Publishing->Participation

“Publishing->Participation,” This was just one entry in a chart comparing Old Media and New Media in the book, Now is Gone: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs by Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis. But coming on the heels of the AEP Summit: “Publishing in the World of Free,” it seemed to suggest some concepts worth exploring. What could this mean in the context of educational academic publishing? And what keeps me, and I’m sure many others in the industry up at night, is what does this look like as a business model?

I don’t have a specific answer of course, but I think that an overall goal is to preserve the value of the publishers’ role— identifying and providing access to high quality information while filtering out inaccurate or poorly presented information—while at the same time creating a model that is not tied to selling fixed units of information.
This is suggestive of some changes the industry has been discussing and pursuing with varied enthusiasm, such as unbundling and micropayments, but it also suggests a social aspect that needs to be explored.

Increasingly, those who are seen as experts in their subject areas are not authors of “the definitive book on the subject”, they are the bloggers and twitterers who answer questions or share their insights on a daily or hourly basis, in short, who demonstrate their expertise in real time.

Daily immersion in the living intellectual life of their customers and peers on the part of a publisher’s authors and editors is going to be a necessary aspect of the move to a participation model. It doesn’t mean that all information has to be free; conversation needs to be free, hints and advice need to be free, but people will still pay for detailed, well-structured information from a source they trust (many bloggers are selling books). That trust, however, has to be built not on reputation but on demonstrating one’s knowledge. And the context those conversations provide is important; unbundling content and making it available online is essentially just a version of the web we have now.

So what are we talking about—does a publisher become a big, global, digital reference desk? Yes, I think, to some degree. But the librarians need to come out from behind their desks and ask questions as well as answer them, and the library needs to have unlimited interlibrary loans. Another key to our new “Wikinomic” world is openness and collaboration. If I am an expert in a particular field I probably know not only of some great content I have authored with my publisher, but also of information by my peers that is published elsewhere. We need a model that would allow and encourage an expert to point someone to both pieces of information and for the creator and publishers of this information to be compensated. Maybe we need an agreed-upon micropayment standard for the industry as well as something like a commission structure for the source of the referral – think affiliate networks.

The book, Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams provides many examples of struggling companies in moribund industries such as mining that reinvented themselves into profitable juggernauts by rethinking their businesses in the context of participation and collaboration.

And in that spirit, I’ll end my piece here. No closure. No conclusion. An open question for discussion and collaboration.

Facebook’s Name Game

When you enter Kennebunk, ME on Route 1 driving North, you are greeted by a sign that says “Welcome to Kennebunk. The only village in the world so named.”

While Kennebunk may not need to worry about its identity, many companies are very concerned about making sure they have control over use of their name, and related brands. Up until now that hasn’t been so easy on the social networking site Facebook.

At the end of May, that changed somewhat as Facebook announced that they would allow users to set up “vanity URLs” for their profiles and pages. There were some restrictions though. The profiles needed to have been established before the announcement, and they needed to have acquired at least 1,000 fans/friends by May 31. The signup would be available to qualified profiles at midnight on Friday June 12th. Subsequently Facebook announced that there would be a second round of registrations available later in June for everyone else. As it turns out there was still a 100 fan/friend limit on these and the signup again became available in the middle of the night.

Compared to sites like MySpace and Twitter, Facebook seems to be creating a lot of obstacles for companies seeking to stake their claim. I think it’s worth examining why—and looking at what they trying to protect? I think for one thing they are trying to avoid a lot of the domain squatting issues that plagued the early internet. But more importantly, I think they are trying to retain authenticity. While it seems that Facebook is sort of making up their strategy as they go along, they are making an effort to give marketers some of what they want and at the same time, trying to enforce a degree of good citizenship. Which is not a bad thing.

What social media has taught us (at least those of us who are listening) is that a company’s brand or a person’s reputation can’t stand in place of real interaction. And this is a radical change of thinking for a culture that has been driven since the 50s on the idea of brand loyalty. Increasingly these days you need to walk the walk every day, be listening, be involved and be authentic with your customers or the value of your brand or reputation is going to go down.  And again, that’s not a bad thing. As Shakespeare wrote:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

It’s 10 O’clock; Do You Know Where Your Brand Is?

Those of us of a certain age, will recall a television PSA that asked ominously “It’s Ten O’clock; Do You Know Where Your Children Are?”   Although a bit dramatic I can’t argue with the logic of the message.  It’s not a good idea for your kids to be out playing unsupervised as the anonymity of darkness offers cover to those with bad intent (talk about being dramatic)!  In the same vein, it’s not recommended to let your company’s brand play unsupervised on the Internet, where again anonymity can embolden pranksters, cranks, and ne’er do wells.

Some may argue that this is exactly the reason they have been protective parents and not let their company out to play on the mean streets of Social Networking, opting instead to present it dressed in its Sunday best in the controlled environs of its own web site.  I’d liken this somewhat to the parent who isn’t yet ready to talk with their teen about sex.  Face it folks, it’s happening whether you want to talk about it or not.  Better to be part of the conversation.

One recent and very visible example of a company in denial is Dominoes. They learned a painful lesson in how far and how fast Social Media can spread a message good or bad.  Because they had not gotten involved with social media, it wasn’t until they got the proverbial call from the police station that they realized the unseemly behavior that was perpetrated under their company name. Read the New York Times story

Like hormones, the need to share information is hard to repress. Whether or not you are ready to move your company into social networking, chances are there is a discussion happening out there around your brand. And If it’s out there because someone has created a [Your company] Sucks, group on Facebook then you really want to make sure that this isn’t the last word.

The Trust Test

It’s inevitable: Whether you are the in-house person working on social media or a consulting “expert”, sooner or later someone in the organization is going to say “but what if they say something negative about our product/company on our blog/Facebook wall?”   And it becomes clear that they haven’t quite grasped what makes social media different from other marketing.   It’s exactly the possibility that someone can criticize a company or product that gives social media its power.   Participating in social media gives a company more credibility because they are seen as saying “yes, we want to hear what you have to say good or bad and we’ll engage you in a conversation about it.”  This transparency is what gives consumers confidence.   After years and years of one-way marketing, where the company controlled the conversation and all the reviews they shared were glowing, the public has become jaded. Now they really only trust what they hear from peers.  Even industry media coverage and reviews have become suspect because of the potential influence of advertising revenue on editorial.

So I guess the big question for a company getting into social media is, how much do you trust your product or brand?  If you feel your company produces a high quality product and strives to provide good service and ethical business operations, then why not open up the conversation?  Yes there are cranks on the internet and people who might write something inappropriate on your wall just for kicks, but those are pretty easily seen for what they are and most services have ways of removing posts and banning such users.   Other negative comments that appear genuine and are expressed in an appropriate way offer opportunities for a couple of positive things to happen.   Your company can show its responsiveness and caring by having a conversation with the customer and identifying and solving their problem, or maybe even better, other fans/supporters can respond either to provide specific positive examples of why they like your product/service or to help the user solve their problem.

You’ve probably experienced this at trade shows, someone comes to the booth and starts to ask the marketing intern standing there a question or complain about an issue they may have had, just as the kid starts to get that deer in the headlights look another customer standing in the booth jumps in and starts to help, explaining that they had the same problem and then they found out they hadn’t read the manual and they had the wrong processor or whatever, and often more than one person will chime in.  People like to be helpful and they like to show how smart they are; this helps to drive social media.

If the idea of having a negative message appear on your blog or Facebook profile seems scary to folks in your company.  How about negative comments appearing somewhere else that you never see, or a discussion group dedicated to how much your company sucks? Now that’s scary! And it’s the risk that companies who refuse to engage authentically with their customers run.