The world of “Wikinomics” (aka collaboration)

The first four chapters of Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams’ Wikinomics can essentially be summed up with one sentence that appears on page 37: “Whether people are creating, sharing, or socializing, the new Web is principally about participating rather than about passively receiving information.”

The numerous examples used in the book demonstrate not only the fact that anyone can create content, but that individuals can now collaborate across platforms that were once thought to be barriers, such as regions and corporations. Participation is, for the most part, simple. Whether it’s the Goldcorp Challenge that turned a $100 million company into a $9 billion one or the tale of Linux, IBM, and the beginnings of open-source software, Tapscott and Williams’ stories illustrate that the opportunities for participation on the Web are constantly increasing because of the variety of Web-based tools available. (For more great examples of collaboration, check out the Web site for Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs. His book – which I think does a better job of explaining the phenomenon of how technology eases collaboration than Wikinomics – is a must read too.)

I think there are three big reasons people like participating in the online space and will continue to do so:

• The technical side of things, for the most part, is pretty easy. You don’t have to be an HTML expert to have a MySpace page or post your photos on Flickr. A lot of the technology is such that anyone – whether you’re incredibly tech-savvy or don’t have the slightest clue how to do anything on a computer besides type – can create material online.

• It’s inexpensive. There are numerous sites, such as Blogger and WordPress, that will host your blog for free. There’s no membership fee to be part of social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Sites like YouTube and Flickr don’t charge for posting multimedia, either. (Well, unless you have a pro account on Flickr, but the free accounts are more than sufficient.)

• Information is updated constantly. Instead of waiting for the 2008 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica to be released, visit Wikipedia. (Granted, the information in Wikipedia is not always guaranteed to be accurate – take this story about Kenneth Lay’s Wikipedia entry, for example – but it’s often corrected pretty quickly.) If you want to read the latest news stories, read a blog or an online news source instead of waiting for tomorrow’s Washington Post.

There are so many ways that people can, as Tapscott and Williams put it, “enhance the Web.” And the biggest advantage to all these social media and collaboration tools is that anyone can use them.

And the Ultimate Question is….

When I first saw this book listed on our class syllabus, I was intrigued. The ultimate question? What exactly is the Ultimate Question? I found my answer on page 28:

“How likely is it that you would recommend company X to a friend or colleague?”

In Fred Reichheld’s book, “The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth”, he argues that company’s profits are both good (coming from a satisfied customer) and bad (coming from an unsatisfied customer). Part of figuring out what portion of your profits are “good” (and knowing how to grow your profits in the future) is understanding who’s promoting you versus who is unhappy with your service or product. Reichheld even has a formula that will help companies calculate what he calls their Net Promoter Score, or NPS. A company’s NPS is essentially equal to its promoters minus its detractors (the unhappy customers)….and this score influences a company’s profits and growth.

Reichheld argues that “companies need to understand the economic value that results from building better relationships.” Yes, even one customer’s perception of a company can potentially affect its bottom line.  Actually, as my classmate Luke pointed out, Reichheld actually says that one negative comment about a company can neutralize between three and 10 positive comments. And this is where the Ultimate Question comes in: studies have shown that potential customers trust their peers more than they do advertisements or newspaper articles. According to the 2007 edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer (full disclosure: I work at Edelman), people are heavily influenced by their friends, family, coworkers, and other who they consider to be similar to themselves. “For the second consecutive year, “a person like me” or a peer is the most trusted spokesperson in the United States at 51%.”

Because people are so heavily influenced by what their friends and family are saying, corporations have to develop and maintain good relationships with their customers. But Reichheld points out that many companies are so huge that it’s becoming increasingly difficult (and often costly) to obtain feedback from a substantial number of customers. So how can companies effectively solicit responses from those who have bought their product or service?

Companies can come right here…to the Internet. With numerous types of social media available, the Internet allows companies to listen to what customers are saying about them and to build relationships with these customers. For example, a corporate blog can serve as a pseudo focus group but also allows companies the opportunity to respond to those commenting on the blog. This two-way communication is key to building relationships, and the Internet provides many effective, inexpensive outlets on which to do this. Granted, not all customers spend time online or feel inclined to comment on a blog, but creating corporate blogs or forums is certainly one good approach that a company can (and should) take when reaching out to customers.

Of course, the idea of obtaining feedback online isn’t new. Listservs, online forums, and e-mail groups (like the one created by the Consumer Tax Group, as mentioned in Reichheld’s book) were among some of the original online methods used to garner comments from customers. But the current technology and social media landscape are continually making this process much easier.

Search: Algorithms and tagging and linking, oh my

The concept of search is something that’s always been a little mysterious (for lack of a better term) to me.  Sure, I understand the basic idea of it, but how does search really work?  Search Engine Watch describes how crawler-based search engines “spider” Web pages, index pages, and then rank them in the order that the search engine software thinks is most relevant.  The third part of this equation is what intrigues me the most. 

How are ranking algorithms written that they can determine what site is more popular or relevant to a user versus another?  GoogleGuide explains this a little bit, noting that Google uses over 100 factors in determining a site’s PageRank, such as the position and size of the search terms on a given page.  This recent New York Times article that a colleague sent me does an even better job of explaining how Google constantly tweaks its PageRank algorithms to ensure users are quickly and easily finding what they want.  (Really, this article is a must-read if you’re even remotely interested in search.)  But for the most part, the intricacies of ranking algorithms will remain a mystery to most of us.  Like the NYT article says, employees at places like Google are barely allowed to discuss it…because these innerworkings are what give search engines their competitive edge.

For those of us in the social media world, though, it’s a good thing for us that some people do discuss what it takes to optimize a blog or social media site so that it’s highly visible in a search.  Rohit Bhargava’s “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)” and Guy Kawasaki’s interview with Technorati founder David Sifry both discuss similar ways to try and increase a blog’s ranking.  They mention a variety of ways to make a blog more visible: make tagging and bookmarking easy for users, link to other blogs, put a full-text RSS feed on your blog, post frequently, submit your content to other sites, and so on.

These are great recommendations for bloggers who are looking to optimize their blog in terms of its rank in different search engines…but I’m still a little skeptical.  With millions of blogs out there, simply following Sifry’s and Bhargava’s advice is not an automatic recipe for making it into the Technorati Top 100.  These strategies will absolutely help bloggers make themselves more visible, but putting these SMO tips into practice isn’t a surefire way to enjoy a ranking spot near DailyKos or Gawker. Clay Shirky, an instructor at New York University, conducted a study that offers some insight as to why certain blogs are popular and listed as top search results while the rest are not.  For you celeb gossip junkies out there, it’s kind of like Hollywood: there are the A-listers….and then there’s everyone else whose names we barely know.

This piece in New York Magazine, “Blogs to Riches: The Haves and the Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom”, is a favorite of mine.  Shirky did several experiments to examine the “disparities in the blogosphere.”  He started by counting inbound links to a sample of 433 blogs.  He found that the A-list – a very small number of blogs – had hundreds of inbound links.  Yet almost all the others had only a few sites linking to them.

“Economists and network scientists have a name for Shirky’s curve: a “power-law distribution.” Power laws are not limited to the Web; in fact, they’re common to many social systems. If you chart the world’s wealth, it forms a power-law curve: A tiny number of rich people possess most of the world’s capital, while almost everyone else has little or none.”

I’m assuming that these 433 bloggers in Shirky’s experiment certainly employed strategies to help them get noticed.  But based on these results of Shirky’s experiment, it’s an uphill battle for bloggers to increase their ranking even if they’re following the tips from Bhargava and Siftry.  Perhaps it can be done but….who can actually “make it big” in the blogosphere? 

“Google never forgets.”

It’s obvious that, although social media isn’t exactly brand new (according to Wikipedia, Justin Hall was the first blogger in 1994 and the term “weblog” was coined in ’97), companies are still grappling with how to respond to citizen marketers. McConnell and Huba’s book “Citizen Marketers” Where People are the Message” is full of stories about corporations who’ve decided not to respond to what could potentially be some of their company’s greatest allies. New tales of companies shying away from interacting with these 1 Percenters are popping up all the time. All these incidents raise an important question: how do we get companies to change their thinking about citizen marketers and realize that corporations can no longer fully control the message?

One of my favorite points that McConnell and Huba make is this: “With the Power of One, Google never forgets.” This is so true. One company misstep, one missed opportunity to connect with a 1 Percenter, and the entire world will probably read about it…and will be able to read about it for years to come.

Remember what happened with Kryptonite Locks in 2004? This article from Wired gives a good rundown of the events that ensued. Chris Brennan, a “bike enthusiast and network security consultant” opened a pricy Kryptonite bike lock with a Bic pen. Brennan posted his experience on an Internet forum, and then additional posts began appearing on related forums and Web sites. Instead of directly addressing Brennan’s discovery, Kryptonite declined to comment. Instead, they talked about releasing a new lock design that is supposedly more secure. Brennan said he would never purchase a Kryptonite lock again. (And who can blame him?)

For obvious reasons, this is great example of a “don’t” when it comes to citizen marketers and corporations. Companies can no longer ignore what’s being said about them in the online space. And trying to ignore that conversation usually only hurts corporations in the long run.

This leads back to the point of “Google never forgets.” Try running a Google search for “Kryptonite bike lock.” Guess what? Not counting the sponsored links, the first link is to the Wikipedia entry about Kryptonite which, in the brief summary on the search page, mentions the Bic pen incident. The second and third search results are posts from the popular blog Engadget about the company’s locks being “hacked by a Bic pen.” The fourth link is the Kryptonite Web site. And remember that Brennan cracked the Kryptonite lock three years ago.  Once this missteps occur, they don’t just fall into oblivion a month later….which is why it’s so important that companies learn to adapt to and work with citizen marketers.

So many companies don’t understand the idea of citizen marketers because they’re so determined to control their image at any cost, even if it means ignoring the people to whom they should be listening. McConnell and Huba give some great examples of companies who, on some occasions, didn’t quite embrace the 1 Percenters; check out the sections about “iPod’s Dirty Little Secret”, the woman with the “Slave to Target” blog, and Coca Cola’s reaction to the Diet Coke and Mentos video.

Although these citizen marketers are forcing many companies out of their comfort zones, the online conversation about corporations isn’t going to go away. Companies have to learn how to listen and respond to citizen marketers. Pete Blackshaw makes a great point in that companies must put themselves in the shoes of the consumer. It’s all about – as Blackshaw says – “listening-centered marketing.” But he also acknowledges that this isn’t easy.

Blackshaw writes: “But let’s face it; listening is hard. I’m not terribly good at it, nor are many of my industry friends who wave the “listening” banner. It takes work. What we hear can throw us off track. But without new frameworks for putting our ear to the consumer pulse, we’ll never get it right, and we’ll never have the benefit of conversation to inform judgment or “marketing optimization.”

Why citizen marketing (and social media) works

Marketing and public relations are no longer just about blasting out a press release or buying advertising space. In the Web 2.0 world, citizen marketers – a term used by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba in their book “Citizen Marketers: Where the People are the Message” – are playing an increasing role in shaping how brands are portrayed by the public. Steve makes a great point in his blog post: corporations are not in control of the message anymore, and are being held accountable for their actions by their various publics, often through these citizen marketers.

McConnell and Huba mentioned four types of citizen marketers in the first chapter of the book:

1. Filters: the “human wire services” who collect blog posts, podcasts, and other types of media
2. Fanatics: those who love to analyze brands, organizations, and the like
3. Facilitators: creators of Web-based communities
4. Firecrackers: the “one-hit wonders of citizen marketers” who create videos, songs, or other media that quickly generate interest

The most important aspect of citizen marketing, in my mind – and the thing that all four types of citizen marketers have in common – is the fact that what they say and do is both authentic and transparent. This is why citizen marketing is credible and influential. Like McConnell and Huba said, “The world of citizen content creators is largely governed by a universal law of authenticity . . . Faking authenticity is a difficult art.” Those citizen marketers whose actions aren’t genuine will, through the wisdom of the crowds, be exposed.

That’s the great thing about citizen marketing (and social media, for that matter): if something is incorrect or not authentic, the public will make it known. Robert Scoble touts this fact on his blog when he talks about social media:

“A newspaper can’t magically change its stories, even if society decides something in them is incorrect. My blog can be updated for all readers nearly instantly if someone demonstrates that I was wrong on a post.”

Of course, there will always be some who doubt the credibility of citizen marketing. Douglas Adams wrote that people can’t trust what they find on the Internet “any more than you can trust what people tell you on megaphones, postcards, or in restaurants.” Although the concept of Web 2.0 is still evolving, the fact that new media is changeable and is also shaped by the collective knowledge of the crowds increases the credibility of those publishing and interacting via the Web.

The authenticity of citizen marketing efforts, though, is hurt by things like Jason Calacanis’s experiment to pay the top 12 social bookmarkers for contributing to sites like Digg, Reddit, and Newsvine. Like McConnell and Huba wrote, “the 1 percenters contribute” to social networking sites because they enjoy it. When someone is under pressure to contribute or post a comment, it becomes work. One of Digg’s contributors said it best in the e-mail he wrote to decline Calacanis’s offer:

“I don’t need to be paid [for] what I do now. I will commit my time to Digg whenever possible, that’s how much I enjoy Digg. It’s not about the money, it’s what you enjoy, and this is what I like.”

Again, the whole reason citizen marketing works is because it’s organic and genuine and generated by someone just like you and me. And for citizen marketing to remain credible, we have to ensure it stays that way.

Digital Musing…let the fun begin

Welcome to Digital Musing, home to all my random thoughts on the Web 2.0 world. This blog was created for a class called Public Relations in the Age of Digital Influence at the Johns Hopkins University. The course is taught by John Bell of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

Let the blogging begin…and happy reading.