This very public Twitter incident was a good reminder about the importance of social media guidelines. And it got us at sy-ENGAGE thinking…

Where’s the line between brand guidelines and social media guidelines? It’s a very important question for organizations today, for two reasons.

1. Personal brands are so strong. Everyone has a voice, and they don’t always know the implications of that voice/influence/power.

2. Brands are not set in concrete. This has always been true, but again, people have more of a voice than ever before and they have the tools (cameras, graphic design tools, communications channels like Facebook) to effectively create a brand.

It’s a tension between emergence and intention.

Branding says plan everything, be intentional about everything, be united about everything.

Emergence says be present, be scrappy, let the right patterns emerge at the right time and ensure you have the right structures in place to steer those patterns in the right direction. Have the solid intention but also know how to listen and follow.

Engagement (and service-dominant logic) also says people don’t own what they don’t create. Original works are interesting and valuable, but derivative works are often more interesting and arguably more valuable. Mashups or remixes, for example – are they piracy, or are they the best possible sign of brand loyalty.

For example, Camellia and Pooja’s variations on the sy-ENGAGE logo are not strictly “on brand” … is that a good or a bad thing?

So when we develop brand guidelines, there needs to be a seamless segue into social media guidelines. Because in the 21st century it’s not only the marketing department and the design company who create the brand. It’s everyone.

And it goes beyond the visual look and feel; it also includes:

• What photos we upload
• What words we use
• What stories we tell
• What behaviors we exhibit

It’s our entire culture, and culture is not prescribed from a document. The brand guidelines must be intentional but it must also come from an appreciative observation of reality. And it must address how we do what we do. It must be a living document, that lives, grows and learns with the company.

What examples have you seen of brand guidelines that help shape culture?

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Kids and the internet – are they a good combination?

We think so!

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Hello again, it’s been a while!

This morning on Breakfast on One, Marie introduced NZ to this viral video that’s been capturing hearts around the world.

Already being hailed as “Korea’s Susan Boyle”, Choi Sung Bong is a 22-year-old with an amazing story. Abandoned at age 3 at an orphanage, he escaped into homelessness at age 5, and spent the next 10 years surviving by selling gum and energy drinks.

This is a real tearjerker, even before the music begins. The video (just one version, there are several others) has attracted over 5 million views in just a week since it was uploaded. And the Facebook page set up for Sung-Bong has gathered over 30,000 likers already.

Why?

Every minute, 48 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube. Why do some videos get 5 million views, while others don’t?

It comes back to a larger question: why do some ideas take off, and others don’t?

It’s a question that a team of filmmakers took on in creating The Influencers, a 13-minute documentary that asks some of the world’s movers and shakers what it is that makes someone influential.

The filmmakers say they’re trying to find out “what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach.” However, they do refer to the classic adoption curve referenced in books like The Tipping Point and Crossing the Chasm. They even made a fantastically funky graphic about it (click to enlarge):

What’s not often told is that the adoption curve comes out of research into 1950s farmers adopting new kinds of seed.

While it has been a useful way to look at influence, it’s not the only way. Researcher Duncan Watts did some research into influence, and concluded (somewhat controversially) that what mattered most was not so much the influencer, but instead, the influenced.

More on this in Simon’s NZ Marketing Magazine column in the July-August issue. Stay tuned!

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This morning on Breakfast on One, Marie gave a preview of the iPad 2, due for launch in New Zealand this Friday, and also gave us a look at the rise of online charitable giving.

First, the iPad 2 is billed as “thinner, lighter, faster” (I’d love to be all of those things!) than the iPad 1. In fact, it’s even thinner than the iPhone 4, and the word is, that makes a significant difference.

The big news is that it has not one, but two cameras, one on each side, so it enables videoconferencing, which was a big request from users after iPad 1 came out. And the camera’s not too bad, either, as our video of the week shows (see below).

Marie’s recommended iPad 2 apps:

• Flipboard: a magazine-like interface for your social networks.
• Dropbox: online file storage. One of the big problems with the iPad is that it’s not easy to move files onto it … Dropbox lets you do that through the internet. Super easy to use, too.
• Penultimate (clever name!): lets you use the iPad like a pen and paper, for writing notes or even sketching pictures. This is pretty exciting!
• The Apple family of products, like Garageband and iMovie, also have iPad versions, which is pretty cool.

As mentioned, the high definition camera is pretty good, judging by this music video shot entirely on two iPad 2′s:

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On this morning’s Breakfast on One, Marie explained two buzzwords that have been circulating for a while: cloud computing and gamification.

Cloud computing has been around for a while, but many business owners still don’t know what it can do for them. The Christchurch earthquake brought this issue to the fore, where some businesses were unable to retrieve their paper records because they had no off-site backup.

Cloud computing simply means storing your files on the internet instead of storing them on your own computer. Over the past decade, many cloud options have arisen for normal business processes, such as Google Docs for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and (New Zealand’s own) Xero for accounting.

It’s similar to the situation when electricity was first introduced. At first, you had to own and maintain your own generator. As time went by, specialist power companies arose, and all you had to do was subscribe to their service, and plug into the mains.

In the same way, cloud computing offers software as a service, rather than as a product you buy. One of the best guides we’ve found to cloud computing is from New Zealand’s own (in fact, Christchurch’s own) Ben Kepes, and his site diversity.net.nz.

Meanwhile, gamification is a relatively new buzzword (there’s even been a conference about it). It’s all about applying the lessons learnt from video games to areas like education, marketing and management.

There’s a lot to it, but in a nutshell, playing is our best way of learning. (We’ve discussed this before with our book review on The Little Red Ball). Volkswagen knows this, and dramatically demonstrated it in their “The Fun Theory” series of videos, including “piano stairs” as shown on Breakfast this morning:

We’ll post the link to Marie’s session once it’s on the TVNZ website.

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On this morning’s Breakfast on One, Marie is exploring the future of social shopping.

From where we sit, we see three sides to the future of shopping: group shopping (which is a hot topic), social ecommerce, and augmented reality.

Group shopping is the old-fashioned idea of a bulk discount if many people purchase a product. What’s new is how technology powers the process of finding many people to add to the group purchase. ReadWriteWeb has some great coverage of group shopping. Groupon is the world’s best-known example, while New Zealand has GrabOne, Groupy and others.

Social ecommerce is an emerging area that adds a social layer over the top of ecommerce. The earliest touch of this was Amazon.com’s “People who bought that, also bought this” feature. An interesting tweak on this is startup Shwowp, which aims to give consumers more power over their own purchasing history.

And finally, augmented reality offers amazing potential for seeing products in action without taking them out of their box. For example.

What these three areas have in common is the addition of data from other people – whether that’s your friends, your acquaintances, or strangers with similar interests.

Marie’s session also covered a popular video of a kitten playing in slow motion (ahhhhhh) and the business social network, LinkedIn.com.

Thanks to Amar Trivedi for some of the suggestions for today’s content. Feel free to add your ideas for Marie’s next session below!

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In New Zealand, up to 100,000 people are logging into a social networking service that most marketers have never heard of.

It’s SkyKiwi.com, the news and information portal that also boasts a Facebook-style social network for New Zealand’s Chinese-speaking community.

Marie’s talked about other Chinese social media on today’s Breakfast on One, but not many (English-speaking) people know about the Chinese social media site in our own backyard. We decided to find out more, and interviewed SkyKiwi’s CEO, Kylie Liu.

SkyKiwi.com has more than 80,000 registered users and 3000 unique visits per day, according to Kylie.

You can read all about the major social networks in China (where Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked, among many other sites).

Also mentioned by Marie this morning:

• The Auckland Public Transport animation that’s been a viral hit in New Zealand
• The Onyas, the oscars for web development in New Zealand
• Some New Zealand companies are using China’s version of Twitter, Sina Weibo, including Tourism NZ, Zespri, and Air New Zealand. In fact, Air New Zealand recently launched an account specifically for it’s Chinese-speaking customers in New Zealand.

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What is the value of social media?

It’s a kind of abstract question that comes up in corporate discussions. But here’s a really practical demonstration of the value of social media, on a simple level.

Our mate Aidan had a flat car battery. He doesn’t have an AA membership, but he does have Twitter. Our other mate Rachel had jumper leads and a car. Problem, meet solution!

Sounds simple, but it sums up everything that’s possible with the loose kind of community that social media allows.

Sometimes people worry that online social networking is making us less social, less connected to the real world around us. The evidence points to the opposite.

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(If you are interested in the harder business measures around social media, check out my presentation on social media measurement at Social Media Club Auckland)

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Towards the end of 2010 we had the opportunity to present our 2-day social media workshop in Shanghai, one of the most exciting cities in the world!

We really enjoyed our time with the marketers who attended and the folks from Innodecision who brought us across. We also saw a rare snow in Shanghai, a special first for Simon, who’d never seen snow at Christmas before!

Social media is huge in Asia Pacific generally, and in especially in China.

Chinese internet users (all 450 million of them) are more connected to each other than anywhere else. But the specific sites are radically different on mainland China.

China’s government blocks Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many other popular social media sites, which means home-made social networks have taken off.

It’s easy to write off these “made in China” social networks as copycats, but here’s some food for thought:

• China’s newest social network, pengyou.com, is owned by Tencent, the company that introduced the highly successful QQ instant messaging system in 1999. That’s a long time before Facebook or Twitter were ever heard of.
• One of China’s top video sharing sites, Tudou.com, was launched in July 2004. YouTube launched in February 2005.
• Even the more obvious copycat sites like Renren, Kaixin001 and Sina Weibo have innovated the user experience. Sina Weibo, in particular, offers a lot of improvements on Twitter’s user experience such as threaded conversations and topic-based groups.
• Convergence is happening quickly. Sina Weibo (aka the Chinese Twitter) is becoming more like a social network. Meanwhile, QQ has microblogging, taking Weibo on directly.

As a consumer, there’s a wealth of choices to share your opinion. For businesses, the choices are a little more limited – there is no equivalent to the free Facebook fan page, for example.

The government policy of blocking popular social media sites is also a barrier (over and above the existing language barrier) for businesses that want to reach customers around the world.

What’s the same?

Those are the differences; what are the similarities? Here’s what we saw that was the same as in our workshops in New Zealand and Australia.

• Marketing and PR are still dominated by women. 85% of our Shanghai workshop attendees were female, similar to our experience in the west.
• Although the technical issues were vastly different, the key questions remain the same:
  • Where do we start?
  • How do we resource social media?
  • How do we measure success?
• There’s also an increasing awareness that social media affects all areas of a company, from customer service to marketing to PR, and especially to innovation and new product development.

China left a lasting impression on us. We’ve come away thinking bigger. We’ve also been pleasantly surprised to see some exciting, authentic brands coming out of China, with a fresh new take on corporate social responsibility in the way they market.

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By Simon

2010 was an amazing year for me. And a big part of the amazingness was books. Here are some that can make a big difference for you, too.

Speed Thinking by Ken Hudson

It turns out that most quick decisions are just as good as decisions that we take ages on. Speed Thinking gives you a 9-minute process to explore the heck out of any situation, and get on to the next step. It removes a lot of stress and uncertainty, too.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

After hearing this recommended by people I knew and respected, I had to check out Linchpin. I’m glad I did – Linchpin was a tour de force. You’ll read about why you need to do your work as art, and why a company full of indispensable people is much less of a risk than you think. You’ll probably also be inspired!

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

Zappos is the poster child of social media. Not because of the technology (CEO Tony Hsieh says their most important piece of technology is the telephone) but because they’ve created a culture of openness and transparency, where every employee has a sense of ownership. Delivering Happiness is Hsieh’s story of how he and the Zappos team created an amazing culture, and a seriously profitable business (Zappos was acquired by Amazon last year for $928 million).

Drive by Dan Pink

On a very similar theme to Linchpin and Delivering Happiness, Drive delves into the science of what motivates us at work. It’s not money. Instead, it’s autonomy, mastery and purpose. If you haven’t got time to read the whole book, check out this video instead.

The Why of Work by Dave Ulrich and Wendy Ulrich

Continuing the theme of what makes people happy, Dave Ulrich (who comes from a background in HR) and Wendy Ulrich (who comes from a background in psychology) have created a framework to connect employees’ personal motivation with the company’s purpose. Keeping it real. The Why of Work does a great job of gathering together previous strands of thought (such as Positive Psychology) and bringing them together in the workplace.

Open Leadership by Charlene Li

In 2008 Charlene Li co-wrote Groundswell, which was a great introduction to social media for business. In 2010, with Open Leadership, Li explores the impact social technologies have on leadership styles, and gives a framework for navigating the open, slightly scary waters of the future.

Empowered by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

Empowered explores similar territory to Open Leadership, looking at how frontline employees and even customers can be empowered to be your company’s most enthusiastic marketers.

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working by Tony Schwartz

It sounds obvious, but we need to look after ourselves if we’re to produce the work of arts that Seth Godin talks about in Linchpin. The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working (subtitled and what to do about it) gives some really practical advice on how to do that. See my interview with Tony here.

Dare to Dream Again by Eugene Moreau

On a personal level, we need to ask ourselves what we are here for. Dare to Dream Again by my friend Eugene Moreau, is the story of Alex, a successful executive who’s hit a wall. But it can also be your story … some very practical lessons here.

Predictable Success by Les McKeown

Where is your company on the business lifecycle? Predictable Success lays out that lifecycle, helps you find where you are, and how to avoid the death spiral. Here’s my interview with Les.

Enjoy your reading! Very relaxing photo from Lori Grieg

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