Social media rule number one : Know thy network

Social media rule number one: Know thy network

Many businesses are scared to be online. They fear the adverse power of social media and online communications. An open two-way channel is indeed more difficult to control than the one-way TV, radio and newspapers where customers will eventually comment but the editorial team will decide which comment to accept and which one is better to delete. But what can happen online and why the fear? Well the truth is that everything can happen online and damage a brand. Businesses that took years to work their image and message can see all their efforts destroyed in some days, with a simple comment on Facebook. Conflicts and crises happen every single day on social networks. 

At the same time companies know that they don't have a choice to eventually get online and hope for the best if they want to survive in a competitive market. So what can they do about it? 

Well first of all it is important for businesses to know that A LOT can be done to prevent, limit and control online problems, especially conflicts and crises. 

Rule number one that I always tell my clients is KNOW YOUR NETWORK. Know your Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. network. This is easier said than done, but it is the most important thing your business must know online. Knowing your network doesn't mean how many ''LIKES'' your business has on Facebook or ''TWEETS'' on Twitter. Knowing your network means to ask yourself the right questions about your network. Here are some examples: 

1) Who are my online customers?

2) Do I have a community, a sub-community?

3) How is information shared in my network?

4) Who are the leaders of my network?

5) etc. 

When I did a quick survey, not even 1 out of 20 online businesses could answer one of those questions about their online community. We all know that knowledge is power so if you don't know your network how can you prevent conflicts and crises in that same network?

If you have questions or comments you can also contact us or visit the official eRelations website at erelations.info. 

ORCM Architecture Model Transcendence, part 3

ORCM Architecture Model Transcendence, part 3: Diffusion-based limitations override

(source: http://erelations.info/orcm-architecture-model-part-3/)

Relations created online have some advantages over «offline» relations, at least in a business context. Such an advantage is the massive scale of a message dissemination.

Whereas in the early stages of the history of humanity a message could be distributed to more than one person it was difficult to do and involved someone to write the message (most people could not write since they did not have the required education), someone to deliver the message (sometimes you also needed a horse, donkey or a damn camel), as well as someone to read it (most people could not read). It also involved material resources and in most cases it stopped right there (there were no Costco or Staples to sell you 10,000 pages + printer bundles back then, remember?). All those factors combined contributed to a fairly limited level of message distribution, which progressed quickly when large numbers of people gained access to education, printing methods were developed, etc.

But there were still many limitations to large-scale message distribution. Those limitations are to a large degree abolished now on a worldwide scale. This is mainly because with the advent of online communications you still need someone to write the message (most people can write since they possess the required education), someone to deliver the message (all you need is a pc, smartphone, etc.), as well as someone to read it (most people can read, although they may not be «at the same level»). It does not involve much material resources, since all those great businesses have put in place cloud-based IT infrastructures so all you guys may write and propagate all sorts of content through their servers and application interfaces, email servers and social networks, this mostly with no charge, which is of course wonderful!

The downfall of the democratization of the writing process is that your piece about socio-politically derived gender-influenced perception of Dali's works may be lost in a massive influx of information from which it will appear as no more than a drop lost in a sea of not particularly significant data (marketers will at this point roll their eyes will muttering «SEO», but that's another story altogether on which countless posts were already devoted). Think of it this way: if there were millions of papyrus scattered around the earth and you could pick some from the trash around the corner (or buy a thousand papyrus for 11.99$ from you-know-where), most likely nobody would care about this one piece of papyrus, right? So the staggering numbers of posts, blogs, tweets and various electronic pieces of literature do cause a loss of uniqueness; no one really cares about a particular, individual electronic writing unless it combines several factors such as significance, being directed towards a particular niche, excellent writing skills, etc. The overall quality of a post may then increase its potential for persistence in the cosmic cloud of Web-based I/O (input/output) interactions.

But one particular trait of capitalistic societies (which is fine overall, of course) is to capitalize (duh!) on any activities of said society. Online communications are no exception to this rule, even more so in recent years with millions of new users having gained access to the Net (that means a huge market share is potentially available). In order to profit from this increase in online population content will be created for the specific purpose of generating interest for brands and products. For the content to be seen by a significant number of folks, techniques & methods will be developed to trick search engines to consider as significant something that would otherwise be discarded as spam or insignificant. There you have it: content quality will be lost to the power of money. And with more and more bots pushing product/brand-based generic content on blogs/social networks through automated processes there is a risk that social media will lose some of its potential for communicating, interacting and sharing precious knowledge with others. You know, the «social» part of social media? Or we could re-label all that brand media...

Well like they say, 'nough said: that's it for your fave blog series; we will leave the ORCM Architecture Model Transcendence trilogy on this apocalyptic note.

Transforming reality through corporate vision

Transforming reality through corporate vision

People are born and eventually come of age and pass away. This is not necessarily the case with corporate entities. Those strange forms of life may survive through one main aspect: the vision located at the core of their heart; one could say that the corporate vision is the soul of a corporation, the principle governing its behavior pattern adopted through various roles and situations.

A strong corporate vision is not based exclusively on reality: it transforms, creates reality... It may not care – or want to care... - that you perceive it as being disconnected from "facts on the ground"; acknowledging a perception that would differ from the corporate vision may be undesirable, since it may then prevent the corporate vision from becoming a reality. Hence a too strong focus or obsession with reality may not help a vision take shape and subsequently materialize. On the contrary, being "open" to a perception that is compatible with the corporate vision could help it become a reality; thus adopting a particular attitude of desiring to conform to the corporate vision can contribute in transforming the "real world". And then, the corporate vision will become real: "facts on the ground" will be aligned with said vision and will thus be perceived as more true/natural and less as an artificial perception based on a distorted viewpoint.

This process, which could be akin in some aspects to an organized form of systemic brainwash/propaganda, is not necessarily negative in its inherent nature, though: it strives to achieve perennity of the corporation through dissemination of its vision, i.e. "business culture", in order to convert, dominate, gain strength. Ethics of behavior is not particularly relevant in the case of a corporate entity (other than for image-building purposes) since its primary will is to never cease to exist; it will then take actions required to assure its ultimate sustainability and survival; the moral aspect of activities undertaken to this effect is a human element while corporations are not human, even though they are created and managed/controlled by humans (like, for example, an animal being directed by a human does not make said animal become a human itself). It could then be assumed that corporations are governed through different sets of rules than individuals.

A corporate entity that would never fail to regenerate and propagate its core vision could, in theory, "never die" and survive eternally.

Participation & Collaboration IS 2.0

I hear a lot about the technical aspects of upgrading an individual or an organization to a 2.0 level/state, etc. There are lots of features on social media tools, and how to use them for business purposes to strengthen a brand, etc. 

We are beginning to see more and more ads in main social networks and this trend does not show any signs of losing steam. What I fear is that a couple years ago we had intranets of a private nature, now social media is generally open to the public, and if the marketing aspect becomes too strong, perhaps individuals and organizations will go back to private networks and isolate their information stream from the general public in order to cut themselves from the "spamming", i.e. automation of "user-generated" content. 

That will be a blow to the internet in its inherent nature: transparent and free. But some would say the the Web is becoming more and more like TV: more ads & control, less freedom.

What I would like to see is the focus remaining on what seems like the most important aspects of social media: participation & collaboration. The interactive nature of social networks is best when genuine; let's not spoil that through automated content-generation processes and programmed functions. Or can it be done while keeping control over content quality? Interesting topic...