The Big Deal About Small Talk

We all know someone who knows how to “work the room” at a party or business reception; they seem to have a database in their head and know everyone’s name as well as the name of their spouse, kids, and some tidbit of personal information—a favorite sport, or TV show or a big client they have.  Chances are this seemingly-effortless social ability has been gained through a fair amount of hard work, but it has probably been worth it; helping this person to achieve some level of personal and/or business success.

We often refer to these sorts of shallow interactions as “small talk” and discount their potential value—especially people like me who don’t have the gift—but maybe we shouldn’t. Those of you with academic leanings may have noticed the similarity of the title of this post to that of an influential paper on social theory, written in the early 70s by Mark Granovetter called The Strength of Weak Ties. In a nutshell what Granovetter says is that it’s important—at least for purposes of networking or having a social life enriched with the opportunity to meet new people—to have a number of acquaintances in addition to your close friends and family, because these acquaintances or “weak ties” are the links that connect other circles of “strong ties” and keeps them from being self limiting. A number of these concepts were more recently popularized by Malcom Gladwell in The Tipping Point.

These days the growth of online social networks have made “weak ties” worth revisiting. A great deal of the work that the gadfly in my original example probably had to do: collecting business cards, writing notes on napkins, etc. to cultivate these weak ties, has been in large part replaced and enhanced by platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg and others. Online social networks are incredibly efficient engines built around insubstantial connections. It’s actually the lack of substance that greases the wheels of social networking. It doesn’t involve a lot of social risk to see if someone shares your favorite TV shows or likes a band that you like, but that connection can bring you into their circle and connect you with another network of friends.

As marketers think about how to approach social networks it’s good to keep these ideas in mind. If you want to create a message, application, or piece of content to be shared widely, keep it on the light side. It doesn’t have to be silly but it shouldn’t be too complicated. An example from the world of Facebook would be the creation of “Engagement Apps.” these are just simple things like badges, petitions, or polls that can help give you exposure and open the channels for communication, without asking too much of the user.

75 Ways to Use Social Networking in Educational Publishing

Last week I moderated a session at the Association of Educational Publishers Summit “Publishing in the World of Free.” The panelists were Andrew Pass of Pass-Ed a developer of curriculum materials employing web 2.0 technologies, and Lisa Schmucki of EdWeb.net a social networking site for educators. The title of the session was “75 Ways to Use Social Networking in Educational Publishing” don’t worry the panelists did not try to fit all 75 into the session—the full list was handed out at the end. If you missed the handout, download it here.

My purpose was just to set the stage for the discussion and to provide input from the publisher’s perspective.   Here’s my introduction:

Good Afternoon:

Thank you for joining us for 75 Ways to Use Social Networking  in Educational Publishing.  Our panelists today are Andrew Pass of Pass-Ed and Lisa Schmucki of EdWeb.net

Over the past couple of years the world has seen a virtual “big bang” in Social Networking, that has spawned, among other things, a “blogosphere,” a “twitterverse,” and a friendly but strange world called Facebook, in which one is constantly offered drinks yet remains thirsty!

Even for those publishers who have yet to “Digg,” “Tweet,” or “blog,” the concepts of social networking are not completely new.  Many of the old school have used tools such as listservs and online discussion groups to share expertise, promote products, and to monitor the reputations of their authors and brands.

However, the latest proliferation of social networking tools and sites, and their embrace by the public is unprecedented—earlier this year Facebook crossed the 200 million user mark, making it the 4th most trafficked site on the Internet (new numbers in last week suggest it may now be #3), and Twitter was the cover story in last week’s Time Magazine.  For businesses and organizations, the opportunities and challenges this new environment presents can seem daunting. For publishers, the silver lining is  that this new environment doesn’t favor those with large marketing budgets so much as  those with compelling content.  In the panel today we will help you make sense of some of the tools available and their uses in both product development and marketing contexts. The panelists will touch on a number of examples of how to use social networking, however the “75 ways” referred to in the program title are all listed in your handout…

I hope it was a valuable session for everyone. The room was packed so there are a lot of publishers trying to figure out the social networking thing. As might be gleaned from the title of the summit, there was a lot of discussion about the “problem” of free content, but one thing we hoped to point out was the other side of the coin—how many free resources and tools are available that make the barriers to getting into social media very low.

The new ROI(s)

Return On Investment.  It’s one of the most frequent impediments Social Media Marketers run into.  While it’s true that the metrics for social media are in their infancy, it’s also true that the investment involved in most social media is very small compared to other hard-to-measure activities such as advertising, public relations, and research and development.  For a good discussion of this see Paul Gillin’s book Secret’s of Social Media Marketing. Not surprising then that social media marketers have chosen to deflate this particular sacred cow by redefining it—Marcel Duchamp would be proud! Gillin suggests ROI might stand for “Risk Of Inaction,” while PR Measurement Maven KD Paine has stated that ROI should stand for “Relationships Over Impressions.” Her redefinition moves us from the language of advertising—primarily a one way medium—to the conversational tone of social networking. While impressions continue to be a standard measure in the advertising world from GQ to Google Adwords, there is a great deal of evidence that people are less “impressionable” than they once were.   And large advertisers are being trounced daily by low-budget upstarts who evangelize their audiences into a viral marketing machine.  That’s right let the audience do the work.  But ask nicely after building trust and it won’t even feel like work.

This leads me to my own tweak on the ROI theme as it pertains to life in the social networking world.  I’d make a slight adjustment to KD’s definition and say ROI should stand for “Relationships Over Instant-Gratification.”  I know the hyphenation is really trying to fit an oval peg into a round acronym, but bear with me. It is the pressure for ROI as it’s originally defined that can lead marketers to missteps once they have launched their social media presence—that is trying to convert too early. Hitting up your new Facebook fans with a generic sales e-mail the minute they sign up is a sure way to damp enthusiasm and make people think twice about inviting friends to sign up. You’ve asked for too much too early. The viral nature of information sharing in social networks is based on casual relationships (so called “weak ties”) where there is very little social risk in making a recommendation to a friend. By jumping to the conversion stage you immediately increase the level of risk in the relationship. In a recent Hubspot webinar one of the principals used the dating metaphor—”you don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date.” Likewise asking for other sorts of instant gratification on the first date, successful or not, is unlikely to lead to a long-term relationship.

It is worth the wait (in marketing as in other things), even strictly from a numbers standpoint the long-term value of a customer well cultivated is higher and the investment required lower (hence better ROI!) than constantly prospecting for one-shot sales. Seth Godin provides a good discussion of this from the nascent days of social networking in his book Permission Marketing.

Godin also talks about creating a curriculum to guide the conversation with customers. Yes you need to give over some of the control and take your timing cues from the customer, but doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a goal.

With time and experience, more meaningful metrics will emerge, some may become “industry standards” but as localization and micro-markets increasingly become the drivers of business, it’s really the metrics specific to your business that will matter. Of course, if you’re not playing then you have nothing to measure, so I return to Gillin and say that the biggest ROI to fear is “Risk of Inaction.”