The Future Place Blog

Changing from the tank to the stream, and why Twitter is so important

Over the last couple of days Sue York and I have been focusing on how to make social media accessible to more people, especially busy execs (trying to help them become ‘Efficient Execs’ in the context of their social media usage).

As part of that process we have been exploring the sorts of things that make people who are not social media fans uncomfortable. Some of the findings are pretty straightforward, ‘I don’t want to share that much stuff’, ‘I don’t want to know that sort of stuff’, ‘I don’t have the time for all that stuff’, and some were more surprising (at least for us), such as somebody who said they ‘hated serendipity’, by which they meant they liked their findings to be predictable and their world to be ordered. This particular comment led me to think about of the big paradigm shifts that social media (indeed the web) is imposing, a shift from organised collections of information (which I have likened to a tank) to a stream of information (given the terrible floods and worse happening I have avoided using a metaphor stronger than stream).

In the ‘tank’ world we tended to try to deal with everything and we would catch up on things. For example, if you went on holiday you would typically try to read all your mail and email on your return to catch up with communications, you may look at the main magazines you missed whilst you were away (e.g. The Economist) but you probably tried to follow the new whilst you were away. Your colleagues will brief you on projects so you can resume your involvement and input.

The classic metaphor for the ‘tank’ method was the ‘do list’. Items went on the do list and stayed there until they were processed.

With the amounts of information now being produced, especially via the Web, and in particular in social media, nobody is every going to catch up, nobody will be able to read everything that they ought to read, our metaphorical do lists run the risk of simply growing and growing. The new way is to move away from the paradigm of the tank to that of the stream. A stream may look the same from one day to another, but it is always new water, if you see a twig floating down the stream you see it, but if you look away and miss it, then you can’t look for it later. Whilst some things will stay ‘tank’ items, such as remembering your partner’s birthday, paying your taxes, etc, a growing number of things, and social media in particular need to model themselves on the stream.

People who are really at home with social media use Twitter to control their stream of information. People who are not comfortable find that Twitter is adding the uncontrollable flow of information. The key difference between the two is the adoption of the stream mentality.

Using Twitter to filter information is based on following people who tend to find/say/create relevant things, using hashtags that identify useful things, and then monitoring the flow of the stream via a tool like TweetDeck. The person comfortable with social media will not worry about what they missed whilst they were asleep, or out at a meeting, or even busy working on a presentation, they will assume that anything important will be re-tweeted. If it was in the stream and it was not re-tweeted by lots of people, then it might have been interesting, but it was probably not important to you.

Once the Efficient Exec lets go of the idea that they can monitor everything, they will find they can use Twitter to highlight key things. Australian researcher, Peter Harris, gave a great example of how to use Twitter when he said that one of the times he looked at TweetDeck was first thing in the morning and that he tended to look for two or three interesting things, not trying to get everything, just dipping into the stream.

I find that I look at TweetDeck about 5 minutes every hour to keep on top of things, which means I am probably spending an hour a day on information and communication – but that is my job, others should be able to manage on less, perhaps checking your app (be it TweetDeck, HootSuite or whatever even just twice a day).

One of the big differences with the steam and the tank is what you do after a break, such as a two-week holiday. With the tank approach people try to catch-up, ploughing through their over-loaded in-boxes. The steam way would be to ignore that and start looking at the stream when you return – perhaps even setting your out of office to say something like “I am out of the office for two weeks and my inbox is closed. If it is urgent contact XXX. If it is for my attention, you will need to send it to me after my return.”

Once you are following the right people and hashtags it is probably fair to say that if a particular news story or topic did not get re-tweeted it did not matter.

 

What is the Efficient Exec?

The Efficient Exec is a collaborative project to help busy execs get the benefits they want from social media without having to become a social media junkie, indeed without even having to like social media very much. The project is being headed by Ray Poynter and The Future Place, but it hopes to draw on other people’s talents and experiences.

The kick-off event is a webinar by Ray Poynter and Sue York titled the Busy Exec’s Guide to Social media and you can still sign-up to that webinar if you are quick HERE (it is at 10am London time, 30 March). If you miss the webinar then we are hoping to post a recording later.

The three planks of the Efficient Exec approach to social media are to focus on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but even that can be daunting if you are not already comfortable with the way these three work, and if you do not understand how they can help you in your work life.

Facebook
Facebook is probably the least useful of the three social media platforms we are focusing on, but it is also one of the most important. No exec could afford to never watch TV, never read a newspaper/watch the news, and similarly no exec can afford not to understand the basics of Facebook, at the very least you need to know what people are saying about you, what your staff are using, and if you have children you will want to know what they know.

One of the key issues that we have uncovered so far is that many people are unsure about the difference between profile, a page, and a group. So there is now an Efficient Exec Page to ”Like”, an Efficient Exec Group to ”Join”, and you can become “Friends” with the Efficient Exec.

Twitter
Twitter can become the busy exec’s key source of new news, but only if you keep it under control. You can check out the Efficient Exec on Twitter to get suggestions for efficient social media strategies.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn has three benefits, to build a CV, to find out about other people/companies, and to find a group to discuss ideas. There is an Efficient Exec group on LinkedIn and you are welcome to join.

 

What if neuroscientists are looking in the wrong place?

One of my passions at the moment is finding out more about Discourse Analysis and considering how it can be used in the commercial sphere. One topic from DA that has really caught my eye is Discursive Psychology, which asks questions so profound that they could change the way we thing about the mind and about the way we think about brand management, marketing, and market research. Below is a snippet from a project I am working on.

Discursive Psychology

Discursive Psychology asks a question so bold as to be almost subversive! What if the neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists are looking in the wrong place when they are looking for phenomena such as attitudes and memory? What if these phenomena exist not in the head but in the discourse between people? It is important to note, from a commercial perspective, that it is not necessary to completely accept the argument of Discursive Psychology to realise that this alternative view potentially opens up new insights and opportunities.

To over simplify the argument, for reasons of clarity and brevity, Discursive Psychology is suggesting that traditional psychology uses what people say to guess what is going on in the mind. Discursive Psychology dismisses this as currently impossible and possibly misguided, preferring to categorise and study what people say as phenomena in their own right.

What is Thinking?

There is a common, but Discourse Analysis would say misguided, view that thinking and communicating start with some amorphous ideas in our mind for which we find the right words, which we then articulate, and where the listener decodes these words back into the own amorphous thoughts – this is very much the structuralist view associated with people like Saussure. However, Wittgenstein (1958) posed the thought that “the experience of thinking may just be the experience of saying”, i.e. that when we think we normally think in words. Wittgenstein suggests that if we explore how we think about things we may well find it is analogous to talking to ourselves, in our heads.

For most people it is easy to highlight some situations where thinking is not done in words, for example if you were trying to think about how you tie a tie you are likely to envisage it in either pictures or by trying to recreate the hand and arm movements. But if you try to think about why you wear a tie, you are likely to find words running through your inner voice.

This view of thinking is linked to the view that if you can’t say it then it is hard to think it, which is one of the reasons that many people advocate the practice that has become pejoratively known as political correctness. For example, if homophobic language is not available to people it will be harder for them to think homophobically. The same idea is explored, less positively, in
George Orwells’s 1984, where Newspeak is engineered to produce compliance by the population and adherence to Big Brother.

In a similar way, Professor VS Ramachandran, sees the use of metaphor as potentially one of the essential things that allowed humans to develop from a more primitive stage. The metaphor provides a mechanism to start a discourse about something that had previously not been articulated.

In terms of brands and services, examples of creating language to facilitate thought abound, for example, lien, loan, mortgage, debt, interest, premium, APR, surety, deposit, and overdraft all help facilitate the discussion, thought, and marketing of financial products and services. Similarly, the introduction of phrases such as junk bond, sub-prime, negative equity, and over-extended allow the negative side of financial products and services to be thought of and spoken about in more detail and with greater precision. The use of metaphor is frequently used to position or re-position an idea or service, for example the micro-payment service Venmo use the metaphor “It’s like your phone and wallet had a baby” to help people envisage their product.

Attitudes

Traditional psychology makes much use of the concept of attitudes, for example describing them as “an enduring organizational, motivational, emotional, perceptual, and cognitive process with respect to some aspect of an individual’s world” (Crutchfield & Krech, 1948). Because attitudes are thought to reside in the mind and to be of such importance, researchers seek to measure them via a variety of scales and techniques.

However, most researchers are all too familiar with the effect of framing and anchoring in asking attitude scale questions. As the framing and anchoring changes, so do the responses. Surely, if attitudes were the essential element that traditional models imply they would not be so unstable when researchers try to measure them? Even more worrying is the propensity of subjects to express contradictory views. For example, in February 2011 YouGov reported that 25% of UK citizens agreed with a scale that said “As long as they are peaceful people should not be prosecuted for making a protest, even if their views are extreme and likely to offend many people.” However, 82% of the same respondents in the same survey agreed with the prosecution of Emdadur Choudhury who burned poppies on a protest on Armistice Day 2010.

Discursive Psychology that highlights so called common-sense is seen as essential to negotiating a social world, acting as a lubricant of interactions. However, the robustness of common-sense is that it is built upon contradictory pairs, for example:

‘Many hands make light’ work and ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’.

‘Knowledge is power’ and ‘Ignorance is bliss’.

‘Look before you leap’ and ‘He who hesitates is lost’.

‘Clothes make the man’ and ‘Never judge a book by its cover’.

An alternative model for attitudes is that people carry a sort of portmanteau of responses to all of the situations that they are likely to encounter. The way these responses are selected and utilised was foreshadowed by Wittgenstein’s language games and Austin’s speech acts, and the way that the portmanteau is filled may well fit the models described by Foucault and Bakhtin.

In the commercial world this view fits well with the traditional view that brands have personalities, that products are seen to convey characteristics (think rugged LandRover, versus sexist Lynx, versus caring Dove). Clearly, if brands have personalities, views, and attitudes, these will not be found in the ‘mind’ but may be studied in discourse.

Memory

Much of the ‘science’ of memory looks at concepts such as MOPs (Memory Organisation Packets) which can be described but which are hard to put under the microscope. But others (e.g. Halbwachs, 1980) have argued that memory is essentially social (or at least a significant component of it is social). Putting together the observations of Wittgenstein (thinking is speaking) and Bakhtin (everything that is said is in response to something that was said before), suggests a model where memories are (in many cases) words and that these words have been negotiated and shared with others.

If we think of a mother and child sitting together looking at a family photo album we can see shared memories being created. Similarly, the night after a party, especially with aid of Facebook, the events of the previous 24 hours are often negotiated as people fill in different details. In a group discussion situation, a negative person can facilitate the other group members in recalling their negative ‘feelings’ and may actually create new negative, shared memories.

This shared, negotiated memory is one of the reasons that word of mouth is so powerful in markets, it does not just pass information from person-to-person, it changes and creates memories, which is why Fred Reichheld makes so much of promoters and detractors in the context of his Net Promoter Score, and why Rijn Vogelaar (2010) highlights the role of Superpromoters (and their negative opposite). Many people can ‘remember’ that Volvo is safe, that Bose speakers are clear, and that Belgian chocolate tastes good without ever conducting their own trials and experiences.

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I will be presenting a paper on Discourse Analysis and market research at the Merlien Qualitative Consumer Research and Insights 2011 Conference in Malta (April 7-8) and I have started a LinkedIn discussion on DA in the NewMR group.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you think that Discursive Psychology may be saying something interesting to us? And, if so, what?

 

Social Media for Busy Execs

Sue York and I are revamping and expanding a training module I created last year called “The Busy Exec’s Guide to Social Media”. The idea that underlies it is how an exec can spend just 20% of the time that an SM fan spends in order to gain 80% of the benefits.

Our thinking at the moment (and we’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions) is that there are probably five things that the 20:80 exec should focus on:

1. Facebook. Everybody needs to be on Facebook now, just so they can follow the conversations, just like every exec needs to follow the news and to be aware of the main entertainment and sports stories. However, the 20:80 Exec should only use Facebook for private or business use (not both), and they should be a very passive user (not posting, gaming, tagging etc).
2. Twitter. Twitter can be the best single source of information for the busy exec, but they should avoid tweeting, other than the occasional retweet or reply. Following a collection of useful Twitter accounts and hashtags can reduce the need to read industry publications, search YouTube, and follow blogs. The key to making Twitter useful is to use an alternative interface, such as TweetDeck – and knowing about search.twitter.
3. LinkedIn. The main use for LinkedIn is to find a small number of discussion groups that really interest you, anything between one and four groups is good for the 20:80 way, and use these to keep abreast of interesting discussions in your field of interest. LinkedIn is also useful for finding information about other companies, getting in contact with people you meet at events, and for building a CV.
4. Reading Blogs. The 20:80 way does not involve writing a blog, blogging takes a lot of time and quite a bit of dedication. However, in most fields there are some key blogs that are really worth reading. The busy exec should sign up to three or four of these and thereby develop some areas of specialist knowledge and information to complement their existing strengths.
5. Google. Google has a variety of tools that can really help the busy exec, amongst which are: having a gmail account for when everything else fails (and to be the account you use to sign-up to things), Google Insights to find out what people are interested in, Google Blog Search, and alerts. Other interesting options which go just beyond the 20:80 way are Google Docs, iGoogle, Google RSS reader.

The 20:80 way is not be as much fun as fully embracing social media, but it does enable a busy exec to get most of the benefits and perhaps even more importantly to stay in touch with where everybody else is.

As part of our revamping of this course Sue and I are running a one hour webinar as a beta test and you are welcome to sit in on this session if you are free, it will be held on Wednesday 30 March, at 10:00am London time (which is one hour ahead GMT at the moment), click HERE to sign up for the webinar.

What do you think of the five recommendations above? Would you remove any, change any, add something?

 

Why is the London MR market so had to crack?

Every so often I am asked by companies from outside the UK to advise them on the best way of entering the UK and of being sucessful. Unfortunately my response is normally to point out that it is very, very rare for a company entering the UK from outside to be sucessful.

In order to back-up my observation I decided to list the number of entrants into the UK who had been sucessfull. However, this led to a discussion about what we meant by sucessful. My feeling that there are probably two indicators of sucess, a) a turnover of £4million per year (enough to put you in the top 75 companies in the UK), and b) profitable. In terms of this criteria it is clear there are just a handful of sucessful entrants, and most of them have achieved it by acquiring large local businesses, for example Ipsos/Mori and GfK/NOP (Harris is a large company, largely through acquisitions, but may be failing the profitable test).

Perhaps the biggest surprise is how few North American companies have been sucessful in the UK, given the size and strength of the North American research industry.

Why is it so hard to enter the UK market? Well, I'd love to hear your views, but here are a few of ideas that have occured to me.

1. The UK market is quite incestious, it is mostly based in London and most of the key people know each other, buyers tend to buy from people they know.
2. The market is simply very hard to enter, most local start-ups also fail to get into the top 75, the ones that do are usually created by people who already have client networks in place (e.g. they may take clients from their previous employer).
3. UK buyers think that 'British' research is best - this may not be true, but seems to be driving behaviour.

So, does this mean that people should not try to enter the UK market? I think the answer to that is a loud maybe! I think that companies looking to enter Europe should seriously consider entering a multi-lingual country such as Netherlands. If you are looking to enter the UK, think about why somebody should prefer you to the top 75 companies doing more than £4million a year, you will need a good 'reason' and you will probably need a Brit to drive the brand image - because not only is it rare for a non-UK company to be sucessful in the UK, but it is rare for a non-Brit to be sucessful in the UK research industry.

ESOMAR in Melbourne for APAC

Today is the first day of the two-day ESOMAR APAC Conference in Melbourne, although for me it started a day earlier with the Advanced Quant workshop that Jon Pinnell and I ran. The reception last night was a welcome mix of familiar faces and new faces.

As well as the formal sessions there are two social events that I will be involved in and if you are in Melbourne I hope to see you at one or both.

Monday 5:30pm, 'Meet the author', as part of the networking drinks ESOMAR have organised a meet the author event for people to buy copies of my book, The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research, and to have a chat with me about the book.

Tuesday 6:00pm, Colmar Brunton Trivia night, this event is a social event being hosted at the Melbourne offices, quite close to the Conference location and will provide a great chance for delegates new to Melbourne with a chance to unwind, with drinks and a light-heated trivia quiz (with the chance to win prizes). If you'd like to attend Download Trivia night for more information.

Quick declaration of interest, Colmar Brunton are a client of mine, indeed if you are still in Melbourne on Friday you see me presenting with Colmar Brunton at the AMI/AMSRS "Social Media Killed the Media Star" event.

An #Gov2au tweetup in Canberra, March 18

Craig Thomler (@CraigThomler) and myself are organising an informal get together at the Wig and Pen at 5:30pm on Friday 18th to discuss Social Media and Government, including differences and similarities between the UK and Australia - as part of my Colmar Brunton sponsored five city tour of Australia.

If you have a POV or are simply curious, come along and have a chat with the rest of us.

 

Do you know any young people? If so, get them to read Tanvi’s blog

Tanvi Gupta is one of the young rising stars of the new research world, currently she is a student in India, but she is soon to take a position with one of the leading MR companies, and will already be famous when she arrives, because of the profile she has created through social media and her contribution to events like the Festival of NewMR and more recently blogging for ESOMAR’s Contact project.

Tanvi has just posted a blog that I think every young researcher, and every young person who is even considering joining the MR industry, should read. There are two reasons in particular that I think people (even older people) should read it:

1) Tanvi shows that even a new entrant to the industry can achieve a global reputation, if they are talented, if they contribute, and if they have a vision.

2) Tanvi also makes the comment that despite her success, none of her MBA classmates have adopted her strategy. The chances are there but young people still need to grasp them, they won't just happen!

Tanvi puts the credit to her success down to a fairy godmother (Twitter), but I think it is those young researchers who do not grasp the opportunities of social media who are trusting to the fairy godmother model of advancement.

 

Interview with Brian Singh of Zinc Research

Brian Singh is the Managing Director of Zinc Research, an interesting research company based in Calgary in Canada, the sponsors of the NewMR ‘Listening is the New Asking’ event being held on March 8. For more information about the event click HERE

This interview was conducted as part of the build-up to the ‘Listening is the New Asking’ event, but the interview ranges over a much wider area, giving some insight into Brian’s perspectives on life and research. Many years ago a British politician called Denis Healy said that all good politicians have a good hinterland, I think that is also true of good market researchers and if you listen to the interview below you will appreciate what a wide and varied hinterland Brian has and perhaps begin to understand how it might help inform the research he conducts.

Key themes in listening research

As the preparations are being finalised for next week’s NewMR ‘Listening is the new asking’ event (an online conference), some key themes about listening research are becoming clear and I am sure that they will be major topics during the online event and during the next couple of years.

My feeling is that the key issues are:

1. To what extent can machines replace researchers? You will hear from most of the speakers, such as Anna Tomkocz from Freshminds and Catriona Oldershaw from Synthesio, that sentiment analysis is highly dependent on human intervention. However, you will also hear from Theo Downes-LeGuin that the use of computerised software for qualitative data analysis may shift some tasks away from expensive, senior qualitative researchers towards more junior (aka cheaper) analysts.
2. Is this research market research? Although speakers such as Annie Pettit from Conversition will illustrate how market research can use these blog monitoring and sampling tools, it will also be apparent that most of these tools were made for more than market research. For example, having found influencers some of the software is designed to be used to put the client directly in touch with specific individuals – a process that market research has traditionally defined itself as not doing.
3. Do we really understand what we should be paying attention to? Paul Vittles from the Vittles organisation and John Griffiths from Planning Above and Beyond will both challenge the way researchers think about listening and the implications that has for research.
4. What are the key quality and ethics issues? Most of the speakers will address issues relating to topics such as how much confidence can clients have in the results and the ethical concerns of tools such as scraping and profiling.

You can find out more about the programme for the event by clicking HERE

You can register to attend by clicking HERE

On March 8 you can join in the conversation by following the hashtag #newmr

The other big, but not so important, debate is about what to call this type of research, is it netnography, is it social media research, is it social media monitoring (or mining)? Perhaps the event on March 8 will provide some guidance on that point.

ps if you register for the event you will see we are operating a donations method of registering, where people can pay what they feel they ought. Some have paid, some have not, some who have not paid will do so after the event, whilst some will probably be happy not to pay.

The event sponsor is Zinc Research