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From “The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss” by Claire Nouvian/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Urban Jungle, London, 2007 
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To view previous photos of the week, check out my flickr site.

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In the blogosphere, everything is on the record.

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Here is my take on a story by Alice LaPlante in last week's Information Week

Social media and new technology have changed the balance of power over who can influence and how they do it.  With blogs, message boards and chat rooms, you need not be a star journalist or celebrity to shape opinions.  Citizen journalists can topple news anchors and Senate majority leaders. Everyday individuals can influence purchasing decisions of entire online communities. 

As the former head of Word of Mouth Association (WOMA) Andy Sernovitz wrote to me:

“Forget about celebrities.  No one cares.  In the age of word of mouth marketing real people are the true celebrities.  The opinions of people like us are the only thing that matters any more.  I don't care which movie star or athlete uses a product -- if the reviews on Amazon are bad, I'm not buying it.”

Books like the Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point have popularized the notion that there are special individual experts out there – connectors, mavens, etc, if you will – who are driving buzz and influencing consumer buying habits.  Tap them and their network and the crowds will tip your way.

Armed with this insight, marketers have sought out and enlisted these thought leaders to drive online word of mouth efforts. 

But new research and marketing results may dispel this latest conventional wisdom.  Information Week’s Alice LaPlante looked at how new opinion leaders drove buzz on the web and suggests in a piece last week that this new way of thinking “may be overly simplistic.”    

She writes:  “Indeed a growing school of thought is that influentials aren’t so much leading trends as acting as mouthpieces for underlying social movements that are either in progress or lying fallow waiting to be triggered.  Thus successful marketing doesn’t depend so much on finding influential people and seeding them with ideas so much as doing the kind of research that exposes embryo trends and then helping influentials discover them.”

So where should online marketing dollars be spent – seeking out key influencers to drive opinion?  Or should marketers first identify trends and then look for individuals that embody that trend – whether they are opinion leaders or just ordinary folks who want to talk about their product experience?   

Finding an answer may be like trying to determine the order of the chicken or the egg.  It is true that you can’t manufacture a wave of support within a community by just identifying opinion leaders.  It is also true that a wave won’t swell without the backing of influencers.   

Organic Advocacy

I asked Rob Fuggetta, founder/CEO of Zuberance, a Silicon Valley-based start-up what he thought.  His firm helps companies identify, mobilize, and grow communities of authentic advocates.

Fuggetta wrote that ‘there is no doubt that certain people have more influence over purchase decisions and perceptions than others. These people may not be trend-setters or early adopters, but they are indeed more influential because their opinions and recommendations are more trusted than others. 

“Therefore, the goal for all of marketing -- indeed for the business itself -- is to create a vibrant community of advocates from and among these influentials. We call this ‘organic advocacy.’ Companies can then amplify this organic advocacy by linking communities of advocates with other communities and individuals in authentic, relevant ways both online and offline."
 

Authenticity is Key

Marcus Colombano, over at Avantgarde has actually had success enlisting celebrities to use the products he has marketed. 

His take: Throwing tons of money at all the influentials in the world won’t work if the product itself doesn’t meet a genuine unmet need.  The brand experience has to be a reflection of the personal creativity of the user in order for a product to translate from a small circle to mass consumption.

In the end, it may not be about monitoring trends or recruiting influencers.  LaPlante quotes Steve Rubel who addresses the growing prevalence of “influence fatigue.”  To influence, companies need to directly engage in the communities themselves.  They can’t buy their way in.  They can’t force their way in.  They have to join communities or create legitimite ones, be active members and build influence through trust, candor and the strength of their product.  As Steve points out, “that’s an extremely labor intensive process.”  But in my view, the results are well worth the price of entry.

Let me get back to you. 

Technorati Tags: Alice LePlante; Andy Sernovitz; Malcolm Gladwell; Rob Fuggetta; Zuberance; Marcus Colombano; Steve Rubel;

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Dancing in Union Square, San Francisco, 2007 
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One can't live by writing alone.  For the past year, I have been including a photo of the week in the sidebar.  So please indulge me as I give my work a larger showcase.  Let me know what you think.  I don't plan to quit my day job. 

To view previous photos of the week, check out my flickr site.

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When it comes to consuming web 2.0, are you, as Charlene Li described in her recent Forrester Research report Social Technographics -- a creator, critic, collector, joiner, spectator or an inactive? Or are you an omnivore, connector, lackluster veteran, productivity enhancer, mobile centric, connected but hassled, inexperienced experimenter, light but satisfied, an indifferent or an off-the-network as John Horrigan calls Internet users in the Pew Internet and American Life Project report issued last week?





                                    Source: Pew Internet and American Life Study

There seem to be a lot categories to choose from.   But as Greg Sterling and Curtiss Thompson point out, the implications are important for companies and marketers.  Millions if not billions of dollars are being spent trying to determine the best way to reach you and the less web-enabled.  With market segments increasingly more fragmented and consumers more indifferent to traditional marketing, how do you target the largest base or a narrow niche?  And with what tools? 

Companies are calibrating product and marketing strategies to identify those who have or who are inching toward a web 2.0 lifestyle.  They also realize they can't ignore the other half of all Americans who, that Pew Study reported, are only occasional users of modern Internet gadgetry.  Making my living in the blogosphere, I tend to forget how few users have fully embraced web 2.0 -- a point that John Paczkowski, Rex Hammock, Dan Farber and Larry Dignan all emphasized on their blogs last week.  On the other hand, Mathew Ingram, George Nimeh took a more hopeful stance.  Nimeh, for example, saw the 31 percent of American adults who are “elite tech users” as “incredibly encouraging.” 

With the growing number of studies and searches slicing and dicing the American consumers’ Internet usage patterns, I asked Charlene what distinction she draws from her study and that of the Pew report.  

Praising the Pew study for its comprehensive segmentation, Charlene wrote me:  

"Our Social Technographics was designed to be a strategy planning tool, and deals specifically with people’s actions, and primarily online. It’s not a strict segmentation in the way that Pew has done it, but rather, a categorization that helps understand how people move up and down the ladder depending on their participation levels. My belief is that people can be motivated to be Creators or Critics in different areas of their lives. My personal example is I’m a Creator when it comes to social media, but a Spectator when it comes to the environment and politics. But I can easily see myself moving “up the ladder” in these two areas. Social Technographics thus becomes a strategy planning tool for deciding how to approach social strategy, based on the specific Social  Technographics profiles of your target audience."

It seems then that categories are a useful framing device and that one size may not fit all.  As for me, I am clearly an amalgam but according to the Pew Internet Topology Test, I am a connector. Larry Dignan reports that he "is a cross between an omnivore and a lackluster veteran," while Rex Hammock jokingly discovered much to his surprise that he is "a male in his mid to late twenties."

Using Pew’s segmentation terminology,  I don’t have the many gadgets of an omnivore, but I “voraciously” participate in cyberspace, express myself online and do a range of web 2.0 activities.  At the same time, I'm like a mobile centric “feeling less technologically competent and definitely needing help getting new technology to work.” And like an off the network user, I am probably more likely to flip on an episode of South Park, without Tivo, on Comedy Central on a non-plasma television than download the latest YouTube video.  I recognize the value of user generated content as entertainment and know where to find it, but I don’t live it.  Social media is much more professional; it’s business and source of much intellectual curiosity.

Ultimately, given the myriad Internet usage patterns, companies are not well served by merely jumping head first and deploying a laundry list of Internet tools to reach the growing number of web 2.0 users.  As Forrester advises, “a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.”

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Social Technographics; Forrester Research; Charlene Li; Social Media; Pew; Pew Internet and American Life Survey; John Horrigan; Market Segmentation;

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Today I am looking at how Slide uses new media to tell their story and market to their customers.  It is part of a select group of postings on companies including blip.tv and meebo that were profiled in Business 2.0 Magazine 25 Web 2.0 startups to watch in 2007. 

Slide has developed to tool to create customizable and easily assembled slide shows of photos that can be embedded in a blog or a MySpace page, sent out in an RSS feed, or streamed to a desktop as a screensaver. 

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Another characteristic of web 2.0 companies is their ability to tap into users' need for individual expression.  Slide's widget is highly customizable.  Slide gives users a great deal of flexibility in how they present their slide show.  Slide's blog is a perfect, inexpensive vehicle to engage customers, solicit direct user feedback and introduce new features to spur further usage and adoption. 

So with a track record for success and a viable business model, the question remains whether Max is scripting another PayPal blockbuster?

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Technorati Tags: Business 2.0 Magazine; Slide; Marketing; New Media; PayPal; Slide; Max Levchin;

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I mark my one year anniversary as a blogger with a movie review. 

There is an interesting film now playing in Atlanta and elsewhere across the country.  It's called “Into Great Silence.” It’s about an order of Carthusian monks who live lives of near, but not total, silence. Prayer, song and some discussion are also part of their way of life. It’s a world far removed from the one we now know where every aspect of our lives is posted on a blog or YouTube and every observation is forwarded on Twitter.  It is also a far cry from those who avoid the sounds of nature and instead run outside listening to an iPod or retreat from the sights of nature by flying around in SecondLife.  

Enough said.  Here is my review:

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Technorati Tags: Movie Reviews; In Great Silence; Carthusian Monks; Twitter;

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