It shouldn’t surprise anyone to see posts titled "The Role of Ethical Brands in a Down Economy," "The Four Social Media Questions You Must Answer During an Economic Downturn," "In A Down Economy, Tomorrow’s Leaders Are Born Today," "Will Social Media Help PR Weather the Storm," and "25 Ways Social Media Prepares You for a Social Media Downturn." All of these respected marketers have the recession in mind (image by collective nouns).

There were some great insights in these articles, most of which I liked Todd Defren’s statistical based analysis showing online marketing will be the bright spot in communications. I disagreed w/ some of Chris Brogan’s 25 ways (though I love Chris), but mostly because no one knows how social media functions and works in a recession. I think reliance on brass tacks, on hard core value building and ROI is what matters now.

What is clear: This new media world will see an even stronger focus from corporate as big ad spends get cut and marketers seek guerilla oriented tactics. But things will change, and online communicators are going to be forced to act differently.  

I’ve been through one of these before, in the telecom industry which suffered an industry specific depression from 2000-2. During that time I actually excelled and grew a book of business, keeping more than a dozen of my fellows employed. So while I will be deploying social media for the first time in a  recession, I’ve got a few experiences that are guiding my thoughts during this particular time:

Here are five ways I anticipate this recession will affect us:

1) ROI must become the song. If you can’t measure or you think page impressions represents an accurate measurement for marketing communications initiatives, mail it in. No company will engage in that anymore. Integration with calls to action must be used to produce tangible results.

2) Similarly, social media consultants will be forced to produce or they will bomb. Now more than ever it’s about ROI, not Facebook friends.  

3) Independent, positive thinkers will do better. They will not be susceptible to media driven BS and fear mongering. Consider this ridiculous CCN story that liberally uses poll terms to claim 60% of Americans say depression is likely. Talk about tabloid journalism. Yet, these stories can inspire panic and that is the great challenge.

Rich Becker makes a good point, "When economic times seem tough, you tend to want to work with those who seem largely unaffected." In his post, he was speaking about the newspaper industry, but it may as well be your company. Executives and individuals will need to wield a sober, pragmatic approach to the market, and provide actionable ways to grow their business. More than anything people and cultures that win will be the positive ones with real value to offer their employers, their clients and the world in general.

4) It’s time for millenials to grow up in the workplace. This is Gen Y’s first recession, and to date they have shown heavy demands for senior executive access and mentorship, lifestyle choices, collaboration, high salaries, plush bennies, transitory career paths, and steady, significant pay increases. More than anything it has been incumbent on employers to attract and retain them with these many cultural aspects. Well, the coin has flipped.  In tough times, it’s incumbent on the employee to prove value, not the employer. I sense that many over-privileged divas are heading for a rude awakening.

5) More noise.  As companies abandon traditional, costly tactics and crowd the marketplace with their new social media initiatives we will likely see a new nightmare of corporate crud. Social media initiatives must offer immediate, clear strong value to communities, or they will click and flee. Substance is paramount! Tolerance for BS gimmicks will evaporate. Last recession, a similar noise level occurred with email marketing, that time’s cheap marketing elixir.

A Time of Pain

Regardless of how social media fares as a sub sector, I believe from a societal perspective that this will be a widespread recession that will take a good long time to get better.  Poor fiduciary lending has affected our entire financial industry and in ways that we’ve not seen in modern times before under the Federal Reserve. This will impact all businesses and all sectors, from credit to actual sales. My prayers and thoughts are with those who will be affected.

Further, more than any economic downturn in my life, this will hurt the lower middle income and low income classes.  Consider the impact high heating costs, transportation costs, lost jobs from construction, cut state spending, etc., will make on blue collar America.

There will be great challenges ahead that supersede "making money," and I encourage readers to think about what we can do to help as individuals. It is a time for charity, a time for helping brothers and sisters regardless of race, creed, class, religion. Economic pain affects all, and no American should go hungry.

Related posts:

• Recession 2.0
• Using Social Media to Communicate in Tough Times (HR Perspective)
• Accelerating through the Recession

Yes, we all hate these ethical transgressions.  Social media is supposed to be a game changer, a creator of forthright relational discussions between two parties, not another communications tool set to manipulate people with.. Yet, unethical communicators from all sides of the aisle can’t seem to help themselves, as demonstrated by one Democratic state senatorial candidate in Nevada.

The story goes something like this… After Democratic Challenger Allison Copening failed at the first debate (both Democrats and Republicans called it a failure), the Nevada State Democratic Party dumped what rumored to be $1 million smear campaign against Sen. Bob Beers. As part of the effort, this "anonymous blog" appeared, dubbed  The Real Beers.  Dig into the blog and you will see:

1. While it does carry the Nevada State Democratic Party name, there is single person to hold accountable.

2. The comments are filtered to prohibit any pro Bob Beers messages.

3. The comments that have been allowed are written by the agency that produced it, with the exception of one.

4. The people in the video are staged (more coming later).

5. The stories, quotes, etc. are all half-truths, fabrications, spin, and lies. Most of these are addressed by the Beers campaign.

Funniest yet, the YouTube video includes people who are not residents. It is verifiable because, especially the testimony on the end. from a person identifies himself as a resident, but appears to be the same person on a hip hop forum maintained by the agency of record who built the site, the Drex Agency. Classy folks, there at Drex.   Drex busted itself when it accidently put up a template of the entire blog in their public work files. The work files were scanned and cached. Drex is sending mailers to local citizens to drive them to the web site, too. Gotta love an integrated campaign.

While the social media communications echo chamber hasn’t picked up on this nasty astroturfing incident, the local bloggers and media have.  The Las Vegas Sun goes so far as to say:

This kind of assault, no matter how little it is grounded in reality, can work.

Look, this company does not have a formal political agenda. But if I did force one upon my employees, it would be Democratic, as evidenced by my blatant support of Obama in recent weeks. I don’t care what party, company or organization you work for, astroturfing is a dirty nasty practice that should result in offending parties losing their jobs.  It’s flat out wrong. And it flies in the face of everything so many of us have tried to build out here, beginning with the timeless Cluetrain Manifesto,whose words, "There is no market for messages," still rings true to this day.

If we as a group of communications don’t call out transgressions like the Copening campaign’s smeer effort with its fake grassroots effort, who will?  Stop astroturfing now!

Related Posts:

Following yesterday’s post on the Behavioral Characteristics of the Digerati…

Yesterday I gave a presentation on Generations Y and Z, and by its very nature demographics came up. But is social media generational or just a result of the ubiquitous easy-to-use social technology on all of our many electronic devices? Yesterday, I concluded this demographic approach is not accurate.

The need to classify by generation, by sex, by sub-generation, age groups, etcetera, is corporate communications reality. All marketers want the demographics so they can intelligently target their stakeholders…

Soul demographics - or behavioral patterns as Gartner argues — will become an important measure of new studies. But no matter how you slice and dice people, the reality of socialized communications is that we are people. Social marketing begins with understanding how people interact, and the dynamics of relationship building online.

Often, companies want to know what they will get for $xxx,000 of social media engagement. What’s the ROI?!?!? And we play the game because we have to justify corporate expenditures in this era. But somewhere the soul of social media gets lost in these discussions.

Companies like Zappos get it, they understand the power of relationships, of people. People care about themselves, and how the company will sere them. “Give me what I want, Jobs!”

I just wonder if most companies will ever get it, that organizational social media really is about peering with their customers, partners and employees, rather than broadcasting a cleverly disguised ad or white paper in the form “user generated content” or a “blog post.”

In researching a new presentation on the next generation of digital media users — now dubbed Generation Z (Goodness Gracious!) — it became apparent that the generational discussion fails to hit the truth. The era should not be defined by generations, but more simply the ever-present factual reality of being online.

Forcing online behavior into a box — albeit the millenial or X or Z one — doesn’t seem to make sense. Go to any tweet-up and you will see members from multiple generations ignoring their fellows as they pour their brains into a ubiquitously present iPhone (Transparent screen image by Edan).

Gartner recognized this when it dubbed the generational phenomena Generation V. I have become a believer in this description, in particular the three main characteristics of Generation V, originally proposed by Adam Sarner, a principal analyst at Gartner (Forbes):

1) We don’t necessarily get the underpinnings of technology, it’s just what we use. I see this increasingly throughout my work and personal life. People don’t get technology or software coding, it’s just gotten easy enough that almost any person can use it.

2) Overwhelming desire to participate in online communities, more importantly, global communities. This occurs through user generated personae that so many of us have embraced. New media content creation enables interaction and avatars, but most importantly, true two-way interaction.

3) Meritocratic environment: Collaboration, “we” is more powerful and valuable than “me,” yet me seems to be pretty important to recognize.

This last phrase was added by me, as we continue to deal with the rise of Internet fame and parasocial behavior. The reality of this particular matter seems to be that while there’s a collaborative spirit to online conversational media, there’s also a pretty strong self centered part to it, too. Me is important, and if others aren’t recognized for their participation they seem to leave the conversation pretty quickly.

When your digital persona is so integrated into your life, online and “reality” blur. They form a common reality. Thus it seems to me that much of the persona we see in digital media demonstrates a truer glimpse into the fragile, beautiful and oft self-absorbed soul. That is why relationships have become paramount in social media marketing. People feel a need to be recognized.

Friday’s Buzz Bin post will discuss the impact of generational demographic studies on corporate social media.

Confederate: United in a league, alliance, or conspiracy (image by Geoff Livingston).

Creating social media strategies for large organizations can be unwieldy. Disparate divisions, brands, product launches, autonomous departments, budgets and line items can give corporate communicators a tough time as they bridge their companies into the social era.

Some organizations can manage their organizations well enough to federate their social media efforts under one roof. Now some very basic best practices are arising. According to the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, 62 of the country’s largest companies are already engaged. But others cannot, and they must look to create a different model, one we have started calling the confederate model.

There are many organizations that simply cannot get all of their parts to agree on a unified strategy. For example, consider national non-profits that have local autonomous chapters. Other corporate structures where this problem can arise include partnerships like large law firms, franchise models that feature local owners and undefined marketing structures, and automobile dealerships (Star Alliance image by Nergiz).

For all intents and purposes, these loosely organized bodies can do what they like. This creates enormous challenges online, in large part because of the disparate efforts can confuse customers, as well as fracture brand conversations. Indeed, a communicator needs to acknowledge that there will always be a healthy majority of internal stakeholders who will never engage in the larger social media stratey.

Building a Confederated Model

Instead of trying to control the social media effort under one roof, confederated models try to empower individual stakeholders in the larger organization. A confederated model for a company or non-profit assumes and includes the following:

In addition to building the actual framework, a great deal of the effort involves internal alliance building and communications. Local stakeholders need to be made aware of and convinced about the effectiveness of the social media tool sets.

Of course, what would a proposed stategic model be without a case study? One needs to go no further than the Obama campaign’s social media efforts. This is an ongoing effort.

Partisan politics aside, Obama’s campaign communications involves intense grassroots activities using social media tools. Tens of thousands of Obama campaigners, advocates and even casual voters are enabled to spread the message.

At the heart of the effort is activism on more than a dozen social networks, as well as the Obama campaign’s web site. Bloggers using the Obama platform have even posted negatively against policies or Obama actions.

Not your average political campaign, but one that does fit into the confederated model. The Obama campaign is less concerned about individual flare outs and control, and much more oriented towards word of mouth and viral grass roots activism. The results have been self-evident.

At almost every event or discussion on social media, there’s a naysayer that only millenials, those under 30 consume social media. They dismiss this conversational form as something that their target market doesn’t use. Ironically, they are missing the boat as older generations are using social media.

Perhaps the best example of this is who is creating content. Technorati released the first part of its State of the Blogosphere report yesterday. It’s so funny to see their statistics, which prominently feature the millenial stats. Yet, when you delve into the numbers you can see some interesting breakdowns favoring Gen X and Baby Boomers.

Consider that 50% of bloggers are 35 and older, and 42% are between the ages of 35-54. Those are some pretty strong statistics demonstrating that millenial bloggers are getting outpaced by older generations.

In the U.S., 34% of bloggers are 25-34, and 37% are 35-49. So the older trend is even more pervasive in the United States.

The Technorati report is just the harbinger of a growing trend that usage statistics and surveys will continue confirming. Generation X and increasingly Baby Boomers are online. Communicators who dismiss these powerful media consumers as traditional media only do so at their own peril.

Breaking news from the Web 2.0 Expo: What’s new? Nothing really! Social media continues to mature, and that means the market for social media services will become more crowded and shift.

We’re not seeing any new game changing evolution in social media this year. What’s new is the new Facebook, the more stabilized Twitter, and the solidification of top bloggers as influencers.

The biggest change this year is the increasingly competitive nature of social media. Consider Twitter’s pitched battle with microblog networks like FriendFeed, and increased video competition for YouTube. Or the attempts of the many to unseat top influentials. But in my mind this represents a maturation of the market. Nothing is really new.

And social media is maturing on the corporate side, too. Most companies are not doing social media well, but their toes are in the water. Now the latest studies show that enterprises are willing to let employees use social media at work 70% of the time. Fear fades as adoption increases.

As a result, we’re seeing more focus on verticalized market penetration rather than the novelty of social media. Consider recent articles on Banking 2.0 and Government 2.0.

For those seeking to enter social media, it’s harder to make a big difference. Verticalization such as government or auto industry expertise seems like the next natural course.

Impact on Our Profession

A friend of mine is trying to reinvent his career, and thought about social media as a possible industry. His logic, “It’s so hot right now.”

I actually told him not to do it, to focus on an area where there’s more of an opportunity to seize early leadership position. In my opinion, it’s very hard to establish a leadership position as a top social media marketer these days. For every Jason Falls there are hundreds who are setting up shops, twitter profiles and blogs that never rise off the the echo chamber floor.

There has been a veritable flood of social media experts hitting the market. Then there are all of the PR and ad agencies claiming to have a social media practice. We get multiple calls from these folks every week seeking to partner in some fashion. From a competitive standpoint, we refuse to sub and give away our core competency.

The reality is the sprint to the finish line is on. The leaders have been established, for the most part. To seize positioning requires strong market savoir faire, differentiation, and of course, the time commitment to prove your salt.

The rest of the industry is late to the game, playing catch up. Consolidation, acquisition, and yes, crash and burn scenarios are likely in the next 12 months.

That’s just my $.02. What do you think?

It’s a time for the individual. Social media has unleashed personality, and delivered the power of opinion and voice. We can each become individual superstars in our own right. But great leaders will see social media as an opportunity to do more than become well known.

Frank Gruber, Aaron Brazell, Brian Solis, myself, Nick O’Neill, and Rohit Bhargava. Image taken by our own Qui Diaz.

See, it’s somewhat difficult to be well known in the community, but in reality, many people are doing it. That person — the influential — can be found within two to three percent in any given market segment. Some can just be considered internet famous, others are true thought leaders.

But how many of those leaders are creating the next generation of thought leaders? Or do they prefer to shine on their own?

Lee Iacocca was a man who turned around Chrysler. But once his fame distracted him and he eventually left the company, Chrysler collapsed. There was a leadership void. Lou Gerstner turned around IBM, and groomed another generation of leaders to supersede him. Like him or hate him, Jack Welch also developed a corps of leaders at GE.

Bill Walsh not only coached the 49ers to three Super Bowl victories, he mentored ten head coaches who won or led their teams to Super Bowls (totaling 7 additional victories, collectively).

I believe that you have to pass on your skills. Nothing that I have, nothing that is in my head is really, truly mine. Mentors, influencers, and authors have all directly or indirectly passed their wisdom on to me, giving me the tools that I needed to succeed.

It’s my personal belief that I am obligated to give away what was so freely given to me. Great leaders know they are a product of others, that they are there to be of service to their organization, and as such, act as trusted servants.

At Livingston Communications and publicly on the Buzz Bin we live this ethos. That’s why you see other people like Qui (recently featured on BlogHer) and Larissa Fair delivering quality content on the blog, and making a name for themselves in social media. Newer bloggers Marinel Mones and Mike Nelson are learning how to deliver quality content to you every week.

In my opinion, the greatest result of this company can achieve is not the societal change we can affect for our social cause clients. Nor will it be the results-oriented marketing campaigns we create for companies. These — while worthy results — cannot compare to enabling the next generation of great communicators.

It’s hard to make it, and then make a difference in your profession. But it’s even harder and more worthwhile to build heroes who can affect more change. There is great satisfaction in helping others succeed and achieve results that benefit society. It’s my great hope that we can deliver meaningful growth and actionable experiences to our team members.

This week’s lipstick incident demonstrates The GOP has brought back the smear in earnest, a tactic reminiscent of the Bush campaigns from 2000 and 2004 (image by Mae Li). Personally, this kind of abusive use of communication powers — while effective — should be condemned.

This kind of manipulation should not be a surprise given these recent events:

Using our powers for good remains one of the consistent things we talk about at LComm. In reality, great communication prowess can be used for good or evil. Society has demonstrated that it is susceptible to misinformation. That’s why it was great to see the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) stand up against the manipulative communications tactics used recently.

In a letter to Robert Gibbs (Obama for America) and a letter to Jill Hazelbaker (John McCain 2008), PRSA Chair & CEO Jeffrey Julin, on behalf of the PRSA Board of Directors, asks the campaigns to sign a formal pledge obligating them to abide by the PRSA Code of Ethics in all communications, stating that:

The use of innuendo, incomplete information, surrogate messaging and character attacks, whether in political discourse or other forms of commercial free speech, raises serious concerns for our organization and its 32,000 members, each of whom signs a pledge to the PRSA Code of Ethics. In fact, ethical practice is the most important obligation of PRSA membership, and we maintain that our obligations extend not only to those we represent, but also to the publics they serve.

Many will question the effectiveness of PRSA’s message. Five generations of Livingstons ago, in 1913 my Great, Great, Great Uncle Sigmund Livingston took a similar step, starting the Anti-Defamation League. The League’s purpose is stop the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to end unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens. Says the ADL:

Founded on one man’s iron will to achieve social justice and to eradicate hatred, ADL has invested nearly a century in influencing, educating and effecting reform.

A generation later Nazi Germany arose, and from a communications perspective, smeer tactics and hatred were deployed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels is often credited with creating Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht program. The end result: A country drunk enough to allow the genocidal extermination of six million Jews. This country helped liberate those left standing, and in an outcry against anti-semitism, became a champion of Israel, in large part because people like Uncle Ziggy (as he is known amongst the older relatives) beat the drum.

I’m not saying McCain is Goebbels, but the GOP’s use of smeer inspires fear in my heart about what could be. We must stand-up against abusive use of communication powers.

If anything, the past eight years has demonstrated that this country will vote with religious zeal rather than informed decision. Education, and the resulting intelligent decisions that it often inspires, has fallen to the wayside. Our population has become susceptible to manipulation.

As a result, communicators — particularly those in political campaigns — have a moral obligation to use their powers for good. And we as communicators with a voice need to start standing up and saying, “No, this is not right!” I tip my hat to the PRSA for a good action.

This weekend, I had the great privilege of giving five, highly interactive unconference sessions at PodCamp/SearchCamp Philly. For me the biggest takeaway was the need to train social media marketers about traditional communications theory.

It reminded me of a Jim Collins quote in Good to Great, “Good is the Enemy of Great.” There are many good social media experts out there. They have proven they can build personal brands, but they are not great.

The social media expert’s inability or unwillingness to learn traditional PR and marketing strategy and skills causes them to frequently fail. In essence, their security lies in their good community skills, but their lack of formal marketing and PR training (and real PR, not media relations) makes them painfully inadequate for business-oriented social media.

Yes, networking skills are paramount to messaging skills. Yet without understanding a businesses’ core objectives, and how those create a value proposition for the marketplace, social media initiatives often fail to deliver measurable ROI, much less a tangible affect on a company’s communications effort. As Jonny Goldstein noted, you need both bleeding edge social media savoir fair AND “old school chops” to build a program that works.

In one session on business blogging, we ended up spending more than 30 minutes alone on how to build a value proposition, and then how to map it to a social media effort. For those social media engaged who are struggling with this problem, I created a social media content process on the Now Is Gone blog which should enable a basic content strategy. However, I will caution that publishing content does not yield eyeballs, rather it keeps them coming back after you’ve engaged them. Community participation is paramount to delivering content.