Social Media Ideas and Trends

I think we’ll look back on 2009 as the year when social media had the greatest hype, and 2010 as the year we started to really figure out how to make it work. One of the questions that I often heard asked amid the hype this year was, “Are decision makers actually using social media?” For the answer, check out a great blog post by Chris Koch of the IT Services Marketing Association called “Want proof that the C-suite is into social media? Here it is.”

The post is based on ITSMA’s recent survey, “How Customers Choose Solution Providers, 2009: The Importance of Personalization, Epiphanies, and Social Media.” Here’s a quote from Chris’ post:

We found that usage of social media among IT and business buyers of technology rose 50% over last year and finally pushed to majority status—55% said they use social media as part of the technology buying process in 2009 versus just 37% in 2008. More importantly, we found that executives in large organizations use social media more than in smaller organizations, and that C-suite executives actually use social media more than their lower-level buying peers. Just 15% of CEOs and directors said they did not use any form of social media at all, while 34% of manager/directors and 26% of VPs/Assistant vice presidents said they ignore the stuff.

Chris sums up the rationale behind all of this in a way that’s hard to argue with:

This makes sense when you consider what our IT buyers have been telling us for years: that their peers are by far their most preferred and trusted choice for information during the buying process.

We all understand how this principle works one-to-one. Social media provides the tools for corporations to expand their existing relationships and build their influence, one-to-many.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

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There’s a paradox in my involvement in social media that people who know me well will understand: Often I don’t want to know what most people are thinking. For instance, the absolute nadir of human communication is occurring in the comments sections of YouTube and local news sites. I avoid them as much as possible.

I had a moment this weekend with Facebook that showed me a future I find as unpleasant as it is likely. Facebook is essentially becoming the shadow Internet, from email and chat within the site to photo and video sharing to applications and the ability to share links. More is no doubt on the way, all geared toward keeping people on the site as much as possible.

I still remember the first time I was shocked by someone’s callousness on the Internet, in the mid ’90s. A relative of a Lockerbie victim said in a forum he was sure those who died in that crash were all in heaven, and someone argued with him. I felt shocked and saddened that someone within what I had previously seen as a polite and supportive community would go out of her way to say something pointlessly hurtful.

I’m seeing inklings of that on Facebook now. The first (very mild) one for me was several months ago when someone I’ve friended on Facebook but don’t really know challenged a comment I’d made about music by admonishing me to have a more open mind. I was a bit taken aback. Anyone who actually knows me will tell you my musical mind is pretty darn open. Put my iPod on shuffle and you might get Icelandic rap, John Coltrane, vintage Chapel Hill punk, ’70s African funk or Erik Satie.

Today while looking at posts from two of my (actual, real-world) friends, I read comments to their posts, made by people I don’t know, that really annoyed me. I won’t go into the details but the comments were smug, confrontational and ideological in nature. They were basically written to scold the person for not thinking the way they did.

That’s not what I come to Facebook for. The real world gives me enough of that. I’m not interested in debate. I’m not interested in your politics or your cultural biases. And I’m certainly not interested in reading things that make me angry written by people I don’t even know.

I’m also more than a little worried about the petitions to create a “Dislike” button. I’m sure a lot of people will use it to say, for instance, “I’m sorry your car broke down in Boise,” but a lot will see it as the “I disagree with you” button. How can making that quick and easy contribute to a more positive discourse?

I know I can unfriend people and hide comments, but I don’t think there’s any way I can keep from seeing your jerky friends’ comments. Maybe we all need to agree to unfriend jerks. I’m just dismayed that, like I had to do with the Internet 15 years ago, I now have to come to terms with the fact that Facebook isn’t a big party of like-minded, polite, well-meaning people. It’s a microcosm of reality, and we’ll have to get better at filtering out the realities we don’t want.

Inevitable, yes, but a shame nonetheless.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

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I was in our External Communications team staff meeting earlier this week listening to a discussion of SAS’ Premier Business Leadership Series event in Las Vegas, and the journalists and bloggers who attended. Some of the “journalists” write for print, some online, and some both. Some of the “bloggers” are influential and have large audiences in the markets SAS serves. Our PR team is actively engaged with all of them, helping them with stories, answering inquiries and building relationships.

So what’s the difference between a blogger and a journalist in this context? Is it just the medium they use? Considering that some of the “journalists” are writing online, does it come down to a distinction of how their text is entered?

I thought about this same thing at BlogWorld Expo, which covered everything from blogging to tweeting to podcasting to video. There was such a spread of people there that had almost nothing in common other than that they were participating in digital/social/online/2.0 media.

I just looked at the Technorati list of the top 100 blogs. What does The Huffington Post (#1) really have in common with Gizmodo (#2)? And is my personal blog (imaginatively titled David B. Thomas) really in the same category as, say, Copyblogger, just because we both use WordPress?

We could all come up with qualities and attributes that define what blogging means to us (openness, participation, community, equal access of ideas) but does the word “blogger” really mean anything anymore?

The term “social media” was coined to identify the tools, and has expanded to encompass the principles and techniques and, more important, the philosophy. Before too long the term itself will lose any relevance. Some say that has already happened. I think it’s already happened to “blogger.”

What next? Writer? Author? Communicator? Or does the importance of the medium used become irrelevant, and disappear within the larger role of the person using it?

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

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Lots of people make grand (and often unrealistic) predictions about social media and where it’s going. David Armano from the Dachis Group has a very practical, believable set of predictions on the Harvard Business blog. Worth reading.

He’s spot on about social media becoming less “social,” and I’ve been predicting that as well. As more and more companies get involved in social media (and spammers, and scammers) more people will find ways to filter them out. It’s just like in the early days of the Web. The early adopters and purists will be scandalized and rail against the commercialization, and the rest of us will get on with it.

Scaling social media will be a big issue for corporations, according to David, and SAS is no exception. We’re working on our social network strategy, figuring out what our global corporate presence should look like in places like Facebook and LinkedIn.

The next step is Twitter. I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the challenge of maintaining Twitter presences for an 11,000-employee organization. In 2010 we’re going to need some strategies for breaking it down into manageable chunks and figuring out who’s going to do it.

I like David’s ideas about making social media more fun, too. That’s something companies will need to take into account. Again, as in the early days of the Web, the novelty of social media will wear off as more and more people become involved. It won’t be enough to just be there; we’ll need to make it fun to come find out what we’re saying.

In traditional marketing communications, that meant contests. In social media marketing, it means a lot of other things as well, like quizzes and games and interacting with other people and videos and that are actually funny. SAS has a very engaged, smart and active user community. What could we do in social media to give them an outlet for their enthusiasm, intellect and wit, and do it in a way that attracts other people to the party?

David also predicts that “your company will have a social media policy,” and I’m glad we’re on top of that one, having released ours internally in June. The more people I speak to in positions like mine, the more I realize that SAS is actually a bit ahead of the game in that regard, although we still have a lot to do in terms of communicating our guidelines internally and sharing best practices.

David’s prediction that “mobile becomes a social media lifeline” refers to the fact that a large number of companies block social media participation by employees. When I hear that, I’m reminded of John Gilmore’s quote, “The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it.” If a company blocks employee access to Twitter or Facebook, are they going to confiscate their mobile phones at the door? I’m glad SAS has a more enlightened and trusting policy.

The final prediction that “sharing no longer means e-mail” is extremely relevant for companies as well. David says it will become “more mainstream for people to share with networks what they used to do with e-mail lists.” Those “share this” links at the bottom of web pages and blog posts will – and should – become ubiquitous. It doesn’t do you any good to create great content if people can’t find it and can’t pass it along. And yes, I realize I don’t have one on this blog.

I’m also working on a summary of the key themes I picked up from a few recent conferences that will look at trends as well. Keep your eyes open for that. In the meantime, what are your predictions?

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

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