Social Graphs and their implications from a personal branding perspective…

Although the concept of social graphs is nothing new, I recently became quite intrigued by an application for Facebook called Nexus , which creates a visual representation of your contacts and their relative relationships to one another. You can see mine below or click here to access it.

What I find especially interesting is that there is actually no new information shown, but rather the information is presented in such a manner that it creates an entirely new application with a specific purpose (mash-up). You can instantly decipher who the odd balls are in your network (relative to yourself) by looking at how far off from the centre they are. You can also visually group people by interests and look for 3-d visual linear patterns on the social graph. Naturally, this presents a huge opportunity for marketing research firms that can create effective behavioural models out of all of this.

So how is this different from traditional behavioural marketing research?

How about the fact that 70% of Canadians are on Facebook and spend an average of 20 minutes a day on it. How’s that for participation rate and sample integrity?

This really got me thinking about the whole evolving field of personal branding (or digital presence reputation management as I like to call it). This simple application can instantly paint a picture of an individual from both a personal and professional perspective (assuming of course, that they filled out their Facebook profile accurately).

Now imagine the possibilities if there was a tool like the quickly growing FriendFeed that would amalgamate your online social media behaviour in a visual multi-dimensional way as opposed to simply linear. What I mean is a virtual representation of a single individual formed from their digital presence (scattered throughout the web over years of usage). Anything you create online, no matter how private and secure you think it is, could one day be used to feed into this “assumed model of yourself”.

The big question is “Who will own it?” -especially seeing as how people sign off their rights each time they check the “I agree” check box on social networks, cloud applications, content uploads, etc…

Perhaps it’s time for a “social marketing” campaign to make modern internet users seriously modify their behaviours. Based on reactions I see at my workshops, there is little indication that people are aware of the potential future implications of their online actions. Especially considering the fact that my workshop audience is usually made up of communications or marketing people (the ones you would think would be aware of all of this).

Even just looking at it from the perspective of employment , the one-way fluffy, drum-beating resume is no match for an unbiased social representation of an individual accumulated over many years. And what about the employers themselves? Would they not have to be monitoring their own personal brands even more so than their potential employees/shareholders to avoid embarrassment? Lots to ponder about for a Friday! I’ll leave you all with that and eagerly await your comments…

Cheers,

MK

Top Business Gurus – do you have a favourite?

The top 5 most influential business thinkers, according to a recent Wall Street Journal ranking , are as follows:

1. Gary Hamel – Strategy Guru

2. Thomas L. Friedman – New York Times Columnist

3. Bill Gates – Microsoft Chairman

4. Malcolm Gladwell – Author “Tipping Point”

      5. Howard Gardner- Harvard Professor

No surprises there.

The remaining 15 are as follows:

6. Philip Kotler – Northwestern professor

7. Robert B. Reich – Ex-labor secretary

8. Daniel Goleman – Psychologist

9. Henry Mitzberg – McGill professor

10. Steven R. Covey – Author,’7 Habits of Highly Effective People’

11. Jeffrey Pfeffer – Stanford professor

12. Peter M. Senge – Author,’The Fifth Discipine’

13. Richard Branson – Virgin founder

14. Michael E. Porter – Harvard professor

15. Michael S. Dell – Dell founder

16. Geert Hofstede – Author, ‘Culture’s Consequences’

17. Clayton M. Christiansen – Harvard professor

18. Jack Welch – Former GE CEO

19. Tom Peters – Author, ‘In Search of Excellence’

20. Myron S. Scholes – Nobel laureate

After reading the full list, I began to wonder who has made the most impact on my personal development as a business strategist/marketer. I have read books or articles by all the authors listed. I use formulas and principles developed by Michael Porter (Porter’s 5-forces) , Geert Hofstede (Cultural Dimensions) and Philip Kotler (Social Marketing) in almost every strategy I develop (where applicable). I have even been inspired enough to take immediate action just by watching interviews with Richard Branson and listening to success stories like that of Michael S. Dell. However, all this thinking made me realize that I don’t have one single guru. Everybody has played their part, not to mention a whole slew of existing experts (and perhaps potential future Top-20 gurus) like Don Tapscott, Jim Collins, Chris Anderson, Mitch Joel, Seth Godin, Joseph Jaffe, or even my bosses Bernie Colterman and Jim Mintz.

I then (out of curiosity) looked at the methodology for this list and noticed that for the first time Google search results were incorporated as determinant factors, and rightfully so. For too long business guru influence was measured solely by amount of publications or scholarly journal articles (which is important, but only measures the influence on a niche segment). Nowadays, if you want to establish yourself as a guru, or sustain your existing position as a guru, you absolutely must have a strong digital presence. The existing gurus are lucky that their publishers, agents, communities of readers, etc… actively talk about them and create digital content mentioning them online. They don’t have to get personally involved (although it would be great if they did).

The new, up and coming gurus on the other hand, absolutely should (and are) all personally involved in creating, sharing, responding and listing to digital content using social media (blogging, podcasting, etc…) to boost their reputations and carfeully manage their own personal brands. They understand that the rules have changed. It will be interesting to see how many gurus on the Top 20 list a decade from now, will have gotten there thanks to social media.

The potential impact a single individual can have on others has always amazed me. My own personal goal is to find that ideal balance of absorbing a bit of everything around me (kind of like a sponge) while at the same time trying hard to push my field further ahead with new ideas.

Who are your favourite gurus and what are your thoughts on the list compiled by the Wall Street Journal?

Podcasting Explained

I’m sure that by now, the creator of this video series (leelefever) needs no introduction. Here’s his latest on Podcasting…