Member-to-Member

Expert Advice: Humble Thyself Before the Paradigm Shift

Got an exec breathing down your neck wanting to know the ROI on your social media budget while you scramble around trying to develop monetization schemes and explain why social network ad revenue is down? Don't show her this video. Instead, grab yourself a big cup of something steamy, sit down, and watch it yourself. Watch it to be reminded that behind the curtain of the social media revolution you are monetizing your career on, is a cultural paradigm shift so fundamental that there is absolutely no way an expert or anyone else today can know what the marketing plan of the future really looks like.

Watch the video while anthropologist Michael Wesch (KSU Asst. Prof) takes you on a hour-long insightful and entertaining tour of the dynamics of social networks' popularity through the example of YouTube. The social media maven will laugh but the true expert will see that behind the fun Dr. Wesch is explaining how the social revolution in communication (not media) is building new models of human interaction and even self-identity that promise to shift our definition of community as deeply as the shift from tribe to nation state did thousands of years ago, but along entirely new dimensions (he doesn't' go that far, but I do).

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And after you've watched the video - all the way to the end, past the silly teenagers and babies spawning viral fun on a global scale to where the crotchety old man reveals his many selves and the people cry and feel betrayed to where the man who lost his child talks about how YouTube helped him live again - reflect on your own social media experience that makes you so sure you're an expert (ever mindful that even experts can disagree).

Organizational Identity in the Age of Social Media

I’m very late in picking up a conversational thread with Ben Martin that I dropped in Feb(!) about how organizations can and should participate in the social web. I need to set the record straight if nothing else that Ben and I are in strong agreement on the problem – if not the solution.  

In short, Ben and I agree that, as he says so eloquently, organizations are becoming "conversationally impotent in today's marketplace" to the extent that they don't let their employees and customers champion them in personal and individual ways from within the social web (and in the real world as well). Where Ben and I may not be in agreement is that I do not think the solution is to send these employees and customers forth unprepared, unmonitored and unchecked to shape the public image of the organization according to their own personality because there are very real downsides to the organization in doing this, and because some of the potential upside may be missed as well.

This fundamental dilemma - how to enable an organization's broader audience to carry forth its identity while still maintaining some level of control over the dialog and "company line" is the essential challenge for strategic marketers in the days, months and years ahead; and how we handle it will render us either essential or irrelevant to our organizations' success in the marketplace. Personally, I plan to be on the side of "essential."

Branding in the Era of Social Media

Pundits and hacks alike have been pondering the impact of social media on the mysterious yet powerful discipline of Branding. I am no different and am cooking on a truly brilliant theory of my own (really, I am - stay tuned) about this multifaceted subject. But before I get to brilliance, I wanted to point to a dialog going on among ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership members on its marketing list serve because - thanks to Ben Martin and his insightful blog response to the discussion - it illustrates a specific and yet important example of what modern 'brand police' are having to deal with.