Malcolm Gladwell On Why Social Media Won’t Cause Revolutions

Posted on 08. Apr, 2010 by Natalie in Highlights, Marketing & Sales, Social Media

There were 3 key things I learned at the F5 Expo held in Vancouver yesterday

1. Always charge your iPhone and camera.
2. Not having an iPhone to multi-task on while watching speakers is saving me from brain damage
3. Malcolm Gladwell is a passionate intellectual who knows that online communities will not cause offline revolutions.

F5 Expo `Refreshing Business Strategies’ was a day for those wanting to know more about social media use for small business. I found it a little  101 in terms of information disseminated, and it seems I wasn’t alone – one of my 4 tweets was quoted here.

However there were some gems of information and I’ll share them with you below.

Tod Maffin – Taking Crazy Back

In some ways it was a blessing in disguise that my iPhone died 1 hour in, especially after listening to an excellent presentation from a lively and humorous Tod Maffin encouraging us to gain balance and stop multi-tasking. I found myself being present, listening and writing notes instead.

Work/Life Balance

Tod was an entrepreneurial wonder kid who took a napkin idea to launch and then public.

Overnight success for partners? $10Million.
Lifetime damage from 20 hour days and spreading yourself too thin by doing too much? Priceless.

Tod suffered a complete breakdown the day after they went public and went on to suffer depression and alcoholism and has been left with permanent damage.

He urged us to look at our actions and habits and lead less stressful lives for the sake of our health and sanity. As he said `Society rewards busy-ness, not working smarter or harder’. As a result depression is now the leading cause of short term disability in the workplace.

You are not an energizer bunny (aside from Winnie Lai), multi-tasking is not productive and creates short-term brain functionality as opposed to long term memory.

How to change?

We need to create a culture where asking for help is rewarded and mentorship and job shadowing is encouraged. We need to build `gut feeling’ into our decision making.

Normally we run a business on ability, reputation and price. He challenged us to

1. Trust your instincts
2. Abolish presenteeism – i.e “I’m having a shite week so I’m not coming in today”
3. Be crazy – unique, bold and brave.

Social Media Metrics

As this area grows people are rightly focused on ROI. But how do you track that?

Firstly you need to employ Darren Barefoot’s acronym of POST – People, objectives, strategy, tactics.

Identify where the people are, then focus on your business objectives, define the metrics that show your success – you’re most interested in the number of clicks – on your tweet links, on your ads, on your call to action buttons.

Then build your own social media monitoring dashboard. Throw stuff against the wall and measure it. Try things out – Google Ads, Facebook Ads, competitions and track it via Google Analytics, Bit.ly, Facebook Insights.

Best free tool to bring all this tracking info together is Netvibes.com – quick way to scan and report on qualitative and quantitative data.

Search Engine Marketing =

Pay Per Click (advertising)   +     Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)   +    Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Someone searching for what your business offers is 25% more likely to click through if they see you in both paid and organic search – a culmination of the above.

Search engines sites all look for relevant and fresh content that’s being searched for by people. So use keywords and especially longtail keywords – phrases like `Internet marketing for small business’ that are relevant but receive less searches so are less competitive.

PPC and SEO work best if you’re descriptive about your product or service.

Video for Business Use

Look at your target market. Have a creative idea, make it quirky, interesting and address a problem.
Surround your video with more text so search engines find it first – it’s useful to embed it in your blog as well as post it on YouTube.

Video doesn’t need to go viral to be effective – needs to educate, engage and enlighten your customers.

When is it not useful to use video? When you’re providing a deep analysis of something, it’s better to use text then as it’s cheaper and faster to write an article and better for SEO.

Creating Revolutions in Social Media

Malcolm Gladwell’s a respected thought leader, intellectual and best-selling author of Outliers, Tipping Point and Blink.

He spoke about innovation and limitations. In his presentation he played devil’s advocate to the use of Social Media and stated why it can’t start revolutions. My takeaway notes are below plus the video intro of his speech.

1. The Internet exploits Weak Ties, but Revolutions are Built of Strong Ties. Social Media is excellent for allowing you to build weak ties but you must ensure you strengthen them by creating real relationships. Revolutions are caused by committed friends willing to risk their lives.
2. The Internet draws value from anonymity by creating freedom of expression, but revolutions are built of trust and if someone’s anonymous you won’t trust them.  Trust is built from lots of high contact interactions and physical proximity – something that is undermined by the internet.
3. Internet favors spontaneous activity but revolutions are always organized and built brick by brick over a long period of time. Social Media tools may provide instantaneous, cheap and easy to build momentum, but they can be just as easily dismantled. We need to build permanent infrastructure.

It was controversial, entertaining and filled with excellent historical examples. A great way to end the day. I’m looking forward to reading his new book.

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Tags: F5 Expo Malcolm Gladwell, Social Media Metrics, Tod Maffin Taking Crazy Back, Video for Business Use