We have to get over fame before we learn to connect

If you aren't a regular follower of Marketing Week (the UK mag for the Marketing industry) you may have missed my latest leader - published at the end of last week.
I wouldn't want to miss out on the opportunity of making connections - which are frankly more likely here than on the fame-hunting pages of MW so, the column is repeated below...

Does social media satisfy an urge for fame left as a hangover of the broadcast age? An urge we must get over before we achieve connection?

The use of the term social media has done many marketers a dis-service. Actually, it's led them up a garden path to a place where the trees don't quite bear the fruit they may have hoped for.

There are two reasons.
First: including the word 'media' made us believe this was all about communication. It is. But only as a means to an end.
The second: the hangover of our mass communication era concepts of fame.

The latter assumes people are broadcasting in social networks (etc). Those who believe that will point to the idea that when we use (eg) Twitter we are shouting out into the ether in order to acquire an audience.

And that would be the case if this was a broadcast model - an example of one to many.

But it isn't.

It's many to many. When we tweet (or express metadata - stuff about ourselves, our lives, our issues and concerns) we are not seeking an audience, we are seeking connections.

It's an important distinction.

I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of people seeking their little bit of fame through the use of the tools of social media. There are.

What I am saying is that they misunderstand the true value of a network over a broadcast model - that a network brings you connections.
And it's time we all got over that fame thing.

Unless we do, marketers will continue to make the mistake of seeking to gather audience when what they actually want - and need - is connection.

A recent example? I received an email from someone in the industry begging me to 'like' one of his clients facebook pages. If it acquired a certain (big) number of likes then the client would give a (big) cheque to Children In Need. Each like (should the target be reached) would have cost the client £2.50. That's a reasonable cost per acquisition I suppose - If you think audience has value.

The reality is if I 'like' your page only because I want to help a third party (in this case Children In Need) or for any other reason than genuine shared purpose/belief, then my eyes and ears are closed to you.

£2.50 down the drain.

A community without connection is just an audience with its eyes and ears shut.

Connection discovers and brings together people who care about the same things and gives the opportunity to do something about them together.

Connection means we join together to make things - products, services, co-created campaigns.

Social Media is more about connection and less about communication than is too often assumed. Letting go of our old world concepts of fame and audience reveals the real ROI of the web: A place for making with others - not taking from or broadcasting through.

Related articles

• Social Media and The Tale of Two Professions (briansolis.com)
• Nine Factors To Select A Social Media Agency By (davefleet.com)
• Rapport Building is Essential in Social Media Brand Engagement (chrisabraham.com)
• Caterpillar Inc thoughtfully embraces social media (wendysoucie.com)
• PR: What's Social Media Got to Do with It? (prinyourpajamas.com)

How we are made great - part II

 

The graph above is from Louis Gray, via Stowe Boyd.

In part I of How We Are Made Great I argue it is other people that make us or an idea great - other people and their mass behaviour.
Louis argues that bloggers' interactions with their communities and their reaching out to other communities reduces as they become more established.

He's on the money, for me, of course. I discussed similar themes in It's Not How Famous You Are, It's How Relevant
And detailed more risks for those with an abundance of attention, here.

Here's Louis' list of interaction types (together with my use of them).

• Allowing blog comments (yep)
  
• Responding to blog comments (oh yes)
  
• Commenting on FriendFeed about your blog (er sorry,... more laziness than attitude)
  
• Tweeting links to your blog posts (yes)
  
• Digging your blog (again, I'm a little lazy when it comes to self promotion)
  
• Stumbling your blog (see above)
  
• Pimping your blog on others' blogs (yes, in as much as I comment on other blogs and invite bloggers to come by mine to join in conversations here).

In general I try to focus on the ones that are less directly promotional in the traditional sense (digg, stumbleupon) and more on a meeting of minds - where I believe the real promotion happens anyway - comments, responding, reaching out to individuals.

Those who roll back on this are actually putting their fame and status at risk, in my view. They're certainly putting the brakes on its growth.

And when they do this they reduce both their value to their community and the communities value to themselves (I am made greater by my connections, so are my connections, Stowe Boyd)

There's no idea that doesn't get better from sharing.

So I think there's one key interaction missing from Louis' list:

• Tracking who is writing about what you've blogged and commenting on their take on it, on their blogs.

Which is kind of why this is How We Are Made Great Part II and not just a comment on Louis' blog. Hope he'll discover us and join in?

So, to summarize parts I and II:

We are made great by other people. And in order to be selected for greatness we must interact with other people.

Type 4 bloggers would do well to remember how and why they got to be raised upon our shoulders.

As I concluded on /Message in Part I:

"Go careful when you claim responsibility. Remember all those times you tried to turn the flock and nothing happened - or it turned in the opposite direction?

"You were just as responsible then.We make us great."

Tips for building a love machine

One of the authors of the following slidedeck reached out in a comment on this post (Love, Purpose and Fame) and was kind enough to include a link to the deck.
There's some great tips in it for those who understand that the internet is for people coming together and paying each other attention (attention is love, as we refer to in Love, Purpose and Fame) - for those building love machines! Thanks to Ming Yeow for discovering us!

Discovery Is The New Cocaine - Going Beyond Engagement

view presentation (tags: discovery digital)

Love, purpose and fame,

How much of participation is driven by attention-seeking rather than a genuine desire to co-create?

It's a question that framed itself during a conversation with Ivan Pope. I wondered if the desire to participate is a natural human state - and one that gets driven out of us by mass broadcast models (ie sitting back and consuming becomes normalised behaviour in a mass media world)?

I cited the example of my 3-year-old, who could not understand why she could not join in with the nativity play she went to watch last Christmas.

How much of that was driven by her desire to seek attention compared to her desire to join in?
Ivan's point (and this is my interpretation so, Ivan, please do expand in the comments if required...) is that attention = love. The more love we receive the happier we are - a powerful motivator.

So was my daughter seeking more love, or seeking to share in an experience and help form it?

Of course, we don't have to answer either/or.

The learning for those of us who wish to create better ways for humans to connect is to understand that our communities of purpose are not only coming together to get things done, they are coming together to be loved.

In user-generated-content-powered broadcast models, such as Youtube, and our own Ditto.net, less people acquire more of the love. How could we share that out?

Even in Total Communities (where to take part you have to create part, eg facebook, twitter, secondlife) the love concentrates where the attention focuses.

Jemima Kiss, at the Guardian, mused on twitter that she now had 2000 followers and that she would therefore try harder to say something useful or interesting.

When the attention becomes too great, when the conversation becomes little more than augmented broadcast, there is a natural tendancy for us to start making considerations like this. A little part of ourselves is hidden away in favour of the version required for the lower common denominator. (Not a dig at Jemima, I hasten to add, her tweet was just an inspirational, right now, example)

The more famous you are the less you can really be yourself?

Perhaps synchronous attention is a core part of what makes us human - the ability to create real time bonding experiences with fellow humans? The social act of being?