This past weekend was my introduction to Gnomedex and its founder, Chris Pirillo. I was joined by EarthLink colleagues Jerry Grasso and Dave Coustan. It was nice to trade Atlanta's 103 degree heat for Seattle's cooler clime.
During the 3 day conference, I met some interesting folks and heard some interesting presentations. Over at the Seattle Aquarium for a evening event, a conversation with Robert Scoble about Naked Conversations led to a discussion about - somehow appropriately - starfish as a metaphor for new media and corporate adoption. Now the little starfish has recently gotten a lot of play due to Rod Beckström's and Ori Brafman's book, The Starfish and The Spider.
Where the book's authors use the spider and starfish to look at centralized and decentralized organizations, Scoble was kicking around the image of a starfish to talk about how new media has evolved since he and Shel Israel wrote their book. Where Naked Conversations focused on blogs, today companies need to embrace blogs as well as podcasts, vlogs, Twitter, FaceBook, etc. Based on the starfish metaphor, two years ago, a new media starfish would have had one arm; today it has many more, representing the many tools now at our disposal. But like the theory in Beckström's and Ori Brafman's book, the starfish represents decentralized knowledge and communications that still need to be distributed throughout the organization.
The challenge is helping companies manage those many arms and making sure each arm integrates with all the others. The use of social media is more than just promoting conversations; it's about conversion - converting all possible traffic to customers via social media. More than building a brand and generating impressions, corporate communications' function is to help with this conversion. This no easy task. Management needs to see the utility of these tools. It needs to see how a starfish's arms will feed the starfish.
Anatomically, I am not sure what part of the starfish's body is corporate communications. I will leave that designation to Robert, but I think he is onto something.
So how does corporate communications get management's buy-in? For that, consider Guy Kawaski.
Guy presented on the first full day, mixing humility with self promotion - no easy feat. He listed ten ways to evangelize a product. Evangelism is key because the product will die on the vine without passion and purpose. I would like to appropriate his ten step program and apply it to what corporate communications needs to do to get management buy-in to a social media program.
Guy Kawaski's Ten Key Features of Product Evangelism
Make meaning -- Nike is not about two pieces of leather and a strip of rubber.
Make mantra - a mantra that explains why you exist. Don't need a multi word statement. The mission of Wendy's Restaurants is NOT "to deliver superior quality products and service for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation and partnerships" It should be healthy fast food.
Roll the DICEE -- (Deep - lots of power) (Intelligent - somebody was thinking) (Complete - not just the product but all the accompanying infrastructure to support it) (Elegant) (Emotive)
Niche thyself -- the ability to provide a unique product and service with accompanying value
Let a hundred flowers blossom -- Look beyond those whom you think are going to use it; reach out to those whom you hadn't considered
Make it personal -- how does the product affect each customer?
Find the true influencer -- not always at the top or senior management
Enable a test drive -- give customers the chance to experience the product before purchase
Look for agnostics, not atheists -- Go after those who are open, not those who have already made up their minds. In political terms, focus on the "undecided," not those committed to the other side.
Provide a slippery slope -- baby steps - don't force wholesale change at once
(Bonus) Don't let the bozos the grind you down -- don't be discouraged by naysayers
Though the case for social media is getting easier to make these days, there are still pockets of resistance to new business models, decentralized communication, and freedom of expression. With each step, corporate communications needs to demonstrate a reason for social media, express it in simple terms that everyone will understand. It needs to contain DICEE. It needs to serve a unique, understandable purpose and function.
As evangelists, we need to look beyond our traditional base; we may find advocates in other parts of the company and demonstrate how social media will add meaning for those who will use it. We can't assume these influencers and allies are at the top of the organization. They may be found in customer support, engineering and product development. We need to give folks the ability to test our ideas and build support by focusing on those who are open to our ideas; not those that have already made up their minds against them. Lastly, we must provide the ability to gradually embrace social media and not let the naysayers bully or defeat us.
Change is not easy, but evangelists are not dictators or ideologues. They need to listen, adopt and respect their audience. Without this flexibility, the chances of achieving adoption and ultimately Scoble's concept of conversion is highly questionable.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble; Shel Israel; Naked Conversations; Gnomedex; Chris Pirillo; Guy Kawasaki; The Spider and the Starfish; Rod Bechstrom; Ori Brafman; Social+Media;
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