Will the continuing complexity in Country structures eventually make a dramatically change in world and economic order?

I have recently read a very interesting article of a Clay Shirky who refers to a Joseph Tainter and his book “The collapse of Complex Societies”. In the article Shirky claims that when structures get to complex and difficult to understand for their “inhabitants” and only a little “elite” understands how to navigate in the complex structure, they will eventually collapse and new and more adaptable structures will rise from their ashes. My thesis is; will this be the reason for the European Crisis and for big enterprises?

Tainter explains in his book that structures as the Roma Empire and the Soviet Union collapsed, even though these regimes had complex social structures and even advanced technology they could not survey. These regimes had developed a bureaucracy, which had a firm grip of the power structures and despite of that they collapsed. Tainter explains the collapses with the cultural sophistication of the societies. I will add two more dimensions into this explanation:

1. The lack of public support of these complex structures – “The people do not understand what it lead to”
2. The lack of proper communication and integrating of the people in the development of the structure

Do we have a similar story in the European Union?  

One can say that we have a structural crisis in EU as well as an economical crisis. Compared to the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union, EU has sought to create a structure that can accommodate all countries that just showed a desire to participate. EU forgot to ensure that Europe has different speeds in the development of democracy and other structures as financial accountability. To counter this, the "European empire" has built a complex of officer structure, which helps to define the rules and guidelines in all key areas. This complexly structure is not based on each member's cultural and developmental stage. It is a structure designed for bureaucrats, by bureaucrats. The complexly structure is one of the reasons that countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland has managed to participate in the Euro cooperation and with-out solid economic power has issued bonds for sale to the “hungry” European banks as they were told that it is solid gold. These countries has with their membership of EU developed a Society which when they entered was fare behind the other members and gained a similar society as the “old” members in a 20 year period. This has taken the “old members” more than 60 years to reach the same level of social and economic development. To move from a simple rural agricultural structure to a complex EU structure demands cultural and social changes for the new member states. This has been a problem for several of the member states south of the Alps. It is a fact a number of these countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are in trouble. Some of these countries are, close to a collapse. The collapse of these countries threaten the solid countries north of the Alps, and herby threaten the entire European structure. According to Tainter complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond.  Could these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? Tainter answer is - When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it is not because they do not want to, it is because they can’t. One reason they can’t is that the public opinion has turned against the complexity due to lack of understanding in the public. When this happens, the cultural difference in the member country and the Central EU has departed so much that it is inventible that a collapse will happen. This is the most appropriate response according to Tainter.

Is it possible to avoid collapses in complex structures?

Even though Tainter says that it is impossible to avoid a collapse when the structure is too complex, I believe that you can postpone the collapse by communicating the circumstances with your population as a country and as a company your employees.  Social Media is a good example of how complex situations become down scaled and easy to access problems, solved outside the complex organizations/structure by peer-to-peer communications.

The complexity problem will create new and simpler structures that will bring value to societies and organizations who adapt them. A new world order and another economic system will appear when the old and complex system turns negative and looses value towards its population an organizations. The Warsaw pact community is a good example of that. These societies was plagued by an inability to react and even communicate their message to the population, their complexity and efficiency had reached a point where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler up to 1989 – which was the moment of collapse.

Could a collapse also happen in an enterprise?

Big companies or enterprises do have complex structures and the bigger they get the more complex and process oriented they get. This lead to the situation that nothing (no costumer contact no sale) can be done simple.  The complexity increase with the size of the enterprise and the decrease of new ideas and employees happens. In the period of 1990 – 1994, small entrepreneurs (100 and less employees) generated approximately 8 million new jobs. At the same time, the complex enterprises (100 and more employees) destroyed more than 3 million jobs.

Take the case of selling a service to a costumer, how would the Entrepreneur react and how would the enterprise react?

The entrepreneur would look into the need of the costumer and make the service available for the costumer. The enterprise would start a process attaching an offering manager, to the case, to help it progress. Next step would be having the service price looked through by the company lawyer. A third step would be to tell the costumer that they needed 4 weeks to deliver the price and product. What happened; the complexity of the selling process has increased to a “monster of processes”. What will the enterprise do – virtually nothing until the costumer reacts and even then not being able to do anything, as they fail to respond to reduce circumstances through orderly downsizing, it is not because they don’t want to, it is because they can’t . The enterprise has build a process system where there is no way to make things a little bit simpler. The enterprise edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. The scenario could end in two ways:

1. The costumer agree to wait for the enterprise to serve.

2. The costumer reject the order and starts buying from an organization with less complex structures. Neither scenarios; will in the long run suite the costumer and the enterprise will loose costumers. This will lead to a collapse for the enterprise. Could you as an enterprise avoid this collapse – you could postpone it by communicating your message to the costumers in a clear way. To avoid it, you have to change culture and actually have a collapse, simply to get a method to simplification.

 The answer to the question; can an enterprise collapse the answer is YES.

What is the outcome would it create a new world order?

I do not believe in revolution or violent uprisings but when ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse there will be a possibility to create a new world order. When members of the old system disperse, abandoning old beliefs, experimenting with new things and making a living in a different way than members used to do, could lead to a new world order. There is a compensating advantage for the people leaving the old system: When the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, people who turn to a simple structure will be the new success and will be the one who would know what happens in the future. A new and simple world order has to occur, to get countries and enterprises, on economic growth again. We have seen it before and we will see it again new ways of communicating has already created enormous potential to create new jobs and possibilities. We have to participate in that direction, to be able to solve the problems of tomorrow.

Is social media better off with a better measurement of metrics?

When an enterprise organization should compare the success of its social media initiatives one important parameter is metrics. If your measurement show a positive indication with the metrics used your company management will properly let you continue using the resources on your Social Media project.

Is that really what it takes to have success to be able to show initial metric such as:

• Page views,
• Time on site,
• Number of comments 

Are these metrics valid for marketers, when comparing investments in other marketing activities?

There must be other and more intuitive toolsets that can enrich and enlarge our use of social media to another level. A company –Crowd Factory have announced that they have improved the analytics toolset of Social Media metrics. Crowd Factory claim, that they have given the marketers the ability to track;

                      Social sharing in real time

                      Social reach

                      Social impressions

You can now give your marketing campaigns a social lift and see the contribution that social enriches your marketing effort and bottom line. Crowd Factory claim that their new analytics available will include:

• Social Reach and Social Impressions:  Customers can use the “social reach” metric to see how many people were exposed to their campaign through social sharing.
• Share Rate. Crowd Factory’s new “share rate” metric provides a precise measure of campaign virality, showing what percentage of campaign visits generate a share.
• Click back Rate. While it’s important to understand how many people shared a campaign, an even better measure of earned media is Crowd Factory’s new “click back rate” metric: the percentage of people who actually clicked on the shared content.
• Influencers. Crowd Factory customers can now not only how many people generated a visit from their sharing activities, but also see the social reach and social impressions attributable to an individual influencer.
• Social Lift. This metrics allows marketers to see how much impact social sharing had on overall campaign traffic, by showing what percentage of people who visited a website or campaign came as a result of receiving shared content.
• Total Profiles. As marketers move beyond one-off campaigns and seek to build a social database, this new metric provides insights into how many people completed social actions and how many social profiles were generated from all Crowd Factory social campaigns.(Source: Crowd Factory 2011)

Does these new and promising analytics from Crowd Factory help us to become better social media marketers? 

One thing is for sure, if they work as promised it gives us a certainty to be able to present for C-level that our used money used on Social Media is done in a prober and accountable way. This gives the company a value of being on track if it is positive and negative you can just close the social media in the next budget round as metrics show it is not for us.

In a world of change, should metrics be the only parameter for developing of Social Media?

Nobody will doubt the value of measuring and using metrics. In all communication, you need to keep it simple to have the highest success rate. When you complicate the purpose of using Social Media in your communication, you will experience that the value, will be diminished and the interactive purpose of the communication will disappear. It is up to you as marketer and content developer and context finder, to make sure that the shift from persuasion to influence has to be with respect towards your costumers. To answer the headline of this blog - yes you will be well of having proper metrics getting the most knowledge of your costumers behaviour. To have success, you have to have other purposes if you want to develop your Social Media strategy.  You need to create the frames of interactive communication going from one-to-many to Many-to-many.

Does Social Media generate Social Selling?

 It is important to understand what Social Media generates and what it can contribute to Social Selling. Social Media in itself does not generate Social Selling and is not supposed to do so. As mentioned in a previous blog (The shifting power from enterprise to consumer) Social Media is supposed to create an advanced dialog between the costumer and the company. As been discussed before, Social Media is a dialog between “Many-to-Many” and NOT a “One-to-Many” speech. The influence of the buying process has changed as the dialog and conversation has change from the company to the costumer. The Costumer is in “control-Costumer empowerment” and it has an effect on the buying and selling process. If you want to participate in the conversation and want to have influence on the costumer network and influence the opinion of the costumer, you need to be able to deliver a valuable content and place it in the context, which will give sense to the costumer. Social selling is based on this new reality – you cannot fool the costumer and don’t even try. Start to recognize that your costumers is more knowledgeable  and even better informed that you used to think – the costumers is connected in social networks where they discuss everything- and this could be your advantage if you deliver the content which will give the costumer and advantage. The expectation from the new Social costumer is that;

• There is a demand of relevance from you as a seller – content in the right context in an honest and open way.
• There is a demand to the seller that you know about your costumer, their companies and their needs before engaging with them in any sales.

Sales are not able to come with a standard “elevator pitch” where the common problems, is addressed.

Using the social media for sales, demand that you actively listen, and engage and add value to the costumer conversation – content in the right context. What costumer wants is a strong collaboration where they get the feeling that they are being, taken seriously and maybe even taken into the development of new products. Your costumers expect you to know as much about them as they know about you. The company need to have its sales intelligence in place to be able to catch the knowledge, which is, presented in both traditional data and from Social media from their costumers.

As a company you need to be aware of that the Social Costumer would only use your marketing material for a second opinion, and instead turn to their peer network or to people they know to evaluate the vendors product or service and even diagnose their news collected before taking a buying decision. The new reality is that costumers will formulate their opinion without the company and sales persons influence if they cannot deliver a valuable content to the costumer. A growing number of business in especially the B2B segment, is started and closed without any face-to-face meeting as costumers are collaborating online with the company they are buying from. This demands openness and flexibility from the companies, which is difficult as you are, exposed to your competitors looking into your business, as that is a demand from costumers.

Using Social Media in a corporation during a financial crisis, will that create competitive advantage?

 

The global crisis which we are in should “jump start” our brain to think “change”. It is not just financial change but change in:

• How we do business?
• How we consume?
• How we communicate?

It is not an easy task, we have to change behaviour, which we have been used to and have considered as fundamentals and essential for our life especially in the western hemisphere. We are facing enormous challenges.

We have to change the way we do business. Today corporate economy has a strong focus on profit maximization in order to satisfy shareholders. This is not a sufficient path to solve tomorrow's challenges there is a need to think differently. Thinking differently is likewise to think out of the box, change habits and taking in themes such as social and environmental responsibility and innovative thinking into the company's way of communicating with its customers.

We have to change the way we consume. The growing population consumption will within a short time span gives us a lack of fossils fuels, lack of clean drinking water and food sources. We have to think and change to green technology for energy consumption, water cleaning and even food production.

We have to change the way we communicate the messages to the population and how we want to secure that our companies can continue to produce sustainable products and service, which is beneficial for business for consumer and for the environment. A communication model, must be chosen.

How do Social Media fit into this quit complex reality facing the entire population on our planet?

A way of getting change is to communicate with people and get a dialog among people. There are several layers of using Social Media, both on a Macro (governmental) and Micro (company) level in economical terms. In today’s challenging world the communication must be more unified which mean that the Micro level economy – our companies -  will have a responsibility to communicate business messages on a more responsible and sustainable way – taking into consideration how our product/services will affect our social and environment behavior. If this should happen in a positive way the companies has to benefit from it and the consumer and state has to benefit as well from this change. To create this change in communication, a number of questions, must be asked  from a company perspective;

• The change, which happens, during a crisis will Social Media in a communication perspective create competitive advantage?
• Taking advantage of social media’s high value and low cost, will that benefit the company in a changed world?
• Could the change to a Social Media infrastructure help the company through a crisis into a new changed world?

To create competitive advantage a company has to do things different from its competitors and secure that it catches the newest trend in the consumer segment the company is working in. First, you should not drop all you other marketing activities just to use social media. You should use Social Media in coherence with your other marketing channels and secure that you start get the collaboration and dialog with your costumers. The strong thing about Social Media is when you get the peer-to-peer dialog up running. if you as company have been able to create a good content of your product and service and have placed in a context where it naturally explains what you can do for the consumer the peer-to-peer conversation will take it on from that and spread the message. In that perspective, your company will have competitive advantage.

The next level you as a company have to consider is even though Social Media create high value for a relative low cost you have to develop the environment for social media to happen and create the dialog and collaboration, and this is not an easy task, it takes time and internal resources to get there. If you have the resources and time, internal in the company, you would have the possibility to benefit from Social Media in a changed world.

There are certainly some benefits to have a social media infrastructure in place before you have a crisis either internal in the company or external in the form of a global financial crisis. It takes time and energy to build a well run and function Social Media infrastructure. A Social Media infrastructure where you have the collaboration with your costumers, and where your company organization, have accepted, the new way of communicating with the costumers. When these two factors, are in position the Social Media can help the company through a crisis, because you get a lot of information from the market and end-user consumers, which will help you take the correct decisions.

It is very easy to say that using Social Media in a corporation in crisis times will crate competitive advantage this will not do for every company. As described above, you have to have certain criteria being present, and you should have a corporation, believing in change to get real competitive advantage. But if you have these criteria’s in place you will benefit from Social Media in a financial crisis as present today.

Can the CEO of an enterprise, benefit from Social Media?

Most CEO according to Forrester is not very social and do not have a profile on Twitter, FaceBook or do blogging on the social platform. Some CEO see Social Media more as a place where you can brag about your latest “achievements, get attention, approval and applause from an audience which is a place for non achievers to be”.

So in a CEO objective do they need to be social?

It depends how they and you look at it. From an enterprise CEO point of view, people want to communicate with him or her and if he or she has to work the social media, they will have just another platform to present their companies view and benefits towards their costumers.

Could it benefit the CEO personally?

Again, it depends on how well known he or she is in the public room. According to head hunters they will look for activity on the social media. Is the CEO is a public person and knowledgeable in his area the CEO will be found, by the right people for the right job anyway.

Should the CEO recognise Social Media as a “Buzz-word” campaign?

Many CEO feel disappointed from their past experiences,, with other new products, protocols, portals where they have been promised increased revenue, better efficiency and optimization of the utilization. The CEO feel that non has performed, as advertised from the various marketing and sales departments.

Why should the CEO work the social media anyway?

If Social Media is a part of the enterprises communication strategy it will be a good signal from the CEO to be a “first mover” in the company and herby draw attention to the enterprise with his collaboration with the costumers. Even though he/she has been disappointment in the past, they should look at Social Media as different approach. In the past, the CEO was not necessarily part of the campaign. The difference with social media is that the CEO is a very active part, of the campaign he she is the face of the campaign, he she participate actively and get an unfiltered feedback from the costumers if he get their attention and trust.

Could every type of CEO use the social media?

Yes if he or she knows how to create good content and be able to present it in the right context where it creates good purpose for the enterprise and its costumers. The lazy CEO could always go to the marketing department and make them handle his blog, tweet and even his LinkedIn account, but he will be easily spotted by the audience and the one he want to collaborate with – and then it will not work it is not authentic.

Is their a lot of cost using Social Media for the CEO?

The difference from previous times marketing campaigns is that using social media is low cost from a money investment point of view. It could be time consuming and costly for the CEO in that perspective if he/she do not take proper percussions of getting the right content. As a CEO you are in the campaign you are addressing the costumer and you are changing the one-way approach, which marketing could be to a many-to-many approach where you get a profitable conversation and connection with your costumers.

What is the Bottom Line to the CEO and the enterprise with Social Media?

The CEO has a very simple purpose he has to make sure that the shareholders are content this is where the CEO must look into the fundamentals of the enterprise and make the changes, which could make the company be prosperous in the future. One area where change must occur is marketing. Fundamentally, marketing must refocus away from selling product and toward creating relationships. Customers don’t like to be ‘owned’ if that implies lack of choice or freedom. But they do like to be ‘owned’ if what that means is a vendor taking ongoing responsibility for the success of their joint ventures.  Ownership in this sense means an abiding commitment and a strong sense of mutuality in the development of the marketplace. When customers encounter this kind of ownership, they tend to become fanatically loyal to their supplier, which in turns builds a stable economic base for profitability and growth.”

 This is where Social Media can help developing this way of communicating with the costumers. CEO´s should use their position to create and maintain relationships with costumers and prospects. This should be an important part of the CEO job description, and in that perspective the CEO could really benefit from Social Media.

Does Social Media create Social change or “revolution”?

There is no doubt that Social Media can change the opinion of a topic or a product/service if the peer-to-peer communication creates context and content which moves the people or the consumer. The technology power, which Social Media gives to the people and in a business context to the consumer, demands great responsibility from all parties. The positive disruptiveness, which we have seen Social Media has made in the uprising of the Egyptian people towards their leaders, and which have helped Syrian show the upraise in their country has shown the power of social Media communications in driving coverage of conflicts. You can say it has helped showing the surrounding world that governments cannot suppress their people with force without been known to the world. As a tyrant you cannot make genocides to your people without been exposed.

The latest example of this is an article on CNN by Andres Monroy-Hernadez (Mexico Murders show the influence of Internet) which shows the power of Social Media on drug cartels. The drug cartels murder numerous people in Mexico but the latest development where they hang notes to the corpses telling the world to stop using the internet to expose their destructive behaviour will create more dead people. This show, the power of Social Media and show how frightened these criminal organizations are for being, exposed in a bigger context. This is how social media create social change on a geopolitical level, helping opposition and minorities to be taken seriously.

On a business level, we have seen products having been condemned out of the market and has made it’s way back into the mindset of the consumers, by using exceptional content in a extraordinary good context. I am talking of the product Old Spice. Old Spice is in my mindset a product, which was modern in the 1960 and early 1970. It is a product, which my farther used and a product with no appeal to a younger generation. The Social Media change is here the reinvention of the product, in a humoristic context with appeal to the women, instead of the men using Old Spice. The change is not the target group that was change but the change of media and the cheapness of production – the commercial, was on YouTube. Next step in the communication/collaboration with costumer, was when they was asked to post questions directly to “The Man” and getting answers back in video format on YouTube. This was part of the tactics in the campaign. Together with the use of other Social Media as Twitter and FaceBook Old Spice body wash was, reinstalled as a product to be used, in the 21^st century by men. The commercial result has been impressive as Old Spice is the #1 body wash for men. The commercial with all the humour has been the all-time most viewed commercial on YouTube. The traffic on Oldspice.com has increased up to 300% all very impressive. This is Social Media change in rebrand a product – this is a revolutionary change in how to get a conversation among peers on the social media.

I would argue that Social Media create social change, in the geopolitical environment it even create social revolution. On the business level a smaller revolution are created – here we are not talking life and death but survival of products in a new and interesting content. I hope that Social Media will  continue to create change on numerous levels and on different platforms, this will help to change the world for the better.

Social Media and Mobility

Getting social, on a mobility platform demands the right strategy. As in any other aspect of your marketing mix, you need to look into what kind of strategy the market prefer, and which segment and region you want to attend in. It is old knowledge that content and context is tow of the important strategy parameters when you want to have success with social Media.

Now where do you want to set your social media foot prints?

This is the next question you want to ask yourself making your strategy. One thing is for sure that the majority of people in rural districts of the world want to participate in the social conversation and exchange of goods and knowledge. Devices like mobile phones, I-pads have in the recent years, become more important with the development of new and innovative functionality on these devices.

In the emerging markets like Brazil, Argentina and other Latin American countries, the popularity for attending Social Medias on mobile devices has exploded. The Latin American countries are not just following the western world on social media on mobility they are leading.

To me this is a very positive surprise, as I can see how people in Latin and South America connect to the web and get social via their mobile devices. The readers of my blogs are increasing in the use of mobile devices and coming from emerging markets the use of mobile safari and mobile phones has during the last 6 month increased from 1% to 6% and the emerging countries has increased from 3% to 10% of the readers.

The current trends on mobility and Social Networking include:

• Mobility can provide a competitive advantage, as solutions become more business critic.
• Mobility solutions have increased in complexity—before, during and after deployment.
• Additional device functionality and connectivity demand enhanced information security.
• Mobile solutions require full life cycle management to accommodate changes and updates.
• Social networking is up 58% on mobile devices.
• Services on mobility platform must be simple.
• For 26% of the mobility product user, ease of use is critical.
• 43%, of the mobility users are prevented from using services due to ease of use issues.

Due to various analyses, this is only a start more users in other geographies than Latin and South America will connect via mobile devices.

Why has the social media on mobile devices been so popular and developed that fast in Latin and South America? According to an anthropologic the culture and the history in these regions has developed the use of getting social. The price of mobile devices has decreased rapidly and the need for ease of use devices has increased. Still 43% of the consumers in emerging markets, are prevented from using services due to ease of use issues.

Is it now you as an enterprise company, wanting to sell and marketer your products and service, would approach the emerging markets?

Not necessarily, you need to take into consideration how does these markets use the Social Media and what is the purpose of the use. According to market specialists in Argentina and Brazil, the main purpose of Social media is as the Latin culture in general is to hear how others are doing – friends and relatives and just have a small talk of the current situation – exchange of information among each other. This is not necessarily bad for doing business if you can “turn” the conversation into another subject which suites you as a business. This is where Content and Context starts. Content gives Social Media the depth. Context, create the social interactions and relations you create social identity.

Now you have to create your content and context so you will get the most out of the target groups in the geography you choose. Take an emerging market as Brazil, here women use 39 hours per week on social media on their mobile devices, you want to get into the conversation and secure that you get both content and context which suites this target group. To get your fair share of these markets you need to fine tune and simplify your services so these consumer groups will choose you for the ease of use and get social with your company.