Social Media: It's About Breadcrumbs and Conversations

So how is one to make sense of social media? Is it best defined by the "Broadcast Yourself" ambitions of YouTube? Or is it MySpace, where rich profile pages are the bridge to even richer content? 

Similarly, is it just a consumer phenomenon or the tip of some larger iceberg that subsumes big brands and large enterprises?

The short answer is YES, which may seem like I am punting, but in reality, YouTube and MySpace are all about enabling unbridled self-expression and the frictionless assimilation of micro communities populated by like-minded audiences.

It's about recognition systems, which feed the exhibitionist in all of us and provide a socially acceptable sandbox for the voyeurs who "just like to watch."

It is no less than the virtual water cooler, and as such, something that is emotionally real and culturally significant.

But, here is the caveat. Specifically because this stuff is so visceral and because it has proven to be so virally effective, its role in business, today a tiny heartbeat, is destined to grow into a walking and talking organism that some people call Enterprise 2.0.

Think of social media as a three-legged stool. On one leg is conversational marketing. Conversational marketing embraces the fact that the internet is not a one way medium like broadcast. It is a network space where brands can talk to their consumers, consumers can vote and have a say, and share opinions and ideas with each other.

Today, we see lots of companies doing word of mouth (WOM) marketing campaigns powered by a combination of user-generated content, official branded content, and conversation building tools. In these WOM campaigns, the intent is to get the consumer to contribute in a way that fortifies the brand but also engages the consumer to act (e.g., often these campaigns are bolstered by a contest which makes it a time bound event).

Clearly marked doors allow the consumer to self-educate, engage and hopefully spread the word. Not only is the ROI of such exercises cost-efficient but it is measurable. And you can always improve what you measure, which is a good thing where marketing spend is concerned.

The second leg is to create community, which is all about creating context and providing the kindling wood for sparking (typically) short conversations.  Community sounds like one nebulous blob, but in reality it manifests in the form of disparate, but inter-connected micro-communities. Some come to gain knowledge. Others just want to get a laugh, and be recognized. Still others want to work the room and exchange ideas.

If you have a brand that is worthy of consumers being evangelical, "super fans" or conventioneers, community has to be central to your online strategy in the near term.

A word of guidance, though. Don't treat building community as a singular event like delivering the Ten Commandments.  It doesn't work that way.  Community is built brick by brick, one day at a time, and the members of your community must be treated as stakeholders.  In other words, be prepared to get the idea and implementation out there, fix what is fundamentally broken and iterate.  This agility within market forces a brand to show imperfections but I would assert it is the only way to build bedrock that connects with the always-on generation.

Finally, social media is about breaking knowledge into tiny breadcrumbs and enabling those breadcrumbs to be organized in a way (via user-generated folksonomies or company defined taxonomies) that facilitates corporate memory archiving and enhances e-learning initiatives.  Overlay rich profiles on top of such a model and these breadcrumbs become like synapses that fire across a dynamically generated neural org chart that autonomously connects people, conversations and content around actionable contexts.

Netting it out, breadcrumbs and conversations is a model whereby tiny bits of content can be configured to "call home" by taking the consumer of the information to a specific web site or specific content, where there is a lot to talk about and the conversation never ends.

Best of all, wherever this piece of content is deposited, not only does it act like a trail of breadcrumbs, but it also acts like a dandelion spreading far and wide whenever the wind of social engagement kicks up.

That's the essence of viral marketing, a message with a payload and a path.