In my opinion, this is a good thing. Social technologies enable an open way of working and living grounded on the emerging tenants of cocreation, collaboration and sharing throughout our social graph. With this comes individual and institutional responsibility in developing our understanding and raising awareness of both the opportunities and implications of social technologies in the way we work and the technical and social skills necessary to participate. But how are we developing digital literacies in our institutions? Not just in our students, but also in our staff – be it faculty, administrative, support or ancillary. How can we when our Universities are such large complex organizations?

One consideration. Change how we think about organisational communications.

The traditional approach to organizational communications in most organisations, especially large ones such as universities, is grounded in a mindset of the private face of an organisation (i.e., internal communications and activities) controlled by the few (i.e., external and public relations) in the conduct and delivery of external facing activities (i.e., press releases, events, spoke people, corporate web communications). The aim: To build a corporate professional brand image of the organisation. This approach assumes we have an inside [internal] and an outside [external] face of an organization. However the fact of the matter is, we live and work in invisible social networks, not just the buildings used to house us and our belongings. I often wonder if the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ perspectives of organisational communications is more a factor of the space we reside in than the social networks we live in.

The lived experience of an organisation is experienced and shared by many. And today it is being experienced, recorded, mashed-up and shared on a public stage by anyone and potentially everyone throughout our digital social graph. Developments in social technologies are enabling our lived working and learning experiences to be co-created and shared by those who experience it, not just by those who use to control the media or technology channels (“the few”). Those who have experience of an organisation, be it the people, the activities that define the workplace or the artefacts these activities produce, these people are its member communities. The community who work and live associated with it or have some vested interest in it. The activity: To cocreate and share the lived experience of working within the organisation and the social networks through which we become connected.

This social way of working (and living) is often distanced and independent of the traditional personnel roles that traditionally have managed the organizations brand image and corporate message [external communications and public relations]. Today, what is increasingly important is not just the organisations brand image, but an organizations digital social capital. Digital social capital is the lived identities of its people, their practices, connections and their ways of working, captured and shared through and with social technologies. It is this digital social capital that shows not only the heart of the organisation (it’s people), but also it’s ways of working, be they open or closed, innovative or conservative, traditional or contemporary.

So how do we manage and control all this? How does one charged with the role of communications director, marketing manager or senior executive on the board, especially of a large organization, take charge and manage all of this digital social activity. The simple answer is, we don’t! We can’t! So why try?

A second consideration. Inform and inspire social ways of working across the organisation!

We need to support and grow it by being part of it not master of it. To inform the digital social activities in our organizations through learning and communication initiatives outlined by a social way of working strategy that is championed by individuals and groups in our departments, schools, and across our universities. Championed bottom-up by change agents or innovators who get it and top-down by budget holders and connectors who value it. We don’t all have to do it, but we do all have to value it.

To achieve this there are three core needs I believe for any organisation – small, medium or large to consider:

1. A need to focus on people and practices: What many organizations lack is an understanding of the social ways we/they work. We focus instead on on the technology, and the output, but technologies come and go. With a technology focus we miss the bigger picture of the cultural and learning changes these technologies have and how people using them inspire how we work, learn and live differently. Social technologies (supported not constrained by our governance and technological infrastructure) can support productive and positive social ways of working and learning at both an individual and collective level.
2. A need to learn through example and lead by discussion: It is imperative for especially large organizations to inspire a learning culture in departments, schools and groups that empower individual responsibility in the social ways we work. This is a preferred approach instead of focusing resources mainly on corporate IT governance, technologies and written communications policy and educating the few (i.e., a social media manager). Large organizations are unfortunately conditioned to ‘lead by policy’ not by ‘discussion’ nor to ‘learn through examples’. We attempt to build walled gardens in the form of policies, procedures and technological infrastructure, in fear of ‘what someone might do, say or share’ or ‘to protect our intellectual assets.’ Sometimes in some learning situations a walled garden is good, but not if it stops learning taking place. We learn more through example and discussion, and gain more through sharing what we learn, than we do by writing policy.
3. A need to change our mindset about who is in control: Any organization IS an open organisation. For example, in Higher Education, the members of our communities (i.e., staff, students, funders, collaborators, partners) flow between and through differing identities (personal, private, professional, public) and differing social networks (digital and human) using many and varied social technologies by which to communicate, share and co-create their lived experience of the organization. In this, our community members build not only their personal/professional digital identities, but also the digital social capital that is the organization. Control rests with the individual (“when they press upload, send or enter”) and the organic collective these entries compile. The organisation is therefore a social construction of the digital artefacts the community co-create, over time, place and through differing experiences.

In summary, most organisations including those in Higher Education are inspiring, creative and intellectual communities to work and be part of. The problem lies not in the technologies we commission, the structures we build or the policies we write. The difficulty lies in how we consider, support and inspire learning around the social ways we work. Be it higher education, the arts or the car dealer down the road, social technologies have changed the way we work. Now we need to change the way we think and the way we learn.

Smiles

Kelly

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The first, the difference between brand and branding. He eloquently alludes to a brand as emergent from conversation, as organic through interactions over time, an image, and it is over time that these interactions shape our image of something – in this case a brand. That brand management is the process by which an emergent brand image is influenced – not controlled, and the role of public, private enterprises in this.

The second, the emergence of brand image. Brands have always been emergent, emergent over time in our minds in how we think, interact with and talk with others about them. However now with growing user-generated social technologies from Facebook to YouTube, Twitter and blogging platforms, a brand is not just emergent in our minds/perceptions or between other of our immediate social circles, but increasingly emergent from a partnership between public-private enterprises and the wider community on a mass scale. A brand is emergent from community conversations, community interactions, a social web of people bought together by their interest and/or action about a brand.

The third, the importance of brand community. This view of a brand emergent from community lends itself much to the the thinking of Albert Muniz and Thomas O’Guinn in their (2001) paper on Brand Community. Wherein a community sharing similar rituals and traditions, history and moral responsibility form a community around a brand, what they term a brand community. A community that regulates and inspires the brands meaning and in this can also harm the brand image.

And lastly, how everything communicates. Everything we do, say, share and cocreate communicates – be it the image of a person, place, organisation, movement, idea or product. These interactions cocreate meaning over time, something not new to social anthropologists interested in media and social research. However, today social and search technologies play an increasing role in their aggregation for search, retrieval and mass sharing.

As everything communicates, and social/search technologies give greater emphasis to the communities of conversations, with this comes new mindsets and digital social literacies. Literacies not just for professionals in organisational communication who attempt to ‘manage’ brand image (and more often than not think they own the brand and thus try to control it), but also the digital social literacies of personal-professional communication across most industries and professions – teachers, artists, politicians, nurses, doctors to name but a few.

In summary, this an interesting example and philosophy of emergent branding through/from community, using the example of Rebranding Greece. Here is the video. Please share.

Smiles

Kelly

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The request came after I’d published an article about the  implications of social networking sites like Facebook for the marketing profession. So on 4th March 2009, I delivered a 2 hour public presentation entitled Getting Connected: Social Media and Marketing in a Networked Economy to an audience of 108.

The motivation for giving the talk was to more freely share some of the insights I’d learn’t over the years from case study and survey research of the implication social tools, technologies and channels are having for today’s marketers. The presentation gives a brief account of:

1. The properties of technologies to ground social media – Why is it different?
2. Types of social media – What are our options?
3. Three core learnings from Case Insights about using social media in marketing. These learning’s include to: Share value, Share control and Share real connections for effective marketing with social media.

The insights are drawn from the following Case examples:

• PKU.com
• Swansea Council | Twitter
• General Electric
• IAB UK | Twitter
• Comparethemeerkat.com
• E4 Skins | Myspace
• New York Islanders Blog Box
• Mentos Geyser Viral | YouTube
• Trevor Mentos Intern
• Facebook Applications
• Chris Moyles Social Web Campaign
• Wiggly Wigglers
• Wales 1000 Things

The slides from the presentation are provided below.

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The core distinguishing character of the social web to more linear electronic resource such as TV, Radio, Print and even Web 1.0, is the degree of involvement the user plays in generating and sharing content than ever before. This is why we love it! But do they actually control their content?

It might be user-generated, but is it really user controlled?

Let’s say our organisation decides to use social technologies in their marketing activities or build a social network where our customers, consumers and stakeholders can share and interact. Where a dialogue and conversation can evolve. Where we as a company we can engage with the community within which we coexist. Sounds great!

But as a user or participant in this community, can I really choose how that content is displayed? To whom it is shared? and What the very nature of that content is? Or does someone else control this, for what ever purpose, or aim or objective they have?

This is very much dependent on the nature of the properties of an electronic resource – the technical, structural and experiential properties. And these properties are contingent on who designs, builds and develops it!

Not the user who might use it. Despite the user being the most important node for network sustainability. After all they do create the content.

Properties of Electronic Resources

Electronic resources such as the social web comprise technical properties (hardwired, mechanical elements) that enable structural properties of a resource, such as how interactive it is how vividness etc. This in turn influences the experiential properties – user perceptions and experiences such as ease of use and utility.

Source: Page (2009)

For example, if I design the functionality of a system or network in a certain way (the technical properties), I can influence the degree of control a user has over what they can do with the system or information in the system. This is known as a structural property called ‘pacing’.

Pacing can varying in degree from being controlled by the designer/marketer. We call this externally paced. With more control being given to the user, thus is considered more of an internally paced system.

For many broadcast delivery systems such as television, these are external pacing where the transfer speed and the information sequence is controlled by the advertiser and network- with minimal influence by the receiver of the information (audience).

Turn on your television, select a channel—how much control do you have over the order in which you receive the information and the speed at which you receive it? Compare this to watching a rental video or a DVD. With print media, users have a larger degree of freedom of choice of the order and time allocated to the information, which is why print media are regarded as more internally paced than broadcast media.

User Control and The Web – Who is Pulling the Strings?

Although the concept of information/media control has been around since the 1960′s the development of computer and network-based communication technologies like the Internet and Web has increased its relevance.

With resources like database technology upon which Google and Amazon are based, users have a larger degree of control over the order in which they access information and the amount of time they take to process it.

The social web on the other hand, has an increased capability to enable both external and internal pacing with a common example being the difference between ‘user generation & customization’ (internally paced) and ‘system mediation and personalisation’ (externally paced).

Let’s look at Myspace and Facebook. Myspace is designed to enable more user customisation, not just in content display and sharing, but also in design and functionality, with a lesser degree of system mediation. Facebook in comparison, adheres to more terms and conditions of the use of their network, limiting user control in functionality and design, but enabling it in content generation and sharing.

If I don’t like either of these offerings and their control over my content, I can create my own … a blog through WordPress, a wiki through PBWorks, a social network through Ning and define my own ideas of who controls both the system and it’s content … or as is technically possible through these systems.

So I suppose the closing questions of this blog post are:

• As a participant/user I need to consider who inherently has control over the content I generate? The designer, system developer, the management or marketer … they can add, remove, publicise or ban my content at the click of a button.
• As a designer, developer, management or marketer … how much external and internal control does my community expect or want from the system, and how much am I prepared to give?

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Imagine if we found answers for everything, could explain anything … we should therefore know how to market to you, to everyone? But perhaps more importantly, it is the imagination, the creativity of marketing that we would lose, not just the mystery of our markets!

A sense of mystery is intrinsic to the human condition. In the article, Les Lancaster, a professor in transpersonal psychology from Liverpool John Moores University indicates that ‘it is intrinsic for us to seek answers.

It is our evolutionary heritage, moving us forward by motivating us to find out more and use our imagination’. The author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest!) writes ‘the need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer’.

So perhaps in a time where the focus in marketing is on measurement, proof, evidence, answers, outcomes and the use of electronic resources to assist us in finding the answers, the information for more informed marketing decisions … perhaps we also need to enjoy some of the mystery.

By this I mean some of the mysteries of new technologies, of market trends, of unexplainable phenomena, these might remind us to enjoy the ‘process’ of what we do in marketing more and focus on the outcomes less.

Perhaps we should just play with marketing, be creative … play with social media and see what happens? I know I can hear your thoughts from here … ‘that costs money’!!!

Let’s look at this another way. In the article the author provided a list of 12 things to help maintain the mystery in one’s life … so with a little creative thought, I edited this list of items to help keep the mystery (and creativity) of marketing alive in a time of rising electronic resources … so we don’t become too explainable!

A manifesto for Mystery in Electronic Marketing!

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Today while sitting in the sun reading the June edition of Psychologies Magazine I read an article titled ‘Why Mystery matters?’. It provides an interesting insight into Tanis Taylor view of the effect of constantly trying to control, survey, monitor, examine, plan and audit every minute, every moment and every action in our daily lives … what happens … we lose the mystery!

We can explain everything … or at least we try to!

One thing the growth of electronic technologies have most certainly done is developed a world where we try to explain everything … we live in an information age where we can access information at the click of a button if we can’t answer the ‘why’ question to our son or daughter, we Google it! If we feel out of date we subscribe! If we want to know what you are doing we follow you!

What of the Mystery in Marketing?

This is also true in marketing. Like what is happening in our everyday lives, in marketing we are also constantly focused on explaining everything, developing plans and strategies to remove uncertainty and control the impact and outcome of our marketing activities.

Why not just come up with a list of ideas and see what happens? Can you imagine that? Creative – Yes! Full of mystery – Yes! Would we be permitted to do this – NO!

This mindset of explaining and planning everything is further heightened by the impact electronic resources have and are having on marketing. We have at our finger tips a plethora of electronic resources that help us to collect data on those we regard as our markets – our customers, buyers, consumers – and with data comes a need to explore and profile that data.

Look at the Tesco Clubcard Scheme and the strategic analytical programme put in place by Dunnhumby, the people behind the scheme. They can identify from this data the type of household I live in, the type of lifestyle I lead and provide some explanation of my future purchase behaviour based on what I have purchased in the past!

Armed with this they already know what type of coupon or incentive to send me to intise me back into my local Tesco Extra. Great – marketing is becoming more accountable, measurable and …. my life more explainable!

But what of the mystery of people … marketing afterall has people at it’s centre .. the people who work in marketing and the people and communities to whom we market (or have a dialogue).

If we can measure and observe everything about people, than will this not result in us knowing everything about them?

In addition to the Tesco Clubcard Scheme, Tesco can also monitor your web behaviour what pages on their site you visit, what files your download, what purchases you make online. They can then merge this web usage data with your purchase data from their stores already they are starting to build a pretty good picture of who you are and how to reach you.

Oh and don’t forget your purchase fuel from their service stations, have your car insurance with them and have a Tesco-linked credit card! Are we getting the picture?

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