A few weeks ago, I guess it was, we twittered about Peter Kim’s list of companies that represent some of the best practices in utilizing social networking. Well, he’s now pulled all of that information into a wiki, making it easy to see who’s doing what, how they’re doing it, and what it’s doing for them.

David Armano of Logic + Emotion lays out a conceptual framework for online community building in an article in AdAge.  Everyone wants engagement with their brand.  The problem is that most companies believe that viral strategies are the only (or at least the best) way to do this.  Armano makes the case that community building offers a more achievable goal:

[U]nlike viral, community requires a different set of objectives, strategy and tactics around measurement. Yet, intuitively, brands realize there is value to them. That’s because if we take our bright and shiny marketing hats off for a moment, we realize that it’s likely we are part of them. … People who use social networks also feel like they’re part of a larger community of people they relate to.

Regardless of whether you’re considering starting an online community, Armano provides a concise framework for any online presence—and for any brand initiative for that matter:

Content
When considering community initiatives, there are three questions to ask: Where will the content come from? Does it provide indisputable value? Can a regular flow of quality content be maintained?

Context
Context means understanding how to meet people where they are and serving them the right experience at the right time. Well-designed applications and functionality have great opportunities to deliver on context.

Connectivity
… It’s not about mass communications but more about the micro-interactions …. Designing experiences that support thousands of micro-interactions means you are making a commitment vs. trying to produce a one-hit wonder. …

Continuity
Communities … need to be flexible to evolve while still providing a valuable and consistent user experience which can be sustained.

Read the full article here.

I’m sad to say, I had to miss the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education this year. I’ve enjoyed attending the conference in the past and always went home feeling like I learned something new. As much as I would have liked to be there, I’ve been able to satisfy my desire for information (a bit) by keeping an eye on Symposium happenings through Twitter.

What a difference a year makes. To help organize the tweets, most of the folks include #AMA 08 in their posts, so you can search for all of the posts relating to the Symposium at once. Hot topics seem to be the importance of authenticity, social media, branding (of course), and building trust (see authenticity). In terms of how Web 2.0 and, in particular, social media have been addressed, I’ve gotten the sense that many of the sessions didn’t dig deep enough.

Keeping tabs on a conference this way feels voyeuristic. It’s hard to say how accurate my impression is, simply because I’m hearing about it from a limited pool of people. But at least they are a savvy bunch. As always, it sounds like it’s been a good conference, encouraging thoughtful dialogue. Next year, hopefully I’ll get to experience it first hand AND see what Twitter offers up on the side. In light of the changing marketing landscape and the challenges we’re all facing, it’s bound to be quite a conference.

Social-network analyst Valdis Krebs spoke at the most recent PopTech conference about the top ten social networking trends.  No podcast yet, but Wired does give an overview of some of his research, which looks at how networks added to steroid use in baseball and how networks narrow our focus rather than celebrate diversity:

According to Krebs, [the] insight that a social network creates a pseudo-truth that overrides real, objective truth, can help explain why pack mentality dominates the web.

Using the current election as a model, Krebs says that the internet does not bring people with different ideas together. Instead, people seek out groups with similar ideologies, which makes them less prone to objective, flexible thinking. And no matter how extreme the idea, there’s someone out there on the web who will build a forum around it.

Psychological research has shown that when people find their “political mirrors,” they immediately build clusters around their ideas. This is why politicians’ use of confrontational language like, “You’re either with us, or with the terrorists,” seems to work.

But Krebs sees the positive side of social networks as well. He believes that serious analysis of networks can be used constructively from the outside. The key, he says, is identifying the strong individuals or groups that can lead to group-thinking shifts.

For example, analyzing the rise of the iPod can be used by other companies to chip away at Apple’s dominance.

When Apple released the iPod, there were other MP3 players with better audio or a cheaper price. But Apple created a network by connecting groups through an easy operating system and with marketing.

[...]

In the immediate future, Krebs sees social networks facing a decidedly human problem. They need to find a compromise between the seemingly infinite number of network connections and the limited interaction capacity of human beings.

I stumbled across this paper by Iqbal Mohammed that raises some interesting questions about how we understand branding in the digital age. Mohammed applies Chris Anderson’s Long Tail idea to brand building and argues that when it comes to branding, most organizations are still operating on the same old “a few big hits” model that media producers and manufacturers have traditionally relied on. Branding has (typically) been focussed on finding one big idea that will resonate with the broadest audience and then orienting everything around that idea. But, Mohammed argues, this approach is obsolete: digital media and the ability to segment messages to more and more niche audiences cheaply and easily means we can build a brand around any number of ideas. One or two of these ideas will appeal to a broad audience, but the rest should be allowed to find their own audiences. Even if they appeal to only a few individuals, as the Long Tail idea shows us, those small groups add up to sizable potential markets.

I don’t agree with Mohammed’s criticisms of building a brand on a single core idea, but his argument and his paper are provocative and definitely worth reading for anyone thinking about how to take branding into new media.

On a similar note, check out this discussion of branding versus “edgework” (which seems to be getting at something akin to what Mohammed is talking about).

Ypulse just wrapped up another Youth Marketing Mashup, and here are some of the highlights:

Youth consume local news online, too.

…They want news that impacts them, which is why I think more young people tune in or search for local stories. Sites other than MySpace and Facebook mentioned by our panel as favorites were: Colbert Nation, College Board, New York Times, CNN, MSN, Veoh, Hulu, Twitter, Wired, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Lifehacker and Gizmodo. The college students were much more like “early adopters” in their tastes than the high school students (some big socio-economic differences as well).

There are still “Tech Nots”
With all of our talk about Totally Wired youth, we forget that there are some teens who choose to not participate or unplug. We had one of these high school students on our panel. She barely used the internet for anything outside of school work. She also was one of the teens who spent the most time reading books for pleasure. She’s not on MySpace or Facebook and did not text. We also had another high school student who did not own a cell phone. I wasn’t sure if that was her preference or for financial reasons. My guess was the latter.

Communication Tools Are About Efficiency
Youth are in developmental phase in their lives where socializing with peers is what’s most important. They are also incredibly busy. When I asked the young people on our panel how they stay in touch with each other, what I heard were the usual response (IM, textbook, Facebook and some email, mostly to communicate with adults), but I also heard the repeated need to blast or communicate with “all my friends at once.” Phones are still being primarily used for voice and text, though some of these teens text more than talk (200+ text messages a day). That said, two of our college students had iPhones with data plans and one student had a music phone. As PDAs become more widespread among youth and if the price of data plans drops, I think we’ll see more young people surfing, gaming and even watching video via phone.

[...]

HBO a hit…with youth?
When I asked how they watch TV – some still watched the old fashioned way, but I also heard HBO on demand, YouTube, Colbert Nation, SNL videos (online), and “Lost” on ABC.com.

[...]

Still downloading…
Most of our panel downloads free music or movies from sites like Bit Torrent and Limewire, except for one of the college students who was busted by the RIAA (ouch). The other college students download from home (not school) for that very reason.

Ypulse is a great resource for teen and tween culture. For more highlights on their mashup, click here.