Shadow Social Networks

Social networks are all the rage.

However, they are far too formal to capture how people truly communicate with each other, especially if they are breaking the law. After all, we live in an informal age. While the TV show Mad Men presents us with visions of the formal past, in our current world formal attire is rapidly giving way to informal dress even in some of the last bastions of formality such as offices, the symphony, and expensive restaurants. In offices, for example, where once the tie ruled, now the open collar shirt rules and even it has to be over its shoulder, so to speak, at the pull over shirt which is sneaking up on it.

You law abiding citizens – how do you communicate?

Don’t you flip and flitter between email, text, phone, a structured social network, and in person meetings? If you don’t want your boss or spouse to know what you are up to don’t you try and cover your virtual tracks, even if you aren’t breaking the law?

Now how about non-law abiding citizens?

Chances are they are creating a Shadow Social Network. They are likely giving some structure to their unstructured communication system in hope that they don’t get caught. Law breakers and would be law breakers tend to switch from work to private email accounts, the phone or in person meetings when it is best to not leave too clear of a trail.

What so Shadow Social Networks mean for companies and law enforcement?

To really understand what employees are doing and to catch the criminals or terrorists, organizations have to be able to piece together these disparate strands of communication and see HOW the Shadow Social Network functions, WHO is involved, and WHAT is being done. Normal search and analytics won’t work. Simple email threat analysis and keyword search is not up to the task. Only sophisticated solutions for monitoring, searching, and analyzing across all types of unstructured data can hope to piece together the real picture in a timely manner.

Some marketing myth busting

In the last post, I wrote about why people get as excited by your marketing collateral as they do your home movies. In this one, I’m going to bust some commonly held marketing beliefs.

Myth 1: People are going to pour over every word in your marketing text just like you do.

Reality: You’ll be lucky if they skim it. People like to feel that they are making sound decisions so it is helpful to have a coherent story in the text – just don’t expect people to read it word for word. They will skim it and piece together an executive summary, especially if you haven’ already provided a skimable executives summary.

Tip: Make your marketing text easy to skim. If they can’t get the message in a quick glance through go back to the drawing board.

Myth 2: The facts matter and, if they aren’t convinced yet, give them more facts.

Reality: Narrative is key. People don’t remember facts and are often bored by them.

Tip: Give them a simple narrative they can remember and repeat to others.

Myth 3: Marketing is a creative function

Reality: Good marketing uses both the left brain and the right brain.

Tip: Adopt an agreed upon set of marketing metrics, set clear goals, analyze your market, test and analyze your campaign to the degree possible.

Myth 4: You know what your customer wants and why they did what they did.

Reality: You probably don’t know. The customer might not even know.

Tips:

a. Talk to customers. Conduct 1 on 1 research, surveys and analyze behavior.

b. If you have sales reps, go with them on calls or listen in on the phone to understand where customers get excited, what turns them off, what closes sales, and what inhibits the sales process.

c. Get your customers to come and talk to the sales staff and the marketing staff about whey they bought and what they think of dealing with your company pre-sale and post-sale.

d. Where possible analyze customer behavior over time, across channels and across touch points otherwise you have no chance of getting a clear picture.

Why your collateral is like your home movies

For most companies and executives, their marketing collateral is a priceless object that when bestowed on a prospective customer magically transforms said prospect into a real paying customer. Alas, people outside the company simply do not share the passion for the company’s collateral. For outsiders, with the exception of competitors who are conducting research, reading a company’s collateral is as exciting as watching someone’s home movies.

Why?

+ They don’t care if YOUR Bobby and Sally got to swim in Lake Metamucil because they have THEIR own Bobby and Sally who they actually care about. Your Bobby and Sally just do not generate the same warm and fuzzy feeling. In business, your company and products are at the center of your world. They aren’t at the center of your prospective customers’ worlds.

+ People are busy. They have a hard enough time keeping up with everything they have to deal with to put too much attention towards that they don’t have to deal with.

+ If they are non-technical executives, they probably just don’t love products all that much and words on a piece of paper are not going to get them to form an emotional attachment to yours. You love your product. It is your product. It isn’t our customers. For every iPhone that people love, there are 99 products that they use because they fit a need. If they are executives and are simply buying the product for others to use or to replace others then that emotional attachment registers even lower on the wow meter.