Jon Litwack

The supposed “Gospel” of web 2.0

// April 14th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

This entry is going to sound rather preachy, and how much more fitting could that possibly be considering the title, and the context that I’m about to deliver.

I’ve been perusing the supposed “blogosphere” as of late, particularly within the realm of “social media” and pardon me if what I’m about to say is out of line, but I feel like I’m being spoken to by a born again christian. The type of born again that wants to flaunt bible verses in your face, but doesn’t have the context to back any of what they say up with relevance.

Everything is personal branding this, executive blog that, enterprise 2.0 app the other thing… Why isn’t anybody standing up and saying “So What?”.

This stuff has been around for a long time. Blogging has been around since the advent of webpages, executive blogs are realistically a matter of corporate transparency, and enterprise 2.0 apps defy the true interconnectedness that the emerging trend of semantic web is supposed to offer. In other words, get a real job, stop trying to coach executives to do work that they shouldn’t be doing (unless they’re already doing it, in which case they don’t need your non-executive help), and stop building apps that restrict data to a Content Management System.

If you truly want to embrace the “Concept” of web 2.0, start looking into things like pareto’s long tail, think higher level strategy in the form of holistic campaigns, and stop trying to monetize from buzz words.

I make a living from providing my clients with real world solutions that may or may not leverage new technologies. I’ve been offering low jack solutions for the better part of a decade now and I don’t intend to change it. The more we attempt to market the crap out of web 2.0, the deeper we will fall into the next pit of unrealized equity. Stop selling solutions you don’t understand. It’s all data at the end of the day.

Rant complete.

The reason why your Facebook solutions always blow up in your face

// April 14th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

I’ve been chewing on some strategy work lately for some automotive brands that we work for, and while coming up with specific strategy/tactics I’ve quickly realized the differences between ideation on social engagement strategy vs. site engagement strategy.

I’ll try to break er’ down for y’all. (More after the Jump)

A traditional strategy works within the following structure:

Goals are your business outcome, they are what you want your communication strategy to achieve.

Strategies are defined once you have identified your goals. They are your general approaches to accomplishing your business outcomes.

Objectives are the measurable tasks that you will undertake to realize your strategy.

Tactics are the tools you will use in order to achieve the objectives that you have laid down.

This model has worked for centuries if not millenniums and has been implemented in countless wars, business models and other fine places. Today’s issue of social engagement turns this model on its ear and flips the order a smidgen into the following structure:

Goals (Same as always)

People – The most important aspect of social engagement is the people you wish to engage with. It is therefore a far higher priority than strategy as with the wrong target audience a strategy can be completely useless, or worse (and more commonly) it can blow up in your face. This aspect of this new methodology is an ever changing one and requires constant research and analysis.

Objectives take on a slightly different role as this methodology maps from target audiences downwards; therefore, objectives must be mapped in order to create strategies to support them. They become mini-goals in a sense.

Strategies become dependent on the objectives that were created as a result of target audiences which were determined by over-arching goals.

Tactics can almost be classified within this realm as Technologies as your tactics will typically be a statement of which platforms you intend to use to carry out your strategies. Therefore, I typically label this part of the methodology Tactics/Technology.

So that, in a nutshell, is the POST methodology (People, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics). If you want to learn more about it, there’s a new book out about it at http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell. Leveraging this methodology and focusing on your audience in an ever changing light should alleviate you of some of the typical blowback that marketers get when they try to market the wrong product, to the wrong people, on the wrong platform.