Degrees of Marketing Separation

Market X to people who like X. A simple formula which has decreased in performance as the amount of marketers using it has increased.

One of the challenges marketers face is communicating with consumers by finding content that aligns with the interests of a certain group of people. Skew too far away and you risk confused or disinterested customers. Don't lean far enough and you risk being piled into the mediocrity of the masses of marketers. 

My Camera has a Phone In It

The headline of this post is generally the exact opposite of what most people would say about their smartphone device. The product I'm referring to has the word "phone" in it. It's branded as a phone. And yes, it does everything a phone would do. But is calling it a phone fair in terms of the core function of this device?

The purpose of a phone is to communicate with another person or a group. A smartphone does that but it has many ways of doing that. Yesterday I took a photo of an anti-terror drill taking place in the park outside my apartment and proceeded to post it to my posterous feed. That photo was viewed by over 1500 people. 

How many people have you reached via your phone device this month? Is it 1500? Most of us don't even know that many people. I think that in terms of fairness, (for me at least) it's about time we start calling these devices something else besides a smartphone. The phone aspect of has become the least common and least efficient tool for communicating with those around us.

@natomy of the Twitter "@" Symbol

There's a never-ending supply of blog posts and lists aiming to talk about every aspect of Twitter. Instead of looking at the macro or at EVERY detail, this post aims to dig deep into one single aspect of this extremely deep social network.

Before all the third party clients and tools existed, one of the few core differentiators between Twitter and other communication platforms was the "@" symbol. From the early days of Twitter, this symbol has grown to be used in many different ways and will most likely continue to have an expanded purpose as users become more clever. The following are just a few pieces of the current @natomy:

1. Want Attention from a Response: The originally intended purpose of the @ symbol. It was meant as a way to specify your response to one or a few members while inside a very cluttered space. Users were able to find messages publicly directed at them in the original web client as well as now with current desktop tools such as twhirl or tweedeck.

2. Can't DM (Not Being Followed): One of the main differentiators (for now) between Twitter and other Social Nets is that you are able to follow another person but they don't have to necessarily follow you as well. Despite it being an open forum, there are often times when we need talk to someone privately via twitter, or perhaps say something that isn't relevant to the entire group that is following you. In this case, we direct message or DM. The reality is that not everyone is going to follow each other back. Some people don't want to follow people outside a certain kind of industry and others don't want to manage so many people. Whatever the case may be, sometimes the only way to get a person's attention may be to @ them publicly asking them to DM or email you.

3. Want to Associate with Someone: Although the intention of the @ is to get someone's attention, often many will @ "famous" or "influential" people on the Twitter network to align themselves with that person. Part of them is hoping that the person with a large influence may just @ them back and thus expose them to a large audience as well. The other part of them simply wants to associate themselves with a big name so others will think the person @'ing is somehow connected with the influential figure (and thus also somehow important).

4. Rhetorical: Not far off from the original purpose. Sometimes an @ is thrown into the twittersphere as a completely rhetorical gesture. Example: Person A says something funny. Person B says "@Name is a laugh riot..." Whether or not Person A actually sees the response, others will know that they are funny.

5. Recognize/Welcome New Followers (or list favorites): Twitter is all about making new connections and finding new people to learn from. There are many opportunities for people to recommend others to their network and when doing so they often recommend many at a time. To make it easier for one's followers to click through to recommended tweeters, putting the @ in front of their name will turn their username into a link.

6. Give Credit for a Link, News, Content: Besides communicating our thoughts, Twitter is also a great venue for sharing links to all sorts of places on the web. Sometimes we find links on our own via things like RSS feeds or general browsing, but often we'll see a link tha was tweeted that we think is so great that it needs to be shared with our own network as well. In this situation, after a link is tweeted, adding a "Via @Name" gives credit to the individual who found the link and shared it with you.

7. Mentioning a Brand or Person (The Tweet isn't directed at them): Big brands and big people are all over twitter now. Although not really necessary, the twitter community has grown accustomed to mentioning brands in their @Format vs. just mention "Brand." Partly because this lets followers click easily to the brand in question, but also because there is a small chance the brand will want to somehow respond to comment being made about them.

8. Spammers Trying to Get Your Attention: As mentioned in point two, not everyone has to follow those who follow them. The beauty of that system is that we don't need to be bombarded with communication from parties that we don't want to hear from. Alas, as the popularity of Twitter grows, so does the population of spammers who want to leverage the networks user base. Given the popularity of 3rd party clients like twhirl that popup a notification every time you receive an @ message, spammers have increasingly been able to infultrate the gated community by setting up automatic scripts to @ you when a certain keyword is mentioned.

How will the @ symbol change/expand after Twitter rolls out its new features?

6 Twigrees of Separation

Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is no more than six "steps" away from each person on Earth.

With Twitter, the theory doesn't exactly work the same because this social network allows for anyone to essentially to connect to anyone else directly. So instead of looking at the idea in its traditional sense, the concept above points out the different layers of connections that an average to heavy user would experience with the micro blogging service.

Each person may have varied numbers of degrees that apply to them, but in my own case, the six categories below do cover off on almost all of the Twitter folk I follow and engage.

1. Connections made prior to Twitter:

Individuals who you already know. Whether friends, colleagues or acquaintances, these are people who also belong to the relatively small group of Twitter users, or those who you convinced to join. The connection you have on Twitter with this first tier is significantly different that the rest. Their vague tweets can be 100% clear to you and "inside conversations" can happen frequently (sometimes to the dismay of those who follow you).

2. Local Connections:

Perhaps more of a product of those who use Twitter heavily, the local aspect is becoming a more important type of connection within this network. This layer of Twitter is composed of those who you actually have met in person, or very likely could in the future (especially if those locals share a similar industry or interest).

Geography, Industry, and Interest can obviously skew the weight of where your connections live, but for many, seeking out local individuals to follow provides us with many benefits:

-Local News (Either Faster than the mainstream news)

-Events (Tweetups are commonplace now, especially during conferences) In Chicago we even have a website now dedicated to such instances. www.chicagotweetups.com

-Discussions of locally relevant topics as Olympic Bids, Pizza Quality, or Corrupt Governors

3. Frequent Engagers:

Are there people that you haven't met or corresponded outside of twitter however you send them @'s and DMs on a fairly regular basis? Those would be your frequent engagers. Generally individuals who are in the same niche interest group as you. The category of "Social Media" is probably the largest sub segment of Twitter and because so much content is pumped out daily on this topic, engagement among the individuals in the category is high.

4. Industry Peers:

The bridge is short between layers 3 and 4, but there is a defined point of differentiation. Like the Frequent Engagers, industry peers are composed of those who follow the same topics as you or belong to organizations in your field.

In my own case, I like to follow folks at other digital agencies or who work independently in the digital media space. It keeps me informed of what is going on in the marketplace even though I don't actively seek out conversations with those profiles.

5. Twitter Celebrities:

Those who are unfamiliar with Twitter might not understand this small group of people, but there are just some individuals that generally HAVE to be followed. A few of the popular ones are @ChrisBrogan, @Scobleizer, @GuyKawasaki, and @GaryVee. Now I don't want to imply these people don't add any value to your twitter stream. They absolutely do and that is why they have the number of followers in the first place. But the direct engagement with these folks is often quite low. The reason so many follow them is because they are often the center of many twitter conversations and if you aren't following them, you will miss out on much of the context.

Side note, I have had the pleasure of speaking with 3 of the 4 individuals above either in person or via twitter so I don't want to imply they are completely disconnected with the masses. It's simply a matter of numbers.  A person with 20,000+ followers is going to see a lot of communication and responding to all of them is virtually impossible.

6. Robots, Feeds, etc. Little-to-no Human presence.

There are many twitter profiles that aren't actively manned by a person or team, but rather are just feeds from another source. The most common tool used for this is Twitterfeed which essentially posts a tweet every time a blog or article is posted on a site.

Some of the larger media outlets do this such as @CNN, @HuffingtonPost and @Wired keep the profile automated. Others like @NPRNews, @SunTimes and @The_Onion mix in automated tweets with a few personal interactions as well.

What about brands?

The one segment of twitter profiles I didn't cover in the 6 Twigrees is Brands. They are certainly becoming a more noticeable part of this social network (as you can in the growing Twitter Hard Hat Certified List) however I haven't quite fit them into any category. I supposed if there was a 6.5, they would go there. Brands on twitter are generally not automated, but from the perspective of how far they are removed from an individuals interest or personal connection, unless a person is in love with a brand, the connection is weak. How can this reality be changed? What can brands learn to make themselves more approachable?

Asking "Rookies" for Help.

Why is it that so many people, across vastly different situations, organizations, and settings fear the act of asking our juniors for help?

Is it because we genuinely believe they won't have the experience or insight to provide value? Or is it because we are afraid that it will point out that in SOME situations, that age and tenure aren't as valuable as we would like to think they are?

I've been a participant on both ends of the spectrum so I can understand the psychological reasons for it. But today I'm going to take a mental snapshot of my feelings. I've done this many times in life, especially during my younger days when I was more likely to be follower. This snapshot is going to be a reminder to me for my future self to remember to seek out the advice of the rookies, the fresh faces, and even the arrogant youthful ladder climbers who think they know more than they actually do.

Imagination, unlike most skills, never gets better with age. In fact many may argue that it gets much more dull. As much as leaders will want to be the brains behind a great idea that saves or improves an organization, in the long run its much more important to use that intelligence and experience to make a decision to reach out for help.

The folks who are young and new are going to be able to drive so much creative thinking for you. Will it be refined and ready for implementation? Most likely not, but in the end that is the easy part. The idea is the king of any chess game and there will be plenty of pawns to carry it out. Don't be afraid to leverage those pawns for idea. Not all of them are going to be trying to take your spot on the board. Most of them will feel incredibly lucky and honored that their thinking skills are somehow contributing to the larger organization that they are part of.

Tin-Can vs. Skywriting

There’s a saying that goes something like “You have two ears, and one mouth, and you should use them in that proportion.” In other words, when having a conversation, listen more than you speak.

While I still apply the above words of wisdom in my personal and professional dialog, in the digital world the “conversation” is a very different one. We have moved from one on one, to phone, to email, to exponetially more all while still tring to maintain essentially a two way conversation. With the emergence of microblogs, blogs, and lifestreamers we are now having conversations with hundreds and thousands of people who we have at some point engaged.

So what does this mean? Our mindset, our goals, our expectations are different in these two forms of communication.

1) Tin Can Conversation: You pick up one can, your friend picks up the other. You talk. We go to our tried and true methods of email, etc, to ensure that a piece of information directed at one or possibly a few people gets to its destination and elicits a specific response. Sure the guy on the other side can send it to others and so forth, but the primary purpose of our tin can conversations is to make sure that one person gets the message we want them to hear. We want them to respond and to take action based on a request sent directly to them.

(The above example requires that you omit the chain emails from your Mother, that she forwards to 300 people re: “Elf Yourself!”

2) Skywriting Communication. This type of conversation (the one taking the world by storm) is best exemplified with microblogs such as Twitter. Thousands of people, sending out messages into space that may or may not ever be read. The mindset when writing these messages is completely different. When a person shares a link, quips about the nasty weather, or responds to their @buddy, they are essentially writing a message in the sky. Some people will be outside to see it (and care) and others will be at work and miss it. By the time they walk by, the wind, and other planes will have blown it away. But authors who are comfortable with these tools know that, and accordingly change their form of communication and their expectations. If this type of conversation elicits feedback, great! If not, there’s another airplane in the hanger waiting to go.

Whatever form they take, these two choices of communication will continue to live in harmony. Regardless of how many people we can now connect with, we will always have the need to communicate with a person directly. At the same time, we now have an endless sea of information that we can explore to grow create more opportunities for those direct connections.

Hopefully our options continue to increase.

Bridge to Telepathy (And it's current iteration via social media and mobile technology)

Last night having attended the latest Chicago “Tweet-Up” with Colonel Tribune I observed a behavior which reminded me of a recurring thought I’ve been having regarding the human thought process and social media.

It is not that inconceivable to think microprocessors will some day be able to be manipulated by brain impulses. On the same note, it's also not that unlikely that said microprocessors would be small enough to implant into the human brain & interact with it.

Now let's take it a step further. Wouldn't it be quite imaginable that wifi, bluetooth, etc would have the possibility of being integrated into those chips? Well my friends what you have at that point are all the ingredients for digital telepathy.

If users of such chips set up their wifi to act like a twitter account (where you could only send/receive direct messages to/from those you approve) your brain would be relatively free from the barrage of messages from other would be intruders. (Advertisers, Random Thought Projectors, Creepy People)

I would think the process would be similar to texting someone or sending an email of your thoughts, and they would choose whether to respond. (And hopefully this method wouldn't have you racking up 10 cent charges per “brainwave” on your phone bill.)

In my mind, we're not that far off from already doing this now. When we are sitting in the same room "compunicating" we are in essence doing what I described above. The only difference is that we have a middleman to go through between two+ brains which are eyes, fingers, and devices (blackberry, iphone, etc) but one could still argue that this process could be considered a form of telepathy.

Imagine how many business models would be born or die from such a reality?