Social networking is the #1 activity online. Even though Google gets the most visitors, Facebook is where most of us are spending our time. And it’s not just about Facebook anymore. We are spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr and Twitter. While there are some clear major players in the social space, the social media universe continues to expand and 2011 was a banner year for the idea of an “Interest Graph.”

In 2011, we saw Google launching Google+ and Pinterest grewing at an astounding rate. Facebook launched “Timeline” and “frictionless sharing” with partners like the much anticipated Spotify. Facebook also acquired design companies and the team behind Gowalla, showing the company’s intent to provide a consistent experience across devices and becoming a more prominent player in the mobile space.

2011 was also a big year for social IPOs: From LinkedIn to Groupon and Zynga, small tech startups are becoming public companies. There is much speculation around the existence of a bubble, and some say growth cannot continue because social networks are running out of users. However, Facebook is not yet public and we still don’t see a clear exit for Twitter.

There might be saturation, but social media has changed the way we live. And this means social media is no longer a question for marketers. Companies of all sizes have accepted and even embraced the importance of social media. Investments are starting to increase and companies are now building teams to tackle the new risks and opportunities that social media has created. While Facebook and Twitter ad spending is expected to grow only at a decreasing rate, advanced brands are leveraging more digital dollars for their social media marketing strategies and tactics. “Social” has been an afterthought for many years, but marketing campaigns and programs are finally starting to feel inherently social.

This presentation is about the state of social media and social media marketing on January 1st, 2012:

Hugh Macleod, the cartoonist who blogs at gapingvoid.com, recently announced that he was “giving up” Twitter and Facebook to “reclaim” blogging.

His reasoning seems to be partly philosophical (content ownership) and partly strategic (less tweeting about meals means more time to blog about, well, the important stuff).

Philosophically, Hugh says he doesn’t appreciate the fact that social media sites own what is supposed to be his content. There’s no WordPress-like utopian open source self-hosted social network (and I haven’t heard about Diaspora since Mark Zuckerberg sent his $10 donation).

The cause may be a noble one, but I’m skeptical of this alleged ownership argument though. Hugh and others who have shunned Twitter before him (ie. Seth Godin) don’t seem to be opposed to others sharing their content on Facebook and Twitter. The “Tweet” and “Like” buttons that appear at the bottom of each of their blog posts are evidence that they approve of content sharing and traffic building. It’s ironic that the “Decide” call to action on Hugh’s blog post is only a few pixels above the word “Tweet.”

Strategically… Hugh has a point. Focusing on one thing, instead of aimlessly trying to be active all over the web, makes a lot of sense. However, Hugh is in a unique position. He’s a published author and you could say he’s a bit of a quotable celebrity in the tech startup scene. Whether Hugh will be able to maintain the interest that his recent blog post generated (111 comments and counting) is yet to be seen, but there’s a chance he’ll be ok even if he never tweets ever again.

So, should you give up Twitter and Facebook to reclaim blogging?

Probably not, but ask yourself the following questions before making a decision:

1. Do I have a “reclaimable” blog?

Most likely, you do not. A “reclaimable” blog would be one that used to get a lot of traffic and comments, but at some point it failed to keep up. According to Compete, gapingvoid.com was getting 65k unique visitors in July of 2010. A year later, that was only 12.7K. The drop is a great one, but 12.7K unique visitors is still a lot.

2. What am I trying to achieve?

Is your goal to have a creative outlet where you share thoughts and ideas? Or are you trying to become a top blogger and quit your day job?

3. What do I really enjoy doing?

This is very important. I personally enjoy blogging and podcasting but it’s getting harder to do this. Being on Google+, Twitter and Facebook allows me to have rewarding conversations and discussions with friends and strangers, at any time and from anywhere.

4. What am I good at?

Everyone is different and you need to be objective about what you’re good at. People that are comfortable in front or behind a camera should be on YouTube, Flickr or Instagram. People with a radio voice should probably check out BlogTalkRadio and Cinch.

5. Where does my audience want me?

Hugh’s audience might be more than happy to visit his blog. For you, it might be a different story. Maybe your Twitter friends like to communicate with you in 140 characters, but they might not really be interested in reading your essays. It’s important to consider your audience, even if it’s a small one.

I asked myself the 5 questions above and I quickly determined that it would not be possible for me to give up Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to focus on blogging. In the same way, I wouldn’t give up blogging to focus on social networks.

In conclusion, I don’t think you should follow in Hugh’s footsteps. As Hugh mentioned in his post, blogging has gone from magical to diluted in one decade. Unfortunately for bloggers, I’m not sure that magic will ever be recovered.

Whether we can call it magical or not, great content has the opportunity to create valuable and powerful experiences in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Where and how you do this is completely up to you.

Marcia Conner is a partner at Altimeter Group and the co-author of “The New Social Learning.” She blogs at http://learnativity.com/ and tweets as @marciamarcia.

The book is a good read for anyone interested in learning more about how companies can leverage social technologies and tools to become, well, better companies. I asked Marcia a few questions to go deeper into some of the topics on the book, and here’s what she kindly had to say.

1. If social learning is truly a competitive advantage, how can companies that are late to the game differentiate and compete?

The competitive advantage doesn’t come from the technologies themselves associated with social learning. It comes from the expertise and perspective your people have today that’s often never shared with anyone or put to use in the organization. Social media tools can provide venues for people to connect in ways they hadn’t before, differentiating an organization by the quality and brainpower of their people who now can build new approaches together that they couldn’t before.

2. In today’s culture of sharing, does it make sense for companies to publicly display real-time information about how they are performing and how consumers are talking about them on the social web?

Customer perception — heck, even employee perspective— has been posted on bulletin boards and user group meetings for years. If you don’t believe that, google your company then read 10 or even 20 pages into the search results to see all of the places where you’re talked about now. The trouble with many of those venues is that they are only from a narrow slice of your customers, often without additional insights from people within your organization who have additional information. By engaging with those people in those spaces… or better yet, creating venues for a healthy conversation about what you are doing right and what you need to improve upon, you are far more likely to learn from people’s experiences and correct misperceptions and give people with alternative (and possible more favorable) views a chance to weigh in too.

3. What is needed to inspire and create change at companies with an “anti-social” culture?

I’ve worked with many organizations who consider themselves anti-social because their work is either solitary or senior leadership is very button up… or because middle-management has instilled a sense of fear in the ranks that talking with one another is grounds for dismissal. Each of these needs to be addressed slightly differently.

In the first situation, find bright spots where people are working together and learning from one another despite their individual paths. Use these as exemplars to find more opportunities to cross-pollinate ideas and build relationships between shifts, in common areas, or across online communities where people can congregate in the little moments between other tasks.

If senior leaders are modeling behavior that doesn’t appear to be social, and yet they are interested in fostering a more socially oriented culture, ask them to demonstrate some of the relationship work they do behind the scenes. Perhaps they are active in a community organization where they show a different side of their personality. Encourage them to participate in online social networks where they can be their introverted selves but in a more open and engaging way. Find ways to help them show a side that is committed to working in different ways.

And in the last situation, where there is a fear-based culture because people in the middle feel social is contradictory to productivity, work with senior management to reiterate the disconnect with the larger vision of a more social culture. Actively eliminate roadblocks in people’s path to work together by publicly changing rules and policies that stymie collaboration—and adopting ways of working that more accurately support people’s natural tendencies to learn from one another. You might not, at first, get the buy in or support of people who have been silenced for a long time but you will get newer hires to work in engaging ways, and that alone has the power to shift culture in less time than forcing people to work in ways they don’t believe will be well received.

 I’ve conducted collaborative culture audits with dozens of organizations and almost all of them at first showed an inclination to distrust anyone overly social or relationship oriented. Over time, with specific steps and activities, often with the assistance of easy to use and mobile social technologies, they each became more mindful of what social really means (interacting to get work done) and saw it as an opportunity rather than something to avoid.

4. From SharePoint and LotusLive to SocialText and SocialCast, enterprise collaboration platforms within the firewall are getting quite advanced. What key elements are important when considering these and which do you think is the leading product today?

Each enterprise collaboration tools you mention has pros and cons, environments where they are better suited than one of their competitors, so it would be shortsighted to say one is the leading product today. Having said that, though, I believe it’s important for organizations to carefully consider their culture, their resources, their objectives, and the gaps they are trying to bridge when making a decision on the right tools for their environment. Are they looking for an on premise solution because they have the people to manage the systems? Would a SaaS implementation free people up to focus on business processes and making strides in workforce productivity? Do workers expect one interface where they can access every type of information flow or will they be comfortable using different tools for different activities? These are the types of questions organizations should consider when discerning what’s best for them.

5. What role do executives have in social learning? Do they only provide direction or should they lead by example?

Executives are learning today socially whether they recognize that or not. They learn from their management teams, from fellow executives in other companies, and from being active members of the world around them. While they provide direction to others, if they don’t demonstrate to those that work with them and for them that learning and relationship-building are important, they can undermine their guidance and miss a critical opportunity for people to learn from them too.

6. There are many monitoring tools out there, but they often lack in engagement, social CRM, and analytics capabilities. Do you think they will expand into these areas or will the industry remain fragmented for a while?

Organizations are often so trapped in their fear that relationship-building is anti-productive that they haven’t even begun to consider some analysis of the payoff from those engagements might prove otherwise. This becomes a chicken and the egg dilemma. Organizations are expecting analytics and useful measures of the gains made by working together… and because that level of monitoring isn’t yet widely available, leaders continue to focus on what they fear will happen. Until social technology vendors, on their own, deliver measurement capabilities (and ways to put those metrics into context that proves meaningful, not just numbers for counting’s sake) and up the conversation about the deep change these tools can create, the industry will remain fragmented and there will always be an err of mystery about the value of these tools.

7. In terms of Social Analytics, what should companies with social presences be measuring?

Organizations using social technology to connect people within their ecosystem should, at the least, measure four things:

1) Initiative (how many people logged in)

2) Persistence (how many people came back, presumably because they found value)

3) Connection (how the network expanded)

4) Technology Transition (fewer documents sent across email, for instance).

These four measures will demonstrate to those needing numbers to perceive value that change is underway. It will also begin to create conversations about the usefulness of legacy practices and the multiplier effects of expanding relationships.

The transparent nature of social media makes it easier to measure what’s going on because it can be observed and tracked. For instance, you can analyze what people are searching for and map what they find. You can analyze not only where people go with their social tools, but also how they get there, how long they stay, and what they do when they are there. Although this does not verify the transfer of knowledge or skills, it is a pretty good indication.

The next level of measurement look at functional outcomes rather than simply asking, “Did they engage?” There is little value to the organization if people don’t apply what they take in—put into practice what they learn and how their decisions have been informed. The best measures go the next step to connect using new skills and knowledge with how they affect measures such as the bottom line.

8. By 2014, aprox half of the workforce will be Millenials. Many such Millenials have grown up with video games like Halo, Counter Strike and World of Warcraft. How can companies introduce gaming mechanisms to encourage collaboration and learning?

Children and animals don’t play because they have free time. They play to move through developmental stages and to learn from one another how to interact and how to grow strong. With that knowledge, organizations can introduce more playful practices — be it pool tables in break rooms or races to see which team can come up with more novel ideas to vexing organizational problems. Video games can be introduced in leadership development, customer service training, and even program bug hunts to extend those practices and connect with young workers who enjoy games. Just don’t convince yourself that video games are required to engage a young workforce. Playful, interesting, meaningful work, where people can learn new things and connect with people around topics that matter to them will retain them for a long time.

9. It seems “immersive environments” like Second Life have lost some of the appeal from some years ago. Why is that?

Social tools these days are getting lighter and more mobile, being used to augment work, not as the activity itself. Many of the virtual immersive environments still require a great deal of processing power and big displays that don’t fit easily in a purse or a pocket. This means that the tools providers are either going to need to create an even more captivating and compelling reason to use their tools—or they are going to need to find ways to miniaturize the experience or find ways to take it with you through projection or augmented environments.

10. Should social learning be led by cross-division teams or should it be ”owned” by a specific division/group?

The idea any group or cross-division team can own social learning is like asking one department to be responsible for organizational health. The only people who can own social learning are the individuals who themselves are learning each day, from one another, based on their work and in the flow of work. One department can set strategy and review tools, and even document and advertise healthy social learning practices, but at the point when they give the impression it is their responsibility to manage the learning, they step back in time to an age when we thought training (or knowledge management, or human capital development, or..) was a discreet set of activities and events that could be turned on and off like a light switch. Rather, learning and collaboration are ongoing actions taken by individuals in concert with one another to produce something greater than anyone alone could create. And that is owned by (and directed by) every individual all of the time. Remove the obstacles in people’s paths to do what is hardwired into their DNA—to learn together to grow strong—and you’ll find it creates healthy organizations where social learning is their lifeblood.

Web analytics are cool. If you agree with that statement, there’s a good change you’ve spent some time reading Occam’s Razor, the fascinating blog about web analytics by Avinash Kaushik (author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day).

If you don’t know who Avinash is then just Google “Web Analytics” and you’ll surely find out who he is. I’ve personally  learnt much from his thought-provoking and action-oriented writings, and I’m sure you will too. Below is an interview about some of the hot topics in web analytics today.

1. Tools like Woopra have introduced us to real-time analytics. Is real-time the future of analytics? Why are we not there yet?

There is more and more real-time data available. Google Analytics is updated, officially, every hour. Then there are cool tools like Chartbeat, etc. My personal perspective on real time analytics is…. if you can’t take real-time action then why do you want real time data?

In 99% of the cases real-time data is not actionable (it is not statistically significant and people jump the gun on the wrong signals), and companies (big or small) can’t actually take any action even if there is an actionable signal (change campaigns, landing pages, stop emails from going out or whatever). Then why do you want the data?

Real-time data becomes an excuse to stare at computer screens or do data puking. It keeps people from doing thoughtful analysis and looking at non-tactical things (and adding value to their employer).

If your organization meets these two rules: a) You have enough traffic / responses on your site to get statistically significant data AND b) You have a capacity to change things (take action), you should seek out real time data and you should make use of it. If you don’t meet the two rules take a long hard look at if you are engaging in any activity that is adding to your company’s bottom-line when you tap into real time data.

2. In 2007, you wrote a post  about “engagement” often being an “excuse,” not a metric. Now that we can measure things like comments, Facebook likes, ReTweets, check-ins, etc., what are your thoughts about the importance of measuring engagement?

My point of view on engagement is simple: What the heck does it actually mean? The answer is? Everything to everyone. Hence my minor displeasure at that metric. I believe in clarity of communication and a razor sharp focus on solving specific problems. Hence precise measurements, and naming metrics for clarity.

Engagement means nothing, hence does not drive action.

My recommendation was that if you are measuring time spent on the site as “engagement” then call it Time on Site. If you are measuring the number of visits by one person as “engagement” call it Visitor Loyalty. Then people know what you are measuring and what to do with the data.

With regards to your point about Twitter and Facebook…. it is very very cool that we can measure new things. The metrics I like (or have formulated) are….

# of Retweets per 1000 followers. I call it Message Amplification.
# of Replies sent & received per day. I call it Conversation Rate.

Both measure “engagement”, but they are called what they actually measure. That’s what I recommend. More here: Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics.

In each new medium (like social now) we’ll get even more opportunities to measure if we are doing this right. Unique metrics for unique “engagement” processes.

3. Today’s tools and vendors seem to still be fragmented so we find separate tools for web analytics, monitoring, and specific insights. Do you see the industry consolidating to provide clients with a super tool that does it all?

Yes, and no.

Yes in the sense that as things get settled you’ll see tools evolving to incorporate that reporting. AdWords reporting used to be all by itself (it was too young, too new and no one new where it was going). It is now standard reporting included in Google Analytics and Omniture and other tools.

In the last couple of years AdSense, TV, Email, Display are all incorporated into Google Analytics, as an example. Or sometimes different vendors merge things together, as it the case with the 4Q voice of customer survey which merges with Google Analytics.

So as digital strategies reach some level of maturity expect tools by Google and Yahoo! and WebTrends and more to incorporate them together.

No in the sense that we live in such an ever evolving space (I think of web analytics today as a toddler, a lot of growth/change is to come and we actually have no idea what it is going to become). So new things will keep coming and they’ll be outside and we’ll have to become comfortable with what I call Multiplicity, the idea that to do your job effectively on the web you’ll have to:

a) Use the right tool to answer the right question, and b) Be very comfortable with managing / learning / using multiple tools at one time

And I’ll tell that that to me that is just so exciting that the world changes and evolves and you can have so much fun. Every day!

4. Bloggers often pay attention to comments and Social Media sharing as a way to measure success. What should bloggers be paying more attention to?

This should not come as a surprise… I have a blog post on Blog Metrics! : ) Here it is: Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success.

It is important to focus on the impact of social media on your blogging success (retweets, likes, replies to you on twitter and facebook to posts about your blog etc etc). But blogging is about more than social media links / clicks. The essence of my blog post about is that you should measure holistic success of your blog. The metrics I recommend are:

1. Raw Author Contribution
2. Audience Growth
3. Conversation Rate
4. Citations / Ripple Index (social media falls here)
5. Cost
6. Benefit ($$)

Taking that view allows you to have a robust understanding of if you are adding value and if you should keep doing what you are doing (or change!). I encourage people to do that beyond simply checking retweets or likes.

5. Your 10/90 rule is great because it focuses on people, not tools or technologies. With that rule in mind, what advice would you give to young people getting started in marketing research and analytics?

Learn to try new things and play in the real world. There is no better medium in the world for you to try anything you want, all by yourself without the need to rely on your employer to empower you. Tools are free or cheap. Platforms are free or cheap. All you need is a pinch of effort and a dash of desire to learn in the real world. If you do that no one will refuse to hire you because you’ll actually know what the heck you are talking about. If you don’t do that… well…. life will be tougher.

Here is a blog post that outlines how to do that, at least for Web Analytics: Web Analytics Career Advice: Play In The Real World.

6. Your books “Web Analytics 2.0″ and “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” have not only helped many people, but also created excitement around web analytics. Did you ever think you would one day be the closest thing to an Analytics Rock Star?

There is no such thing as a Rock Star. From dust to dust. :)

But I did want to share that I feel incredibly blessed that blogging and engaging in social media allows me (and anyone else!) to simply do what I am passionate about (writing and analytics), and have something come of it. My blog is responsible for Wiley contacting me and requesting me to write a book and things kept evolving like that. All I did is focus on writing things people would find to be “incredible” and “of value” (my two mantras for blogging).

As you know, all my proceeds from both my books are donated to charity (Doctors Without Borders, The Smile Train and Ekal Vidyalaya), and in around two years that amount is over $100k. I am astounded at that outcome.  More than anything it shows how “powerful” each and every one of us can be when we leverage the beautiful internet and focus on adding value through our passion.

Viva la web!

I recently participated as a panelist on a webinar titled “Your Brand Advocates- How to Find Them and What They Are Worth,” along with Kety Esquivel (from Ogilvy), Rob Fuggetta (from Zuberance), and Frank Eliason (on his last day at Comcast — he’s now with Citi). We talked about what a brand advocate is, and how brands can identify and energize them. Here are my slides along with a few thoughts and tips.

Brand advocates, at their core, are people who really like and care about a brand. They are the opposite of critics because they’re out there talking about the brand and recommending it to their friends  (aprox 150 if they’re sharing those recommendations online, according to Forrester). What they say actually resonates with others because there is a trust between friends and connections. These brand advocates cannot be bought, forced or created, so others perceive them as genuine fans of the brand.

Brand advocates are brand advocates because they’ve had good experiences with a brand and they are willing and able to share some enthusiasm. Of course, brand advocates aren’t always positive and they aren’t always the most vocal or social (as we might assume they are). They do expect the best from you… and that is a good thing.

Anyone representing a company in social media should seek to connect with this special group of passionate and supportive customers. Once you find one (yes, one is a big deal), try to develop and nurture a relationship. If you’re passionate about your company and its products/services (as I happen to be at Samsung), then this should be easy and natural for you. Help them connect with other fans and try to provide them with valuable and memorable experiences (that can be anything from good on-going conversations to content they actually might want to watch/read). Whatever you do, don’t take advocates for granted (regardless of how connected or influential they might seem).

Not sure what to think yet? Here are some stats if that’s your kind of thing:

McKinsey & Company has found that 2/3rds of the economy is influenced by personal recommendations. Zuberance says that a brand advocate may help provide 5 to 7 times more economic value than the average customer. Keller Fay Group has found that consumers mention 56 brands in conversation per week. According to Weber Shandwick, 1 in 3 people come to a brand through a recommendation, and according to Bain & Company, the most recommended company in any given category grows 2.5x the category average.

So, does anyone care about your brand enough to proactively and genuinely talk about it with friends? Are you ready to be an advocate yourself and join the conversation?

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this blog are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Samsung.

Here are videos of the Q&A at the Corporate Social Media Summit in NYC last week. Some of the questions asked were around the role of a Social Media Manager, Foursquare for brands, Twitter follower management, and how to be customer-centric when a community continues to increase in size.

There is also one video with questions by the guys at Served Fresh Media.

 Check out the slides and videos from the presentation here.

 DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this blog are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Samsung. Posts by contributors reflect their personal opinions and not those of their employers.

Here are the slides and video for my presentation about Samsung’s Customer-Centric Approach to Twitter and Social Media at the Corporate Social Media Summit in NYC.

For videos on the Q&A, please click here.

You can follow Samsung USA @samsungtweets and follow me @samsungesteban and @socialnerdia.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this blog are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Samsung. Posts by contributors reflect their personal opinions and not those of their employers.