The purpose of messages is to connect us - not to persuade us

I am continually amazed by the number of people who still seem to think 'social media' is all about content and the distribution of messaging.
Their end game is to persuade you, via the gift of influence, to do stuff. This is the exact same model as old school PR and Advertising: Pay us money, we'll persuade folk to do what you want them to do.
Social Media is not a 'do to' medium. It is a 'do with' medium.
Yet few in the persuasion camp will even open the door to allowing their campaign of doing to to be done with the people for whom it is intended. The lip service to peer to peer participation usually paid is simply to use you and I as a channel to distribute.
This is to treat the peer to peer networked environment as if it were simply another broadcast medium - which is to  misunderstand the difference between a network of nodes and a centre-out broadcast mechanic.
The web creates greatest value when it is understood as the best available way for groups (communities of purpose) to self form. Our sharing of messages, perhaps better understood as our expression of metadata, is our way of reaching out to connect with other people who want to solve the same problems we do, right now.
Bringing together people who care about the same things, self forming into groups, is how the energy to make change is generated.
Bring together people who really care about something and they will help you improve it, making it a better fit for themselves. They'll help you make products and services which work better for them, because they matter to them. They'll do with... you.
It's social, its participatory, it's niche, and it's where the purpose of messages (metadata) is to connect us rather than to persuade us.

Related articles

• Facebook to the Rescue! (time.com)
• Information Literacy The Assistant Librarians' Information Literacy Group. " Blog Archive " Social Media - re-conceptualising information literacy (library.hud.ac.uk)

We don't pass on messages - we share ideas

I've often discussed why traditional advertising can't succeed in social environments.

It comes down to transmission: In social spaces the only way something gets distributed at all is because it is passed from one person who finds it useful/cool to someone else they think will think it useful/cool, too. (image courtesy furiousgeorge81)

So you have to provide messages that can be adapted. Jokes that can be retold in the form people wish to retell them. Unfinished articles. Messy kitchens.

The message you send out isn't how it'll be passed on. It never was anyway. There is more on that in this deck:

Why Traditional Ad Models will not work in social networks (and what will...)

View more presentations from david cushman.

But of course what people pass on isn't a message.

"Hey Joe! Come on over here. I've got this great message to tell you!"

That is advertising. That is broadcast. It lacks the human touch.

No, what we actually do is pass on ideas, not messages.

So, what's the idea you want to share, that others can adapt, embrace, contribute to, share?

"Hey Joe! Come on over here. I've got a great idea I want to share!"

That is human. And being human is a bit of a bonus when you want to communicate with other humans.

When search fails: humans to the rescue

Just added a new blog post over on /message which includes an interview with ditto.net's Colin Kennedy.

Social tools in the enterprise. Contradiction in terms?

Just added a new post to /message. All thoughts welcome!

To advertisers: stop targeting, start broadcasting

We're getting better and better at targeting advertising - at sending users messages we think they'll actually find quite useful.

But the increasingly free expression of metadata changes the game regarding the way we 'target'.

Indeed, it may reveal that who-does-what-to-whom in this relationship can and should be turned on its head.

In the process we may have to let go of one of the grand promises of the digital world - that we can target individuals with such precision that they'll always want what we target them with.

In this world of freely-exposed metadata by all parties advertising is not about targeting, it is about making a message available as widely as possible.

Sounds counter-intuitive in the digital age, right?

But it starts from the notion that recommendation happens in the mind of the receiver, not in the mind of the person making the recommendation.
Simpler still: Marketing is not something advertisers can do to people (ie target and deliver at them), it is something people (with the assistance of other people) do to themselves.

A TV advert is a broadcast of metadata. If some of that metadata hooks up with your own then you find it useful. The advert transforms into recommendation in your mind. When it achieves that status you may transmit how useful you find it to other people.

Trouble is, you can't share how useful you've found it while sat alone in front of the TV.

Which is why the best place to broadcast advertising (as metadata) is in a digital social network. Again, sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Banner ads etc have failed miserably in social networks (certainly in terms of click-thrus and/or engagement).

So, let's be clear. I'm not advocating broadcasting any old-style, fixed, centre-out message will get you endorsed by an adoring public.

No. You have to understand that when you are invited into the 'huge crowd' of a social network you are invited into one of thousands of small groups, each one made up of people looking at each other - not at the stage.

Getting the signal right for each of those small groups is close to impossible (hello 0.01% CTR!) - if you try to do it yourself.

So let the receivers' adapt it. Let them shape it so that its likelihood of being passed on within that receiver's peer-group goes through the roof. Who better to put the message in the most effective terms?

Nutshell: I pass things on that I think are cool, to people who I believe will also think it is cool.

If I get this wrong I lose some of the trust and authority I have built up with my group. So I do this with care and judgement. Much more care and judgement than the one-size-fits-all brand-control-driven centre (the broadcaster of a traditional ad message) can hope to muster.

Critically, emotions are at risk. I don't want to look bad to my peers. I'm a social creature. A human being. An ad message is not. This informs my decisions about what to pass on. Data has a hard time understanding this.

By targeting, the advertiser starts selecting where they are going to choose to share their metadata. They are saying they know who the message is for and who will respond best to it.

Fine. But they are reaching the tip of an iceberg. If you allow the receiver to decide for themselves whether your advert is a recommendation, they will take that message with them deep within their peer groups - where iteration after iteration of your message can spawn - where the next generation of receivers are available to decide if the message is an advert or a recommendation for their peers and so on...

In this context broadcast ain't all bad. We all broadcast our metadata all the time in social networks and mediums - advertisers and receivers all.

The advertiser can't assume they can calculate what it is that the receiver will decide to morph into recommendation today, right now, in the social context they are in. Their peers may be better placed - their current adhoc community of purpose.

The sharing of metadata encourages us to form into groups - communities of purpose no matter how adhoc in nature.

And groups with whom I share purpose are in a great position to spread advertising messages that morph into recommendation when I receive them. They share stuff with me they think I'll think is cool.

Targeting tries to calculate this. It rationalises our preponderance to respond in certain ways.
People, however, can feel this. Which is useful; because we're rarely entirely rational when it comes to purchase (or any other) decisions.

As Mark Earls suggests in Herd - we're post-rational creatures. We do stuff and then try to rationalise why we did it, later. If this were not the case you wouldn't smoke and I wouldn't be overweight.

So, given all this. Why spend the time and trouble targeting? Put your metadata out there - as widely as possible - and hope to be pulled to the people who find it useful, who can shape it to be useful to other people they know.

Messages don't do marketing. People do.

Please, help me on the journey with this one...