Richard Telofski

on "Irregular Competition"

Archive for April, 2008

Maybe the Old Media Are Still the Most Effective?

Apr 30

Posted by Richard Telofski in Contrarian, Truth | 1 Comment

Here’s something that just blows my mind, and it’ll probably blow your’s as well.

Yesterday over on Web-Strategist.com, a blog run by industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research, appeared an article about who people trust in terms of recommendations on the purchase of products or services. Guess what? The old ways are still the most trusted. Duh.

Jeremiah gave us a peek at Forrester data that shows 83% of consumers trust purchase recommendations of friends who have used the product or service as opposed to only 30% who trust the opinions of a prominent blogger. 30%! The number two sources of trust, at 75%, were the traditional media of newspaper, magazine, or television reviews of products and services. Notice these top two sources of consumer trust did not come from the new media of Web 2.0. So much for social media and that development of trust which social media is purported to bring to the commercial arena. In fact, according to this Forrester data, trust in social media recommendations didn’t even score above 60%. Now, some may say 60% isn’t bad, but in my estimation it’s terrible.

Yet, the current validity and relevance of these numbers can be called into question. The source of the data is copyrighted by Forrester in 2008, but the graph from where the data came is actually cited as third quarter 2006. So, in all fairness, it could be that consumer trust opinions may have changed a bit since then.

Even so, these numbers are interesting in that they say that social media is definitely not cracked up to be what most social media evangelista purport it to be. And as I said in a previous article, beware of snake oil salesmen selling social media.

Sorry, Gen Y, but maybe the old media are still the most effective?

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What’s Driving Social Media?

Apr 29

Posted by Richard Telofski in Truth | No Comments

A recent article by Graeme Hutton of Universal Mc Cann suggests that:

Arguably, the rise of social media has been caused by the synthesis of two opposing forces: the rise of personal communications technologies colliding with increasing consumer resistance to mass media conventions.

Okay, I’ll argue with that. The reason behind the rise is a little deeper than just the contemporary “collision” of “two opposing forces.” But the reason is not so deep that it’s not obvious. Key in on the word “social” in social media. It’s obvious. We’re social beings. We want, we need, to be in contact with each other. We need to express our voices and our opinions. We need to know that we matter and that our time here on this rock is not insignificant.

Those deep driving needs are part of what fuels the resistance to mass media conventions (the other part is that we just hate commercials). Mass media doesn’t allow us to express our inner child. But social media, duh, does. The inner child enables the “social” in social media. The technology enables the “media” in social media. And when you put these two forces, though not opposing, together in an increasingly fragmented society, you get the rise in social media.

So there you have it. Graeme Hutton got it half right. Not bad for a large corporation guy, eh?

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I Don’t Care to Belong to Any Club That Would Have Me As a Member.

Apr 28

Posted by Richard Telofski in Contrarian | 1 Comment

“I don’t care to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” Seem familiar? Yes. It’s from the inimitable Groucho Marx. He had, and still has, a point.

Especially so when you apply his point to business social networks. I mean, think about it. Linked In. My Ragan.com. BizSugar.com MillionImpossible.com, etc.; or name your own. If you’re in business, and you have pulse, you’re in the network. There are no other qualifications. Truthfully, you don’t really even need to be in business; just breathing and able to operate a computer. Speaking of breathing, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are, literally, some dead people in some of those networks. If dead people can vote in Chicago and Boston, why can’t they network on Linked In. So my point comes to this: With whom are you really networking?

One of the strengths of a business network, a real life network, is that you know the persons in your network from actually having worked with them previously, rather than just trading quips over the internet. You know their strengths and weaknesses. You know if you can rely on them or trust them. You know all of this, not just based upon the strength of their work, but also upon the strength of their character which you have seen displayed in the crucible of work. That character can only be communicated through good old face-to-face communication. You just can’t get that kind of communication quality over the Internet, particularly on Twitter.

Who cares what you had for breakfast? I’d rather care about your attitude under stress. And I can’t pick that up over the Internet.

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An Inconvenient Medium?

Apr 23

Posted by Richard Telofski in Blogs, Contrarian | No Comments

Social media can be a pain in the butt from which to get anything worthwhile. Surprised that I, a social media consultant, would say that? Don’t be. I’m a realist.

A super article I read the other day got me thinking more about a subject that’s been bugging me for a while. Time involvement with social media. In Social Media’s Inconvenient Truth, Drama 2.0 (yes, that’s the author’s nom de blog.) riffed off another article by Sarah Perez (wow, an actual real name) wherein she theorized that “real people don’t have time for social media.” I think she may have something there. But apparently Drama 2.0 didn’t quite agree. He went a bit deeper (kudos for that) and reasoned that the average “real” person spends less time in social media per week than the average person spends watching television daily. And why is that?

Drama says social media requires involvement, participation, or what Marshall Mc Luhan described as a “cool” medium. Cool media require work to derive more information or satisfaction from and that describes social media to a “T.” Mc Luhan defined TV as a “cool” medium also, but relative to social media TV is “hot.” Why? Because TV has a lot more upfront information than does social media. Hot media require less participation, or less filling in of the blanks through which to derive some satisfaction.

So, as Drama theorizes, after a long day in the trenches of work, where your mind has been on overdrive since 8AM, where are you going to put your mind at 8PM? In a cool medium like social media, one requiring some extra thought, or in a cool, time-to-veg-out-and-relax medium like TV? I know what my answer is, and it’s probably the same as that of most average people. But to say definitely? More research is needed.

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From Content Readers to Content Publishers?

Apr 22

Posted by Richard Telofski in Contrarian | No Comments

I read yesterday about how GroundFloor Media Inc., a PR firm, is launching a social media program aimed at helping its clients go viral in social networks, blogs, and podcasts. The article says, “Social media has transformed consumers from content readers to content publishers.” And this is good how? Who’s going to read all this stuff?

There are only X number of content readers out there. And now they’re spending some of their time not reading, but creating. That creative time consumes time that those same people could spend, well, consuming content. And that creative time cuts down on the total potential audience for what content is already out there. Think about it in terms of numbers. Technorati is tracking about 113 million blogs as of the date of this post. And last I’m aware of there are about 250 million blog readers. So, on average, there are 2.2 readers for each blog? Yeah, that’s what the numbers say.

Of course, the top 1% of blogs pull most of the readership, but that’s not the point. The point is if there are people out there creating the other 99% of blogs and other social media content, they’re not spending time consuming. And we wind up with a society that is more obsessed with talking than with listening. Are we becoming a society of narcissists? More interested in hearing ourselves speak than in listening?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must stop writing and go off and read some of those other blogs. They need the consumption. ;-)

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Are Americans Social Media Voyeurs?

Apr 21

Posted by Richard Telofski in Contrarian | No Comments

A new survey came out last Friday saying that Americans are more likely to consume social media content than create it. I don’t find that surprising in the least. And this problem isn’t a recent one either.

Back in 1997, when I worked for a different consulting company, I was in charge of running the company’s email discussion group, a forerunner of Twitter type stuff. I recall about 1,000 members. Not bad for the size of my company. But the amount of posts made on a daily basis was anemic. And the membership was composed primarily of Americans.

In order to keep the discussion group going, I had to come up with daily posts, very much like blogging. And what happened after a while was that the “discussion group” simply turned into an electronic newsletter. Since the company already had a newsletter in another medium, I stopped the “discussion group.”

So are Americans simply, as the survey results suggest, a nation of social media voyeurs? High on content consumption and low on content creation or response? What do you think? ;-)

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Aren’t Brands Dead Yet?

Apr 18

Posted by Richard Telofski in Truth | 4 Comments

In my 1999 book, Fast Food for eBusiness Marketers, I wrote about how the web was going to kill of the brand. You know what a brand is. It’s that short, iconoclastic communication that remains within the control of the seller. Or so they think.

Web 1.0 was doing much to take that control away from the brander. Now, Web 2.0 has upped the stakes and is ripping the control away at warp speed. No, I haven’t had any Kool-Aid today. But just look around you. Part of the brand’s continuity is based upon information asymmetry. In case you haven’t heard, information asymmetry is dying a progressive death. Alright, it may not be happening at warp speed, that was one of those exaggerations popped in there to spice up the writing.

But it is happening. Sometimes gradually, sometimes a bit faster. So what’s this mean?

It means that instead of relying on branding, marketers will need to actually produce a product or service that is “bullet-proof.” Read that as “perfect.”

Else, they just won’t be able to withstand the advance of information symmetry born of Web 2.0.

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