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It takes a fair amount of self proclaimed experts and authors to get me to this point, but I’m here. Feel free to duck because here it comes – edited down for all of your virgin ears. Sorry in advance for my non-linear writing on this one – I have a little steam coming out of my ears. Social Media – If I have to see one more “expert” tell me how to use it or why I should use them to use it I may come out of my chair. These people may perhaps have one to two projects under their belts that may have been successful, but regardless managed to get a little trade press because they were a little ahead of the pack. When pressed for numbers they hide behind the client confidentiality. The reality is that successful corporate social media programs are a rare spotted owl on a percentage basis.
Personally, I’ve had a magnificent time and experience in social media and built an on-line community that still gets hundreds of thousands of new folks stopping by. It was a program that we set sail on in 2004. Many of you know it as Wells Fargo’s Stagecoach Island. Not only does this program still exist, but it has evolved into one of the most amazing projects that I have ever a part of. This is a large effort, and it has become adopted by the mainstream and school districts as a way of getting kids to experientially learn about real world finances. The team at Wells Fargo, led by Tim Collins, has done a superb job of managing the growth and most importantly maintaining the quality of this initiative. It hasn’t gone unnoticed either. They are still winning banking awards for their efforts. Like I said, I was honored to be a part of that. The key here was all about building a community that had a real sense of purpose and then delivered on the promise of teaching kids about finances. I was personally open early to these types of new forms of social, on-line interactions and communities because I had created my own on-line community (minus the virtual world components) in April of 2004. It’s an effort called the (EMF) Experiential Marketing Forum http://www.experientialforum.com. It’s a business, social environment. While much smaller than the Wells Fargo Initiative, it has community members from all over the world and is translated into 11 languages. I learn experientially on a daily basis as issues that arise aren’t commonplace and therefore require unique solutions. There are now have turnkey community software solutions. That’s great, but the real key is putting into action their key learnings. This is where most people fall short. They haven’t endured an extremely long effort. Actually, the Coke initiatives that they’ve done over the years have done a magnificent job of maintaining their relevance and continually reinventing themselves over the years. Again, they are the rare spotted owl. The most important learning along the way is that we have one ego, one super ID, one everything. The same personality/ego that we carry around in the physical space is the same one that we bring on-line. In essence, we act the same on-line that we do off-line. This is, of course, with the big caveat of virtual reality and the things that follow the same sort of logic. In any case – here’s the bottom line. How many people, from a behavioral standpoint go to social events to get marketed to? How many of you would be offended if a large corporation rolled into your party unannounced that you were at and started with their “Hey we’re cool, come do business with us.”. Most of you – I’m sure! Look at your behavior when you go the facebook “social space”. Do you find yourselves participating in any of the advertising campaigns or even clicking on the banners? Your intention when you go to these social environments is to be social with your existing group of friends. It’s no different. Unfortunately, people are becoming blinded by the large number of users so they don’t even consider the fact that the program they just built won’t effectively engage them. Will programs like this ever exist? I’m sure they will. But it will be a seismic shift from what is currently going on, and it will take the participation of both Facebook and the brands so that the brands are able to seamless integrate themselves into the Facebook theory and to not be intrusive. Make sure your brand comes across as an invited guest – Then and only then will people want to socialize with you!
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