Recognizing Leadership: Social Media

The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization. — Fred Fiedler and Martin Chemers

All across the net — in forums, social networks, fan bases, and even well-read blogs — some people are elevated up by any number of measures and any number of reasons to become perceived leaders in their respective communities or industries.

And yet, unfortunately, when the concept of being a leader arises, whether sought after or rejected on its face, few realize it is not leaders that these varied communities and industries crave. It is leadership.

In June, a few fans, in consideration of my suggestions to promote fandom asked me how to organize a fan club. I obliged them, but was surprised by the response of some, who rejected the idea on its face because Jericho fans did not want any leaders. Off with any leaders’ heads, some said, we are all equal here.

What was missed is that I was not advocating for leaders as they defined the term as much as I was advocating leadership. The two are vastly different.

Leadership is not defined by power, privilege, rank, title, position, or authority. Leadership is a quality of action, one that rarely requires force of law, threat, manipulation, control, or the attempted shutdown of dissent. On the contrary, leaders welcome all parties, all views, and then effectively match those to organizational goals and not necessarily their opinions or preferences.

A successful leader transcends their personality in order to ensure any following is aligned to the organizational goals and not themselves as individuals. The very best of them continually challenge any followers to reach higher obtainable goals, encouraging them to apply leadership as well.

In social media, some bloggers, social network participants, forum administrators, group hosts, and even online talk show hosts become leaders either by pursuit of action, grant of title, or by default simply because others recognize them for their insights and expertise. Yet, relatively few recognize the role they have assumed or accept the responsibility of it. Fewer still have ever been exposed to the difference between leaders and those who think they are leaders.

You can tell which are which. Effective leadership looks for objectivity and truth, taking responsibility for their actions and win the hearts of any following. Whereas those who think they are leaders are subjective, obscure facts, and promote their own partisan interests and make demands while denying the role for fear of being held responsible or accountable. Sometimes, they attempt to force others to succumb to their will because of any number of erroneous qualifications: experience, seniority, title, rank, traffic, followers, friends, links, etc.

Leadership requires none of these things. Rather, it revolves around vision, motivation, inspiration, empowerment, and authenticity. And very likely, but not certainly, it seems to me that Jericho fans are well overdue to find those few who are capable.

If not, the craving for leadership will continually lead toward elevating those who are popular and not necessarily those who have the skill sets necessary. The results can be disastrous, as they have been for the last two weeks.

You see, there is a vast difference between those who start something, provide a forum to talk about something, and those who lead something. Last week, someone responded to me and said he did not want to be a leader. It reminded me of an episode in Jericho, when Gray Anderson was ready, once again, to relinquish authority to Johnston Green. Green basically told him to accept the responsibility or stand aside.

The lesson was as clear in the show as it is for fans today. As I opened, the quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, will determine the success or failure of a third season. Good night and good luck.

Stuggling To Be Relevant: Old Media

Last year, most people said it wouldn’t happen. Now it is happening out of desperation. The people who social media participants and bloggers call “old media” are working as quickly as possible to change everything and become the, um, new new media.

Old media is not struggling; they are fighting for survival.

According to Bloomberg, BusinessWeek is doing everything possible to keep up. The magazine is undergoing a facelift and adding stories on new products and personal finance. It is updating its logo and typefaces.

Advertising pages dropped 20 percent and advertising sales dropped 15 percent. Hard copy circulation is down 1.2 percent. Online, the story is different. Its Internet readership is up to 6.5 million unique visitors a month from 1.7 million a month in 2004. But ad sales online only account for 18 percent of its revenue.

“All traditional business publishers are struggling to find the right formula,” said Peter Kriesky, Kreisky Media Consultancy in New York. “None of them have reached the promised land.''

What if there is no formula?

ABC seems to be asking the same. So while it tends to be the quietest of all networks about its plans for network-Internet convergence, The New York Times says it is the only major network that is using the staff of its evening newscast to produce a separate and distinct daily program for a Web audience as opposed to repackaging (that’s largely true).

The 15-minute Webcasts often feature Charles Gibson in the anchor chair and ABC News correspondent. Bill Blakemore recently finished a special on global warming. I watched their Web segment on the Pennsylvania shooting plot this morning. It’s not perfect (ABC needs a full screen option, among other things), but it is a step in the right direction and more promising than repackage plus option being made by other networks.

Innovation will lead the way.

This is not to say traditional media is not content relevant (they are). They simply lack in platform building, appropriate technology, and understanding active consumers (as opposed to passive readers and viewers). Too many are following old models and formulas.

Time Magazine’s Bill Tancer found one piece of the puzzle: according to the Solutions Research Group, roughly 37 percent of the U.S. population over the age of 12 use their computers while watching television at home.

What's the answer? It seems to me that consumers want integrated print, broadcast, and Internet. And while mobile devices seem to be chugging along, we’re still past prime time for a dual-device entertainment interface that allows people to watch programming on a big screen while participating online with their smaller screened laptops that function like a universal remote. Of course, all this assumes cable companies stop double dipping by charging people twice for essentially the same service.

Sounds like an Apple of an opportunity to me.

As for where print and broadcast seem to be missing the mark online right now, maybe that’s better served up in the weeks ahead. At the moment, I have some old media ads to write. As much as times are changing, some things have not changed.

Punching Monkeys: Nielsen Survey

Last week, a Nielsen study proclaimed that traditional advertising is still more credible than ads on search engines, Web site banners, and mobile phones.

Have you looked at most banner ads? Most aren’t trying for trust.

Since when has punching a monkey established credibility?

On the contrary, most online ads — whether simple and straightforward or monkey punching — aren’t trying to sell you anything. All they want you to do is click on the link and visit the Web site. And that is where the sale might take place because, according to the same study, brand Web sites are the fourth most trusted sources of information. So what are we missing?

The Web site is the advertisement and the banner ad is the ad for the Web site.

Not surprisingly, word-of-mouth advertising scored high. Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed said recommendations from other consumers was the most credible form of advertising. It has always been this way, which also hints at the power of communication.

Social media is front line communication. The resulting conversations are word-of-mouth advertising.

But not all word-of-mouth marketing sparked by bloggers or advertising gurus or public relations professionals is credible. As Sterling Hagar recently noted at AgencyNext: “When PR people resort to dress-up, play-acting, waitressing and such it suggests one of two possibilities to me: the client doesn't have a strong message or the PR people are having a hard time articulating it.”

Right on. Even people can look like monkeys.

Speaking of monkeys, the survey’s methodology included about 26,000 people on the Internet in 47 markets around the world, which means about 550 people per market. We're not even sure if they were shown ads to establish a context or what ads those might have been. Mediums don't create credibility; messages do.

Advertising Online: Intel & Everybody

Advertising online is the only medium that has seen substantial gains in spending. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet ad revenue totaled almost $10 billion, which represents an increase of nearly 27 percent from the same period a year ago.

This is one of the reasons that Intel is bringing a larger portion of its extremely successful co-op advertising budget to the Internet with 10 to 20 percent of its own budget being spent online. And where the “Intel Inside” campaign goes, so goes Intel marketing partners — at least 35 percent of the ad dollars Intel provides must be devoted to online marketing.

“It was a big change for us,” said Kevin Burkum, vice president for marketing at the egg board in Park Ridge, Ill. told The New York Times. “TV is still very important to us, but it’s not the be-all and end-all as it used to be.”

Maybe that’s because Internet users are conducting about 1.4 million searches every minute — with about 60 percent of those searches occurring on Google. At least that is the word on MSNBC. Citing a study by comScore's qSearch 2.0 service, more than 37 billion searches worldwide went through Google in August. (Side note: they just bought Jaiku.)

Yahoo Inc. was second worldwide with 8.5 billion, followed by Baidu at 3.3 billion, Microsoft Corp. at 2.2 billion, and NHN at 2 billion.

With so many searches, online media buyers might be wondering if buying up keywords and Google click-throughs is the way to go. Sure, but it is not the only way and maybe not even the best way.

One of the more compelling studies that I’ve come across is from the Atlas Institute, which points out what I hope other advertisers and marketers know — 67 percent of all consumers are influenced by more than one ad before they purchase. In other words, they might see an ad here and go somewhere else, forget about it, see it again, conduct a search, and then click on it again.

It’s something to think about if you are a content provider. Your click-through ads have a greater chance of supporting someone else’s shared revenue. But more importantly, marketers might be a bit more careful about where they think click-through purchases are coming from … the prospect likely came from somewhere else.

All of it provides great food for thought and suddenly makes concepts like social media relevant. Thinking about this sure beats writing about the bubble. Besides, Eric Eggertson already did an outstanding cover of the bubble buzz around the second departure of the not-so-anonymous Amanda Chapel. I pretty much closed my case study on them in July after discovering they were causing their own brand damage.

Chatting Jericho: Richard Becker

When I first began covering what began as a crisis communication case study of CBS over the cancellation of a television show, Jericho, and the fan outcry that followed, I could have never imaged meeting such a great group of passionate people.

They are not what I expected; certainly not what CBS expected. You can learn more about them in the comment thread of this post, aptly titled “Understanding Viewers.” There, they left more than 194 comments, about themselves and why they cared so much.

Since CBS reversed its cancellation decision, I’ve usually confined the second case study to tracking consumer marketing behaviors as the fans have worked hard to secure a third season after what will be a short second season, which will probably be introduced during a mid-season break.

In doing so, I am sometimes reminded how easy it is for fans to lose sight of their original reasons to pull together, but I know what they sometimes do not: they are still those same people, perhaps just a bit frustrated in attempting to find their own way. I met many of them at a forum called Jericho Rally Point.

So when one of them sent me message last week or so, it was easy to accept Morgan’s invitation to join them for a chat session at 5 p.m. (PST) on Wednesday, Oct. 10. I have to be honest: I haven’t entered a chat room in years. I expect it will be fun, hopefully engaging, and certainly interesting.

Thanks for the splendid introduction in the forums, Morgan. I'll do all my best.

Listening To Tony: BlogCatalog.com

When Tony Berkman, president of BlogCatalog, said he was going to have fun at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas, I told him to think again.

“What do you mean?” asked Berkman. “I thought you would take me to get a Nathan’s hotdog.”

“… a what?”

“They have Nathan’s hotdogs in Las Vegas, I remember …”

“Um, no.”

“So then what are we going to do?”

“Talk.”

“What are we going to talk about?”

“You tell me.”

“You aren’t interested in talking?”

“I’m interested in listening.”

“Are you going to give us a ride from the airport? …”

I started working with BlogCatalog by accident a few months ago. It’s not always formal, but we do have a lot of fun. Sure, sometimes it’s work; other times it’s a partnership. We started a few months ago.

Berkman had come up with an interesting idea to ask BlogCatalog members to use their blogs for good and raise awareness and funds for education through an Omidyar Network sponsored non-profit called DonorsChoose.org. It seemed like a great topic for our National Business Community Blog; I e-mailed him and asked for a news release.

It was their first Bloggers Unite campaign, but it wasn’t called that yet. Since they didn’t have a release, I told him I’d be happy to write one up for the blog and he could use it.

The campaign was an interesting idea. With so many bloggers writing from a contrarian’s point of view, this campaign seemed to provide something that social media sometimes lacks. The outcome was inspiring: 1,000 children directly benefited though DonorsChoose.org; and the non-profit organization received a tremendous amount of attention.

The second campaign was bigger. The third was even bigger. We haven’t calculated the outcomes yet. We’ll have a better picture starting tomorrow, after our post for hope competition closes. Even without the measures though, I already know the outcomes will be something worthwhile. BlogCatalog members are all that.

Beyond Bloggers Unite campaigns, we have been brainstorming with Berkman and the team about a couple of ideas related to BlogCatalog.com. They are some pretty big ideas; so I cannot post about them. But when Berkman told me he was coming to Las Vegas, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity to kidnap the team for a night and set some of these ideas in motion.

Most communication people like to talk. Unless I’m teaching or giving a presentation, mostly I don’t. I like to listen. Listening is the first step in a process we employ called a core message. I’m not going to write about the core message today (click the label if you want), but I will share one fundamental step: listening.

It makes me wonder. Maybe dialogue isn’t what people crave online. Maybe they want someone to listen.

“ … Did you hang up on me again?” Berkman asked jokingly.

Maybe that’s why BlogCatalog works. The BlogCatalog team over there listens to its members. Jeez, I hope it’s not a quiet evening.

If you haven’t heard about BlogWorld in Las Vegas this Nov. 8-9, Shel Isreal, Mike Arrington, Brian Clark, Arianna Huffington, and David Perlmutter are speaking. And more names that won’t fit in this post. It’s that big.

BlogCatalog will be at BlogWorld; I’ll be lending an assist. You’ll be able to find them at booth # 116 (members might want to watch for the announcement because it comes with good news). After hours, at least one night, the people behind the fastest-growing social network for bloggers will be with me. I'm putting them to work.