Social Media Monitoring, Black Friday and the Why We Buy

Posted by gavinjohnston67

There is a wild-west mentality that dominates the corporate conversation about social media. Like the cavalier approach to the internet at the close of the 20^th century, strategy appears secondary as we scramble to find meaning behind numbers and attempt to generate capital out of something that is still in its infancy. This approach is mirrored in social media monitoring, which more often than not stops with just providing data. Numbers are gathered around an area of interest, a few correlations are run between data points and the findings are handed off to the client without any emphasis what any of if really means. As we come off of Black Friday and prepare for Cyber Monday, companies are sifting through mounds of data gleaned from social media monitoring in hopes of uncovering something that will give them the absolute edge over the competition, but it means precious little if we don’t understand the deeper issues behind shopping, gift giving, consumption, etc.

Granted, data provides an answer to “what is happening,” but it fails to address “why it’s happening.” The “why” comes from anthropological analysis to data to uncover connections between data points that are normally overlooked, which provides new business opportunities and ways of messaging to customers. Anthropology works from an assumption of the inherent interconnectedness of people, focusing on culture as the starting point of investigation. People and cultures are so complex, and anthropology strives to make sense of that complexity.

Similarly, digital anthropology seeks to connect dots and uncover relationships between data points by going beyond the search for statistical significance and focusing on producing valid, actionable insights. Loosely speaking, “reliability” is the extent to which a measurement procedure yields the same answer, however and whenever it’s carried out – it’s the data in their purest form. “Validity,” is the extent to which it fives the correct answer. Imagine a spike in negative Twitter conversations in late December about your company. While the information may be statistically reliable, it lacks meaning. It doesn’t even begin to approach an understanding of “why” with any kind of depth or understanding.

All too frequently, the questions we ask and the metrics we assign to them have very little to do with the subtleties of human behavior. The data doesn’t address whom these numbers represent, what social and cultural conditions are motivating the commentary or how independent variables influence the date. The result is that we make assumptions and ask questions that are simply wrong.

To overcome these issues, an anthropologically-trained researcher (or research team) filters data through a system of questions that tie each data point back to what we know about cultural patterns and trends. For example, if there is a spike on conversations about bacon, it might be tied to agricultural conditions, but it might also be tied to the fact that Anthony Bourdain talked about bacon martinis on his show the night before. Add that the fact that people who self-identify as “foodies” have doubled in the last few years and you start to realize that the conversation isn’t so much about the product but how the product fits into the larger pattern of people living their lives. This hypothetical spike in discussion reflects the need to be part of a special group with extensive knowledge or expertise that makes them extraordinary in the eyes of other people. And that is the place real opportunity lies.

These same principles can be applied to all social media and online activity. Whether your company is selling soap or helping people make multi-million dollar transactions, human behavior is usually more complex than the numbers alone would suggest. Discovering these connections are where the real opportunities reside.

Keep in mind, other companies have the same data you do and they too are searching the web with the hope of uncovering some hidden insight. In fact, they face the same dilemma of not being able to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated topics. Uncovering these connections and understanding the reasons behind them means uncovering new revenue streams, new avenues of messaging and new business opportunities before the competition can act. Digital anthropology helps move social media monitoring from “what” to “why” to “what next.”

Reversing Roles: Online to Brick and Mortar

Posted by gavinjohnston67

There’s a simple message for most retailers that has become common in advertising discourse over the last few year: stop talking about yourselves so much.  And while I tend to agree with this point of view, what does it necessarily mean? I think it’s less about the frequency of the message and more about the nature of it. We are no longer pushing goods, we are engaging in a dialog.

Bricks and mortar retailers are at an interesting crossroads. In-store sales driven purely by price considerations are losing ground as experiential designs gain ground. And these retailers have a marvelous opportunity to learn from their fellow online team members (often forgotten in the silos that define so many businesses) and their online competitors. Just as online retailers have struggled to generate repeat sales, so too have brick and mortar spaces. But the online world has already learned an important lesson – focusing on an added value approach rather than pushing the brand will lead to greater sales and greater loyalty.

Step one is to recognize a very difficult proposition. Namely, companies are no longer in the business of pushing goods, they’re in the business of creating fans and attracting devotees. That means shifting the experience from a transaction to a dialog that puts your brand squarely in the lives of people. If you gain permission to be part of a consumer’s daily life, you become a fixture, a player on their life stage. You gain permission by sharing. You don’t gain that permission if you spend your energy yelling about yourself.  Well, obviously. But how do you do it? Increasingly, social media analysis is a large part of the equation. Indeed, this is often the starting point for a campaign because it has the greatest reach and provides a more realistic view of how the world understands and shares your brand. Online retailers were quick to embrace this idea on two levels.

First, they have generally found a way to offer an unexpected value add, such as the Zappo’s shipping and return policies. There is a clear benefit that goes beyond the economic return in that it also is a wonderful experience – tracking, cost savings and decidedly happy people. Second, is the point of social engagement and capital. Returning to the Zappo’s example, they have made the customer experience very public, displaying not only praise but the ugly side as well. Rather than resulting in people dropping the company, they have seen their social media presence (and their sales) grow, as people come to see them as genuine, down to earth and open. The people who use them become ambassadors for the brand and increase their own sense of self-worth in the process.

I am by no means suggesting that social media is the answer, but I am suggesting that social engagement by companies and brands have become an expectation for consumers, just as we expect a company to have an ecommerce presence. The difference is that while ecommerce can provide an ocean of analytics (in the purely statistical sense), they rarely get at the subtle richness of online conversations. This means going beyond collecting numbers and sentiments and digging into the underlying connections between what is written, what is shared, and how personal identity shapes how a brand is discussed, interpreted and used. Not only does such an approach allow you to map out voiced perceptions about a brand, it allows you to identify primary influencers and how it is they gain that status. Once you understand that, you can begin mapping out a plan for how you will approach your existing market as well as find new points of entry. And that’s a pretty compelling thing.

Personality Seepage

Posted by gavinjohnston67

My friend Bryan Crawford posted a marvelous article by Bethlehem Shoals on “Personality Seepage” yesterday that got me revisiting an issue I’d set aside, namely, the presentation of self in virtual life. Beautifully written (unlike most of my muses), the article sums up the increasing difficulty we have in separating our various senses or displays of self thanks to the digital age.

Personality seepage is the consequence of the liminality that occurs (that nether-state between one construct of reality and another), when we put too much of ourselves online at once. With the array of IM windows, boxes, and browsers all crammed together on our laptop, iPad or telephone screens, we see seepage. Personal and professional language become blurred and the lines we draw between one projection and another break down.

Of course, this leads me back to anthropologist Erving Goffman and the theoretical model in anthropology and sociolinguistics rooted in the idea of constructed identity – that we create, or adapt, based on context. As we communicate with people, we share different parts of ourselves, adopting a slightly different personas, so to speak, to fit the context. It is a co-creative act and one that has social and cultural rules that define the interaction. The written word, with no face behind it and no real direct interaction to guide our conversation through non-verbal/non-textual cues exacerbates the situation. Unlike most situations, we have no clear way to define our contexts and we juggle too many conversations at once.

More often than not, the blurring leads to expressions that can be taken as insulting or simply out of place. We inadvertently display a side of our personalities we want to stress with one person but conceal with another. So much for the praise we heap on the notion of authenticity in what we say and do. Authenticity isn’t about being “real,” it’s about a different kind of projection, one that is more about establishing a friendly context. The authenticity of a person is, in truth, the last thing we want.

But why does any of this matter? It matters because of our new love affair with social media monitoring and the ways we build products, services and messages to accommodate the virtual self. We monitor half truths and make decisions based on spurious exchanges in the virtual universe. In other words, Personality Seepage is the frequently the communicative norm in virtual space and that means the people to whom we market or for whom we build are not the people we think we know. It’s not enough to simply watch and “listen” in the social media universe. We have to understand what happens offline as well.

Who Are You on FaceBook Today?

Posted by gavinjohnston67

Coming out of anthropology, I have always been interested in social and cultural interaction, identity, and how we display ourselves in a public venue. Because brands are focusing more and more on social media as a significant point of marketing, it becomes increasingly important to understand the nuances of who is actually speaking and being spoken to in a virtual environment. How do self-presentation strategies impact who we choose to be in a social media space?

Anthropologist Erving Goffman used the imagery of the theater to portray the importance of social action. But unlike others who have used this metaphor, he took all elements of acting into consideration. A person’s main goal is to keep his coherence, and adjust to the different settings offered him. In other words, whether in the real world, the virtual world, or the juncture where the two meet, we negotiate what we let people know about ourselves and how we feel about a brand. And this has implications for how we consider incorporating social media sites into the branding process.

Take gender. Marketers frequently target based in part on gender. Second Life software doesn’t allow gender to be left undefined. However, unlike real life, the virtual environment allows players to switch genders fairly freely. One survey shows that only 10-15 percent of residents switch gender on a regular basis. The implication is simple – how reliable is Second Life as a marketing tool when the target market isn’t what it seems?

Second Life is an extreme example insofar as it relies on establishing a fictional self in a fictional world. But what about Face Book? Does this idea of performance hold up under scrutiny? Yes. Picture choices, blog entries, and the brands we brag about (or rail against) take on a constructed element that reflects a state of performance outside the scope of face to face interaction. People become “experts” based on their writing styles, their image choices, and their frequency of posting. People take extreme positions on a brand as a way of establishing credibility. The web is an inherently creative space and while people like to see themselves as rational, objective players, human beings are rarely as rational as they think.

So what is a brand to do when it comes to social media?

Difficult as it sounds, step one is to quit worrying about control of the brand. Since people are essentially using the brand as a way of directing attention at themselves, it makes more sense to simply engage as much as possible and talk about what you do well.

Focus on maintaining a consistent brand message instead of reacting. People respond to consistency in part because they understand that the people we encounter in social media suffer from what amount to mood swings, bad days, etc.

Be willing to create buzz, even if some of that buzz is occasionally negative. Mediocrity breeds indifference. Learn to be comfortable with extremes.

Finally, remember that people want to have a reason to discuss your brand and will find a way to do it whether you like it or not.

By Gavin

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