Being: Peter Kim

Brief thoughts on SXSW 2010

[I borrowed @richardatdell’s hat]
by David Alston on Flickr

This post is intended as a collection of loose notes and thoughts, really. I haven’t had enough time since the end of SXSW to step back and take time to reflect, but now that a fortnight has passed since the opening day, publish or perish.

1. If you see sentiment expressed along the lines of, “SXSW is a waste of time. I’ve never been, but…” you can stop reading right when you hit that conjunction. There’s no substitute for being there. Read Heather’s take on this.

2. Predictions about “this year’s Twitter” will be wrong. In 2010 many thought it would be plancast. Neither Twitter nor FourSquare became what they are today until well after the long weekend.

2.1. Fears about failed network coverage turned out to be unfounded. The new fail in 2010 was battery life. Three on-the-spot opportunities for an entrepreneur next year: mobile device charging, hand sanitizer/Airborne shots, rain gear.

3. Past performance does not predict future results. The panels, the parties, and the people that were great last year may not repeat the next. Hedge by mixing big events with small events. It’s a small, concentrated area and if you miss people one day, you’ll likely see them the next night.

4. You go there to meet the people in person. Two factors increase the potential for engagement: it’s a weekend so it seems less like work. It’s also in Austin, a city not known as well for its business as for its cultural scene. Why not a NXNE? Location matters.

5. Many seemed to think that next year will be the tipping point for brand involvement. So if you thought there were too many people and SXSWi was too big this year, wait until next year.

6. More than a few non-official but industry-related events happened before and during SXSW – we held a Social Business Summit, Tim Hayden and Chris Brogan held Get Ready To Live, Chris Heuer’s Social Media Clubhouse held programming all weekend long. Look for these to get even better next year; with sentiment generally criticizing panel content as weak, the value of external curation goes up. Attendees can still learn by day and socialize by night.

7. Many thanks to all of the great photographers like David Alston who captured the experience in pictures to remember and share.

Your loose thoughts in response are welcome as well, naturally.

Being there

As data networks facilitate higher speed connections, remote experiences have become richer. Later this month, college basketball fans can watch March Madness live at their desks instead of having to constantly refresh a scoreboard page or linger in the break room where CNBC has been anonymously switched to CBS.

But for me I’ll always remember sitting in the nosebleeds at the Georgia Dome, cheering for teams to which I had no connection.

These days, scholars study Woodstock as a cultural phenomenon. Amazon has almost 300 history books on the three day weekend. Taping culture was propagated by fans of the Grateful Dead, Phish, Dave Matthews Band and others, who shared experiences with one another. Pay-per-view allows us to stream HD concerts into our homes.

But for me, I’ll always remember being close enough to see the texture of Eddie Vedder’s jacket at Riverbend, the long drives home from Rupp Arena with ears ringing from arena rock, not being crushed in a mosh pit at FDR Park.

Think about industry conferences and events – we used to read the trade press for recaps on large convocations; then we had blog posts, evolving into liveblogging, and today there’s real-time tweets and Ustreaming citizen journalists.

But this exponentially increased flow of information does not replace the value of in-person, real-life experiences. There’s an old proverb that states, “teach a person to fish and they’re fed for a lifetime.” It’s about process – and through process one gains experience.

I’m heading down to Austin for the Dachis Group Social Business Summit and SXSW. If you’re going to be in town as well, I look forward to being there with you. Because despite advertisers, pundits, and others who may believe that technology creates no gap between real and Memorex – the ones who are there will feel the difference.

You can follow live updates from the Dachis Group Social Business Summit at #sbs2010.

What you can learn from Forrester’s new blogging policy

I’ve been following the discussion around Forrester’s new blogging policy. In case you weren’t aware, I was formerly a Forrester analyst covering social computing and wrote some of the early drafts of the company’s blogging policy. Now I’m building a strategy consulting practice at Dachis Group and advising companies on social business – wherein policies and guidelines play an important role.

Based on my experience, I understand where Forrester’s management is coming from. Forrester makes their money by curating information and social media poses a threat to its core intellectual property. How? By shifting points of value creation and capture closer to $free. So why on earth would the firm want to encourage their proprietary value-creating assets (i.e. analysts) to support and accelerate the shift? Implementing a policy to protect IP value is a smart move by management.

However, smart marketers know that not all consumers are created equal. Same goes for Forrester’s readers: some prefer syndicated research reports, others phone inquiries, and some favor in-person interactions. Professionally-affiliated, personally-managed blogs – let’s call them “perfessional” – provide an additional engagement channel for employees to support business goals, on consumer-friendly terms. Social media policies must provide flexibility from an employee perspective that permit perfessional engagement – otherwise, companies risk missing a business opportunity.

Here’s where Forrester’s decision appears to fall flat: in its quest for control of employee social media publishing, the company limits both risk AND reward. This is the point that most social media discussion has focused on. Ultimately it’s a business decision and Forrester’s to make, but case history shows that perfessional blogs like Jeremiah’s, Bruce’s, and mine help build both personal and company brands.

I think there’s a more difficult point here for Forrester – some condition in the company’s current culture drove an insider to leak the information to SageCircle. This signals internal dissonance and the uncomfortable but likely fact that malcontent employees need to separate from Forrester. When you’re playing poker, exchanging your cards as the round plays out is just part of the game. Only time will tell if the new policy is a success or failure, based on business results – but again, a smart move by management to protect core IP in the reality of an evolving social business landscape, instead of clinging to purist social media ideals.

Companies must implement policy to manage social media participation and let’s face it – the devil is in the details. To be effective, a social media policy must be tailored to a company’s strategy, culture, process, style, industry, competition, technology, and most importantly – customer needs. You can’t just copy and paste a policy you find on a wiki; you’ve got to understand how policy and guidelines play critical roles in supporting social business.

Four years ago today

I started this blog on a snowy Saturday in Boston, telling you about how I learned to love the blog.

A lot has changed in social media since then. Curiously, my early posts are closer in style to tweets or posterizing than the long form that I publish here more often.

Thanks for reading!

Peter Kim

Managing Director, North America

Dachis Group

Peter Kim is a leading thinker on social business, which he discusses on his blog, Being Peter Kim. He has been quoted in the press by media outlets including CNN, CNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Peter is currently responsible for building Dachis Group’s North America organization while leading case teams to formulate social business strategy for clients.

  Peter was previously an analyst at Forrester Research, focusing on social technology and marketing strategy. Earlier at PUMA AG, he was responsible for international marketing operations, e-commerce, and digital marketing.  

Peter is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s Darden School and the University of Pennsylvania.

High-res photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beingpeterkim/4113035483/sizes/o/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beingpeterkim/2912067581/sizes/o/

2010: The Year of Mobile

A year from now, we’re going to look back on what happened this year and declare that it was finally the “year of mobile.”

Here’s why:

Devices. Mobile phones have been getting more sophisticated, as operating systems evolve, batteries live longer, and processors run faster. And it’s not just phones – netbooks have been hot and tablets will soon seize the spotlight.
Applications. Thousands of applications available specifically for mobile experiences that aren’t the clunky WAP-based sites of old. These run on more sophisticated operating systems, giving users familiar interface cues.
Networks. 3G networks might be strained now, but that won’t be the case forever. AOL initially strained under the demands of dial-up, but ended up thriving (and then missing the switch to broadband). Wi-fi hotspots have proliferated and you can find a network almost anywhere you go today.

These three areas will continue to progress and if competition keeps prices in check, innovation will continue and we’ll be more connected than ever by the end of the year. We’ve seen interesting concepts in all three of these areas before, but today’s overall system has reached a point of maturity making the mobile experience useful, usable, and desirable.

And as consumers get more out of mobile platforms, advertising will follow suit and finally take off. Ads will now become part of the Apple and Google ecosystems, not standalone networks with limited reach.

Other things we’ll see:

A new “hot” skill set emerges. Mobile expertise will be in highest demand with lowest supply – at least in the US.
Another check box for integrated marketing. First you had to tack on a website. Then it was some social networks. Now it will be a mobile presence.
More ways to love to hate advertising. The world is going to discover new ways to be annoyed by ads never previously imagined. Will location-based relevance save the day? I don’t think so.

Think back to surfing the web on a Treo 650 using Blazer via GPRS or a RAZR using WAP over EDGE…we can look back and laugh about this now. It’s likely we’ll be feeling the same about Safari on an iPhone 3GS/3G sooner than you think.

Social Business in 2010

Late last year, I coordinated a fun weekend project that went over pretty well called Social Media Predictions 2009. This year, reflecting a shift in where we see the space heading, Dachis Group launched Social Business Imperatives 2010.

As we wrap up 2009, I want to highlight some areas where our business will be focused in 2010. I could position these as predictions, but then I’d be stacking the deck because I know they’re already going to happen.

A talent shortage. There are just not enough people out there who possess a deep understanding of social media combined with business strategy experience. In some cases, it’s not a lack of technical skills, but rather a lack of interpersonal acumen. On the flip side, this market void creates an opportunity for individuals who understand different functions, can navigate ambiguity in difficult political waters, and understand how to manage mission critical initiatives on a corporate level.
Major social business strategy projects. You might not hear about any of these, because companies are putting infrastructure in place to support social business. There’s no need to tip off the competition by discussing what’s being built – these initiatives aren’t about creating short-term buzz; they’re about driving long-term profitability.
Service provider consolidation. Lots of small companies out there “get it.” Fewer big companies don’t. As we roll into this maturing market for social business, scale is becoming the name of the game for clients and consultants alike.
A shift in industry focus. The conversation about what’s next will come to rest on social business. We’ve been hearing about the same old proof of concept examples now for years – it’s time to figure out how to make social work for companies, not just individuals. A new wave of books will publish, but only a handful will be worth reading; many others will be sadly outdated and deliver DOA. Same goes for events – new gatherings and emergent outcomes, while others struggle to remain relevant.

All of these areas are related. If you are on the client-side, you may already be experiencing these issues; if not, then you may either have a window of opportunity or you may need to dig deeper into your competitive intelligence resources.

As for Dachis Group, we are actively hiring right now for the best professionals in social business. We’ve been working on strategy projects with major brands that will turn into the case studies of tomorrow. We are actively looking for companies that want to work with us closely to deliver social business design. And we’ll be convening our first annual Social Business Summit in Austin next March.

I guess if you don’t believe me, these might be predictions after all…but trust me on these.

A conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk

A couple weeks ago, I had a public, online conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk aka @garyvee. He’s on a PR blitz to promote the release of his new book “Crush It.”

If you’re not familiar with Vaynerchuk, he’s a self-trained wine expert who has used social media, online video in particular, to drive exponential growth in his family’s wine business. At the same time, he’s built a kingpin personal brand, signing a seven-figure, ten-book deal in Spring 2009. Vaynerchuk stands as proof of how participating in one’s customer ecosystem leads to business success.

To view the entire conversation, visit The Dachis Group Collaboratory.

And you may want to consider subscribing to the Collaboratory’s RSS feed.

The plague of plagiarism

I tend to believe that most people participating online do the right thing.

We invest time and energy in contributing to a collective understanding. I applaud Todd Defren and ShiftPR for sharing their work on the social media press release. Nielsen Online offers free use of their industrial-strength brand monitoring system through Blogpulse.

We celebrate the success of others. The community at large helped Chris Brogan and Julien Smith become New York Times best selling authors. We’ve cheered on my friends and former colleagues Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, and Ray Wang (and Deb Schultz) in creating Altimeter Group.

We give credit where and when credit is due. As Dachis Group builds momentum and understanding around Social Business Design, most people have acknowledged our work in adding their own thoughts to the conversation.

However, as social media has mainstreamed, snake oil salespeople have started popping up everywhere. It may be true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – so what? If flattery means siphoning off attention and awareness that leads to business, then criticize me to your heart’s content. I’d prefer to be distinct and profitable then copied and commoditized.

It’s a simple economic fact that producers need incentive to produce. Social media isn’t socialism. When I see work get plagiarized, my natural reaction is to pull back and share less. Which is unfortunate, because I’ve experienced how connecting and collaborating with a larger ecosystem has driven improved outcomes. However, this ensures the preservation of value for constituents who matter most – my clients.

As we sit poised before flu season, many people have prepared themselves with vaccines and behavioral changes. The equivalents in social media may be Creative Commons and behind-the-scenes process changes. Just as public health officials monitor for signs of outbreak, you can monitor using tools like Google Alerts, BackType/Tweets, and CopyScape.

I wonder if this will be enough.

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