The Buzz Bin

Our class next week will be on the first half of Groundswell, chapters 1-6. The most important aspect of Groundswell is the home run statement, “concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies.”

By far, this is the greatest barrier to adoption — and more importantly, successful deployment of social media — after the control issue we discussed in the Cluetrain lecture. Everyone wants to talk technology tactics and tools, and not focus on the heart of the groundswell, the community. The community drives social media, not social media in their many technological forms. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff also note that what Todd Defren originally called “Shiny Object Syndrome” as a major barrier to success in Chapter 4.

Instead, communicators should follow POST — People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. I would add that technology is not your only form of outreach. There is influencer relations and attending or creating social events. Instead of Technology make T in POST “tactics.” Question to the class is do you believe in POST, and why is it so important that our effort begins with community research and listening (as outlined by Qui last week)?

In addition, there’s much said about strategy and understanding objectives. The points in Groundswell are important, so pay attention, but there are more. Our efforts over the next couple of weeks will highlight understanding organizational objectives and building strategy, including the return to basics outlined in the classic book Positioning.

The book offers some strong tips on talking with the Groundswell in Chapter 6. We will discuss the Ernst & Young case study outlined, and how it pertains to the next class assignment. This form of talking is the one we are recommending for our class. Creating a blog, video or branding in a community/socnet can be dangerous if you don’t have great resources, and they can easily be bridged into the T portion of POST.

The Social Technographics Ladder

What’s really going to be a major point of discussion next week is how people interact with each other online — the metaphorical Groundswell. To help communicators better understand the community itself (the people) Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff offer us the Forrester Social Technographics profile, which classifies online users in a ladder:

This taxonomy really makes it easy for marketers to grasp the social web community. It’s important to note that people can be members of multiple classes.

Further, it’s noted in Groundswell and truly critical that marketers focus on both content creators and critics. Both have voices, and as Motrin found out last fall, critics can be all powerful online. This is important to note for any outreach effort. You must be ready to respond openly and transparently with critics, not just primary influencers.

One need not wonder how the statistics would fall now in the Technographics profile as they are now 18 months old. Forrester has updated the data online. Marketers can even build their own Technographics profile based on the age, location and sex of their primary customers.