put people in the show who had existing followings – the same thing that Old Spice did by targeting Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres, Lisa Barone, etc.

Skip to Like Minds in October last year, and it was the same tactic with those who we asked to partner with us on the event. By having local companies as partners, they brought in their clients to see them perform.

This is why Social Media is so powerful. You are invested in it, because you’ve co-created it. And because you are invested in, you bring people to see it and you can’t get away from it.

Your Leading Thoughts

When you look at a group photo, which is the first face you look for?
How have you socialised content to put kids in the show?
Where have you seen this tactic NOT work?

Photo courtesy of Brave Heart

The 5 Innovations of the iPad

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Scott Gould

There’s been an iPad in my office for 2 months or so already, but with the UK release, I thought now would be a better time to talk about it. Whilst I’ll inevitably discuss some of the features, I want to keep to what I see as the key points of innovation, and draw some learning from those for future application.

Let me say right from the start: I think the iPad is a revolutionary device. Not so much for the device, actually, as it really is the culmination of 10 years of exceptional innovation from Apple that has created the right ecosystem to deliver the iPad. Without the ecosystem, it wouldn’t work.

So, here are the 5 innovations of the iPad:

1. You’re already using the iPad, even if you don’t have one

Because we are all pretty much accustomed to using some form of app store for our mobile device, whether it’s the iPhone or not, means that we are already using the iPad. You’ll understand what I mean when you get to holding the device, and then realise that there is no learning curve here – you already know how to use it, and if you’re on the iPhone, you already have a bunch of apps that are iPad apps that you know how to use and have installed.

This shows the power of the ecosystem that Apple have created – something that I would argue is actually Apple’s Real Asset that they’ve built over the last 10 years. They have easily tied in a new device into their existing ecosystem with such barrier-free adoption. I wonder what else they could do it with…

The fact that you already have been taught how to use it makes me think of Chip and Dan Heath in their book Switch, who say that it’s easier to start a journey that is already part of the way there, than start a shorter journey where you have to begin right at the beginning. With the iPad, it’s all the former. Once I installed the iPad from my iPhone backup, I had all my apps and settings in place, optimised for the new device. I’m already most of the way there. Continue reading →

Let Attendees Be Participants

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Scott Gould

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:

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. Continue reading →

What ‘Social’ Means For ‘Broadcast’ Businesses

Posted on May 1, 2010 by Scott Gould

On Friday 4th June, I’m speaking at Creative Brkfst in Plymouth about what ‘Social’ as a media and a mindset means for what are traditionally ‘Broadcast’ businesses.

There are a lot of fears for SMEs regarding Social Media – mainly that it is a fad, that they will fail at it, and that they will waste finance in doing so – but as with most fears, these really stem from a lack of understanding. We fear what we don’t know. What doesn’t help is the incredible amount of talk and buzz word heavy jargon, the supposed heavy reliance of technology to achieve success (thereby creating gatekeepers), the shoddy way in which most agencies provide Social Media services, and the tragic tales of brands who screwed up with Facebook like Nestlé.

What I’ll be doing is going through the Social / Broadcast Matrix and presenting a clear, framed explanation of what broadcast is, how social is an opposite of that, and how the two work together, rather than cancelling each other out. If people can understand what the mindset is, I’m confident they’ll quickly understand the media.

We’ll then look at the three ways in which Broadcast Businesses can move into Social Business.

Creative Brkfst is all about about Good Ideas (love the slogan), and as a primarily creative meetup, what I’m going to be doing with the 40 minutes I have is actually demonstrate all four modes of the Social / Broadcast Matrix by having discussion, keynoting, feedback, etc – so get yourself ready for a really engaging morning.

Best of all, it’s free. Meaning you get a morning of my time for free, as well as coffee and breakfast.

If you want to come, then you can get details here: http://creativebrkfst.eventbrite.com/