Shifting Spheres of Influence

So, while I was in Florida I realized that I had mistakenly set a post up to publish while I was away without ever finishing said post.  Pretty brilliant, eh?

So here is the re-post as I was meaning to make it.

"Social networking is not a platform, it’s not a destination, it’s a behaviour."

Katie is speaking out against this tendency of brands to worry about how they can get their brand into facebook or myspace rather than really leverage this emerging phenomenon.

I couldn't agree more.  But let's break it down a bit.

Social Networking and this whole Age of Conversation has taken the continuing fragmentation of media and made it non-linear.  If we thought the media world was fragmented before, we now have an unlimited number of forever forming and reforming communities within just one social networking site, let alone all of them combined.

Being on YouTube or Facebook doesn't guarantee viewership.  It's the same with every social networking site.  Understanding and engaging the communities within and outside of these social networking sites that matters.

So this raises a number of questions.

• How are people using these tools?
• How do different communities use the same tools?
• How do we identify the behaviors of people and communities we desire to interact with?

But as I sat and thought about this some more, I was taken back to an old associate, Stuart MacDonald, and a phrase he used to love to drop like a bomb in any meeting. 

"Where's the value?"

Consuming media is wonderful.  But it is a subset of activity that I participate in when I log into my personal spaces.  I am also looking to create media, build relationships and have conversations.   Ironically, these other activities generally result in my consuming media.  Only the media I'm consuming is directed and positioned by how the community and those I'm interacting with perceive its value.

• So is it really just a challenge of seeding as many "new media" firms would have us believe?
• How should we segment or target our engagements in a non-linear environment? (who should we engage?)
• What should we measure? (so we actually understand the value we are creating/participating in)

I'm going to go out on a limb.  What if it is all about behavior?  Could I not maximize my reach within twitter by looking to engage with all of the people on twitter that are speaking on a topic of interest to the engagement or campaign in question?  And then follow this activity into other platforms?

Calling it a "Conversation Age" is great, but we can't personally engage in a conversation with every person, customer or prospect.  And if this phenomenon is truly non-linear in nature, then that means we can't identify it in simple variables.  We would have to apply the principles of chaos to marketing.

That means it can't be seen when looking at the number of visitors to a site, the number of conversation online, views of our media or even reach or brand equity measurements. These are the individual data points and alone they tell us a misleading story.  We would have to be looking for patterns of engagement.  Ways that these (or other variables) interact and present emerging patterns.  Ultimate success would be when these patterns are stable yet non-linear in nature.  Continuing to morph and adjust as they interact with emerging communities online.

Is system thinking coming to Marketing?