The Myth of Transparency - Why We Don't Really Have a Say

Every few months, it makes the news again - another change in Privacy rules on Facebook , a new agreement at Twitter, Google pulls its access from another platform, a shakeup in management, key employees leaving.... Each time this happens it causes an outbreak of prodding, poking and, in many cases, intrusive questions to dig out the "why" of what happened and all the dirty laundry.

Gossip-mongers, paparazzi, we have words for people like this in the entertainment industry and in everyday life. And yet, in an online communities there seems to be a presumption by the community that they have a right to know why decisions are made and who profits from them.

Clearly this is not the case. All of the leading networking platforms are privately-owned firms and while some of them are publicly traded, none are owned by the users. The privately owned networks have limited legal need to report even so much as executive leadership changes. Publicly traded companies must report changes...but they still have no requirements around explaining the whys and wherefores. Nor is there any moral obligation to explain personal choices by the staff about their own lives.

So why do we demand explanations?  Let me illustrate with a parable, as I so often do.

I am active in an incredibly niche industry. To say that everyone knows everyone else comes very close to the truth. A few years ago a major player in the industry landscape, having pulled itself out of two major business setbacks, packed it in quite suddenly, just as it was doing really well again.

People went ballistic. They raged and ranted about this company, how it had never been well-run, or
that it was a joke. Specifically, the President came under major dissection. He's been higgeldy-piggedly about his business objectives, running the company like a hobby, inconsistent, etc. (In reality, the market had radically altered several times over a decade, and he had merely been attempting to find workable business models, but that was never once acknowledged.)

Recently, that company has made some moves to return as a player in the field. There were positive
and negative reactions, but the weirdest and most inexplicable reaction I encountered was from members of that industry press. Two journalists told me that they were going to contact the people involved and demand details of their contracts. I boggled. Then I asked, "By what right do you demand this knowledge? It's none of your business."

The argument was loud.

A week later one of them contacted me privately to admit that I saved him from embarrassing himself
badly and ruining his credibility.

We use the products. We engage with the communities. Of course we feel as if we have a claim on those companies, but in reality, we have none. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn owe us...nothing. We use their sites for free and in return they sell our data to advertisers. Equally we owe these platforms nothing; no loyalty, no praise. By what right do we demand transparency from these platforms? Because we answer questions and talk with other people?

The Myth is that by participating on a community, we have some kind of ownership of that community. In reality, we have only our own content to leverage. Anything that we have created to make the community a better place is ours, and with some foresight, we'll have made it as portable and flexible as possible. If that content is customized for that site, well then, it's gone.

Change in any community comes with emotional cost, and each time it feels like upheaval but, we are owed no transparency from any platform on which we willingly engage that we do not own. Perhaps some platforms will be more transparent than others, but we have no right to demand answers to questions that are none of our business.

So go ahead and ask your questions, but don't be surprised when no one tells you "why".

4 Ways To Fight Back Against Facebook Throttling Pageviews Without Paying For Promotion

Facebook is throttling Page views in order to "encourage" us to pay for promotion. We all know they are, and we're frustrated by this. It feels like extortion even if it isn't. It's not fair to the folks who have "liked" that page, and okay, yes, we can harangue them to add the page to their favorites, but isn't that forcing them to say they want to read the page, no really, they really want to read the page, thanks, really, over and over again?

No matter how you slice it, it's a crappy deal for the folks on your page. They want to read your posts, they want to "like" and respond to them, if only they knew they were there!  But FB has us in a bind, and we're getting fewer and fewer views every time. (I"m down 20% on views from this time last year.) It's time to fight back! Here's a a few tactics to make sure you get your word out.

Ask People to Share the Post - If you're a nice person who believes content is king, this feels like cheating. You don't want to shill for your page, you just want folks to enjoy the content. But, along with "likes" this simple act of sharing allows more people (and people outside your page) to see the content. So go ahead and ask!

Switch Up the Kind of Posts You Make - You're posting status updates regularly (not too often, just often enough) and you're worried that even when they do see the post, people following your page aren't taking note of it. It's time to switch up your posting strategy. Instead of a status update, share a picture, or a video or a link. Ask a question, hold a poll. Rotate through different media to engage people who prefer different communications styles, and you'll get more attention overall.

Share Posts Outside Facebook - Media posted publicly on Facebook can be accessed by people not on Facebook. Public posts can be seen by anyone with a FB account. Go ahead and tweet that image post, share the existence of your page on your mailing list or blog. Amplify, amplify, amplify!

Share Page Posts From Your Personal Account - This is the ace up your sleeve. You have contacts who don't follow your Page but do follow you and when they see you share a post from your Page, they'll be there with likes and shares of their own. Share those posts on your personal page and leverage that network.

Use these four tips to fight back against Facebook throttling and get the word out!

Where to Start With Content Marketing

Social Media's new buzzphrase is Content Marketing. You've seen it on blogs, Facebook Gurus tell you to embrace it, webinars abound. You love the idea...but where to start?

Chances are, you're already creating content. Look beyond "holiday sales!" reminders to see the content you already produce.

Tell people what you love about your product or service - you have years of helping people be more productive, happier, more efficient. Tell those stories and let you passion shine. People respond to that with passion of their own.

Share the insight years of experience have given you - You've been working in your field for years, maybe decades, and you've seen fads come and go. You know what works and why. That kind of experience makes an impression on readers.

Be honest - This advice cannot be repeated too often. Consumers are not children. When you know something, say it, when you don't, be honest. There's no amount of fiction that can make up for betrayed trust.

Tell your own story - You are a unique snowflake...or maybe not, but chances are, your story can help someone, by giving them a unique perspective on life. Don't take yourself out of your story, you are the best hook you have.

Avoid gimmicks - Don't look for "clever' ways to gain engagement, just talk with people. Contests should be about your users/readers/followers not about your numbers.

Creating original, compelling content is as simple as having a conversation about something you love, with someone else who loves it, too. Tell your story your way, respond when people talk with you and Content Marketing will happen.

How Passion Sells - Going Beyond Eating Your Own Dogfood

It's an old adage that "Passion Sells." And we've all experienced how a passionate influencer can sway our own opinion - especially when that influencer is someone to whom we have previously given cognitive authority in areas of expertise. This is the core of social search, and every platform is betting on you wanting to do more of this - getting opinions and recommendations from influencers, providing recommendations of your own to your sphere of influence.

But, why is it that passions sells? What are the specific qualities of passion that work in terms of influence? What, specifically triggers the metamorphosis of passion to influence? It's more than just eating your own dog food, although realistically, you'd better be starting from there. ^_^

Passion is often softened in marketing into images of sensuality or hedonism, but at it's heart, passion is about belief.


The Journey Begins With Belief

Celebrity endorsements are a tried and true form of advertising, so are testimonials. Both of these are based on the simple idea that a voice that is recognizable will have influence. For some people sheer recognition is enough, for others there must be a connection - that person is like me. Either way the journey begins with belief in the voice speaking. Depending on the product, or the sophistication of the audience, you can buy endorsement, but you can never fake belief.  When you believe in your product, other people are willing to believe in it too.


Benefits With Benefits

It's awfully nice that using your product or service was good for that person over there. You'll need to convince every person out there of direct, tangible results for them, too. To do that, you'll need to think way outside your list of intended results, uses and outcomes. Understanding that each person who uses your product or service has an individual story, gives you a chance to customize what you have to say to your listeners.  Make the benefits plain to each person on the scale of their needs, not out of your jar of pitches.


Making a Convincing Case

When we have been in someone else's shoes, we know what they are seeing. When we have a story that is compelling to that person, they can see what we are seeing. Bridging that gap between perspectives is exactly where passion fits in. Passion becomes the connection between the words and the belief that underscores those words. It's your business, it's your content, it's your life. If you aren't passionate about it, why should anyone else be?

Don't throw your passion down on every third project out there. Take every opportunity to mean what you say.  When you've built up your reputation as someone who means every word they say, whose passion has worth, you'll find that your influence increases exponentially.

Embrace what you do with passion and ignite your creativity, and your market's belief in you.

When a Reward Program Feels Like a Slap

One of the keystones in a business-consumer relationship is the idea of reward. The concept is simple - the company says, "Be loyal to us and be rewarded by us" to the consumer.

I'm not going to rant how credit card companies, airlines, hotel chains and other business conglomerates have  shifted their "reward" programs from any meaningful measure of reward to S&H green stamp-like "points you can cash in for cheap consumer goods." Today I'm going to focus on a situation that any small company might run into - when a reward ends up feeling more like a punishment.

The company in question is, generally speaking, excellent in both word and deed when it comes to customer service. They recently ran a promotion in which current customers would receive a code that could be decoded for a discount to be used on a future purchase.

There were several problems with this contest right off the bat. Non-purchasing people who visited them at an event were able to get the discount code card - and presumably more than one, to get a better discount - while people not at the event had to jump through some hoops to get a card. It wasn't as easy as sending one's email address - it was a throwback to the old days of send a 3" x 5" card with 1" block letters and a self-addressed stamped envelope.... That was Step 1. It wasn't an insurmountable hurdle, but it did feel weirdly anachronistic and awkward. And it mean that I waited 2 weeks to get my card, where people who just happened to be at the event were able to get theirs right away by mere coincidence of time and place.

When one received the card, it contained a QR code which, when scanned, would reveal the code, or the code could be entered in a special website to reveal the discount. Step 2. Again, not by itself arduous...but why couldn't this have been Step 1 for people not at that event? I give you my email, you send me an email with the code. Faster, less waste of paper and less time.

Step 3 was where it really started to go wrong. I revealed my discount and found that I would save....4%? Seriously? I admit - I felt insulted. All that time and yes, I paid for a stamp...to get 4% off an order? I'll be honest, any discount less than 15% annoys me. When I discount items, I never discount less than 15%.  But to go through that rigmarole and wait to receive a 4% discount...well that was much less of a "thanks" than they intended, I'm sure.

But this wasn't over. I kept the card, even though it had what I considered to be a relatively limited time period - it was good for only 3 months. So, not a special reward  discount so much as a time-sale coupon.

Step 4 - I finally put an order together and went to apply my discount...only to find that the items I chose were not eligible for the discount. (To be fair, they were already discounted, but still.) So, in the end, as a reward and to thank me for my support, I'm out the price of a stamp.

As I say, I genuinely love this company. I can totally understand at each step of the process why it had to be the way it was, but in the end, the special discount was more like a slap in the face.

When developing reward programs, consider the process as a whole, as well as individual parts.

Make sure that the end goal - to reward and thank customers - is executed fully, or you may actually accomplish the opposite of what you intend.

Rumors of Quora's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Note: I have been less active here of late because of other time constraints and something had to fall off the list. This blog was it. I have, however, been very active on Quora, where I answer all sorts of questions about just about anything except Social Media. ^_^ Recently Quora has been tagged by a number of former users as a site that is just about to implode. Here is my rebuttal, with a healthy dose of Community Lifecycle discussion. If you've got any kind of a community online, forum, mailing list, Facebook, consider reading section 3, 4 and 5.

***

1. Introduction

Elitist, clique-ish, stuck up and broken, Quora is reported to be in the middle of a mass exodus of tech talent and contributing users. Or so some people would have us believe. Certainly, some former users have written angry screeds based on their own personal experience in this apparent snakepit. One of the founders is leaving, so clearly that is a signal to anyone with a brain to get out now!

The problem with these reports is that they are, in most cases, conflating two completely different aspects of Quora, and trying to make the one responsible for the other.

2. Quora, Product and Community

Let's have a frank discussion about Quora. Quora is a beast with two faces - a community, which has all of the very typical problems of all online communities, and all of the benefits, as well. And there is Quora the product, which as of yet does not have a strictly defined existence in the public eye, but is strong enough to have gained a second round of investment.

Quora the product is a fully-fleshed out community architecture without an [apparent] business model. Neither users nor spectators really know anything about Quora the product's future. At the moment, Quora has neither advertising nor subscription and if content is being sold by Quora to media outlets, none of the users know anything concrete about those agreements.

What Quora the product will evolve into is, as of yet, entirely unknown to users of Quora. Pretty much any conjecture or opinion you hear from disgruntled ex-users is just that...conjecture or opinion. Charlie Cheever leaving means that...Charlie Cheever is leaving. We cannot reasonably connect any change in his status at Quora with any external change in Quora the product.

The second half of this equation - apparent problems with Quora the community- is driven by the community lifecycle. Online platforms have a lifecycle of their own, and each user on that platform has a lifecycle on that platform.

3. User Lifecycles

Think of MySpace for a moment. It was a pioneer in the social space, stepping on the shoulders of less-popular but still functional Livejournal. For a while it was the go-to social platform. When people ask the question now "What happened to MySpace?" or expound upon its downfall, they are merely showing off their lack of knowledge about communications platforms and the lifecycle that accompanies them.

In Perils and Pitfalls of Community Management, I wrote about the stages of creation, organization and moderation of an online community.

Along with the lifecycle of a community, each individual user goes through a lifecycle process:

1) Newbie - Everything is new and exciting. Some people seem to effortlessly acclimate, others bang against walls, still others fall foul almost immediately of community guidelines and moderation.

2) Experienced Community User - A person has been active on the community for a few months, can answer basic "how to" and "where" questions and still has a lot of enthusiasm for the community.

3) Senior Community Member - This person has been active on the community for more than 6 months and has been assigned cognitive or real authority on the community.

4) Moderators/Admins - Ideally, these people have shown uncommon skill in handling community interaction. (This is often not true, however, and many communities will promote heavy users without any real people skills.)

***

What does this mean for a person who has just joined Quora? It means that there are roughly 3 months or so for the honeymoon. In that time, the new user will be building their profile, their interest map (i.e., following topics and people) and building their reputation. The reputation one builds in the first three months will be critical to future interactions - this is the online community equivalent of a "first impression."

After that 3 months, the user continues in the role they have created for themselves - whether it be "active user" or "gadfly"or "occasional poster," very little will change for another cycle of three months or so.

At 6 months, the user has had time to acclimate - or not - to the community and to establish behavioral patterns there. If the reputation the user established is as "knowledgeable and helpful resource" then they might find themselves rising in cognitive authority in the community. On Quora, the PeopleRank algorithm is a direct expression of this, as the user gains status through community approval.

For the community, this three-month user lifecycle means that, at any given time, new users are joining and asking all the same questions, while previously active users are retiring, either due to life changes, changed status on the community, or merely because they have hit the end of their lifecycle and are not as motivated to be there any more.

People who engage, but are not recognized, on online communities very often were not able to gain positive attention through normal community activities. They take their opportunity to gain attention and garner reaction with a dramatic exit, called "a flounce." Ironically, many users who engage in a flounce do not actually leave the site at all, but remain on the periphery, commenting (negatively) on the community's downfall.

Changes in staff, formatting and community standards can all affect user lifecycles. Some users take these changes as chances to leave quietly, while some take the opportunity to flounce off publicly.

4. Successful vs Unsuccessful Engagement Online

The recent spate of "Quora is over" posts are almost all written by people who never quite "got" Quora, people who leave with a flounce. What is the difference between the person who "gets" a community and a person who doesn't?

- Experience on other community platforms
A new community member who has never been on a moderated platform before might find the constraints of that society confining. The Internet is a big place, and in many places, freedom of expression without consequence is a standard expectation. On a moderated community like Quora, consequence of expression is a daily occurrence. Some people, when forced to comply with community standards, will find themselves unable to do so

- The ability to separate knowledge/experience from opinion
New community members whose agenda include "winning" conversations and those who cannot imagine that their own biases and experiences have colored their perspective, often find it nearly impossible to function on a moderated community. These people have a hard time separating qualitative from quantitative information.

- The ability to separate constructive criticism from personal criticism
Quora is designed to allow anyone make suggestions to alter a question or answer. Many new Quorans are shocked and appalled when complete strangers edit their answers. Others are enraged when their answers are tagged with "Need Improvement" or "Does Not Answer the Question" or any of the other tags with which Reviewers, Admins, Moderators can tag a post.

The inability to separate out the needs of the community from the needs of the individual Quoran shows a critical misunderstanding of what Quora the community is about. Quora is, on the face of it, a group effort - a constant process to ask good questions and benefit from great answers.

5. What Cliques With You

Let's take a moment and look at the accusation of "cliquishness" that inevitably arises within a community. What, exactly, does that mean for a public community?

In school, a clique is a social sub-network that forms within a larger social framework. It is impenetrable to outsiders, and is easily broken or destroyed by interactions between insiders. Can a public online community really be "cliqueish?" Well, yes and no.

After a community is established and stable, any new user is likely to find an in-crowd in existence. You expect a store to have employees and a hierarchy in place to keep it running - a community needs no less. Users of any level who have interacted for any length of time before you arrive will, of course, have already developed relationships with one another.

How hard is it to break into this "clique"? To a small extent that depends on the reason for the clique in the first place. If the group was formed for the sole purpose of providing a way for a small group to communicate, it might well be very difficult for a new user to make a positive impression.

But public online communities very rarely exist to serve a small group of people. It's far more likely that they exist to provide a forum for communication and information-sharing for a large group. So - how hard is it to break into that in-crowd? Not hard at all. By providing useful, thoughtful perspective, insight and information, a person can rapidly be recognized as a positive resource on that platform. Again, Quora makes this simple, by providing the community a chance to increase cognitive authority for any given user with upvotes.

Why, then, do people have a hard time getting along on Quora?

It's easy to see people who will not last long on any online community. These people start off rude, or loud, or "clever" and slowly, but surely, the community ceases to hear them, tunes them out or escorts them out the door. Multiple warnings from admins are seen as personal vendetta, rather than a call to engage with the community in a positive and meaningful way.

Recently, a few experienced users have taken time off from Quora. Some of the more public "Quora is dying" articles have cited these people leaving as proof that Quora is rotting from within. However, if you look at individual cases, you can see that as many people have left because of life changes and community lifecycle changes as have left because of any intrinsic (much less endemic) failure on Quora's part. In other cases, Quora has moderated a few people for their inability to follow community standards - these actions have almost invariably been followed by loud, public flounces by the parties involved. This is followed by those parties conflating Quora the community (with which they never meshed) and Quora the product, about which none of the users have concrete information.


6. Conclusion - What Does This Mean For Quora?

This, of course, is the big question. And honestly, we have no idea. Quora the product is a privately owned entity. We, the users, are not privy to decisions made about the company or product until they are made public. Any conjecture about the health of the company is, as I said, merely conjecture.

What we can say is that Quora the community is as vital as ever. No, the quality of questions has not dropped - people are just getting through to the last part of their lifecycle and are tired of waves of new people coming in and stomping around the site. Yes, Quora *could* do better with onboarding. A brief training video, followed by a single, easy to find Index of information (not in Q&A form, which just encourages confusion about rules) could, potentially, solve some of the problems. But it would cause others. In any case, no one reads the FAQs.

Users who joined post the Initial Quora ramp-up, it is still possible to find a place here. It just takes a little time and effort and a little goodwill and desire to make Quora a better resource.

For those of us who use Quora in this fashion, at this moment, at least, the rumors of Quora's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Two Things You Can't Fake on Social Media

This week Social Media channels are abuzz with NBC's epic failure to recognize what Social Media is about...and what the Internet is, full stop. While Twitter blazes with reported failures of NBC's streaming channels and inability to access live coverage, NBC executives have taken to the airwaves to explain to the denizens of the Internet how the problems are all their fault.

The above debacle is a massive and public expression of the two things that cannot be faked in Social Media: Cluefulness and Relevance.

Being clueless is, unfortunately for many businesses, quite simple. All you need to do is have no idea of the needs of your audience, or any idea of what social media really is (hint: it's a lot of people talking...).

Being Clueful and Relevant means you know:

Who Your Audience Is (Where they are, When they are on)

What They Want

How They Intend to Get What They Want If You Don't Give It To Them

This last is where NBC really dropped the ball. By insisting on delayed coverage for the Opening Ceremonies, I guess they expected we'd all sit around staring at the clock. Instead, many of us simply found overseas streams and proxy servers, so we could watch the Ceremonies live. It took me, oh, about 15 minutes to find a working overseas stream. When that one cut out, it took me 10 more minutes to find another one.

But I'm not talking about NBC today. I'm talking about another failure to be Clueful or Relevant. A much, much smaller scale of failure, but just as annoying.

Yesterday I received a tweet: Hey @Yuricon! I followed you, you should follow me!

Okay, not the most skilled opening, but maybe sincere. So I popped over to their account and found something that only very tangentially intersected my interests and the interests of my audience. I tweeted back:

"Your topic isn't my topic, but if you say something interesting, I'll share it and follow."

Okay, so far, another day on Twitter. Bear in mind that I am outspoken about media's failure when it comes to women (hyper-sexualization, body image, unequal portrayals of men and women in power, dismissive and judgmental language in regards to women, etc.,). The next tweet showed a massive dose of Cluelessness.

The person/company in question assured me that they understood women, because he (he had identified himself) was publishing a book on self-improvement for women. My response was admittedly very sarcastic, something about how wonderful that was, because more women need more men to tell them how to improve themselves.

Here's my point. NBC execs are taking to Twitter to tell us to stop whining, that the problems are with our computers..., this shows clearly a complete lack of connection with their audience. It's obvious that to NBC and to the IOC, that we are merely a commodity to be bought and sold. NBC cannot fake having a clue, or understanding the least anything about Social Media. This guy was also unable to fake being Clueful or Relevant and instead, just opted to throw his one pitch with "something about women" at me.

The worst part about companies pretending to have a clue or to be relevant, is that it is horribly, painfully evident to anyone looking on.

NBC could have asked their interns, "Hey, if we do a time-delay on the Opening Ceremonies, what would you do?" This guy could have read some of my posts and seen what he does that would be relevant to me and my audience.

Have a clue who you're talking to - about what - and why - and you won't need to fake anything at all.