social networks

Selling the value of Social Networks to the Silos

“Wait a moment, here I have it. This: ‘Most men will not swim before they are able to.’ Is not that witty? Naturally, they won’t swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won’t think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.” ~Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO SWIM MUST TEACH: We live in times when mankind has bartered solid earth for water. Those who know how to swim, must swim and teach. And those that would survive must be willing to learn and adapt. Such is the case for those learning social networks. Social networks are an outer manifestation in the form of text, photos, video, news and music OF OUR inner lives. Whereas before we heard thoughts from another person over a telephone line or experienced a director’s vision on the television or silver screen, we now have an environment (social networks) where we live WITHIN a constant stream of thought, vision and communication. To speak plainly: those who can find business intelligence, set up on-the-fly networks and aggregate customers quickly WITHIN social networks provide value to traditional businesses seeking to enter these same networks.

collectivestream

THE MEDIUM HAS CHANGED: Sifting through this stream, filtering it, is the primary and initial task that those who work in social networks must do via social media monitoring and community management. And those who introduce corporations and brands to the use of social networks must simplify and translate all of the lexicon that has ballooned around social networks into an easy to grasp language. Many, like Peter Economides of FelixBNI, state firmly that nothing has changed EXCEPT the medium or channel. While this is very true, there is also the reality that a new medium often changes the user or participant. We communicate at the speed of thought now and our “PCs, the Internet, mobile phones, GPS have come together to enable a vast distributed data network of collective memory…a collective stream of intelligence” (PeopleBrowsr). To speak plainly: social networks now provide a new, faster means to create connections, sales and business relationships.

CONVINCING DUTCH UNCLES: So how does one convince a businessman in his 60’s who is used to using the telephone and maybe a fax machine to communicate…how does one convince such a man to use Facebook to see photos and read stories of his grandchildren, to see Twitter as a scope into powerful business intelligence, to view photos of family and peers at Flickr and video of family at YouTube? How does one convince him to look for the breaking news at Reddit or discover the latest market trends at StumbleUpon? How does one convince him to read what his competitors’ team is presenting at Slideshare or Scrib’d? How does one convince him to catch up with his granddaughter’s music at her Last.fm channel or to create his own radio station at Pandora and listen to this on the drive to work? How does one reveal that vital conversations related to the brands he founded are taking place within Disqus communities (communities built around the comment-threads from blogs)? How does one convince him that Wikipedia is a faster route to information on many subjects than Britannica? How does one convince him that Yelp will “save the night” in a new town if that top restaurant is fully booked? To speak plainly: there is a network for every market and many networks contain a slice devoted to specific markets. Use these free venues for connection to your customer and for making sales!

SELLING CRONIES ON SOCIAL NETWORKS: Selling the crustiest, saltiest critics on the power and speed of social networks is rooted in psychology. Changing anyone’s mind, accessing a heart, really depends upon getting to know that person. What motivates him or her? What goals does he or she have? Doing a little homework USING social networks PRIOR to such meetings is one route to engaging in a convincing conversation. When I know what 10 competitors to a brand are doing RIGHT NOW (social monitoring tools) and six months from now (Recorded Future), that can be a great conversation starter. When I know where 50 new clients/customers for a product or service are located and what they are saying, this can lead to some exciting plans for the corporation. When I can show what events led to a shift in consumer behavior that either helped or hurt a brand, that can lead to some important adjustments to the supply chain and perhaps product identity. When I create a simple infographic that visualizes EXACTLY where that gentleman’s customers are conversing in social networks, what they are saying, when they are saying it and to whom they are talking, well, we hope he will see pools of new business opportunity. Will this businessman want his regional sales teams to know about new businesses expected to enter an area during the next 3 years? How would the CEO of a major automaker like to see alliances, business relations, company affiliates or joint ventures related to top global automakers? To speak plainly: When normal business processes are augmented or enhanced by social network data, we can make informed and calculated decisions on where, to whom, when and how to sell online. More effectively, with less expense and faster response time!

TEACHING LEVERAGE: But the next part is sticky, in more ways than one. Because after this classic businessman has paid for market intelligence and a plan to access these pools of customers, his first action is often incorrect. He wants to blast these customers with the digital equivalent of direct-marketing mail pieces from a neighborhood souvlaki joint. He wants to buy TV ads and slap a Facebook icon at the end. He wants to get on the bullhorn and round ’em up to the lot for those shiny new vehicles. And so now we have to show him examples of how brands have leveraged the inexpensive and free social networks to harness the collective strength of employees and customers alike. We have to show him how Best Buy raised up its entire staff via TwelpForce and solved thousands of customer service issues via Twitter. We have to show him how NewEgg put up lots of videos to teach customers how to fix or use electronics purchased at their stores. We have to show him how Starbucks gave their customers a chance to change anything about the stores or products or service through My Starbucks Idea. And even if we heard about these great methods of leveraging social networks years ago at conferences or through friends running those social communities, we have to keep telling the story because it is still so new to so many. Especially the crusty cronies. To speak plainly: Do not assume when selling social network ideas to CEOs that he/she has seen or “gets” what you are talking about. Spell it out WITH examples that include simple math and clear lists of benefits.

SELLING COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT AND CONTENT-MARKETING TO MARKETING MANAGERS: Another tough sell is convincing the Marketing Manager and the General Manager that a new position of Community Manager or Social Media Manager WITHIN the corporation is essential. And that this person will be creating LOTS of regular content and engaging in relationship with the customers and stakeholders of the brand. As Jeremiah Owyang, of Altimeter Group, says, “Agencies should teach their clients how to ‘fish’ rather than do it for them as strategic advisors.” Or as Steve Woodruff writes, “The companies who advance with real personality in their social media endeavors will likely do best.” Content and relationship that works in social networks is born from customers who are passionate about the brand and a Community Manager or Social Media Manager who takes this content and distributes it throughout the social networks to the advantage of BOTH the customer and the brand. Read more on Great Community Management in this interview with Eleftherios Hatziioannou, former Social Media Manager at Mercedes-Benz Global and current Social Media Director at s.Oliver.

It all goes back to psychology and knowing what each person WITHIN the organization wants, what they need, and what the company is ready for now. And then showing how some simple first steps involving Listening, Planning and Executing can lead to great things. As Peter Economides of FelixBNI writes, “It’s about social psychology, not economics.”

A FEW GREAT TWEETS TO CONSIDER:

“You need someone who can read into the data and say “this is telling me…” ” richmeyer

There are way too many analytic solutions out there & not enough people to analyze the data and turn it into actionable data. richmeyer

Organizations need individuals/teams within to leverage analytics into actionable items that can help meet brand objectives. richmeyer

A “spot-on” CSV of 100 Key Influencers w/social links + a summation of these Influencers’ latest messages + a graph of who follows them. Nat_Hansen

How To Bring a Deity Back to Life: The Importance of a Culture Remembering its Gods

(Author’s note: The following piece is born out of my deep love of mythology and the belief that rituals embodying these mythologies can transform cultures deadened by modernity and the love of money. ~Nathaniel Hansen, M.A. Mythological Studies, Pacifica Graduate Institute, April 18, 2011. Athens, Greece).

All cultures … have grown out of myths. They are founded on myths. What these myths have given has been inspiration for aspiration. The economic interpretation of history is for the birds. Economics is itself a function of aspiration. It’s what people aspire to that creates the field in which economics works. ~Joseph Campbell

We’re in a freefall into the future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective and that’s all it is… joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes. ~Joseph Campbell

Heresy is the life of a mythology, and orthodoxy is the death. ~Joseph Campbell

Deities find power in the cultures that adore and nurture them. Bringing a deity back to life involves igniting a flame of desire within the populace whose ancestors once served and worshipped it. The truth is that the deity itself has not died…the people only need remember what their ancestors felt and saw and smelled. Re-igniting a culture with its root metaphor, with the essence that animated its founders, IS a path to enlivening its people. A nation in crisis can find inspiration AND momentum via a root metaphor.

WHAT IS A ROOT METAPHOR: A root metaphor is much more than a figure of speech or an image. A root metaphor is the god, the mythology, which births a culture. Author Sandra Barnes writes, “Root metaphor names things that are likened to one another…once a root metaphor is named it becomes a protected category within which many ways of replicating, restating, or reformulating an idea can be tried out. The greater its ability to incorporate and adapt to new experience, the more powerful it becomes.” Archibald MacLeish writes, “A world ends when its metaphor has died.” The pain in the West is not of a people yearning for the arrival of a savior but of a people chained from honoring the natural world surrounding them. The importance of a people re-discovering the root metaphor of the earliest cultures from whence their ancestors came cannot be understated. Experience of a root metaphor is experience of a deity.

Ritual sustains the relationship between a deity and a culture. Ritual is the embodiment of myth. Ritual is the swiftest route to invoking gods from long ago. The best books on ritual are the following:

Ritual: Power, Healing and Community by Malidoma Some: http://amzn.to/ritualbook1
Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual by Tom F. Driver: http://amzn.to/ritualbook2
Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions by Catherine Bell: http://amzn.to/ritualbook3
The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade: http://amzn.to/ritualbook4
A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies by Astrid Erll: http://amzn.to/ritualbook_5

Helping a culture remember its gods has the potential to awaken within its core, its depth, a renewed vigor and vitality. The literature on the effect of political power games masked as beneficent acts by religious organizations is manifold. And the literature on violent wars based upon the same is also manifold. No wonder people want to forget gods that were part of an era in which their ancestors were violently attacked and killed! We now live within yet another period of history where such violence between people groups has resulted in countless deaths (ie.-Bosnia or Rwanda).

So why would a culture want to remember gods that might awaken previous conflicts with other cultures?

The reasons for remembering an ancient deity are manifold. The central value I seek to identify is simple: Power grows within the culture that touches the hand of its ancient gods. When a people are animated by the gods that gave birth to their nation, amazing things can happen. It’s one thing to move from the love of money to loving people. It’s even more powerful to come together with those loved ones and worship a deity, or a pantheon of deities.

Watch anyone discuss religion, politics or sexuality and you will see a person animated by a god. The passion these three topics engenders has more to do with the unseen than the seen. And the realm of the unseen is the realm of the gods.

A PATH TO DISCOVERING POTENT RITUAL: So how does one bring a god back to life? How does one ignite the cultural memory of a people?

1. Identify the external artifacts (architecture, music, daily schedule) that match ancient forms. Map and describe these.
2. Listen to the conversations of the people in social networks and identify where these same external artifacts locate in the fabric of the Internet. What symbols in the physical plane are mirrored in cyberspace and in the social networks? Draw connections. Make maps on your wall of these. Or use mapping software online.
3. Create campaigns, films, music, community programs, public cultural events, private gatherings of influencers and multiple small gatherings (circles) that bring people together in the flesh. When a revolution that starts in social networks move to the realm of flesh, great emotion, attraction and synergy occurs. This is the power of going from a Facebook wall to a Facebook event to a lover’s bed, of going from an Eventbrite conference to a local meetup to the office of an organization that matches your skillet perfectly, of going from an online game to a concert with other fans of a great band to the band’s hotel suite!
4. Install “avatars” into the mix of #3 who embody the energy of the gods/goddesses you wish to help the culture remember. Empower these avatars to inject the energy of the gods/goddesses directly into the imagination and emotional body of the culture. Watch how quickly the messaging from these avatars spreads through the social networks and Internet media channels (like YouTube).
5. Immersion: As the members of a culture are immersed in the power of the medium and the avatars, watch how author and reader, performer and audience, begin to merge and weave the flavor of the god into the flesh of the culture.
6. Choosing the right content is critical. As was once said, the difference between the right and wrong word IS the difference between a lightning bug AND lightning! You WANT the members of the culture ALL humming that god’s tune on their lips. That’s what brings change…and quickly!
7. Location: The most powerful location into which an avatar can speak powerful words is ritual. Return to the excellent books on ritual above and make this study part of your work. Then re-create the original rituals from ancient times as the meeting point between a current generation and its ancestral gods.
8. Health: Once the avatar sparks the culture, keep him/her healthy as the vitalization of content leads to heady situations where the avatar MUST keep his/her cool and not implode or explode. Good healthy habits are in order!!
9. PR: Deal with critics by having pre-scripted guidelines in place for the typical critics of such a deity. And ALWAYS remember that Critics are there to drive Creatives to higher heights and deeper depths! The most powerful answer to a Critic can sound like this: “There will always be more than one way to be a human!”

The nations of the world are ripe for remembering ancestral deities. Lots of them! And the time to act is NOW!!

Social Networks: Born from Greek roots of storytelling and socializing

HEART AND SOUL ARE GREECE’S PRIMARY EXPORT: Greece has vast exports of the heart that world citizens desire. There’s nothing new about this AND there’s a whole new generation of Greeks who deserve to experience a return on their culture’s seemingly endless ability to tap soul and human-ness. There’s a tactile aspect to relationship here found nowhere else on the planet. People everywhere want this experience AND want to know how to get it.

THE TIME OF THE GREEK HAS COME ONCE AGAIN: Due to increasing weaving of heart and tech via social networks, the time has never been better for Greek “heart-exporters” to get busy. Walk into a night club in NYC or LA and watch what happens to the crowd when DJ Vassilis Tsillichristos takes control. There is an intuitive understanding within the Greek psyche of interior landscapes and this plays out in Greek music especially. The music effortlessly carries one swiftly to the center of physical sensations related to relationship, self-exploration and identity.

SOCIAL NETWORKS BORN FROM GREEK PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION: PhD student Theresa Sauter, from the Queensland University of Technology, is examining how social-networking websites help people form their own identity.

“Social-networking sites, blogs, online discussion forums and online journals represent modern arenas for individuals to write themselves into being,” the Courier Mail quotes Sauter as saying.

“A lot of people see social networking as a new way for people to interact but I’m interested in examining it as a way to form an identity and understand ourselves,” she adds.

“The ancient Greek philosophers used a reflective notebook to write down what they had read and their thoughts on it,” she said.

EVIDENCE FOUND IN THE GREEK COFFEE RITUAL:We see in Sauter’s quotes the strength of the Greek identity. Living in Greece, one REALLY experiences that force in real-time. It is a passion for creativity that is shaped by the presence of a harsh critical eye. This typifies the internal Greek landscape, its psychic tension. One part of the Greek psyche acts like a chisel upon marble, carving towards essence. How could an export of Greek sensibility and passion play out?

Here’s just one way: There is an increasing movement via Augmented Reality, Transmedia and the externalizing of social network experience that needs Greek input. As we begin wearing computers, touching QR codes and interacting “in-the-flesh” with social networks, humanity has the potential to extract from imagination a deeper experience via relationship. And Greeks have mastered this. One only need sit at coffee in Greece to know what is meant by this. Every possibility is explored over coffee, every avenue of relationship, every business idea, every position on anything at all. And it is this, this precision of relationship, that Greeks bring to the global human community. If I were to ask someone to lead the branding of external social hardware, I would pick a Greek BECAUSE of the precise and complex social analysis he/she creates.

PRECISION OF RELATIONSHIP IN GREECE: What do I mean by “precision of relationship” in Greek culture? This is related to insight. I’ve learned a lot about insight since spending time in Greece, both in the professional sense and the personal sense. Devin Coldewey writes, “Insight is the result of recombination, hybridizing ideas, internal accidents, emergent properties of ideas we never even knew were related.” To return to Greek “coffee time”, here we experience a seemingly inexhaustible exploration and re-exploration of what was said, who said, when it was said, why it was said, what it could have meant, what should we do about it. And it is in this analysis that one finds laughter, depth, decision. When you look into the eye of a Greek, you really feel like some part inside your chest or brain has been touched by that eye. And whether this is true or not, whether the observer really does “feel” you immediately, is not the point. The point is what YOU feel in that moment. Because Greeks will reflect to you what you are very quickly, if only by staring back at you a few seconds longer than other nationalities.

HOLLOWED BY SORROW, FILLED BY JOY: If externalized social hardware is to lead humanity to some kind of evolutionary step, it will necessarily lead one into depth of experience of others and the world (as digital social networks have done). James Hillman writes, “Until the culture recognizes the legitimacy of growing down, each person in the culture struggles blindly to make sense of the darkness that the soul requires to deepen into life.” It is natural to desire transcendence, to want escape, to experience “another place”. And the pleasures of transcendence are multiplied when one has experienced depth and pain. A cup hollowed by sorrow can hold more joy. No nation has experienced such depth of heartache than Greece, not only because of the nature of its travesties but ALSO because Greeks truly do feel emotion in their bodies with an intensity one has to see to experience. A fight between Greek lovers is truly something to behold!

FROM CITY TO ISLAND: But what really draws one into the Greek experience (and why Greek sensibility ought to have a strong influence upon the externalizing of social networks through social hardware and wearable computers), is the bent towards simplicity. The journey from the endlessly complicated chaos of Athens to a Greek island captures what humans really long for deep down. Cosmologist Brian Swimme captures this journey when he writes, “The fundamental worldview of industrial society is that Earth is like a gravel pit or a lumberyard — just a resource for human use. We live disconnected from the evolving earth community, but our deepest allurement is a rich, intimate participation in the sacred powers of life, of nature, of soul, the ongoing adventure of the Universe and the ways that each one of us can reinvent ourselves.” Tens of thousands of Greeks experience the ritual of departing from an industrial mindset to pure physical and social immersion every August. Our future as a species should be characterized by this type of pilgrimage for it is the healing we need.

SOCIAL GRAPH = ATHENS, INTEREST GRAPH = THE ISLANDS: Externalized social tech at its best will follow Occam’s Razor. Leonardo da Vinci captured the Razor in his own elegant language: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” And few environments could be more simple than a Greek island in the summer. As one of Greece’s greatest writers, Nikos Kazanstakis writes, “How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.” He goes on to write, “You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.” Think of the social graphs (Facebook) as Athens, many types all melded together. Think of the interest graph (Twitter) as the islands: each island has its purpose. Santorini for lovers, Mykonos for parties, Tinos for Mother Mary, etc.

GREECE IS THE PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE: The immersive quality of social networks matches the immersive experience of Greek culture. If you walk down the street in Athens, in any Greek city, you’ll see how over and over each person IS a kingdom unto themselves, ready at any moment to react or seduce, to envelop you in his/her ethos. A Greek may seem quiet on the surface but I will tell you that below this surface is a great molten center ready at any time to burst forth. And in this fire there exists the same Promethean tendency to distribute the magic of the gods to one’s parea, one’s tribe. The magic of the parea is the at the center of Greek culture. This subjective nature of the parea and its interests is captured in The Art of Immersion by Frank Rose:

“That was then. In the months and years ahead, professional storytellers of every persuasion—people in movies, in television, in video games, and in marketing—will need to function in a world in which distinctions that were clear throughout the past century are becoming increasingly blurred:

The blurring of author and audience: Whose story is it?
The blurring of story and game: How do you engage with it?
The blurring of entertainment and marketing: What function does it serve?
The blurring of fiction and reality: Where does one end and the other begin?”
(http://www.artofimmersion.com)

THE PAREA: In a country like Greece, influence and connection is of particular importance to success and career momentum. The Greek is a FANTASTIC mix of being a very social animal AND being very private about matters to do with money and ownership. And that ‘s a nice mixture! But the social side seems to always win in the end and that’s a very important factor in understanding Facebook’s acceleration in the Greek social eco-system. Through Facebook, one may discover the tribe, the lover, and the career best suited to one’s interests: in short, Facebook is the ultimate digital Parea-producing engine.

As I understand it, a Parea in Greek culture is a circle of friends who gather and share their stories about life, their philosophies, values and ideas. The Parea is a venue for the growth of the human spirit, the development of friendship and the exploration of philosophies to enrich one’s quality of life that is all too brief in time. In Greece, the Parea is a long-lasting circle and cycle of life nourished by its members. And that’s exactly what social networks are engendering in the human family: a finely woven fabric of connection and communication resulting in unlimited new possibility found first internally, in the psyche, and then actuated externally.

The World Behind the World

Social Media transfers invisible contents onto the “stages” provided in Social Networks. These contents may then be turned into all manner of relationship, content and business material. Humanity seems to have entered a zenith of probability and opportunity. Have we transcended our planet via this new medium?

Social networks re-training humanity

To be clear: One way of seeing social networks and the Internet is as a training ground. Next up, in this respect: making these connections with one another via our minds, our thoughts, our flesh. The relative freedom of these digital networks points away from our previous material limitations toward the vastness of spirit and all the possibilities that realm holds.

To expand on this: Social experience in digital networks has far more to do with spiritual development than anything else. We are learning to navigate vastness, to find our way through our own and others’ psychologies, to create worlds and cast these into the mystery beyond what is known via limited human transparencies.

~Nathaniel Hansen, Athens, Greece, December 2010.