The law of Facebook Fan Page status updates

Social Objects: branded content, understanding & brandvocacy

In preparation for my new job as United Way of Winnipeg‘s Interactive & Social Media Engagement Manager, I’ve been reading a few of the current SoMe classics, including Brian Solis’ Engage!

I’ve heard Brian reference “social objects” on his blog, and I’d already come to the conclusion that brands will be better understood in the social world by creating and spreading content of their own, as opposed to just listening and participating in existing conversations.

As part of my engagement strategy I’m going to produce simple videos that convey just how important and life-changing the programs United Way supports are to the people who use them. There are a thousand amazing stories out there, and I believe that if people just heard them, they’d be moved to donate—whether for intellectual or emotional reasons.

These stories, in social media marketing terms, are “social objects”—ideas around which people who care can congregate, comment, and share to their networks.

Here’s my conception of a social object creating “brandvocates”—fans advocating your organization’s work:

1] Content is published to the social web. 2] It sparks conversation, creating a perception of the brand in people’s minds. 3] People share the content & their newfound understanding of the brand that produced it.

And here’s a more structured version of Brian’s idea, showing the journey from content to conversation, to enhanced brand perception and brandvocacy:

Perhaps Brian will drop by and tell me if I’ve got the concept down!

Man & Machine Series: Recursive self-improvement

So, part of the idea behind technological #singularity is that it might be possible to build a machine that’s smarter than people. Then all heck breaks loose, and humans do not necessarily come out on top.

“Theoretically, if a machine built by humans could bring to bear greater problem-solving and inventive skills than humans, then it could design a yet more capable machine. If built, this more capable machine then could design a machine of even greater capability.” Machines get smarter and smarter, outpacing humans until they’re the boss of us.

Man & Machine Series: Robot/Human Hybrid #singularity illustration

I’m working on a series called “Man & Machine”, about the coming (or not, depending on your philosophical attachment to humanity) singularity.

Don’t pop the social media bubble!

Umair Haque recently advanced a hypothesis that social media is a bubble, and that when it bursts we will see that we were not brought meaningfully closer together by the growth of social communication.

I don’t want social media to be a bubble, because I like it.

First, let’s define a bubble. We mean an economics-style bubble, like the dot-com bubble or the housing bubble. In this sense, a bubble is “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values”. So lots of new relationships that aren’t worth very much. I think Unmair was saying we’ve been placing undue value on the relationships generated by social media, both from a personal standpoint (these aren’t real friends) and a marketing standpoint (these aren’t very devoted ‘fans’).

Here are the reasons I feel the shiny, soapy dome of social media’s bubble should be left alone.

The flowering of human creativity

“Thin relationships” are not a new phenomena to society. If we rechristen these friends “acquaintances”, you might recognize them better. Aquaintances are certainly not without value.

Clay Shirky’s SXSW keynote touched on the evolutionary impetus to share and to cooperate, calling it “spiteful” not to pass on information when it’s very little effort for you to do so. This is the link economy in action.

It’s easy to share links to interesting content. It’s fun to add to the conversation by commenting on blogs and liking updates. It’s gratifying to contribute content to the collective by taking photos, writing essays (blog posts), illustrating, designing fonts and photoshop brushes, and shooting funny videos. It’s meaningful to lead culture and capture the zeitgeist by giving birth to memes, defining ideas, pushing for human thought development.

The more the merrier

Thin relationships, or “weak connections” make these upper-Maslow interactions possible. You don’t need a high level of investment in someone to trade ideas. Their input is valuable precisely because they come from a different perspective, and aren’t bound by politeness or concern for your ego. I’ve mentioned the findings that novel input from new friends sparks more innovative, creative solutions. The more the merrier.

Marketing soap

From a marketing standpoint, I hate to put the idea out there (there being Google search) that we’re overestimating the worth of social media and it’s practitioners. It could sour corporate decision makers who ponder how much to invest in newfangled media.

This isn’t about protecting our jobs, it’s about making them better. My firm belief is that all marketing, communication, PR, customer service and sales efforts (not to mention internal communications) can be enhanced and made more worthwhile and productive by conversing instead of broadcasting. I don’t think organizations have a choice, because public expectation of brands/services/orgs has changed.

This being a nascent revolution in the mainstream, still, I don’t want to throw the word b-word around. I want to work to show that teaming up with customers to get them what they want is going to succeed.

The UPA were TIME TRAVELLERS. There, I said it.

In researching an illustration project, I made an incredible discovery I now offer to the world. Did you ever notice how much Gerald McBoing-Boing and his concerned family look like an RSS icon? Allow me to demonstrate:

That’s crazy! There’s no way the artists at UPA could have known about RSS back in the 18th century!

Platform Wars

Who will dominate location-based status? The Big Blue Boot stomps Gowalla & Foursquare into ‘roo & d0u¢hebag soup. Illustration available creative commons-style on Flickr for all your bloggy uses.