Who do you trust? If you're a parent, who would you entrust your children to for the afternoon or evening? And how does all this relate to social media and the Royal Wedding?

Bottom of the pile — The Establishment

The establishment category includes heads-of-state, politicians and the clergy. They move in a world of *the well connected* and enjoy VIP status due to who rather than what they know. The Establishment is not at all squeamish about having more than the commoner. They move in "high places" and almost seem to operate above the law.

Cases to consider: middle east, MP expenses and child abuse.

Observation: as trust and respect for The Establishment reduces, common people are less squeamish about calling it to account for greedy and inhumane actions.

Trust factor: untrusted by the majority, particularly Generations X and Y. Would you entrust your children to this category. No!

Next-up — Big Business

This category needs no introduction. It reluctantly plays by the rules and spends its huge resources to mitigate the effects of those rules on its liberty. Tax avoidance, sweat-shops and low pay are all more than nodding acquaintances of this category.

Cases to consider: HSBC Infrastructure Company Limited, minimum wage set at £6.08/hour

Observation: as trust and respect for Big Business reduces, common people quickly make their feelings of disgust known about inequality. Instruments such as off-shoring, futures and spread-betting are not understood, they are mysteries that generate huge profits and are seen as evil.

Trust factor: eroded to near zero. Would you entrust your children to this category? Don't be ridiculous!

Next — Celebrity

Celeb's gain wealth by being popular and for now commoners are happy to watch them rise to fame and enjoy the trappings that come with the territory. To the commoner the celebrity is a hero(in), someone that flies the flag of hope while sharing a common set of values and opinions. Gucci, cool cribbs and fake tans are all in. However celebs are given their ephemeral positions in a chart like manner, they come and go according to the whim Joe and Joanna commoner — they either sell copies of OK magazine or they don't!

Cases to consider: Katie Price, Julia Roberts.

Observation: trust in this case is an alignment of values and opinions. If the lifestyle choices of the celebrity resonate with that of the commoner and the celeb' hasn't out-stayed her or his A-list position, they're remain revered or atleast admired and trusted.

Trust factor: is a bit like share values which go down as well as up. Would you entrust your children to this category? Some might for an afternoon BBQ but not if there's an unattended pool.

Penultimate — Education

Education has transitioned from benevolent-giver seeking to improve man's lot in life to a culture of *bums on seats*. The prospectus has become less about appealing to academic research aspirations and more about a *sign here for a prestigious title* sales pitch.

Cases to consider: Pay £9,000 a year and join one of the above categories.

Observation: Education joins the ranks of Big Business by churning out degree qualified students that find themselves competing among the masses with a commodity qualification.

Trust factor: some predict the current degrees-for-jobs culture will implode and that Education is no longer trusted as the benevolent giver in society. Would you entrust your children to this category? We do, everyday, but we don't consider the education system to be entirely *safe*.

Top Trump — People Power

Common people are clumping together, joining voices of dissent and aiming their killer-blows at all the above. People trust their peers, especially relatives and people that live in the same vacinity; people with similar values and opinions to themselves.

Cases to consider: Lady Di. Who does your baby sitting?

Observation: like likes like. People power is now frequently brought to bear via social media where collective voices join to shout their collective likes and dislikes.

Trust factor: higher than all the above

One further thing to consider. Will Kate Middleton be more admired by remaining a so called commoner in attitudes, values and opinons? Or by becoming a Royal in both title and deed?

Be smart, do more with less

The objectives for Marketers have, in recent years, become more closely aligned to those of Sales and curiously IT. Get these roles together in a room and you might not experience a single-minded concordance or world-view but the underlying goals could be boiled down to:

1. Reduce the cost of sale
2. Webify and automate sales of commodity items
3. Build, measure, monitor and grow the sales pipeline i.e. be competitive, find-nurture-close
4. Do more with less
5. Win by means of energy, skill and intelligence
6. Provide world class service
7. Only spend where return on investment (ROI) will be derived

Pressure's on

The pressure for marketing to deliver is immense. Long gone are the days of website *brand experience centres*, where brand managers could luxuriate in seemingly endless web development budgets to produce beautiful but shamelessly pointless sites to support offline-centric propositions. Today, the role of brand manager may no longer exist and the CMO will likely see no need to differentiate between online and offline, above the line or below it — it all has to directly contribute to the numbers! And this is reflected across the board: it's all about getting the sale and measuring ROI. Marketing frou-frou is long dead.

An unwelcome distraction

Given the imperative to turn dimes-into-dollars, to take expense out of the business, to be more competitive, its quite natural to focus on the here and now. In terms of hierarchy of needs, when under pressure, we tend to gravitate towards the bottom of the triangle. Colliding with this characterisation of modern marketing is the arrival of social media. It's entirely possible to spend your precious marketing dollar on listening and at the end of the quarter have absolutely nothing to show for your money apart from a list of positive or negative comments "people said about stuff" and to realise that machine driven sentiment analysis *ain't that clever*. The demo looked so promising!

Forensic marketing

You have a pipeline right? Seek to answer these questions and you'll get an understanding of what to do and why you're doing it:

1. What is the social footprint of this person?
2. Who are they influenced by?
3. Who are they connected to?
4. What are their interests, values and opinions?

It is amazing how much information exists about people online. Where they live, what car they drive, where they holiday, it's all out there, it just needs piecing together.

Social marketing may have started with listening and may talk endlessly about engagement but ultimately it's about understanding wants, wishes, desires and propensities of people in ways that have not been possible till now. I have also come to realise that every type of media is, or can be, social media. Gathering the information to answer questions 1 to 4 above is possible though one could feel it's a stretch target at present. Organisations with forensic marketing skill will gain competitive advantage.

The race is on to work out how to automate this stuff and make it work for a variety of business types and contexts.

My first "proper" bicycle was a Dawes Red Feather. It came complete with lights and a dynamo! The lamp was very effective at illuminating the road ahead  — all the time I was moving. A dynamo powered light goes out the moment you come to a halt. Fast forward 40 years and things are a little different. On any dark evening you'll notice cyclists, lit-up like proverbial mobile christmas trees with their flashing LED lights and high-power lamps. These ensure that not only can they see where they're going but that they're also seen and therefore safety is maximised. In other words, lights on a bicycle have two purposes: to see the way ahead and to be seen.

The Social Media parallel

When discussing Social Media activities with clients and prospects, they're understandable first concern is to gather some social media analytics. This information tells them what people say about their brands and associated services. Using the bicycle analogy this information is the "lights to see".

Be seen too!

It's one thing to see but that's only half of the social media story. Active participation is the other half — it the same as *being seen*. And it's really quite important. If you blog and wonder why you don't get comments it could well be because you don't comment on other blogs. Perhaps you don't yet blog at all? If you tweet and all your tweets are about you, your brand and your activities then your social media plan ain't that social! If you can never bring yourself to engage with your competitors or even, heaven forbid, congratulate them on their achievements, you haven't got it yet.

Single-dimensional social media doesn't work — you have to see and be seen. You have to participate as well as measure. Social media is a conversation and it involves expressing opinions, ideas and celebrating success even when it's not yours. Social media participation requires a healthy dose of altruism. If you think it's there simply to exploit — you haven't understood how to play nicely. It's as if you stopped peddling, your dynamo has stopped and ALL your lights have gone out. It's a social thing….

Technology has continued to improve the Internet and the Internet continues to change us; the millions of people connected to it. Over the past 10 years we've seen huge improvements in web technology and I'd suggest this has resulted in the rise of people power.

Internet reach

As an early adopter, I had access to the Internet at home long before the work place. Since then, its reach has extended from home, to work (or in some cases the reverse) and now to smartphones and iPads. You can carry the Internet in your pocket! And many do: there's an estimated 1.5 billion 3G handsets out there.

Websites have changed beyond recognition

Ubiquitous broadband, mega-pixel screens, improved browser technologies and sophisticated software developments have all combined to change today's web experience beyond recognition. Here's a couple of examples:

1. Apple's homepage 10 years ago
2. BBC's homepage 10 years ago

The Internet delivers a richer visual environment but it's not a passive broadcast space like TV. Many Internet users expect some degree of 2-way interaction, especially the generation that grew-up with it — Generation-Y. The Internet didn't replace TV in the sense that it gave more of the same, but it has equaled if not replaced the TV as the medium by which Values and Opinions are transmitted. And because it's a 2-way medium, the bigger voice is the audience not the broadcaster. And this simple numerical superiority has led to the rise of People Power.

What fuels People Power?

In a word: ideas. You might have thought I would say: social media! No, it's ideas that resonate and reach millions of readers in near real-time that has promoted People Power to king of the hill. Social Media is the meeting space where ideas are shaped and formed, where they gain inertia and are given momentum. Social media is the catalyst of change.

The new dynamic

Governments and organisations are aware of the power social media can exert upon them. Unlike advertising campaigns which were carefully constructed, impeccably timed and designed to travel in the top-down direction, *ideas* are expressed in the reverse, bottom-up direction. They arrive without notice and packaged in a transparent container labeled *brutally honest*.

To play or not?

Some organisations worry about participating in social media. To not is no longer an option. It would be as absurd as not having a website or phone system but to play brings introduces its own issues. Direct and public feedback has a subtle way of enforcing quality of service and/or product — audiences trust the values and opinions of their peers. If your organisation is trustworthy, open and proudly stakes its reputation to all it says and does online it's likely to do well. If reputation is what you worry about and the idea of playing in the social media space keeps you up at night, your audiences will be talking about you anyway. Sooner or later, you'll have to join the party.

What is the fuel of change?

Ideas that resonate with people get carried on channels such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. When there's a strong desire to change something, anything from a poor service that's affected thousands to an oppresive regime that's affected millions, these ideas gain momentum and are given velocity.

The fuel of change = problem + idea + social media + will

In August 2009 I wrote Power to the People. And the trend continues: thanks to the power of social media, global power bases continue to slide from top-down to bottom-up. Any government or organisation that hasn't kept pace with popular sentiment, wants and wishes will find themselves on the wrong end of 140 characters and that's proving a dangerous place to be!

The current uprising in Egypt is further evidence: the threat to Mubarak and government being so great that Internet access and mobile networks has been shutdown for days. Social media power houses Google and Twitter have fought back. Protesters can now call these numbers: +16504194196 , +390662207294, +97316199855 and their voice messages can be found here: http://www.twitter.com/#/speak2tweet. All those naysayers that doubted power is shifting to the people may need to reconsider their views.

1. http://xjg.co/gR25Mk — the speak2tweet twitter feed
2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12332850
3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12331520
4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12341554

I've been thinking about this WEM stuff (Web Engagement Management). And I want to know more: what is it? and who's it for? 5 May 2010, Brice Dunwoodie defined WEM this way on CMS Wire's website.

The 5 Pillars of WEM

Web Engagement Management is a composite concept. These are the 5 parts we consider its core:

1. Content Optimization
   This include native or tightly integrated analytics, content and experience personalization, multi-variate testing and optimization and SEO.
2. Multi-channel Management
   Consistency is important and WEM maintains it by delivering the same message/experience to customers across devices and channels both online and offline.
3. Conversational Engagement
   WEM supports this through communities, user generated content, commenting, trackbacks, micro-blogging, social media integration, analytics, social media monitoring and sentiment analysis.
4. Demand Generation
   Targeted marketing is huge. With an overall goal of increasing the number and quality of relationships, WEM comes to the aid of demand generators through need recognition, relevancy enhancements and engagement triggers.
5. Sales Automation
   Love isn't the only two-way street, and as social media analyst Jeremiah Owyang put it, "real-time isn't fast enough." This idea is manifest in WEM in areas like two-way CRM integration, social CRM and e-mail or other campaign integration with the content platform.

Let's do some analysis to better understand if WEM is for Local Government.

Scenario 1

North Somerset Council, my local authority want web-engaged audiences because these audiences can self-serve and therefore reduce contact costs.

Content Optimisation

— Web analytics will confirm what the council knows to be the busy, useful, frequently-used parts of the site.
— Personalisation won't be terribly helpful as assumptions made about my visit could be wildly inaccurate.
— Multi-variate testing? Well this ain't no Tesco or ASDA website and anyway, MV testing is seen as an ongoing exercise, not just a project. And budgets won't stretch even if the benefits were proven.
— SEO? Well North Somerset doesn't have any competitors so SEO, though important, isn't going to get the lion's share of budget.
— UX is not listed under content optimisation, yet it can be treated as a project cost and will yield useful results even if the study is heuristic.

Multi-channel Management

I take issue with the assertion that WEM delivers consistency of message/experience both on- and off-line. Please tell me how that's going to happen? Unless organisations adopt a web-first publishing model I cannot understand how WEM will orchestrate offline publishing or say, an above the line campaign.

Conversational Engagement

The statement: WEM supports this through communities is woolly. Would a WEM solution involve building a community? Or, is this a Facebook connector for example? Put this issue of community definition to oneside and I have to say the remainder of the list is bang-on. For me, conversation is the central pillar of Engagement. The term engagement should as much about conversation as it is about conversion if WEM is to benefit an organisation as much as its audiences. I'd like to think of this pillar as *real conversations between real people* and I hope they occur where the people choose.

Demand Generation

Don't know about this one. Anyone from local government care to comment?

Sales Automation

In a local authority context, Sales Automation could be renamed integration. Systems such as WCM, CRM, Email and Analytics need present a dash board of information about the #topics being discussed, about the citizens involved in discussion and the sentiments of conversations.

Conclusion

WEM is relevant to local authorities in part. These organisations don't sell and neither do they compete for your business. But they do provide vital services funded by tax payers and they are accountable for the services they provide. A joined-up engagement strategy, under-pined by a sensible collection of joined-up systems will help local government engage with its citizens.

Further scenarios to follow…

Since my last post on this subject I thought it worth revisiting the data. Why today? Today (13 December 2010) was the day English Councils discovered just how much they had to save as the waves of cuts begin to hit. Local government is required to deliver services, some funded by central government, others through community initiatives. And it's the latter a.k.a, Big Society or pay-for-it-yourself that means these organisations need to engage with citizens to:

— sell ideas
— explain choices, cuts and options
— ask for input and help
— gain commitment

Today was the day some lost their jobs while others had budgets cut to such an extent it will make tomorrow's challenge a whole new ball game. An interesting side effect of hard times is that strategic intelligence is driven up as hardships increase. This is the age of austerity, the age of doing more with less. And it's the age where councils seem to be engaging with their citizens using with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Will it enable them to do more with less? Only time will tell…meantime, some have joined the race to be liked.

In this post I've refreshed the date and concentrated on PERCENTAGE INCREASE IN FACEBOOK LIKES since my last post. Coventry County Council is still the notable leader in terms of Facebook success with more that 16,000 Likes!

Organisations of all types and sizes are currently engaged in social media experiments. Very limited, very cautious experiments. A little measurement here, a bit of coy chat there, you know how it is, we're currently in that in-between stage — curious but fearful of leaving known comforts for the brave new world. Where are you and your organisation in this spectrum:

1. Conservative — traditional marketing and pr + some social media monitoring
2. Progressive — senior managers blog, some tweets broadcast. Marketing orchestrate and tightly control all that's said
3. Enlightened — blogs and tweets flow, communication rules have been replaced with principles that protect personal, organisational and client interests. *Everyone* knows the values and opinions of the organisation. Conversations across porous boundaries are natural, human, honest, accountable

Level 2 organisations are giving social media a trial run but their understanding is still entombed in old-marketing paradigms. They have fears. Nightmares actually. Someone might do something like this…(pokey tongue shot of my daughter) metaphorically speaking.

Speaking openly about my own characteristics, I'm an odd mixture: a techy with EQ. I like facts not waffle, I love straight-forward honesty. Here's the worrying bit…even if being honest is going to cost me somehow, I will say it any way. Can't see the point in not!. All this means I can be seen as a maverick. Yet it's my belief that people want transparency and honesty, they want to know you're capable of saying *this is the wrong product for you, I shalln't take any more of your time* if that really is the case. My daughter has inherited a fair number of my wacky genes; she has the ability to shock me to the core and yet she is loved for her honesty and good heart.

Organisations cannot afford gaffs; leaks of a confidential matter, betrayal of a commercial secret or an expression of a sentiment, opinion or idea that's orthogonal to the group. So being a level 2 is seen as the practical solution. Audiences, however, know they're not getting the real deal. They're not seeing the people. This is the main difference between levels 2 and 3. It is the existence and universal understanding of a set of guiding principles. Rules and principles differ greatly, the latter offering a great deal of flexibility over the former. Take for example the stick man below. He's throwing and catching a package. Never once does he drop and break the item. So he's never broken the rule which states: "do not drop". But he has violated the principle: FRAGILE.

To be a genuinely social organisation, the old rules of marketing have to be binned. People across the organisation need "to be on the same page" if they're to tweet, blog or write comments in the open forum of social media. To get to level 3 involves:

1. Trusting a wider group of people to engage directly with their peers and audiences (internal and external)
2. Equipping the organisation with a set of guiding principles — see Values and Opinions
3. Working through the pain of level 2
4. Scrapping old-world paradigms and replacing the velvet tongue of marketing with the authentic voice of individuals

An organisation that's genuinely open — engages with competitors to discuss ideas, engages with audiences openly and frankly — is not the same as the one that thinks the illusion of one-to-one marketing is a great ambition. The promise of 1-to-1 marketing appeals to the old-world marketer.

A social organisation is one that's confident in the power of ad-hoc, transparent communication. A social organisation empowers its people to engage in open conversation. A social organisation participates in authentic dialog not pseudo 1-to-1 marketing. A social organisation is *open for business* in a very real sense.