Transforming Pixels to Gold

This is part 3 of a 3 post series. [View part 2]

An extract from Sonja Falvo's new eBook: http://www.sonjafalvo.com/books.html

FOCUS ON CONNECTING OTHERS IN A MEANINGFUL WAY

There are many ways to approach social media and as many ways to find success. People like Robin Dickinson find amazing success by not only creating direct connections to his company but more so by facilitating connections for others (on social media and off). But this is not about a conclusive idea on how to use social media or what social media platform is best for you. I want to keep an important question in your mind before you consider these things.

The initial goals most people I’ve worked with strive for on social media are big numbers; judgements on what is successful or not are based purely on amounts of friends, followers or connections etc. While there’s some merit to this approach, it is important to question why we want to be on social media. The obvious answer for business owners is to make money.

This type of honesty is a great platform for something much more profound. Consider this, your product at some point came about to “fill a gap in the market”. This essentially says, there is a human need not being met or a human problem not being solved and that’s why your product / business exists. So whatever you sell, somehow it solves people’s problems or meets some human need. This is not necessarily a material need -there’s markets for emotional needs, economic needs, intellectual needs etc.

In this way ‘making money’ is secondary to the more primary reason your company exists. Start by asking:

• How does my company contribute (fulfil needs / solve problems)?
• How does my company create connections and build meaning in society?
• When you understand that – social media / business / life success awaits you!

MEAT AND COFFEE

If you got to this point after reading the above, I’d probably say you’re thinking that ‘this is all very interesting but it’s a shame that it lacks meat’. Where’s the substance? How can all this be applied in the ‘real world’? So not to be branded the “ideas man” of this eBook – here’s a few paragraphs to sink your teeth into.

To be certain this example is real (enough), I thought about one of my favourite coffee shops a couple of blocks from where I live. It’s called “A coffee and a yarn”. The “yarn” part is the “having a yarn” (conversation) reference but also refers to knitting. It’s a coffee shop like any other -tables with cups full of sugar sachets placed in the middle -but right next to the sugar are baskets of wool and knitting needles. It’s a coffee shop concept that captures the knitters’ niche and it is growing in “coolness” as a thing to do to fill in the time (in Newtown, Sydney at least).

“A coffee and a yarn” -what is the deeper business intent? I suggest before diving head first into social media, to start by gaining an understanding of your deeper business intent. That way you’ll have a clear (or clearer) grasp on what sets you apart, but more importantly how your offering solves problems or meets the needs of the wider community. My personal thinking about the success of a coffee shop like “A coffee and a yarn” is not just that it targets a growing niche but it acts as a reminder of something that you could say is part of our cultural DNA.

It was once commonplace to get together in the process of making gifts for family, community or the tribe -slowly, manually and lovingly. We don’t do this anymore; we go to the shop and buy gifts or with a few clicks online, a gift arrives at our door sometime later. There’s no argument about the incredible convenience of all this – but with that communal making process gone, so too perhaps does a bit of heart with it.

A business like “A coffee and a yarn” contributes in a wider sense by being a reminder of this and in addition, supplying the space and mindset to bring this back into a modern setting. That’s my stab at what could be its deeper business intent.

THE PEACE OFFERING – FOR YOUR TRIBAL LEADERS

Now we know something of the business intent, we need an offering to help us draw in our tribal leaders. This can be done with social media. First imagine walking into an unknown tribe long ago with your message of deeper intent. Would you just waltz in empty-handed? I doubt that would be a good idea. Expect to be running out, possibly even with a spear dangling out of your back.

What you need is a “peace offering”. Robin Dickinson’s peace offering was his willingness and genuine interest to craft “Sharewords” for businesses free of charge. He introduced this idea on his blog, started with a small group and it grew from there. Let’s do something like this with “A coffee and a yarn”.

Our peace offering will be: an intimate gathering, free food / drinks and content for social media.

1. Create a blog called: A making community – the soul of the gift.

To interject this nice list I’m making, I think it will be useful to consider a real world analogy when strategising this social media approach. Imagine you wanted to create a community space in a town centre. The idea is you want people to get together, talk about your product, give you some ideas on how to improve it and hopefully sell loads of it. Because you’re worried about attendance, you’re prepared to give away some expired product lines you were going to ditch anyway.... How could that be a good idea? Still it’s what the majority of businesses do on social media.

So, rather than being a blog for one business, we want it to have the potential of being a community space around things people will be passionate about (this is a key difference to traditional business blogging).

A “Wordpress” blogging platform has some great community enabling tools – we will start with a “Wordpress” installation.

2. Create a post about an up-coming event called “A making community – the soul of the gift”. The event will be an intimate discussion group about the process of making gifts and what it means in a modern context. This will be followed by a craft workshop. The idea is to record this event (perhaps video stream it) so that this can be added on various Social media platforms. This is part of the peace offering.

SEEK OUT YOUR TRIBAL LEADERS

People often make the mistake of pitching only the big fish. If you do that, expect to have a lot of knockbacks. If you don’t have a big tribe, why would a tribal leader of the biggest tribe want you as an ally? Chances are, they wouldn’t – they’ll see you as just one of the many pitching them daily. So I suggest you focus your energy on small to average followings / connections on social media. Pitch the big fish when you’re a big fish – you’ll have more success.

1. Make a list of people with a similar range of community building expertise. Twitter is a good place to start. Do a simple keyword search on http://search.twitter.com or try http://listorious.com . Have a look at people’s profiles, if they’re creating relevant on-topic lists (e.g. craft / knitting etc.) it’s a good indication they’re also the type of community builders you want to target.
2. Extend the list to administrators of relevant http://www.meetup.com groups, Facebook pages: http://www.facebook.com/pages/ , http://www.eventbrite.com organisers and LinkedIn groups: http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory . These people have a community building focus too.
3. Send the invite via email if you can find it (you want to make it a personal request). Otherwise use the social media platforms you’ve found people on. Don’t make a ginormous list that will be unmanageable either – focus on small and quality (remember the type of attributes you’re looking for to get the best results).

Ask people to comment for expressions of interest on the upcoming event. Then use the comment area as an organising / further discussion platform as well.

BUILD, BUILD AND BUILD FURTHER

All this stuff is procedural. There’s no point focusing too much on procedure and platforms when you don’t know how this will benefit the wider community. All the right procedures in the world, just won’t stick. You can have the fanciest letterbox on the street, but don’t forget it’s the house that you live in!

1. Use Eventbrite to legitimise and organise your event
2. Capture the event on video
3. Build all the social media spaces around: “A making community – the soul of the gift” (A facebook community page, a twitter account etc. Remember, this is not about your product or offering, if you want to attract a community – think about eventually creating a community space for others to use. Resign yourself to let go of some of the control. It will be liberating! And you’ll find people will be far more interested in your product anyway.
4. Post the video on several social video spaces. Tube Mogul is a free social video distribution platform – this will save you a lot of time.
5. Ask your new friends to be co-writers on you community blog. Profile there businesses / projects on it. You can use Wordpress’s ability to profile contributors to the blog. Start moving towards what http://www.mumbrella.com.au did for the Australian media and adverting space (industry news / guest posting / ongoing video episodes).
6. Use Facebook to connect an intimate group of people. Interview members using status comments (Facebook comment activity keeps the status on the top of other people’s streams, which helps gain more activity and prominence).

Overall the idea is to start with small step to make this concept bigger and bigger. The first stage is to leverage and combine the audiences of smaller community builders. This will be a benefit to all involved. Start by priming the wheels of Reed’s Law -then watch it take effect!

I’m going to stop there. I guess I just have to be the ‘ideas man’. There’s a lot more of this procedural stuff I could write about for days but I’m not sure you’d enjoy it and I wouldn’t like to start boring you to tears! So here’s hoping the tips to this point are useful. Beyond that, I hope you can see that with the higher value of your business in hand that the success you’re hoping to attract on social media is well on its way.

If you don’t believe me, have a closer look at what Robin Dickinson’s doing with Sharewords and the Centurions... A definite one to follow

This is part 2 of a 3 post series.

An extract from Sonja Falvo's new eBook: http://www.sonjafalvo.com/books.html

[View part 1]

Great tribal leadership on social media – an interview on Facebook

---

David

Hi Robin, thanks again for being able to do this Facebook interview / conversation. As you know I think Sharewords is a brilliant concept. I see it as a great example of how connecting with people in a meaningful way has a reach far beyond the platform of social media. Was this the intention and how did the whole Sharewords concept come about?

---

Robin

Thank you, David. I appreciate your kind encouragement.

Sharewords is part of a much longer term strategy that I have been gently unfolding online for the past year. My diamond focus is to 'Help you succeed in business' and I commit full resources to enabling this.

An important part of helping businesses succeed is to facilitate the strongest possible word-ofmouth recommendation. It's highly profitable and it works wonders. Ask any business owner or solopreneur what will help them grow and you get an almost reflex response is "Spread the word!"

i.e. tell others about my business so that I get more customers.

Sharewords is a proactive response from business people to take control and craft the words *they* want spread! Think about how you share recommendations with your friends and colleagues. You use 4-5 words -quickly and effortlessly delivered. It's not a clunky sentence, nor the old-fashioned elevator pitch.

So, as a professional business development facilitator, I've been running a "live" workshop on RADSMARTS to show people how to develop their sharewords. The response has been massive. It's how we met, David.

---

David

The response is without doubt massive -I don't think I've seen as many responses to one blog post and it's still growing. The growth has also moved strongly into Twitter, Facebook and I believe a collaborative online newspaper.

I first became interested in sharewords after seeing perhaps 3 or 4 tweets about it from a couple of people I follow. What hooked me was the value of what you're offering – you provide a phrase (sharewords) that succinctly captures what a particular business is all about. This is done only after becoming very informed about what’s unique to the business and all free of charge. It goes beyond the usual free ebook or webinar and that’s what I believe really sets you apart – it directly shows that you are exactly what you say you’re about – interested and capable in helping a wide variety of business succeed. Your authenticity is easy to see.

A lot of companies interested in moving in similar direction might see this as a huge hurdle. The concern would be that if they offer so much value without monetising it, they’ll be taken for a ride

– their potential customers will just take what they need and move on.

What are your thoughts on this?

---

Robin

These are important observations you make, David. Things I have given much consideration to.

Think of the Sharewords post as part of the roll-out of a long-term strategy. Before publishing anything online, I thought long and hard about the hows and whys of my online participation, especially from a commercial perspective.

A key element of my online strategy is to attract and help a relatively small group of highly motivated 'like-minds' who also want to succeed commercially online. This value-based approach is very different from the volume-based approach that many businesses take i.e. get huge lists of large numbers of followers, subscribers and try and convert a tiny % into sales.

If I can find and help 100 succeed, who in turn can find and help 100 succeed, the leverage is enormous and highly sustainable. (This is called the Centurion project). Compare this with volume approaches that are resource hungry at a rate proportional to growth.

Implementing this value-plan effectively will take several years, and relies on attracting the right people.

Enter, the Sharewords post. The purpose of this post is to help me identify potential collaborators for the long-term plan. So far 24 people have joined the Centurion project as a direct result of their strong participation in this post. It has proven to be a vastly efficient way of helping strong people find me.

Outside of the context of this strategy, the Sharewords-style post -or online workshop as is probably a more apt description -wouldn't make any sense to me. To this point, I see many people blowing large amounts of their time, effort, money and intellectual property outside of any commercially solid plan.

How can that be sustainable?

---

David

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. A lot of projects / businesses tend to take two contradicting approaches with social media. One is what's closer to a campaign style that builds a whole lot of attention in a short space of time. There’s usually a big enough carrot (like a 10k prize) and in this sense it’s about buying an audience's engagement. At the same time there’s the hope that community continues to contribute and be engaged. One has an extrinsic value and is often short lived because it doesn’t always turn into an intrinsic value.

That’s the hard one – how do we create just being a part of that particular community as a value in itself – without the need for a succession of big enough carrots?

Personally, I’ve been a part of various social media communities and often ‘drop out’. I believe at that point it’s a question of motivation; people tend to be much more motivated in a group when there’s a sense of working towards a greater good. I see inklings of that in your project – perhaps that’s a part of your bigger picture?

---

Robin

Sustained motivation is something I think about a lot.

For me, the drivers of sustained motivation in a community like the Centurions are a combination of a) attracting people who are naturally self-motivated and 'lower maintenance'; b) providing a regular scoreboard or feedback mechanism that tracks results; c) having a forum for regular, honest communication d) knowing that you are part of something big and bold and e) me being available to support members during their 'hour of need'.

Your point about 'working towards the greater good' is part of the fabric of the community spirit. That said, I make it very clear that this is a commercial venture aimed at generating more and more money for less and less work.

People have said that my approach is somewhat altruistic. For example, the many hours of sustained, high quality input I have invested into helping people craft their sharewords.

I don't think of myself as altruistic at all. I help people because I like helping people AND because it's commercially effective. It's been my offline business model for 20 years because it works so well to generate sustained profits -and I make absolutely no secret about it.

Does that make sense to you, David?

---

David

Certainly does. I actually think the idea that giving high value and receiving nothing in return won't happen in most cases. It's more likely people give the same value back or sometimes even more. People call it reciprocity but really value exchanges are what we've been doing for eons.

If we take the example of Sharewords I'd understand your return as being:

1. Quality referrals / recommendations
2. Active contributions / involvement
3. Monetary Those things sustain each other and as you say make it commercially viable (online / offline).

Comparing the two though, I'd imagine point 1 has huge implications for this model in terms of

the exponential reach available online. I've lost count of how many times I've eagerly referred

Sharewords online / word of mouth and I'm just one of many. This reach must make it far easier to source the right community members (Centurions) who I imagine are key to taking this project even further.

What has been the result so far for yourself and the Centurions?

---

Robin

The results so far are:

1. Clear feedback that a value-based model can work. Until I launched Centurions, it was purely theoretical;
2. Better online metrics for less work. For example, blog views and engagement remain strong for vastly less work;
3. Increased sales: it's early days, but members are reporting positive sales boosts.

Being based on a geometric progression, the results and returns from the early phases of the Centurion model will be modest and barely visible i.e initially the graph is asymptotic. The mid-later stages become much more interesting as the results compound. I think it was Albert

Einstein who said "The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest". We shall see. I must say that I find a model based on the notion of earning more and more money for less and

less work fascinating.

---

David

You're in a sense creating a tribe of tribal leaders around a shared set of values. That's got to grow your connections around your value approach exponentially (and it has). The effort of finding and directing connections gets distributed across all those involved so I imagine it must lessen the effort load.

So as you say, less work for greater outcomes!

It's indeed a very fascinating area and it’s great to watch it unfold for you.

Reed's law (like Einstein's words ) is a good example for how growth compounds on networks. Social media is an apt example.

2(to the power of N) – N – 1 = potential connections

N are participants, so 100 participants has the value of 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 possible connections!

I came across it on George Beckenstein's blog: http://www.benckenstein.com/digital-media/swine-flu-susan-boyle-and-the-network-multiplier effect/

By the way before we wrap this up, where's the best place to find out more about the Centurions? And do you have any other quick tips to share for those wanting to do something like Sharewords and the Centurions on social media?

---

Robin

Thank you, David. I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss these ideas with you.

If readers would like help creating their sharewords, simply come to the article and start participating. It's that easy.

For more information about the Centurions, simply email me at robin@radsmarts.com.

Wishing you and your readers every success in business and in life.

Robin :)

---

David

I'll extend that wish too and thanks again, it's been a very enlightening discussion :-)

David

---

View part 3 - What is your deeper business intent?

And why is this relevant to social media?

Usability gurus like Jakob Neilson are ongoing proponents of the idea that websites are about getting information - a website is only as good as how effectively it transfers information to the user.

In the early 2000’s Neilson wrote:

Ultimately users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop. The old analogy is somebody who goes to see a theatre performance: When they leave the theatre, you want them to be discussing how great the play was and not how great the costumes were.

Neilson’s approach comes from a user centered design model, more commonly called “usability”. Usability is concerned with how easy it is for users to complete the tasks a website is designed for. A website works when users get to where they want to go without hindrance or as Steven Krug has popularized: websites work when they “don’t make [you] think”. Thinking is obviously not the desired effect for good websites.

If we take this approach to its logical end, we might expect the internet to be intravenously injected straight into our minds – no unnecessary design or artistic fluff to get in the way of good content and certainly no thinking required!

To be fair though, Neilson and followers have done their bit to lead the mass exodus away from glossy brochure style sites (nice for billboards / magazines but almost useless for websites), and non-human designed sites like those attempting to fit a whole encyclopedia into one never ending long scrolling web page.

What is often left out of the usability debate is that the internet is not just a deliverer of external content, but has become more a medium in itself - with its own content and set of rules. The whole Web 2.0 phenomena makes use of and makes money out of this very fact.

It’s difficult to pin-point an exact definition of Web 2.0 but broadly speaking it describes sites that leverage the dynamic and collaborative nature of the internet. Sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are populated with a constant flow of user-generated content. Static Web 1.0 sites have a 1 directional flow of information similar to traditional publishing models like newspapers and television. Web 2.0 is different by being able to offer information (and advertising) apparently more relevant to the user, based on how he / she interacts with and contributes to these sites.

So, how do we apply Neilson's premise to Web 2.0 websites?

Most people just want to get in, get it and get out... the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool Neilson, 2007

The problem here is that a growing number of people are using the internet (especially social Web 2.0 sites) with vague intentions - not always looking for something specific. For instance we might be online to make conversation, browse with no particular goal in mind or just passing time when we're meant to be working.

If we need to determine a goal, we might just as well ask why is it we do anything social? A lot of people are just looking for a way to feel a part of something bigger - perhaps looking for a community of like-minded people to relate to in a safe and non-intrusive environment.

It's here where the a task-based usability model falls short (when specific tasks can't be so clearly defined). What is needed is a way of determining social engagement - how engaged are your users when online on your particular site? How well did the experience imitate real social interactions? etc. etc.

References

Steven Krug Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach-Usability/dp/0789723107

Jakob Nielsen Designing Web Usability http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Usability-VOICES-Jakob-Nielsen/dp/156205810X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242705058&sr=1-1

Jakob Nielsen Web 2.0 'neglecting good design' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6653119.stm

Images courtesy of Photolibrary - Get creative with stock photos, stock footage & production music from photolibrary.com