This week, my DishyMix guest blogger is Joseph Carrabis, CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution. Joseph is a Senior Research Fellow and Advisory Board Member of the Society for New Communications Research and Director, Predictive Analytics and Senior Fellow at the Center for Semantic Excellence as well as a member of Scientists Without Borders.

This is part 1 of a 3 part series of responses to a question from Ted Zahn, Creative Director at Real Branding about the quality of our relationships in the social media space. If you search on “Carrabis” on my blog you will find myriad posts from Joseph about social media and human behavior. Joseph has been entertaining questions from DishyMix listeners for months and they are fascinating. Here’s the latest:

Ted Zahn, Creative Director, Real Branding

Ted wrote “…This is pretty high-level stuff, but Joseph is a pretty high-level guy…”

Joseph says, “this is no doubt a comment about my love of kite flying. I just purchased 1,000 ft of line for my MegaPowerSled kite (for reference, the thing in back is a drogue and is used to stabilize the main kite in high winds. I’m 6’ tall and can use the drogue as a sleeping bag if I tuck in a bit). Considering I usually reserve this kite for the RI coast, I’m wondering if the Coast Guard will be coming to call as there’s a chance I’ll be in their fly space.” “Also thanks for the images of Three Chimneys. S’e tha e gle t-iongantas! (Yes, it’s awesome!)”

Now, do I believe social networks will truly enhance the overall quality of our personal relationships?
Yes, definitely. Of course, my basis for this is that social networks have existed since we descended from the trees and started walking across the pampas and that without them we wouldn’t be sitting in front of computers, me responding and readers reading…hmm…not truly sure if that’s enhancement…
Will online social networks enhance the overall quality of our personal relationships? I’ll still go with a “Yes” and I’ll caveat that by recognizing that social networks are incredibly fluid and dynamic based on the psycho-social and psycho-cognitive distance between network members and ourselves. For example, I’ve heard something along the lines of “You can pick your friends and you can’t pick your family.” What’s being defined are two social networks, one genetically much closer than the other. But which one is psychologically closer?
How do we as individuals determine the values of social ties when traditional social interaction is limited? This is something I deal with quite a bit in Reading Virtual Minds (and I swear I’ll finish writing it this year).
The strongest social networks were traditionally based on being able to make physical contact because we only allowed those we trusted highly access to our selves, our “sacks of flesh”. This comes across in modern times with how different people, social groups, cultures, etc., define “personal space.” Asian cultures have a very different concept of personal space than do western cultures, continental European cultures than Anglo cultures, Aboriginal cultures from “modern” cultures. Any readers who want advanced understanding of personal space, go spend time with well trained boxers, traditionally trained martial artists (of any culture) or people with advanced hand-to-hand combat training. The usual question of “Where are you in my social network?” is subsumed by “Are you a friend or foe?” and studying what these people conceive as personal space is fascinating.
Are we closer to those we embrace in flesh bound arms in our living and bedrooms or to those we entwine in pseudo-human tendrils in our mutually defined ‘toon space? And is the work of mutual definition that creates a ‘toon space any psycho-cognitively or psycho-socially different than the work of mutually defining the layout and color schemes of our living and bedrooms?
Technology, regardless of how rapidly it advances and increases our ability to get things done or do new things, is still going to be bound by our biology and more exactly our neurology. Our internal wiring isn’t going to change overnight. Generationally maybe and even then only if there’s enough evolutionary gain in the new wiring and a large enough population in any given generation that knowingly or otherwise breeds for that gain. Heck, if the gain is obvious enough it will breed true regardless of people’s efforts otherwise.
Will social networks enhance our personal relationships? Yes, of course. And the same rules apply online as off; we’ll co-create and take part in social networks that enhance our personal relationships to the extent that we want those personal relationships to exist. This also plays into Alex Nesbitt’s question. How do you get people to take part in social media? Make it personal. Go through what I wrote and the final suggestions and what comes out are elements from the concept of personal space – how close are you willing to let others get to you, how close are you willing to get to others? That psycho-cognitive and psycho-social distance is determined by the amount of work you’re willing to put into developing those relationships.
Will social networks enhance our personal relationships? Only to the extent you want those personal relationships that are based on a given social network to exist.
Next part, “…or perhaps just the quantity of them?”

Can’t get enough of Joseph, listen to his DishyMix interview. Click below.

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”

Meet Joseph Carrabis, Chief Research Officer, author, inventor, musician, cultural linguist and genius. Susan talks to Joseph about being a cultural linguist, gender specific marketing discoveries, cultural anthropology and how humans, as social animals, are interacting with social networking.

This week, my DishyMix guest blogger is Joseph Carrabis, CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution. Joseph is a Senior Research Fellow and Advisory Board Member of the Society for New Communications Research and Director, Predictive Analytics and Senior Fellow at the Center for Semantic Excellence as well as a member of Scientists Without Borders.

This is part 3 of a 3 part series of responses to a question from Ted Zahn, Creative Director at Real Branding about the quality of our relationships in the social media space.

Ted Zahn, Creative Director, Real Branding

Hello again,
This is part 3 and the last part of my response to Ted Zahn’s question. Part 1 dealt with whether or not social networks will truly enhance the overall quality of our personal relationships, part 2 with “will social networks enhance just the quantity of our personal relationships rather than the quality of them?” and here we close with “is there a “digital effect” that is shifting the nature of our relationships to less personal, one-way broadcasts (email, status updates, photo galleries, “Where I’ve Traveled” widgets) at the expense of “genuine” communication. Is this just an inevitable trend of the digital age? Or are social networks actually a part of the solution?”
Again, an excellent question, this.
Based on research and as indicated in my responses to these questions, we’re more easily able to recognize a “relationship” now than we were in the past. Our culture and our businesses have sensitized us to their existence, an aspect of what’s called cognitive readiness and stated more zennishly as “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” People are prepared to recognize and respond to social networks and the relationships they spawn, hence we count things as “relationships” that don’t truly meet the definition.
Something obvious that might not be is that what we define as a “relationship” has changed. Relationships haven’t changed, their mechanics, how our brains and minds deal with them hasn’t changed, what’s changed is what we’re pointing at when we use the word “relationship”.
Psychological and social health dictates that we’ll always require personal, physical relationships. Who we allow into those relationships won’t change much, as well.
It’s kind of funny, really. This question plays into something we’ve recognized in our research and what we’re referring to as Saturation Points (see Forget Influencers — the New Metric of Interest will be “Saturation Point”).
Saturation points within “social networks” are already being seen. Recently our beloved Susan Bratton wrote “…more and more, I see a need for me to canvas my small circle of closest friends to select a few social media sites around which we can galvanize. This scatter shot social media experience is beginning to exhaust me as my inbox fills with friend requests that deliver no tangible value to my daily life.” in Doppler Social Media Site for Frequent Travelers – YASNSIB.
Are social networks part of the solution? This is truly amusing (and I’m hoping you’ll agree if you haven’t noticed it already). Yes, social networks are exactly part of the solution. Combine the above Susan Bratton quote with another quote from the same piece, “I’m looking for feedback from anyone who has created their own intimate circle of existing friends and gotten them on a single social platform to foster more frequent, deeper connections with those most important in your life.”
Susan is looking to create a social network to help her evaluate social networks. LOL! You go, Girl!

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”

Meet Joseph Carrabis, Chief Research Officer, author, inventor, musician, cultural linguist and genius. Susan talks to Joseph about being a cultural linguist, gender specific marketing discoveries, cultural anthropology and how humans, as social animals, are interacting with social networking.

Hear Joseph describe the differences between neurolinguistic modeling, psychodynamic modeling and psychosocial modeling and how our brains are still working with 10 million years of evolutionary history. Get details on gender differences in the ways women create networks to establish power and authority and how men establish power and authority to create networks.

This week, my DishyMix guest blogger is Joseph Carrabis, CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution. Joseph is a Senior Research Fellow and Advisory Board Member of the Society for New Communications Research and Director, Predictive Analytics and Senior Fellow at the Center for Semantic Excellence as well as a member of Scientists Without Borders.

I am enthralled by the level of insight Joseph brings to the intersection of brain science and social media. Joseph has been guest blogging answers to questions from DishyMix listeners. Use the search box on the blog to see all of his amazing posts.

Here’s a question from Ted Zahn, Creative Director, Real Branding

Hello again,
Ted’s question, “will social networks enhance just the quantity of our personal relationships rather than the quality of them,” is my next response below.

Excellent question, this. NextStage presented some research findings on just this subject recently. The real question (to me) builds on something I wrote in part 1; how much effort does someone want to put into a given social network? It can be summed up by someone’s response during our research, “I don’t have time to be on five or six social networks.” This response was specific to networks like LinkedIn, FaceBook, et cetera. Although anecdotal, it was exemplary of the major themes we were studying.
Quick response first: People will take part in as many social networks as benefit them. They will more actively take part in social networks that more directly benefit them. Preparing my response I went back through NextStage’s research and then contacted about twenty people just to verify the emerging pattern.

This leads to the next paragraph.
Perhaps a more useful response: The average human being will only be able to actively participate in a maximum of nine (9) social networks at a given time. This doesn’t mean they’ll only be a member of a maximum of nine networks (they could be a member of several hundred, they’ll only be active on at most nine in any given time period) nor does it mean they’ll participate in nine in any given time period (they’ll max at nine. Most times they’ll only be active participants on 2-3 at a whack). Thus if you’re a marketer wanting to know where to place advertising dollars, go for volume unless you have extremely high confidence in a networks demographics.

The limits mentioned above have to do with aspects of neurophysiology, specifically our brains’ I/O system. Once you get past neurophysiology you start dealing with things like situational awareness, attention-distraction gradients, engagement, …

<ASIDE>
For the record, I define engagement the good old fashioned, neuro- and psycho-cognitive way, “Engagement is the demonstration of Attention via psychomotor activity that serves to focus an individual’s Attention.” None of this “if there’s this many clicks in this amount of time on this many pages during…” stuff.
Then again, I’ve seen lots of evidence that people do things based on what and how they’re thinking and little evidence that people think about things based on what they’re doing and how they do them, hence equating a mental state to an activity is the reverse of what’s true in my view.
</ASIDE>

Now the socio- and neuro-economist kicks in and asks, “What do you mean by benefit, exactly?”

How people benefit from social networks touches lots of areas of research. Let me start with the question “How does someone chose to self-identify?” John Spalding wrote “What we love to do we find time to do.” and this is demonstrated via self-identification.

For example, I love music so I block off some time every day to play guitar, piano, whatever strikes my mood and interest at the time. I also love bike-riding with Susan (wife, partner, WiseWoman of the North, etc) so we block off time for that every week. I wouldn’t reference myself as a musician or biker and here is one of the interesting things about self-identification, humans are constantly projecting themselves into their environment so that we can be recognized (identified) in ways that reinforce our self-concept. Thus, when people call me a musician (I’m not) I’m flattered, my ego swells, my pride rises a notch or two. When people say “I always see you out riding with Susan” ditto.

The fact that I non-cognitively project those aspects of myself into the world is what demonstrates the depth that those self-concepts exist in me.

So let me put it out there to the readers; what do you find time to do? Then, whether you chose to accept it as a definition or not, it’s what you “love”. More to the point, it’s how you want others to identify you, to recognize that you are not Joseph and vice versa.

Now let’s apply this more directly to self-identification and social networks.

Humans continually do things, say things, etc., to demonstrate who and what they believe they are. I write “believe” and not “think” intentionally. Belief comes from deeper parts of our self-concept than thought because we tend to have less of ourselves invested in what we “think” and more of ourselves invested in what we “believe”. I write in Reading Virtual Minds that there are three basic levels of self-concept – Personality, Identity and Core – and most people aren’t aware of them (probably a good thing for most people).

At various points in a person’s life they may need to identify themselves as an alumnus from a specific institution. A way they might do that is by taking part in the alumni social network affiliated with that institution. Or perhaps they wish to gain recognition as a kite-flyer so they take part in kite-flying social networks (for the record, I don’t take part in such networks).

Or do I? Now we get directly into how one defines a “social network”. The Pictou County Flyers is, indeed, a social network even if the members don’t recognize it as such. They periodically gather to perform activities that are all designed to do one thing and one thing only – reinforce their belief that within that social network they are safe and accepted.

You didn’t think I was going to write “fly kites”, did you?

The level of safety and acceptance one feels within a network is directly proportional to the number and quality of connections they have within that network.

Again, note “number and quality”. We’re not talking about the number of people they know within that network, we’re talking about the ways that people connect, their reasons for connecting and the strength of those connections.

For example, right now (I’m guessing) most readers only know one person in the Pictou County Flyers (me). Your connection to the ‘Flyers isn’t very strong. Let’s say I take you out flying some day and you fly the SkyTiger, the Q2002 and (god forbid) the Ekko. Let’s count your knowing me and our flying these three kites as a total of four connections.

Connections aren’t enough. It’s the quality of those connections that matters where safety and acceptance are concerned.

Let’s say we had a great time flying. We spent most of the day laughing ourselves silly. I was uniformly encouraging and made fun of myself when I made mistakes. We also had periods where we opened up to each other and transmitted quality personal information. We then went to a pub and had some beers and sandwiches, got to know each other a little more and finally I mentioned the Family Kite Night at Nelson Memorial Park in Tatamagouche (Nova Scotia, folks), inviting you to come along.

You may only have four connections to me but those connections are very strong. You feel quite safe and accepted by me. Safe and accepted enough to meet me and some of the ‘Flyers in Tatamagouche.

When we meet in Tatamagouche I tell the other ‘Flyers how well you handled the kites. They accept you because I accept you. People who prefer the SkyTiger, Q2002 and Ekko make their way over to you to talk, others who prefer other kites less so.

Kite flying is the vector. What is transmitted is social acceptance and safety, sometimes referred to as credibility and most often recognized by neuro- and socio-economists as social value, i.e., the benefit we mentioned o’ so long ago.

You’ll participate in kite flying activities because you benefit from doing so, specifically your value increases within that social network each time you participate.

Or you can be like me and just get a rush out of it.

So will social networks enhance the quantity of our personal relationships? Tell me how “personal” personal is, what benefit is derived from the relationship and I’ll answer yes or no. How many people are in your Skype contact list? How many do you interact with daily and for how long? How many people are linked to you? Ditto the ‘interact’ question.
Next up, is there a “digital effect” that is shifting the nature of our relationships to less personal, one-way broadcasts (email, status updates, photo galleries, “Where I’ve Traveled” widgets) at the expense of “genuine” communication. Is this just an inevitable trend of the digital age? Or are social networks actually a part of the solution? I’ll post something on my blog for people who want to know a little bit more of the science behind this kind of stuff.

Listen to Joseph’s DishyMix interview here.

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”

Meet Joseph Carrabis, Chief Research Officer, author, inventor, musician, cultural linguist and genius. Susan talks to Joseph about being a cultural linguist, gender specific marketing discoveries, cultural anthropology and how humans, as social animals, are interacting with social networking.

Hear Joseph describe the differences between neurolinguistic modeling, psychodynamic modeling and psychosocial modeling and how our brains are still working with 10 million years of evolutionary history. Get details on gender differences in the ways women create networks to establish power and authority and how men establish power and authority to create networks.

Coming up on DishyMix I interview Mary Brown of JWT BOOM, author of the definitive book on the Baby Boomer market and producer of Livewire: The Summit.

If you read my blog, you know I’m fascinated with the untapped potential of bringing boomers into social media. If you haven’t read Joseph Carrabis’s guest posts on the subject, just “search” my blog for his amazing insights.

Here’s a reprint of a press release that has some good datapoints. Hear Mary talk in more detail about the changing Boomer landscape in my upcoming DishyMix epsiode.

ThirdAge Online Media and Social Networking Research Uncovers the Current Ins and Outs of Preferences Among Boomers

San Francisco, Calif., June 2, 2008 – Which online boomer trends are in – and which are out? To find out, ThirdAge, a leading online destination for the baby boomer and midlife markets, and JWTBOOM, an integrated marketing agency dedicated to reaching boomers, surveyed more than 1,800 respondents. The unexpected results were presented today in San Francisco at JWT LiveWire: The Summit, a conference dedicated to reaching consumers age 40-plus.

The results of the survey may surprise even the savviest online marketers looking to capture the attention of the coveted boomer market. It turns out the audience values word-of-mouth recommendations, expert opinions, trusted brands and privacy online. But, they are not yet embracing social networking or blogs, despite what recent hype would suggest.

The following outlines the current trends of boomers’ online preferences:

In

• Word-of-mouth sharing
• Experts and credible authorities
• Trusted brands
• Product research and online shopping
• Email
• Broadband
• Privacy
• Health and wellness information

Not Yet

• Social networking
• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Downloading and listening to music
• Group gaming

They “Social Network” Their Own Way:
“The research clearly shows that boomers are not clamoring to social networking sites the same way younger generations are making new friends in today’s social media playground,” said ThirdAge CEO Sharon Whiteley. “Boomers are using more traditional web communication tools, such as email, to keep in touch with their existing group of friends in order to share photos and, more importantly, life experience. “That said,” she added, “Boomers in general are interested in connecting and interacting with others in their community around shared interests and common issues. They relate to people sharing a similar life phase – and they trust those who have walked in their shoes.”

Fifty-three percent of those surveyed had not visited social networking sites; 47 percent cited concerns over privacy and having personal information on the web; 39 percent said they are too busy; 32 percent do not see the benefit of spending time social networking.

Boomers Embrace Online Marketing…Selectively
“Boomers will participate in online communities to share opinions about brands and products,” said JWT Boom president Lori Bitter, whose company specializes in marketing to boomers. “They are also open to both traditional marketing and emarketing, as long as the message is coming from a brand they know and trust.”

Seventy-five percent of respondents that have received promotional emails about products and services have clicked through to the site being promoted. More than 55 percent have purchased a product or service promoted in an email.

Ninety-three percent of respondents who have read an article about a Web site in print (newspaper or magazine) have later visited the site online, reminding marketers that media coverage, as part of an integrated marketing strategy, remains an important element of boomer marketing.

Trust – But Verify
Respondents were most likely to trust a Web site’s content if the site corresponded to a trusted brand or featured credible expertise.

Consider:

• 83 percent reported the content needed to be attributed to experts, authors or authorities with subject matter credibility
• 66 percent said they trust sites whose content is sponsored by a company they know and trust
• 62 percent said they would trust a site if they had been going to it for a long time and came to trust its brand

“This data reflects that brands have the ability to connect directly to their key consumers through targeted online sponsorships,” said Bitter.

They’ve Got the Power
Boomers alone account for 78 million people and control over 83 percent of consumer spending. Forty percent of the United States’ population is over 45, with 50 percent market growth projected over the next 15 years. Boomer spending will increase $800 billion to over $4.6 trillion by 2015. This is a potent marketplace that can’t be ignored.

“Marketers have the opportunity to build a relationship with this important audience,” said Whiteley. “For example, we have learned that ThirdAgers are not universally familiar with or receptive to blogs. On the other hand, they value personal views written by experts and opinions by authoritative sources. On our redesigned Web site scheduled to launch in early July, we are featuring ‘contributors’ rather than bloggers regardless of the nomenclature popularized by mainstream social media. We know our audience and want to speak their language.”

Additional Noteworthy Findings
Word-of-mouth: Boomers participate in viral or word-of-mouth marketing as much as or more than younger age groups. Ninety-three percent of respondents were very or somewhat likely to share product information or news with friends.

Product research and shopping: Eighty-eight percent of respondents use the Internet for research before purchasing a product offline, and 78 percent shop online.

Broadband: Eighty percent of respondents use a broadband connection at home.

Health and Wellness: Ninety-seven percent use the Internet to seek information on
health and wellness.

Gaming: Sixty-two percent had little or no interest in playing games with others.

ThirdAge Inc.
ThirdAge Inc. is a leading life stage media, marketing and consumer insight company exclusively focused on serving today’s dynamic population of boomers and aging mid-lifers online. For the last decade ThirdAge has built a loyal community interested in health/wellness, relationships/romance and money/work, while also serving premiere marketers who want to build a relationship with this audience. Headquartered in New York the site attracts more than one million unique visitors per month. www.thirdage.com
JWT BOOM is the premier integrated marketing firm specializing in reaching consumers over age forty. Providing results-driven strategy and execution, JWT BOOM excels at helping clients build profitable and lasting relationships with boomers and mature consumers, the fastest-growing and most financially powerful segment in the country. www.jwtboom.com

Additional survey data is available upon request:
Hilary Allard
hallard at thecastlegrp dot com
Linda Walsh
lwalsh at thecastlegrp dot com

Joseph Carrabis continues his guest blogging by answering this question from DishyMix listener Alex Nexbitt, co-founder of Digital Podcast, a digital consultancy focusing on the convergence of brands, media and social technologies. This is the second part of a multi-part response. Here’s the first part of the answer to this thread/question.

Alex Nesbitt’s Question:

One of the biggest challenges with social media is getting passive audience to become active contributors. There are different ways of contributing, for example writing, videos, photos, and there are different reasons for contributing, for example the desire to be seen and recognized, or passion for a topic. What are differences in the reasons why and the ways that women vs. men decide to contribute, and overall what approaches would be most effective in motivating each?

Joseph Carrabis’ Answer:

Alex Nesbitt, Part 2…

I left off with some redefinitions based on reframes. This might be semantics to some and I won’t argue that, only offer that semantics is extremely important and increases in importance the larger the social frame in which statements, observations, etc., are made.

For example, I wrote “The reframe you want is ‘interactive members’” and offered that it is an example of part of the answer to your larger question. Both NextStage and related research has demonstrated that men and women will respond to that simple statement quite differently, different age groups will respond differently, different cultural groups will respond differently and, what’s the killer for most marketers, those responses will occur at a non-conscious level. People will have a positive or negative take on it, not even be aware of their own reaction yet act upon that non-conscious reaction as if it were stated fact. It doesn’t matter if the audience understands, accepts or shares the meaning of the language used in communication. We’re not talking about logic or truth. Especially when it comes to social networks.

Referencing my last post again, “The reframe you want is ‘interactive members’” is a male oriented statement, “The necessary reframe is ‘interactive members’” is a female oriented statement.

I can offer an in depth explanation why the former is male and the latter is female based on Modality Engineering if people want and the simplest answer is that the former establishes a linear relationship between me and thee, speaker and spoken-to. The former – completely without meaning to – will perceptibly raise people’s blood pressure, increase pulse and respiration, …, and those are just the macro sympathetic nervous system factors. Blood chemistry will change for all but a few people because adrenaline and a host of other proteins, enzymes and peptides get released.

All from a simple statement? Yes. That simple statement is hierarchical and depending on tone, situation, inference, etc., is adversarial. Use it wisely or not at all.

The latter statement does many wonderful things. It completely removes any adversarial aspect between speaker and spoken-to by removing “you want” as the action clause. It further supplies information without involving persons or personhood. And it directs attention to the transitive phrase and away from speaker and spoken-to via the adjective “necessary”.

I offer all this because it’s part of the answer to the larger question. The easiest way to get people to take part, to become interactive, is to demonstrate their value directly, is to make it obvious that the site owner/management recognizes them as “members” and not just an “audience”. This brings us to exafference and reafference, something I wrote about in Branding in Online Video. Online video and social media both deal with exafference – passive participation (the “they’re giving you their time” part) – and reafference, or active participation. How the two deal with exafference and reafference differs and the principles are the same.

The original question contained “…there are different reasons for contributing…” and listed several ways of contributing. Remembering that I suggest we invite members to add and share, we need to acknowledge that nobody does anything unless they feel safe first. Even people who routinely engage in risky behaviors do so because they feel safe in their own being (this is the “Twenty-One and bullet proof” concept young people tend to have).

So people become reafferent (interactive) when they feel safe first. Social media conveys safety by demonstrating it. People responded to Susan Bratton’s call for questions because they feel safe with her and via extension, with me. I’m benefiting from Susan’s reputation within her existing social.

People submitted questions for me to answer because they trust Susan to value their time, their input, their reputation, so on and so forth. This trust equates to safety in the guise of pleasure or pain on an interesting slider.

I’ve written in several places that the brain determines trust and never distrust. People may say they don’t trust someone and what the brain is registering is that they trust that someone to cause them pain (and the implications this has for online and brand loyalty are enormous).

The core issue, though, is that safety and trust have to be demonstrated. Susan gets to demonstrate this by having you folks post questions and get responses. This is a demonstration to others that they, too, can feel safe asking questions and getting responses on Susan’s blog.

This form of reafference brings us back to “direct address” again.

(more to follow)

The first series from Joseph, about Boomers and Social Networking starts HERE in a 4 part series. Don’t miss it!

Joseph Carrabis is CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution. He is also a Senior Research Fellow and Advisory Board Member of the Society for New Communications Research and Director, Predictive Analytics and Senior Fellow at the Center for Semantic Excellence as well as a member of Scientists Without Borders.

To hear Joseph’s DishyMix interview, click a button below.

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”

Joseph Carrabis continues his guest blogging by answering this question from DishyMix listener Alex Nexbitt, co-founder of Digital Podcast, a digital consultancy focusing on the convergence of brands, media and social technologies.

Alex Nesbitt’s Question:

One of the biggest challenges with social media is getting passive audience to become active contributors. There are different ways of contributing, for example writing, videos, photos, and there are different reasons for contributing, for example the desire to be seen and recognized, or passion for a topic. What are differences in the reasons why and the ways that women vs. men decide to contribute, and overall what approaches would be most effective in motivating each?

Joseph Carrabis’ Answer:

I’m going to break down the paragraph. Let’s start with “One of the biggest challenges with social media is getting passive audience to become active contributors.”

Active contributors…In a way this question is a good one to build off of Dave Evans’ question. Correct, there are different ways of contributing. Everybody participates to different degrees and in different ways. I’d rather have people pass my blog onto each other than comment on it. (I can already see that this response is going to be another novel length opus…).

Let’s start with the recognition that there’s no such thing as a “passive audience”. The audience may not recognize it as such and the time they give being “passive” has value to them. I’ve written elsewhere that competition has more to do with what people are willing to devote time to than anything else these days (what some have called the “attention economy”). The “passive” audience is already contributing an exhaustible resource to social media – their time.

So they are active, simply not demonstrating it in a way most technologies can easily recognize.

Next I offer that the concept of “active contributors” focuses efforts on an incorrect problem. (To be honest, most of the challenges I deal with working with clients comes from getting them to reframe the “problem” to something more easily solvable — a lesson from freshman physical mechanics).

The concept of “active contributors” does two things right out of the gate; it removes the site owner/management from sharing responsibility for what’s happening and it stops owner/management from recognizing that social sites are based – more than any other sites – on building and maintaining relationships. The reframe you want is “interactive members”.

[a whole thesis could be written about that last sentence because it is also an example of answering part of this question. [As was the previous sentence]]

Interactive – there’s a give and take, a fair-exchange of goods and services, information, beliefs, etc., (see Chapter 8 – Fair-Exchange, or “You Have to Give as Good as You Get” between the people involved

Members – there is little to no social differentiation (class separation) among people involved except that which is actively or passively agreed to and accepted by the people involved.
Most owners/managers, reading this reframe, recognize that their responsibility isn’t to the social site per se; it’s to the individuals adding content to the site. And that, of course, is another reframe, one that falls from the above. “contribute” has vertical attribution, “add” has horizontal attribution. Again, “add” is a relationship word, “contribute” is a hierarchical word (in modern American English, anyway).
(more to follow)

The first series from Joseph, about Boomers and Social Networking starts HERE in a 4 part series. Don’t miss it!

Joseph Carrabis is CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution. He is also a Senior Research Fellow and Advisory Board Member of the Society for New Communications Research and Director, Predictive Analytics and Senior Fellow at the Center for Semantic Excellence as well as a member of Scientists Without Borders.

To hear Joseph’s DishyMix interview, click a button below.

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”

This week, my DishyMix guest blogger is Joseph Carrabis, CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution. Joseph is a Senior Research Fellow and Advisory Board Member of the Society for New Communications Research and Director, Predictive Analytics and Senior Fellow at the Center for Semantic Excellence as well as a member of Scientists Without Borders.

I am enthralled by the level of insight Joseph brings to messaging, especially when it has to do with the difference between how men and women react to marketing. I asked Joseph if he’d be willing to answer a few questions from DishyMix listeners. He said, “yes!”

Here’s the second question. The first, about Boomers and Social Networking starts HERE in a 4 part series. Don’t miss it!

Dave Evans, CEO, Digital Voodoo

Dave’s Blog

I hear a lot about female intuition and influence, and about male command and control. As marketers transition from traditional media, which I’d consider to be control-centric, to Social Media that is clearly all about influence this discussion becomes more important.
Given that are more than few female executives are running top-flight agencies and media units, women can evidently “learn” to operate quite effectively from a position of control versus influence. My question is “Will men be able to do the reverse? Will male executives be able to move comfortably into Social Media, where control is replaced with influence?”

Joseph’s Second, Updated Reply:

I wasn’t satisfied with my (first) answer to Dave Evans’ question. (see first answer below) I believe my answer was accurate and verifiable, what it lacked was actionability and the thread of understanding that I so love weaving into my explanations. People who’ve seen my presentations and such would agree (I hope) that I provide take-aways, things participants can do to get real results (actionability). One of the things I hold myself to is providing both theory and application in an explanation. Also, I tie lots of disparate things together so that they make sense. One student wrote an evaluation of a seminar I gave and included “…you’ve got to hang in there until the punch line. Some other things that Carrabis comes up with can seem absolutely dotty in the beginning. You may have the urge to throw up your hands, walk out and find somebody who makes sense. Some of the folks in the last class did that. They managed to miss some of the most mind blowing educational experiences they could have had.”

Whether due to jet lag, a chocolate-beer-wine high (I wrote that response while I was in Brussels on business) or whatever, my response to Dave wasn’t a completely satisfying one to me and I’m notoriously hard to please.

So please allow me to provide a follow-up response to Dave’s question. It’s going to pull from a bunch of different disciplines (I am Joseph Carrabis after all. If I answer a question without involving half a dozen disciplines people will think it’s not really me responding) but how else can it be thorough?

Let’s start with the idea that men and women think differently. If you disagree with that premise you can stop reading now. The question becomes how do men and women think differently and how does that difference affect things like cognitive, behavioral/effective and motivational (“{C,B/e,M}” for short) demonstrations and methodologies.

Males in our society and up to about the mid-1990s pretty much dominated the “hard” sciences. The reason for this goes back to the cultural cues we gave boys and girls up until the last quarter of the last century. These cultural cues can best be summed up in a couple of simple statements; boys usually had to “prove” things, girls didn’t.

This “proof” took the form of what behaviorists call “dominance games” and it’s why boys got into fights more often than girls (with all due respect to the recent YouTube girlfight videos phenomena). The {C,B/e,M} reinforced by dominance games was something already well prevalent in western society and is demonstrated by the majority of governments and very definitely in US courts — the adversarial system. Someone is “right” because they have the most money, most influence, most votes, etc. This may seem like Dave’s “influence” proposition and I offer that this is not the case. What is happening is what’s called “coherence”, not influence.

The difference is critical to answering Dave’s question and the surrogate questions that fall from it. Coherence is a logical construct. Things cohere because the mutual benefit is increased control (using Dave’s term) of the whole and recognition of individual control elements (we know who to blame when things mung up). Pieces stuck together allows action on one piece to control direction, acceleration, velocity, etc., of all pieces via that one piece unless sufficient social or mechanical force is applied to break the “control” piece off. Coherence is lost in these cases. Examples of this kind of decoherence are well known in the be-all and end-all of boy’s dominance games — military science. The extreme hierarchical system of control and coherence — the “chain of command” — means that by taking out individuals closer and closer to the top of the hierarchy greater and greater decoherence occurs.

Note that there is not influence as I understand Dave’s use of the term. Influence recognizes that one or more pieces might go in completely different directions than the “control” piece because the relationships between the pieces are tenuous (from a physical mechanics perspective) and based on mutually beneficial relationships (from a social perspective).

Women have traditionally been taught to use a different strategy called (surprise!) “correspondence”. The principle difference between the two is that coherence is a logical construct, correspondence is an ecological construct.

Correspondence (surprise! part 2) gains its power via its ability to influence change (and this is what I think Dave means by his use of the term) rather than create or direct change (the coherence methodology).

Ecological constructs may have hierarchies inside them (food chains, for example) and even when they do there’s a much higher degree of balance (think of a wind mobile) involved. Food chains can’t have pieces of the hierarchy removed because ecological/environmental destruction ensues (think of the over-fishing of the oceans, destruction of the rain-forests, increasing rates of species extinction, …). A wind mobile with a single element removed just clatters in the breeze, the balance that created the sensoral harmony is gone.

And if you’ve intuited that this ecological construct, correspondence, is based on, uses and creates relationships, you’ve already figured things out. For the rest of you, please hang in there. We’re getting close to the punch line.

Each strategy is useful in certain arenas. Correspondence allows for distributed action, mutual acceptance, group loyalty, … — the things that traditional women’s societies are best known for. Coherence allows for quicker action, surgical action, directed response, … — the things that traditional men’s societies are best known for.

With this informational foundation we can really get interesting. Ecological constructs are highly adaptive. This is the “Life will out” syndrome. Given enough time, life will return to any environment regardless of how much destruction has taken place. In many cases, life will adapt itself to thrive on the destruction to bring the environment back to some kind of recognizable ecological balance. These highly adaptive systems are highly adaptive because they rely on heuristic calculations rather than statistical calculations (what? You thought I wouldn’t get math involved somehow?). (Not a plug coming up, just part of the explanation) NextStage’s Evolution Technology does what it does by using statistical methods when there’s enough data, otherwise use heuristic methods.

What’s the difference? Statistical methods will determine an optimal solution, heuristic methods will determine a best outcome given the existing data. Optimal solutions are only optimal when well defined outcomes exist. Heuristic solutions are the best possible outcomes for everyone/everything involved in the process.

The biggest problem with statistical methods is the gi-normous amount of data necessary to truly determine optimal solutions. Very few companies/agencies/individuals have enough data to determine optimal solutions yet they still use traditional statistical methods and fail as often (or close to as often) as they succeed. Very few organizations use heuristic methods (I’m not even sure organizations know these tools exist).

What’s amusing about this is that a traditional scientific axiom — Occam’s Razor — is actually a heuristic. Occam’s Razor instructs us to go with the simplest solution when in doubt. This is a restatement of the “fluency heuristic” that instructs us to go with what we know rather than what we don’t. Our minds are wired to accept as simple those things we already know or have in consciousness.

What comes to the surface in all this is that women are allowed to use heuristics and men are not. Women can say “I felt like it” or “I thought it was right” and have it accepted as a reasonably response both by other women and by men. Men usually do not have this luxury because their cultural training is coherence, not correspondence.

Correspondence, by the way, along with the heuristics that power it, are what is sometimes referred to as “intuition” or in this case what Dave calls “female intuition”.

So will the majority of men be able to move into relationship marketing? Not unless they’re ready, willing and able to consider heuristic business models and up until about 1990 our society didn’t allow for it. Are there any males in business that can make the switch to relationship marketing? Yes. Quite specifically those who ascended a business hierarchy by “going with their gut”, ie, intuition.
—

Whoosh. Bet you wish you never had me as one of your professors, huh?
Joseph

Joseph’s First Reply:

Wow! Great Question. Very perceptive. Truly.

Also quite easy to answer: No. Not really. At least not easily. Definitely no for the majority of American males. Probably also no for lots of British Commonwealth males. Asian males most easily. Southern EU males probably. Northern EU males yes and only with a little work. South American males yes and with some fascinating variations.

This is a really good question. How much time do we have for me to explain the easy answer? I had complete grad courses, master classes and post-docs that dealt with the roots of this question.

Now let me share the intriguing piece; there’s a whole class of American males that will be able to make this move without hesitation.

This is one of those questions with a core that touches so much of what’s going on today. Why are GM, Ford, etc., losing business and closing plants? See the above. Why are EU based car companies (even the ones that are subsidiaries of US companies) surviving? See the above. Why do Americans donate organs at 28% and the French at 99.9%? See the above. Why is determining proper marketing resources allocation so difficult? See the above.

I know I wrote a minor thesis in answer to the previous question. This question is much richer and really deserves a full day to explain in detail why the “easy answer” is what it is.

-Joseph

If you’d like a copy of Joseph’s thesis, email susan at personallifemedia dot com and I’ll get you in touch with Joseph.

To hear Joseph’s DishyMix interview, click a button below.

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”

In this series of guest blogs by Joseph Carrabis, he answers the first question about how social networks can appeal to boomers, who have been more reluctant than GenX and Millenials to participate in social networking to date.

Question from Susan Bratton, Host of DishyMix:

I’d like to know if I were launching a social networking site for boomers, what words would I use to entice men to join and what would inspire women to sign up? What words would be different? How would I evocatively articulate value so that I had a higher number of conversions? And are there any reasons that both men and women share in their desire to connect online with others?

Joseph Answers:

First let me make sure I understand the challenge correctly;

• You want to launch a social networking site for boomers (50-70yo).
• You want to entice males to join using text.
• You want to entice females to join using text.

Specifically, in part four Joseph answers:

Are there any reasons that both men and women share in their desire to connect online with others?”

Fascinating question as the basic reason for connection has never changed regardless of era, method, medium or anything else. Humans are social animals and will seek each other out because we reaffirm our identities via social interaction. This is true even for hermits and monastics.

The images I suggested in previous emails deal with identification and recognition (ego-identification and group-recognition), the male with what is and is not wanted, the female with what is not and is wanted (remember I wrote previously that men and women frame things differently? There you have it).

The need for identification and recognition from socially acceptable others is so strong as to be clinically recognized in its absence; failure to thrive. We are wired — and I really can’t emphasize how important, how critical this is to human society and social well-being — to require interaction as part of our normal development and it’s amazing what the nascent brain will do to get it. There are casebooks full of stories of both great hope and great pain regarding children through adults who either are never given interaction or are cut off from it.

Having said all that, the degree to which interaction is required and is a great motivator is very culturally based. Asian cultures practically demand it. Southern European and most South American non-indigenous cultures do demand it but to a lesser degree, followed by northern European cultures followed by traditional English speaking cultures. These latter like to emphasize individuality and again each country’s difference shows in the requirements for social discourse and healthy society.

But what do both males and females seek online? Identification, recognition, acceptance, and always of the image they wish to present, the “self” they wish to have others identify as themselves. Go to any virtual world (read Second Life? I don’t find you interesting in Real Life and Remember my writing I didn’t find someone interesting in real life?) and you’ll see this, go to any “adult” site and you’ll see the same. The recent slew of dating/personals sites claim to have gone around this via their different solicitation methods and video personals and such.

Accept the me I want you to accept, recognize the me I wish recognized and identify that “persona” (the Jungian sense of the word) with me. Then, if I return that three-fold favor, I may remove some of the layers and let you know more of the real me, the me I do not wish to share because it might not be accepted, might be recognized for qualities other than those I wish recognized, and I might be identified with a “persona” that’s not in my control.

Think of it as Lions, Tigers and Bears in the game of social exchange.

And I believe that ends my typically long-winded, real roundabout answer to question #1.

-Joseph

Go to Boomers Part 1

Go to Boomers Part 2

Go to Boomers Part 3

Listen to Joseph’s DishyMix Interview.

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”

In this series of guest blogs by Joseph Carrabis, he answers the first question about how social networks can appeal to boomers, who have been more reluctant than GenX and Millenials to participate in social networking to date.

Question from Susan Bratton, Host of DishyMix:

I’d like to know if I were launching a social networking site for boomers, what words would I use to entice men to join and what would inspire women to sign up? What words would be different? How would I evocatively articulate value so that I had a higher number of conversions? And are there any reasons that both men and women share in their desire to connect online with others?

Joseph’s Answer Part 3 0f 4:

I left off with how to stop males in their tracks and get their attention fixed long enough for you to get your message across. The method I described will work for any site and especially well for male boomers for lots of reasons. Whether male or female audience, you must always remember that the type of site they’re navigating creates an expectation value in them before they get to the site. Doesn’t matter if they came from a search, from a friend’s recommendation, from seeing an ad on tv, from an email blast or whatever. Also recognize that each of these brings with it its own expectation values.

For example, a trusted, long time friend sends you a link and suggests it’s just what you’re looking for. You go and explore and it’s so far off the mark that you wonder what your friend was smoking. Much higher expectation value than something coming from an email blast.

The moral is to be careful when you’re considering your distribution sources. You want an expectation value high enough to spark interest yet low enough to forestall disappointment.

Now to females…A text message that will cause females to stop long enough for you to get your message across and have them sign up.

Ha! Done and done. Same text, different image and again thinking of a social network site themed for travel. Typical cabana-boy image. She’s stretched out on a beach lounger, bright, tropical sun on a smooth white beach. Big straw hat protecting her sunglass covered eyes, bright yellow one piece swimsuit that highlights a rich tan, angle the shot so that we can see both a cabana and palm trees in the background AND the waves and other people on the beach. The other people are there and not close to her — she has her privacy AND her silence. The photo is taken from her right side and her right leg is steepled. On her left side is the nicely tanned, nicely muscled (and not overly muscled) cabana boy with a tropical drink on a silver tray. If you can get away with it, the steepled leg frames the cabana boy in a “Mrs. Robinson” shot.

All that with the same text as before, “You don’t have time for this”.

This will work without the foolery required to stop and lock the male’s attention because it works on wish-fulfillment. Will this work for every female? Hardly. Will it work for boomer females? More yes than no because of the multiple layers of subtlety involved. The messages of silence, of stateliness, she is being served by a wish-fulfillment entity, a possible and definitely not overt sexual metaphor for those old enough to remember or recognize it, warmth on the skin, on the body from the environment, drawing out all the poisons and toxins of every day life, literally a quiet moment in the sun.

These two images are as different as they are because males and females frame things differently. Note that these images and text won’t work as well with younger audiences and definitely not with all cultural groups.

Next time I’ll get to “And are there any reasons that both men and women share in their desire to connect online with others?”

-Joseph

- Joseph

Go to Boomers Part 1

Go to Boomers Part 2

Go to Boomers Part 4

Listen to Joseph’s DishyMix Interview.

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”

In this series of guest blogs by Joseph Carrabis, he answers the first question about how social networks can appeal to boomers, who have been more reluctant than GenX and Millenials to participate in social networking to date.

Question from Susan Bratton, Host of DishyMix:

I’d like to know if I were launching a social networking site for boomers, what words would I use to entice men to join and what would inspire women to sign up? What words would be different? How would I evocatively articulate value so that I had a higher number of conversions? And are there any reasons that both men and women share in their desire to connect online with others?

Joseph Answers:

First let me make sure I understand the challenge correctly;
You want to launch a social networking site for boomers (50-70yo).
You want to entice males to join using text
You want to entice females to join using text.

Okay, my first question back to you is “What’s the exact function of the social networking site?” The reason I ask is that some recent research we did determined that people under the boomer age were self-regulating the number of information sources they monitored each day (see attached jpg). Between 28-35 the average information consumer throttles down what they give their time to in a given day. From a sociologic perspective this makes a lot of sense. This is the usual time period in which most people are starting families, getting rooted in a career, starting to accumulate life-spanning responsibilities, … the amount of time they have for anything is dwindling so they give their time more selectively. The next break is at about 55yo. Now they start questing for information sources again. Why? Because now they’re starting to have more time and (sadly) they’re starting to lose those they knew at a more rapid rate. They seek to be more in touch with what’s happening around them and this benefits marketers as it means there’s more opportunity to reach out to that lucrative boomer audience.

Click on Image for “Trusted Sources by Age” Chart.

So what do you want that social network to do for these boomers? Is it FaceBookish? Travel? Romance? Is it a massive IM site? Does it provide medical information? Is the medical information specialized? Is the site culturally based? Geographically based?

One of the greatest teachings I ever had was to forget the editorial (this was in the glory days of print) and look at the ads. The ads, more than anything else, told you who the audience was. Or at least who the sales department is selling ad space to.

This is still true. I was talking with a senior person at a well known online that’s experiencing some changes. I suggested using NextStage’s Evolution Technology to get a real fix on who the exact audience was. Knowing the exact audience the content/editorial could be tailored more precisely.

The pushback was that the online head honchos didn’t want to know who the exact audience was because, if the true audience wasn’t what they were basing their ad space sales on, ouch!

And I swear to god I’m not rambling. All this plays in to answering your question. People who’ve seen my presentations are probably reading this and saying, “Yep, that’s Joseph”.

The real challenge is that boomer males really prefer visual information (pictures, images, charts, graphs) to text information. The visual needs to catch their attention then drive that captured attention to some important piece of text (preferably actionable. Let’s face it, Boomer males aren’t known for their ability to focus unless they’re SNAGs.

More to follow once I finish waking up…
Joseph

Go to Boomers Part 1

Go to Boomers Part 2

Go to Boomers Part 4

Listen to Joseph’s DishyMix Interview.

Joseph Carrabis, Founder, NextStage Evolution on “Why People Do What They Do.”