Week 2: Empowering the Customer

Materials:

• Read “The Dawn of the Human Network”
• Read “How to Build Your Startup Without Building Code” (looking forward to this article.)
• Read “Why the Groundswell and Why Now?
• Listen to “Star Search” clip                    
• Read “The Internet Before Search Engines” 

I was able to complete my learning objectives for this week – and felt that both the Groundswell and Startup articles were quite compelling. Both made me think about my own situation and how best to apply the concepts contained in the articles. 

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/30/how-to-build-your-startup-without-learning-code/

This quick article by Tony Navarro on VentureBeat attempts to breakdown the barriers between having a web startup idea and actually building the idea.  The major hurdle for most people is actually creating the code.  Navarro recommends his non-coding audience simulate/prototype the idea, take advantage of the low-tech options for branding and marketing, and then try some Web 2.0 sites for fundraising.

I do have some programming skills, but that doesn't make the process a lot easier; in fact, as the founder of a startup, it may be detrimental to have the skills to personally build your idea.  Instead of focusing on the bigger picture of building a business and monetizing you may waste your time fighting bugs and implementing useless features.  Programming skills aren't completely transferable either.  Building desktop applications for enterprise customers won't prepare you for building a dynamic and user oriented website.

Regardless of programming skills, it may always make sense to outsource your code to someone with more free time.

"Why the Groundswell and Why Now?" in Groundswell, pp.3-15

I really enjoyed reading this article. Having been a longtime user of Digg and other user-driven sites, I have seen firsthand how a community can backlash at its “host” for perceived wrongs, etc. The article really made me think about how so many companies want to get on the social media bandwagon, and want to engage their communities… but I can't help but think about all of the companies that have gotten so much more than they asked for. Engaging users is dicey business. I’m sure it’s fantastic when it goes right, but when it goes wrong… it’s hard to control, as illustrated in the “Groundswell” article. What’s worse, when a company makes a mistake in their social media strategy, media tends to love covering it.

McDonalds created the Twitter hashtag  #mcdstories, with the intent of engaging their customers to tell great stories about McDonalds. Instead, the hashtag became widely used to lament horror stories from the restaurant, from wrong orders to surly employees to a full host of digestive complaints. So in essence, McDonalds ended up paying for terrible, and sometimes terribly funny, bad publicity. Making matters worse, the mistake was widely covered in the media.

American Apparel made a similar blunder, tweeting out to its users during Superstorm Sandy that in case they were “bored” during the storm, there would be a big sale in those states affected.  I’m sure their official social media strategy did not call for turning national disasters into advertising opportunities… but that’s what ended up happening. These are just two of the examples I remember of a social media strategy going horribly wrong – and they both illustrate how essential it is to have tight control over social media campaigns and consider all possible outcomes! The groundswell can be hard to gauge, and even harder to control once a mistake has been made.

History of Social Media Infographic: