An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

This post is the tenth (and last!) in a series of my interpretation of Social Media Principles.

Associations are inherently good:

I’m not sure I believe that they are inherently good. I’m leaning towards associations are agnostic - it’s the value you add that make them good.

When Jim Benson and I first started this series on social media principles, Jim asserted that associations are inherently good.

Jim writes:

Social media teaches us that our associations make us stronger.  The number of followers we have on Twitter, the number of friends on facebook, the number of connections on LinkedIn all increase our “reach”…

Organizational Structure

So let’s focus on the positive: social media is about linkages, and ideally, reciprocal linkages. If reach is about the number of people who will potentially see our message, then of course associations are inherently good. The corollary to that is we also increase the number of people whose message(s) we can receive, thus increasing our ability to gather information.

The information exchange facilitated by these associations is then a positive thing - it builds trust within an organization, it empowers individuals to be confident in the decisions that they make and also allows new, interesting thoughts and ideas to surface.

The associations don’t automagically lead to information exchange. Associations are necessary, but not sufficient to exchange information. There’s also an underlying assumption that the information exchanged is TRUE.

What if associations are used to spread disinformation? The information recipients will need to spend time filtering and validating the dissonant data. This could possibly lead to information overload and increases the noise factor.

What if individuals don’t do anything with the information? Where is the value in that? If the information received is not actionable or action-worthy is the association that spawned access to it good?

When true, actionable information exchange is facilitated, associations are good.

There’s a cost to everything, including managing relationships, no matter how weak the link. There’s no such thing as free lunch, just lunches for which the cost approaches free.

I discovered a horrifying truth today. My mom has discovered the Google. She now knows what we all thought in our heads, but maybe didn’t admit… You can use Google to STALK people.

Like your children.

My sister pinged me tonight:

Kim:speaking of mom, she apparently commented on my blog. me: what? ha. the condom thing? Kim: no. on the baguette i don’t know how she found it, but she’s getting good.
Kim didn’t quite know what to make of Mom’s comment:

Baguette and butter!!! Delicious!!! Extra exclamation marks, use three to express your feeling!!! Better yet, they’re free!!! absolutely free!!! Can you say: “I want to buy a loaf of French bread or baguette.” in Vietnamese? Is it in your guide book?
Are those avocado halves in the background? They look delicious!!! I’ve missed Tex-Mex cuisine!!! I haven’t had breakfast!!!

Awesome. I quickly realized that Mom was making fun of Kim’s previous post, making fun of apostrophes. Of course, Mom also referenced Kim’s slightly inappropriate post about saying something in Vietnamese.

Kim: but then she makes that sly reference to the condom postKim: when has mom ever been sly?askin me if the book i has tells me how to say i want a baguette in vietHOW ELSE WOULD SHE KnOW ABOUT THE BOOK?!

In the meantime, I had responded to my Mom’s comment:

…I love you, but you comment like a sp@mm3r.

Of course, my mom’s comment and this story was too good not to share, so in short order, @MackCollier was laughing his @$$ off and having a conversation about my Mom’s comment. Others picked up the link, and in short order, her traffic hit an all time best, surpassing the day her blog got passed around her husband’s consulting firm (take THAT, Justin!).

Traffic from thienkim.wordpress.com on 01/19/2008

She freaked.

Kim: it’s like inviting someone into your house and you haven’t cleaned yet!

As of this writing, I’m trying to convince my sister to join Twitter:

Kim: an.i am a technophobe.for real.and a luddite.there is no reason for anyone to read my blog except the people who know me!if more people read me, i’d have to step up my game!(ok…so i don’t want to twitter because i’m a perfectionist.)

Linkbait

In all seriousness, Kim, Mom and I had great fun and were glad we got to share it with you.

Kim’s post gave my mother the fodder she needed to make fun of Kim. My mom’s post gave me a chance to make a comment that resonated with the Twitter community I’m part of, a community of social media marketers, search marketers and digital professionals.

Thanks to Mack Collier for helping me drive traffic to my sister’s blog post and sharing in this fun!

This post is the ninth in a series of my interpretation of Social Media Principles. More to come in the near distant future.

Pouring Water from Flickr User bfurnace

Context is fluid:

Things change more often, as does your frame of reference. Think about the information you have at various points and look at developments along a continuum.

One attribute organizations look for in its people is flexibility. You see multiple job ads saying:

Ability to manage the ambiguity and multiple priorities inherent in a fast-paced environment…

Able to work under pressure, and deal with the unexpected and ambiguity…

Flexibility, independence and ability to multi-task, setting priority to each with little or no direction…

These ads came from a variety of verticals - legal, education, and nonprofit.

Why do these roles address “ambiguity” and “flexibility”?

Because people need to make decisions all the time. For employers, discovering someone with these qualities enables managers to trust that members of their team are on track with their projects and can reprioritize in light of new information. This requires organizations to have:

1. Clear, shared vision that drives goals which define success, or Vision >> Goals >> Execution to success
2. Open communication so that employees can make high judgment decisions (see Two Cents: Organizational Entropy & Information Abuse, Case Study: Amalgamated Suckup Dot Com).

Social media applications can be the tools that:

1. Facilitate communication amongst teams;
2. Gather information that may materially affect decision making.

Yammer, a microblogging application, facilitates private, in-company communication so users can connect and share with others in the organization. Twitter’s initial use case was internal communication at Obvious Corporation.

While these tools allow for rapid sharing of short bursts of information, the 140 character upper limit allows for only so much context, as James Andrews, a VP in Ketchum’s New York office discovered. Practitioners of social media - marketers, consultants, PR, communications, community managers/developers - should practice self-awareness about the information they share via these channels.

If

Facebook is about people you used to know; Twitter is about people you’d like to know better. - Tim O’Reilly

the common thread between to two very different social networking tools is the context they add to information about others in any given user’s network. More information leads to a more robust picture. The question is - do you take many small data slices over time, or do you take a robust picture created in time?

Read Jim Benson’s take on Context is Fluid on Evolvng Web

This post is the eighth in a series of my interpretation of Social Media Principles. More to come in the near distant future.

Jim Benson shares his thoughts on Immediacy in all Things on his blog, Evolving Web.

Immediacy in all things:

Acting on new, validated information when appropriate moves things forward more quickly than before.

Jim published his post before I had a chance to start mine. He raises points about motivation, respect, and delays to missions, writing:

We consider ourselves on a mission when we have clear goals, we have an idea of how to satisfy those goals, and we are somewhat excited about achieving them.  A mission differs from a task by our emotional investment.

“Strike while the iron is hot. Eat while the food is fresh.” doesn’t mean as soon as possible. Taking the time to consider the context and circumstances, prioritize appropriately and keep an eye on the mission is much easier with respect and open communication. This requires knowing the mission and having the correct information, so that we can then judge if our actions are on or off strategy.

We have technological tools that empower us to get information more quickly, easily and cheaply. With the rise in adoption of mobile technologies including cell phones with sms and smart phones with email/internet, we can do more with small timeboxes.

What does this look like in the context of an organization?

DocuSign, Online Signature and Contract Execution Services

One company, DocuSign, clearly understands the value of moving information forward as quickly as possible.

DocuSign provides secure, legally binding electronic signature and online contract execution services. Fortune 500 enterprise organizations as well as individual small business owners rely on DocuSign’s electronic signature and electronic contract execution services daily. By using DocuSign, companies across all industries, with various business processes and needs, have dramatically reduced operating costs and significantly improved efficiency and customer satisfaction.

A possible DocuSign online contract execution process looks like:

1. Open the form on a PC
2. Fill in the fields
3. Sign electronically
4. Instantly and securely, the other party can access the form without using paper and overnight shipping.
5. Move forward as appropriate, now that a legally binding contract has been entered into by both parties.

Compare that with an old-school, analog system:

1. Sending hard copy documents often via overnight shipping
2. Following up if a contract wasn’t returned
3. Generating new contracts if something got lost or wasn’t filled out correctly
4. Repeating the above as necessary.

In a best case scenario, the old-school, analog system for contract execution would take 2-3 business days. This assumes that all authorized signers are available to sign as soon as the documents arrive, sign correctly, and return ship the documents right away.

Just like email reduced the time for written correspondence, DocuSign reduces the time for contract execution. DocuSign’s ability to accelerate this process securely results not only in satisfied customers, but also impresses the clients of DocuSign’s customers. From the real estate industry to global brands, DocuSign helps its customers move their businesses forward by providing them with new, valid information more quickly than overnight shipping, bike messenger and fax.

The immediacy provided by DocuSign’s service enables its customers to move forward with their mission. By empowering its customers and impressing their clients, DocuSign aligns itself very strongly with its customers.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeCMDV-9tP0]

<disclaimer>  DocuSign is a client </disclaimer>

This post is the seventh in a series of my interpretation of Social Media Principles. More to come in the near distant future.

My previous post, Economies Have Currencies, led to discussion on Twitter and on my blog. Social media principle #7 perhaps explains this best…

Trucks move physical objects - Communication moves ideas from Katmere via Flickr

Communication is blood:

Communication is the transport mechanism for information flow.

As a concrete example of communication facilitating how the information flows, the path looks like this:

An’s blog post –> An’s Tweet –> Nick Ward’s Comment –> An’s thanks of Nick’s comment w/a brief encapsulation –> Josh Maher’s comment integrating information from An’s blog post and Nick’s comment.

Retweets from Mack Collier, Jim Benson and others help spread the ideas and participate in the on-going discussion.

If we sit on, or hoard information, ideas stagnate.

In organizations, what ends up happening is 1) sub-optimal innovation. Jim Benson touched on this briefly, discussing the benefits of dynamic teams and workplaces; 2) bored employees that become cost sinks. This happens not because they want to cost the organization $$, but because keeping bored employees around requires management overhead.

By lowering costs of communication or building processes that incentivize people to share information, the odds of the above occurences decreases. Social media tools have already led to new and innovative ways to express creativity (Salesforce + Facebook –> Faceforce), build and market personal brands (MySpace –> Tila Tequila) and help consumers find information they want (Yelp –> Setting expectations around restaurants, salons, etc.).

This data may be expressed visually, textually, auditorially or some combination of the above, but without open pathways of communication, information remains siloed and decisions are then made which may or may not reflect reality.

This post is the sixth in a series of my interpretation of Social Media Principles. More to come in the near distant future.

Previously, I discussed rules in social media, framing the discussion in terms of etiquette and social norms. Once predictability of outcome for actions exist, bargaining and trade is possible, thus…

Currency, from Department of Chemistry, Washington University

Economies have currencies:

Trade is possible with Karmic infrastructure and rules of engagement.

Karmic infrastructure and rules of engagement provide people with boundaries within which to operate. Those who do not follow the norms are marginalized or on the edge/outside of the system.

One of the main ways we interact with others is through exchange of value, which can take many forms. For example, this can look like the exchange of approval, affection or information. Jim Benson has blogged about the currencies of Social Media, discussing artifacts and recognition.

My Company Cares Because…?

By making the artifacts and recognition distinct, measurable, and concrete strategic decisions about knowing with whom to trade becomes possible.
For brands, this means knowing who is interested in 1) your industry; 2) your business; and 3) why they care.

For consumers, this means knowing 1) if you have any brand affinities; 2) why you think about brands, products and services the way you do; and 3) providing actionable feedback to the appropriate people.

For example, I have spent quite a bit of time discussing whrrl, a social networking/location aware/social experience discovery application. Whrrl’s community manager and I have spent quite a bit of time discussing Web 2.0, social media and restaurants. As a top whrrler, I trade her my insights, links and content to help create a better experience for me. I’ve touched 262 places, rated/reviewed 85 places and bookmarked 42 places/events as “want to go.”

On her end, she informs me of whrrl-related events, new feature releases and other relevant information based on our relationship created with the exchange of value. She actively solicits my feedback and integrates those insights as appropriate.

Predictability and ability to set and adjust expectations around actions enable trade between members of the community. Social media participation reflects this, via the exchange of ideas and information through comments, reviews, blog posts and linking.