Over here in Australia we’re not quite as progressive or savvy as many of our US and European counterparts. We’re not pitchfork wielding hicks (despite what the British say), yet we tend to lag a few years behind global best practice. Subsequently, when it comes to social media, many businesses are just beginning to wake up to the potential of the social web. And the rest are simply scratching their heads asking… ‘social what the…?’. As such, when broaching the topic of social media with clients, I’ve often found myself needing to give a quick explanation of the social web, and the impact it’s having on businesses (and the web in general). As a lover of analogies, I’ve developed one specifically to explain the social web to our less savvy clients. And it goes a little like this…
The social web is just like our universe
I find there is a natural symmetry in relating the social web to our own universe. Both are expansive, monumental in size, constantly evolving & largely unexplored. And in the bigger picture, our home (whether it be earth or the corporate home page) is just a minuscule component of a much larger entity…
The composition of the social web mirrors that of our solar system. I ask clients to picture their web site as earth. Beyond the walls & boundaries of their own world, millions upon millions of destinations exist. Some of these destinations are enormous. If the client’s web site is earth, Facebook and Digg are indeed the Jupiter and Saturn of the social web. But like of our own universe, the majority of entities are small. The millions of blogs, forums, chat rooms and niche communities within the social web replicate the stars, moons, asteroids & comets of our universe. And with millions of communities comes millions of opportunities for organisations to enter the social web frontier…
Exploration begins with research
There was a time when scientists believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Many businesses currently view the web in a similar manner. They believe that their corporate web site is the centre of the universe. It’s not. Social technologies have forever modified the way in which people publish and consume content on the web. Product reviews, comparison shopping, consumer forums and industry blogs enable customers to gather information from a plethora of sources outside of the corporate web site. Companies no longer have total control over brand related digital communications. And while this concept is truly alien to many old school marketers, it creates a myriad of opportunities for organisations to connect with customers, learn about their needs, forge deeper relationships and build customer advocacy. But only for companies that are willing to venture into the unknown…
Astronomers never limited their research to the earth’s own atmosphere. New telescopic technologies facilitated the exploration of deep space. Companies now need to follow the astronomers’ lead. Sure… they may not be ready to launch a mission to Mars any time soon. But if they don’t develop their own social media telescopes, they’ll never be in a position to leverage the social web in the future.
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Hey, I can’t believe you’ve had such an awesome blog all this time and I never knew about it until now!
That’s a really apt way of describing social web. It’s always good to relate a new concept back to one people are familiar with. Nice work
Ditto what Chris said but I’m a long-time reader. I think if I “borrow” your brilliant explanation, people might not look at me as if I’d just landed from Mars. Would you mind?
Hi James,
I think you analogy is great… but let me say that here in the center of Europe, some companies still believe that earth is Flat ;-)… they are not the majority, and we are seeing movements towards the right direction… but still a lot of work to do.
One of my activities is being active in bridging digital divide at Iwith.org foundation, but I’m starting to think that the gap between the Internet 1.0 users and the social media users is becoming more harmful than the first one…
If you are not in internet, you don’t miss it,.. perhaps your live is complex enough, and there are really nice things out there to do other than procrastinating on internet… but If you are “connected” but you doesn’t know that is the earth that revolve the Sun, and the Sun is moving element and so…
I like your analogy!
@ Chris – Hey cuz. Good to see you over here. I’ve been working away at this quietly for a while. I see you’ve got a blog yourself set up as well. We’ll have to swap notes some time.
@ Vickie – Thanks for tuning in to my ramblings
Naturally, any long time reader is entitled to swipe my ideas and use them as their own. I do it all the time…
@ Jobuda – Glad you enjoyed the analogy. Hope you have some success in bridging the digital divide. Don’t worry… the rest of the world will catch up one day. Except that once they acquaint themselves with web 2.0, we’ll be web 4.0