The social media tsunami is the game changer that is significantly impacting our world of communications and challenging the current models of engagement with journalists and influencers. This change mandates that we reassess our current engagement models and the importance of individual and organizational influence. Social media is more than a phenomenon, it will not go away. And it has created new and viral forms of influence that are changing the way purchasing decisions are made in nearly all industries. For example as a social customer hundreds of people read my reviews of hotels on Tripadivor.com and what I think of restaurants on Yelp.com. Social media is the new word of mouth marketing platform. More importantly it has also allowed us to identify and better understand the new influencers, their followers and is enabling transformation and innovation of their business models.
Wikipedia Definition of a Journalist
A journalist collects and disseminates information about current events, people, trends, and issues. His or her work is acknowledged as journalism. Can't we find almost all of this on the Internet today with one simple search?
Thanks to the social media tsunami everybody can be a journalist. And every company can become a media company; that is if they have a culture of transparency and they have employees that can write. In my mind the questions in the bullet list below are important, but the seminal question is the influence level of traditional journalists waning?
- Who is a journalist today?
- Who are the influencers?
- Whom do they influence?
- How do they impact your sales?
- How are they involved in the purchasing decision making cycle and at what stage?
- What are their channels of influence?
Journalism has been at a cross roads now for fifteen years, and its entire business model has been in a virtual stage of disruption since the advent of the Internet and digital media. Anybody who told you during the 1980s and 1990's that there was a separation between church and state, (content and advertizing) has pie all over their face, especially today, because if that were true Madison Avenue would not exist. Most of the big publishing companies have not innovated their business models, and/or understood the role of digital media. Apple filled their void in some ways and now they are a publishing company of rich digital media content with news about artists. We are a visual society, video rules, and in the near future the majority of us will consume most of our digital media on a mobile device.
Technology Journalism
Take for example Ziff Davis, once a billion dollar technology publishing giant, it was acquired by the investment firm Great Hill Equity Partners for an undisclosed amount this summer and you know it wasn't in the billions. Ziff Davis was a great partner of mine back in the good old 1990's when product reviews had merit and the awards given to technology products meant something. I was a big time trophy hunter (product award seeker) for my products during the 1990s and was successful in winning most of them for our networking product areas. During the 1990's Ziff Davis, CMP and other publishers decided not to invest in "realistic" labs to test products that eroded the value of their information and was the beginning of the end. This became a virulent issue because much of their information wasn't trustworthy.
I have witnessed two important strategic blunders that have accelerated the demise of modern publishing and journalism as we knew it. The first and most glaring obvious blunder was their failure to simply understand the Internet and digital media. Yes the San Francisco Chronicle was one of the first to go online with www.sfgate.com, but it hasn't stopped the bleeding of talent from its corp. The second classic blunder was their failure to invest in quality people who understand the dynamics of the market, products, and services that they cover. This seems to be continuing as I have recently been made aware that a major and trusted business source is recruiting bloggers as columnists and paying them a pittance based on the ad revenue generated from their content. The beat goes on, but this time it looks like beat of a New Orleans funeral party.
Information You Can Trust
When we look for influence in our markets we look for information we can trust primarily from thought leaders in their fields. They can be journalists, academics, business influencers, industry luminaries, consultants and sometimes integrators and partners. We even have a scorecard and apply specific weighting parameters depending on the area and market. Most importantly we conduct of a lot of due diligence and try to understand their channels of influence and we also dig deep to see if their business conduct is ethical and reputable. This is easy with academics, because most of the universities provide a built in ethics platform, but it's not easy with the other influencer types.
Influencer Channels:
- Are they an author?
- Do they blog regularly?
- What is their reputation?
- Do they consult with the C suite?
- What is their expertise and research agenda?
- Do they speak regularly at industry events?
- What is their PR and YouTube presence?
- Do they run a consulting organization?
- What is their regional or geographic reach?
When applying these metrics to an academic these are some example of guidelines and key weighting parameters we would apply.
- Author-has published at least two books and HBR, MIT, California Mgt Review, etc.
- Blogger-is a regular blogger and has a significant Twitter following.
- C Suite Consultant-consults regularly with C suite executives in industry and Gov.
- Independent Consulting Organization-separate from University, Keystone Strategy Group, Palladium, The Berkeley Innovation Forum, etc.
- Research Depth-recognized expert in field conducting regular primary and secondary market research
- University rank-renown University, one of Top 50 in US example.
- Speaking-regular speaker in field of expertise
- Press Appeal /TV-Quoteability-PR friendly and TV appearances.
- Venture Capital Involvement
- Geographic reach
Net/Net
The Internet is now delivering on its promise of instant gratification and with the current advances in information and mobile technologies we can get information on just about anything anytime and anywhere. So in some ways everyone is a journalist and every company has the opportunity to become a media company. If you look at what British Petroleum has done on Facebook, they have essentially created a virtual newspaper about everything they want to share about the oil spill. Every Oil company should follow this approach and become as transparent as possible about their business and operations; however, this is something that challenges their very DNA. As John Hofmeister said this month in this month's Strategy +Business article, Why We Hate the Oil Companies, "we are perceived as unlovable and unavoidable." If you don't already read Strategy+Business you should it is excellent and as always I wish you great selling and marketing in the millennium.