Overheard: Everything

Listening always beats asking. Asking questions demands and shapes response.

And people, good, kind, back-scratching people, will often tell you what you want to hear.

Taken to extremes you get your LinkedIn recommendations. (Compare that to what your colleagues may say if you're out of the room...)

Less dramatically, ask people and you guide their thoughts.

Market Research companies are painfully aware of this skew. No question is entirely without motive. None comes without an agenda - an agenda proposed by the questioner.

But listening, passive listening, can teach you much.

Wise orgs and brands are doing more of this. It's often a bit of a revelation for them that they can do it relatively easily online.

But anything I publish on any open forum, blog, tweet, is recorded, is searchable, is discoverable. As is anything you say. Or your friends. And their friends ad infinitum.

Right now and for the mid-term (I'm assuming) we feel what we hear is pure, unsullied, honest, unskewed people saying what they really mean to their peers. With caveats around axe grinders and power relationships, of course.

But could it be we will begin to change what we say on the assumption that brands are listening? Will it lead to a layer of artifice?

I guess it's a little like CCTV surveillance. Britains 'know' they are the most filmed people on Earth. The emergence of hoodie culture - hiding your face from the prying eyes - is the most visible change to behaviour.

For the most part we act as if the cameras aren't there. (image courtesy)

But perhaps this is because the implications haven't sunk in yet?

And with the notion that brands and orgs can pick up on our every digital utterance still very new, who knows how this fact will end up modifying our online behaviour as we become more familiar with it.

Will we update our notions of privacy and private space as we embrace the digital?

Will we find greater value in expressing ourselves freely because that expression can connect us with others trying to solve the same problems we are (communities of purpose)?

Or will silos around our private lives remain strictly maintained?

Will we feel the need for them in a world in which you can be overheard by anyone else.

And what happens when those doing the surveillance speak back - in real time. I recall the experiment in which CCTV operators added a speaker to their cameras and started berating people they spotted dropping litter. Out loud and in public. That shocked.

So if a representative of a brand responds to your complaint in real time on Twitter (for example) are you shocked? Angered? Or pleased?

I'm guessing pleased? You aren't being told off. You are being helped at just the point at which you expressed the need for help.

Generally we are so starved of human contact with large orgs that we're left beaming by an encounter that takes us beyond the corporate artifice to the humans inside.

Does knowing they are there (lurking/ready to help depending on your pov) make a difference? Do we change if they start openly responding?

Are we thinking outloud to impress the infinite unknown audience?

What I publish is not only shared right now with those who directly choose to receive it, it is here for all time, for all people. Ever.

Dr Mike Wesch talks about the moment of context collapse we face when staring into a webcam to share on the web - that we know not to whom we are speaking.

The same must be true of any kind of utterance which can for ever be discoverable.

When you realise just how long and loud your voice may echo through the ages does it make you want to shout a little louder. Or clam up?

The dilemma is one that has always faced publishers. We're all publishers now - with greater reach than ever before - it faces us all.

It has the potential to change the meaning and value of everything we share online.

Brands are failing the social media response test

Neil Perkin has just announced his short-list for post of the month and among them is my little project to test the social media response times of a handful of leading brands.

You may recall we set them a little test in the post What Does It Take To Get Some Service Around Here?
Would be wonderful if you popped over to see the other posts Neil has assembled on that short list.

Of course it would be very cool of you if you happened to vote for What Does It Take To Get Some Service Round Here? while you are there, but I'd recommend a visit in any event - because Neil's assembled a whole heap of blogging wonderfulness to dine on. Tuck in.

By way of an update; Qik won the race to be fastest re social media response. Ford was our honourable runner-up and taking the third place on the podium... well, we're still waiting.

It appears that in social media, the majority of brands, at least, can't hear you scream.

Shame for them that everyone else can....

(image courtesy)

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What to blame if response rates take a tumble

Just went to grab myself a bottle of diet coke from my regular vending machine. Put money in - it goes right through and out the other end. It doesn't work.
It hasn't worked for several days now.
When the agency that supplies the machine turns up to refill it they are going to discover it isn't working.
I suspect they won't ask themselves: "hmmm, weather hasn't been so good, has there been some bad publicity for diet coke, maybe no one has any money, are people making their own drinks? etc etc".

They'll spot the machine is broken and do their best to fix it. That will be their first thought.

What is our first reaction when response rates fall?

Is it to consider that maybe, just maybe, the model is broken?

Google is asking.

Models that aren't broken.

Why 'niche' isn't 'niche' anymore - and the global solution

Mass marketing may well be ass-whipped, but should that be a major concern for niche publishers?

There’s an argument that adverts in niche market mags are altogether more effective and engaging than, for example, a TV ad broadcast at all comers just before the 10pm news.
Interest in the niche magazine ad is self-selecting by virtue of the reader.

So niche magazines are the future – hurrah!

Yet magazine ad teams report dwindling ad response – and prefer to think this is wholly a result of dwindling eye-balls as circulations slide. "Bloody editorial should pull its finger out" (etc etc mutter, mutter).

They may well have a point. But incremental improvements in editorial quality can only be a small part of the answer.

We know audiences are fragmenting – and they are doing this because more precisely targeted experiences are available to them. ie why buy a car title when what you are really interested in is your type of car. And if there’s a website focused on it, peopled by a passionate and knowledgeable community tempting you away from your old medium…

Those niche market mags that are holding up well are those that either still supply news content which beats (by virtue of cast-iron exclusives) alternative sources (and for whom news is a core brand value) or those that are already incredibly well focused/segmented (ie one marque titles in the car sector).

Those one-marque titles are (usually) so small as to stay under the market-share radar. They rarely have ABCs. But you can bet that’s where much of your missing market has gone.

Not so many years ago a reader of a magazine about old cars had little choice but to enjoy the variety offered to him. Now there is still a subset of readers who enjoy that variety. But those who were itching to have more focus on their specific area of interest can now get it. And if that market is too small to warrant a glossy print publication, now it can migrate online.

Once online, that market becomes global with the potential to achieve commercially viable scale in a new way.

I guess this is just another example of listening to what your community is telling you.
So, do you know enough about how your community is behaving and how it is fragmenting? Have you placed any value on joining with the new (often global) communities that are emerging? Or are you content to watch your pot getting smaller?


If you know of niche mags which are doing well and which don't fit the model described above - please share and tell us what you think their formula for success is.