I’m reading Don Tapscott’s excellent Grown up Digital, which focuses on the Net generation. It’s particularly pertinent as I’m preparing a talk on social media strategy for the local chapter of YPO. What’s interesting is that the event is organised by the YPO ‘kids’, the children of the YPOers. When I asked for a brief from my twenty-something contact, she said: “Do what you did the last time I heard you speak. Our parents need a wake up call. They need to realise that things have really changed. A while ago. They need to stop pretending that new media is about kids being silly on Facebook or sniggering over someone’s photo. They need to understand that ordinary people are using social media channels all the time, and that it’s impacting their business. Whether they like it or not.”

I’m slightly bemused by this.  I’m 49.   The people who ‘don’t get it’ are the successful captains of industry and entrepreneurship on this island. Many of them are younger than I am. I’m wondering how I can earn the attention of people who may not feel compelled to change anything about the way their business operates… Facebook or no Facebook.

So I go back to Tapscott, and the Net generation. That’s the Millennials, or Generation Y – people born between January 1977 and December 1997, now aged 13-33. Tapscott’s book is based on on a 4.5 million dollar study of 6,000 young people, and has some great handouts – for employers, instructors, parents, marketers and political leaders. What’s fascinating is not so much insights about how the Net generation uses technology – but what Tapscott calls the ‘The Net Gen Norms’ – the distinctive attitudinal and behavioural characteristics that differentiate this generation from their parents and other generations. His research identified eight characteristics:

1. Freedom. In everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression.

2. Customisation. A need to personalise anything, from media to job descriptions.

3. Scrutiny. The Net Gen have a love of transparency, and know that their market power allows them to demand more of companies and employers.

4. Integrity. Net Geners looks for openness and corporate integrity when deciding what to buy and where to work.  They expect company values to be aligned with their own.

5. Entertainment. This generation wants play in work, education and social life.  It has been bred on interactive experiences.  Brand recognition alone is no longer enough.

6. Collaboration. NetGeners are all about relationships. Nine out of ten young people interviewed said that if a best friend recommended a product, they were likely to buy it. The conversations on online networks also include discussions on brands, companies, products and services.

7. Speed. That’s not just in video games, but in flow of information.  Many marketers and employers still have to understand that NetGerns expect the same quick communication from others – every instant message should draw an instant response.

8. Innovation. A twenty-something in the workforce wants the new BlackBerry or iPhone not because the old one is no longer cool, but because the new one does so much more.  They seek innovative companies as employers.  Sometimes, they just don’t want to be employed, and prefer to strike out and do their own thing.

My most recent wake up call – about the Net Generation having come of age – came last May.  My wife called me to say that she’d just found out that she was ‘watching 26 unusual items on eBay’. The 26 items were all ‘Playmobil cowboys.’ When she cornered our son Jacob, then aged 7, he immediately admitted to being the watcher.

“Sure,” he said. “Did you know that Playmobil don’t make cowboys any more? They seem to think that kids only want this modern stuff, like cars and aircraft. Well they don’t! I know you use eBay to find stuff that you cannot find easily in a shop. So I did a quick search! Look – you cannot find any of these cowboys on sale at the Playmobil Fun Park!  And there’s nothing of interest for kids on their website either! I’m going to write a letter to the CEO of Playmobil and let her know!”

You still can’t get Playmobil cowboys very easily, unless you get on eBay or find some in your attic. Jacob’s letter to Playmobil, complaining about the demise of the cowboy range, and offering his services as a ‘consultant’ was answered promptly and very graciously by the Playmobil CEO.  Jacob still can’t understand why so many companies won’t listen to what kids are telling them to do.

This video from Scott Rosenberg, author of ‘Say Everything‘, is a great crash course on where blogging came from; how open source and WordPress in particular has provided a powerful platform for citizen journalists; and why blogging matters more than ever, despite several announcements of its demise.

Suddenly, Facebook has become Big Brother.  Almost at par with Google.  Or perhaps even bigger, since most people still cannot quite understand how Google monetises our content.  While Facebook appears to have finally changed its rules of engagement one time too many, and everyone is currently taking a potshot, from the BBC to the Economist.  Mark Zuckerberg has just issued a statement saying Facebook moved too quickly and made a bunch of mistakes.

In my country, concerns about Facebook privacy have been exacerbated by a court ruling.   Last week, a 24 year-old got a fine and a suspended jail sentence for saying nasty things about the Pope on a Facebook page.  Inevitably, there are many in this wired micro-state who feel we are gently moving from the open Internet to a brave new world where the disruptive nature of web 2.0 technologies is about to be tamed by over-zealous magistrates clinging to antiquated Press Laws.  Others see this as the first important step in bringing online unpleasantness under control.

The privacy situation is still evolving, but the camps seem to be congregating as follows:

1. Facebook is like a utility, and should be regulated as such.  In this post and this post, Danah Boyd, an academic working for Microsoft Research, makes a compelling argument.

2. The issue is not privacy, but the fact that Facebook is trying to make a buck from something that is social.  Help will soon be at hand.  This post, by Venessa Miermis, rattles the cage.

3. Get off Facebook, get off the Internet, get a real social life.

4. It’s a storm in a teacup compared to the benefits people get from Facebook.  We just need to keep unchecking those privacy boxes.  And our kids will find a way of working it out.  Whether it’s Facebook, or some other social network which will end up taking its pace.

Today, I found this paragraph in a great book by the academic Mathieu O’Neil called Cyberchiefs.  It was published in 2009, so Mathieu does not have the benefit of hindsight:

“The traditional libertarian concern for privacy has its limits:  when it contradicts the profit motive.  For the exhaustive profiles listing people’s most intimate material, spiritual or consumer preferences – which they have themselves helpfully created – legally belongs to the owners of Facebook, and to the advertisers they sell this information to.  In informational capitalism individual users can freely copy and distribute digitised corporate content, and corporations can freely copy and distribute digitised user-generated content.”

It’s not like we haven’t been warned.

Whatever we choose to share online is public.

Whatever our friends choose to share about us online is also public.

Yes, whatever we write, film, record, do online can come back to haunt us.  It’s the public sphere, not some genteel living room.  In the old days, if you had an argument with someone, you could just walk away, lick your wounds and make up.  Now, the evidence of your conflict is permanent.  And possibly visible to others, who may have an interest in making that conflict public or permanent.

So go educate your kids.  Educate yourself.  Educate your judiciary.  Educate your media.  And educate your politicians, your rulers, your church, your friends.

And then, fight with all your energy, to keep the Internet open, and away from the grasps of those who may be in a position of power, likely to be less informed than you, or your children.  And who may start tampering with your basic freedoms in the name of doing what’s best for you.

It’s not like it would be the first time this has happened.  Or the last.

Presenting has a lot to do with theatre. Except you don’t have a script – just pointers to key messages that you hope will connect, challenge, inspire, trigger. And the audience is not just a passive recipient – especially when it comes to social media. Each performance is different; each audience has a different insight. Hopefully, by the end of the session, both the speaker and the ‘presented to’ have learnt something new.

The Q&A at the end of a presentation to the local Chamber of Commerce, and a couple of subsequent emails from participants, threw up some interesting points which gave me food for thought.

These questions stood out:

1. Will Facebook continue to rule the roost, when there are so many worries that the company is meddling with our privacy? Isn’t trust in the entire ecosystem being undermined by Facebook constantly changing the rules of engagement?

2. How can social media tackle the marketing of unpalatable products, like cigarettes for instance?

3. There are plenty of examples of large companies using social media, and even they were making slip ups. How can an average SME learn from these mistakes? Say, a firm in the incoming tourism sector, or an exporter of a local product?

4. How can teens and kids get educated on the opportunities and hazards of social media engagement? Particularly in the case of young people who will soon have to get on the career ladder? Is there such a thing as social media or mobile device etiquette, in the way that we developed email and other netiquette?

I’ll try and address these issues in future posts.

I’m running a session at the Chamber of Commerce in Malta this Wednesday, 19 May at 16.00.  It’s aimed at people managing small businesses who are still trying to work out how it impacts their businesses, brand equity, customer engagement and more  Here’s what the session will cover.  I’ll also run a Q&A session at the end.

This piece is also pertinent.

In December 2007, there were 14,000 Maltese people on Facebook.  Fast forward to May 2010, and that number is 162,000, and growing daily.  As a nation, we’re right up there with the top 15 worldwide in terms of our national, proportional take-up of the social network – something which says as much about our access to technology as to our desire to connect with others.

Web 2.0, or social media as it’s colloquially known, is much more than Facebook.  It’s ‘two-way’ technology that enables sharing, online conversations and many forms of user-generated content. There are literally thousands of tools that can be loosely grouped as social media:  videos, blogs, micro-blogs, podcasts, social networking, community and social bookmarking sites, forums, wikis and more.  The read-write web where everyone can potentially publish what they want to a global audience should by now have made social media as mainstream as the daily newspaper.  And yet, it is one of the most misunderstood phenomena by the business community.  Locally, a recent spate of scandals and law suits fuelled by blogs and Facebook pictures has only helped increase the confusion and anxiety. As one business person told me, “I have no idea if I should ignore this stuff, get my kids off Facebook or try and understand what’s going on because it may well impact my business.”

I have been using social media technologies since 2005 and researching their applicability for business for the past three years.  Here’s a little of what I’ve learned so far:

The rules of marketing are changing. Social media has taken the institutional control of marketing and put it in the hands of the general public. With technology increasingly ubiquitous and available to all, people now have the tools to carry on conversations and express their views on brands and their content online. Prospects inevitably form many of their opinions and impressions of a brand or a company from others they come in contact with online.

Two-way means engagement. This is a far cry from the traditional broadcasting way of doing things. In the old days, you used to be able to throw money in print, TV and radio advertising and wait for the ripples to come back to you in the form of clients.  Now, the ripples have a voice, and can bite back or come back to haunt you.

Your employees can become terrific online ambassadors, or a total embarrassment.  They need to be guided how to engage.  Trying to block them from using the media is always counter-productive.  Most people nowadays access their favourite social networks via mobile devices.

Social media is not about PR. It’s about social engagement.  It’s definitely not just about you, or your business. It can be used for PR, and marketing, brand building, customer support, reputation management, community building and a pile of other social engagements.  But the tools were originally devised to do other things.

Having a website is no longer enough. A blog can be a terrific substitute for an expensive website.  There is no substitute for great content.

You don’t need to use all the tools. But you do need to have a basic understanding of most of them.  Because your customers and prospects are engaging on many of them, and you need to understand what they are saying about you, and your business.

To succeed, you have to be transparent, open, and reactive. That’s difficult for many businesses that have thrived over the years by doing the exact opposite.

You cannot just set up shop and do nothing else. There are thousands of Facebook fan pages hijacked by the competition, dead blogs and inactive Twitter accounts.  You need a real commitment to succeed.

Social media is not free. Many of the tools are free to use, but your time isn’t free and neither is that of your employees.  Good content costs money.

Trust is a huge factor in social engagement. Social media marketing is most effective when users in the community know you.  Building trust online takes time and management of your social web presence across communities.

Social media builds awareness and drives conversations. It’s a powerful way of enabling interaction between the company and customer. Selling is a secondary or tertiary benefit of social media.

Beware of self-proclaimed social media experts. Especially people who have never been in the trenches of business and understand the pressure there is to generate sales, reduce costs, engage customers and do something about a brand.  Knowing how to set up a website, or a Facebook fan page or dabbling in some SEO does not qualify someone to call themselves an ‘expert’.

You need a strategy before you dive in. Get a road map.  Smart people first start by listening.  And there are tools that enable you to do just that. What most organisations lack is how to structure and create an interaction with consumers which is consistent in approach and enticing enough for third parties to engage.

Social media can be measured for ROI purposes. You can set KPIs and measure the success of social media campaigns. Much of what you spend in traditional mainstream PR and marketing cannot.

Social media doesn’t work when you’re shouting about yourself.  You need to find a way of getting other people to shout about you, for you – of their own free will.

It’s not so much about the future as learning from the lessons of the past. You cannot ignore social change when ordinary citizens believe that they have access to new ways of getting their voices heard, and engaging with the people and issues that really matter to their lives.  If you run a business or a country, social media is both opportunity and threat.  Ignore that at your peril.

This article first appeared in The Commercial Courier, April-May 2010