Reading for 11/12

I really took to the Heath brothers' creation of CHIFF in this chapter of Made to Stick.  To employ the standards of clever, high-quality, innovative, friendly, and fun allows for a much more rigorous, if whimsical, level of quality.  To be clever forces companies to adhere to the unexpected aspect of SUCCESs and ensure that their product be unique and enjoyable.  To be high-quality is pretty self explanatory, forcing the product to be of a standard the company can be proud of and the consumer can respect.  To be innovative also works towards the unexpected by forcing the company to come up with new ideas rather than recycle old ones.  Friendly and fun both make for a more enjoyable product that appeals to a wider consumer pool.  These strategies are all important because they go hand in hand with SUCCESs and with the need to put the consumer first and thus help the idea to stick.

The Heath brothers have a way of conveying their message in ways that makes sense and are easy to remember, and CHIFF helps the reader to do just that.  It's important to remember because this is a helpful strategy for those wanting their idea to be successful.  It's important to have standards and to stick to them, just like the company behind Cranium did.  Without these standards, failure could have been theirs.  But because they stuck to what they'd been doing before and didn't waver from their very precise standards, they continued to be a hugely successful producer of a hugely successful product.  This is example is the perfect way to illustrate the importance of knowing one's market and audience and sticking to the procedures and ideals that led you to them in the first place.  Made to Stick is all about finding out who that audience is and latching on to what they respond to no matter what.

Reading for 11/5

In this chapter Gillin touches on the interesting notion of how traditional marketing doesn't equate to social media marketing.  I found this particularly interesting because of the related discussions we've had in class about the same subject.  It seems that social media marketing is quite different, and almost opposite even, from mainstream marketing.  Tactics that work in one just don't in the other and I find this fascinating.  Where mainstream marketing is all about appealing to the masses and trying to reel in as many people from a giant, muddled pond specific to no demographic, social media marketing is all about finding niche groups of like minded people and appealing to their specific sensibilities.  This makes for two very different strategies when approaching a marketing plan.  For mainstream media the the key is to know what appeals to the majority of a wide range of people where for social media it is to know what appeals to the very specific demographic you're reaching.

I found it so interesting that Gillin mentions this here because I believe it's an extremely important concept for marketers to grasp.  You cannot approach a social media campaign the same way you would approach a mainstream media campaign.  You have to know your audience and what they're looking for, and that is the essential message here.  An effective campaign, no matter what the product, is knowing your audience and adapting your product to that audience's needs.  No strategy can be effective without this at the core of it.  It's all about how you're presenting the product, and that all depends on who you're presenting it to. Gillin touches on the subject only briefly here but I believe it is one worth considering far beyond this discussion.  It is an essential part of the industry to know how to adapt to the consumer, whomever they may be.

Reading for 10/29

This chapter in "Design to Thrive" is all about the 'S' in "RIBS": significance.  Howard discusses here how the importance of significance plays into the success of a new site.  The consumer wants to feels as though they are involved in something worth their while because it is prominent or important in their community.  The power of significance can be the difference between success and failure in a site.  Facebook, for instance, is a site that demonstrates significance.  Why do people get a Facebook? Because their friends have them.  It's all about being involved in something other people care about, too, so you're no just wasting your time on something no one else is interested in.  Facebook became a phenomenon because it started out so exclusive, only students of certain schools could be a member.  Then it expanded from certain schools to all schools, then to all people.  This initial exclusivity launched it into stardom and then once to clientele was secured, it allowed everyone in.  The minds behind Facebook knew how to attract consumers, and then how to keep them: by keeping it relevant and thus significant.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are websites like MySpace.  While MySpace certainly wasn't, and still isn't, a failure, it's not quite the gold mine that Facbook is, when it was once poised to be.  That's because it failed to adapt and grow with its consumer, and they found something that suited their purposes better.  As Facebook went on the rise, so MySpace began to fall.  In this instance, one sites success became another's failure because it took its significance away from it.  MySpace isn't significant in the wake of the tour de force that is Facebook.  This particular aspect of RIBS became the difference for both of these sites, even if in two very different ways.

Reading for 10/8

In these chapters of "Made to Stick" the Heath brothers explore the first two aspects of what makes an idea, or more specifically a plan, a "SUCCESs."  The first of these is to keep it "Simple."  The first few pages of the chapter work to clarify that by simple the brothers do not mean you dumb-down your plan or cut out complicated aspects, but rather to find the core of the plan, the main idea behind the plan, and put this forward as the most important aspect to be focused on.  I don't know about the majority of people, but I know for me that I need to understand the big picture before I can understand the smaller parts of a concept so this idea makes perfect sense to me. I need to be able to see the main point and the final objective before working on the details of a plan, and the Heath brothers explicate on that very thoroughly here.

The second component of a SUCCESsful idea is that it is "Unexpected."  One of the Heath brothers' examples they use to illustrate this idea of unexpectedness is through the use of mysteries in scientific writing. They talk about how a scientist writing for a non-scientific audience can employ the use of mysteries to captivate the reader's attention, but more importantly, to keep their attention. What's unexpected about the use of a mystery is that the reader is taken on an unexpected journey.  When reading a scientific document you expect it to be dense and filled with jargon and unfamiliar terms, and often it is, but if a mystery is introduced you find yourself unexpectedly invested in something you didn't plan to care about. This idea of being surprised and introduced to something we weren't even looking for in this first place is something that makes perfect sense as another reason why some ideas thrive, ironically, unexpectedly.

Reading for 10/1

Dr. Howard's chapter on "belonging" is all about how to get a user of your site to feel that sense of belonging and community that keeps them coming back.  People want to feel included and influential and both of these play into this idea of belonging.  To create this, the user has to feel like they can identify with the site, the people behind it, and the others using it.  They have to feel as though they are part of a community that gets them and they can interact with.

There are several techniques Dr. Howard explores as to how this can be accomplished.  One that I found most interesting was that of using mythologies.  I think this goes back to how we read earlier in Made to Stick that people relate to stories.  People like to feel as though they know about things they are involved in and the people behind them.  They want that sense of relationship and being able to identify with them.  So the use of mythologies, things like creating an origin story for how the site got started, give the users that feeling of knowing the original purpose for the site and knowing the motivations of the creators.  This gives them a personality to identify with and connect to.

It's important for people to feel like they belong because it gives them a reason to return.  Creating these back stories and other mythologies that give the site and its creators a persona to identify with helps to accomplish this.  People feel connected with them, and thus like they have formed a sort of relationship with the site.  This aspect of RIBS is so essential because it gets to the heart of why people get so addicted to certain sites, but forget all about others. It's all about which sites give them a purpose for being there and a community to be a member of.

Reading for 9/24

Howard's chapter on remuneration in Design to Thrive explains why the concept is so important to the success of any social media site.  Remuneration means having the consumer believe that spending time on this site is worth their while, that the investment of their time will reap some sort of benefit for them. The best way to insure a consumer believes his time is being spent in a worthwhile fashion is to make the site user-friendly.  A site that is brilliantly designed and coded, that is efficiently functional and  effective, can only appeal so much to the user if it is not also easy to use for them.  It's easy for the designers of these sites to get caught up in the behind-the-scenes aspect and forget about what it looks like from an ordinary user's perspective.  When this happens, user-friendliness gets lost and the consumer along with it.

Two examples that Howard uses to illustrate the importance of remuneration are Google and Wikipedia.  Both of these sites came late in the game of their respective markets, but they sailed away with all of the clientele.  Why is this? Because they understood the importance of remuneration.  Google, unlike the foremost search engine directly prior to it, AltaVista, was simple, direct, and easy to use.  Rather than cluttering the home page with many words and options for how to search or what to search for, Google kept it simple with one place to start your user experience.  Wikipedia, too, appeals to the user far more than its competitors because of its user-driven nature.  Consumers like to feel in control of their experience as opposed to feeling lost in it. Wikipedia goes to show that this is true for more than just social media sites.  Remuneration should always be kept in mind when building a social media site because it's what the consumers will keep in mind as they are using it.

Reading for 9/17

As the title of Chapter 8 of Design to Thrive suggests, the most important takeaway from this part of Dr. Howard's book is the notion "that while technologies may change rapidly, human beings don't" (207).  I took this to be the key message of the chapter not only because it is the title, but also because the rest of the assertions put forward build off of this notion.  Why are experts able to predict technological advances decades before hand?  How can they know what will survive and what won't? How can we even "Design to Thrive" if technology is so unpredictably ever-changing and unstable? It's because people aren't.  No matter how quickly our technology changes or advances, no matter how quickly new things surface and old ones die out, people will fundamentally always want the same things they've always wanted.  And this is how we can guess what technology will thrive, by knowing what people will, and always will continue to, want.

This ties back to the idea of "RIBS" and why it is a sound plan to follow.  It's because it speaks to human nature and knowing what will and won't work with the human race.  People are always going to need "Remuneration."  They will always only dedicate their time to something they believe to be worthwhile and worth the investment of time and energy.  People will always feel the need to be heard, to have an "Influence" in whatever they are doing.  It is human nature to want to feel a sense of "Belonging," that you're connecting with others and not involving yourself in something no one else cares about.  And finally, people don't want to waste their time on something that isn't "Significant."  RIBS is based on basic human wants and desires and these fundamental elements of human nature will never change.  And so, in the end, it is always the dependency of the human condition that will allow technology, and anything else for that matter, to be a predictable venture in an otherwise unpredictable world.  Dr. Howard highlights this notion in Chapter 8, putting a new spin to the importance of RIBS (7-8).

Reading for 9/10

Dan and Chip Heath's Made to Stick is a book about why some ideas thrive while others fail.  What makes something a sensation? In Chapter 6, entitled "Stories," they delve into the potential for success when stories are utilized in campaigns.  The one in particular that jumped out for me was the one of Jared and his "Subway diet."  Most of us remember Jared and his extreme weight loss through eating Subway's line of healthy sandwiches and the tremendous amount of success it brought the company.  Jared became a national sensation and everyone knew his story.  What I didn't know was how it came to light.  Jared didn't set out to became a weight loss icon and Subway didn't set out to find create one, but through the grace of chance and people sticking by a good idea when they find one, Jared's story beat the odds.  It was his tale that inspired people to write about him, then to relate to him, and then to care about him.  All Jared ever wanted was to lose weight.

I think the reason this story is included in this chapter is not only because it was such a success, but also because it demonstrates perfectly the Heath brother's recipe for "SUCCESs" (p 222).  The tale is "Simple," "Unexpected," "Concrete," "Credible," "Emotional," and a "Story" (p 222-223). It showcases every point the authors have been making about what makes something "stick." It's a story like Jared's that has all the appeal and potential to reach millions of people, and that's why it did.  This is so important to the Heath brother's point that you will get much farther in a campaign or marketing idea if you keep in mind that people relate to other people, not to checklists.  This is why the "7 under 6" campaign before Jared didn't take off, but he did.  No one cares about a set of numbers, they care about an ordinary person who did an extraordinary thing.

Reading for 9/3

In Paul Gillin’s third chapter of Secrets to Social Media Marketing he begins the discussion by stressing the importance of companies being able to “tap into the conversation” (p 41).  I think this idea is absolutely essential to the success of social media marketing because there is a plethora of free tools at their disposal, if only they know how to find and use them. The internet is full of consumer feedback and conversation just waiting to be found and used by the service providers.  What companies seem to be failing to capitalize on is this abundance of commentary, suggestions, and criticisms.  While certainly not everything written on the internet is necessarily constructive or helpful, a great deal of it is.  And the best part is that there's so much of it you can easily find what the majority of your consumers do actually agree upon.  There's so much potential to what social media has to offer companies in the way of immediate and superfluous feedback.
In addition to the tremendous amount of consumer feedback, social media also offers this direct interaction with the individual consumer.  If companies can find a way to work into this aspect of the market, then they can cut out all of the negative aspects of broad range campaigning and appeal to smaller, more similar groups of people.  By tapping into the potential of targeting groups and their shared interests, companies now have the opportunity to campaign to the individual as opposed to the whole.  People tend to ignore mass marketing and generic ads, but advertisement that targets their personal likes and peaks their interest is something that has much more potential to grab attention and appeal to the consumer.  I think the focus Gillin places on the importance of companies realizing this and utilizing it to their fullest potential is extremely important for social media marketing and a key component that must be fully realized.  

Reading for 8/27

           Paul Gillin eases us into Secrets of Social Media Marketing with the notion that “tools are secondary.”  He wants us to understand that while something newer and better will always be on the horizon, the customer is using something else already.  So rather than waste time waiting, it’s a much better use of your energy to focus on your goals and how you’ll accomplish them.  It’s also important to note that social media isn’t always the best medium for your product or purpose.  Sometimes it’s better to stick with the traditional.  Social media is a targeted campaign for a narrow demographic.  While it is a narrow market, however, it is a very powerful one.  People are becoming more and more desensitized to broad marketing and ignoring it in favor for what they find among those with shared interests.  This is what makes social media such a powerful tool.  Social media is all about sharing and communicating with people like you.  So naturally it turns into a place for people to complain, brag about, or otherwise comment on companies and their products.  This is one of the most important things to remember about this medium, it’s an opportunity for the consumer to be honest and for the companies to listen to the feedback and embrace the honesty.

            Unfortunately social media can also be a tricky market due to the consumer’s nature to want to share information with other people, but not with companies.  This is examined in Chapter 6 of Gillin’s guide.  People tend to resist the campaigns they see clouding their online communities as they’re viewed as intrusive or invasive.  Essential aspects to successful social media include open enrollment, connection and communication amongst members, personal spaces for information about the consumer, and smaller communities within the network, amongst others.  One of the biggest draws for social networkers is the opportunity to keep in touch with people they otherwise wouldn’t.  For others, however, it can also be for networking for their career, keeping up with trends, or just to get a jump on the relationships to come. 

            In the first chapter of Design to Thrive Tharon W. Howard shows the importance of social media to the way people communicate with each other and how that has changed over the past few decades.  Here, again, it is noted that it is a niche market and a powerful one, but that the engine itself is not the most important aspect to success.  Rather it stems from the inclusion of “RIBS,” or “remuneration,” “influence,” “belonging,” and “significance.”  These four criteria are what account for a successful marketing strategy in social media, according to Howard.  Chapter two deals with the fundamentals of a social network.  As opposed to an online community, a social network is comprised of relationships that revolve around the individual; they are user to user.  Also, a group isn’t always a community.  These are nuanced differences but they are important ones nonetheless.