FLIRTing with the Crowds

Once you’ve set up the Focus: which business area to engage the crowds in; the people to talk to; the extent of collaboration and depth of control granted, it is time to delve into the second FLIRT element: Language.

A company’s needs are clearly not top of mind for the customers and even if you have recognized an area in your business in which others have successfully conducted crowdsourcing activities - and which thus is apparently fruitful soil for collaboration - you may still get it wrong if you don’t pay enough attention to the language of the effort.
The harsh reality is that no matter how sexy and hip you think your company or brand is, they both are very likely to be dramatically less interesting or cool to your customers than they are to you. Products and brands alone seldom constitute a gripping surface strong enough for a large group of people to gather around and start collaborating with. In other words, you can’t build a crowdsourcing community around your company or even your products per se - you need to talk about the right things and you need to do it in the right way for them to resonate.

What is needed is thinking about the proper Language, the right angle to approaching the customers as well as interesting, compelling ‘social objects‘ for the customers to gather around and talk about. If these things click, there will be an increased possibility that customers will relate to your offering and do respond to your call.

Understanding customer / context

Language consists of first and foremost understanding your customers: what makes as them tick? what do they care about? What values, things or activities do they find important? Equally important is understanding the environment in which the customer acts in his/her daily life: what phenomena in pop-culture and contemporary society surrounds them at present? what do they talk about when conversing with families / friends / colleagues? what kind of constraints and expectations does the society and their social network place (both in meatspace and the web) upon them? What do the customers want to emphasize in their life and what do they need a break from? These issues help in finding the right social objects.

Social Objects

Through undesrstanding the aforementioned issues, potential social objects can be recognized, around which the community can form (note that communities are never built by companies, but instead form around social objects as a result of active participation of the members). Jyri Engeström is one of the early advocates for the central role of social objects in social networks. Here’s an excerpt from his insightful post on the subject:

The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They’re not; social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object. That’s why many sociologists, especially activity theorists, actor-network theorists and post-ANT people prefer to talk about ’socio-material networks’, or just ‘activities’ or ‘practices’ (as I do) instead of social networks.

Furthermore, he adds that:

…we can use the object-centered sociality theory to identify new objects that are potentially suitable for social networking services. Take the notion of place, for example. Annotating places is a new practice for which there is clearly a need, but for which there is no successful service at the moment because the technology for capturing one’s location is not quite yet cheap enough, reliable enough, and easy enough to use.

The post is from 2005, but anyway timely, great read and a useful pointer to more stuff on the subject.

In the ever digitalizing world, social objects can thus be anything that can be represented online and that relate to the customer. In YouTube these objects are videos; in del.icio.us, other people’s URL’s; in sellaband its the bands and being a fan that combines; with Naked & Angry it is pattern design (that can be applied to both ties and wallpapers); in Jaiku, it is the small things in everyday life that are barely significant enough to be written about. Potent and powerful social objects can be either a way of strengthening self perception or indeed a refreshing way to escape the norms and restricitions of everyday life. The main point is that the links in the network are not enough: there has to be a meaning for the links, relevant social objects that unite the participants and give them something common to share, no matter what their background and other interests might be. That’s when people come together for meaningful interaction.

Value cues

In addition to the primary social objects, everything else too is significant: every little detail and element in your online presence is a value cue that communicates what kind of community / collaboration the customer is about to engage. Threadless, for example holds design competitions together with selected partners under its “Loves Threadless” section. These partners are carefully selected to relate to the (to a certain extent) underground and off-mainstream values and worldviews of the design-oriented and self-conscious community. For example, as partners, they have Tribeca Film Festival instead of MTV; Fast Food Nation instead of McDonald’s, etc.

Authenticity

Once the right social objects and their presentation are identified, it should be established how the company presents itself in the effort. Under no circumstances should a company attempt to engage the crowds representing itself as something they are not. This is sure to spark annoyance and downright attacks from the audience once they figure out. And they will. There are now more than 1 billion people on the net. If you’re hiding something intentionally, somebody, somewhere will find out the truth, after which it takes hours at best before it is known by the whole world.

For example, Sony tried launching a viral video for its PSP that was manufactured to look like consumer generated content. When the video got bad feedback from the audience (and rightly so, it is abominable), Sony tried denying any connection with it. That, in turn sparked even more venomous attacks from the people who felt themselves looked down upon: “how stupid sony does Sony think we are?”, was a common outcry.

Authenticity is therefore a key factor in language. Although a company can frame its presence in different ways, the identity of the initiator (the company) must be recognizable. This is also required by law in the EU starting next year.

It must also be recognized that if something goes wrong, admitting to mistakes is a far better approach than denial and subsequent negative effect in corporate image. The crowd forgives a quickly repenting friend but not a stubborn schmuck.

Transparency

In the age of social media, transparency is yet another key issue within language. Transparency in itself can act as a powerful incentive to participate, given that the rest of the audience is relevant to the participator, large and active enough. This is because of the instant gratification one feels when his/her contribution and its effect on the big picture is instantly shown for all. It creates a feeling of actually making a difference. People are also interested in what happens with the project they are contributing to in general, so if you don’t have a very good reason (”that’s how it has always been done” doesn’t qualify), to keep something a secret, disclose it. A black hole sucking input but giving nothing out is a frustrating playmate.

Key issues in Language

• Understand the customer
• Understand their context
• Identify potential social objects
• Utilize relevant value cues
• Be authentic & admit to mistakes
• Be transparent