The Conversation Prism

Check out some of the early concepts for the v2 of the conversation prism

About 5 minutes in Des gives a shout out to the conversation prism.

I admire the work of Valeria Maltoni. Over the years, we’ve shared our individual ideas and vision for discovering, monitoring, and measuring relevant conversations in order to effectively chart the corporate landscape and identify opportunities for mutually beneficial engagement and learning. We’ve decided to collaborate to weave our experiences and advice into one post that we hope helps you unravel the confusion stemming from value over hype when evaluating Social Media as a channel for presenting, interacting, and observing.

As public relations, communications, and new media marketing professionals, it’s our job to identify the communities where our customers, peers, and also influencers communicate with each other in a way that’s transparent and frictionless. It’s how we build relationships and how we establish our personal and corporate social capital while simultaneously increasing intellectual equity.

Social Networks are magnets for marketers, but the people who define each online community are growing reticent to their hollow attempts at connecting as a means to create or extend a channel for broadcasting messages in a one-to-many hyperbole assault.

True social marketing is not marketing at all. The new era of communications necessitates personalization through a genuine and humanized approach. It fuses marketing, service, sociology, psychology, creativity, sales, and a dedicated practice of transparent Social Customer Relationship Management (sCRM).

Here’s why this is hard for companies - internally, the organization of work is still centered around a product or a service, things are seen from the inside out. Sometimes the delivery mechanism of that product is mistaken for the product itself.

For example, newspapers identified their product very closely with paper - thus requiring printing production plants, distribution models, and sponsors (advertising). The infrastructure created around the news to make it a business held it inside a specific model. The job of getting the news today is performed in hundreds of different ways - all vying for our attention. How could news organizations become more agile and relevant in this new context?

Technology Versus Social Sciences

Social media is not governed by the media or technology that facilitate online interaction, contribution, or participation. It is defined by the people, the communities they join, and the parallel cultures and behavior that manifest. Technology and the networks that spawn through constant innovation will continually surface, merge, excel, or vanish. Human nature and the desire to connect, interact, and elevate is perpetual.

The Conversation Prism - (get the poster here)

Using the Conversation Prism , we can visualize and map the shifting landscape of social networks and micro communities to observe and conduct our initial fieldwork through digital anthropology. The process reveals everything, from measurement opportunities to participation strategies to the specific infrastructure changes necessitated by the new proactive and reactive process of engagement in the social Web.

How can organizations learn to participate? Employees are a company’s first community. Right now companies tend to manage the flow of information through their internal social networks in the same ways they manage the technology installed on each associate’s laptop. Companies can and will get ahead when they learn to educate, engage with, and empower the natural grass roots communities that form around projects. The Conversation Prism can help visualize existing participation.

Listening

The first step is to “listen,” by searching keywords that populate and bind our marketplace. They include our company name, brands, competitors, and other related product and business descriptors. By assessing the volume, frequency and tonality of conversations throughout each network, we can establish The Conversation Index (CI), a benchmark to assess the state of our brand in the Social Web and also serve as a metric of which to compare our future activity to past presence and brand perception

We can not measure what we do not know. We need a baseline that extends across the Social Web, beyond blog posts and Twitter.

Elements necessary to define, identify and capture The Conversation Index:

- Timeframe

- Keywords

- Quantity of mentions vs. competition, total and by channel

- Tonality

- Potential for response, if so, from which department

- Reach of mention within each network (web traffic, subscribers, followers, retweets, linkbacks)

- Action (note that Social Media begets unique programs that drive discernible clickpaths so that you have visibility into measurable activity. Create a dedicated URL for the campaign and use Google or NuConomy analytics - YOU, not the Web team, use link shortneners that provide quantifiable numbers at the point of click such as Bit.ly and Poprl, use BackTweets.com to track the volume of link sharing.)

The Conversation Index is measured first for a baseline and then at regular intervals to draw comparisons and insight. The CI is also helpful to capture sentiment, reactions, visibility, action, and feedback surrounding specific events, leading up to, during, and following the landmark.

Imagine what would happen if everyone in your organization was a brand steward. Have you taught your teams what they should be listening for? People are not merely a company’s best assets, they are its best technology. Along with the potential for relevant and valuable content, which is the lifeblood of social media, you need more ears and hearts on the ground.

Social networks can and do extend beyond the company’s walls, yet few organizations have learned to recognize, encourage and embrace the talent they already have. The ones that have and do, can measure the results beyond anecdotal evidence.

Presentation

When documenting the results during the listening exercise, it’s absolutely critical to capture persuasive and credible criteria in a way that’s presentable and incontestable to decision makers. For those without graphic artists at the ready, recording the data above in a spreadsheet and exporting key findings as charts in a visual presentation will establish a compelling case and benchmark for further endeavoring into socialized engagement, as well as the ability to reference past status.

Formalizing the research creates a process that serves as a manageable workflow and procedure for all future aspects of tracking and documenting and reporting the details mined from listening, measurement, perception, and learning.

What are you going to do with all the data? While many companies have good ways to capture historical data through quantitative and qualitative research, the process and discipline do not include action steps beyond the tweaking of a campaign. That’s not deep enough. It means that you’re not willing to let what you hear and see change the way you do business.

In a nutshell, new marketing means that what you learn does not affect just how you present yourself - it impacts what you bring to the table.

Observation

Communities support each other. Citizens actively help others make decisions, offer suggestions and referrals, proactively share negative experiences, and repeatedly ask question - with or without our participation.

Doc Searls calls this Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). Others refer to it as Customer Relationship Management (CRM). But, as we are quickly learning, “management” and “relationships” are as distant from each other as their intentions. Perhaps it’s better stated as Community Relations or better yet, Public Relations.

Either way, we are missing opportunities right now.

Once our target networks are identified and our Conversation Index is documented, we must observe the conversational ecosystem within each network to understand the corresponding culture and behavioral dynamics. This is why new communications in the social economy requires a crash course in social sciences such as Anthropology, Sociology, and Ethnography.

We learn, earn credibility, and procure strategic intelligence through immersion.

The insight that we learn from listening and observing reveals dedicated and intermittent conversation ecosystems that spotlight real world brand perception and the potential for evangelism and also potential crisis. It resets intentions, crystallizes engagement strategies, influences how we adapt our story to each community, it humbles us, and introduces empathy into the process of connecting.

Can you give power to your customers? If your company has a customer Advisory Board, how can you work towards a true democratization of their influence over what you offer? Do you provide a forum for customers not just to tell you what they think, but to teach and share what they know with their peers?

Facilitating a peer community is probably one of the best ways to grow your corporate social capital while simultaneously increasing intellectual equity.

To excel in Social Media, we have to embrace modesty and refrain from the projection of vanity. Negativity is onerous. Unwelcome feedback is grueling to swallow. Whether or not it’s right or wrong, it’s still real world perception and it impacts our bottom line.

We have to be open.

Let it touch us.

Adapt

Reaction, change, and the practice of listening, hearing, and responding is the art and science of instilling trust and confidence that feed communities and determine the health and prosperity of brand resonance.

Allowing outside stimulus instead of reflecting or disregarding it is the art of embracing and embodying transparency and practicing genuine, unbiased engagement to facilitate meaningful relationships. Otherwise, transparency and engagement are merely yet another buzzword in the quiver of marketing arrows.

Productive and mutually beneficial engagement is powered by effective listening and productive participation that results in measurable and favorable action. It’s not only measured by the Conversation Index, but also by the sales, referrals, relationships and ensuing brand loyalty that escalate, and sometimes dip, in reaction to our contribution.

We earn the rewards or consequences we deserve.

So much of this is new to us. However, as marketers we’re learning how to excel and succeed in the new age of traditional and new influencers as they wrestle with relevance in the face of newfound opportunity.

Influence IS the ability to listen, learn, engage and inspire measurable actions. It’s also the observable progress people make as a result of an engagement with us.

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via PR 2.0

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

The Conversation Prism debuted in August 2008 to provide a visual representation of the true expansiveness of the Social Web and the conversations that define it. In this short time span, over one million people have crossed its path.

When Jesse Thomas of JESS3 and I initially mapped “the conversation,” we recognized that the act of categorizing social networks within a visually rich graphic would be momentary at best, demanding endless iterations in order to accurately document evolving and shifting online conversations as well as the communities that promote them.

My goal was to observe, analyze, dissect, and present the dynamics of conversations, how and where they transpired.

We’re proud to introduce version 2.0 of The Conversation Prism. We’re also excited to release a version that traverses the online realm into the real world with the release of a full color 18” x 24” poster to prominently display in the workplace, classroom, home office, or at events. Please visit www.theconversationprism.com for details, embed codes, and additional insights.

What follows is a detailed mission statement and instructional guide to help you successfully endeavor into the social world of online communication and relationships building.

The Eloquence of the Conversation Prism and Social Science

The inspiration for its inception derived from a consistent observation of top-down methodologies and practices of brands, professional and personal, employed to create a presence on the social Web. Simply stated, brands focused on building presences in the most popular communities without regard to how they would attract inhabitants and ultimately interact, let alone whether or not their core ambassadors were present.

The Conversation Prism suggested a reversal in this approach, instead inspiring a bottom-up strategy that promoted social research, mapping, and ethnography. This inceptive sociological fieldwork would change everything and provide the insight necessary to develop an enlightened and cultured Social Media program that could potentially humanize the brand and foster relationships and engender emissaries to carry goodwill across the social web.

You + Me + Mutual Value = <3>

People aren’t lured into relationships simply because you cast the bait to reel them into a conversation.

Sincerity extends beyond the mere act of creating a profile on Twitter or forming a fan page on Facebook or a group on LinkedIn. The dual definition of transparency serves very different forms of both genuine and hollow separated by intent and impression. Relationships are measured in the value, action, and sentiment that others take away from each conversation. Talking “at” or responding without merit, intelligence, or quality grossly underestimates the people you’re hoping to befriend and influence.

If participation were this simple, then perhaps everyone would excel as a Social Media “expert.”

It’s the difference between community and a halfway house; one will flourish, while the other will shelter transients, never building a thriving citizenry.

Identifying connected communities and observing the themes and culture of each provide entrée into the personification necessary to foster a genuine and equal ecosystem for dialogue.

It’s about bringing information and solutions to people where they congregate before attempting to host their attention on our terms.

The art of conversations is mastered through both the practice of hearing AND listening.

I hear you.

I’m listening to you.

I understand.

Drink it in… identify opportunities to engage, but more importantly, experience the nature, dynamic, ambience, and emotion in order to sincerely and intelligently empathize and converse as a peer.

Conversation Workflow

Making connections at the human level with the intent to listen before action is the only true and rewarding source of mutually beneficial engagement.

Socialized media is empowering us to not only consume content, but also create it. This is the era of new influencers and we become media and earn authority based on the content we share and also how and where we participate. In turn, our social graph creates an orbiting realm of social influence that can be useful to brands that align with our values and lifestyle.

This is about humanizing the story in a way that empathizes with those whom you’re trying to compel.

Conversations are increasingly distributed. This social distribution fragments our ability to connect with masses, but promotes a 1:1 approach that yields a one-to-many upside through the empowerment of influential social beacons.

The Conversation Prism represents that opportunity to proactively survey the landscape to pinpoint relevant dialogue, prioritize participation strategies, and create an engagement hierarchy and org chart.

V2.0 introduces a workflow rotation of concentric circles that assist in the establishment of value-added engagement cadence.

Level One, The Hub:

As a communications or service professional, you’ll find yourself at the center of the prism - whether you’re observing, listening or participating.

Halo 1:

The next layer of circles is supported by the activity of learning and organizing engagement strategies…

1. Observation – Discovering the communities that are actively discussing your brand

2. Listening – Hearing the people and the underlying sentiment in order to accurately craft response and participation programs, by community.

3. Identification – Recognizing and acknowledging the beacons to potentially enlist as brand ambassadors as well as the consumer who simply needs your response.

4. Internalization – Not every bit of feedback will be beneficial to your organization, but you will recognize patterns or spots of brilliance that can improve existing products and services over time.

5. Prioritization – Assess and structure where and how your team should focus.

6. Routing - Delegate by topic and expertise.

Halo 2:

Social Media represents the intersection of all public facing departments and requires that each infrastructure employ a socialized series of guidelines and response strategies. Inward focus now must include outward contribution. Ideally, each organization will appoint a community manager to listen and also assign and manage the responses of each department. Over time, this process will seamlessly integrate within the company’s CRM infrastructure, creating a new class of Social CRM or sCRM.

Conversations should always map to specific authorities within an organization to provide a competent and helpful response.

1. Customer or Product Support

2. Product and Sales

3. Marketing/PR

4. Community

5. Corporate Communications

6. Crisis

7. Support

Halo 3:

The outer ring completes the image of conversational workflow, but not the cycle. The process is powered by the continual rotation of listening, responding, and learning online and in the real world.

1. Ongoing Feedback and Insight – This is a necessary ingredient in more effectively building a socially aware and trusted brand. We must learn and demonstrate growth based on the feedback we receive. We must also continually share knowledge, provide resources, and communicate vision to earn trust, authority, and respect.

2. Participation – It’s been said that participation is the new marketing. Perhaps it’s better said that participation is the new focus group and mechanism for embracing humility to genuinely humanize your story. It’s how we learn and improve.

3. Online – Effectively building online relationships increase brand visibility and strengthen brand value within respective Social Networks. Embracing and empowering the community carries our brand personality across social graphs.

4. Real World – The true metric for relationships is how well they carry from the Web to the real world. It’s not about reaching customers using the latest shiny new object, it’s about reaching customers where they go to discover and share information and building relationships that have meaning and worth online and offline.

Creating a Social Map

As conversations are increasingly distributed, everything begins with listening and observing. Doing so will help you identify exactly where relevant discussions are taking place, as well as their scale and frequency. This dialog can be charted into a targeted social map that’s unique to your brand. In the example below, I created a Social Map using MindJet to represent the communities where (if I were a brand) either need to or currently contribute based on my initial research.

This map is compelling as it demonstrates the scope of missed opportunities to the team and also decision makers. Consider running an audit and tracking the results in an accompanying document that measures and presents the rate of occurrence, whether each instance required a response, and if so, by whom, and also the potential reach of each dialog by quantifying the network of friends and friends of friends (FoFs) in order to establish priority, authority, response strategies, and urgency.

While we can’t control how our messages are internalized, we can surely shape perception at the point of discourse.

Remember, it’s what you say about you, what they hear, how they share that story, and how you weave that insight into future conversations.

The Conversation Prism is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

In the social economy, relationships are the new currency and in Socialized Media, you will earn the relationships you deserve, in the individual communities where stakeholders and influencer assemble.
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The Conversation Prism: The Language of Human Connections is International
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Connect with me on:
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by Brian Solis via PR 2.0

I almost can’t believe that this day is finally here…

Deirdre Breakenridge and I proudly announce the availability of our new book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR.”

The book is in stock at Amazon, the Amazon Kindle store, Barnes & Noble, Safari, and bookstores everywhere.

Deirdre and I spent a good part of the last year pouring our heart, soul, and real world successes and failures into this book, and we only hope that it will help you excel in whatever role you choose to pursue.

This book is written for the those facing the new intersection of all that is Public Relations including PR, media and analyst relations, customer service, product development, social media, brand and community managers, executive management, HR, journalists, bloggers, marketing, advertising, students, teachers, content publishers, and everyone in between.

Book Summary:

PR, as we know it, is a dying practice having evolved away from the public and instead concentrating its energy on broadcasting disconnected messages to “media and analysts.”

What we’ve learned and what we know are quickly fading into irrelevance and obscurity. Reporters and analysts are now sharing the stage with a new generation of influencers. In addition to a still relevant process of media relations, we now need to expand our scope of participation and outreach by also identifying, understanding, and engaging the everyday people who have plugged-in to a powerful and democratized online platform for creating and distributing information, insight, and opinions – effectively gaining authority in the process.

The very people we had always wished to reach through traditional channels are now the very people we need to convince and inspire directly in order to remain part of industry-defining and market making conversations. This is a new era of influence and in order to participate, we have to rewire our DNA to stop marketing “at” audiences in order to genuinely and intelligently humanize our story to connect with real people and the online communities they inhabit.

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is a critical and mandatory process to shine in today’s social economy. It will help businesses forge meaningful relationships with those who will bridge specific benefits to distinct groups of consumers in order to cultivate a loyal, vocal, and hyper-connected community of customers and influencers.

I sincerely hope that this book helps you…

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Bonus: If you happen to live near San Mateo or Palo Alto, please visit Barnes & Noble or Borders for a pleasant surprise.

Originally published on Tuesday, August 05, 2008 @BrianSolis’s PR2.0 Blog

Last year, Robert Scoble and Darren Barefoot debuted the Social Media Starfish to visualize and document the rapidly evolving landscape for social tools, services, and networks.

If you work in marketing, public relations, advertising, customer service, product development, or any discipline that’s motivated, shaped, and directed by customers, peers, stakeholders and influencers, monitoring and in some cases, participating in online conversations is critical in competing for the future.

Over the last month, I worked with Jesse Thomas of JESS3, to create a new graphic that helps chart online conversations between the people that populate communities as well as the networks that connect the Social Web. The Conversation Prism is free to use and share. It’s our contribution to a new era of media education and literacy.

The Conversation Prism

The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

If a conversation takes place online and you’re not there to hear or see it, did it actually happen?

Indeed. Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence your business and brand.

As a communications or service professional, you’ll find yourself at the center of the prism - whether you’re observing, listening or participating. This visual map is the ideal complement to The Essential Guide to Social Media and the Social Media Manifesto, which will help you better understand how to listen and in turn, participate transparently, sincerely, and effectively.

As conversations are increasingly distributed, everything begins with listening and observing. Doing so, will help you identify exactly where relevant discussions are taking place, as well as their scale and frequency. This dialog can be charted into a targeted social map that’s unique to your brand. In the example below, I created a Social Map using MindJet to represent the communities where I either need to or currently contribute based on my initial research.

Perhaps most importantly, the process of listening and observing will reveal the cultures of the very communities you may wish to engage.

Remember, participating in Social Media is more meaningful when you have a deeper understanding of anthropology and sociology and not just the social tools that facilitate interaction. This is about creating and cultivating relationships with people, online and in the real world, and these relationships are defined by mutual value and benefits.

In the social economy, relationships are the new currency.

Enjoy the Conversation Prism and please let me know how you’d like to see it evolve.

Please also see The Social Media Ecosystem by Deb Schultz, which debuted in November 2007.

For more on the subject, please also read:

- Comcast, Dell and The Socialization of Service
- New Communication Theory and the New Roles for the New World of Marketing
- The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
- The Art of Conversation - It’s About Listening Not Marketing
- Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?
- Cultural Voyeurism and Social Media
- Free ebook: Customer Service, The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media
- Distributed Conversations and Fragmented Attention