Standout with the Crowd!!

How many of you have had an idea, opportunity, or just been stumped and needed some advice? If I took a random survey, I would be confident that 99 percent of people would say at one point in their life they needed advice. Typically the best way to get this is to poll your friends, family or coworkers. Now, with social media driving our everyday life, I see more and more people use this avenue as an opportunity to get the answers they are so desperately seeking. I can’t tell you how many times I have pulled up Facebook or Instagram and notice that someone has posted a picture and asked for feedback. Some of the feedback is positive, some negative and some just plain comical. But the result is based on how the recipient values the feedback that is being provided. Did you realize that there is a technical term for this type of interaction? It is called Crowdsourcing, and it is being utilize more and more throughout the business and technical worlds.

In today’s world businesses need to stay ahead of the game in order to maintain their competitive edge. Hiring creative and innovative people is a must, but sometimes ideas can become stale or stagnant when you are too close to the product. Crowdsourcing uses the input of individuals external to an organization to resolve strategic problems or complete tasks once assigned internally to an explicit corporate individual or department. The use of this method allows for non-bias and candid feedback that will elevate the level of thinking within an organization. But when you ask the crowd for their participation, you better be ready to act. The natural response of the public is to be heard and see the see the results of their engagement.

When deciding to utilize a method like crowdsourcing, you should always build a proactive and results driven strategy around it.

1.      Set goals. Articulate the problem and give your audience a specific challenge or clarity around the end goal. Framing the questions is vital to success.

2.      Practice cross-fertilization. Executive sponsorship is important at the onset to gather crowds, but don’t limit participants to a single area of expertise or department within a business. Bringing together different thinkers results in bigger, better ideas.

3.      Make it fun. There needs to be a social recognition and a game quality to make what is ultimately a problem-solving task attractive to participants. Integrate game mechanics and voting, or prizes to motivate the crowd.

4.      Be committed. Be prepared for a continuous feedback loop – to provide an answer, take action or just simply acknowledge the crowds contributions.

5.      Allocate back-end resources. On the front-end, things like communication and motivation are critical. Once the ideas start rolling in, there needs to be curation and filtering, along with plans to put the contributions into action.

While there are great benefits to crowds, without a plan of action, control and understanding, they can become herds and reinforce group think. It is critical that these strategies and processes provide incentives, fairness in evaluation, transparency and an ability to bring the results back into your organization. Without this, experimenting with the crowd can create substandard results or even backlash against the organizers.

There definitely needs to be a balance with crowdsourcing. If you rely too heavily on the public opinion and suggestions, it could result in a disastrous failure. You would probably  want stay away from letting the masses name a product or help define a campaign slogan. One example of such a disaster, according to the Business Insider,  is when “NASA decided to let a popular vote name a new section of the International Space Station, they at least had the sense to start with a pool of their own suggestions. Unfortunately, they decided to include the option to write-in an alternative. Someone told Stephen Colbert. Stephen Colbert told his legion of devoted fans. The next thing NASA knew, Colbert had six times more votes than any of the options they had provided. NASA was not amused, declining to honor the contest winner.” Everyone loves a good practical joke, and an opportunist is always waiting to make their mark. This should be accounted for when you decide to go to the general public for an idea.

Using crowdsourcing makes great financial and creative sense, but just like any other strategy it should involve proper planning and the understanding of the pro’s and con’s. Crowdsourcing should be used in conjunction with other strategies in order to maximize its success. Businesses can boost their brand and keep on their company on the competitive edge if they are engaging. Public engagement can provide constructive feedback (positive and negative) and help create new processes and consumer responsiveness. A more personal relationship can be obtain with their consumers by allowing them to feel as if they were a part of the improvements or new strategies. However, businesses should always era on the side of caution because there's no privacy in crowdsourcing. Customers, competitors and the interactive world will all be aware of your motives. Invariably, there will be many entries or suggestions that are just not realistic to implement. And always keep in mind that sometimes you get exactly what you pay for.

 

References

Apps | Technology | The Guardian. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/apps

Does crowdsourcing innovation work? Yes, and here’s how. | Spigit. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.spigit.com/spigit-in-the-news/does-crowdsourcing-innovation-work-yes-and-here%E2%80%99s-how/

Danger, Danger, Citizen Alert

The world of communications and journalism has changed so much over the last ten years. During the time of traditional media, the stories were written by those who were considered professional journalist, reporters or communications specialist. Fact checking was a must and ensuring you maintained your journalist ethics was nothing to compromise. Now, anyone who has an idea, thought or experience they would like to share can hit the internet and express it in their own way. Our readings this week were on citizen journalism and digital democracy. What is citizen journalism and digital democracy you ask? Well, just what it sounds like. It is the opportunity to express your ideas, tell your story or review an experience you may have just by creating a blog or posting on a social networking site (SNS). Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well I think it’s both.

Citizen journalism opens up a door to a whole world of story’s that otherwise may not have made it out to the general public. Mobile devices such as phones and net pads are capturing and streaming real-time news. Collaborative journalism (the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together) is becoming the way of communication. Due to the availability of technology, citizens can often report breaking news more quickly than traditional media reporters. The means to publish is now in the hands of citizens, while the internet encourages new forms of journalism that are interactive and immediate. However, it is important that fact checking is still a big part of the reporting process. Quality of the story should be as important as timeliness. Everyone wants to be the first to break the story, but no one wants to be the first to recant something that was incorrectly reported. Always confirm before you report. For example, how many times have you seen a story on Facebook about a celebrity that has died? Just because it looks like a “News Story” it does not mean it is factual. And, that also goes for those who decide they want to write a blog or create a post about a certain topic. Citizen journalism tends to be one-sided and not necessarily fair. People by nature are biased and objectivity tends to flee when an inexperienced writer has a slanted view. When this happens, the original story can be a changed a bit. Gossip begins and errors are exposed resulting in different versions of the same story. Society might not get what they bargained for. The same concept comes into play with blogs and posts regarding events, news and even sports. Citizen journalism doesn’t stop there, it is in just about everywhere you look on the internet. SNSes are filled with people expressing their viewpoints and experiences through posts and blogs.

Blogs and social network posts have become one of the fastest growing communication mediums of all time. Many people are blogging about things such as politics, the economy, healthcare, entertainment or what they had for breakfast. There are generally five types of bloggers; corporate, entrepreneur, full-time professional, part-time professional and the hobbyist. Just as people like to hear themselves talk (I know you know what I’m talking about) there are also those express their opinions in blogs not matter how blunt, crazy or obscene they may be. However, blogging is a very powerful tool, For instance, did you know that 6.7 million people blog on blogging sites and 12 million on social networks? Also, 77 percent of internet users read blogs and 81 percent of US consumers trust the advice and information from blogs. With stats like that, how can you not be interested in what is being said. However one must be extremely careful about the face value of what you read. I generally go to many blog links to research certain things. However, if I am looking for clarification on a serious topic, I am careful to ensure that the source is creditable. Most blogs for which I link are from a professional site I feel that is very reputable and the bloggers credentials and expertise is prominent on the site. 

While there be more news streaming across the media with the help of everyday people and their digital devices, these same people will hold the reporters accountable to their stories. That is why it is so important to ensure the validity of what is being posted or blogged. Again, people want to be heard and they also want you to know if they have a different opinion or a different experience than what you may have blogged or posted about. That is where the democracy comes in. Everyone has a voice in this digital world and many are not afraid to put it all out there. More main stream media newsrooms are moving toward a more opinionated or partisan approach to news and commentary. To be impartial is said to be boring to viewers and readers. Audiences are said to be attracted to strong opinion and conflicts of opinion. They want to know all angles and be a part of the conversation.

The tradition of what journalism is has changed and lines are being blurred between the reporters and the citizens who are not jumping onto the journalistic bandwagon. So choose carefully what you read. Take in to consideration the source of the information. If you blog, blog smart. If you browse, browse with caution. And always remember that just because you read it on Facebook, it does not mean its 100 percent truth.

 

 References

Blogging Stats | Social Media Today. (2013, August 28). Retrieved April 19, 2014, from http://socialmediatoday.com/mikevelocity/1698201/blogging-stats-2013-infographic

Information 3.0: The Pros and Cons of Citizen Journalism! What are your thoughts?! (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2014, from http://sarahfich2.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-pros-and-cons-of-citizen-journalism.html

Ward, S. J. (n.d.). Digital Media Ethics | Center for Journalism Ethics. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from http://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/resources/digital-media-ethics/

 

The Social Media Storm

Social media has come a long way in a very short time. In my previous post, I pointed out concerns regarding social media and the social development of our children. Now let’s discuss the evolution of social media and what it means to our businesses. Understanding the history of social networking sites (SNS) gives a great perspective of the intent of this trend.

Believe it or not, SNS first came on the scene in 1969 through a company called CompuServe. It was the first major commercial internet service provider for the public in the United States. This service used a technology known as dial-up which dominated the field through the 1980s and even remained a player into the mid-90s. I am sure there are some of you out there who can still recall that distinct sound from when you were trying to connect to your dial up server. In 1971, the first email was delivered and throughout the 70s, bulletin board systems were created to inform people of meetings, announcements and sharing various posts and information. This was the beginning of the virtual communities. The Prodigy online service was introduced in 1984 and soon became one of the largest online service providers in 1990. Prodigy later pioneered the sales of dial-up connections to the World Wide Web and hosting services for Web publishers. Through several acquisitions, this service is now part of AT&T. Then in 1984, American Online (AOL) made its debuted and in ’85, A British engineer by the name of Tim Berners-Lee began work at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland), on what was to become the World Wide Web (WWW). 1992 a community online system for college students and young adults was opened by Tripod, and in 1993 CERN donated the WWW technology to the world. Also, students from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, debuted Mosaic (the first graphical browser) and the web pages we know now were born. By this time, more than 200 Web servers were online.

In the mid-90s things really started to speed up. By 1994 more than 1500 Web servers were online. Yahoo opened as a major internet search engine and index in 1994. GeoCities which was created by the Beverly Hills Internet and allowed users to create their own urban modeled websites, got up to one million members by 1997. There were 38 million user Web pages on GeoCities before is shut down for U.S. users in 2009. Today, Yahoo owns GeoCities and offers it only as a web hosting service for Japan. The internet was now being referred to as the “Information Superhighway.” Also in 1997 blogging begins. SixDegrees.com allows users to create profiles and friends list. You can now do virtual chatting through AOL and Blackboard is introduced as an online course management system for educators and learners. Google came into the game in 1998 and in 1999 the first online social network to achieve prominence was Friends Reunited. At this point seventy million computers were connected but in the world of business and commerce in 2000, the dot.com bubble had burst and the internet and online future was unsure. From 2001 through 2004 social networking took off. Wikipedia came online; Apple began selling iPods and introduced iTunes; a social networking site called Friendster opened in the U.S. and grew to three million users in just three months. AOL had over 34 million members; MySpace launched to compete with Friendster; LinkedIn started the business SNS concept for professionals; and now there were over three billion Web pages. Facebook hit the market and has not stopped. Digg was founded as a social news website for people to share stories across the internet.

Let’s fast forward to 2014.  Social media is the new business market. To be and maintain a competitive edge, you must be ready to move into that social media world. However, this is not without risk. Many companies have a hesitation about moving into this unknown world. It is very hard to monitor the real-time comments that may put your business in a negative light. Companies need to start thinking of ways to transition their marketing strategies that will include social media. It is important that they begin to hire those with blogging and mobile media experience. Businesses and organizations must understand the necessity and complexity of building a social media presences. To build it is one thing, but you cannot let it go stagnant, or blunder the approach. If that happens, companies can face damaging reputations. If your site is stagnant, it discourages consumer engagement and gives the impression that you are unwilling to service your customer.

Social networking can make or break a company if it is not properly handled. I read an article about companies that had used national tragedies and social media to promote their product. While one may think that it is an opportunity, it is looked upon as completely distasteful. For example, shortly after the Newtown shootings occurred, Kmart sent a tweet to pay their respects and then added a promotional hashtag. Also, a tweet accidently went out under the Chrysler Auto company account that included gross profanity due to the user sending it under the wrong account. With Twitter having over 500 million registered users, even if you don’t follow Chrysler Auto, the retweets of people for whom you may follow will spin a situation like this out of control. As I’ve said before, good news travels fast, but bad news and stupid mistakes travel at warp speed.

I think in today’s world of internet dominance, enhancing your brand and keeping it on the forefront involves a social marketing strategy. Companies must ensure they have a social marketing plan and keep it authentic and align it with the terms of the company’s style and persona. Also have a backup public relations crisis plan to advert any negative responses or complications that may occur.

 

References

Babcock, P. (2010, August 13). Suffering From Social Media Neglect? Retrieved April 11, 2014, from http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/technology/articles/pages/socialmedianeglect.aspx

The Brief History of Social Media. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2014, from http://www2.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/NewMedia/SocialMedia/SocialMediaHistory.html

Calderon, A. (2013, May 22). 19 Companies That Made Huge Social Media Fails. Retrieved April 11, 2014, from http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/19-companies-that-made-huge-social-media-fails

Is Digital Dominance a Downfall in Childhood Development?

As I read through articles this week and digested the whole mobile nation, it really got me thinking about our society and especially our youth. Is all this mobile access helping or hindering the development of our children? Approximately half of our world’s population has mobile connectivity and 90% of Americans own mobile phones. The statistic does not exclude our youth population. The marketing thought within the business world today is pretty much, Go Mobile or Go Home. And, with those numbers above, why would you think otherwise. My thoughts are, with this rapidly evolving mobile and social media revolution we may be technologically engaging, but is it at the expense of losing our true physical social abilities?

Think about this, when’s the last time you sat down to hand write a thank you card or a note of appreciation to someone? If that question was presented to our youth today, the response would probably be that they send an email or posted something on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. In today’s world the instant gratification of mobility and social media has replaced the intimacy of a hand written note or receiving a card in the mail. Even the act of going outside to play with neighborhood friends or joining an actual physical social activity has taken a back seat to online social groups and networks. Are the youth today being robbed of the excitement of receiving that special letter in the mail or going to an event and enjoying the roar of a crowd and being part of a social community that does not involve logging on. Being mobile has opened the door to a larger world for our children, but at what cost?

Some say that kids who struggle with social skills may find it easier to rely upon social media and digital applications as a crutch. They use these venues as an act of socialization, instead of actually challenging themselves to physically get out and participate in a true social environment. A person’s social skills are most critically developed in childhood. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the healthier a child’s early experiences are, the more apt they are to enter school and life with a strong foundation or social-emotional skills. When these social activities are challenged with social media being the only way some children interact with the world, it limits the development needed to for these kids to be socially functioning adult. But, on the flip side of that statistic, children who may have serious inhibitions about being part of a group can now find social networks that peak their interest and just simply log in and be engaged. Through an expanded network, a child is not just limited to social activities within their local community. Their engagement can expand far beyond these boundaries to reach across the nation and even worldwide. Mobility and social networking opens the door for many individuals to find other youth that share their same interest and goals which helps to foster their individual identities. For some of these children, mobile technology has opened a whole other world for them to actually grow and expand their personalities.

In today’s digital world, a child’s engagement can expand far beyond local community boundaries to reach across the nation and even worldwide. Social networking opens the door for many kids to find other children that share their same interest and goals which helps to foster their individual identities. Schools have successfully integrated social networking to help bridge the gaps in offering certain academic activities that would not be available without the internet. Some classrooms have even joined forces with other classrooms in entirely different countries to help expand cultural diversity. When engaging in activities such as this, it enlarges the community and teaches cultural acceptance at an early age.

 Now does all this new access to the world help or hinder a child’s development. There are additional studies that have shown that increased use of mobile application and immediate access to the internet increases attention disorders. It’s been recorded that 40% of 8 to 18 year olds spend 54 minutes a day on mobile apps and social media sites.  Also, when receiving an alert from a social networking site activity, like a new tweet or Facebook message, users take 20 to 25 minutes on average to return to their original task. In 30% of cases, it took two hours to fully return attention to their original task. When children are exposed to prolonged use of the internet or social media activity it can produce permanent changes in the brain structure and function due to the interactive, repetitive and addictive stimuli. When a developing brain consistently shifts from object to object without thorough evaluation or completion of one topic, it can increase the potential of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders (ADHD). While it has not been factual proven that internet activity and social networking is a cause for the rise in ADHD diagnosis in youth today it cannot be dismissed. A direct correlation is arguable that since social media has saturated our lifestyles, ADHD diagnoses have been on the rise.

Since mobile strategies and social media are now part of our daily lives and will only continue to grow, it is important that parents understand that children need to be socialized in a way that does not include internet activity. Parents should consider limiting social networking in childhood to allow for proper brain development of social, emotional and behavioral skills. When properly monitored, these activities can enhance our lives instead of hindering our children’s development and growth.

 

References

Mark Connolly/Wisconsin Center for Education Research (2011, October). Benefits and Drawbacks. Retrieved January 13, 2014, from http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/news/coverStories/2011/benefits_and_drawbacks.php

 ProCon.org. (2014, January 16). Social Networking ProCon.org. Retrieved from http://socialnetworking.procon.org/

 The Rise of ADHD: Is Technology to Blame? - ADHD Center - EverydayHealth.com. (2010, August). Retrieved January 16, 2014, from http://www.everydayhealth.com/adhd-awareness/the-rise-of-adhd-is-technology-to-blame.aspx

 Carroll, J.A. & Kirkpatrick, R.L. (2011). Impact of social media on adolescent behavioral health. Oakland, CA: California Adolescent Health Collaborative.