Does being over-networked mean having a low quality network?

In my quest to understand who and how we use social networking website, I’d launch the conversation with heavy users.Definition:

To put it in a nutshell, I’d define a heavy user in term of number of contacts in the profile. One could consider the number of visits, time spent, or other criteria but I arbitrary chose the number of contacts in Profile.

Arbitrarily, I would say that a heavy user has more than 250+ contacts (a lower number would give sens as well)

Question: What does it mean having a lot of profile in your profile?

Let’s be frank. How many persons you really keep in contact? 100-150 persons?

I said frankly!!!

Hmmmmmm, 60-70?

So what does it mean when someone make of his network profile a Xmas wish list of names?

The persons I know and that are really good in networking are not using online social networks. They are social networks.

Of course, if your job is to develop your network for professional reasons, I see recruitment professions for instance, the question is different. But for the others?

I made a test. I tried to contact persons in my network in order to obtain a contact. I’ve tried those who are very (over) networked on online social networks and those who are reasonably networked.

The result is that the heavy users do not answer to telephone or do not pass contacts… Sad, no? Or maybe I am not a person one can introduce?

For non-heavy users, they answer to the phone and pass contacts…

So. Taking into account that I am still the same person when I am calling these two kind of network users and that there is not difference of hierarchy in the persons I contacted, is there some consequences to take from this short experience?

Without studying too long this issue, I would say that heavy users are wanna-be networked persons but are not really, or persons that didn’t really understood the interest of these kind of services…

Online social networks are made to facilitate the exchange of contact, aren’t they?

Being networked is global and time occurring, i.e. in real life, your are networked at one moment. Social networks of a person changes, moves, grow but also diminishes according to the time and the space.

This is not the case for online networks. With online networks, you add contacts like pearls and keep it all the rest of your life (who is really deleting contacts from his profile when is not anymore in contact with a person?).

In a normal life, you meet always the same persons. And you learn to know and respect these persons by meeting them again and again.

When you have 250+ contacts, you don’t really know the contacts you have.

And when you need to introduce some of your contacts to another contact, you have a problem as you need to introduce two persons you don’t know…

So do Heavy users = Low quality networks?

Well, let’s think about this…

 

Social network or Asocial networks?

When I want to add a new contact in my network, I have to send a request. This looks quite logical.

There is a default text generated by the software saying something like: Hi, its frank, I want to add you to my network, Bye.

I nearly cannot remember anybody who didn’t send me this message as an invitation. Isn’t it a little bit sad?

Let’s imagine any other situation in real life and use the same kind of introduction: You meet a girl in the street and say: Hey, I am Frank, I want to add you to my list of girl friend. Bye…

Is it rough?

or try online dating: it would be: Hello (Hey is too strong), I am Casanova, I want to add you to my list of conquests. Accept my request…

No, No, NO!!!

Adding contacts doesn’t have to be done this way. You can send a real introduction, write a real message with your little fingers. This will not damage your keyboard or cost you higher connection cost to internet.

This has a name: courtoisie.

Online as offline: their is minimum rules. We should not forget that in the term Social network, there is the word SOCIAL. so let’s act as such, so that we do not transform this nice technology in Asocial network…

Brand new marketing or brand marketing?

The push of Brand communities is steady with new websites controled by brands or simply branded blowing every week.

Does a Brand need to open a blog in order to be fair play and start a real two-way communication with its costumers? Starbucks (http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/home/home.jsp), as many other companies, ask the same question: Are U satisfied? Starbucks only follows what its Canadian concurrent did in Canada long time ago with… nothing more :+)

Do a brand need to keep its community inside the boundaries of the Brand when creating a community? Is it the right strategy?

Looking back to the history of social network, there was dating website. As for every new technology, sex is the main driver for early adopters.

With the huge success of online dating websites, all news papers adopted a dating on their website. What news paper’s website do have a dating service today? Huge firms as meetic.com, match.com took over the market.

So will it be the same for Brand communities?

This is a question I had to ask myself while creating www.hairmust.com community, the Loreal Professionnel community.

Is the interest for the brand wide enough to lead a sufficient traffic so that the community will be alive? And if yes, will it be sufficient to survive next wave of absorption (that will surely happen in the future)?

I don’t think so.

This is the reason why I decided to open the community to a larger public than only Loreal Pro admirers. I was also lead by the last researches showing that brand admirers are not, as we used to think, the target persons we have to reach with our community. Brand consumers are the right targets as brand admirers are not word-of-mouth white flags as they are so extremists that they are not trusted more than the brand itself is. In add, they are so focused that they are not meeting other stratus of the population.

I decided to focus the community on hair dressers and beauty lovers.

This mix seems to me the right one as hairdressers are motivated to produce content (photos in our case) and beauty lovers are interested in choosing the right hair dresser or discovering the new trend (not in catalogues, but in real). The brand in this story? The brand is the guarantor of the quality, the initiator of the new trend. In construction, we would say the Quality control.

This structure solves somehow one of the most complicated question of online communities: 1. how to motivate users to generate content and 2. what is the remuneration of users generating content.

In our case, Users generating content will be hairdressers. Their remuneration: free marketing for their business.

We will see if this logic will function. I strongly believe that yes.

Issued by Loreal Professionnel CZ to press on www.hairmust.cz – March 11, 2008

HAIR MUST – PRESS RELEASE

HAIRMUST-CLOSE TO YOUR HAIR

L´Oreal Professionnel announces the new „big bang“ in the universe of hair beauty. Through modern internet technologies, brand community HairMust will give the opprotunities for haidressers and brand´s fans to be closer of world best haidresser´s and beauty trends and the brand itself. Instead of one way commnunication you can help us to built our community and be part of it. We want meet you, we want hear you, we want advice you!

OUR AIM

We know that only the qualitative developpement of our salons will issue to satisfied customer of our brand. That´s why L´Oréal Professionnel brings to its haidressers several marketing, merchandising and education tools which enhance their business. Existing tools are following:

Ø Education & trainnings

Ø Merchandising items and trainnings

Ø Marketing and discount programs for salons

Ø Shows promoting the best practises

AND NOW!!! HairMust on-line brand community transfers all mentioned into a new dimension!

BRAND COMMUNITY IS MAINLY SOCIAL COMMUNITY

The concept of brand community come out from the basic human needs like socializing, sharing great ideas or finding a close friend. You can perhaps know these social networks, already existing on internet:

The concept of barnd community is also very young, based on the article of two american sociologist – Muniz and O´Guinn-from 2001. Their definition of BC is the following: „A brand community is a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand.“ (Dixit Brand community by Muniz and,O’Guinn 2001 by Journal of consumer research, Inc. ● Vol. 27 ● March 2001).

Since then, there was no real try to create an online brand community, branded directly by a brand.

L´Oréal Professionnel is one of the first brands to really try the experience!

IT WILL WORKS !?

Due to the nature of the project as real small revolution we don´t know if the reality will reach our expectations. Nevertheless we are strongly convinced that the expansive offline community already exists and that for following reasons:

· Hair profession is a very dynamic profession where hair professionals

o Attend to training

o Participate to fairs

o Organise contest between themselves

o Are passionated by their work

· There is a demand from hair salon clients on:

o Advices

o Trends, inspiration

o Contacts with „good“ hairdressers

· Brand Loreal Professionnel is famous and is a reference in the industry

So it just have let to put them on-line and spirit our brand!

WHY TO REACH OUR COMMUNITY

New community HairMust of L´Oréal Professionnel is type of UGC network, living from the activity of all membres. More it has members, more powerfull and animate our community will be. The strategy is based on the principle EVERYBODY WONS! Let´s check the motivation for all target group visitors:

· Hair professionnals:

o Show their work (photos, advices)

o Motivate their team

o Be visible from potential clients

o Organise and promote events

o Find jobs

o Find material for their salon

o See what is the trend/make the trend

o Be informed in real time

o Networking (chat, discussions, blogs)

· Anybody

o Choose a hairdresser based on his work

o Obtain information on trends, products

o Be advised on hair/style questions

o Find inspiration for hairstyle or special occasions (wedding, social events, …)

o Find informations

o Vote for best hair dresser

o Networking (chat, discussions, blogs)

WE WAIT YOU ON-LINE ON HAIRMUST.CZ!