I first heard about nonprofit Worldreader—which gives Kindles to students with little access to printed books in rural sub-Saharan Africa—last January on the Build It Kenny They Will Come Blog….  The following line in the post really wowed me:

“Imagine, all the books a child would ever need to see them through their basic education, all packed into a ~$100 device.”

It turns out WorldReader is taking its idea of bringing free digital books to the developing world one step further. WorldReader’s newest project is turning plain old feature phones into smart phones that can be used as electronic readers.

Imagine children using cell phones to read books in parts of the developing world where they previously had few to no books. All for free, except for the costs of the cell phone. Keep in mind that an astounding 79 percent of people in the developing world had a mobile phone subscription at the end of 2011, more than percentage with access to electricity.

To quote the Build It Kenny They Will Come Blog….:

“We often say in mobiles-for-development that today most people in the developing world will make their first phone call on a mobile, and have their first experience of the Internet on one, too. Perhaps children, in the not-too-distant future, will have their first experience of reading on [a mobile phone]?”

I grew up in a military town during the Vietnam war. I remember my friends’ dads going on tours, particularly submarine cruises, for months at a time with little or no communication. There was just a lot of wondering.

Today, social media has made life for military families another universe. You can keep connected with military personnel via Facebook and YouTube just about every day. Dads and moms serving abroad can help their kids with their homework, read bedtime stories, and do some of the things they would if they were back home.

That would have been unimaginable in my childhood. Many dads returned back then as virtual strangers to their young kids, and young kids generally do not hug strangers.  So welcome homes were often … painful.

The beyond-words blessing of social media’s real-time information does have a down side, though. A handful of military families are learning about the death of their loved ones via Facebook, according to USA Today. One of the widows mentioned in the article received the bad news when she was home alone with her children.

The military has a special process for notifying families that their loved ones have died. Uniformed military personnel are dispatched to their next of kins’ homes to deliver the news in private face to face in a dignified way.

According to the USA Today article, the next edition of the Army’s Social Media Handbook, which provides guidance for leaders, soldiers and family members, will address the casualty notification process.

This is a sound strategy, in my view, because I believe additional training is the answer. Additional guidance and more training should help prevent this problem from growing—along with any related calls to restrict military personnel’s access to social media in the field.

Social media has brought so much joy to military families. It’s truly sad to think it has caused extra pain for the families of some military personnel who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.

I apologize to my regular readers for the lack of posts the last few weeks. I’ve been busy visiting my family out of state for Easter, had some unexpected Internet connectivity problems, and then was busy with client catchup. So my monthly video clip of the month post, usually posted around the first of the month, is way, way overdue.

So without futher ado, here’s my April 2012 video clip of the month: a video excerpt from the Women Who Tech TeleSummit after party in San Francisco in 2008. It’s an oldie but goodie—with relevant information on a time-sensitive topic.

Registration is open for the 4th annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit—taking place May 23, 2012, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST—featuring an incredible lineup of female technology change makers. Women with an Internet connection anywhere in the world can take part.

The cost? $20 with scholarships available.

Just like the past three sold out TeleSummits, this one may sell out too. So register now. Among the talented women in technology, startups, and social media serving as panelists include:

• Startup investor Joanne Wilson
• WordPress usability expert Jane Wells of Automattic
• Shaherose Charania of Founders Labs and Women 2
• Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas
• Elisa Camahort Paige of BlogHer
• Kaliya Hamlin of She’s Geeky

I signed up as soon as I learned registration was open for this year’s event. Again, I recommend you do the same.

Reprinted with permission from the Peace for Sale blog. For background on this post, please see the earlier The making and breaking of KONY 2012 Peace for Sale blog post. 

The Enough Project has worked with Funny or Die to produce a pretty funny short film. It’s a parody on KONY 2012 with a call to action. The action, however, does not claim to end a war – its goal is to build awareness and to inspire people to send the letter below to President Obama. This is a realistic goal that does not cost much more than some time and a phone call and is an action the primary viewers can do to impact policy. There is a clear connection between the action and the result. Unlike KONY 2012… where buying a bracelet and targeting youth who are unable to vote to END a WAR surely is a bit off target.

Here is the video and below is the is the letter… and here is the Enough Project site to get more info.

Dear President Obama,

I applaud your decision to deploy U.S. military advisors to assist regional counter-LRA efforts. This is an important step towards a more effective strategy to bring an end to the LRA crisis. But unless an urgent need is addressed, it will be nearly impossible to find Joseph Kony. The main force trying to find Kony has been cut in half and is not allowed to operate in Congo, where most of the LRA is located. A robust Africa-U.S.-Europe partnership is urgently needed. The four key elements of this partnership should be:

1. Troops: President Obama should call on African governments to deploy capable forces to help find Kony;
2. Intelligence: A surge of U.S. intelligence support; and
3. Transport: Logistical assistance from European countries.
4. Defection strategy: aid and radio towers to make sure that LRA fighters know they have a safe place to come out.

I urge you to reach out to your African and European counterparts to secure their support.

When you signed the historic, widely-supported LRA legislation into law last May, you called the nearly 25 year-long LRA crisis a “unique crisis of conscience.” It’s time for your administration to act with all the urgency required to fulfill congressional intent and create a African-U.S.-European partnership capable of finally ending the LRA.

Sincerely,

President Obama Contact Information:

Phone:(202) 456-1111
Fax:(202) 456-2461
Email: Use form on Enough Project website (toward bottom).

I read with interest yesterday a post on a “wide-ranging” Senate investigation into the federal government’s use of public relations services. From the Institute for Public Relations website:

“Twice in the past year there have been investigations into public relations spending by the federal government. The most recent was launched in late February by Senator Claire McCaskill (D–Mo.) and Senator Rob Portman (R–Ohio), who have triggered a wide-ranging investigation of the federal government’s use of public relations and advertising services. At the initial stages of this inquiry the Subcommittee is seeking data for the past five years pertaining to “contracts for the acquisition of public relations, publicity, advertising, communications, or similar services” at 11 separate Federal agencies.  We have our concerns, which we expressed directly with the Senators and through an op-ed published in Roll Call.”

It will be interesting to see where the investigation leads. Similiar controversies have frequently arisen over the years when some members of Congress perceive a federal agency’s public relations activities are overly promotional of a policy or program, particularly in an election year.  The Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, Federal Communications Commission, Internal Revenue Service, and and other federal agencies have drawn congressional scrutiny during the past decade for potential violations of:

• 5 U.S.C. 3107 prohibiting the use of appropriated funds to hire “publicity experts”
• Annual appropriations law prohibiting funds being used “for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofor authorized by Congress”
• 5 C.F.R. § 1320.3(c), as detailed in U.S. Office of Management and Budget Guidance on Agency Survey and Statistical Information Collections, regulating audience research (including surveys and focus groups)
• The Smith-Mundt Act requiring the U.S. public be insulated from government-sponsored information and broadcasting directed at audiences beyond America’s borders (kind of hard in a Web 2.0 world)

According to the Congressional Research Service, however, the laws prohibiting the hiring of publicity experts and the expenditure of appropriated funds on publicity and propaganda in actuality place very few limits on agency public relations activities:

“(1) No federal entity is required to monitor agency compliance with the publicity and propaganda statutes. At present, the federal government has what has been termed ‘fire alarm oversight’ of agency expenditures on communications. Scrutiny typically occurs when a Member of Congress is alerted by the media or some other source that an agency’s spending on communications may be cause for concern. A Member then sends a written request to the Government Accountability Office asking for a legal opinion on the activities in question.

(2) The terms ‘publicity,’ ‘propaganda,’ and ‘publicity expert’ have been interpreted to forbid a very limited number of activities. Congress has not defined the terms ‘publicity,’ ‘propaganda,’ and ‘publicity expert.’ Thus, to GAO has gone the task of delineating what these terms encompass. GAO has done this on a case-by-case basis over the past half-century. Generally speaking, GAO has narrowly defined these terms. It has held that the ‘publicity or propaganda’ prohibition in appropriations laws forbids any public relations activity that:

• involves ‘self-aggrandizement’ or ‘puffery’ of the agency, its personnel, or activities;
• is ‘purely partisan in nature’ (i.e., it is ‘designed to aid a political party or candidate’); or,
• is ‘covert propaganda’ (i.e., the communication does not reveal that government appropriations were expended to produce it).

GAO has interpreted ‘publicity expert’ to mean someone who ‘extols or advertises’ an agency, ‘an activity quite different from disseminating information to the citizenry about the agency, its policies, practices, and products.”

Social media has further complicated this interpretation and enforcement challenge.

I agree with the op-ed Gerard F. Corbett, chairman and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America, wrote for Roll Call:

“Any investigation into the government’s use of PR firms should not be undertaken unilaterally. It must be met by an equally robust examination of how the government communicates with the public and how it can better use innovative PR firms and professionals to best reach and inform citizens.”

Federal agencies deserve less ambiguity on where to draw the line between the appropriate use of funds for public education and general information and the inappropriate use of tax dollars to promote themselves, a political agenda, or U.S. foreign policy. Communications practitioners who serve federal government clients need to watch this investigation—and adhere to any resulting law changes—carefully.

Do you think this investigation will lead do anything?  

Do you know a sure-fire way of engaging readers? Yes, a way of literally causing more brain synapses to fire.

Use language that depicts movement or triggers the senses.

According to new brain research detailed in the New York Times, brains respond to written depictions of smells, textures, and movements as if they were the real thing. Unlike with bland language, they trigger additional neurological regions of the brain distinct from language-processing areas. Words like “lavender,” “cinnamon” and “soap,” for example, elicit a response from the parts of the brain devoted to dealing with smells, not just the “classical” language regions.

“A team of researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in their laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active. Metaphors like `The singer had a velvet voice’ and `He had leathery hands’ roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like `The singer had a pleasing voice’ and `He had strong hands,’ did not.

Researchers have discovered that words describing motion also stimulate regions of the brain distinct from language-processing areas. In a study led by the cognitive scientist Véronique Boulenger, of the Laboratory of Language Dynamics in France, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like `John grasped the object’ and `Pablo kicked the ball.’ The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body’s movements. What’s more, this activity was concentrated in one part of the motor cortex when the movement described was arm-related and in another part when the movement concerned the leg.”

As I wrote about last all, another benefit to vivid language is making you appear more credible. If people have to think too hard about what you say or write, they are less likely to believe you.

Detailed descriptions and evocative metaphor in plain language is the way to go. Need I say more.

Your turn! Do you think engaging writing is important?

A sound communications strategy or creative brief is the most important part of a successful communications campaign or product. It is the firm foundation determining how your communications mix (i.e., public relations, advertising, promotion, and direct marketing) will work together to achieve your communications objectives. It is the genesis of every word you write, every product you produce, every conversation you start.

All too often, however, communicators skip or scrimp on development of a communications strategy or creative brief. Some simply fail to draw the distinction between developing strategy and copying tactics. Others, in a hurry to carry out individual tactics, end up wasting time and effort:

• Skipping development of a sound communications strategy or creative brief leaves you vulnerable to creative teams becoming so enamored with an individual tactic, a potentially award-winning piece of copy, or a dramatic situation that they end up communicating just to communicate—not thinking through choosing a medium to target a specific group with a message carefully crafted to the target. They often end up creating nothing but noise.
• Scrimping on development can result in rejection (weeks or months down the road) of products developed strictly in adherence to the strategy or creative brief. An analysis of the rejection can reveal the problem is strategic and not creative. In these cases, the strategy or creative brief should never have been approved.

Ogilvy Creative Director Norman Berry said it best: Vague strategies inhibit. Precise strategies liberate.”

For a breath-taking example of what this all means check out the Coca Cola Content 2020 Part One and Part Two videos, my pick for March 2012 video clip of the month. The videos detail Coca Cola’s brilliant strategy for making content the core of its marketing efforts (and no longer relying on traditional ad agencies for creative ideas). Coke’s vision is content that is liquid and linked to create contagious conversations that cannot be controlled… and more.

Vague and inhibiting? No. Tactical? No!

Precise and liberating? Yes!

Check the videos out below and enjoy!

What’s your plan to keep your communications strategic? Please share your ideas and experiences in the comments section.

Just after reading a fascinating post on Mobile Mahaal, an innovative experiment making radio more interactive in Afghanistan, I read another by Kim Andrew Elliott on proposed Voice of America (VOA) budget cuts and programs “under other names.” Kim wrote:

“Congress should not spend money on an international news service that the private sector can accomplish at no cost to the taxpayers.”

Kim’s comment was in reaction to a post on the Mountain Runner blog by David Jackson about the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) proposal to radically change the way VOA’s central operation does business. The proposal calls for VOA launching a global news network producing original content, rather than rehashing wire service stories, and producing programming “under other names.” David wrote:

“VOA is well known and trusted by its international audiences. Yet time and again Board members have tried to pressure VOA management to launch programs under other names, thinking that might avoid the assumed taint of being associated with the U.S. government. The fact is, that association is not necessarily bad. VOA’s reputation, which has been painstakingly built over seven decades, is of a broadcaster who tells the truth about everything, including the U.S., and even when the news is unflattering. When we try to hide the association with VOA (or the U.S. government), that only prompts conspiracy theories that the CIA is behind the broadcasts. And in the end, they always figure out it’s coming from us anyway.”

My thought, besides agreeing with Kim and David? What about combining mobile with audience-produced local content (a Web 2.0 rule of thumb is audience segmentation, not old school one-message-fits-all mass distribution). Why spend money on websites and Cold War-appropriate television and radio stations when you can tap mobile, a form of communication governments aren’t likely to jam, especially when there are technologically appropriate and user-friendly customizable programming options like Mobile Mahaal’s? Also, why not combine local audience-produced content (via crowdsourcing radio applications like FrontlineSMS:Radio) with rehashed wire stories? You could transparently fund VOA-curated and/or supported content at a low cost and potentially higher trust factor? You also would avoid flouting the Smith–Mundt Act with websites.

In terms of the BBG’s new Strategic Plan, you might also have some hope of:

• Achieving the goal of the BBG “to become the world’s leading international news agency by 2016”
• Implementing the call for the BBG to “align how we deliver our content with how consumers now access it”
• Living up to the BBG’s revised mission statement and “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy”

Your turn! What am I missing? Can the BBG become the world’s leading international news agency by 2016—with a miniscule budget and mass distribution?

Breast cancer is personal for me. My own grandmother survived breast cancer. Three of my coworkers had breast cancer and one died, leaving two young children. Another friend of mine also survived breast cancer.

For that reason, when I received a direct message from Beth Kanter on Twitter asking me to post tweets with #takebackthepink and #supercure during the SuperBowl I did. I supported Beth’s efforts to make women’s health care accessible to everyone. Every child should have the opportunity to have a grandmother survive breast cancer. Low-income children shouldn’t have to watch their grandmothers suffer and die because they couldn’t afford a mammogram.

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock the last two weeks, Beth’s direct message was in response to Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s politically tinged decision to pull all funding from Planned Parenthood centers. The Komen grants, totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, were mainly intended for free breast screenings for low-income women. None of the money was being used to fund abortions, so cutting off funding did nothing to stop them. The decision, which was reversed February 3, would have left countless of mothers and grandmothers without access to free mammograms.

The effort Beth was promoting ended up completely hijacking the #supercure hashtag during the SuperBowl. Tweets with #supercure and #takebackthepink completely drowned out Komen supporters who planned to promote their organization with #supercure during the sporting event (the NFL is one of Komen’s major sponsors). It (along with several other anti-Komen social media campaigns) helped make conversations about Komen on social media 40 percent negative when they usually are pretty flat.

I am writing this post because I read in the Daily Beast former Komen Vice President Karen Handel is calling Planned Parenthood a “gigantic bully” for launching a social-media firestorm:

“Planned Parenthood launched a vicious attack on a nonprofit organization that fights breast cancer,” she said. “Komen gave out $93 million in community grants last year. Planned Parenthood got $680,000—less than 1 percent of the total granting portfolio. They unleashed Armageddon on an organization for $680,000.”

Her comment reflects the lack of awareness many people in senior positions still have about social media and its power.  One individual and even a leaderless swarm can inspire seismic change in a Web 2.0 world. All you need is motivation, a good wireless connection, and an understanding of social media and psychological insights. Of course, you need luck and a great cause with emotional pull too.

Breast cancer is such a cause for many people like me. That is why I’ve given money to Komen on more than one occasion. But my loyalty is to fighting breast cancer, not an organization with questionable transparency. It’s beyond bad luck Komen apparently hadn’t bothered creating a crisis communications plan that included social media while Beth and other opponents to its Planned Parenthood decision did—even without the benefit Komen enjoyed of knowing about the decision weeks before it became public.

Many would more accurately call that suicide in a Web 2.0 world, not Armageddon.

Your turn! What do you think is the biggest lesson learned from the Komen-Planned Parenthood controversy?

Editor’s Note: The Tweet button is malfunctioning on this post. If you retweet, please use the Shareaholic button below.

What do you think you would need most to harness the Internet to transform Facebook’s privacy policy in Europe?

Great storytelling (a.k.a. content)? Opinion leaders or household names driving traffic to your killer web presence and its top-notch user experience (a.k.a. context)? Or an easy way for people to act to support your efforts and spread the word to their friends? (a.k.a. conversation)?

Tough one!

What turned out to be the answer for Max Schrems, a 24-year-old Austrian law student, is both fascinating and surprising. Last summer, after finishing his thesis on Facebook’s violation of privacy law in Europe, Schrems:

• Formed an activist group called Europe v. Facebook
• Published his thesis online along with a redacted version of the 1,200 pages of data Facebook had collected on him since he joined the social media site in 2008
• Bombarded Facebook with complaints
• Prompted a probe by a European privacy regulator and Congress to question the social media site
• Persuaded 40,000 people to contact Facebook in Ireland, where its European headquarters are located, to demand a summary of all the personal data the U.S. company is holding on them

His vocal campaign has been so successful Facebook’s European Director of Policy Richard Allan and another unidentified California-based Facebook executive flew to Vienna to meet with Schrems earlier this week to discuss his concerns.

Now the Web 2.0 cliché that “content is king” would have you believe great storytelling must be behind Schrems’ success. If you examine at least the English-language part of the Europe v. Facebook website, you see the content is outstanding … for a law student whose first language isn’t English. But I doubt it will be used as a case study for inbound marketing anytime soon.

The user experience on Europe v. Facebook is also fairly average, except content is offered in five languages, and the New York Times is reporting Schrems started with a one-person operation, not a bunch of celebrity endorsements. So his context isn’t case study material either.

What? Another Web 2.0 cliché doesn’t apply?

The key to Schrems’ success seems to be conversation. His website’s main menu gives people an easy way to “Get your Data” and the Europe v. Facebook Facebook page he set up allows them to join the conversation. An article in Forbes also suggests users of the social news site Reddit were crucial in Schrems’ message going viral.

Lesson learned? Content and context do not necessarily rule. Sometimes the most important thing you need besides a great cause is making it easy for people to act and share.

Do you think content, context, or conversation is the most important to Web 2.0 success? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Groundswell is so far the best book on social media I’ve ever read. Written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (and recently updated), the book is a must read for anyone who pieces together coherant communications strategies.

My favorite quote — “concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies” — supports the book’s four steps to creating strategies: (1) people, (2) objectives, (3) strategy, and (4) technology. It also sets the stage for a brilliant section on engaging audiences online based on the communications problem you face:

• Awareness (people don’t know about you): Try a viral video, assuming you can come up with a brilliant idea that grabs your audience’s attention.
• Word-of-mouth (you need people to talk to each other): If you want to be hot and have people talking about how hot you are, go with Facebook, Twitter, or other appropriate social networks.
• Complexity (you have complicated problems to communicate): Start blogging to reach multiple sets of customers or explain your complex products or services. As an added bonus, blog posts often get featured in traditional media and web searches favor them.
• Accessibility (your audience members are stubbornly insistent on listening to each other, not you): Create an online community where your audience members can support one another or join one they’ve already created for themselves.

Naturally, when I ran across a video interview of Ms. Li about focusing on online relationships, not technologies, I had to pick it for February 2012 video clip of the month. As an added bonus, the video ends with practical advice for parents raising children in the digital age. Enjoy it below (and read or reread the updated Groundswell if you haven’t already)!

You turn! Do you think concentrating on relationships is good advice? Please share your comments.

Today, every organization is a global brand. Thanks to Web 2.0, people from around the world can access your content, discover and interact with other members of your online communities, and add their own voice to the conversation.

This is exciting but also a little unnerving. How do you relate to people from another culture? What do you say, or not say, to start a conversation off right? Are there cultural taboos you need to be aware of?

Fortunately, a psychologist named Dr. Geert Hofstede set out to answer these types of questions for IBM in the 1970s and his research on cultures and their value systems remains an enormous help in understanding cultural differences. Because even genuinely small cultural mistakes can have enormous consequences, his dimensions of culture framework should be required reading for all social media practitioners.

The dimensions of culture are:

• Power distance: This dimension reflects how a society handles inequalities among people. People in societies with a high power distance (e.g., Malaysia, Guatemala, the Philippines, etc.) accept a hierarchical order where everybody has a place, and the hierarchical order requires no justification. In societies with low power distance (e.g., Austria, Israel, Denmark, etc.), people strive to equalise the distribution of power and demand justification for inequalities of power.
• Individualism vs. collectivism: Societies on the high side of this dimension (e.g., the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, etc.) believe individuals should take care of themselves and their immediate families only. Societies on the low end (e.g., Guatemala, Ecuador, Pakistan, etc.) prefer tightly-knit social frameworks where individuals can expect their relatives or members of a particular in-group to look after them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.
• Uncertainty avoidance: This dimension is about how a society deals with ambiguity. Should people try to control the future or just let it happen? Societies exhibiting strong uncertainty avoidance (e.g., Greece, Portugal, Guatemala, etc.) maintain rigid codes of belief and behaviour and are intolerant of unorthodox behavior and ideas. Societies on the low end maintain a more relaxed attitude and value practice over principles (e.g., Denmark, Jamaica, Singapore, etc.)
• Masculinity vs. femininity: The masculinity side of this dimension (e.g., Japan, Hungary, Venezuela, etc.) represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material reward for success. Society at large is more competitive. Its opposite, femininity (e.g., Norway, Sweden, Costa Rica, etc.), stands for a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life. Society at large is more consensus-oriented.
• Long-term vs. short-term orientation: This dimension is about a society’s search for virtue. Societies with a short-term orientation (e.g., United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela, etc.) strive to establish absolute truth. Their people exhibit great respect for traditions, save little for the future, and focus on achieving quick results. Societies with a long-term orientation (e.g., China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc.) believe truth depends on situation, context, and time. Their people adapt traditions quickly to changed conditions, tend to save and invest money, and look to the long term for achieving results.
• Indulgence vs. restraint (the recently added sixth dimension): Societies with high indulgence (e.g., Venezuela, Mexico, El Salvador, etc.) believe in enjoying leisure and allow relatively free gratification of human drives. Societies with high restraint (e.g., Ukraine, Latvia, Egypt, etc.) suppress gratification and live under strict social norms.

Pretty enlightening, huh! When you grow up in a culture, it’s pretty easy to take your norms of behavior for granted and not realize there are so many completely different ways to perceive things. Check out the free online tool at the Geert Hofstede website where you can compare two cultures against each other and learn more.

Which dimension of culture do you think sparks the most cultural misunderstanding?

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” is a Gertrude Stein quote we’ve all heard reminding us things are what they are no matter what you call them.

In the communications world, however, the term “influencer” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing. One communications practitioner may define and apply the influencer concept in a way worlds apart from a second practitioner, though both are trying to harness influencers to change ideas, motivate new behaviors,  reach potential buyers, etc. one of three ways:

• Communicating to influencers, to increase awareness of a brand or cause within the influencer community
• Communicating through influencers, using influencers to increase awareness of a brand or cause amongst focal groups/target markets
• Communicating with influencers, turning influencers into advocates of the brand or cause

Obviously, strategies to harness influencers would be very different depending on how you intend to tap them, not to mention who you think they are. Nevertheless, the term influencer seems to be thrown around indiscriminately these days as communications practitioners adjust to changes in technology, especially social media.

My personal take on the influencer equation is definitions/contexts generally lump into three broad categories:

• Household names: celebrities, musicians, artists, and politicians who are assumed to drive thought and action of people they have no direct association with.
• Thought leaders: networked, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable people who can ignite passion for your brand or cause in your community (otherwise known as tastemakers, social precincts, opinion leaders, uberinfluencers, 1 percenters [but not in the Occupy Wall Street context], 10 percenters, focusers, etc.) These people personally know the people they influence, although the ties that bind them may be weak.
• Interpersonal influencers: people who focal groups/target markets regularly interact with and who influence their decisions (e.g., neighbors, friends, parents, teachers, coworkers, religious leaders, etc.). These people may live in relative obscurity within their communities. They, however, know well the people they influence and the ties that bind them are strong.

Bottom line? Influencers are not the same, even if communications practitioners refer to them with the same name.

What do you think of influencers? Are they the best route to a focal group/target market? Please share your ideas in the comments section.

A Communications 301 rule of thumb is “information alone doesn’t change behavior.” You might have brilliant left-brained arguments about why people should do something, but if you don’t touch them emotionally, they won’t be swayed.

O.K., maybe they’ll give you a thumbs up, but they won’t act.

Raising awareness is only effective in changing behavior when you have the time and resources to reach the saturation point of “everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows.”

Almost always you do not.

To inspire action, you need to unite an idea with an emotion.  Then you need to make sure people have the necessary tools and community support to carry out your vision.

Success involves the following six principles:

• Personal: People have to have a reason to care about your cause. You need to explain what the cost of failing to act will be on them as individuals and on society as a whole. Make sure to highlight real people and real stories.
• Direct. You have to explain how people can help, tell them what you want them to do and when, and give them the tools they need to do what’s needed easily.
• Transparent. If you share enough information about your cause—that’s personal and direct (see above) and transparent—a community can develop around it. Not only will this community give your supporters a sense of solidarity and connectedness, it can achieve something great that they couldn’t achieve through individual effort.
• Hubbed. To grow your community and spur productive collaboration, you need to cultivate and connect social precincts, enthusiastic, networked, and knowledgeable people who can ignite passion for your cause. Only 3 to 5 percent of your community, these leaders are the hubs connecting and inspiring individuals and settings direction for the collaborative effort.
• Independent. Independence means individuals can have the freedom to choose the task that suits their ability, time, or interest—no matter where they are or whoever else may be posting content at that time. No coordination or pre-existing relationship is required.
• Close-Knit. Remember it’s all about connecting people to your cause, building relationships, and sharing and improving ideas. Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of focusing on technology and forgetting about humanity. The technology you use doesn’t matter as long as it allows your community to create a group identify, a culture of sharing and trust, and appropriate cultural norms.

What do you think about my post above? What do you think about unleashing crowds to create change? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

How can you turn a leaderless communications swarm into a collaborative online community that achieves results? That’s the zillion dollar question for 2012. As my runner up for January 2012 video clip of the month below shows (and anybody who has been following the news knows), self-directed communications swarms fueled many of the top news events of 2011.

While my runner up for video clip of the month above is inspiring, especially on the New Year, my main pick is enlightening. It features Roan Yong, a social collaboration expert from Singapore, on why online collaboration fails and how gamification can help.

Yong argues a leaderless communications swarm is a great starting point, but a leaderless swarm can’t think strategically to solve a problem. To turn collective action into productive collaboration, he says you need to tap and connect the tribal leaders: the 1 percent. To empower them to lead the communications swarm, he argues you need to gamify collaboration. In a blog post Yong wrote about his presentation, he explained:

“To gamify collaboration, we need to make collaborative task visible so that people can have the freedom to choose the task that suits their ability, time, or interest. We need to make collaborators’ strengths and weaknesses visible so that people can form collaboration team with complimentary skill set. And we need to give fair incentives based on contributions.”

Yong also shared his PowerPoint from his presentation online, which (along with his blog post) is also a great read if you don’t have a half hour to absorb the must know information in the video.

Fascinating stuff. Does Yong have “the answer” to leading online communities? Time will tell. Either way, 2012 definitely belongs to organizations and causes that can tap online communities to solve problems.

What do you think of using gamification to make online collaboration work? Do you think communications swarms need a leader to produce results? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.