Greg Verdino

If Twitter were a state, it would be Arkansas

No offense to Arkansas.

I've only been there once, for just one day, so I could be way off base here.  But bear with me for a few moments. 

I was traveling with Jaffe and we flew into a quirky, sleepy, little airport early in the morning.  As we hit the road by car, headed to our meeting, Arkansas seemed to comprise little more than open fields dotted with a handful of cows hanging around doing a whole lot of nothing, and the occasional seemingly-deserted house. Now, anyone with even a passing knowledge of business and geography knows that Arkansas is also home to at least one vibrant and vital hub of activity, a place that is chock-a-block with conversation and commerce, a place that is a can't-survive-without destination for thousands of business people and millions upon millions of consumers. But neither hustle nor bustle were among my first impressions of the state.

Jaffe and I spent most of the day sitting in a coffee shop, waiting for something to happen.  When our meeting finally happened, it was a bit of a let-down, fraught with mixed messages and crossed signals, and then aircraft technical issues grounded us in Arkansas overnight. 

On the flipside, Jaffe did manage to convert a stranger into a fan, or more precisely a follower who hung around with us both at the airport and later that evening in the hotel bar, where rather than engage in any kind of meaningful conversation we half-watched American Idol while blurting out a real-time stream of running commentary.

In one random moment of surprise and delight (and social media serendipity), we bumped into blogger, Twitteratum and IBMer Doug Meacham, who just so happened to be in the same place at the same time.  It was a nice few moments of interaction with a social media friend that I only rarely see in person.

If you happen to live in Arkansas, you might protest that -- on the basis of a one day visit -- I've gotten it all wrong.  I missed the point, have no idea what I'm talking about, and that only a true resident can know the state the way the state was meant to be known.  You'd probably be right but it doesn't change the fact that my experience of Arkansas was my experience of Arkansas.

Back in New York when anyone asked, "So what was Arkansas like?" I might recount a rendition of the story above.  Or I might just say something like, "Well, are you on Twitter yet?  It was kinda like that."

For new or infrequent readers who don't know that my tongue is generally planted at least somewhat firmly in-cheek, I should also point out that the mockingbird is Arkansas's state bird.  Which, by way of the clunkiest segue possible, brings me from the great state of Arkansas to the great state of the Twittersphere...

Today, HubSpot released its second State of the Twittersphere report.  Some of the key findings are (un)surprisingly similar to other recent data from ratings giant Nielsen -- that while the service's top-line rate of growth has been through the roof, more than half of all Twitter accounts show little to no sign of activity.  No Tweets. No followers. No friends. 

A deeper dive into the data seems to suggest that the typical Twitter user looks more like my cousin Joe (no relation to Jaffe) and less like me. 

Joe's profile shows no bio, no location, the generic o_O avatar and a single exploratory tweet from more than a month ago.  He has fewer than 10 followers and is following just 23 other accounts.  Look at the accounts he follows and you'll find mostly celebrities and mainstream media outlets, with a few social media micro-celebs and a spammer thrown in for good measure.

At best, you might argue that Joe sees Twitter as a passive experience -- he "tunes in" a handful of brand name channels and watches the content they post.  You might call this the Oprah Effect and this patttern seems to back-up a recent POV from Brian Solis that, for the majority of users, Twitter is a broadcast platform rather than the conversation we social media insiders make it out to be.  And let's face facts people -- with more than a million followers but only a handful of celeb follows and no @ replies since April (none to regular people), Oprah hasn't exactly "joined the conversation."  To the contrary, she has launched yet another broadcast program - although with just 50 or so tweets since joining the service almost two months ago, it isn't a broadcast worth tuning into.  (Love him, hate him or write him off as having hit his peak with That 70's Show, at least Ashton Kutcher seems to get it closer to right - but I digress...)

There's a more likely scenario though, isn't there? 

You can see it in my cousin's profile, but you might infer it from the HubSpot and Nielsen data as well.  That Joe simply visited once, just for one day, and hasn't been back since. (Holy crap, did Verdino just tie together the loose ends of this rambling post?)

This is more an observation than a judgment, since after all, I'm not a big proponent of the bigger-is-better thinking that gets so many marketers hot and bothered.  Maybe my cousin Joe is a living embodiment of the state of Twitter (an argument that would please the naysayers and skeptics) or maybe the true state of Twitter is best understood by taking a long, hard look at the most active users that live in its epicenter -- and we don't care how it looks to outsiders who don't get it (an argument that plays right into the hands of the social media "experts" but is perhaps closer to right.)

In other words - maybe microblogging is meant to be, erm, micro after all. 

And in the end, the value doesn't come from the millions and millions of strangers who may or may not actually be there, but from the dozens or hundreds or thousands of friends that we choose to interact with every day.

Thoughts?

NOTICE (6/16: 9pm EST)  For some reason, comments aren't displaying for this post anymore.  It seems like Typepad is still logging them and hopefully they can help me figure out how to fix the problem. Don't let that keep you from adding your own thoughts though, and try checking back soon to read the thread.

Book 'em Verdino: announcing microMARKETING

I'm excited to announce that I've inked a deal with McGraw-Hill for the publication of my first business book, microMARKETING: A Breakthrough Approach to Building Brands by Thinking and Acting Small.

If the title alone isn't enough to clue you in, I'd like to give you an idea of the ground I'll cover in the book.  Here's a bit of how I described the book in the proposal itself:

A media revolution is underway, fueled by a micro-content phenomenon that is shifting the balance of power from mass communications to masses of communicators.  This shift plays out daily on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Ustream and other social sites.  It’s in the notion that an otherwise normal individual can use social media and low-end technology to become a micro-celebrity with a significant following.  It’s in the viral effect that takes hold when even one online influencer (in essence a one-person media outlet) sparks a conversation that makes or breaks a brand.  It’s in the shift in behavior that is turning the smart phone into the “first screen” for Gen Y and many increasingly-mobile Gen Xers.  It’s in the shift from watching 60 minute television shows interrupted by 30-second advertisements, to watching 30-second pieces of online video content with no advertisements at all.  It’s even in the changing of our expectations of product design and retail sales, giving rise to dozens of successful small businesses and individuals (think Threadless, think Etsy, think Mimobot, think Lemonade) that can create and sell enough high quality, unique or custom merchandise at a premium to shoppers for whom choice and individuality matter more than convenience and price. 

These are exciting times, but they can also be scary times for marketers who have been trained to think that bigger is better, and for whom the excesses and successes of the past 50 or so years – big budgets for major media ad campaigns designed to sell mountains of product through big-box retailers – seem to be the only way to build a big brand.  For better or worse, the new reality is that the old way doesn’t work so well anymore. Simply put, micro-content and macro-marketing don’t mix – and trying to maintain the status quo while consumer behaviors and expectations change amounts to little more than a recipe for failure.

Enter micromarketing – a new approach to building brands, marketing products and services, and growing meaningful long-term customer (and corporate) value.  Micromarketing emphasizes relationships over reach, interactions over interruption, and the network effect over the broadcast network.  It is built upon the premise that the “next big thing” is really lots and lots of small things, and that to survive and thrive, even the biggest marketers must think and act small (make that “micro”), too. 

microMARKETING is not a "Twitter book."  Puh-leeze... In signature Verdino-style, I will aim to help marketers understand the larger trends that are driving the popularity of tools like Twitter and what the real world implications are for businesses (even if Twitter itself -- or Facebook or YouTube, for that matter -- goes away), but my focus will be aimed squarely at the big picture.  I also don't plan to trot out the same ol' tired social media case studies.  In fact, one key piece of my approach is to help large companies understand how to thrive in the era of micro-content and micro-culture by taking lessons from the people and organizations that are involved in the revolution at the grassroots level.  In other words, I'll be looking at what the biggest of big corporations should learn from "whatever experts." 

Again, from the proposal:

Over the past several years, social media has evolved from a trend to watch to an irrefutable fact of life for marketers of all sizes.  Now – before most companies have even gotten social media right – the mainstreaming of micro-content services, the ubiquity of powerful low-cost handheld technology (from Internet-ready phones to consumer-grade HD cameras) and the rise of DIY culture promise to change the rules of consumer engagement yet again.  It is important to understand how these changes impact our ability to build brands, manage customer relationships and drive sales today, and this will only become more important over the coming years as more and more consumers flock to the technologies that are powering the shift.

On the flipside, it is also important that marketers not get swept up in the hype surrounding a single tool or tactic, losing sight of the bigger implications for their businesses.  As has happened with core social media tools like blogging, podcasting and social networking (and short-lived fads like Second Life), marketers now run the risk of not seeing the forest for the trees – of jumping on the “Twitter bandwagon” with short-lived, ill-advised tactics that do little to impact their businesses.   

On the one hand, microMARKETING educates decision makers about larger trends and what they mean for companies who are looking to more effectively engage consumers through new digital channels.  On the other hand, it delivers tangible and practical case studies, stories, tips and tricks from familiar competitors (other large corporations) and unlikely sources of inspiration (micro-businesses and individual creators.)

microMARKETING is slated for a May/June 2010 release.  I need to hand in the final manuscript by mid-October.  Needless to say, I've got my work cut out for me over the next few months.

That may mean less blogging for the next few months, although I'll still try to post here at least once/week.  And you should stay tuned for periodic updates on the book, my progress and the process.  Hell, I may even ask you for some input along the way.

Finally, I'd like to thank the good folks at McGraw-Hill -- especially Donya Dickerson -- and my agent Ethan Friedman at LevelFive Media.

Good times, ahead...

Storytelling at the brink of the future?

Although the odds are pretty good you'll never read a fiction review on this blog, I can't help but tell y'all about J.C. Hutchins' forthcoming novel Personal Effects: Dark Art.  It's a supernatural thriller that pits an art therapist at a psychiatric institute against a blind serial killer/patient -- it may or may not be your cup of tea, and the actual content of the book isn't why I'm telling you about it.

The thing that probably will interest you is the way (ways plural, really) J.C. has taken what he has learned through years of social media self-publishing to create a work that goes well beyond the printed page, encompassing digital, mobile and the physical world to create a fully participatory multimedia narrative.  In many ways, Personal Effects is a novel custom-designed for digital natives (although J.C. and his publisher may not think of it that way) and it just might offer a glimpse at the future of storytelling.

 And the future of storytelling should matter to you no matter what products your company produces or promotes because, as marketers, our success often rides on both our ability to tell compelling stories and our customers' willingness and ability to spread their own stories about their experiences with our brands.

 Of course, everything begins with the book itself.  Let's assume it's good -- I haven't read it yet, but look forward to digging into the advance copy I received over the weekend (thanks J.C.)

But Personal Effects really gets interesting when it gets innovative.  If you aren't familiar with J.C. Hutchins (frankly, I only knew of him through some mutual contacts and from hearing his name bandied about in social media circles), he is a good example of what I have called a "whatever expert" -- someone who is good at what he does and has found a way to succeed at it through smart, effective use of social media.  Although Personal Effects is his first published novel, he has been writing for years, releasing his work as free audiobooks and using the web and social media to build a loyal audience.

J.C. isn't a marketer by training or trade, but the digital and multimedia components of his project offer a practical blueprint for any marketer looking to transform their brand storytelling into an active, participatory experience that is fueled by community and optimized for customer-to-consumer word of mouth.  Readers can enter the world of Personal Effects in a variety of ways:

• Technology-Fueled Calls-to-Action: Clues peppered throughout the novel and in the killer's personal effects packaged with the novel (e.g., a drivers license, photos, hospital paperwork) drive readers to companion websites, forums, onto email lists, into mobile phone voicemail systems and opt-in text messaging programs and more where they can find and explore additional layers of narrative.

• A Distributed, Online Experience: Readers can get inside the heads of key characters through their social network profiles, personal blogs and Twitter streams.

• Original, Distributable Content: Tapping into his heritage as a popular and well-established podcaster, J.C. has produced an exclusive audio-only novella prequel, as well as a series of YouTube-friendly video promos featuring well known horror personalities.

• Seamless Integration with Relevant Third Party Sites: One of the characters (yes, a fictional character from the book) has written columns for Suicide Girls, a site (some content NSFW) whose readership seems to be well aligned with J.C.'s audience, and there is a planned deep integration that brings Suicide Girl models into the novel's fictional world and provides readers with an additional web-only subplot.

• A Fan Community: Readers can 'commit themselves to the Brink' (aka Brinkvale Psychiatric, where the novel takes place), submit their own artwork for display in the community gallery (a logical tie-in with the fact that the book's protagonist is an art therapist at the Brink) and receive personalized intake paperwork.  In other words, readers don't just consume the story; they become part of it.

• Creative, Innovative Influencer Outreach: This is how I became aware of the book in the first place and may bear some of the most relevant lessons for social media marketers.  Over the weekend, the mailman delivered an unexpected package, a good-sized box that contained materials that immediately piqued my interest, earned my attention and (true to the spirit of Personal Effects) drew me directly into the fictional world of Brinkvale Psychiatric.  Containing not only a reviewer's copy of the book and the obligatory media kit, the package was filled with my personal effects from my own stay at the Brink.  Everything was hyper-personalized and it was impossible not to dive in (and just as impossible not to tell others about it -- and last time I checked, that's what influencer outreach is all about.)  Here are a couple of photos and you can check out more on Flickr -- but be warned, you're bound to dismiss your run-of-the-mill blogger outreach emails as downright asinine...

 

 

So what's the bottom line?  J.C. is tapping into the power of digital and the potential of social to turn the lay-back (and some might say dying) act of reading a novel into a fully immersive lean-forward experience.  It's equal parts fiction and alternate reality game, powered by a healthy dose of practical Web 2.0 know-how. Followers of pop culture may draw parallels between Personal Effects and the similarly rich multimedia storytelling approaches used to fuel films like Blair Witch Project, television shows like Lost, video games like Halo 2 and even a recent album release by Nine Inch Nails.  Brands have occassionally tapped into this form of multimedia storytelling to do cool and interesting things -- see Audi's Art of the Heist, for example.  But to my knowledge, this is the first time an author has undertaken something so ambitious in association with a novel -- and it just might get digital natives to pick up a plain old printed book. 

Am I gushing?  Sorry.  It's pretty cool and makes me want to curl up with Personal Effects, my laptop and my iPhone right now.

Barring that though (damn you, workload, damn you), I'd love to hear from you.  Which of J.C.'s approaches do you think you can apply to get your customers involved in your brand's story?

GyPSii: all-in-one social networking for the iPhone

As 2008 came to a close, my blogger-buddy Peter Kim asked a batch of social media folks to think about what 2009 would have in store for our industry.  I included location awareness and mobile social networking among my predictions:

Geo-location, location, location. Location awareness will be the mobile utility of the year as more and more consumers use their GPS-enabled phones and mobile social software (mososo) to find great stuff to see, do and buy wherever they may be at any given time, and foster real world face-to-face connections with the people in their social networks.

A few months later, crayon began working with a mobile social network provider called GyPSii.  GyPSii allows people to use their mobile phones to instantly capture and share what they are actually doing, building a multi-media virtual diary on their world – the places they've been, the things they've done, the cool things they've seen -- and share their experiences with their network of friends.  It's an all-in-one mobile social application that lets you connect with friends, document your life and share experiences, all in real time.  And of course it seamlessly integrates with Facebook and Twitter - making it easy to update once and share everywhere.

GyPSii already has a nice global footprint, and it works on most carrier networks and on dozens of different handsets.  But the reason I'm blogging about them now is that -- as of today -- GyPSii has launched its iPhone App.  And crayon and our good buddies at SHIFT Communications are helping to spread the word and get some traction.

So if you're an iPhone or iPod Touch user -- and especially if you're a social media geek who has dabbled with mobile social software and likes to bang on new services -- it would be great to see you on GyPSii.  You can get started by downloading the free App from the iTunes right now.

If you'd like a guided tour of GyPSii's iPhone features, you can watch this short video demo:

[Feed and email readers, click through for the video.]

Once you've downloaded the App, be sure to friend me on GyPSii, follow them on Twitter and become a Facebook Fan.  But most of all, be sure to spread the word, because the more friends you have on GyPSii, the better it gets.

Looking forward to connecting.

30 ways to Live in HD (and get free Panasonic gear)

At crayon, we've been doing lots of great work for our client Panasonic, all to support their Living In HD initiative.  I first wrote about LiHD in January, immediately after returning from the Consumer Electronics Show.  Here's some of what I wrote:

Over the course of the past year and a half, Panasonic has been driving a key initiative called Living in High Definition.  They have been selecting real families from across the United States and equipping them with a full suite of HD products.  Why?  To demonstrate just how much impact new Panasonic technologies really do have on how families spend their time and make memories, but also (and perhaps more importantly) to gain better insights into what real people want and how they use it once they have it.  We've been working with Panasonic to evolve the Living in HD program and the families involved with it into the seeds of an online community focused around digital consumer lifestyles.

Well, the LiHD community is now up and in full swing, with new members joining, connecting and sharing content every day.  You should check it out and join.  Once you're there, you'll not only meet plenty of interesting people; you'll also find lots of useful video content -- from a bi-monthly podcast to dozens of how-to tips to an ongoing series of clips from the LiHD Answerman, Panasonic's own HD expert who answers real questions from the community about everything from how to buy the right gear to how to get the most out of the gear you own.  It's a pretty rich program with lots to offer everyone from HD novices to prosumer content creators.  I hope you'll take a few minutes to check it out. While you're at it, why not follow our community leader on Twitter, become an LiHD fan on Facebook and subscribe to the LiHD and Answerman YouTube channels.

But as excited as I am about all the work we've done (and are doing) to bring Living In HD to life, the real purpose of this post is to tell you about a cool new sweepstakes we're running to drive community participation.

We call it the 30x30 Product Giveaway because Panasonic is giving away one camera per day for each of the 30 days in May.  That's 30 cameras over 30 days to 30 lucky members of the LiHD community. 

It's a fantastic incentive to get involved with Living In HD plus a great chance to win a new digital still camera or HD camcorder.  No purchase is necessary of course, but you do need to be a member of the community to win.

Here's all you need to do:

• Become a member of the Living In HD community
• Register for the 30x30 sweepstakes (you only need to register once to be eligible for all 30 chances, and you get to choose which of three great cameras you'd like to receive if you win)
• Check back every day to see who's taking home a new cam

So what are you waiting for?  Go register to win.  The month is already underway so the sooner you register, the more chances you'll have to win.

And of course I'd love to hear your feedback on the program.  Thanks. :-)

Is status status or does context count?

Having gotten annoyed one too many times by friends feeding their Twitter updates directly into their Facebook status field, devoid of relevance and context -- do I really need updates like "@twitterbuddy17 lolz for realz.;-P" cluttering up my mini-feed? -- I updated my Facebook status to vent my frustration.

An interesting debate ensued.  See below to read what some of my FB friends had to say.  What do you think?  Is status status or does context count?

Social Graces: coming to a laptop near you

Stunning images, pithy headlines, my trademark rapier-sharp wit and copious amounts of full frontal nudity.

The new, expanded version of my "Social Graces" presentation offers all of that and more.  But if you want to know what the purty pictures really mean, you've gotta hear the talk track that goes with the slides.  And if you want to hear the talk track, then you need to register for my MarketingProfs seminar, going down this Thursday (January 22nd, 2009) at noon eastern.

Just in case you can't attend -- or if you have an uncontrollable jones for instant gratification -- here are the slides I'll be speaking to.  Ooh, I'm such a tease...

Social Graces (January 2009)

[Feed and email readers, click through for the embedded slides.]

Panasonic, plasmas and people

Unless you're new 'round these parts, you know that I've been working the CES beat on behalf of Panasonic (a crayon client.)  I had intended to do lots of blogging and share lots of multimedia, but I was so busy over the past few days that -- other than a post on my first day in Vegas -- I haven't had a chance to write anything except tweets.  I did upload a bunch of photos and a few videos -- so check those out.  But moving along...

Tomorrow, I head back to New York, so I thought I'd at least take some time now to give you a sense of how I spent my time and reflect on some of my experiences at and around the show.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that it's a long post.  Bear with me.

Panasonic showed off plenty of shiny, new gear -- from the world's thinnest television, a sweet portable Blu-Ray player, and a 150-inch HD flat panel to (arguably the booth's biggest draw) 3D HD televisions that could hit American homes as early as 2010.  They also announced some great services designed to help Panasonic consumers make the most of a fully integrated, digital home -- services like a new Amazon partnership that will allow people to download on-demand video content directly to Viera Cast-enabled televisions.

But, truth be told, all of the latest gear (no matter how impressive) pales in comparison to the human side of CES -- and the human side of Panasonic's CES experience was the thing that kept me so busy. 

As anyone who has attended CES (or any conference for that matter) knows, so much of the value lies in connecting with interesting people.  Historically, CES has always about buyers connecting with sellers, and mainstream media reporters connecting with their manufacturer-side counterparts.  All of that still goes on but, moreso than any previous year, the people to meet, greet and get to know were the social media movers and shakers.  If you were a blogger, vlogger, podcaster, Twitterer or virtually any other type of prosumer ccontent creator, you were never more than a tweet away from getting together with other members of your community.  Social media makers were everywhere, and you had your pick of parties on any given night.

OK.  So what does this have to do with the price of sleaze in Nevada?

I was at CES as a marketer, but also as a blogger and -- more importantly -- as the host of six awesome social media content creators that joined us in Las Vegas as guests of Panasonic.  My main role was to help our guests connect with one another, the Panasonic executive team and some other very special guests of our client.

Steve Garfield, Chris Brogan, Stacy DeBroff, Melissa Pierce, Ponzi Pirillo and Vicki Rellas hit the show floor each day armed with Panasonic cameras and just did their thing.  They documented their experiences and told their stories -- some of their content has already hit the web, but there will be plenty more to come.  I can't wait to see what they've created.

We also gave them (we hope) compelling Panasonic stories to tell.  Of course, we made sure that they got a first hand look at all of Panasonic's latest innovations.  But more importantly, we gave them a look at the human side of Panasonic -- an electronics company that prides itself on having a distinctly human heart.  Listen to the Panasonic team and you'll hear, time and time again, that it isn't enough to make technologically superior products; it's vital that the technology improves people's lives, helps them live better, gives them new ways to spend their time, new means to create, save and share memories, and (increasingly) provides smarter, easier ways to create their own content.

Who better to deliver this vision to our social media dream team than the Chairman of Panasonic Corporation of North America.  Think about it -- that's a pretty cool thing (if I don't say so myself.)  The Chairman of one of the world's largest consumer electronics companies made the time to not only meet our influencers, but to engage each and every one of them in a meaningful dialogue.  Yoshi Yamada described his vision for the company, answered questions, and spend some of our session getting to know the bloggers better.

And of course the entire thing was on the record.  Some of the influencers' photos are already on Flickr and everyone in the room shot video.  Here are just a couple of my own shots.  The first shows the entire team flanking Mr. Yamada.

And how about this?  Mr. Yamada watching one of Steve's videos -- a clip shot with a Panasonic HD camcorder that was yesterday's most watched vdeo on CNN iReport. 

But wait, there's more. :-)

The human story behind Panasonic runs much deeper than corporate executives talking to content creators in the hope of garnering some good will and positive buzz.  Those were key objectives of this initiative, but Panasonic is committed to engaging directly with consumers in a more profound way.

Over the course of the past year and a half, Panasonic has been driving a key initiative called Living in High Definition.  They have been selecting real families from across the United States and equipping them with a full suite of HD products.  Why?  To demonstrate just how much impact new Panasonic technologies really do have on how families spend their time and make memories, but also (and perhaps more importantly) to gain better insights into what real people want and how they use it once they have it.  We've been working with Panasonic to evolve the Living in HD program and the families involved with it into the seeds of an online community focused around digital consumer lifestyles, but that's another blog post for another time.  For now, it's enough to say that Living in HD is important to Panasonic; even moreso in 2009.

Given the strategic importance of Living in HD, CES also provided a fantastic opportunity to celebrate a couple of real HD families, let them experience CES and let them tell attendees just how their lives have changed because of their involvement with Panasonic.  We marketing geeks wring our hands over how to best convince social media insiders to spread word of mouth online.  Panasonic is taking it one giant step further and tapping into passionate (but at the end of the day, normal) consumers to tell the Panasonic story to buyers and reporters at the country's largest consumer electronics conference.  I love this approach (and while Panasonic is a crayon client, involving real families in the CES booth presence was the client's idea.)

And so, finally, we used CES as an opportunity to take this another step further by creating opportunities for the families and the influencers to meet, connect and forge new (hopefully) lasting friendships, like the one that is burgeoning between the Calandros of San Luis Obispo and MomCentral CEO (and newly minted Calandro fan) Stacy DeBroff.

Take that, all you social media size queens!

 
We social media types seem to spend an awful lot of time agonizing over ways to grow our network and (dare I say it) the amount of influence we wield. 

This scenario is played out daily on Twitter and, in many ways, Twitter is a micro-representation of the larger social mediasphere.  For my own part, I was jarred to find that I dropped nearly 100 Twitter followers overnight and generally suffer an inferiority complex over the fact that @amandagravel has about 1,000 more followers than I do (social media rule #37: the pretty girls will always win.)

Anyway... it turns out that we social media nerds may have it all wrong.  According to new research conducted by HP Labs and Cornell University, size doesn't really matter.  Instead, we should be gauging the influence (or Twinfluence at least -- the research specifically studied Twitter patterns) of a social media user less by the number of people in their network than by how well (and how often) they interact directly with other people. Cornell and HP draw the distinction between any Twitterer's larger network of so-called 'friends' and 'followers' (aka total strangers) and the smaller, 'hidden network' of real friends that the Twitterer actually interacts with.  You might argue whether interacting with one another on Twitter (or in any other social network) constitutes a solid enough basis for proper friendship, but the bottom line is clear and the case is compelling.  It's not the size of the ship but the motion of the ocean.

This kind of thinking offers an obvious takeaway for social media marketers, who historically seem to focus a bit too much on courting the so-called A List -- the bigger-than-big bloggers and top of the chart Twitterati who seem to present (but only sometimes deliver) the possibility of scale.  Suddenly, your social media plan is less hard science (give me the verifiable top 10) and more social science (help me understand who talks to who, how and why.) 

Of course, size and depth of connection are not mutually exclusive -- guys like Chris Brogan find ways to deliver both.  And of course, the finding that influence is really a matter of individual level person-to-person relationships isn't (or shouldn't be) a shocker.  But research that validates what you might have summized all along is never a bad thing.

Incidentally, all of this echos my own thinking about the nature of online communities.  In fact, I pretty much said so in one of my 2009 predictions for Peter Kim's crowdsourced eBook.  Here's what I predicted:

Social graph shrinkage.  Sure, the total population of social media users will continue to grow but with the rise of mososo and a resurgence of in person networking, many consumers will scale back on both the number of accounts they maintain AND their number of so-called “friends” and “followers.”  We’ll start using online social platforms to stay connected with the people we actually know and care about.  Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter.

You may now worship me as a Social Media Nostradamus. Just kidding of course (no I'm not) but I would love to hear your perspectives on this topic.  Chime in, if you're not already checked out for the holidays.

(Post inspired by Max Kalehoff's MediaPost coverage. I recommend reading his thoughts too.  Thanks Max.)

MarketingProfs webinar: 'Social Graces' on 1/22/09

I'm happy to announce that I'll be taking the MarketingProfs "virtual stage" on January 22nd, presenting a 90 minute online seminar about conversational marketing.  This web event is free for MProfs Premium Plus members and $129 for everyone else.

You can learn more and register at MarketingProfs.  I hope you can join me.

_____________________

Social Graces: Strategies to Take Your Social Media Marketing Beyond One-Off Tactics

Where: Online

When: January 22nd, 2009 @ 12 noon EST (90 minutes)

When it comes to social media, you may have tried one of everything — a blog, a Facebook Fan Page, a widget, an App, a Twitter account, the list goes on — without gaining any insight into whether or not any of them delivered real results. Or perhaps you’re so confused by (or frightened of) social media that you haven’t tried anything at all. In either case, now is the time to polish your act and develop some "social graces."

This seminar goes beyond the tried-and-true conversational marketing platitudes (be authentic, be transparent, the consumer is in control — really now?) and looks past the ever-changing menu of today’s "hot" Web 2.0 properties (how many of those will be around come year-end?) to provide a clear vision of how companies can leverage sweeping change and must-know trends to propel their digital marketing plans into the future.

That probably sounds like a tall order, and it is. It may sound too abstract, too conceptual, too hard to put into practice. It isn’t. Each insight, approach and concept will be illustrated with real examples of companies that have succeeded and — just importantly — companies that have failed. At the end of 90 minutes you will leave with a set of innovative approaches, a stack of specific ideas that you can implement right away, and a much better sense of how to make conversational marketing work for your business.

You Will Learn

• New ways to think about the role social media and conversation can, should and will play in your overall marketing mix.
• Key concepts that help simplify this whole social media thing in terms that even your CEO can understand.
• Why the social tools and platforms you choose are less relevant than the people you engage and the way your company "behaves."
• Why you need to ditch "old marketing" approaches when connecting with consumers through social channels.
• How to move beyond just the "what" and truly understand the "why" and "how" that can take your social media activities from me-too tactics to key components of your marketing advantage.

Who Should Attend

• Anyone who is responsible for their company’s social media marketing efforts or would like to learn more about how other companies are using social media and conversational marketing approaches to deliver business results.
• Marketing, PR and customer support professionals; senior executives and any company stakeholder who wants to gain a better understanding of what differentiates social media success and failure.
• This webinar focuses primarily on strategic approaches and next-level concepts. A familiarity with basic social media concepts and common social media tools is helpful, but not necessary – we will start with a basic primer before delving into the heart of the program.

REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT