Online Media Landscape 2009/2010 - The line between classic and online media is blurring

When the media is perceived in the context of online influence, there is no exact line between the types of social media and the classic media. The focus should be on the target groups, and the goals of an organization, considering reacing a right audience.

Brand Media

Brand Media combines classic media with new online media. Almost all very popular online media outlets become a brands, comparable with classic media brand values. The examples of brand media include Huffington Post, Engadget, Techcrunch, etc.

A majority of online users have the same perception on purely online media and popular blogs, at the same way as they consume classic media Web sites.

Agregation Media

Aggregation Media are mainly a social media outlets. They have risen as the important online syndication-based source for the filtering the information, tailored by an user needs. The examples include Digg, Delicious, Google News, TechMeme, AllTop, etc.

Aggregation media bring visits to a syndicate Web sites (the owners of content), and users  have option to follow a plethora of online sources through an aggregation media.

Amateur Media

Amateur Media are the product of user generated content (UGC). Milions of blogs, social networks, forums and other forms of social media profiles, based on user generated content, are generally created by some amateurs (“unknown crowd”). The examples are users’ accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Youtube, Flickr, etc.

Those “amateurs” are not perceived as “serious/influential media” (by media experts), until they enter in the field of brand media.

Consumer Media

Consumer Media are the product of user generated reviews, on a classic Web sites, as well as on a social media platforms. If a Web site generate the users’ opinions related to some products and services, that Web site is consumer medium which directly influence the buying behavior of an user.

E.g. the shops with influential user reviews like Amazon.com, or IMDB.com are also Consumer Media, as well as review-based websites like Epinions.com.

Custom Media

Custom media is a marketing term referring broadly to the development, production and delivery of media designed to strengthen the relationship between the sponsor of the medium and the medium’s audience.

Organizations create custom media, and they are in the strong competition with an advertising-based media, using a different revenue model. The main goal of custom media is to achieve as much target audience as it can be, at the similar waz how it is done bu classic media. The differnce is in the editorial focus, as well as in the revenue model. The examples include GSK Alli, UPS Compass, Oracle Magazine, etc.

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The problem is in the fact that when I want to more interact in Serbian language, a lot of non-Serbian speaking followers will not understand the statusses, and it could be very boring to them. I experience myself the same issue with some persons with a multilingual Twitter accounts I follow, and often I miss something important from those people. The reason is - I did not have enough attention regarding a lot of tweets in other language(s).

Finally, yesterday I got the tweet from Oliver Gassner (very influential German blogger) with this remark:

I created the account http://twitter.com/draganvaragic to have it only for tweets and the interaction in English. I hope that this will work, although there is the advice not to do multilingual tweets with separate Twitter accounts.

What are your experiences doing multi-lingual Twitter?

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It is indicative that many social media experts use the term “Social Capital” to clarify and define the benefits of an organization’s use of Social Media, although there are not a lot of places where you can find the explanations about connections between the Social Capital and Social Media.

Defining Social Media Capital

Social capital is a social science concept, which in essence defines the value of the connections in the (offline and online) social networks.

As in the other forms of Capital, the value is not important by itself,  when it is produced by the connections in the social networks. That value can be earned and spent, as the benefit of organization’s engagement in social media environment.

According to Susan Mernit, Social Media Capital represents the value which is developed by the connections, the reputation and the influence of an individual or an organization, in the social media environment.

Susan Mernit also defines the connections between Social Capital and Social Media Ecosystem (Social Media Capital), with the three Rs rule - Referral, Recommendation and Reputation.

The Experts and the Practice of Social Media Capital

Steve Rubel recently created a column in The AdAge magazine - “How to Build Social Capital“, with the practical advices in the field of Social Media Capital.

Mashable has the interesting text related to Social Media Enterprise, or B2B segment of Social Media Capital.

Stephen Denny has interesting example which clarifies the difference between Offline Social Capital and Social Media Capital:

A friend of Stephen Denny (she has a significant offline social capital) posted a Tweet, which made him ‘a little angry’: “Please go to some website and vote for my company in some contest that you’ve never heard of.”

In this case, the online reputation of the mentioned person is not well developed, although she has earned enough offline reputation, according to Mr. Denny. She could not persuade him to do the desired action, because she does not have enough online influence:

• The reputation between these two persons is developed through theirs mutual trust. It is not a trust between her company and him. The trust in friend and the trust in friend’s company are two completely different trusts! Advice - Do not forget that you are not the company you represent!
• Unknown Web site and unknown contest are not the ways how you can earn the online credibility. One of the basic parameters of the development of online credibility is - provide the relevant content. If you do not know what is a relevant online content, you have to learn online evaluation.

Social Media Capital and Reputation Economy, Social Innovation, Generation G

It is very obvious why at these days all of “stuff in business” is related to “Social Innovation” (look at the first paragraph of this article).

In online environment, Social Media Capital is the concept that follows the thoughts about “Economy of Free“, by Chris Anderson, which is based upon something called “Reputation Economy“.

Some authors use the term Whuffie (Whuffie Factor) as the Reputation System measure. Whuffie is the reputation-based currency, and it is perceived as the synonym for Social Capital. The authors who use the term “Whuffie”, they put the equal sign between the Social Capital and the reputation.

There is the (online) population which is (conceptually) raised through the actual social changes, and the (buzzword) name of those people is “Generation G” - “G” comes from “Generosity”. “Generation G” is culture of individuals (based on the leading societal and business mindset) who share, give, engage, create and collaborate in large numbers.

It can be said that reputation means social (media) capital, or in other words, reputation is currency that influence the most of the online business success.

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“Content marketing represents the different marketing formats  that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases[…]”

While reading the articles related to content marketing basics, it can be said that only a few of them are not “captured” with the sole writer’s professional perspective:

• The people from software development/sales background (e-CMS) mostly emphasize the production of a different content formats (content as the product of some programming -  including software as a service (SaaS), mashups, etc.).
• The people form content writing/production background mostly emphasize the creation of compelling component of a content, which is very important (inbound) part of content marketing, but not the only important part.
• The people from SEO, social media, ePR and e-marketing background emphasize that the base of content marketing is the relation between SEO, social media and compelling content creation activities.

It can be noticed that there is not much said about the managerial perspective of content marketing, or what are the issues related to the implementation of content marketing strategy in an organization:

• From the broader perspective, content communication workflow (the desirable action from an user, as the result of a compelling component of a content) as the most important part of the content marketing strategy, can be implemented in the complete value chain of an organization (e.g. employers’ engagement on intranet portals, as the part of the enterprise 2.0 strategy).
• From the feasibility perspective, there are the issues related to the resources allocation (budgets, in-house activities, outsourced tasks, project management), the benefits related to the custom media creation (will you create your blog, news-blog, online magazine, etc.?), as well as the social media engagement scope (it is not the same if there is the organization’s engagement in 5 or in 50 different social media).
  The aim is to create the optimal set of content marketing activities, with the maximum results.
• From the implementation perspective, there is the issues related to the management of a content marketing activities (e.g. keywords research implemented without overlaping in the content creation; SEO & PPC activities; A/B split testing activities; tagging a uploaded content on youtube, flickr, slideshare… - These activities are done with a different specialists), the issues related to the maximization of the content life-cycle effects (e.g. it is not the same value of traffic volume and the time span for the same story in a press release or/and in a blog article).
  The aim is to cover a complete spectrum of the content marketing effects, with the focus on conversions.

Content Marketing Management is a set of activities and processes that support a creation and sharing the content, with the aim of maximizing the customer satisfaction and an organizational business results.

Content Marketing Management is not in the relation to content management, and it gives managerial perspective of content marketing activities. In the process level, Content Marketing Managment should incorporate business & marketing strategy, content strategy, content design, Web development (including SEO), Social Media Activities, as well as the Post-Click Marketing activities.
From the online conversion perspective, Content Marketing Management incorporates all content activities, including the projected content activities related to the acomplishment of an explicit online goals (visitors’ actions that lead to a conversion).

Btw. If you like this article, you can vote for it on Sphinn.com.

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This means that after a time, with some number of tweet post, this account could be seen as relevant - according to number of followers.

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After the development of the framework of a particular activities, it is much easier to create the detail map of the business processes and the responsibilities, needed to develop and maintain a social media activities within the company.

I researched a number of proposed frameworks for social media (optimization), and I found several very useful works. Here is the review of nine proposed general frameworks for social media (social media frameworks taxonomy), and the tenth is my proposition for the subject (I already created SMO Matrix, but it is related to the brand reputation management). The details for the proposed frameworks can be found on the destination Websites.

I - 11 Guidelines to Social Media Success by Eric Enge

First, I will present social media success map by Eric Enge, which is the collection of successful social media activities (advices):

1. Know your audience / Pick the right social media site to target
2. Discover the needs of your audience
3. Learn the lingo and value system
4. Make friends
5. Add unique value to the community
6. Don’t self promote
7. Make sure the information you provide is accurate
8. Be transparent
9. Be patient
10. Be prepared to let go (your content)
11. Don’t spam

II - Burton’s Group ACES Framework for Social Media

ACES is the complex framework based on the four elements:

1. Audiences
2. Capabilities
3. Enablement
4. Sustainability

It is the recommendation to examine all the given slides at the destination Website.

III - KUDOS Framework for Social Media Marketing

Kudos framework is one of the most mentioned SM frameworks (together with the ACES framework) in the search results. It is related to the definition of the strategy and the evaluation of a social media campaigns:

1. Knowledgeable (Does social media activity demonstrate knowledge on the part of the brand?)
2. Useful (Not all of social media activity is useful to the brand’s audience.)
3. Desirable (Do the brand and the audience actively want social media activity?)
4. Open (Open means honest and transparent.)
5. Sharable (Another degree further of open is making the activity sharable.)

IV - OASIS Engagement Framework for Social Marketing

OASIS is a five step process:

1. Define your Objectives
2. Know your Audience
3. Develop a Strategy
4. Plan the Implementation
5. Think about Sustainment

V - A Framework for Social Media By Mark Ouyang

This framework is the structure of desirable goals related to social media activities. Those goals can be linked to the particular proposed features which are the representation of a social media activities.

VI - Framework For Social Media Strategies by Josh Klein

In his much wider article about social media, Josh Klein defined the framework for the development of social media strategies:

1. Be Listening (Social Media Monitoring)
2. Be Great (It’s impossible to fake greatness. Not in the long run.)
3. Be Available (Engagement)
4. Have A Conversion Engine (Social media is just another part of the larger puzzle, and nothing replaces a business model.)

VII - Social Media Process by Milestone

Milestone in their presentation “Social Media Optimization Strategies” defined six steps social media process (I like this one):

1. Setting social media campaign goals.
2. Creating social media strategy/Defining promotion plan.
3. Setting up customer’s profile on social media sites.
4. Training.
5. Social media tracking/Reputation management.
6. Returns.

VIII - 14 Steps Social Media Content Creation Process from “Now Is Gone”

This is very useful part of the creation of social media strategy, related to the content creation process, from the blog of the book “Now is Gone”:

1. Clearly articulate who your stakeholders are.
2. Clearly articulate the key issues these stakeholders care about.
3. Begin by researching which, if any, top bloggers are discussing these issues.
4. Once your initial search yields important blogs, please visit them and note which social networks the bloggers use to connect (back channels).
5. Don’t just observe, participate.
6. Comprehensive industry analysis.
7. Identify the outcomes the organization would like to achieve.
8. Identify the company’s value for the marketplace.
9. Draft an editorial mission to serve the community/stakeholders.
10. Examine the company’s resources.
11. Select the outreach mechanism(s) that best fits the industry’s preferred content needs…
12. Determine who will create the content.
13. Select general content categories to provide guidance on a weekly basis.
14. Determine measurement based on outcomes…

IX - Building A Company With Social Media by Elliance

How to engage the human resources of the company in social media landscape? Search Illustrated column @ SearchEngineLand.

X - Framework for Social Media by Dragan Varagic

Finally, here is my proposal of framework for social media (v. 0.2):

Social Media Optimization Framework

1. Defining the goals and the audiences.
2. Identifying and researching the competition.
3. The analysis of the chosen social media (conversation/content analysis).
4. The selection of the communicators (the persons who will use particular social media).
5. The education about the use of chosen social media.
6. Content plan creation and the deployment for the particular social media.
7. Visual identity usage, related to the rules of the particular social media.
8. Communication plan creation and the deployment for the particular social media.
9. Social media monitoring.
10. Evaluation (real-time).

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P2P Search, Distributed Search, Community Search = User Base!

Distributed search engine concept is not new, I read some posts about this approach to Web search four years ago, and my opinion about it that it is very interesting concept regarding breaking the monopoles in search engines industry by using p2p technology as the search platform, instead of proprietary web crawlers, thousands of SE’s servers, etc. But, I did not read about some successful p2p SE’s in any mainstream media, nor blogs. Will Edgios.com be the breaker of that? Maybe!

Edgios.com follows the basic rules of p2p distributed search engines platform, which means that it is basically community search engine. Community search engines are dependable of a user base volume, which means that a user base has to be built. And, it is not easy - In fact that is also the basic concept of social media. We are living in the time of various social media, and maybe that can be the benefit of new p2p search engines.

One of not very often told stories about Google.com success starts in 1994, when a group of college students start to use search engine prototype, later known as Google. Until 1999 Google user base was pretty big, those persons used Google for several years, and that was the greatest capital of Google success. Believe it, or not.

Edgios.com Strengths and Weaknesses

Edgios.com is in Alpha phase, and there is still not a lot of users, which means that search results are not very good at the moment. You have to install software that watch your web surfing, which means that all of your security software will be alarmed. You have to trust them that it is anonymous, that they have strictly privacy rules… And, there will be a lot of issues related to Web users who are not in the position to change the security rules of the computers they use (e.g. large networks of computers). But, it works.

It is in test phase, and I think that better design is needed, but for now it is not so important.

Edgios is a US company, based in Palo Alto, CA. The company is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), a premier Venture Capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA. DFJ shares with Edgios a passion for distributed computing, having backed Skype (as well as Baidu.com), the most successful P2P startup to date. If they can engage the Skype user base in some way, then…

I would like to see p2p SE’s as the competition of Google. Do you?

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When: October 4–5 2008.

Where: Bor, Brestovačka banja

This fall’s BlogOpen is a regional friendly and professional meeting of bloggers which has, since last fall, been on the calendar of regular annual meetings of all the participants in blogosphere: authors, readers, IT workers and mainstream media.

Goals:

1. Discussion about the topics and problems characteristic of this manner of public communication;

2. Realization of virtual communication in real, public space;

3. Calling wider public’s attention to this mode of authors’ presence and to the importance of an information society;

4. Promotion of an information society, electronic communication and the role of Internet as a source of information, educative tool, interpersonal networking and fostering of democracy;

5. Making notice of the most significant and most successful blogging authors and their impact as creators of public opinion and as sources of information.

More info…

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When the study is observed through the organizational communication level, there are the strong evidences related to the proliferation of less controllable online communication environment, through the significant rise of new “super influencers”.

“In Brazil a stunning 24% of active internet users fall into the super influencer category. They are followed by India, Mexico and Pakistan – demonstrating how internet users have found their voice thanks to their massive use of social media in these markets.”

In addition, I would like to emphasize the issue raised on the ReadWriteWeb discussion related to mentioned survey – What is an offline relationships impact of an online influencers? In my opinion, there is a lot more chance that offline influence of some person can be spread easily in online world (when the reputation management transfer is done correctly), related to pure online engagement of some person.

My experience tells me that the best influence results I have in the face-to-face communication, in both cases – when I know person from offline and online World. The best examples for spreading an online influence in offline world are niche conferences… It is the easiest way how to meet influencers and brought their attention to you.

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