Carpe Diem – Small Biz Has the Advantage Now
http://www.goodlittlebiz.com/node/242
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Harvard study confirms that Twitter is unique
Indeed. As a Business Anthropologist, I am fascinated by who chooses to be active in Twitter and what they’re up to. And equally fascinated by the numbers – including marketers and business pundits – who are fearful, confounded or compelled to denigrate Twitter.
Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.
At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue – Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia’s edits ii. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool.
Those 10% are very active. As other bloggers have explored, they differ from other social media users in several ways. What I find especially interesting are the small, non-monetized exchanges being invented real time. The skill to do so is not taught in MBA programs; a better place to look might be Aikido dojos and community theatres. As I see it, Creatives from all over the world are exchanging because it’s fun and enlivening. A high-performing client remarked to me recently, “I love going on Twitter; I always learn there.”
For those who feel a need to distinguish between value and play (believing that play is defined as ‘not creating value’,) I am happy to explore the question: what are millions of people finding on Twitter? The more practical value includes:
Questions
Insights
Perspectives
Tools
Solutions
Resources
The less practical? Challenges; inspiring quotations, accomplishments, and points of view. I learned about the Harvard study this morning on Twitter. Thanks @DanOnBranding and @Lapp.
Received wisdom when I was in grad school was that one could recognize the advent of human ancestors in the archeological record when tools became more beautiful than they needed to be to get the job done. Making such tools was viewed as distinctly human behavior. Does anyone think that has changed?
And who made those beautiful tools? Not the median tool user. This anthropologist will bet it was the same part of the population who are now active on Twitter. The 10% who feel compelled to make the world better.
These are the people who are navigating the economic downturn by inventing new exchanges with people all over the world. Whether or not money is involved, these Creatives are like bees – pollinating our businesses and communities – sparking new value - making the economy more resilient.
Filed under Business Anthropologist, Changing Economic patterns, Navigating the downturn, Resilient Enterprises, Social media | Comments (4)Social Media Bump up the Pressure to Innovate
A new resilience report from Strategy and Business, Digital Darwinism, paints a sweeping picture of what they call the “evolution” of advertising, corporate marketing and media companies in response to “Web 2.0″. The changes have only just begun, as new dynamics, new roles and new required competences emerge.
While well-researched in those fields, I believe the article misses a key point: consumer behavior via socal media is a revolution. I don’t think the execs interviewed are close to prepared to “engage”, as they call it.
Certainly the field is ripe for innovation, as the article points out. One key area will be in new metrics: those slippery consumers are getting harder and harder to predict, and with that, the success measures of marketing are rapidly becoming obsolete. But new ones have not emerged. On the contrary, questions as simple as how many people are using Twitter are unresolved, because digital pathways to it are constantly being re-invented by tech-saavy users.
The article points out that much greater skill at listening and collaboration is demanded:
The five behaviors that all players — marketers, agencies, and media companies — must display to perform at a high level in this ecosystem are now evident. They revolve around getting closer to consumers, engendering conversations, mastering the context of marketing messages, making better use of consumer data and insight, and building new and more collaborative relationships across the value chain.
And much greater flexibility,
Associated with this heightened focus on the media mix is the demand for greater flexibility and speed. In fact, most marketers are already buying and adjusting media on a weekly or even daily basis as needed. More than half of the marketers in our survey said they expect the media buying process to look more like the stock exchange in five years; media will be bought and sold on a real-time, transparent, and continuous basis. Good-bye, upfront. Hello, 24/7 marketplace.
I believe that the article – and most people in the industry – are still missing the extraordinary demand of social media to learn on one’s feet. They move fast; creation and re-invention is a daily event. Anyone who wants to believe that he was smart the day before is in jeopardy. And anyone who believes that she is smart on her own has little chance. Web 2.0 demands nimble collaborative elegance, brimming with curiosity and very little room for ego, that I believe is going to shake up marketing much more than the article seems to imagine.
Thirteen years into the online era, only about one-quarter of marketers regard themselves as digitally savvy
Therein lies the problem. ’Marketing experts’, using what they learned in B school to ‘message’ to revolutionaries who are immersed in a democratizing medium that the execs have not experienced (though they’ve all heard of the book, The Experience Economy, and maybe even read the review.) With all their talk about ”consumer insight”, they don’t know what’s going on in social media. (Twittering is not in their job description…) While they’re struggling to establish new roles and metrics, the online world boogies on…
Social media fulfill the power to the people that Woz and Jobs dreamed about in the ’70s. They’re a powerful vehicle for exchange that can only be understood by participating. They breed resilience and ingenuity. Control is not in the cards.
Filed under Changing Economic patterns, Resilient Enterprises, Social media | Comment (1)
