Despite its title, ROI is NOT a discussion of metrics for social media marketing or the return on investment from SMM efforts. Klout has gained such clout over the individuals tweeting and posting that it merits this book length treatment. I worry from the tone that Mark has bought into the Klout Kool-Aid: However the book is even-handed in its treatment of the issues.

Read the Tao of Twitter first if you haven’t: The Tao of Twitter: Changing your life and business 140 characters at a time

Note: I am moving my social media commentary to another blog, www.smm4biz.com . Please consider checking it out or subscribing if you have an interest in social media marketing. Today I have a further discussion of Mark’s new book -

ROI is a good read, but Klout still sucks! http://wp.me/p1reuk-u

With teaching the new course in SMM I feel that I will have more ideas to share about SMM. I continue to believe that there is a great synergy between experiential innovation and social media, so there should be some overlap between the two blogs. PLEASE CHECK THE NEW BLOG OUT!

I posted a video that I showed my class to try to get them excited about being buried under 3 major projects…  http://wp.me/p1reuk-9

Consider subscribing to the new blog as well! – Gary

I believe that the two biggest threats to the wide open Web and social media as we know it are the potential dominance of:

1. Facebook as a social media platform and
2. Klout as an SM-rater.

Facebook is an evolving closed system that threatens to overtake the WWW as the world wide information space. Further evidence of this trend was the launching of the WSJ facebook site this week: WSJ Social, For a World Where Facebook Is the New Internet – Forbes http://onforb.es/rniic2 (thanks @laurelschirr)

The Klout threat is even more insidious as it can change the behavior of social media participants. As people seek higher Klout scores for K-rewards, status or even job screening tricks reminiscent of commercial website SEO will come to twitter, FB, etc. For example someone would likely increase a Klout score by:

• More frequent postings,
• Hot topics (“what if Justin #Bieber and Lady #Gaga hooked-up?”)
• Following people with high scores, and
• Only following back half of followers.

Does that sound like a social world? See this article, also from Forbes: How Do You Like Being Publicly Scored? http://onforb.es/phDoeX

Do you agree that these are THE two big threats?

[A couple earlier articles of mine on Klout: Why Klout is dangerous http://wp.me/pdSfz-dQ; Will Klout Kill Community? http://shar.es/HM1Sm ]

Would I call the course “crowdsourced”?

Most of the help came from experts who consult to companies on social media marketing, have led seminars on SMM, have written books, or taught pieces of SMM in their university classes. (Although good suggestions came from students and others as well.)

So should I instead call it “lead user” innovation?

I think the process is best called “Community-sourcing.” I believe that this is a case study in why you should develop a focused twitter and blog following and community: the benefit from such a community is obvious at times like this but is also present day-to-day.

The incredible help I have received on my SMM course reminded me of an aha! moment after I moved to Hong Kong. When I was in Chicago I was good at generating trading ideas; after being in Hong Kong for a couple months it was getting harder. I at first blamed the long hours. Then I realized my infrastructure had changed: in Chicago I rode the morning train with an economist focused on fixed income and currency markets; when I got to the office I talked with the floor people before they headed to the bond pits and had pre-market calls with major institutional traders. The decline in ideas was not due to lost sleep, but my lost community…

Why do people help?

Why did I receive such an outpouring of help and support from the online community? This is always an issue in crowdsourcing and lead-users as well -WHY DO PEOPLE HELP???

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

(The current full outline is in the following post)

Social Media Marketing – Spring 2012

Objective – The objective of SMM class is for each student to understand and apply: the principles of social media marketing, the use of the key social media platforms by organizations, how SMM differs from standard marketing and internet marketing, key issues and changes in social media, and to demonstrate the capability to use social media to support the mission of a professional, business or non-profit organization.

Social Media Marketing is not Internet Marketing. In internet marketing promotional tools such as direct selling, coupons, advertisements are brought online and established success measures include SEO, click-throughs, etc. Social Media Marketing is really social networking online: reaching out and advancing real relationships with customers, prospects, and stakeholders. Promotional tools used in SMM can be jarring and counter-productive if not used carefully.

The “big four” SM platforms for professional SMM (per @michellegolden) are:

1.  Facebook [And FB fan pages]
2. Blogs
3. Twitter
4. YouTube
5. And… LinkedIn for anyone interested in networking or B2B or professional advancement…

 Reading: This is a rapidly changing field with many questions and few answers. There is a lot of reading including books, blogs and articles.

Books: We will use 4 interesting business-oriented paperbacks.

• Tao of Twitter by Mark Schaefer and
• Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

are easy reads and should be read quickly as they will be discussed in the first two weeks. These two books are key to project 1 – your passion. Mr. Schaefer will address our class via Skype in one of our first four class meetings.

• Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day (Dave Evans) and
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR (David Meerman Scott)

are available in the bookstore or can be purchased through Amazon or a bookstore. I urge every student to get a copy of An Hour a Day; you can share the Scott book if you wish, but must keep up in reading.

Recommended books  include: Engage (Solis), Likeable Social Media (Kerpen), Social Media ROI (Blanchard)

Websites: I hope you follow many websites and blogs. These should definitely be included for this class:

•  http://fastcompany.com/
• http://www.smmmagazine.com/magazine/
• http://techcrunch.com/
• http://mashable.com/                                       www.technorati.com
• http://blog.hubspot.com/
• allfacebook.com
• http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/
• http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-tech-technology.html?mod=WSJ_topnav_tech_main
• http://www.wired.com/

•  http://www.businessesgrow.com/blog/  (Mark Schaefer)
• www.facebook.com/SMM4RU  (This Class)

Articles: As assigned by instructor

Class Projects: Projects are the focus of Social Media Marketing class. The instructor will post sheets with more detailed information about each project

1. Personal Campaign – each student designs + executes a social media campaign for a personal “passion.”
2. Turn an author into a best seller – each group will generate ideas and a SMM plan for a new book author.
3. Organizational SMM – each group will generate ideas and an SMM plan for an organization.

Student Content: There is so much to understand and so much changing that no one person…but the each group will help with two videocasts for the entire class to view.

Student reports – each group will create a video-cast for the class on one of these topics:

1.  Presenting pictures: Flickr and its competitors
2. Blogging on WordPress, BogSpot or Tumblr; video-blogging
3. SMM on singles sites: OKCupid, Casual Kiss, Plenty of Fish
4. Google+, What’s happening, what’s coming…
5. Promoting blog content: StumbleUpon, DIGG, Technorati, Delicious, etc. & Syndicating a blog – B2Community, Triberr, etc.
6. Influence measures: PeerIndex, Tweet Grader, Klout, etc.
7. Video – winning on YouTube, vimeo, blogs – merits of platforms and techniques
8. Internal social media – Yammer, Ning, etc.
9. SM ads (FB, Linkedin, etc.) and compare to Google Ads.
10. Guerrilla marketing for small businesses with social media
11. Forecasting with social media

Best practices – Contrasting a good and bad organizational social media effort – video-cast from each group.

Course Topics Outline

1. Types of social media: blogs, microblogs, networking, media sharing, special interest
2. The “Big Five” – Facebook (& Fan Page), Blog, Twitter, YouTube… and Linkedin
   1. Other SM platforms –Flickr, Google+, Tmblr, Digg, etc. Other important social media and benefits (presentations by students

   3.  Word of mouth marketing and theory
   4. Niche marketing: the long tail
   5. Engagement: Building a community
   6. Creating CONTENT

1. Social issues in online communities

Organizational Application of social media

7. Traditional vs. new media; organic vs. amplified word of mouth
   1. Networking – what it means and how it is done; Networking vs. Marketing: conflicts and synergy
8. Brand narrative, storytelling, and brand community
9. Innovation: Wikinomics, lead users, and crowdsourcing
   1. Co-creation and prosumers
   2. Netnography and SM customer research
   3. Forecasting with social media data
10. SMM for intra-organizational communication & collaboration (& supply/distr chain)
11. Mobile Marketing and location-based social media
12. Successful and unsuccessful firm use of SMM
13. Organizational Applications of SMM: Setting organizational goals and tracking them. Measures / metrics of influence –
    1. Google Analytics, Klout, etc. What do they measure? Do they really matter?
    2. ROI of social media efforts.
14. Selling, service and social media – Leads, pipeline, customer service and CRM
15. Developing an organizational social media plan – Integrated marketing, C-S, internal
    1. Integrated with organizational Marketing and Strategy

Workshops

1. Engagement and creating content: Blogging and Micro-blogging
2. Creating a great Fan Page
3. Mobile marketing and Location-based SMM
4. Determining ROI of social media
5. Benefits of Social media clubs and groups
6. Video-pods and presentations
7. Using video

When it comes to ideas, especially CREATIVE ideas: Groups Kill!

See my previous post: http://wp.me/pdSfz-dC

Course Topics

1. Types of social media: blogs, micro-blogs, networking, media sharing, special interest
2. The “Big Four” – Facebook Fan Page, Blog, Twitter, YouTube, (and Linkedin)
   1. Other SM platforms – YouTube, Flickr, Google+, Tmblr, etc. Other important social media and benefits (presentations by students)

1. Word of mouth marketing and theory
2. Niche marketing: the long tail
3. Engagement: Building a community
4. Creating Content

1. Social issues in online communities

Organizational Application of social media

7. Traditional vs. new media; organic vs. amplified word of mouth
8. Innovation: Wikinomics, lead users, and crowdsourcing
   1. Co-creation and prosumers
   2. Netnography and SM customer research
9. Brand narrative, storytelling, and brand community
10. Networking – what it means and how it is done; Networking vs. Marketing: conflicts and synergy
11. Mobile marketing and location-based social media
12. Successful and unsuccessful firm use of SMM
13. Organizational Applications of SMM: Setting organizational goals and tracking them. Measures / metrics of influence – Google Analytics, Klout, etc. What do they really measure? Do they really matter? ROI of social media efforts.
14. Developing an organizational social media plan

Workshops

1. Engagement and creating content
2. Creating a great Fan Page
3. Mobile marketing and Location-based SMM
4. Determining ROI of social media
5. Benefits of Social media clubs and groups
6. Video-pods and presentations
7. Using video 

Student reports

1.  Presenting pictures: Flickr and its competitors
2. Micro-blogging: Tumblr
3. FB competitors: Google+, Ning, MySpace (emphasis on G+)
4. Location-based: Foursquare and its competitors
5. Promoting content: StumbleUpon, DIGG, Technorati, Delicious, etc.
6. Influence measures: PeerIndex, Tweet Grader, Klout, etc.
7. Video tricks – winning on YouTube

Please post suggestions here or at the FB fan page: www.facebook.com/SMM4RU

Happy 2012 to all!

An earlier post that generated “crowdsourcing” help for the course design is here: http://wp.me/pdSfz-aF

Xerox invented the Mac

That seems a strong statement. But read the excellent account that I have ripped from the WSJ:

“At Xerox in the 1970s, a group of brilliant researchers invented the personal computer—they called it the Alto—complete with onscreen windows, menus, icons, graphics and the mouse, all more-or-less as we know them today. Alan Kay was foremost among these genius innovators. Mr. Kay built, in turn, on the 1960s inventions of Douglas Engelbart. Mr. Engelbart was first to develop the mouse, the onscreen window, and the whole idea of computers that did more important things than compute. He wanted computers to solve everyday problems, do word-processing and make pictures and graphs instead of (only) performing complex numerical calculations, controlling intricate machinery, and keeping inventories and payrolls up-to-date.

Corporate Xerox was unimpressed with the Alto. It was expensive, and who needed a personal computer anyway? “Personal computer” sounded like “personal aircraft carrier.” The market had to be smallish. Xerox accordingly made a deal with Apple whereby a group from Apple was ushered into the top-secret research boudoir in Palo Alto and allowed to look and ask questions. Jobs led the Apple group, and he understood right away that the Xerox researchers had done something tremendous. They had made an easy-to-use computer that spoke pictures instead of numbers. Jobs saw that a cheap version of this elegant computer might be gigantically popular and hugely important. And he ran the project that rolled out the Apple Macintosh in 1984.” (see full WSJ article by David Gelernter at GelernterArticle )

Xerox saw no potential in the device so they let the Apple Engineers come in and see their wonderful invention!

“Real artists ship” or Real innovators go to market!

Steve Jobs and Apple did not invent the GUI, or the Icon, or the mouse, or really any of the features that made the Mac revolutionary – the guys at PARC did – but Jobs and Apple brought the Mac to market. As Steve jobs said in the Atlantic link below: “Real Artists Ship”. Xerox invented; Apple innovated.

Coolest Show on earth (WSJ)   GelernterArticle

Praise for Bad Steve – The Atlantic http://bit.ly/pDJ6Tw

1. The organizations were not “user-centric” – they were instead “doctor-centric”,
2. Both had distinct “silos” and difficulty with cross-departmental cooperation and innovation, and
3. Government and third-party payers.

Despite the incredible growth as Higher Ed moved from an elite luxury to a middle class requirement, the dominant business model and primary delivery process hasn’t changed much in 400 years. Ironically, organizations that serve as centers for scientific research and innovation have not innovated despite incredible growth and skyrocketing costs.

Customer- and user-driven innovation

Readers of this blog know that I believe that innovation starts with a deep understanding of user needs and ideally draws users and customer into co-creation and collaborative innovation.

Customer-centricism drives innovation in many industries, but in education it is not simple to define the customer. Are customers current students? Employers? Alumni? Parents and government (who pay)? Each of these groups may have different views on needs and what would improve the service.

Most colleges now have students evaluate their professors. Some universities (especially teaching-oriented schools) weigh the ratings in pay reviews and tenure or promotion decisions.

Are current students the customer? Students have a wide range of reasons to be in college including: parental pressure; credentials for a job after school; a relatively safe and enjoyable place to continue their high school experimentation with sex, drugs and liquor; and (hopefully) studying something that they are interested in.

Scholars have argued that attempts to focus on current student feedback have resulted in dumbed-down courses and less focus on cheating. See:

For how student evaluations and course selection dumb-down courses: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775703000256

For how student evaluations taught a professor not to enforce the honor code:  http://t.co/tt9ppan via @rogerschank

Math is hard and writing papers are a drag. Through course selection and student evaluations rigor and demanding assignment decrease. As the saying goes “a college education is one of those very few goods for which the less the buyer gets, the more he likes it.” Once again: Are current students the sole or even primary customer for Higher Ed?

Who do you think universities should consider the customer? Who can they use as innovation partners?