Networks are integral to all our lives. They’re the people who help you through the tough times, the job opportunity you wouldn’t have otherwise known about or something as trivial as the gig you might have missed.
Academics and institutions have formalised this and given it a name – social capital – the strength and make-up of networks, and the value they have for the individuals within them.
Without going into detail, the theory is that as well as providing support and creating shared values, networks facilitate the flow of information, opportunities and financial capital, and that stronger networks enrich peoples’ lives and strengthen society as a whole.
[An important note here: this is just scratching the surface. It's a complex subject and definitions vary – if you want to find out more, check out good ol' wikipedia, what the World Bank has to say and the work of the ONS.]
The value of strong and weak ties
One of the core principles is the type of connections we form, those with people that we share a lot of similarities, networks which provide support and create social norms (known as bonding social capital) and those who we are only weakly connected to, but can bring us new information and opportunities (bridging social capital or “the strength of weak ties”).
In coarse terms, an example of networks that create bonding capital would be your best mates or work colleagues, while bridging social capital might be generated by some of connections you form through Linked In or twitter – people with shared interests, but who live 1,000 miles away and that you don’t communicate with very often.
As you can imagine social networking offers a massive opportunity for developing social capital and for the past year, we’ve been working with Enterprise UK and Virgin Media on a project that has this at its core – the Virgin Media Pioneers programme.
Developing entrepreneurial social capital
The Pioneers project is all about equipping young people with the skills, confidence and opportunities to turn their entrepreneurial ideas into reality, all by connecting them with the right people. We think of this as generating ‘entrepreneurial social capital’.
The project centres around a social networking platform we’ve built, that encourages people to use video blogging to share their experiences, advice and start conversations, with people like them, and more experienced professionals.
Pioneers, as they’ve become known, are creating both strong, supporting relationships and discovering new connections that can bring them the new information and opportunities that they never would have known about otherwise.
Measuring and visualising the strength of networks
There’s a robust and complex measurement programme in place to demonstrate social capital, using in-depth qualitative and attitudinal surveys as well as web metrics. These are necessary to get a detailed and statistical picture – but we wondered how we might tell this as a story, and make it more human.
We realised that the eco-system behind the website was difficult to see from the outside, but that we could make it visible. If we could demonstrate how social capital was developing, in an immediately engaging way, this would have benefits not only for those managing and investing in the programme, but for the people who are a part of these networks.
We’ve developed an application, with technology created by some of our expert technical associates, Ollie Glass and George Bashi, that uses snapshots of the website database, over time, to plot users and their networks over geographic locations, as the eco-system evolved.
To demonstrate social capital, albeit initially in a simple way, we used data on the amount of information that flowed across individual connections to reflect the strength of the different parts of the network, all in a way that could be explored by the user.
The result is not just something that looks pretty, it’s a way of demonstrating what the website is achieving for the people we set out to support.
It also serves as a neat way of reporting success to stakeholders who won’t read a 30-page report, as well as allowing us, and the people within the network to spot areas of strength and weakness.
Today, Nestlé has become the latest “how not to do social media” case study. Following a campaign by Greenpeace to put an end to the company’s unsustainable use of palm oil, a number of people have been changing their Facebook profile pictures to Greenpeace’s KitKat mock-up logo.
Nestlé’s response on Facebook? “Please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic – they will be deleted.”
Unsurprisingly, this censorship statement on the social network has caused a crescendo of backlash. But rather than try and diffuse mounting anger towards the brand, Nestlé’s sarcastic, dismissive responses have only served to inflame and enrage fans even more. Read more…
After months of hard work, head-scratching, frantic coding and copious tea-drinking by a number of the team here, I’m over the moon to tell you that we’ve just launched a brand new site (I could have had a baby by now. Well, I sort of have, with multiple parentage).
Virgin Media Pioneers is a social networking and video blogging platform, and is a partnership between Virgin Media and Enterprise UK – the charity that aims to increase entrepreneurial behaviour across Britain.
It’s the core of a programme that’s going to equip young, budding entrepreneurs – Pioneers – with the skills, confidence, experience and network of contacts to help them make it on their own.
Anyone who joins the site can easily connect with entrepreneurial people like them, as well as get support and advice from established business experts. Pioneers upload video blogs and responses to share their experiences, talk about their business ideas, ask for help or simply celebrate success.
The site’s been built on a set of open source platforms and plugins, most notably WordPress, VideoPress and BuddyPress, which gave us a foundation to combine social and video features without coding everything from the ground up.
From day one we’ve worked in really close collaboration with both Enterprise UK and Virgin Media, running an agile methodology that’s proved massively successful.
Without going into too much detail, the biggest feature of this is that we – all of us, clients included – have met up every two weeks for nearly the past nine months, and at every point there’s been an opportunity to change the shape of what we’ve been doing.
When we discovered a new requirement, decided we didn’t like the way something worked or had a brand new insight into our target audience, we simply changed the priority of what we were working on next. It was an eye-opener, working on a large-scale build in this way, but one that’s been pivotal to the success of the development.
NixonMcInnes provided the skills and experience in designing and building the site, including user experience design, working to create a brand identity and undertaking usability testing to make sure that this is something that fits with the immediate needs and expectations of our first Pioneers.
Usability testing with people who were actually going to be using the site was particularly interesting and vindicated our choice of agile as a methodology, as well as the other decisions we’d made along the way; all feedback we gathered was overwhelmingly positive and even after months of development, I only came away with a few minor changes to make.
This is only the start though – the first release of the site is going to build and evolve over time to include new features and functions, based on the needs of the people who use it, using feedback and research.
Why am I so excited? OK, there’s a degree of self-satisfaction and pride in what we’ve all produced, but it’s more than that – as other people have pointed out, in the recession young people were some of the hardest hit – and this is one opportunity for those people to move towards turning their own ideas into a career. As a result, it’s also supporting independent business in the UK, in which social enterprise is beginning to feature more (from my recent experience, anyway).
It’s been an amazing experience, working with some brilliant people (not just Steve, Josh, Matt, Jenni and Telmo) and I can’t wait to watch more people join the site, follow their journey and build on what we’ve all started.
This week I spoke at a conference about social media for the construction industry.
It was one of those gigs where you are given a topic to cover and you have to adhere to that brief.
My presentation was about Facebook and my remit was to examine the ways that Facebook could be used in the construction industry to drive brand recognition and revenue.
Basically, I had to talk about how the construction industry could use Facebook for 40 minutes.
My first thought was “Yikes! What am I going to say here?” (I know next to nothing about the construction industry).
As I started to research the topic and look for examples of how the construction industry is already using Facebook, my heart sank even lower; case studies of Facebook groups and pages in this industry are few and far between.
So, I took a step back and began to think about why the construction industry might want to consider Facebook as a marketing channel.
Quite frankly, the stats speak for themselves. Facebook has 19M active users in the UK and 44% of these are over 30 years of age.
That’s a massive amount of people and the demographic is hugely inclusive.
Even for a niche industry the potential audience is still bigger than you might find any other single network.
That convinced me that Facebook was certainly worth considering as a marketing channel for the construction industry but I still wasn’t convinced about Facebook’s value as a B2B comms. channel.
Again, I went back to basics and started to think about what Facebook offered.
The bottom line is that it lets businesses simply and easily create a presence which they can use to engage with an audience and create a dialogue with them (for free).
Also, Facebook forces people to be authentic – unlike other social spaces, when you create a profile in Facebook you use your real name. And when you create a business presence in Facebook, you use your personal profile to do this.
This actively supports B2B communication, which is about one-to-one relationships– Facebook offers businesses the opportunity to create connections with real people AS real people.
So far so good, but the next question was how could the construction industry engage with their audiences?
Like I said, I’m no expert on the construction industry (they build stuff, right?) but once I started to think about the kinds of reasons why someone might want to connect with a business, I realised that these apply to all industries.
Bingo, I had my presentation – and my core message.
Which is (in less than 140 characters, as is the current twend):
Facebook has lots of users and offers tools to help you reach them. Work out who you want to reach and what they want. Give it to them.
My summary slide here shows the variety of ways in which you can engage and give value to people on Facebook but why not check out my full presentationto see how you can put this in to practice?
At the end of my presentation (which, I am relieved to say, was well received), some of the companies I spoke to still had concerns about using Facebook in this way – it just isn’t seen as a viable tool for B2B marketing.
That’s OK. It’s not my job to sell Facebook to you.
What is important is that you are aware of its potential for business and its place in your social media toolkit so you can make an informed decision. And I really believe that this applies whatever business you are in!
The world feels like it’s spinning faster and faster to me.
What future are we spinning towards? One future to familiarise ourselves with and think about is a harder, more challenging world.
Whilst the media coaxes us with messages of a recovery, there is a different dashboard to at least be aware of…
Ingredients for a different dashboard, to ’see’ a different future
Take Umair Haque’s truer-than-ever macropalypse. (Short version: the economics and business practices of yesterday are totally broken and everything must change).
Add John Robb’s mindblowing Global Guerillas journal and text book. (Short version: through precisely exploiting modern society and its networks and technology a ‘terrorist’ can generate an ROI inconcievable in yesterday’s world)
Sprinkle some #collapsonomics and resilient futures, with hexayurts and all. (Short version: while some people speculate about a more volatile future, these guys are actually getting down to the nitty gritty of ‘what to do about a crazy future’.)
And finish with a garnish of grassroots activism from Dan McQuillan’s link sharing on Twitter. (Short version: lots of different sorts of people around the world are being treated unfairly, and technology innovation and ‘groking’ can help them get their voice heard and their changes made, sometimes…)
In my view our job as citizens and co-workers and as a company and family members and whatever context is to create better futures for ourselves and the world. If you agree, and that’s something you are interested in, in doing a good job, then you should prepare yourselve for a variety of futures, including this harder one too.
Personally, I am optimistic. But whatever the future, it definitely isn’t going to be easy.
In my mind Cisco are the kings of B2B technology marketing, and are also organising themselves in some very interesting networked ways to compete in the internet age. At their recent Cisco Velocity Partner event I offered my thoughts on 8 key principles for B2B tech marketers engaging with social media.
After my talk Alexandra Krasne, who is a cool Cisco video person, made a quick video.
I say the word network too many times (note to self!) but it might be offer one or two useful snippety thoughts if you are involved in B2B social media shizzle.
My thanks as always to Cisco – who are also a NixonMcInnes client – for involving me.
As an agency with a long history of designing and building social sites and apps, we’re not new to agile. While in the early days we’d used the trusty (but pitfall ridden) waterfall approach, over the past couple of years we’ve been moving towards a more agile model – but mainly on our smaller projects.
So when a big and exciting design and build project landed, with a healthily ambitious deadline, we thought it was a great opportunity to put agile to a serious test.
Meeting the needs of changing requirements
The project is working with two key clients, a charity whose aim is to increase entrepreneurial behaviour in the UK and one of the country’s leading entertainment and communications companies.
We’re building a social platform that combines quick, easy video blogging and networking features, to equip disadvantaged young people with the skills, confidence and contacts to make it as entrepreneurs.
All in all this project means a lot – to the people funding it, the people who will be using it and, needless to say, to us! So as the first major project on which we fully commit to the agile process, we’re investing a lot of time, energy and confidence in this.
So if it’s a big project, why take this approach? More than anything, we’re confident it offers clear advantages over the waterfall model, especially on a large-scale build.
Traditionally the agency takes a brief, produces a full specification and goes away to build it. Months later they come back, while requirements have changed for the client, with something that might not still meet their needs. Using agile, regular reviews mean new requests can come in at any time and the end product can change accordingly.
Engaging outside expertise We know the value of engaging outside expertise; we do it whenever we know an external resource can add massive value to our clients – so considering the scale of the project, we started by bringing in an outside Agile Consultant, Mark Stringer of Agile Lab.
Mark accompanied us to the kick-off meeting, in which we undertook the time-honoured ritual of stories and priorities – working from the core objectives of the site and the needs of the people who’ll be using it, we created a list of things they would want to achieve, which we prioritised before breaking them down into a series of features and functions.
We (the royal we, really it was Steve Winton, our technical lead) estimated how long these would take to build and broke them down further into two week ’sprints’ – bursts of work in which various people from different disciplines develop core aspects of the site.
Initially this is working well, building on the open source technologies we know and love – WordPress and the BuddyPress plugins – Steve is starting by delivering the core functionality of site while I’m designing how it will work and how it will be laid out.
Facing problem one
As with any large scale site with its own individual identity, branding is a big job and something that we’ll all need to get nailed before we can start on the page design and front-end coding.
In the meantime, we’ll work on the user experience design and back-end development, putting the fundamental inner-workings of the site in place.
Planning it out, this posed our first problem – how we can later start to tie in all the other disciplines.
The solution we’ve come up with involves a staggered approach to our sprints, coding back-end functionality while working on the user experience design for the same feature set, scheduling in page design of the same for the following sprint, and front-end coding for the one after.
It might sound confusing but on paper it’s looking like an answer to the problem of bringing agile to a large, multi-discipline project.
Problem one leads to problem two
This fluid approach solves many problems but lead us straight into to our second headscratcher…
What really happens when requirements change? As I said, in agile priorities change between sprints and new stories are introduced, which can leave us feeling a little nervous about exactly what’s going to come out at launch.
Our solution? Well, to be honest, it’s still early days and we’re still working on it. Currently we’re regularly reappraising the backlog of stories and ensuring we keep a holistic view of what we’re aiming to deliver, but beyond that it’s a work in progress. Perversely it’s one that makes us feel a bit more nervous than if we had a weighty document specifying exactly what the finished product would look like and do.
Have you used agile on a large-scale web build? Or had a site built for you where everything wasn’t set in stone before development began?
How did it make you feel? I’d be really interested to know.
The Future of Technology in Eduction is the kinda event I really enjoy going to – not social media for social media’s sake, but the application of what excites us all to a profoundly important topic.
We got screwed over or taken for granted by the big organisations in our lives. They became ‘them‘ – the enemy. But I wonder how bad they actually want to be, now – today? I find that so much kick back and reaction to large organisations starting to consider how social media might help them be better centres around this evilness, this lack of trust, this loathing.
But what if was different to that?
What if big organisations were made up by people mostly like me and you?
What if those people wanted to do good and cared about their organisation and their daily work?
What if internal crap, deposited and built up over time, made those big organisations deeply dysfunctional?
What if they as organisations lost sight of who they serviced and how to do that with dignity and in a mutually beneficial way?
What if the irresistable force of the internet on the world means that suddenly that stultifying stasis is gone and that their organisations are now vibrating into a new shape and a new way of working?
What if senior management actually get all of this?
What if the grassroots get it too?
What if the middle management catch up too, and start trusting the proclamations from the top as real, and allow the appetite from the coal face to turn to action?
What if this is the start of a new era in business?
What if we really can change business, and politics, and education, community, the environment, and everything else?
What if the only thing holding us back is OUR fear and distrust (not their evilness)?
What if we have become those resistant to change?
What if those big organisations wanted to do good, and needed our help?
Treehugger for those that care about the environment
Easy!
In theory, all we need do is some quick network mapping using free tools, and we can quickly find the online watering holes for the demographic or community we seek. Bada bing.
Yes, there are issues with this simplistic approach but ones we are usually comfortable with (or at least resigned to) in marketing: that there is no such thing as a typical mother, or car lover, or professional.
But at some level this works – unless we want to get into precision marketing then we accept the benefits and risks of stereotypes and broad brush segments.
Reconsidering communities of interest as something else
These are ‘communities of interest’ – places that people gravitate towards due to a shared interest that goes beyond obvious grouping criteria like age, gender, nationality (sometimes) and geographical location. Some people call them tribes.
But personal experience is fundamentally changing my understanding of how communities gather and interact online. I am finding much more nuance to this tribal social world.
In particular, it’s the ‘off topic’ conversations that have got me interested.
When I first joined the Brighton New Media list some time in 2002 I was new to the concept of Off-Topic but quickly learnt that it was for everything that wasn’t on-topic ;-) The conversations not about digital media but about popular culture, politics, sport, relationships, customer service and shopping – the trivia (and substance) of every day LIFE.
Witnessing the fullness
Now, as a newly keen mountain biker, I have been stunned – there is no other word – by the off-topic conversations in the mountain biking forum I hang out in, Singletrack World.
Here are some conversations from the first two pages of the forum this morning – there are 40 posts per summary page, so these are the highlights from 80 different posts.
Er, nope!
Multi-coloured, multi-faceted, all encompassing. And not about bicycling!
What we talk about when we feel in the right company
This is a mountain biking forum. For mountain bikers. Who happen to also be people. To be citizens, to be consumers, to be parents. And of course they are us. We are them. This specific space (which is dear to me and many others that love mountain biking) is just a microcosm – a helpful mirror or glimpse of ourselves online.
I know this ain’t rocket science, but for some reason to me it feels like an important and possibly lost reminder.
They (we) discuss trivia like backing up Macbooks and pointing brickwork, and deeply personal sensitive topics like their relationships, their health, their beliefs. I’ve left out some stuff out of respect for the community – a wonderful community – because it would feel wrong to air the content more broadly without permissions (although this stuff is all public). It is too intimate to haul some of this into the broad light of day. This is people’s lives.
My points is this
So the point I am working towards is that even in this digital life where we live out the various parts of our lives and personalities in different online spaces, and gravitate towards helpfully neat ‘communities of interest’, we are still not single-issue – we are still humans in all of our complexity and nuance.
Crunching the numbers
I did some quick back-of-fag-packet analysis to try and understand the balance of on-topic to off-topic conversations in Singletrack.
Here’s what I came up with:
The stand out insights were that only 3 in 10 conversations are off-topic, but that off-topic conversations attract a significantly higher level of engagement with an average of 17 responses (though not necessarily 17 different people conversing – it could be two people back-and-forthing :).
So off-topic punches well above its weight in terms of % of overall ‘posts’ – the Singletrack terminology for a member physically writing something, representing 42% of all posts on the forum.
In short:
Most conversations are about bikes (near 70%)
Off-topic conversations get nearly twice as many responses
Overall, when looking at ‘posts’ rather than topics, off-topic is 42% of everything that makes up this community
So where does all of this leave us?
I’d love to know your thoughts, but for me there are a few helpful reminders for me and our clients:
1. Beware the simplistic ‘we found a community!’
Simple as that really. You might get most engagement with your issues, or reach those you most want to reach by thinking more broadly than the classic hang-outs for the hardcore. In my mountain bike forum we share recommendations about health, relationships, laptops and phones, cars (I’ve seen lots, ironically).
2. Consider more broadly where relevant issues might be discussed
See above. So consider not ‘what is the main topic of this space and does it match with our interest’ but instead ‘where do issues like these also get discussed by the people we want to reach’. Don’t think too directly – Don’t Stay In might not be the best (or at least the only) place to engage about drugs, Mumsnet might not be the best or only place to engage about parenting issues. Etc.
3. Recognise the importance of safety and likemindedness in unlocking
What is perhaps hardest to appreciate is how the things that we – as a big organisation/client/person trying to do good – might want to achieve in creating a space for people to talk about specific topics, might be forever prevented by people feeling appropriately safe and at home. With the new online tribal spaces, the level of likemindedness and togetherness seems to foster a spirit conducive to openness and honesty about everything else – the off-topic stuff. If we are trying to create a social platform for a given single-issue, how can we make it safe? Or, recognising this challenge, how can we be more distributed and engage with these conversations across the web as they happen without being intruding strangers and weirdos?
Are there more issues at hand that I’ve missed? Thanks for listening.
