Top Shelf Reading Picks:

Last week I reviewed Groundswell and highlighted some of its analytical tools for social media. However, much of it was geared to Fortune 500 companies with six-figure marketing budgets. That’s why it was nice to read it back-to-back with another book, We Are Smarter than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in your Business, by Barry Libert and Jon Spector [and thousands of contributors], which is helpful to the small business owner both in idea generation and execution. Its examples span large and small companies.

One thing I liked about the book is that it literally walks the talk, or maybe I should say “jogs the blogs.” It’s unique in that they take the “we” part seriously–the book was sourced from a crowd. People were openly invited to submit their ideas, which were vetted and incorporated into the book. The authors also created an interactive website to expand upon the ideas in the book.

Before I get into substance, the only bone I have to pick is that I’m a traditionalist when it comes to book layouts. For example, I’m not into Kindle: It’s just not the same as holding a book in your hands. Of course, I also said that about newspapers, and I now read those online. But the reason I bring this up is that I’m always wary of books with funky fonts and numerous “call outs” (sidebars scattered sporadically throughout the main text). They distract me, I end up jumping from section to section, and it’s a bit of an ADD experience for me. On the other hand, the pleasant surprise was that while the book was written by a “crowd,” the authors are to be commended, as the tone and voice are consistent throughout.

Now back to “crowdsourcing” or the proverbial “we” and a few of the highlights from We Are Smarter than Me:

Let your customers do the talking. We Are Smarter looks to Amazon and its product reviews as one of the beginnings of crowdsourcing. Who doesn’t read and rely on these? In fact, before we buy a toy, I have my son read them, and now he wants to write them, too. But think of what a shocking concept this was back in 2004–let the public review the products we sell? What if people slam them? Fast-forward four years, and I’m wary of buying from a site that doesn’t have product reviews. This might be why one of my all-time favorite websites is makeupalley.com.

I liked the example of Maki Kaji, who created Sudoku. He ran a puzzle magazine to which people submitted their ideas, and the editors chose among them. Sudoku first ran in 1984. Readers offered their modifications and corrections until it was perfected. However, as that was pre-internet, it didn’t become popular until 20 years later when it hit the London Times. Unfortunately, Kaji did not trademark Sudoku internationally. But in true social media fashion he says “We’re prolific because we do it for the love the games, not the money.”

Clearly, what’s the guy going to say … “oops?” But, I highlight that comment because it underscores a point that I think many people forget in their rush into social media: the need for passion.

Let your customers be your customer service team. This is something I hadn’t read elsewhere – not only “why” you should let your customers create a forum to discuss your products/services, but how to manage it and use it to your best advantage. Sure it saves you money. But, according to We Are Smarter, many customers like to be considered experts in their field and will feel more invested in your products. (It’s that passion thing again.) The book also give tips as to how to make sure your customers are giving sound advice, how to organize your forums, archive information, and so forth. Having your customers bond is not a bad thing. Doing it online for cheap is even better. If you ever doubt the importance of customer loyalty, see the H.O.G’s (Harley Owner’s Group) as a great pre-internet example.

Crowdsourcing still needs management. Chapter 7 was called “Make Everyone a C-We-O” but focuses on examples where social media projects found that they still needed to have a management structure in place. While We Are Smarter is optimistic that the crowd can replace most management functions, I’m still a skeptic. People are people and crowdsourcing is by the people and for the people, yet throughout history we have always had leaders – some were appointed (either by themselves or others), others were officially elected or they might have evolved naturally.

This brings me to the final chapter – “Lead from the Rear” which includes guidelines for running a business that involves crowdsourcing and really provides a good overview of how you need to change your company’s thinking to embrace the power of We.

1. Lead from the rear. “The company’s role is to provide direction and then stand back…. The company is not the star of the show, but the producer, working from behind the scenes to make it easy for all community members to get involved and stay involved.” Time to forget about command and control.
2. Know when to step in. They should probably have continued the producer metaphor here. Sometimes the director/actors, etc. get carried away, fight or go in the wrong direction. That’s when a producer needs to step in. Same with an online community.
3. Form a club, a real community of like-minded people. Start with your satisfied customers who already have a vested interest, then try to bring in bright people likely to add value to the conversation.
4. You can’t hide, so don’t even try. In today’s society, “companies need to erase the word confidential from their mental hard drives.” In other words if you screw up, fess up. Company fixers (i.e., George Clooney a/k/a Michael Clayton) don’t stand a chance against the internet.
5. Forget about perfection. When crowdsourcing, it’s more real when things are not “polished” to perfection – leave the photoshopping/wordsmithing to one-way dialogues like magazines.
6. Stir things up. Online crowdsourcing is like an open debate – that’s what elicits involvement and passion.
7. Say thank you. Reward member participation by recognition and incentives. Remember, they don’t have to do this for you!
8. This is not a one-night stand. Communities take time to develop. The benefit is that gives you time to tweak things.

Top Shelf Bottom Line: We Are Smarter Than Me is a good addition to the recent spate of books about social media. I especially recommend it for anyone looking to involve their customers in their business, rather than just target them. It’s chock full of big ideas that can even be implemented on a small business budget.

When I say the words, “We the people . . ., in order to form a more perfect union . . .,” I tend to do so in the sing-songy way that Schoolhouse Rock did, without much thought to the power of “We.” However, this week I’m reviewing two books that focus specifically on the power of “We,” and it’s interesting to see that a 200-year-old concept–”We” is better than “Me”–still rings true.

While both books deal with social media, it was nice to read the two books back to back. First, I’m reviewing Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. While it had some great insights and tools (more on that below), I was sometimes put off because it’s focused on the Forrester Research audience–Fortune 500 companies. Sure, I could glean some great analytical tidbits, but I’m really not about to invest $80,000 or even $200,000 to deal with social media on behalf of my company.

Fortunately, I also received a copy of We are Smarter than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business by Barry Libert and Jon Spector (and thousands of contributors). While it covered similar ground, the examples and ideas were sometimes more applicable (and adaptable) to small businesses. More on that later this week.

Groundswell:

Like Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirkey, Groundswell starts out with a series of powerful example of how people are influencing the media by using tools such as Digg.com, Google Earth and YouTube. My favorite bit is when Li and Bernoff describe Barbra Streisand’s attempts to remove a photo of her house from the internet as a bit like trying to get “pee out of a pool.” Thanks to Groundswell, I’ll be thinking of Barbra when I brave the town pool this weekend.

Other interesting points:

Focus on what you want to accomplish first, and then determine the technology.  The authors provide a post test:

1. People: What are your customers ready for?
2. Objectives: What are your goals?
3. Strategy: How do you want relationships with your customers to change?
4. Technology: What applications should you build?

I wish I had had this test back in 2005, when we built an online member profile database for the Downtown Women’s Club where members could update their profiles themselves, make them searchable on Google, add links to their websites and recommend other members. Well, we built it, and only a few came. I wasn’t sure whether the rest were lost in some cornfields looking for a ballpark, so I quickly backtracked and ran a survey of our members (working women, mostly Gen X and boomers).

What did I find? That they had minimal or little interest in being found on the internet, let alone participating in it. Doh! I ended up writing The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking to educate them as to why they should care. Two years later, we’re finally seeing more of this group using our online networking and marketing platforms.

What I should have done is what Groundswell suggests: Do the survey first to figure out how much of my audience is even interested in being online. Groundswell breaks down your potential audiences into six categories, and you can use the Groundswell Profile Tool to find out how yours stacks up.

1. Creators: Bloggers, online consumers, podcasters, video uploaders.
2. Critics: People who react to online content, posting comments and rating or reviewing products.
3. Collectors: Digg’ers, i.e., people who use social bookmarks such as del.icio.us to “collect” websites.
4. Joiners: MySpace, Facebook and Twitter users
5. Spectators: people who read/watch what others post, but don’t comment.
6. Inactives: Nonparticipants online.

According to the tool, I’m still dealing with a customer base that is not as interested as other groups in “joining” and doing creative things on the internet. (Women in the 35-and-above ranges fall below the average in all categories except “inactives.”) This duplicates what I found in our 2006 survey.

Nevertheless, doing things backward may not have been the worst thing in my case. If I had done the survey first,  would I have gone ahead and built an online networking/marketing platform? Probably not. So in that case, ignorance was a bit of a good thing. However, by surveying my group after the fact, it did help me make a decision to “dumb down” our offerings and take out a lot of the bells and whistles.

While I may have failed the post test, I actually did OK with another one of Groundswell’s tests, which is recommended for evaluating a new technology.

1. Does it enable people to connect with each other in new ways?
2. Is it effortless to sign up for?
3. Does it shift power from institutions to people?
4. Does the community generate enough content to sustain itself?
5. Is it an open platform that invites partnerships?

Other good quotes/concepts:

“You cannot ignore this trend. You cannot sit this one out. Unless you are retiring in the next six months, it’s too late to quit and let somebody else handle it. The groundswell trend is unstoppable, and your customers are there.” Hey ladies . . . are you listening to this?

“Your brand is what your customers say it is.”

“Whatever department takes charge of listening to the groundswell–whether it’s research or marketing–will soon become far more central to how decisions are made.”

The book is full of examples of how large companies are getting input from clients through blogs that they wouldn’t get through a survey. And how viral marketing online can be a fraction of the cost of traditional media, yet still have the same impact.

With regard to pursuing a social media strategy, here’s another good guideline from the book:

1. Start small.
2. Educate your executives. You still need to explain to people that it’s not just kids writing about their day-to-day lives.
3. Get the right people to run your strategy. I liked this because the person you want blogging is the one with the passion, not necessarily the title.
4. Get your agency and technology partners in sync. If they don’t get the groundswell, it may be time to change.
5. Plan for next steps and long term.

The Top Shelf Bottom Line: Here’s a test. Ask your colleagues, business partners, advisory board, web team, ad agency and employees whether they’ve blogged, commented on blogs, posted pictures on Flickr, joined an online network or even written a review on Amazon. If they haven’t done any of that, buy them this book. For those of us who are already in this social media world, some of the tools can help you map out a strategy, so still worth reading, especially if you’re in the midst of writing the marketing portion of your business plan.

Next: We are Smarter than Me.

Top Shelf Quick Pick. How’d You Score that Gig: A Guide to the Coolest Jobs and How to Get Them. As summer is almost upon us (and the piles of books being sent continues to multiply), I’m going to start a “quick pick” feature where I will be posting shorter reviews of books that cross my desk. First up is this nice little career guide by Alexandra Levit.

HYSTG is a career guide in the vein of Career Bliss: Secrets from 100 Women Who Love Their Work by Joanne Gordon and other books that help you match your personality and/or passions to the right type of job for you.

In the book, Levit divides people into seven categories:

1. Adventurer
2. Creator
3. Data Head
4. Entrepreneur
5. Investigator
6. Networker
7. Nurturer

Which one are you? Take her quiz to find out. I admit, I took the quiz and wasn’t sure the questions were on point. However, when I got my results, they indicated that I was mostly an entrepreneur with data head and networker tendencies. Considering I’m a marketing data wonk who has her own business promoting networking, I’d say the test was downright accurate.

The rest of the book has a separate section for each category. Within each section it outlines eight “potential” careers that are suited to your passions/interests and what each job entails. While I already have/had a few of the jobs under entrepreneur (blogger/internet-based business owner) Some of the more interesting ones under my three top categories (entrepreneur, data head and networker) included meteorologist, talent agent and lobbyist. I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time I want to change careers.

Worth picking up for anyone who feels like her career isn’t matching up with her current personality/interests or wants to see if she’s cut out to be an entrepreneur. For more from Alexandra Levit, click here to listen to her recent guest spot on my internet radio show, Smash the Ladder with Anita & Diane.