Social Groups and the Marketing Paradox

The ultimate question in a socially networked existence

A new phenomenon called social networking has caught up with the world in as recent as last 5-6 years. It has caught the fancy of a ever agile marketing professional looking for an opportunity and reason to sell more of his products and services as well. No doubt Social media is growing fast, it has large no of users, Progressive minded individuals available in a single place (the web); who are sharing serious and non serious conversations, opinions, apps, videos, pictures, insights and knowledge.  Maybe marketers today are induced into this exciting phenomenon with the ever reliable technology of smart tracking tools, browsers, social platforms, Analytics, CRM tools and some great opportunity tags fixed on the foreheads of social media.

My experiments with social networking!

Indeed Social Networks are a very attractive proposition for any marketer;

I was told that if facebook was a country it would be the 3rd Largest in the world – WOW! Great place to start a marketing campaign and push your product proposition!

I was also told that SOCIAL MEDIA (in caps) defines the social information and psychographics among consumers and social media (Lower case) refers to the tools that facilitate conversation tracking of consumers – Wow again! If all information about the Consumer is available, what else does a marketer need – isn’t it like Just point and shoot!!

But experiments with Social media made me realize some hard facts. The first one being ; Social Media is not about getting the attention of users/ individuals in orkut, facebook , my space, twitter…  nor its about creating marketing buzz among the groups and communities right from the word go.

My realization is that social Media is not about consumers, its about groups; and the individuals who define the group. Its them that we need to listen to understand with care.

Observe carefully and you realize that Social Groups exist in the real/ offline world as well.

Paul Hare regards the defining characteristic of a group as social interaction subsets of the larger Groups. Also the Characteristics shared by members of a group may include interests, values, social representations, ethnic or social background, and kinship ties. By this definition, society can be viewed as a very large group. In a nutshell belongingness to groups or communities has always been a natural & social phenomenon among the human kind.

Social groups may be considered as extension of such groups in an online space, except that unlike the offline groups:

\*They are comparatively more visible/ noticeable / Searchable then their offline peers. one does not need exclusivity or invitations to join these groups. The individuals within the group and the group as such is available in their full strength for a right cause

Its highly probable that their  logical and behavioral facets in the online space define their individuality and Spirit of being together and motivate them for their online actions!  A few such facets could be:

Autonomy: Autonomy is about Self Direction; because every individual (mostly) in the world is fed up of being told what to do, what is good for them, what is profitable for them, what is right for them etc . Scenerios involving parents, boss, peers, society at large etc etc are perceived as traditional roadblocks. These traditional road blocks probablydon’t excite these individuals and they no longer see them as challenges that need to be overcome in the traditional real world. They want all others, who don’t think like them (and probably they are surrounded by a lot of them) to get out of the way.  And of course, everybody wants their own space. Being in an online group helps them move towards this liberation that was not possible till some time ago.

Individuals enter into this space on the basis of common interests and values, this however need not be be specific or objective at all, it can be as weird or as  funny a group ( currently in facebook)  called Physics doesn’t exist, it’s all gnomes, It currently has over 84,000 members. Such “Start treating people like people” context predominantly defines the reason of being together and very often also defines the rules of engagement with the online world.

Purpose and Recognition: Achieving or contributing together in an cooperative environment for others or the world at large through the skills and knowledge possessed by the group builds the motivation or purpose of the group. The purpose is the reason that binds the individuals into a group. It is the urge to do things better and get better at things the prime reason that discharges the concept of sharing and expressing.  It predominantly stems from the individual need to be recognized (people also hate being missed!). Its like if a group gets recognized – an individual (in the group) also gets recognized as well for their contribution. This sounds so similar to the conventional teamwork thinking. The purposeal is usually long term and is driven by values of comparative advantage creation. An advantage that makes each group distinct and different from others

Paul Krugman – the 2008 Nobel Laureate’s New Trade theory is very relevant in this context as each of the online groups bring their comparative advantage determinants to the table. It is entirely possible that the new world order and the new factors of globalization are actually boundary less and the groups might become most influential and powerful in the future. I understand that recent Obama presidential election was widely driven by such disparate online groups and caused more young voters to turn out on the Election Day. The comparative advantage these groups held was the simple ever existing “voting power”

Groups with defined purposes grow like a phenomenon, they get new members, followers, fans, associations, contributions, Visibility and of course recognition. Clear examples of this being open source software Groups which resulted in products like Linux, apache and many other applications.

The groups that do not have a purpose usually just exist or are remain dormant in a very lucid framework, their critical mass of following and new memberships is arrested after some time and the individuals in the group tend to dissociate and scatter.  To be on a caution list; Many groups start and grow with a great purpose but then they become disoriented when their purpose is lost.

Belong to …

To belong to a online group is a social, emotional and psychological need and is a very natural phenomenon like the formation of an offline groups. In real world, it starts with Invitation and has a formal procedure. In an online world, its just a click and not necessarily many rules are applicable. An individual can start a group, An individual can follow group/s other than their own, one group can follow other group or many other groups so on and so forth

Every group starts off as an individual set (first to start or starting point of a network) The group comes into shape the moment more like minded individuals subscribe to the individual’s views or share common interests; they are usually known as friends, members, followers or fans. A group does not need a purpose to start with. It needs a purpose only to grow and stabilize. A group also does not need to have a very overt and specific name e.g. an individual called mindy kaling started her twitter account in 2008 and follows 108 individuals, but in an interesting development about 10,198 other groups/ lists follow her; that means a whopping 1,23,7561 Individuals follow her and subscribe to her views and interests. Its definitely interesting to see what’s the conversation going on in this space, but amazing only 1500 tweets are visible to the audience. What could be the purpose?

Cooperative Advantage

Being in Online groups is like being in a cooperative system and do not have a structure, leadership, hierarchy, coherence and are absolutely scattered . It’s also a No carrot – no stick zone, because the groups have nothing to lose. In fact, the groups comes into being because of these properties, else it would have been a corporation.

But its very interesting to know that the advantages that come with an online group unlike an Real world corporation are no infrastructure costs, no Human resource costs, no coordination costs, no idea development costs and no taxes. J; Something that every corporation would yearn for years to come.

Many times the resultant of being in such groups is chaos (which is good for creativity and innovation) and the good outcomes of the groups enable association and aspirational among non group individuals and cause the group to swell or expand. Vice versa may also be true. Groups with a purpose, usually utilize this Cooperative advantage to enable growth of their ideas.

As I mentioned Hierarchy actually doesn’t exist in a group, but it would be exciting to know that there are many types of individuals that make up and hold the group together and more still there are many types of groups.

There are the serious ones, the non serious ones, the open ones, the closed ones and value neutral ones …– Their definitions confirm their story of existence.  However a group is as strong or weak depending upon the strength of its purpose. But they all share common grounds/ characteristics which can be described as follows:

The DNA of a group

The nature of the groups with purpose is to spread . Autonomy & purpose are the core traits or the nucleus of the group, then growth and Sharing form the Double helix of their DNA and their basic building blocks/ bases that genetic code is defined by their

(There may be many more such building blocks)

Interestingly, it is observed that certain well grown groups often act like a system and depict behaviors known as positive feedbacks or negative feedbacks ; whereby In response to certain external stimuli or perturbation (offline or online) they act to increase the magnitude of the perturbation. That is, “if A produces more of B the groups in turn produce more of A”. In contrast, a system that responds to a perturbation in a way that reduces its effect is said to exhibit Negative feedback. A typical example of these types of groups could be the hacker groups and the white knight groups. Chinese hackers have depicted their nationalism in early 2009 by hacking Malaysian Government websites in response to introduction of new laws for Chinese Diaspora. They also attacked French Websites in 2008 for disruption of Olympic torch relay through Paris.

The Heroes in a group

Although I reiterate that hierarchy does not exist in a group but individuals within a group play key roles of spread and share; my current understandings and observation filters down to three distinct individual types or roles as described by Malcolm Gladwell in his notoriously famous ‘The tipping Point’

They do it in a really fast & efficient way and can be identified by the fact that they are connected to everyone or are friends with everyone. These individuals are the most easily identified members of the group because they are everywhere and know everybody. They are not restricted to just part of one group but multiple groups based on their interest i.e they are available in multiple groups, multiple platforms ( twitter, facebook, orkut, bebo…)

If you are on a social networking platform like Face book or orkut ; try Looking at  some of your friends network ( of face book & orkut) carefully and you will find a few friends who are connected to over 300 or 400 friends or comparatively huge no of individuals. It seems that they are friends with everyone. These are the individuals that interact with other individuals and groups and pass messages, information and insights (through posts, tweets, videos, Pictures, Apps etc.).

The opinionators or Mavens can also be identified easily by their following traits:

a)      They will let the world know about their opinion/ Impressions through their blogs, discussion groups, wikis etc.

b)      The conversations are most profound and reflect the intensity and at times passion of their beliefs and thoughts

c)      Of course they are connected with the connectors

In a entire flow of things, the Contexters facilitate the exploration of the idea or provide the idea itself, The mavens, sense the intent and provide the stickiness factor and the connectors provide the epidemic factor. Now that’s quite a way to spread or grow

How can a marketer benefit from Social Media?

A marketing organization can benefit enormously provided they are addressing the right or relevant groups and have a long term objective association. My understanding depicts that a marketer should firstly accept the social groups as it is and should not make a conscious attempt to change or influence their context with marketing messages right from the word go. It’s not only invasive to their space but also its like saying you are not complete (Therefore use my product/ service).

In other words, The social media should not be treated as a lead generation platform but as a platform to manage reputation and creation of support groups and friends. It is also a great platform to acquire new product ideas and solutions to the current problems.

A marketer can reap the following benefits through well defined set of processes

1)      Identify the groups that one wants to associate with and Listen to their conversations and utilize the benefits of cooperative framework to harness the collective intelligence. Its because best products & services don’t talk about themselves, they are talked about. one can end up with amazing new ideas, Insights and solutions if the marketer just listens. It is suggested that employees of an organization be exposed to these groups so that they can understand the needs first hand

2)      Test your new products and services by introducing them to the potential groups, and they would be more than willing to share first hand un adulterated views and opinions. The marketing organization can save a lot of effort and resources that they would otherwise spend in market research.

3)      Nurture the groups with strong purposes and radical ideas and just watch them grow and one may end with great product, applications or processes itself. The best way to nurture a group is to become a sponsor (without influencing or interfering in the group activities)

4)      Try creating self help groups ( individuals consisting of your employees and customers), and follow the main groups closely

5)      Engage with the groups and provide direction to groups with potential, but it is suggested that it be done only by engaging the right individuals rather than the entire group. The right individuals to engage within a group would be the contexters and opinionators/ mavens; although it is usually considered difficult; but for a right reason and the prospect of spread/ growth of group they might get aligned to a cause and spread it rapidly.

6)      Provide the dormant groups with a cause or direction and equivocally participate in their growth and spread. You can win uncoditional friendship and support of these groups.

These are a few ways a marketer can harvest Social media. However, the social media is still in evolving stages and so is our understanding about them. We need to make sure that our learnings grow at the same pace as the growth of the social media. Social media at the end of the day does not deal with only media/ mediums, but also with factors of user generated content, Group psychology and direction.

Such unconventional mediums require unconventional means and techniques of measurement. But that should be another story. That i will be writing about soon.

Till then keep me informed with your views and opinions

Source: Wikipedia, Seth Godin – ted.com, the Tipping point – Malcolm Gladwell, New Trade theory -Paul Krugman, Paul Hare