social media observations

HEALING THE ECO-SYSTEM AND THE HUMAN SOUL: How Transmodern Leaders And Social Strategists Gave Golden Keys To The Most Valuable Online Community And Set Them Free To Usher In a New World

“If you had time, you succeeded in working the human mud internally and turning it into spirit.”— Nikos Kazantzakis

“You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go. ”
— Nikos Kazantzakis

INDIVIDUALS ARE DROPPING INTO SOCIAL NETWORKS LIKE DEWDROPS INTO THE SEA: Social networks are a dynamic eco-system of individual minds, isolated communities and seemingly opposed ideologies melding into an increasingly ripened spiritual entity.

The whole of humanity is in a process of realizing the fantastic truth of Oneness, of what it means to be separate AND one, of that famous Buddhist saying about dropping like dew drops into the sea. Producing intelligence reports for major brands and media projects using listening AND social monitoring tools, I have regular experiences of seeing this phenomenon occurring over and over within multiple online communities.

AN EXTREMELY VALUABLE ONLINE COMMUNITY – THE CULTURAL CREATIVES: I am currently working on projects for a major film, e-commerce platform, several media-conglomerates, global dance collective and several luminaries who all market to/live within the Cultural Creative tribe. A defining characteristic of Cultural Creatives is the ability to see oneself as part of something bigger. CC’s see that everything relates as an interwoven piece of nature. The movement is a healing movement. A core desire amongst CC’s is for things to be made whole and for mankind to wake up to their true desires. The core values of Cultural Creatives include:

▪ Authenticity, actions must be consistent with words and beliefs
▪ Engaged action and whole process learning; seeing the world as interwoven and connected
▪ Idealism and activism
▪ Globalism and ecology
▪ The importance of women

THE COMMUNITY WITH GREATEST POTENTIAL IN THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF THE WEB:It is my firm belief that no community has more potential to activate the social web spiritually than the Cultural Creatives. I will say it again: leaders of the various sub-cultures within the Cultural Creative movement ARE the movers and shakers when it comes to being Innerpreneurs, those who capitalize on the soul of humanity.

THE GOLDEN KEYS TO THE CULTURAL CREATIVES: One of the most amazing words in internet marketing is “keyword” or “keyphrase.” As I have worked this week to produce a list of the top keywords or keyphrases for the Cultural Creatives and their various sub-cultures AND thought about their potential to potentiate global spiritual revolution and activism, I am realizing that these words are golden keys…keys to open vaults of spiritual material within this swiftly forming global Homo Universalis or Collective Polymath.

In keeping with this, some of the TOP “GOLDEN KEYS” to the Cultural Creative wealth (ACCORDING TO global monthly search volume) include:

Family (37,200,000)
Secret (16,600,000)
Crystal (11,100,000)
Therapy (7,480,000)
Yoga (7,480,000)
environment (5,000,000)
psychology (5,000,000)
stress (5,000,000)
relationship (4,090,000)
success (3,350,000)
motivation (2,740,000)
counseling (2,740,000)
wealth (1,500,000)
the secret (1,500,000)
meditation (1,500,000)
spiritual (1,220,000)
inspiration (823,000)
home health (673,000
)

HOW TO USE THE GOLDEN KEYS (KEYWORDS) TO ACCESS THE HEART OF A COMMUNITY: One of the world’s foremost social community and strategy architects, Brian Solis, writes, “Gathering intelligence to inspire meaningful and actionable social programs is priceless.” Every golden key above contains etymological, mythological, cultural and personal significance.

To create “meaningful and actionable social programs” a social marketer should consider delving into each of these disciplines AS A MEANS OF UNPACKING THE SECRET OF EACH KEYWORD AND KEYPHRASE. For a social strategy to find its seed in a set of keywords with HUGE POTENCY is the equivalent of possessing Jack’s magic beans that led to the giant’s castle in the clouds. Use keyphrases, their meanings and their histories to inform your understanding of the living quality of the WORD, the COMMUNITY, and the OVER-ARCHING CAMPAIGN PHILOSOPHY. At the root of every word, there is a god or deity…a living and breathing presence. Understanding words AS living and breathing presences transforms keywords from plain data into VIBRANT DATA, DATA WITH VITALITY!

AN EXAMPLE: THE OVER-ARCHING CAMPAIGN PHILOSOPHY FOR THE CULTURAL CREATIVE UNIVERSE AND ITS VARIOUS SUB-CULTURES

To find an overarching philosophy for guiding an online social campaign, I suggest discovering THROUGH the keyphrases KEY INFLUENCERS and studying their root philosophies. Since the MOST COMMON theme for Cultural Creatives IS weaving community together and holistic practices in all disciplines, I submit that a person who captures the essence of WEAVING THE HEARTS OF THE WORLD TOGETHER could be a perfect informer of a CULTURAL CREATIVE strategy.

A LEADER FROM THE FUTURE IN OUR MIDST: Ziauddin Sardar, perhaps one of the world’s greatest living Polymaths (Renaissance Person), has said ‘there is more than one way to be human’. He writes ‘I do not regard “the human” either as “the” or as a priori given’. ‘The western way of being human is one amongst many. Similarly, the Islamic way of being human is also one amongst many. The Australian aboriginal way of being human is also another way of being human. I see each culture as a complete universe with its own way of knowing, being and doing – and hence, its own way of being human’. The corollary is that there are also different ways of knowing. The question that Sardar has always asked is: ‘how do you know? The answer depends a great deal on who ‘you’ are: ‘how you look at the world, how you shape your inquiry, the period and culture that shapes your outlook and the values that frame how you think’. (Source)

Sadar is from a tribe of people known as the Transmodernists. As the social web enters a season of vigorous competition in the Transmedia space, bringing multiple technologies, software platforms and “walled gardens” (large AND separate communties like Facebook, MySpace, AOL and Yahoo) together, philosophers who speak like Sardar speaks will be increasingly relevant. The programmers and software developers who can weave Transmodernist philosophy into their conceptual process WILL win in today’s pluralistic world.

HOW DOES ONE WEAVE TRANSMODERNIST PHILOSOPHY INTO AN EFFECTIVE SOCIAL CAMPAIGN:

Paul H. Ray’s summary of Transmodern culture informs a process, as follows:

1. LISTEN and DISCOVER THE LEADERS IN THESE FOLLOWING AREAS:

KEYWORD is ENVIRONMENT: Ecological sustainability, beyond environmentalism: If you can name an aspect of ecology and sustainability, they are emphatically for it, and are leading the way. Cultural Creatives demonstrate awareness of a large range of issues, including wanting to rebuild neighborhoods and communities, ecological sustainability and limits to growth, seeing nature as sacred, wanting to stop corporate polluters, being anti-big-business, wanting voluntary simplicity, being willing to pay to clean up the environment and to stop global warming.

KEYWORD is RELATIONSHIP: Globalism: Two of the top values for Cultural Creatives are xenophilism (love of travel to foreign places, of foreigners and the exotic) and ecological sustainability, which strongly includes concern for the planetary ecology and stewardship, and population problems.

KEYWORDS are WOMEN and FAMILY: Feminism, women’s issues, relationships, family: The fact that Cultural Creatives are 60 percent women is a major key to understanding this subculture. Much of the focus on women’s issues in politics comes from them-including concerns about violence and abuse of women and children, desire to rebuild neighborhoods and community, desire to improve caring relationships, and concerns about family (though they are no more family-oriented than most North Americans, it is near the top in their list of values).

KEYWORDS include SPIRITUAL, PSYCHOLOGY, HOME HEALTH: Altruism, self-actualization, alternative health care, spirituality and spiritual psychology: This is a complex of highly interrelated beliefs and values centered on the inner life. In reality, this is a new sense of the sacred that incorporates personal growth psychology and the spiritual and service to others as all one orientation. It also includes a stronger trend toward holistic health and alternative health care as part of this complex.

KEYWORDS include INSPIRATION, SUCCESS and MOTIVATION. Well-developed social conscience and social optimism: Contrary to some social critics, an emphasis on the personal does not exclude the political or social conscience, though individuals may focus on them in sequence. Cultural Creatives are engaged in the world just as much as in personal and spiritual issues. Rebuilding and healing society is related to healing ourselves, physically and spiritually. With that goes a guarded social optimism.

2. EACH OF THESE ASPECTS OF THE CULTURAL CREATIVE IMAGINATION IS A COMMUNITY WITH REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL. FIRE THIS IMAGINATION WITH AGGREGATED, CONTEST-DRIVEN, COMMUNITY-SOURCED ACTIVITIES USING EXISTING SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY.

Discover media, products, in-the-flesh activities/meet-ups/events, and delivery platforms currently used by these communties and AGGREGATE this content/software THUS harnessing ALL that this community is. THEN conceive and run contests and reward-based programs that DRIVE or ATTRACT this community toward the fulfillment of it’s “ULTIMATE GOALS”. Show through these contests how quick goals are being scored GLOBALLY and LOCALLY to achieve these bigger goals.

3. KEEP THE VIRTUOUS CYCLE GOING!

Announce the victories won and capitalize on these wins through positive PR and by raising up new leaders to foment successive, community-sourced campaigns. Community-sourced EVERYTHING is a HUGE aspect of the social web and knowing what your community’s NEED is the MARK of good leadership.

4. AND IF YOU NEED HELP FUNDRAISING FOR YOUR CAUSE, CHECK OUT THESE FANTASTIC WORLD-SOURCING TOOLS FOR DOING SO!

           a. KickStarter
           b. Giveo
           c. Kiva
           d. 8 Funding Contests for Jumpstarting your Big Idea!

REVOLUTION OF THE HEART: The friendly people of the world are weaving humanity together!

THE FRIENDLY PEOPLE of the world are weaving humanity together through social networks towards an end(s) none of us can see as yet.

It’s one of the MOST fantastic revolutions the planet has EVER seen. Within the social fabric of the internet humans have a distinct opportunity to turn the earth into a place of peace and unity. In fact, even the naysayers have united with the lovers in this by participation in social networks.

BRAND HUMANIZATION IS EVIDENCE OF THE REVOLUTION OF LOVE! In an attempt to humanize, brands are getting very creative in reaching the hearts of their followers.

See the following two ads for an example!

THE PEACEFUL BEAR AD: (click here to watch)

THE WEAVING OF LIKES INTO REAL LIFE (click here to watch)

Typically in times of crisis the masculine goes into a fight or flight action. BUT NOW, the individual is FIGHTING FOR and FLYING TO the tribe(s) and circles oriented around his/her HEART! Go to your tribe today and fight with them to weave this world together with your contribution. Do it! Do that REVOLUTION OF THE HEART!Remember those great ads where everyone sang together while drinking their favorite cola?

FURNISH IT WITH LOVE! (click here to watch)

YOUR SOCIAL GRAPH IS FURNISHED WITH LOVE AND YOU DID THAT! In your social network, you now have all the characters you need to achieve what you are looking for AND there is no time better than the present to begin and FINISH!

For aid in how to hurdle typical obtacles I highly recommend ShipIt by Seth Godin!

As one of my dearest friends says, “Bushido! Do it now because the time is right!” It is a revolution of the heart that is afoot!

THE ROSEBUD LABYRINTH: Opening your social graph in the context of spiritual and communal evolution

“…symbolical rites are the external expressions of man’s inward desire to unite with Divinity.” – Roberta H. Lamerson, F.R.C.

One of the most sacred spiritual rites throughout history is the walking of the labyrinth.

Kimberly Lowelle, the President of The Labyrinth Society – a network of labyrinth scholars and enthusiasts – writes, “The labyrinth is an archetype of transformation. Its transcendant nature knows no boundaries, crossing time and cultures with ease. The labyrinth serves as a bridge from the mundane to the divine…” I suggest to the reader that the Labyrinth is an image AND an experience worth looking deeper into as a model for yielding what one wants from the social fabric of the internet, which is really the fabric of our communal heart.

At their labyrinth website, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco writes about about the deeper meanings of the labyrinth, “The Labyrinth is an archetype, a divine imprint, found in all religious traditions in various forms around the world. By walking a replica of the Chartres labyrinth, laid in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France around 1220, we are rediscovering a long-forgotten mystical tradition that is insisting to be reborn.”

The labyrinth is a shared esoteric tradition, “In Native American culture it is called the Medicine Wheel and Man in the Maze. The Celts described it as the Never Ending Circle. It is also called the Kabbala in mystical Judaism. One feature they all share is that they have one path which winds in a circuitous way to the center.”

Having spent nearly a year walking solely in the labyrinth of social networks AND around the world meeting real people from those networks, I must say that the spiritual opportunity for humanity in social networks is profound.

What do I mean by this? If the ultimate goal of any relationship is the union of two hearts, then I would submit to the reader that social networks reveal paths for multiple re-unions. I have lived such re-unions over and over during the last 12 months in particular, from the re-kindling of high school romance to finding new friends within tribes of a shared heart-sense. Such re-unions are a symbolic experience within human experience of a deeper truth, a deeper goal that all peoples, all tribes, all nations share: to reach the spiritual goals defined by their forefathers and wise-women in whatever spiritual/aesthetic/communal traditions they were raised in. AGAIN, whatever spiritual tradition or method of reaching the sacred you choose, I suggest to you that social networks offer a path of BRINGING YOUR HEART TO YOUR PEOPLE. They want it and need it!

ON A DEEPER LEVEL, SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE EVEN NOW BEING WOVEN TOGETHER FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF SAVING WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAVED IN THE ECO-SYSTEM, THE HUMAN COMMUNITY AND IN OUR INDIVIDUAL HEARTS — ON A GLOBAL LEVEL.

The labyrinth is a living, breathing metaphor for those who walk the social networks and the paths of this planet FOR THE EXPRESS GOAL OF WEAVING HUMANITY TOGETHER.

Grace Cathedral literature shows how the exercise of the labyrinth may be seen in three parts. I have quoted their EXCELLENT material here AND added thoughts on personal and corporate findings one may take from the exercise of the labyrinth.

1. PURGATION (RELEASING) ~ “A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is the act of shedding thoughts and distractions. A time to open the heart and quiet the mind.” (source)

Releasing on a Personal Level: To really enter social networks takes a lot of faith and courage. What I thought was important transforms as I transcend those early details from my Info section and discover truly amazing versions of my own personal gifts and ideals. Moving deeper into TRANSPARENT social graphs is a kind of shedding, the flower opens up, and the center of vitality is revealed. YOUR VITALITY can come from the goals you assign yourself AND THAT your graph assigns you on a daily basis.

Releasing for Businesses: What this means is a releasing of the “expert-ness” in the mind of the Marketing Manager, the Brand Manager and the SVP of Product IN PREPARATION for the LISTENING to the voice of the consumer. Your genius NEEDS to be in taking what your customer wants and elevating that to a level of product or service that exceeds his/her need/desire.

2. ILLUMINATION (RECEIVING) ~ “When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.” (source)

Receiving on a Personal Level: It seems that everyday, a quote or an image or a movie clip, reveals an answer and truth that I needed. Listening to the social fabric of the internet and to oneself PRIOR to interaction with friends gives you the chance to make good decisions about where you want your heart to go that moment, that day, and for your lifetime!

Receiving for Businesses: The important concept here for business is LISTENING. When we listen AT THE CENTER(s) of our customer base (key demographic), answers arrive for future product offerings and brand direction. AND customer service issues are solved very quickly.

3. UNION (RETURNING) ~ “As you leave, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is joining God, your Higher Power, or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for.” (source)

Union on a Personal Level: Chatting with a friend or video-Skype expands the vision found when listening. Meeting physically takes this EVEN FURTHER. That transparent shedding we do as an action of entering the social fabric of the internet and revealing ourselves REQUIRES friendliness and generosity. Secure allies within your social graph to support you in this (HINT: the best way to do this is by being that same person to him/her/them).

Union for Businesses: Again, as said above, the genius that comes from the center of the social graph is knowing what your customer wants and elevating that to a level of product or service that exceeds his/her need/desire. That’s what the Lovemarks from Saatchi + Saatchi are all about! This also is the golden road to building lasting Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Equity.

I suggest to the reader that building and entering your social graph IS akin to the building AND walking of a labyrinth. This passage is a sacred act AND also has regular CENTERS (POINTS OF ILLUMINATION) that you reach. If our genes carry an imprint, it seems logical to state that the social graph you have started building is a VISUALIZATION OF YOUR GENETIC HERITIAGE AND YOUR SPIRITUAL TRIBE.

Entering your personalized social graph, if viewed as a sacred experience, could very well result in your finding the answers and solutions needed by YOU.

Follow your bliss: The future of human interaction with the invisible

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. ~Joseph Campbell

The future of human interaction with the invisible has fully arrived. We are now firmly in an era where Predictive and Temporal Analytics (THINK: Analytics-Driven Policy) MATCHED WITH abundant Storytelling/Transmedia genius HAS yielded full-blown portals into the realm of RELATIONSHIP TO THE MYTHIC. One need only look at the largest portals to VIRTUALPHYSICAL and ROMANTIC relationship creation for evidence of these doorways.

WHAT IS “RELATIONSHIP TO THE MYTHIC”? (And why is this important?)

Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, writes, “The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth.” Wolfgang Pauli writes of “an invisible, potential form of reality that is only indirectly inferable through its effects.”

I submit to the reader that through a combination of Listening to Oneself AND Investigation using Social Monitoring Tools, humans can now discover “worm-holes” that lead directly to their most cherished and inner-desired locations. I would also suggest that these most cherished INNER LOCATIONS are spiritual destinations characterized by terms like nostalgia and “the best times of my life”. Such INNER and REMEMBERED locations MAY be the most desirable locations known to mankind AND MAY also be THE wellspring of creativity for the individual, a society and the whole of humanity. We all seek the bright field, which IS the MYTHIC REALM.

The process for accessing these locations COULD trace the following path:

1. LISTEN TO YOUR OWN HEART by taking one single day out of your life and spending that 24 hour period alone. Simply listening. Karl Menninger writes, “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us , makes us unfold and expand.” Places like Spirit Rock, Esalen, Omega Institute, forests, deserts, islands and parks within cities can facilitate a window TO THE dreamed-of location.

2. WRITE! During your time of listening to yourself, write. And underline the words that mean the most to you. Those are your search terms, the keywords that you will use in the social fabric of the internet to find others like you, destinations of your tribe and eco-systems sympathetic to YOUR nature. Joseph Campbell writes, “One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.” What a fabulous reality we have in that the social fabric of the internet offers abundant paths to the flowering of our humanity!

3. IDENTIFY YOUR KEYS. Take your keywords, your KEYS, to the social monitoring tools, visual maps, AND keyword tools and follow your findings to the location of your tribe in the social networks!

4. BOARD YOUR PLANE, TRAIN OR AUTOMOBILE, whether this be a metaphor for mental passage, spiritual exploration, relationship deepening/adjustment/discovery AND/OR actual physical movement.

5. WRITE YOUR LOVE LETTERS TO THE WORLD as you travel to the land of your tribe (Hint: That’s what blogging, tweeting, FBing, Flickr-ing, YouTubing, SlideShare-ing, etc. really are…these are your forums to express your GIFT to the world). The joy and beauty of your journey will infiltrate and instruct the fabric of the communities around you and inspire others to do their own exploration and SHIFT!

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else. ~Joseph Campbell

Birthing potent thought-animals: The importance of memetics in internet marketing

A few days ago,  a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video of teenage boys freaking out on Chatroulette. The video shows various teen boys watching a teen girl tease them. Suddenly she turns into a demon-possessed being. The resulting looks on these boys’ faces is truly priceless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSaurw6E_Q

What is interesting from a marketing standpoint is that just a few days ago on YouTube, this video had 1100 videos. Now it has over 1 million views. For internet marketers, I suggest that the study of internet memes is crucial. To quote Lorrie Thomas, M.A., “It is an art AND a science.” One must have a creative AND an analytical mind, OR at least a team with both/and present.

WHAT IS A MEME?
A meme is a unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word μιμητισμός (/mɪmetɪsmos/) for “something imitated”.) Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.

Francis Heylighen, of Free University of Brussels, writes that successful memes follow three characterstics, which include:

1) copying-fidelity: the more faithful the copy, the more will remain of the initial pattern after several rounds of copying. If a painting is reproduced by making photocopies from photocopies, the underlying pattern will quickly become unrecognizable. 2) fecundity: the faster the rate of copying, the more the replicator will spread. An industrial printing press can churn out many more copies of a text than an office copying machine. 3) longevity: the longer any instance of the replicating pattern survives, the more copies can be made of it. A drawing made by etching lines in the sand is likely to be erased before anybody could have photographed or otherwise reproduced it.

SUCCESSFUL INTERNET MEMES INCLUDE:
Successful internet memes have been seen by anyone who has email or spends even a little time on the internet. Some of the most famous include: (1) Double Rainbow (2) Nigahiga’s YouTube channel (3) David After Dentist (4) Diet Coke and Mentos (5) the phenomenon of Rickrolling (where user is tricked into clicking a link to a music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. (6) Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance (7) Justin Bieber’s Baby.

A Comprehensive List of Internet Phenomena may be found here.

MEMETICS RESEARCH and ACTION:

1. GEEKY RESEARCH: Read about Cluster Analysis (just to see how deep and complicated the science really gets). Study Meme-Tracking. Check out Group Formation in Large Social Networks.

2. KNOW YOUR DEMOGRAPHIC: Pay attention to the MAJOR archetypes within your chosen demographic AND their needs. Lots of market research has been done already by major research groups like Forrester, Nielsen, JD Power, and MRI into the buying habits, content preferences and behaviors of your audience.

3. USE LISTENING TOOLS TO SPOT SENTIMENT TRENDS: Listen to trends in the social fabric of the internet AND press-releases using Recorded Future, Radian6, Monitter and some of the new Facebook listening tools like Booshaka, Facepinch, OpenBook, It’s Trending and Kurrently. These tools could jumpstart your creative process. Any social campaign worth its salt has included some degree of listening to the customer PRIOR to launch.

4. BRAINSTORM using BIG pieces of paper and LOTS of flexibility WITH ALL IDEAS that emerge. Get INSPIRED in the Behance community, a fabulous place for meeting peers in the creative space AND to learn fabulous CREATIVE PROCESS TECHNIQUES.

5. A, B, C test your top ideas using landing pages, images, tweets, FB status updates, and blogposts. Notice AND measure response to these communications using Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and Alexa.

Great content contains effective memes, or word-creatures, the weavers of this living tissue that we call the social fabric of the internet. Viral videos like the one above, inspirational quotes, one-liners and personal news in the form of tweets and status updates are examples of word-creatures that move through individual and communal minds/hearts to what end none of us may ever know. These thought-animals consume the attention of a community, grow larger, and move deeper into the texture of the community.