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Five Things to Remember about Social Media

December 1, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
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2009-12-01-adage_skierIf you had any doubts about the impact social networking tools and social media have on the world as we know it, watch this Advertising Age video of Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz talk about the changes they’ve made in their approach to reaching skiers and snow enthusiasts. While this is a great example of responsive and proactive marketing, it reveals bigger trends about how social media technologies are changing the way people interact with information and how that impacts their behavior.

Five Things to Remember About Social Media

  1. A picture is worth a thousand words but a video says it all. Video is a powerful communication tool. That seems obvious, of course. Humans process information from images far more efficiently than words alone. Video is an image on speed-it engages different sensory inputs and delivers an image stream. Social media allows for the distribution of videos to be immediate, targeted, personal, and accessible on-demand through YouTube, emails, mobile devices, and websites. Websites, in fact, may be the distribution dinosaurs of the bunch because people have to go to the site to find stuff. New tools are making it easier and easier to bring information to us, not matter where we are.
  2. Honey we shrunk the time. The acceptable time lag for receiving information has radically shortened. Our expectations are now that we can (and should) get what we want to know right away. Decisions are made with real-time information. Who wants to book a ski vacation three months ahead and find out when you arrive that the snow’s no good? The implications of this for your customers is that if you can’t make good information easily and quickly available, they are going to be frustrated and it will reflect on their opinions about the competence and reliability of you, your product or your service. It doesn’t matter if you sell ski vacations or boob jobs.2009-12-01-timeclock
  3. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The expectation to have real time information for our decision-making means we expect transparency, authenticity, and, heaven forbid, honesty. And we don’t just expect it about products we buy. We expect it from politicians, doctors, friends, and service institutions. If we don’t get it, we feel disrespected. There is no trust-and no business-where there is a perception of disrespect.
  4. Together again for the first t ime. This new environment has to be part of your strategy whether it’s for marketing or media literacy. You can’t separate social media from marketing and management and successfully run a business any more than you can separate content production and user-choice from critical thinking about message analysis in media literacy training.2009-12-01-network
  5. It’s the system, stupid. Social media is based on networks. If you hear the word “system,” and still think it’s a con or a n institution independent of you, you need to reorient. It is no longer possible to act in isolation. We are part of a system that all works together–for better or worse. Just like supply and demand, we are in this together. More importantly, systems have very different properties than unidirectional information flows. Messages travel across network hubs and nodes. This means that everytime information hits a hub, it automatically disseminates information to all its nodes. Imagine how germs spread in a room full of kindergartners and you’ll get the idea.

Rob Katz is a smart guy. By empowering his customers with current and accurate information about ski conditions, rates, and services, he is building a deeper, richer, and much more reciprocal relationship with them than he ever could have with ads in Condé Nast traveler. Using social media this way develops relationships based on trust and providing value rather than selling. Priceless.

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Social Media Networks Get the Word Out. Just ask ACORN.

September 18, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 4 Comments
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However you come out on the politics of the “to-fund or not-to-fund” ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) issue, the radical change in House and Senate’s support for funding of the organization (or defunding as the case may be) is an excellent example of the impact of new media technologies.  Information travels across new media distribution channels out of the control of mass media, and corporate and government agendas.  In this case, according to Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner, new media sources played a significant role in forcing Washington to address the ACORN issue.

He writes:

Democrats voted 172-75 to defund ACORN; Republicans voted 173-0 to do so. This would not have occurred but for http://biggovernment.com/ the Big Government videos of ACORN employees encouraging tax evasion and prostitution. “Mainstream media” studiously ignored this big, big story, because it put Obama’s political allies in ACORN in a bad light–such an egregious bit of biased coverage that it aroused derision and contempt from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

Whether or not you even agree with Barone’s interpretation, you have to admit that new media is making its mark on politics.  From text messages to encourage votes to viral videos that impact funding, if you ignore the power of an interconnected network to distribute information, you do so at your peril—or embarrassment.  Just as social media networks have tremendous power to support a cause; they can equally expose a transgression.

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Identifying Trends and Changes in the Social Media Landscape

July 24, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 3 Comments
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Social media tools are a great way to get to know your audience better and for less expense, than you ever have before. Yet, social media tools seem to change overnight. As Heidi Klum says on Project Runway, “One minute you’re in, the next, you’re out.”

For social media marketers, communicators, and researchers, this means not only keeping your finger on the pulse of public conversation but also on how that conversation is getting around. New technology impacts the quality, quantity, and use of information as it moves across a networked society. With apologies to Marshall McLuhan, both the medium and the message will impact your relationship with your audience.

Zeitgeist is a German term that means, literally, the spirit of the times. It captures what’s on our mind, our mood, and the energy level across society. As our world becomes more interconnected, we have the ability to watch the zeitgeist of the country online through different lenses, from sophisticated ones like search engine data to more intimate ones like trolling around on Facebook walls.

The zeitgeist is the context or social backdrop that has significant influence on not just what information flows across the networks, but how we understand the information and act on it. Keeping abreast of these trends is part of developing an more accurate understanding of the people you want to reach. Web marketing pundits argue that building buyer personas is the best way to create a great marketing program. A persona—or archetype, ideal model, or prototype, depending upon your industry—is a defined group that represents your primary customer. A good persona goes beyond the assessment of Influencers or Enthusiasts. Think ‘NASCAR Dads’ or ‘Stay-at-home Moms.’

Developing accurate archetypes addresses several problems. It provides:

  • a reality check about whether or not you really know your customer
  • an evaluation of whether the product or service will do what the customer wants and or needs
  • focuses your marketing efforts more clearly on how to reach your audience

But where do we start looking for the data we need to understand the social context necessary to build up useful customer models?

Several research methods are available to help. These include surveys, interviews, contextual inquiries, web analytics and ethnographic research. The good news is that developing personas in social media relies heavily, and relatively inexpensively, on ethnography and web analytics.

For up close and personal, you can’t beat ethnographic research. It examines the patterns of behavior, artifacts, and social patterns within a society or segment of society. It conjures up visions of Margaret Mead heading out to remote villages to understand indigenous tribes. Previously out of reach of the budgets of most small companies, this kind of research is now available through social participation from anywhere you can connect via computer or mobile device. You can find and join conversations all across the web to find out where your audience is most likely to be. Then you can lurk about the edges and see what’s on their minds. Sites like Facebook and MySpace are contained or bounded communities with observable behaviors, patterns and artifacts in the form of photos, notes, recommendations, and widgets. Not much different from those indigenous tribes. The same is true of social networks like Ning and LinkedIn. This open access allows for immersion—important because you must do a lot of listening before you talk. Immersion is the best way to learn a foreign language because you experience the culture. It’s the same thing in social media. Immersion into social media networks will give you insight into a richer palette than normal psychographics. You can see the psychological manifestations of social networking, such as the need for affiliation, identity development, self-presentation, self-appraisal, belief structures, and interaction and communication styles reflective of individual differences and cognitive and emotional development. These things are fundamental drivers of our decisions and actions.

On the other hand, sometimes you want to get a view from 30,000 feet to see where the population is clumping. For that, try tools like Google Zeitgeist. Google, as the dominant search engine in brand recognition, if not every other way, has created a massive database of search activities. They are not alone in monitoring this data, but the nature of search engines means that each search company indexes information by their own algorithms and logic that can produce vastly different results. John Battelle in The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture says search behavior creates a database of intentions because searching is a manifestation of intended behavior. Bill Tancer’s Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters describes how the dynamics of emotional shifts or responses to society-wide events filter through the systems and impact consumer trends and behavior. Watching meaningful patterns emerge is a social psychologist’s dream come true. Articulating those patterns into strategy is a marketer’s.

Combining macro and micro approaches allows you to bracket your target audience with local influences and conversations in the context of broader social activity. This helps you formulate an understanding of an audience segmentation that encapsulate sets of characteristics, needs, and behaviors. Once you have a clear picture of your audience and market, you will be able to assess how the specific social media tools will connect you with your target audience in meaningful ways and fit with your goals.

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The Positive Psychology Of Entrepreneurship

July 16, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 3 Comments
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A version of this post appeared in my blog Positively Media on Psychology Today.

Portrait of store ownerThere’s a lot of buzz about entrepreneurship right now. This is especially obvious if you hang out on LinkedIn, Twitter, or cruise the Ning social networks. It is not surprising, given the amount of people looking for jobs due to cutbacks and restructuring and a few bankruptcies thrown in for good measure. So far, the government plans to promote economic growth have tried to stimulate a lot of things, but stimulating entrepreneurs doesn’t seem to be one of them. It’s important to encourage entrepreneurship and not just for economic reasons. Entrepreneurship is the ultimate exercise in developing the attributes that we know from positive psychology to be essential to having a good life: self-competence, optimism, engagement, and resilience.

I’m against government stimulus the way it’s usually done for the same reasons that I’m for entrepreneurship. Sending people checks in the mail may give them money to spend–and I’m not saying that’s not fun–but they might as well print a card to stick in the envelope with the check that says: “You can’t do it yourself, so we have to help you.” There is no indication that anyone in government from either side of the aisle thinks we can take care of ourselves. There is no encouragement to start a business or suggestions about how do it with or without the stimulus checks. There are no messages about how starting a business is way to turn one dollar into two. Or even how important it is for everybody’s morale if you just get busy and make or do something. We don’t even teach it in schools unless you make it all the way to an MBA. For a country founded on initiative and pioneer spirit, this seems totally out of character. The stimulus program is a message about powerlessness and consumption. And worse, this type of stimulus is promoting consumption without any ties to an individual’s effort. Every parent knows that’s a recipe for disaster. Aside from what that kind of incentive does to someone’s work ethic, it is even worse psychologically because it undermines people’s belief in themselves.

When someone starts a business, it’s just the opposite. It draws on your passion and energy, your creativity and innovation, your resourcefulness and your guts. You do not have to start the next Apple or IBM to have the satisfaction of making a positive contribution. And if you’re even remotely successful, you’ll also give someone else a job. Do you have a passion for making scented soap? Can you keep somebody’s books, build a website, knit a sweater, wash a dog, tutor kids, repair cars, mow a lawn, or teach someone how to use their computer?

From a practical standpoint, thanks to media and communication technologies, some of the major hurdles to starting a business are incredibly low. With the Internet and social media, you can research legal issues, apply for licenses, get supplies, and launch marketing campaigns all on a shoestring budget. With the Internet, service jobs can be done without having to drive your car or put on a tie. If geography matters to what you want to do, then you’ve got Craig’s List or EBay. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland put on a show in their father’s barn. You can start a business in yours. If you don’t have a barn, how about the garage or the basement?Woman entrepreneur

However, the logistics of starting a business are not the point.

It isn’t what business you do, or how you do it that brings psychological value. It’s that you are doing something. Once you have a plan, you are engaged. You take action, figure out problems, try things, and your belief in yourself grows. Those feelings are self-reinforcing; they build on each other and it’s empowering, if not slightly exhausting. In the recent issue of Psychological Science, Park and Peterson (2009) review what it means to live well according to the positive psychology literature. From Freud to Seligman, the recurring themes include autonomy, competence, initiative, environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth, engagement, meaning, and the balance of skills and challenges. Sounds like the manifesto of an entrepreneur.

Positive psychology gets a bad rap because many people think it’s just about being “happy” and, aside from our moral ambivalence about happiness, many construe that as a fairly shallow construct. If all we–or the economy–needed to feel better was money, the government stimulus checks would really be doing the trick. But that approach misses the point. Positive psychology is about the attributes that make you feel good, which is a different thing. It’s about feeling like you matter, that what you do has meaning, and that you believe in your ability to get stuff done. (Psychologists like to call that ‘self-efficacy’.) When you feel like that, you also feel more optimistic and hopeful which makes you more willing to take risks and try other new things. If you don’t believe me, read Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus‘ “Banker to the Poor” in which he describes how microlending (lending people small amounts of money to start businesses) has positively transformed the lives of people around the world, lifting them out of both poverty and helplessness. Or go to Kiva and read about their social network approach to financing small business ventures.

This is the kind of stimulus we need. Let’s at least focus a couple of initiatives on creating the opportunity to achieve some autonomy, meaning, independence, and engagement through entrepreneurship. It would be nice if the government could show us they have faith in us, too. We could stand a little more optimism all around.

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Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2009). Achieving and sustaining a good life. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(4), 422-428. Retrieved July 15, 2009. from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pps/4_4_inpress/park.pdf

Photos: istockphoto.com

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Do social networks like Twitter belong in media?

July 13, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
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There’s an article on on ABS/CBN news site (Do social networks like Twitter belong in media?) discussing, among other things, the business models of social media, if it’s possible to monetize Twitter, and whether or not Murdoch will invest in Twitter after MySpace.  About 3/4 of the way down the article is a statement that shows me how hard it is for people to let loose of their current models of how the world works and why so many companies and people are having a hard time taking advantage of social networking technologies.  The author writes: “What is also unclear is whether social networks belong under the roof of Internet companies or traditional media.” Why is it that we insist on putting something firmly in an existing category?  Why must social networks be under one roof or the other?

Partly it’s because that’s how brains work.  We process new information by sticking it to something similar in our “brain bank” of stuff so we can decide what it is–or even remember it at all.  We do that with all kinds of things based on our experience.  Call it classification, call it stereotyping.  They are the same.  It is the process of trying to understand new information in the context of old information.  It isn’t a moral failure, it’s a biological constraint.  If we weren’t able to do that, we’d never make it out of the house in the morning for having to figure so much stuff out.  And we get really nervous if we can’t stick things somewhere, so we put new information, new experiences, and stuff we don’t understand firmly into the closest bucket.  And that’s the problem, because once in a bucket, it’s really hard to get it out.  And to make matters worse, this new bucket entry serves as a place to stick other stuff that kind of matches it, and they become equally as questionnably filed away.  When it comes to technology, this constrains us, not helps us.

Hello?  Did anybody watch the CNN coverage of Michael Jackson’s Memorial streaming across Facebook while people texted their experience in Twitters?  It’s time to wrench our old metaphors about media technologies out of the old media vs. new media model.  The boundaries are going away.  Making judgments based on out of date metaphors makes bad decisions.  It is true no matter what arena you’re operating in–business, socially, politically, interpersonally or scientifically.

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