,

Chapter 20

The Human Network

Discovering the new influencers through network and link analysis1 allows us to see the very people who define our markets. While network analysis enables us to uncover local patterns within networks, link analysis extends these observations to determine the associations between objects. Ultimately, what we should start to see and feel is something truly more profound than any one social network. We now begin to see the genesis of a human network, a term that I have sprinkled throughout this book. The human network is representative of the connections that link us to one another across multiple social networks. This is the true social network, one without boundaries or limitations for collaboration and communication. The human network is also how Cisco Systems defines the intersection where technology meets humanity.2

Technology is facilitating the social effect and it is most certainly connecting us in ways that truly make the world a much smaller place, one in which we can participate in its definition and evolution—and also define our place within it.

BREATHING LIFE INTO THE HUMAN NETWORK

As individuals, our human network comprises both professional and personal connections and they differ from each other on the basis of shared interests as well as established relations.

The human network also illustrates the map of individuals with whom we can benefit from connecting. As a result of our research and observation, we can identify and discern tribes, tribal leaders, and specific individuals who can connect us with those individuals who can help us learn and motivate. We also garner perspective and empathy in the process. We also recognize various patterns of connectivity, influence, and hierarchy. These connections and rankings are different within each network and also in the context that governs our study. For example, if a communications or public relations group commissioned the examination, the resulting network will contrast with the outcome of reviews conducted by customer service or human resources. Therefore, the human network will vary on the basis of the nature of the dialogue.

I have studied mapping and influence in much of my work over the years. Analyzing contextual relationships in online media from blogs to social networks to traditional media properties dictates strategies and programming. In one such series, I observed how individuals establish conversational networks. For example, on Twitter, if I were to publish a tweet on the subject of green technology, the responses I'd receive would differ from those who may feel compelled to retort, should I publish an update concerning health care. As reviewed earlier, those responses would also differ based on time and the opening of the attention aperture. In Twitter, I employed two services (which are free) to help analyze this activity. First, I would monitor the Twitter stream of a particular individual based on a theme. I would then run the tests again as that theme changed, usually a few weeks later. Using Twitter-Friends3 and Gravity, I could visually map the conversational network related to themes for both inbound and outbound activity, thus establishing a snapshot of influence and reach. Figure 20.1 shows a graphic of outbound conversations, and Figure 20.2 depicts inbound messages.

The inbound network represents the individuals who respond to us publicly, and the outbound network is representative of those to whom we reply. Removing ourselves from this picture and inserting an already recognized influencer, we can use these tools to establish inbound and outbound conversational networks, based on the interaction over a period of time. We can then assess the caliber of those responding to determine weight and authority for possible inclusion in our resulting influencer map.

In the process of analyzing conversational networks, I realized that I could also connect individuals across multiple networks and remove the barriers between them. For the most part, I did so manually, to ensure that my results were based on first-hand analysis and the qualification of individuals on the basis of preestablished authority, their published works, and the conversational and contextual networks they forged as a result.

THE HUMAN NETWORK: ALIVE AND CLICKING!

As a natural extension of work I was already performing at Cisco Systems, I was tasked with identifying digital and traditional influencers on behalf of the corporate communications team and based on the company's priority business units. It provided me an opportunity to further study influence, linking behavior, as well as where and how these connections were forged and ranked. While this is part of influencer research in general, it should not go unsaid that no databases or preexisting lists were used in this process. We let influence stand on its own merits. If it wasn't discoverable, it wasn't influential.

Using the methodologies promoted by the Conversation Prism and the Conversation Index and also incorporating the systems for recognizing conversational networks, we pinpointed voices of authority, by subject, and analyzed how they connected to each other through their professional activity and interaction. In the process, we were able to reveal the human network. It was representative of blogs, social networks, forums, and micronetworks, as well as corresponding inner networks that showcased tighter, yet distributed pockets of influence and collaboration.

We essentially applied the principles associated with network theory and envisioned through graph theory to humanize the landscape of influence.

Just for a bit of background, network theory,4 as we applied it, represents the study of graphs that serve as a representation of relationships that are symmetrical, those symbolic of similar parts facing each other or arrayed around an axis.

To bring this human network to life, I turned to Pete Warden, creator of Mailana,5 a social network analysis system. Warden was instrumental in the completion of this groundbreaking project, as he adapted his visual networking platform to integrate our research data into a visual and interactive map of influencers that spanned across networks and mediums, organized by business units and the manual assembly of established relationships (see Figure 20.3).

The human network embodies social network analysis, the mapping of relationships with social networks, network theory, link analysis, and graph theory, all fused into one hyperconnected influencer network. Not only does this service provide a visual representation of relationships, it brings them to life. Contacts are clickable and the user can learn more about the individuals and their work. As each icon is clicked, it illuminates the connections that form distinct inner networks within the greater relevant net.

The mission of displaying the influencers and how they connect to each other was served. However, I continue to analyze network topology to learn more about centrality and the relative importance of nodes, edges, and hubs within each human network to better understand the influence of influence.

To further explore the behavior of hubs, nodes, hosts, intersections, connections, and distribution points, I contacted Stan Magniant, who at the time worked at Linkfluence.net, a relationship mapping service based in Washington, D.C., specializing in mapping, monitoring, and measuring trends and opinions on the Social Web.

Magniant and team assembled a heat map based on its interpretation of graph theory to create a network topology that revealed the inbound and outbound link behavior and also the corresponding level of influence based on the quantity of nodes pointing back to distribution points or hubs. After feeding data into the Linkfluence system, both a network topology and hierarchy were immediately apparent and, like the Mailana map, this too was alive and clicking (see Figure 20.4).

Each node revealed inbound and outbound links and the interconnecting relationships and behavior they maintained. Influence and reach were suddenly evident and ready for exploration. We could view which outlets consistently received the bulk of inbound links based on particular topics, while those linking back to primary sources. Linkfluence revealed a hierarchical network structure that distinguished levels of influence and the corresponding networks of each.

Cisco's human network and its discernible structure introduced a new landscape of influencers and paths of influence to individual business units. These graphs were not only visualized, they were reinforced by data. The data would later prove crucial in justifying the work and findings, as decision makers require conclusive evidence and logical strategies to shift resources and attention in new directions.

VISUALIZING SOCIAL ORDER

Before we tackle the process of planning, I'd like to open a window onto the online behavior already observed and documented in social media to spark contemplation and creativity.

In social networks and online communities, the basis for cohesion, in its most simple interpretation, appears to be based on contextual exchanges and the viability of a mutually satisfactory reward system. We follow and connect with people we know, as well as those whom we admire, respect, and from whom we learn. We may also link to those we think will benefit from knowing us, and, in the process, take advantage of the networks they create for personal or professional gain. Based on perpetual interests and those that temporarily distract us, our networks will shift, expand, contract, and morph, based on the individuals we align with at any given moment. Applying social order to social networks, no matter which school of thought you subscribe to, reveals the structure and hierarchy, as well as the governing principles and culture. It is the social economy. And, it is the hierarchy that conveys the balance of power and the contributing roles of each defining class.

This recognition will allow you to prioritize focus and engagement. Not all friends, followers, and fans are created equally.

SOCIAL TECHNOGRAPHICS

Whereas much of the previous discussion has focused on participation behavior within specific social networks, Forrester Research created Social Technographics—a system for analyzing and classifying consumer participation in social technologies. For the past three years, Forrester documented this analysis in visual form, creating the Social Technographics Ladder to demonstrate and categorize individual activity across the Social Web.6 Social Technographics Profiles places people who are online into overlapping groups on the basis of their level of participation.

The groups are segmented as follows:

Creators

• Publish a blog.
• Create and publish Web pages, video, audio, music.
• Write and publish articles or blog posts.

Critics

• Post ratings or reviews of products or services.
• Comment on the blogs of others.
• Contribute to online forums.
• Write or edit articles and entries in wikis.

Collectors

• Use RSS feeds.
• Vote for content online.
• Add tags to content.

Joiners

• Maintain profiles on social networks.
• Visit social networks.

Spectators

• Read blogs.
• Listen to podcasts.
• Watch videos.
• Read online forums.
• Read customer ratings and reviews.

Inactives

• None of these.

Along with the introduction of its most recent Technographics Ladder, Forrester published “The Broad Reach of Social Technologies,”7 a report that found that more than four in five online adults in the United States now participate socially . The role of spectator, at the very least, is now practically universal and therefore should serve as the final straw for those executives who withheld attention, time, and resources from organizing and orchestrating a strategic social effort.

If social media were a scale or spectrum, we could simply divide it by elite content producers and consumers, contributing producers and consumers, consumers, and inactives. What's important to understand when analyzing the Social Technographics Ladder is to establish where on the ladder your consumers and audiences are placed and to what extent. As such, your content, programming, and approach require a highly tailored and customized focus, voice, intent, and infrastructure that match and appeal to individuals and the groups they represent, where, how, and when they consume and in turn respond.

To assist in this process, Forrester Research released an online Consumer Profile Tool that provides brands with Social Technographics, social profile information based on age group, country, and gender. Based on Forrester's survey data, you can view how participation varies globally among different groups of consumers.

TENETS OF COMMUNITY BUILDING

Ultimately, data is only as valuable as its incorporation into corresponding measures. This book is rich in research, information, theory, and experience and is intended to empower you to find your own answers and spark new ones. It is how the information in the book is applied that determines relevance in your world. The data that you gather is specifically relevant to your reality and what you discover, learn, and observe determines your next steps.

Applying Harold Lasswell's communication theory, which was originally introduced in 1949, we are to determine “who says what to whom in what channel with what effect.”8 As I introduced in my last book (Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, coauthored with Deirdre Breakenridge), in the Social Web we must analyze “Who says what, in which channel, to what effect; then ascertain who hears what, shares what, with what intent, where, to what effect.”9 This acknowledges that communication now continues after the initial introduction or encounter.

It is the connection between intelligence, intent, behavior, and people that explicitly and implicitly defines our community— ultimately determining our success. And it is the collaborations between business units in the social realm that ensure cohesion, balance, brand presence, perception, and resonance.

Therefore, our job is to learn. The insights we garner will reveal specifically how and where to engage. At that point, everything boils down to community cultivation.

The world of business is accustomed to using acronyms and letters of the alphabet in helping its leaders become proficient in particular areas of study.

For example, in communications, we're taught how to employ “The Seven Cs,” which include:10

Moving along the alphabet, we're also presented with the Four Ps of Marketing, also known the marketing mix, which was originally introduced by Harvard professor Jerome McCarthy and Phil Kotler in the early 1960s.11

The Four Ps are:

In my work, I always approach the Four Ps with a fifth P. By recognizing the role of people in the marketing mix, it changes everything.

In 1997, Bob Lauterborn, professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina and co-author of The New Marketing Paradigm: Integrated Marketing Communications,12 adapted the Four Ps and focused on the customer instead of on the product. His Four Cs of Service take into account that consumers are growing in influence and that companies need to determine how to send the right message at the right time in the right way to the right person. Instead of building and pushing products—for example, “build it and they will come”—the Four Cs champion the consumer's individual wants and needs.13

Attributes of the Four Cs of Service include:

In 2004, Professor Koichi Shimizu of the Josai University Graduate School of Business Administration adapted Lauterborn's Four Cs into a framework for recognizing and leveraging the customer's role in business.14 Shimizu introduced the world to the 7Cs Compass Model, which portrays customers as encircling companies and companies at the center of marketing activities, and also includes the role of consumers in addition to customers.

The 7Cs Compass Model includes:

The compass points in the model represent:

• N=needs: Analysis of customer needs—unsubstantiated opinions—some of which cannot be converted into concrete commodities.
• W=wants: The substantiated needs to expect commodities.
• S=security: The safety of commodities and production processes and the post-sale warranty.
• E=education: A consumer's right to know information about the commodities.

The compass points are balanced by navigational bearings that help businesses understand associated circumstances:

• National and international: Related to politics and law. I would add that consumer wants and needs and corresponding commodity relevance apply to the cultures in unique national and international circumstances.
• Weather: Weather and natural environments are still uncontrollable and worth proactive consideration. I suggest that weather can also represent socioeconomic environments and their supporting ecosystems and habitats (for example, individual social networks versus real-world societies).
• Social and cultural circumstances: Representative of the social system and problems of a nation. The following seven human cultural factors need to be included in marketing analyses:

  1. Basic values and attitudes

  2. Motivation

  3. Learning capacity and achievement orientation

  4. Technical know-how

  5. Social discipline

  6. Sense of responsibility for the common good and the community

  7. Capacity for flexible adaptation to a changing environment.

• Economic circumstances: Related to national circumstances, but also including factors such as energy, resources, international income and expense, financial circumstances and economic growth, and so forth.

As interactive media earns prominence in today's society, the laws of marketing, customer service, product development, and ultimately, community cultivation recognized the roles of customers, consumers, influencers, peers, and competitors, among many other factors. Social media is the great equalizer and as such, we look again to the alphabet to help build a socially aware framework to serve as creative inspiration for finding people and establishing the relationships that will serve as the foundation for community building.

As in all forms of marketing and communications, principles and methodologies will continue to evolve. In the past several years alone, many social media pioneers have shared their views for documenting the ethos, governances, and ethics that serve as the undercurrent for community cultivation.

Chris Heuer, the founder of Social Media Club and new media innovator, discusses the Four Cs for a social framework:15

• Context: How we frame our stories.
• Communications: The practice of sharing our story as well as listening, responding, and growing.
• Collaboration: Working together to make things better and more efficient and effective.
• Connections: The relationships we forge and maintain.

Heuer binds together the Cs through a framework of values:

• Be human
• Be aware
• Be honest
• Be respectful
• Be a participant
• Be open
• Be courageous

In November 2008, social maven David Armano introduced his version of the Four Cs of Community:16

• Content: Quality content is ideal for attracting the audience necessary to build community.
• Context: Understanding how to meet people where they are; creating the right experience at the right time.
• Connectivity: Designing experiences to support microinteractions.
• Continuity: Providing an ongoing, valuable, and consistent user experience.

In July 2009, Gaurav Mishra, CEO of social media research and strategy company 20:20 WebTech, contributed a guest post to Beth Kanter's blog in which he proposed a 4 Cs Social Media Framework:

• Content: Social media transforms consumers into creators
• Collaboration: The facilitation and aggregation of individual actions into meaningful collective results through conversation, co-creation, and collective action
• Community: Social media enables sustained collaboration around shared ideas over time and across space
• Collective intelligence: The Social Web empowers us to aggregate individual actions and also run sophisticated algorithms to extract meaning

In his post, Mishra captured a core quality of community development that should not go overlooked, which also reinforces our initial discussions on social objects: “People don't build relationships with each other in a vacuum. A vibrant community is built around a social object that is meaningful for its members. The social object can be a person, a place, a thing or an idea.”

One can conjure any order of Cs or Ps to further the dialogue. I've assembled these examples and theories for you because each represent intrinsic values that will improve our work in identifying individuals and groups and also the methods necessary to establish and foster flourishing and interactive communities. However, there are some gaps—some terminology was either inferred or absent, yet the concepts remain vital to growing a vibrant and dynamic community. Thus, I've assembled what I refer to as C3.

C3: The Code of Community Cultivation

• Conversation: Successful communities thrive on interaction.
• Core values: Philosophies and principles that guide our conduct and the relationships we forge.
• Culture: The behavior characteristics of the community we define and shape.
• Cause: Our conviction, our intent, our mission. … Without cause, we lose motivation and a supporting reward structure.
• Credit: Recognition, paying it forward, and attention are the attributes of empowerment and thus a stronger community.
• Coalition: Affinity and associations require liking, sympathy, commonalities, and compelling characteristics that compel someone to align with other people or with something else.
• Conversion: Change is paramount. The ability to shift someone from one state or place to another is powerful, transformative, and part of any ongoing community program.
• Commitment: Without resolve, passion, or drive we cannot expect to inspire others to join or remain part of our communities. We are the catalysts. We are contagious. We must establish and convey our conviction to ensure loyalty and camaraderie.
• Compromise: To grow and evolve, we must adapt, which requires us to listen and feel the feedback from our community. This is how we learn and innovate.
• Champion: Without champions, the ability to scale growth becomes difficult, if not impossible. We must instill enthusiasm and empower champions to help us extend our reach.
• Compassion: Empathy and sympathy are instrumental attributes for feeling the state, experience, and emotions of our peers and influencers for us to better understand the people we are trying to reach.
• Confidence: To convey expertise, insight, and passion authoritatively, confidence is the key to believability.
• Also includes the Cs from the previously mentioned examples: Content, Community, Continuity, Collaboration, Connectivity, Collective Intelligence, Context, Communication, Customer, and Consumer.

And of course, as in any business, the most important Cs to consider in any new media program include the C-Suite:

• CEO: Chief Executive Officer
• COO: Chief Operating Officer
• CMO: Chief Marketing Officer
• CTO: Chief Technology Officer
• CIO: Chief Information Officer
• CFO: Chief Financial Officer
• CSO: Chief Security, Strategy, or Social Officer
• And all other CxOs17

The underlying principle of any relationship-based program is that communities tend to reward selflessness, even if we are inconspicuously accomplishing our goals in the process of growing our networks and corresponding communities. Give your audience something to believe in.

NOTES

1. “Network theory,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_ theory.

2. “The Human Network,” Cisco.com, www.cisco.com/web/about/humannetwork/index.html.

3. Twitter-Friends, http://twitter-friends.com.

4. NetWiki, http://netwiki.amath.unc.edu.

5. Mailana, http://twitter.mailana.com.

6. Josh Bernoff, “Social Technology Growth Marches On in 2009, Led by Social Network Sites,” Groundswell, Forrester Blogs (August 25, 2009), http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2009/08/social-technology-growth-marches-on-in-2009-led-by-social-network-sites.html.

7. Sean Corcoran, “The Broad Reach of Social Technologies,” Forrester Research (August 25, 2009), www.forrester.com/Research/Document/ Excerpt/0,7211,55132,00.html.

8. Theodore Levitt, “Exploit the Product Life Cycle,” Harvard Business Review 43 (November–December, 1965), 81–94.

9. Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations (London: Pearson/Financial Times Press, 2009), 190.

10. James Stull and John W Baird, Business Communication: A Classroom Simulation (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1992).

11. William D. Perreault and E. Jerome McCarthy, Basic Marketing 14th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2003).

12. Don E. Schultz, Stanley Tannenbaum, and Robert F. Lauterborn, The New Marketing Paradigm: Integrated Marketing Communications (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996).

13. Roy McClean, “Marketing 101: 4 Cs versus the 4 Ps of Marketing,” FOCUS Marketing Intelligence, www.customfitfocus.com/marketing-1.htm.

14. “Professor Koichi Shimizu's 7 Cs Compass Model,” Josai University, www.josai.ac.jp/∼shimizu/essence/Professor%20Koichi%20Shimizu%27s%207Cs%20Compass%20Model.html.

15. Chris Heuer, “Social + Media: What's Needed Next,” Drupalcon Keynote (September 3, 2009), Paris.

16. David Armano, “The 4 Cs of Community,” Logic + Emotion (November 30, 2008), http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2008/11/the-4-cs-of-community.html.

17. “Corporate Title,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_ title.