The Jordan Rules

Social Networking

Primary Goal: Creating connections & relationships

Social networking isn’t a new phenomena, & I’m not convinced that the model for social networking has changed that much.

The basic idea of social networking is making connections with people drawn together by a common interest.

 

So, here’s the scenario:

You walk into a Star Trek convention and want to get to know the people in the room, hear new ideas, share stories, and eventually be known as an expert Star Trek fan. What do you do?

Well, you’d start by interacting with someone. But before you begin, you scan the room and realize a couple things:

A. People are congregating into clusters. The larger clusters seem to be having more engaging conversations.

B. There seems to be 3 different kinds of connections available:

The strong connection: Occurs when you meet someone that shares your interest and engages in a valuable exchange of information.

The weak connection: Similar to a strong connection, but the person either isn’t as passionate as you about the subject; or there’s a one way transfer of information.

The preexisting connection: Occurs when a person enters having a preexisting relationship with someone.

So, now you have to come up with an interaction strategy to achieve your goals.

Here’s what you decide:

1. You target a member of larger group because the larger group seems to have more strong connections. Those connections will help you get introduced to the rest of the group.

2. You begin by listening to the conversation. Learning the structure of the group, and what the discussion rules seem to be.

3. You jump in by offering some valuable information. A discussion ensues. You continue adding to the discussion, and eventually get to know those people you’re talking to. You’re well on you’re way to achieving your goals.

Later in the day, people start coming up to you, asking about certain things they heard you talk about. You engage them on a personal, one-on-one, level. Before you know it, people are asking seeking you out to introduce themselves and have a conversation with you. You did it. You’ve successfully participated in social networking.

These principles are the basis for social media marketing, and social business.

Social Media MarketingPrimary Goal: Creating customer advocates

Social media marketing is a relatively new phenomena, depending on how you look at it. Niche marketing and direct marketing has been around for ages; but they never had the open, online, social networks where members could engage in group discussions and create meaningful connections in real-time.Essentially, social media marketing works just like the social networking scenario I suggested earlier in the post; but instead of simply wanting to make connections to share information; you’d want to make connections for marketing reasons. (i.e. market research, marketing communications, crm, etc.)

Social Business

Primary Goal: Monetizing collective innovation & inventionSocial business is an emerging phenomena. Business, in general, works better when there’s open communication between colleagues. It works even better, when there’s a mechanism in place to assist with information overload. (i.e. My administrative assistant sorts through all the mail and only hands me the important stuff.)

A truly social business will focus the power of social media to achieve its business objectives. (Not to be confused with marketing objectives)Here’s the scenario:

You want to open a business that sells gift baskets, and you want it to be a social business. What would you do?Lets assume you’ve done all the legal work to get the business established. You’re now a business of 1. You need to create a business plan, with clear objectives. As a social business, you can begin including the community in your decision making. From business strategy, to branding, to marketing, to creating inventory, to distribution, to product development, to internal communication; you can engage multiple collectives and networks to help create & manage your business.

In game theory, a best response describes a players strategy that provides the best outcome to a set of conditions. In business, given the current market conditions, and evolution of online community communications; social business seems like the best response to business operations. (At least for new business, it seems to be the best response. For established business, the cost of changing would not make it the best response; but there are still integration options that make sense.)A pioneer in social business design is the Dachis Group and is full of thought leadership. Definitely some of the smartest guys in the room. Their visual description of social business design is a fantastically useful tool to describe a new, and complicated idea.

 

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