Tim Andren - At the corner of Innovation and Marketing Ideas

You don't spell 'We' with an 'I'

We are the future. We will make a difference. These words sound like corny mission statements or lyrics to an 80's song, but what they represent is a powerful global-business transition that is causing giant waves of change in our world today. This is bigger than just business or economics. This is cultural. When a cultural change occurs, opportunity springs forth.

The difference in our world today rests on a tiny, fundamental shift in who 'We' are. The smart businesses that open their arms to us (the interconnected crowd), will succeed and lead the new economy forward. They will recognize that our culture, as we know it, is changing.

Western civilization has been dominantly 'I-focused' for quite some time. Advertisers have a lot to do with that focus. People responded to the impact of a commercial culture by buying into the idea that personal happiness or accomplishment is based on individual gain, away from the crowd. Their media of choice informed and entertained them, and as usual, advertisers found a way to weave their message into the stream. In addition, pre-internet culture lacked the tools to share opinions and data that are commonplace today.

Websites and mobile phones are rapidly becoming our preferred media vehicle. They are our resources for information, communication and entertainment. Our informed, communicative crowd of people have naturally founded tribes and communities using these tools. The major difference is that much of the information and entertainment comes from the crowd itself and allows many users to bypass corporations and big budget advertisers.

We have recently witnessed the rise of social networks, blogs, podcasts, etc. Contrary to what you may hear, there wasn't a genius sitting at a computer somewhere who invented these out of the blue. Our interconnected crowd demanded them first. We wanted more connection, not less. We wanted our time on the laptop to be shared, not isolated. We were determined to reconnect with our brothers and sisters.

What the crowd wants - the crowd gets. Culture is rolling along and it pays to make sure you're a part of it. Think about the person you know who scorned Facebook, yet months later signed up because they couldn't stand being out of the loop. They almost didn't have a choice in the matter.

Today's businesses must build their infrastructure with this knowledge. They must not only be aware of our connected crowd's wants or needs, but they should also be an active participant where we congregate. Should a problem arise, they also need to have a lightning-fast public relations team that is already a member of our fraternity and can embrace the challenge by responding in a positive, genuine manner.

Great success will come to the businesses that care about you as an individual, not by pushing you to stand out from the crowd, but by encouraging you to embrace being a part of it.

'We' are the future. 'We' will make a difference.

Adapt or perish

 

Mark Earls' most recent blog post Digital Britain Afterthoughts gives some clear insight about where the disconnect is occurring for businesses in the power shift from traditional to social web media.

Earls' field of study is marketing and the crowd. He understands marketing trends and how mass behavior effects business. This quote (as I interpret it) describes how big business is desperately trying to stay connected and has the blinders on so to speak.

"...many of the people and companies represented yesterday are paid to keep the current model going and just don't want to see the digital technology as anything but a means to turbo-charge the current model."

The giants of business and media have high-output, intricate systems in place today that would be impossible to stop and restructure. Many of their business models were designed to snap into the architecture of traditional media and marketing and are struggling due to a lack of dexterity that's needed for new media.

These companies would need to completely overhaul their framework in order to make business run efficiently and effectively. It would be like stopping a 747's jet engines mid-flight to upgrade or install new ones. Their only choice is to keep the machine going for as long as it can. 'Run it into the ground', they're saying.

Small businesses, however, don't have the same problems. They are nimble because of their size, much more adaptable and often have more of an open architecture to begin with. Small business owners are willing and able to do just about anything to make it work.

Not being established can be a good thing. In many cases, businesses that aren't forced to do go the 'round plug-square hole' route are the younger businesses that developed their model with the influences of new media in mind. Others are just small enough to turn on a dime.

What ways does your business size or flexibility help you in today's business climate?

More on Hurricane Twitter

A few more people are noticing Hurricane Twitter on the horizon. These are two very respected opinions in the business of social media. These forecasts are to be reckoned with.

First up David Armano weighs in on his Logic + Emotion blog: Will Twitter See An "Oprah Effect", Or Is Influence Overrated?

"Twitter has spread almost entirely from word of mouth, leading to press coverage but it's only been recently that we've seen true #1's (the Oprahs of the word) begin to adopt the service furthering it's exposure.

This is when influence could potentially create a perfect storm. Great numbers of "lower level" influencers can of course create a movement, and when combined with even just a few "higher level" influencers who have access to communication platforms—a critical mass of awareness and influence can be reached. This is where Twitter finds itself at the moment. It has millions of "everyday people" who love it and evangelize on behalf of the service. It also has thousands of highly connected people doing the same. And it's now entering a phase where hundreds of incredibly visible and internationally known personalities are joining the ranks."

A more statistics based take from Mashable's Stan Schroeder: The Web in Numbers: The Rise of Social Media

"According to Nielsen, Twitter currently has 7 million unique monthly visitors. If it keeps growing at this rate, it’ll have nearly 100 million visitors same time next year."

Only time will tell, but it's certainly looking like those clouds are forming into a superstorm.

Where do you think Twitter will be in a year from now growth-wise? More importantly, what are doing to prepare for it?

Hurricane Twitter! Are you prepared?

There's a storm on the horizon. Hurricane Twitter is going to be huge. Are you prepared to position your business to benefit from the winds of change?

Recent studies have shown that Twitter's growth has begun a parabolic ascent as shown in the below chart which clearly illustrates the storm's-a-brewing. Erick Schonfeld's TechCrunch article 'Boom! Twitter More Than Doubles Unique U.S. Visitors To 9.3 Million In March' reports measured results stating that Twitter's number of unique visitors "grew 131 percent between February and March to 9.3 million visitors."  Unlike other storms, instead of dark, destructive clouds this natural phenomenon is full of gusts of great potential.

Granted, with Twitter's rockstar status in all forms of media lately, nobody really needs a chart to justify the fact that this social media darling has become the talk of the town. If you simply flip on the television or read the newspaper, you'll find that Twitter talk is not only gaining steam, but mainstream celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Oprah, Shaq, Ellen have all used Twitter to capitalize and/or connect with their audience in ways traditional media simply doesn't allow. Giants on Capitol Hill or CNN are engaging with middle America with methods that would make any idealist politician or media hack proud. The decision-makers behind mega brands, political entities and media outlets are positioning themselves for the coming storm. They know what's on the horizon and it's called opportunity.

You have a choice. There are two ways to respond to Hurricane Twitter. One approach would be to ignore it and bunker down, hoping that it's just a massive natural disaster of passing fancy. Is Twitter a huge fad for superficial chit-chat? A quick scan of some of the more bland, somewhat purposeless Twitter posts ("I just saw my ex at a party" "Jelly beans are fun to eat.") can leave you feeling that way.

The other response and the one I recommend, is to ride the sheer power of the crowd thrusting your ideas forward by their desire to connect by positioning yourself and playing an active role. We measure the output ability of our engines in units of horsepower (HP), social media should be measured in terms of crowdpower (CP) - defined as the capacity to harness, speak to or connect/engage with a mass of people.

You'll have to do more than simply have an account and post tweets though. The more Twitter grows, the more potential noise there will be - making your ability to participate in discussions, track trends, filter noise and make sense of the data all the more important. Imagine Twitter with 100,000,000 users or more, that's what you want to be prepared for. Can you build a niche, a micro-presence now that rockets forward when magnified to a degree of ten? It'll take some expert planning.

I've made recommendations in previous blog posts (Social media is not about you and Listening vs. talking on Twitter) that in order to truly connect and embrace what Twitter has to offer you must steer some of your push-only marketing focus away from your company or brand and flip it around. It's counterintuitive to much of what we're taught about business and marketing, but genuine social connection is truly the eye of the Twitter storm.

I'm not exalting Twitter to panacea status here, however I believe it's growth potential alone in the short to mid-term is reason enough to be paying attention. Twitter is the figurehead for our globe's inevitable transition to a social-powered web. Some people argue that there are not enough features to Twitter's interface or gripe about their lack of business plan. Whether or not it is as effective or legitimate as other social platforms doesn't matter. It's the people's choice. They decide what works for the masses and you would be smart to embrace that decision. The ripples towards a social web require an efficient channel and Twitter's design is perfect for such movement.

Hurricane Twitter represents opportunity for you and your business. The swells of this storm can open up a current of leads or customers as you establish trust and build an interactive brand presence. These gusts can propel you and your business toward a deeper, more bountiful world. Just as a sailor charts his course by studying maps and weather patterns, businesses should be scanning the landscape and trends of Twitter and creating a strategic plan for where they want this storm to take them.

Are your business sails positioned? What factors will be important to your during Hurricane Twitter?

From media consumers to media creators

We are undergoing a change in our media habits. We are going from caterpillar to butterfly - from media consumer to media creator. What does this mean for you?

How much time do you spend on the computer every day outside of work? Studies show that you are spending the majority of this time on websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, message boards, chat rooms and blogs. These sites are the enablers in your media behavior, they are pulling you away from yesteryear's passive traditional media towards a more engaging online media.

As little as five or ten years ago, most people consumed traditional media such as television, magazines, books or film before spending time on the computer. Traditional media use still exists today, although it's playing a smaller role. There are infinitely more options due to two main reasons. The first is that a connected, people-driven internet is given a myriad of options available to them, the Long Tail economy. The second is that millions of people have become independent media creators themselves, empowered by their personal computers.

The Long Tail
We have more access to more media outlets today than ever before. Our media buying habits have also changed, we have adapted to this ever-expanding landscape. For example, iTunes or Amazon gives the average user a degree of choice unlike anything ever experienced by mankind. Hundreds of thousands of options await the user. For these types of businesses, shelf space concerns are irrelevant, the only constraint now is bandwidth and digital storage space.

The Long Tail is also reflected in the brick and mortar business. Bookstores such as Barnes & Noble or Borders now carry 500+ magazines, ten times more than were available to a previous generation of consumers. All of these magazines came from somewhere. Are they all new publications fueled by an influx of new media creators or do we have more options available to us due to technological reach? Yes and yes.

We even see the Long Tail show up in traditional media too. Television offers a ridiculous amount of channel programming - my DirecTV has something like 1000 channels. This produces a different consumer compared to traditional media's 'everybody watches Threes Company' generation of years ago. This media user took part in water cooler talk. They connected around a shared experience of what was on television, a great film, or funny TV commercial. There was a limited selection so everyone had a basis of connection from media that came from the major networks, studios or record labels.

Yesterday's media bandwidth was much narrower than it is today - our range of choices were smaller, denser. In addition, most people spent more time with a more dedicated approach to work or study and spent the majority of their 'media time' after hours. Today's work or school day is interwoven with tweets, text messages, and Facebook status updates.

Personal brands and media creators
The advent of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are ushering in an era of personal brands and media creators. Each brand connects with other brands and creates communities or simply exists in it's own brand atmosphere. Facebook Connect and myOpenID are facilitating a user-driven web where each person brings their identity with them as they jump from site to site or platform to platform.

The Long Tail has brought about an evolutionary scenario of adapt or perish, better described as produce or perish. Businesses and brands are faced with global competition for their products and services. While their reach is wider, their competition base is equally broader. They must produce media to gain recognition, enhance search engine placement and set themselves apart.

Businesses and individuals are grasping their roles as media creators by writing blogs, creating video, sending tweets, etc. They are responding, or adapting if you will, to the Long Tail influences of greater options and more competitors. Consumers individual tastes in media inspire the new media creator to produce brand-driven media channels of their own. They are generating content with a plan to attract an audience, establish a client or make a connection. In some cases a simple small business will have a blog, podcast, video content, Twitter account and Facebook brand page. The goal is to be where the eyeballs are and where the conversation happens.