I’ve said recently that the big four networks’ situations will change drastically in the next five years, which has caused a bit of a stir in and around my community. They will not be the big hits that they have been, because people will seek more relevant, intimate and meaningful experiences in niche networks. We are already seeing this happen.

I don’t understand why that is so hard for people to grasp, especially as the big four really aren’t social networks any more: they just constantly root through your handbag for information to sell. I feel I can say that with confidence because we’ve been here before many times. As Shirley Bassey sings in “History Repeating”:

“The word is about, there’s something evolving, whatever may come, the world keeps revolving. They say the next big thing is here,that the revolution’s near, but to me it seems quite clear, that it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.”

Let me explain why that is:

If you’re a small and medium sized business and still deliberating about social media and its use, you’re too late. You had an 18 month steal on the corporates where the playing field was marginally levelled. You had an opportunity to really take advantage of the slowness of the corporates to respond but they have mobilised their marketing departments, re allocated marketing budgets, commissioned social media consultants to advise them and employed social gurus to future proof them. We are beginning to  see the impact of that in market share which is causing mild concussion for many.

There is an abundance of information on the web about social media that could take a lifetime to read and be all consuming. For some of us it is! However, there is a scarcity at the moment to how to weave this into an integrated marketing campaign.

Some would have us believe that its the only way forward and its the only thing you need to reach new and existing customers. Thats far too one dimensional and we’ll all fall into the trap of traditional marketing if we take that road.

As Olivier Blanchard said at www.wearelikeminds.com in February “Your business doesn’t plug into social media, social media plugs into your business.” He is right. It’s not an attachment, neither is it the only solution. We must not miss the opportunity to really get to the route cause of why we embark on social media campaigns. We can’t also ignore that its just as important to be gregarious offline as well as online.

Before embarking on any social media activity, we all need to go back to the beginning and think about how it is going to fundamentally change, for the better, the relationships we have with customers and employees. The fact is that social media is creating new vulnerabilities and opportunities for business. That can’t be ignored. There are some big questions to ask before setting a blog up such as; how will social media define what is being delivered to the customer.

We have to remember that, even now, most of our customers and users of social media read content but don’t necessarily post it. What that means, for now, is that social media is in a state of mass consumption, not mass creation. We have a long way to go to create meaningful experiences and that, in essence, is our first task!

Just a thought provoker and I’m interested in your thoughts. If you give away stuff for free, at some point, you need to see that go beyond an increase in followers or traffic to your website/blog and turn into at least some currency, don’t you?

Whether you are posting images to flickr, publishing an eBook or participating in a collaborative software development project, you have to get past the potential position of feeling a little downbeat or worse exploited.

This culture of generosity and reciprocation built the web. The notion of sharing and obliging in participation like the Wikipedia case study is at the heart of the web’s recent success. But its also evolving. We need to see that return and perhaps thats where social media is heading. We can’t watch the founders of flickr and other organisations all profit quite nicely from something built by essentially a set of volunteers or by us spending time with someone who never returns a favour. The stakeholders need rewarding too.

If you build a community around your brand who regularly participate in developing innovative ways of doing business, that your company benefits from for free, you need to reward. The winning companies of the future will be those that build incentive frameworks around innovation that adequately ‘pay back’ those contributors whether its financial or non-financial.

Some are doing it already, Ebay, Microsoft and Amazon. But we need to develop this further and get past the less imaginative prizes and competitions structure. Royalty payments, recognition or a bit of free stuff back will be the successful models of the future.

Creating and leading a community is all very well, encouraging people to collaborate on a level playing field exciting, finding an infrastructure that supports innovation and rewards time and effort another thing. Free isn’t free at all, it comes with expectations, time lines and limitations too.

Hmmm…. your customers are creating the market place now not you. Give us choice and we will take it! Look at us has been replaced with look at what we are doing. The big question; is your marketing designed for a static world or an ever changing one?

Markets will always outperform individual businesses, they also learn a lot faster and are better connected than business too. If you’re marketing ain’t broken, its about time you asked yourself why? As Jeff Jarvis said “The mass market is dead. It committed suicide. Google just handed it the gun.”

Most companies, for the last 10 years, have taken the easy way out to market their brands, they have essentially bought customers. Sadly, its cost more and more and had less and less impact. In the past it was about driving traffic to your business, now its about loyalty.

Remember this equation; Feeling valued = loyalty + commitment

Most of us are still acting as if what we do is scarce. Shouting isn’t going to get you heard above the crowd, not when everyone else if shouting too. Now really is the time to tear up the marketing you have been doing in the past. Measure its return on investment and, then when you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, go and find some other way of connecting with your customers.

In October I had to queue to get into the Likeminds Conference in Exeter. This time I was one of the many getting kicked out by Scott Gould at the end of the night!

Well they went and did again didn’t they? The organisers, speakers and delegates raised the bar without creating one! “People to people” was the focus of this full day conference which threw up just as many questions as answers, but that’s the point.

There were particular vibrant and engaging presentations from Jonathan Akwue, Joanne Jacobs, Olivier Blanchard and the irrepressible Chris Brogan. Even the thought of Chris stood on stage in his Superman underpants did nothing to dissuade the audience (sorry you needed to be in the room to get that one!)

There was nothing irksome about the day. Superbly organised with a truly community feel, we all felt a little bit human again. The key lightbulb moments;

1. “When you give people a voice, you have to be prepared for what they are going to say.” Jonathan Akwue. That one is for all you leaders out there!

2. “Understand, participate and then lead.” John Bell. Yep you got to eat an elephant in bite sized chunks.

3. “Having a prescence in social media is worthless unless you do something with it.” Olivier Blanchard. You know sometimes a blinding flash of the obvious is so bloomin’ powerful.

4. “You have to make people feel special.” Chris Brogan. Many of us commented we did feel special!

The buzz in the room was inspiring and so positive, there were obviously no Daily Mail readers in sight! People talk a lot about the social media hype. I’m curious to what they mean by that. Social media for many businesses is the Titanic’s iceberg and its no good re arranging the deckchairs on the old ship anymore. Its a difficult time for many companies. But, perhaps by humanising the relationships we have with people, we can actually thrive.

This conference showed that even in six months not just the technology has moved on, but so has our thinking. It can’t be taken as a token gesture, its serious stuff and it has serious implications. Miss the next one? Er no!