THE COLLECTED STORIES OF SOCIAL
MEDIA b b as told by S e t h J. G o l d s t e i n . CEO, SOCIALMEDIA.COM

Reality
CHECK.

Are we talking about the
next printing press or the next Web 2.0?

COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA AND SOCIAL MEDIA
OVER TIME b 2000 b AIM/ICQ b b Twitter b Facebook b Email 1500 b b CraigsList b MySpace eBay b Del.icio.us COMMUNICATIONS Fax b Flickr 1000 b Telephone b AOL b Telegraph Printing Press 500 b Stained Glass b b b b b b Newspapers Radio Cable b 0 Magazines Google Television Cave Drawings 0 500 1000 1500 2000 MEDIA

KEY
insights:

fig. 41.38.6 Learn to Let
Go [ or the hows and whys of letting your brand get away from you ]

(ergo:) “In videos posted on
YouTube and elsewhere this week, a Domino’s employee in Conover, N.C. prepared sandwiches for delivery while putting cheese up his nose, nasal mucus on the sandwiches.quot; NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 16 2009

A pretty take BIG Time
TO chance. (Then, repeat.)

(ergo:) “Brands are now becoming
conversation factors where academics, celebrities, experts and key opinion formers discuss functional, emotional and, more interestingly, social concerns.quot; SIMON CLIFT, UNILEVER

fig. 41.38.6 (cont.) 1: Most
companies are scared to use social media because they fear losing control of their brand 11: And yet consumers become more invested in brands that reward their participation.

fig. 38.21.7 Be Sensible [
from Buffet and Munger to Newmark and Buckmaster ]

COMPASS
MENTAL
a
handy.
Keep

(ergo:) The management philosophy of
Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craig’s List • Listen to what users want. Try to make the site faster and better. • Hire good people. • No meetings, ever. quot;I find them stupefying and useless.quot; • No management programmes and no MBAs. • Forget the figures. • Occasionally, give people quot;a very gentle nudgequot;. This can be done over lunch or on the instant messaging boards. • He doesn't reply to any of his 100 daily messages, most of which beg Craigslist to do a deal. quot;I'm not real chatty on e-mail.quot; • Put speed over perfection: quot;Get something out there. Do it, even if it isn't perfect.quot;

fig. 8.47.12.3 Stand Roughly There
[ or how the perfect is the enemy of the good ]

(ergo:) “If you are not
embarrassed by what you are releasing, you are taking too long.” REID HOFFMAN, LINKEDIN

getting fancy ALL ABOUT NOT
things Sometimes WORKS. (Chillax.)

fig. 8.47.12.3 (cont.) 1: Why
is it that services which seem perpetually “unfinished” are those that usully last the longest? 11: For the same reason that an accurate picture of a fast moving car needs to be blurry not sharp.

fig. 87.13.22 Plan Your Escape
[ in other words: how to build it, and then get out of the way ]

(ergo:) “The key is recognizing
that no matter how convinced you are in the power of your own ideas. Sometimes, ideas have ideas of their own. That's certainly true in terms of system design. I made the system self-sustaining for one reason: Back when I launched eBay on Labor Day 1995, eBay wasn't my business—it was my hobby. I had to build a system that was self-sustaining. Because I had a real job to go to every morning. I was working as a software engineer from 10 to 7, and I wanted to have a life on the weekends. So I built a system that could keep working—catching complaints and capturing feedback. If I had had a blank check from a big VC, and a big staff running around—things might have gone much worse. I would have probably put together a very complex, elaborate system—something that justified all the investment. But because I had to operate on a tight budget— tight in terms of money and tight in terms of time—necessity focused me on simplicity: So I built a system simple enough to sustain itself.” PIERRE OMIDYAR, EBAY FOUNDER Tufts Commencement Address, June 2002

then out OF Build GET
IT town. (It’ll do you good.)

fig. 87.13.22 (cont.) 1: The
art of Social Media is to provide the lightest weight social context for exchanging information. 11: It’s like hosting a cocktail party where you need to keep lots of conversations going on at the same time without getting stuck in any one of them.

fig. 8.47.12.3 Open the Switchboard
[ or why lots of little conversations are better than one big speech ]

(ergo:) “Utility doesn’t have to
be this big thing. It can take place in smaller, more frequent interactions” MARK ZUCKERBERG, FACEBOOK

NIMBLE and easier SMALL to
ESCAPE. (It’s not very becoming.)

fig. 22.5.9 (cont.) 1: Conventional
media wisdom is to tell a great big story to as many people as possible 11: Social Media is all about enabling lots of little stories to be created by lots of different people at the same time

fig. 22.5.9 Avoid (Excessive) Verbosity
[ or why only 140 characters actually works ]

(ergo:) quot;Creativity comes from constraint.quot;
BIZ STONE, TWITTER

KEEP and IT Keep your
brief audience. (They’re already listening, anyway.)

fig. 22.5.9 (cont.) 1: We
assume that engagement scales with bandwidth 11: But low bandwidth social interactions seem to resonate stronger than high bandwidth multimedia experiences.

fig. 38.21.7 Advertise Socially [
Why ]

(in other words:) “We’re getting
paid to present you with the opportunity to interact with a product socially. And, if you choose to do so and we can display this interaction to your friends, then we’ve done half our job. The other half is ensuring that the social experience was well received by you and your friends. It’s a different type of adverting that pulls from the core of the social graph in a distributed manner that is neither invasive nor annoying.” DAVE GENTZEL, SOCIALMEDIA.COM

GET OUT.

fig. 22.5.9 (cont.) 1: Internet
advertising is typically a message from a company that attempts to distract a user from what he is doing in order to get him to click on a link to an advertiser web site. 11: Social advertising is typically a message from a person who has been prompted by a company to say something. It promotes brand equity without requiring the user clicking away.

fig. 14.26.3 Measure Your Influence
[ basically, how to manage the ratio of information to attention ]

(ergo:) “influence = how likely
people are to do what you say, given who you are, not what you say.” JOSH REICH

REMEMBER Nobody LIKES a SHOWOFF.
(I mean, really.)

fig. 14.26.3 (cont.) 1: Influence
= Attention / Information = ratio of attention one gets to information one produces 11: The popular person who says little (i.e. the Pope or Ben Bernanke) is usually more influential than the popular person who says a lot (i.e. Robert Scoble or Jason Calacanis).

b THANK YOU b