Notes from The Power of Influence

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The Power of Influence lunch was run earlier today. This was in fact the inaugural event of The Insight Exchange. The quality of the event and the feedback augur well for The Insight Exchange future’s, and particularly for the value it will create for participants. It was a highly interactive event, with deep content and great discussion.

Below are the notes I took during the event.

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I initially presented the Influence Landscape framework we launched yesterday, after which the three panelists spoke and the event then progressed to a highly interactive discussion among all participants, from which I have taken a few notes as well.

BRIAN GIESEN – OGILVY PR

75% of people don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising.

In the US 81% look to word of mouth (WOM) for decisions.

Trust in media Editorial is 56%.

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Tapping the power of Social Media: 6 steps for marketers

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I wrote the article below for Tech Marketing magazine. It is intended as a quick guide for marketers who are looking to engage with social media.

It is now impossible to ignore the power and reach of social media. Yet the rules of engagement are very different to traditional marketing and PR. Here are a few guidelines to how to tap the power of social media without stumbling into the many pitfalls:

1. Participate and play

The only way to understand social media is to participate. Don’t just open Facebook and Twitter accounts. You need to play extensively with a wide variety of tools and discover how they are being used. If you think you don’t have time, think how much time you’ll have if you cannot work effectively in a world increasingly driven by social media.

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Q&A: Twitter’s retention rates: will Twitter be pervasive or a niche app?

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After my TV interview about Twitter the other day, I’ve just been interviewed by ABC Radio about the Nielsen research just out that shows that Twitter’s second-month retention rates for new users are 40%, compared to retention rates of 50-60% for Facebook and MySpace when they were at a similar stage in their growth.

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I was asked some interesting questions in the interview, so to paraphrase them and quickly respond:

Is this a concern for Twitter’s executives?

Absolutely. It’s one thing to get massive numbers of new users. It’s another thing to retain them. Unless Twitter can change this, it will never conquer the world as some suggest it might.

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Twitter on ABC TV – the impact on politics, media and socializing

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ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) TV had a very nice segment on Twitter yesterday, as below.

As befits the august institution, the segment was more thoughtful than some other recent media coverage.

It begins with how politicians are using Twitter, including Barack Obama, Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, and South Australian state premier Mike Rann, who announced his new cabinet on Twitter, and talks about how he embraces it as a way of communicating with his electorate.

The segment then looks at how Twitter is becoming a media channel, including providing breaking coverage of events such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks and Australian bushfires, and quotes me saying that many news events are covered first and sometimes better on Twitter than on mainstream media.

On the segment ABC Managing Director Mark Scott says that most Twitter sources cannot be trusted, so people will look to credible sources such as the ABC, possibly delivered over the ABC’s own Twitter channel.

This approach just takes us back to the traditional view that news is only news once a journalist has reported it. In part of my interview that wasn’t used in the segment I noted that people are increasingly looking for primary sources for news. They are not interested in waiting until the broadcast journalists get to the scene, and they feel capable of assessing the validity of these unauthorized sources themselves.

The segment wraps up mentioning Twitter’s search for a business model.

Changing gears – onto the future of influence and new ventures!

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My readers will have seen a massive focus on Enterprise 2.0 in this blog for the last few months, as I have been preparing, promoting and running the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in Sydney and Enterprise 2.0 Executive Briefing in Melbourne, and writing and publishing Implementing Enterprise 2.0, which is rapidly becoming the reference in the field. Moving forward I will continue to be deeply involved in Enterprise 2.0 through my client work, and will also be releasing a lot more content from the report.

However I am now in the process of shifting gears. Last year I realized that a large proportion of my interests could be encapsulated in two key themes:

The future of the enterprise

The future of influence

The first examines how organizations will evolve and what they must do to be successful in an intensely complex and competitive world. The second looks at how messages disseminate when traditional media is being trumped by social media. Together they bring together the inside and the outside, the twin domains in which open communication is transforming business and society.

Having focused deeply for a while on the future of the enterprise, for the next period my attention will shift significantly to the future of influence.

I have studied and worked on influence networks for much of the last decade. Among other activities, I wrote about influence networks in Chapter 6 of Living Networks and published what was then the first detailed study of influence networks in B2B marketing: How Technology Purchasing Decisions are Really Made. However so far I haven’t written up most of my ongoing research and work in the space.

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Launch of Implementing Enterprise 2.0: using software versioning for books

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We have just launched our Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report, encapsulating in a neat package (almost) all you need to know to create massive value with Enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches in your organization.

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Our www.ImplementingEnterprise2.com website includes a number of free chapters and resources, which I’ll feature in more detail here later, as well as ordering information.

One of the key aspects of the report is that it is versioned. Version 1.1, available on Amazon.com, includes just a few small fixes from the 1.0 version that we produced for a limited audience. Now we can get down to the more significant modifications that will eventually see this as a highly refined and revised version 2.0, 3.0 and beyond.

That evolution will be largely based on feedback from readers. We will soon introduce a feedback forum on the report website to gather suggestions and input, though we’re always keen to get ideas in any format.

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What business books I’m buying and reading

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I just received my latest book shipment from Amazon.com – it’s a tasty pile and I thought I’d share the list in case people are interested. Friendfeed is a nice way to share my various activities, but doesn’t include book purchases, which I’d probably prefer to share on an ad-hoc basis anyway.

Below are the books, together with brief comments. In most cases I haven’t read them cover to cover yet, but I’ll offer my thoughts either through reputation or having had a browse.

The predominant themes of Enterprise 2.0 and influencer marketing are obvious. We are writing our own Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report, as well as running our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum soon, and it’s good to see what else has been written on the topic. As any regular readers of this blog will soon discover, influence will be a major theme for my companies in 2009.

Enterprise 2.0

By: Niall Cook

A succinct report-style overview of Enterprise 2.0 from an executive perspective, written by Niall Cook of PR firm Hill & Knowlton.

ENTERPRISE 2.0 IMPLEMENTATION

By: Aaron Newman, Jeremy Thomas

An extensive examination of Enterprise 2.0 implementation. It is written primarily for technical people, including some code examples, though is certainly accessible to non-technical people.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

By: Yochai Benkler

I’ve been long overdue to get this on my bookshelf. Already a classic, it covers the political and economic implications of a networked world.

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Our trend map for 2009: The vital Trends, Risks, and Red Herrings you must know

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Following our extremely popular Trend Blend 2007 and Trend Blend 2008 trend maps comes…. Trend Blend 2009!

Created by Future Exploration Network’s Chief Futurist Richard Watson, also of NowandNext.com, the 2009 trend map moves on from the subway map theme of the last years to show the multi-tentacled hydra that is the year ahead.

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Click on the map to download the pdf (810KB)

To pick out just a few noteworthy elements of the trend map:

CORE THEMES include:

Uncertainy

Ageing

Global Connectivity

Anxiety

Power Shift Eastwards

SUBJECT THEMES include:

SOCIETY: Search for control, enoughism

TECHNOLOGY: Simplicity, Telepresence, Gesture based computing

ECONOMY: De-leveraging, 2-speed economies, Shorter product lifecycles

ENVIRONMENT: Bio fuel backlash, Negawatts, Nuclear power

POLITICS: Virtual protests, Globalisation in retreat, Immigration backlash

BUSINESS: Networked risk, Transparency, Asset price uncertainty

FAMILY: Debt stress, Allowable luxuries, Middle class unrest

MEDIA: Flight to quality, Facebook fatigue, Skimming, Micro boredom

POSSIBLE RED HERRINGS include:

Climate change crisis

Fall of US Empire

Nuclear power

Device convergence

GLOBAL RISKS include:

Major Internet failure

Influenza pandemic

Major earthquake in economic centre

Obesity

Electricity shortages

People taking trend maps too seriously

As usual, this is released on a Creative Commons license, so feel free to play with it, adapt it, and improve it!

Wishing everyone a fabulous 2009 – be sure to take advantage of these upcoming trends!

Interviews: Six important forces that will shape 2009

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I’ve done two radio interviews this morning, asking me for forecasts for the year ahead.

The broader issue I am emphasizing in my current interviews and speaking is that 2009 will bring more change than any other year this decade.

Perversely, a slowing economy will accelerate the pace of change. Many companies will take advantage of the downturn to use technology in innovative ways. Technology ranging from mobile applications to online gaming will become an everyday part of our work lives.

Social change tends to be faster in a downturn. Our attitudes to what is acceptable behavior by the government and companies will rapidly evolve. Technology is shaping society, but society is also shaping technology, particularly in how it allows us to express forcible opinions.

In these interviews for non-professional audiences I briefly covered six important forces that will shape business and society in 2009:

1. Constant partial attention. 2009 will see more people consuming 20 hours or more of media a day. And no, it’s not just the insomniacs. It is due to a phenomenon called Constant Partial Attention, or CPA, in which our attention is constantly divided between a massive array of channels now including mobile Internet, video screens on buses, and more. Over two-thirds of people watch TV while reading. To be successful, we need to thrive on constant interruption.

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Future of Media Framework adapted into Portuguese

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The Future of Media Strategic Framework is still getting plenty of attention 2 1/2 years since it was created – we’re up to around 150,000 downloads and it is still used extensively by companies and consultants in strategy development. I regularly hear new stories of how it’s been used, and I continue to use it in my strategy projects for media clients, along with other strategy tools.

The latest use of the framework is an adaptation into Portuguese in the interdisciplinary information management journal Liinc em Revista, as below.

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To see the article and original image, go to Liinc em Revista Vol. 4, No 2 (2008), and download the pdf of the article:

Fontes de informação como valor agregado ao sistema eletrônico de revistas da Universidade Federal do Paraná (OJS/SER-UFPR) – Patrícia Zeni Marchiori, Andre L Appel

As it happens I speak reasonable Portuguese, as I spent some time there in the 1990s visiting friends, going to Carnaval, and touring the country. I haven’t been back to Brazil since I gave a keynote at a knowledge management conference in Sao Paolo in 2002, but I’m hoping to get back again before long.

The article looks at the document management systems of the Parana Federal University, and uses a framework for the quality dimensions of information sources, based on the structure of the Future of Media Strategic Framework, though using different content.