Successful Blog

What’s Your Answer? Do Consumers Always Know Their Own Needs Better?

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We say,
“Listen first.”
Do we listen to and about ourselves?

We say,
“Be part of the conversation customers are already having about your business and your products.”
Are we part of the conversation clients and corporations are having about us?

Recalling the powerhouse social media panel at AdTech in Shanghai, of which he was part, Lee Hodge reported …

All panelists were in agreement that to shunt conversation … is to assume that consumers are less informed about their own needs than the corporation that is pitching them.

When I consider conversations about “social media mishaps” of recent months I wonder. When I think about human nature and irrational choices I wonder even more …

Is the panel’s point valid?

Do consumers — even clients hiring social media firms — always know their own needs better?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
image: Wikicommons
Work with Liz!!

Social Networking: If Someone Smiles on the Other Side of The World

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Guest Post by Vincent Wright

If you’re happy and you know it, thank your friends—and their friends. And while you’re at it, their friends’ friends. But if you’re sad, hold the blame. Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego have found that “happiness” is not the result solely of a cloistered journey filled with individually tailored self-help techniques. Happiness is also a collective phenomenon that spreads through social networks like an emotional contagion.

In a study that looked at the happiness of nearly 5000 individuals over a period of twenty years, researchers found that when an individual becomes happy, the network effect can be measured up to three degrees. One person’s happiness triggers a chain reaction that benefits not only their friends, but their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends. The effect lasts for up to one year.

The flip side, interestingly, is not the case: Sadness does not spread through social networks as robustly as happiness. Happiness appears to love company more so than misery.

“We’ve found that your emotional state may depend on the emotional experiences of people you don’t even know, who are two to three degrees removed from you,” says Harvard Medical School professor Nicholas Christakis, who, along with James Fowler from the University of California, San Diego co-authored this study. “And the effect isn’t just fleeting.”

For over two years now, Christakis and Fowler have been mining data from the Framingham Heart Study (an ongoing cardiovascular study begun in 1948), reconstructing the social fabric in which individuals are enmeshed and analyzing the relationship between social networks and health. The researchers uncovered a treasure trove of data from archived, handwritten administrative tracking sheets dating back to 1971. All family changes for each study participant, such as birth, marriage, death, and divorce, were recorded. In addition, participants had also listed contact information for their closest friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Coincidentally, many of these friends were also study participants. Focusing on 4,739 individuals, Christakis and Fowler observed over 50,000 social and family ties and analyzed the spread of happiness throughout this group.

Using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Index (a standard metric) that study participants completed, the researchers found that when an individual becomes happy, a friend living within a mile experiences a 25 percent increased chance of becoming happy. A co-resident spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance, siblings living within one mile have a 14 percent increased chance, and for next door neighbors, 34 percent.

But the real surprise came with indirect relationships. Again, while an individual becoming happy increases his friend’s chances, a friend of that friend experiences a nearly 10 percent chance of increased happiness, and a friend of *that* friend has a 5.6 percent increased chance—a three-degree cascade.

For the rest of the story, visit Science Daily.

Thanks, and Keep STRONG!!
Vincent Wright
Image: sxc.hu
_______________
Vincent, you’re a happiness agent if I’ve ever seen one. Thank you for reminding us how this works.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

What Mack Collier Said … About Social Media Mistakes

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A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

Nobody’s Perfickt

Learning a new culture is something that comes in bits, by listening, trying, making mistakes and adjusting until we get it right. It’s like learning to sail, play a guitar, or ride a bike. Not many, maybe not any, can do it from the start. No one can do it perfectly all of the time.

Here’s what Mack said . . .

“The expectation that a company will adapt immediately and seamlessly without error to new culture is unrealistic. You and I didn’t. Did we? What a business moving into social media needs is a way for people get to know them.”

And I think that companies need to also know that getting started using the tools is more important than using them perfectly. Companies need to understand that they WILL make mistakes when they first start using social media, and that that’s ok. And we as bloggers haven’t done a very good job of getting this message across. We too often tend to have a ’shoot first, apologize later’ approach to a company that makes a first-move blunder in this space. I still remember the outcry about how Dell’s first blogging attempts in 2006 ’sucked’, and the criticism was mostly coming from the same bloggers that previously had said that Dell ’sucked’ cause they weren’t blogging. Then as soon as they started, they got attacked anyway.

Companies need to know that it’s ok to be less than perfect when it comes to using social media to connect with their customers online. And we need to make sure they get this message, and re-inforce it with our actions when they do join us.

Mack Collier from a comment on December 9, 2008

A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Mic Is On: We’re Talking About Gifts

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It’s Like Open Mic Only Different

The Mic Is On

Here’s how it works.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

Gifts of All Shapes, Kinds, and Sizes — Even Mistakes

‘Tis the season to be giving — and buying and selling — but mostly giving. Have you found some ways to give that are unusual? Have you found some unusual gifts that are coming your way? Let’s tell some holiday stories of gifts past, present, and future …

  • gifts that get passed around from person to person
  • gifts that are secretly regifted
  • gifts that someone chose all wrong and we kept anyway
  • gifts that were perfectly selected and unforgettable
  • gifts that came in the form of gifts but were really something else
  • And the gifts that kept on giving — was that a good thing?

And, whatever else comes up, including THE EVER POPULAR, Basil the code-writing donkey . . . and flamenco dancing (because we always get off topic, anyway.)

Oh, and bring example links.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
image: sxc.hu
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Guy Kawasaki Talks About Alltop.com and the Alltop.com Community

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Featured in Alltop

I work with companies who are watching in the way of new ventures — weight risks against benefits. Lawyers try to keep them conservative, while the “common wisdom” seems to tell them they need a blog. I’m finding that often a blog isn’t the answer, at least not the appropriate first step. User participation has many forms.

One of the best examples of a social media, user-centered endeavor is Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop.com Alltop gets it right in so many ways. FAQ 3 is part of the magic of the Alltop formula, and what we’ve been talking about — let the community help build the barn.

3. Q. How do you decide which sites and blogs are in a topic?
A. We use a patent-pending, semantic computational algorithm derived from the post-doctoral work of Guy at Stanford. Just kidding. We rely on several sources: results of Google searches, review of the sites’ and blogs’ content, researchers, and our “gut” plus the recommendations of the Twitter community, owners of the sites and blogs, and people who care enough to write to us. Let us declare something: The Twitter community has been the single biggest factor in the quality of Alltop. Without this group of mavens and connectors, Alltop would not be what it is today.

You can tell a person wrote that.

I’m lucky to be talking to the man behind Alltop —
Guy Kawasaki — about his thoughts on how businesses
can engage people as they move online. I wondered about low-risk choices that businesses might make when forming new social media businesses and communities online.


Hi Guy! About Alltop, I’ve been through it all in the past few days. I think most folks don’t realize the scope of the accomplishment you’ve built … it’s no wonder you’re always smiling.

Alltop really is more than it seems. What is Alltop really and why does it work?

Alltop is a digital magazine rack. We assemble (“aggregate”) subscriptions by topics, and we have approximately 400 topics ranging from Adoption to Zoology.

It works because there is so much information on the web and search engines are too good at what they do. For any topic, Google would find millions of hits. Most people do not have the time or ability to winnow this down.

For example, try typing “China” into Google then look at


What’s special about Alltop is the way people have taken a personal interest in it — especially the Twitter community. Did the Twitter community come first or did you grow the community as you grew Alltop?

Twitter as a service pre-dates Alltop by several years. Fortunately, the people who follow me have taken a liking to Alltop. They provide suggestions for topic and feeds for topics, and they help us spread the word about topics. Alltop would not be what it is without Twitter.


What was crucial to making it all happen efficiently? What was crucial to getting the community to buy in?

Many factors came into play: I had a large following because of my visibility so Alltop had a jump start; the product is truly useful; and we were more than willing to hear and implement what the community wanted. Twitter was made for Alltop, and Alltop was made for Twitter–you couldn’t have designed a better synergy if you tried.


What advice do you have for companies who worry about the risks of their first steps into the social sphere?

The willingness to open things up and to seemingly lose control is the only way to control social media. If you think you can control social media in the traditional sense, you shouldn’t even try it. Just stick to buying Super Bowl commercials instead.


What sort of projects might you suggest would offer low risk but high profile community relationship value?

The first thing most companies should do is go to search.twitter.com and search for anyone who mentions their products, services, or the company itself. Then it should help those people in any way possible.

To see how it’s done, they should watch @comcastcares on Twitter. That is a Comcast employee who monitors Twitter for people who have issues with Comcast. This is a great example of how to use social media. The cost is $0 and the upside is huge.

Thanks Guy! It was a pleasure, as always.
_________
Look closely and you see that Alltop.com is a magazine rack that draws people into a community. People help choose the topics. They suggest the sites included. People proudly display the badge of the Alltop domain and discuss Alltop blogs with @GuyKawasaki and @NEENZ on Twitter.

Guy let the people help build it, made the site about them and what they’re doing, and now they promote and protect it. It’s a community all right.

What do you think is the magic of Alltop? What bit of it could make work for you and the community you’re building?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!