Have you heard the term "Rockstars" used time and time again in relation to people on the Internet, particularly in the social media scene?

You have?

Me too, and you know what, it pisses me off no end. So this is my disambiguation post to state the use is plainly wrong when applied to wannabe practitioners of user generated content.

Terribly sorry people but if you want to know what a real Rockstar is watch this video.

If you have Rockstar needs go learn to play guitar, snort some coke and practise your stage diving, oh and pick up some tattoos on the way.

In the words of Scott Weiland (he's the singer above) "don’t attempt to stand in a man’s shoes when you haven’t walked his path"

Scott's history

How do you feel about the phrase?

Technorati Tags: disambiguation rockstar scott weiland social media stp user generated content rockstar social media disambiguation user generated content scott weiland stp

Apparently I have been nominated to be on the Social Media Club Interim Board.

I'm not really into begging for votes, or asking for the popularity contest cup, in fact I detest that. However, this might be a really good thing to be included in from a devil's advocate stance.

If you read my blog semi-regularly you'll know I am one of those who likes to probe and seek some proof and sense of balance, particularly in social media circles. Fact is I am not a fan of evangelising in any niche at all, I find that self-perpetuating nonsense to be very dangerous and lacking in critical analysis.

SO, if you think I'd bring a balanced view to this area and would be of use as a sobering force, please do go ahead and vote me in, I'd relish challenging some of the evangelists, balance is needed in order to bring about a strong group of thinkers, you always need balance.

Vote for Hambly

Thanks

Technorati Tags: evangelists social media votes evangelists social media votes

Humans are innately biased, fact is we cannot help it, we simply prefer to be in situations where we do not feel like the odd one out, we seem programmed to flock to like-minded groups. This is not anything ground-breaking or new, it's a basic human trait.

Some typical examples of like-minded groups include:

• any religion
• football fan
• the mafia
• social media evangelists

I used that list in a presentation/session I led at MediaCampLondon and I'm sure you'll agree, before we dig deeper, that most "specialised" groups or niches do exhibit similar personalities, or group thinking. For a rugby team to excel there needs to be a team mission, a team work-ethic, a cluster of similarity, or a company philosophy, policy. For the police force to work the individual soldiers much share a common belief of law enforcement.

So what can we call the glue in these "packs", "tribes" "groups", "fan bases"? What term describes this commonality of behaviour, the mind-fuck of similarity? What is it then that Chris Brogan the Pied Piper of social media evangelises, what is it that Lloyd Davis the Tart of Tuttle encourages you to love, what is it that Will McInnes the Madman of Metrics and Measurement propagates, and what is it Chris Hambly the Don of the Social Media Mafia challenges you with? - Ideological Amplification is what.

Ideological Amplification is when a belief within a tribe (niche) becomes the "norm" or "accepted" and often "expected" and is then exponentially amplified among its members. - chris hambly

If you think for a moment, all tribes have leaders, this is age-old theory, and from that a vision or a broad ideology born. When loyal members join a particular tribe it is that vision that is then perpetuated, amplified and encouraged to the expense of a nearby tribe - to an extent. Chelsea fans are not in any way waving the ideology flag of Liverpool, for example. Or David Cameron's flock will always seek ammunition to unbalance the arguments of Gordon Brown. These frictional moments and engagements may be unstated, may even take place unwittingly as part of the ideology but they DO occur.

Marketing

Many years ago merchants would tout their business wares in the village market, typically to small groups, small tribes, the merchants could operate a very specific marketing message to a known demographic. When scaling was made possible through technological developments such as printed materials, and more recently radio and television, marketing moved into a more broad-based model where above the line blanket-bombing tactics become the norm, and still are, shear numbers became the model.

The Internet now affords the rapid establishment of tribal theories once again, marketing droids (I include myself in that definition) are once again taking an interest in niche tribes, the "power" of a niche ideology, or they SHOULD be.

You see, for a marketing person we want our products to be discussed, we want the goodness, the buzz, the positive aspects to be ideologically amplified by the tribe. Steve Jobs's gang do this for him daily. Steve's long-term brand (generational) has a fiercely loyal pack of dogs, whom will enthuse and die at the gates of computer heaven before switching brands.

But even new brands to the game can now take advantage of ideological amplification, because The Internet facilitates rapid tribal community building. Never before have we been able to seek and find like-minded people, never before have we been able to run shoulders with vast amounts of people who bolster own own perception of an ideology.

Let's look at more theory.

Thomas Schelling

1971, he published a widely cited article dealing with racial dynamics called "Dynamic Models of Segregation". In this paper he showed that a small preference for one's neighbours to be of the same colour could lead to total segregation. He used coins on graph paper to demonstrate his theory by placing pennies and nickels in different patterns on the "board" and then moving them one by one if they were in an "unhappy" situation.

The positive feedback cycle of segregation - prejudice - in-group preference can be found in most human populations, with great variation in what are regarded as meaningful differences -- gender, age, race, ethnicity, language, sexual preference, religion, etc. Once a cycle of separation-prejudice-discrimination-separation has begun, it has a self-sustaining momentum.

source: wikipedia.

Dangerous stuff…

"Once a cycle of separation-prejudice-discrimination-separation has begun, it has a self-sustaining momentum."

This is what some theorists might call "going viral", I actually prefer to call this pathological, I find it dangerous, sure for a marketing person it can be golden, but and what expense?

So what are we supporting here with social media adoption?

• Increase of niche gangs

- as I've stated, never before have we been able to seek out such vast extremes of ideology in one place. On the Internet there are no mechanical forces preventing us to segregate, we have no house to sell, we are free to indulge in our extremism.

• Disdain for “mainstream”which actually forces us to segregate, isn’t that good? - mainstream channels DO force us to listen, watch and be presented with multiple view points. Newspapers cover a variety of themes which may draw you, something which your niche may not, ever.
• Adoption of tribal mentalities, actually enthused, embraced, encouraged. - Leaders will evangelise, as the Don of Social Media Mafia I do want the members to critically analysis social media, rip it up, question it, find proof, examine it, uncover theory. Chris Brogan doesn't ask this of you, he enjoys the "magic" of it. Will McInnes will want you to find metrics, he wants an industry model, he wants something to bolster and give credibility to his products. Lloyd Davis want you to socialise in public spaces and sing his anthem of Tuttle. Makes no difference what the niche is, we are all selfish and pimping our own ideologies, and if you do not roughly come into line with that, you are marginally ostracised. Debatable, but I challenge you.
• Polarisation, amazon, knows what you like every time, you are profiled. - for each click we make on the internet we are then profiled into a category one step further, for each and every cookie and derivative of YOUR choices are made narrower. You will not be displayed products which you are never likely to buy.
• Additional views which support your views add to your perception of correct, or right. - If you sing hallelujah to the ideology of the group, the remaining participants will praise you, pat you on the back, thus further entrenching the ideology, thus further amplifying it.

Critical analysis skills are taught at 3rd year in the UK University system, and even then it is only the beginning, critical analysis and stepping out of your tribe takes balls, courage and a willingness to argue. This skill is not something we are born with, it takes practise and lots of it.

And that is where the problem lies for me, a serious lacking in critical skills within social media, a fundamental flaw in the system, cult-like blind faith is fucking dangerous, and there will be ferocious venomous spitting when opposing extremes come together.

Look at any war, it is no different... treat your tribe with caution, tread carefully before you preach for you may be amplifying an ideology which is in fact marginalising and segregating.

I will talk about "bridges" at a later date.

UPDATE: 13.07.08 - So what do YOU think, am I being harsh, do you not agree, or do you sense some of this in yourself, what's on your mind after reading this?

Technorati Tags: amplification analysis critial cycle discrimination diversity gangs groups ideology marketing markets mediacamplondon niche polarisation predudice profiled religion segregation shelling specialised theorists tribes univeristy viral segregation polarisation analysis critial ideology amplification marketing profiled univeristy diversity viral discrimin

Here is a picture of me which I really like.

Am I vain? Yeah probably, so what, besides can't you see my rippling muscles?

Anyway this was shot by Benjamin Ellis, at MediaCampLondon.

Ben is a great bloke whom I make time to listen to, he thinks forwards and has vision, and is also someone who takes really fucking good pictures, I could learn a lot from him.

Technorati Tags: benjamin ellis flickr photography picture vanity vanity picture photography benjamin ellis flickr

Just a quick note while it is on my mind.

Eaon Pritchard pointed out a link on twitter today called Goodness And Happiness where Neil Perkin quotes, Eaon and also Dave Winer on the concept of "The way to make money on the internet is to send them away".

Neil writes well, though to be honest probably over-complicating something really basic, perhaps it's verbose for his target audience, could be, or perhaps I'm just simple.

Anyway I wanted to reinforce the idea that, yes, if you create an abundance on content with an abundance of links you will in fact create what is known as The Internet...

It is fairly basic conceptually, the Internet thrives on links, it thrives on generating content, content is king, always has been, likely always will.

As a case study I've managed Audiocourses.com since 2000 and guess what? ... that's what I've always manufactured, a portal, a rich node of information, a useful place for people to come and collect information, bounce off, engage with content.. that's why the site has 14,000 members.

That's not the only place I do it, take a look MBPublishing FREE press releases distribution service, oh and what about this one too The Phone Cam. I have more but no need to rub it in too much, the numbers are thousands not millions, but they are very niche subjects.

So Neil is correct, but come on, it's nothing new, and Dave was also lagging there too by lots of years. If the marketing lads think this is conceptually new they got shit loads of catching up to do.

Yes, generate tons of content daily, and push links out all the time, create the Internet.. no rocket science involved, webs are webs, Offline models have no relativity.

:)

Technorati Tags: content lagging links members traffic traffic lagging members content links

On a recent email newsletter I sent I got 148.3% opens, and 95.8% clicks, that's some kind of a record. secret: segmenting.

Want to discuss it?

Technorati Tags: clicks convering email marketing measure opens segmentation email segmentation marketing convering clicks opens measure

I decided to get a step closer to a full-on MOHAWK

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Go ahead and use html when you make a comment, put the link to your site in, using your favoured keywords, and then state in one sentence only, the point of your website. If you have more than one website use additional comment entries.

My website does not use the no follow tag, so you gain Google Juice.

Technorati Tags: analytics data metrics qualitative survey website why website qualitative analytics data survey metrics

Things move rapidly in the big ole Internet and over this bank holiday weekend I checked out Facebook "pages" again and launched the Social Media Mafia "fan" page.

But we have the FB Group, don't we?

Yes, there is a Facebook group which we have used to date to recruit interested parties, but I've noticed that FB pages provide far more useful features, namely:

Facebook Statistics

180 page views on the first day is not mind-blowing by any stretch of the imagination but at least I know how many, as well as other countable features.

Export Facebook Statistics

Pretty neat, handy for dumping into some of your other data.

Facebook Social Advertisement

Note, you'll see another advert I used in the passed right after they launched the service, not a good click-thru rate, but the ad was merely text, and a bad one too.

(very handy for future events, and pulling new people in, don't you think?).

Facebook Targeting

This is an excellent feature, something many of us have used on other platforms for years. As an example for a Social Media Mafia event in Italy only why would I want to send an update to people in China?

Lastly of course this page is public and not stuck behind a "walled garden".

There are other bits 'n' bobs about Facebook Pages which make sense, though with this small example you can see the benefits are numerous and make the FB Group redundant on many levels.

So, now you should pop on over and become a fan right?

Technorati Tags: channel communication conversation facebook fan social media mafia statistics targetting social media mafia facebook fan channel communication conversation statistics targetting

I have a long history of publishing e-newsletters and an even greater belief in the reach-ability of them. When I consider some of my larger e-mail lists and the associated click-through statistics it becomes crystal clear that they work, period.

The thing is about email is that it is still one of the best communication technologies around for broadcasting news, your updates appear into peoples' in-box, there is no effort on the part of the target at all, and let's face it we are lazy, we forgot sites, we often can't be bothered to go chasing up the news.

Some say what about RSS feeds and feed readers? I say that the majority demographic there is for Geeks and Nerds, for people who are like me and work on the Internet. I also say that my sister and the girl next door are not that type of person, in fact the majority of Internet users are not feed readers, and it is the majority I am interested in typically, it is they I predominately wish to reach.

Newsletter systems can also bring about an important personal connection, or personalisation, unlike an RSS feed from let's say a Blog, which is just generic albeit with many Bloggers liking to use the term "YOU", to give a sense of connection. But you can go deeper than than, a newsletter sign-up form can contain personal data which can then be inserted into an authored newsletter, which gives the communication a far more personal flavour.

This personal touch is powerful, in my experience it has proven to aid considerably in building up credibility (which does take time), and it also aids in giving the reader a sense of inclusion, being part of the "club" if you will.

Some people do not like email targeting and selling, and I say to them they are fools basking in a non-existent demographic, in an minute fish-pond of supposed "friends". If you genuinely have something to sell you cannot expect people to come looking for it, you need to push it in front of their noses, and not just once, but repeatedly.

If you'd like to see how I use a few key personalisation matches try the following Social Media Mafia form, you'll be sent an email and asked to "opt-in" and then you'll receive the first instalment which is pre-written, but will contain some of your personal entries. Don't worry I'm not selling things on this particular list ;)

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