Facebook Friending Strategy (Social Network Niceties)

This post is a few scattered thoughts on the following:
What is the purpose of facebook?
Why have a “friending” strategy?
Who do I consider “friending” on facebook?
Of those I consider “friending”, how do I filter?

Before making any serious choices, you must have a set of values and ideals that give you direction. Putting it another way, if you don’t care about anything then you don’t need to make decisions. What you care about and value will influence your use of social media tools, and how you use them.

If you are using facebook, chances are that you want to connect with friends and people you know. That’s kind of the whole point of this thing. Unless you are a celebrity of some sort with fans you want to communicate with, or who you want to communicate with each other, there is not a whole lot of point in deliberately trying to tick up a great number of friends.

Facebook is not (first and foremost) a marketing website. Google plus is where you can get to know new people based on interests rather than merely interacting with people you already know. This makes G+ much more useful as an all-encompassing (one-stop) social media tool.

Why have a friending strategy?
So that you are being considerate to others. So that you are aware of your own actions (you might be stalking or freaking others out without realising)

Who do I consider friending on facebook?
Anyone I know through work (other teachers and students), sport (parkour, rugby of old), old school mates, people I know from church, people that I interact with in other ways (online, meet in airports, etc)

How do I filter?
I don’t usually friend anyone who has a high level of privacy on their facebook page. If they don’t reveal a lot of info about them self it is likely they don’t want further interactions or they only want to interact with close friends.

I don’t tend to friend anyone who doesn’t have many friends. If someone has 50 friends and is one of my students then they clearly don’t have much online activity. I will balance this with how old someone is - older people tend to have fewer friends but sometimes it is good to have that connection in case you might want to get in touch.

I don’t friend anyone who is immature and who I am not seeking to influence to help them grow into a more mature person - they will only spam my information stream.

I try to only friend people that I will potentially interact with, either to contribute something of value to them or to for them to contribute something of value to me.

There is a tension to keep in balance with friending. You must balance your desire to be in contact with (have access to) a person with your reasonable guess of how much they desire to have contact with you.

I can see more shift towards Google+ over the next few years as the platform develops and as people begin to understand (and trust) the wider social use that G+ offers compared to it’s main competitors (facebook and twitter).

Speaking “To” Versus Speaking “With”

Do you see other participants in a conversation as and audience for your ego? Or do you listen with intent?

Quite a while ago I came to the hard conclusion that I was often seeing myself as the main person involved in the conversation. I became concerned that I wasn’t listening to the other person in a way that was meaningful. Instead of trying to understand the meaning of their words and their feelings behind the words, I was listening for key words that I could use to jump in and speak my opinion.

What I do now is to try and follow what the other person says, repeating back to them in my own words and with my own experiences in order to ensure that I understand what they are saying and how they feel about it. This creates strong links with the person you are conversing with, and even if you don’t have an experience that is similar to them you can still show that you value what they say.

The trick is to really value what they say. If you fake it, they will know. Two things that are helpful to remember in this “real” valuing:

1. You don’t have to value something that is not valuable to you. There is a difference between understanding what someone else values and valuing it yourself. You will not typically form any lasting friendship with someone in whom you do not share much in the way of values. In practice, there are very few people who do not share something with others though. We are all human and seeking answers on one level or another.
2. Someone may be further ahead, or further behind you, in their experiences. You can see your role in listening to them as an encourager to keep them inspired, or you can draw inspiration from them. It can be hard to listen to someone excited about something you discovered yourself some years ago, but if you apply the right mindset to the situation you can forge a positive link with the person.

At the heart of all of this is love. Do you care enough for others to take the time to listen to them? Or would you rather say your piece and then move on to the next person - cold marketing style that is no different from email spam that nobody wants to engage with?

“To” is a one-way process.

“With” is communication together, on a journey, sharing strengths and overcoming weakness.

Even if you see this as splitting semantic hairs, I hope you can see the value of real listening and collaborative communication.

Google, Marketing, and the Environment

How could these three words possibly be linked?

Watching a commercial for nappies, it struck me.  Yes, really: nappies.

The commercial was offering a product that saved the consumer from at least one confusing choice when purchasing nappies.  “Is there really a difference between nappies for girls and nappies for boys?”
The solution was to have a nappy with a longer absorbent strip inside that covered the areas that both girls and boys would wet.  A nappy just for girls would not suit boys because of the limited coverage of the absorbent strip, and vice versa.  So they made a nappy to suit both.

The problem that occurred to me was that a combined nappy would be inefficient in it’s use of material.  Further to that, all of these little inefficiencies in life could add up to a huge impact on the environment.  

Issues of disposable nappies versus the environmental consideration of water cost of cleaning reusable ones aside, it occurred to me that if we had enough information about the required application of out limited resources our problems would be solved.

If we knew exactly the amount of absorbent strip required for each child, along with other relevant manufacturing details with enough precision, then we could make a product so personalised that there would be zero wastage.

So that’s the environment link.

Now Marketing
One of the biggest problems in marketing is knowing who to target your product towards.  The best advertisers know a lot about their target audience and about the products being advertised.  The closest match between a product and a consumer will result in the most sales, and the most people being happy with their purchase.

There is no point in marketing nappies for boys to people who don’t have a baby boy.  If, by some trick of manipulative marketing, a company manages to sell some boy nappies to someone with a baby girl, then they wouldn’t be happy with the outcome.  And if it was through a genuinely deliberate act on the part of the nappy seller, they would lose repeat sales and would probably have to waste resources on returns.

It is hard to fake a genuine interest in the consumer.  Once again, the best marketers and advertising companies will try to best serve the consumer and the product or service provider.  Leaving aside the further complexities of marketing, such as showing people that they have needs that they don’t know about and building their desire so that they wish to have that need fulfilled - something morally questionable but frequently done.  Leaving those extras aside, perhaps we can learn from the best advertisers (information collectors).

There is no question that the environment is an issue of great importance.  The information we need can be looked at from a marketing perspective.  The environment is the consumer and the people that want to interact with the environment are us, the people who want to profit from our interaction with the consumer.  In an ideal transaction, both the environment and ourselves will prosper.  In a less than ideal transaction one party will be worse off.  The better we know what we want from the environment and the better we know how the natural resources available to us can meet those desires, the happier and healthier we all are in the process.

So that’s the marketing part.

Now Google
In our everyday use of the Internet giant, we might easily forget that the main business of Google, and how they make their money to sustain their enormous web presence, is through highly tuned and effective advertising.

Whenever you search for nappies on Google, you might notice (unless you have tuned yourself to ignore them) that there are advertisements surrounding the search results.
Through various practices of data collection, about you, and the products available that you search for, Google seeks to provide the best results.  The money making part of their company seeks to link businesses to the consumers who want those links just as much as the businesses.

We tend to forget that advertising is a two way street.  Perhaps because in the past we have been exposed to the “shot gun” style of advertising through “old” forms of media such as TV, radio, and paper sources.  These targeted (and still target) a wide range of people because they didn’t ultimately know enough to tailor make their advertising to the viewer.  So we patiently sat through a bunch of irrelevant adverts that were sometimes humorous enough to captivate us, even if the product was totally irrelevant to us as a consumer.

Nowadays we don’t have to be interrupted by marketers and advertisers for them to do their business.  They can use the interactive power of the Internet to advertise alongside of our activities and we can have a look at the adverts when we feel like it or if we can’t find a product or service we are after.

That’s a little off the track.

The main thing we can take out of it is that Google is a company (one of several) with the resources to advance our information gathering needs.  If you take a look at recent news releases, you can see that many companies are taking an active interest in the environment and working towards the goal of having as little negative impact on the natural world as possible.  It should be a relatively small step of getting companies like Google to share their technology in order to benefit the “green” goals of the global community.

The current methods of marketing are easily missed because of the ways they enormously benefit the consumer.  It almost seems as if they are serving the consumers more than the businesses.  Facebook gets you to “like” comments, but they also get you to “like” celebrities, charities, products, and other groups.  Amazon started with book sales and each consumer gets to rate and write reviews.  It’s a concept that is quite far spread and the more the consumers have a say, the better the system benefits both the consumers and the sellers.

The final step in the chain is to have some way to link reviews, and other personalised information, to individuals.  Their preferences can then be used to personalise products and offer recommendations uniquely suited.  This could seem invasive but is a necessary trade-off for excellent service.  

My only personal concern in this (because the privacy issue is a deliberate trade-off for me - though still keeping some in check obviously) is the concern that what was once done by personal brokers, real people who would get to know you as an individual, can now be done by computer software on a server across the other side of the planet.  

I worry that people might feel more disconnected, despite being better connected.  That seems to be the biggest challenge in meeting people’s needs.

Putting it all together
I’m sure you are beginning to see how advertising strategies, of getting to know the consumer, can help provide favourable outcomes for both sides of the sales transaction.  Let me try to present a larger view that applies these principles to environmental concerns, and even more.

World domination can come about through the one who offers you everything you need and want, while at the same time taking everything from you that you don’t need or want.  These resources that are surplus to your requirements can then be supplied to others who don’t have them but want them.

“World domination” is a bit of an attention grabbing phrase but I use it to draw your attention to the power of these principles.  The concepts exist, but the weakness is in the details of the information that can be collected.  

If we consider shoes, and the incredible number of factors that lead to the “life-cycle” of a pair, then we hit some issues that force us to overcompensate and waste resources.  The purpose for the shoes (sports, fashion, protection) will affect the materials used.  Work boots need to be more sturdy than slippers but they don’t need to be made of titanium.  Individuals will need different shaped inners and might prefer different coloured laces.  Many shoes are sold with two pairs of laces, with one pair that is totally wasted.  Other wastage could be in the extra thread used to double or triple stitch to meet the individual usage requirements of the most extreme situation when the average user might be fine with just double stitching.

All of these things are such small details that they are too hard, currently, to collect and use to plan for production and marketing.  Even with the vast range of shoes available, there is still a large element of “shot-gun” marketing and product design.  While it might not seem too bad, considering the millions of units produced, it will add up to tonnes of wasted materials and energy in producing those materials.

This is an impact on our environment that we would rather not have.  Every resource taken from the earth adds to depletion and potential scarcity.  We have to put back everything that we take, in some form or another, so that we don’t lose out in the future.  Both sides of the transaction have to benefit for the process to be sustainable.  So our detailed knowledge of what to take and what to give back will be beneficial for everyone.

Now apply this to the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the social contacts that we enjoy, the technological devices that we use.  If we had a way to measure our personal requirements down to the finest detail, then we could provide for those so that we fit these details of our lives like a glove.  When everything fits and functions for us perfectly, then we will be happier, and our efforts to reach this happiness will be minimised.

The next step is to use the technology to predict what you will need for the future.  This is where is gets really tricky.  As far as I know, there is no system out there that makes complex calculations leading to recommendations of what you are going to need.  Simple predictions yes, like growing up and needing bigger clothes, but complex predictions no.  

We know that, given enough detailed information, it is possible to give you everything you need in as efficient a manner as possible.  Is it possible, though, for a computer to predict how your personal tastes will actually change in the future?  Maybe.  But that will involve an even more open disclosure of personal information that people are unlikely to be comfortable with.  It might take some careful marketing to convince people en-mass of the benefits.

So there you have it.  Saturday evening’s musings on Google, marketing, and nappies.  

It’s never quite what you expect is it?