As a student and user of social media, and the power of the networks one can forge with it, I am constantly asking, how can I use this power to get something done?
We have an excellent example right here in the public relations community. In my post today at Communications Overtones, I mentioned that we now have 446 feeds in public relations social media community.
Moving Away from Early Adopters
It seems to me that the use of social media by public relations and communications professionals is just past the early adopter stage and quickly moving toward the early majority stage, as explained in Everett Rogers’ theory of diffusion.
Part of the problem is simple information overload.
Rule of 150
According to another interesting theory, called the “Rule of 150,” social networks are usually an average of 124 people and a maximum of around 150.
Breaking Into Smaller Groups
According to another interesting theory, called the “Rule of 150,” social networks are usually an average of 124 people and a maximum of around 150.
Just last year, the PR feed community was only 160 strong, a perfect size for the community to feed on each other and “know” each other. However, with the explosive growth, things are shifting.
It is the problem of scale that many A-listers have complained about and drawn scorn for mentioning. The problem is that once an “audience” for a blog exceeds about 150, it seems the person writing the blog becomes more of a broadcaster and less of a conversationalist. You simply can’t “know” more than that number of readers and excessive communication starts to feel like noise instead of constructive ideas and recommendations.
I suspect if we analyzed the public relations network of social media feeds, we would probably track three or more loosely associated, but distinct, groups that consume each other’s material and comment on each other’s sites regularly. Steve Rubel recently called the groups in which we read and travel the blogosphere, blog ghettos. A negative take on the concept, perhaps, but an apt one nonetheless.
The issue would make a fantastic graduate-level study, for someone willing to undertake it.
Examples of Spontaneous Groupings
One example of these social networks forming is when groups suddenly and unexpectedly form a coherent group. We have just such an example in the formation of the International Association of Nobodies (IAN) over the past several days.
With 20-plus members and growing, this group has done amazing things in five short days. Including starting a Website, Wiki page at NewPR, a squidoo lens, creating a membership badge, a logo, merchandise and a shared blogroll (see RSS) that members can add to their sites directly.
(Full Disclosure: I am a nobody too)
And Allen Jenkins, who was the inspiration for IAN, posts today about another organization, the the SEA-EAT blog, that formed spontaneously to help tsunami and earthquake victims. That network grew quickly to encompass 200 volunteers, with a core group of 50.
As people try to make sense of the social media network and how it can assist them in daily tasks, I expect more (instead of less) of this activity.
What do you think?
21 comments
4/11/2006 at 12:58 pm
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4/11/2006 at 12:17 am
Robert
Welcome to Marcomblog, Kami.
A very interesting post. I look forward to the student response to you, Susan, Andrea and Lee as you join our group of contributors.
I added the little drop cap to the layout. I’m going to try and start doing that along the way, if I can keep up. What do you think of adding style and design tweaks to the blog? I realize many (most?) read the blog via RSS, but I’m into the style things, too. Due credit, the CSS comes from Mandarin Design. Simple CSS tweaks that anyone can use.
I’m preparing to upgrade the blog’s design. Just finished upgrading the software. Hope to accomplish this over the coming weeks, but other projects and duties keep pushing it further away, I’m afraid.
Still, I’d like to hear everyone’s idea for the blog on all aspects from content to appearance.
Thanks for the first post. Glad to have you all at Marcomblog.
4/12/2006 at 8:58 am
Tina Lang-Stuart
I am not sure it’s one or the other. An IAN member could also be a SEAT-EAT member. So besides the fragmentation we might see cross-membering which fragments the PR-blogosphere even more. It’s Darwin’s rule that will apply at some point - only the strong ones will survive. We might have the little PR blog ghettos but blog authorities have already evolved and will continue to do so - even more as fragmentation increases.
4/12/2006 at 9:32 am
David Phillips
The practice of PR has many domians (research earlier this year identified over 70 different forms of practice).
Untill recently, most comment was about blogging, then Social Media and now there are groups of specialists who talk about things like Marcoms, IR, Internal PR etc.
I expect that this is how PR blogging will go and it is a good thing as long as we realise that there are all these domains of practice.
The next thing we will be doing is identifying the different forms of PR practice that have been mentioned in PR blogs.
4/12/2006 at 10:15 am
Kami Huyse
I strongly agree with Tina that there will be overlap, this is not a neat process. And she is right in the fact that a person can belong to many groups, I know of one personally that was in both SEA-EAT and now IAN. I am sure there are others. We also won’t necessarily stay inside neat PR community groups either.
My point is that a conversatonal group, ones that actually communicate and “know” each other probably won’t get much bigger than 150 participants, with an unlimited number of “others” visiting the group to see what they are up to.
David makes an even finer point with his point of the explosion in practice areas. By the way, I would love to see that list David. I am not sure I have seen that study yet. Do you have a link?
4/12/2006 at 1:25 pm
DeeRambeau
In my opinion, the key driver for the evolution of the blogosphere will be the end “listener” or “consumer of the content.” Authenticity and Authority will be “granted” by them…not by the community of bloggers. Kami, if you and I communicate…that’s great that we’re having a conversation that furthers best practices, but I’m not particularly concerned that you’re reading my blog…nor should you be that I read yours.
I think that blogs will evolve in two directions. Number one as a “source” of breaking information that’s not covered by the mainstream media. Number two a lead-generation tool for new prospects and clients for a company. In either case, it will be up to the “listener” to determine whether the blogger is credible or not.
Example: Steve Rubel is widely read and trafficked. I don’t happen to agree with his opinion on very many things when he actually offers it up…which isn’t very often either. Much like Media Orchard, he’s mostly a “pointer” to other’s opinions or news. Hence, I don’t find him an “authentic” voice and don’t read him much. Do my readers care if I’m not a part of his community? Not.
I absolutely agree with you that we as practitioners will determine our own smaller groups of “inclusion.” But whether or not those groups or subgroups wield any “influence” will be determined by readers or listeners and not by us.
4/12/2006 at 3:11 pm
Kami Huyse
Dee; I agree with everything you’ve said, the influence of any channel of communication is based on its credibility with its audience. I was not addressing that aspect here. However, I am simply talking about the effect when a group of influentials, that have presumably earned influence ove time, choose to take on a particular topic or cause. In this post, I was interested in the limits of such groupings.
As for the effectiveness or influence of such communication, I think that is an excellent topic that should be tackled in more depth.
Another interesting effect I’ve noticed is that the core audience for of any given blog seems to be other bloggers. There are many that read and don’t comment, but what I am talking about is who participates in the conversational aspects of a given blog. I wonder why that is? Any ideas out there?
4/12/2006 at 3:42 pm
DeeRambeau
Kami,
it is interesting indeed to see what limits, if any, are organically built around these groupings. In trade associations, you see it done geographically and by topic interest…I know that Mike Manuel and Jeremy Pepper and some of the Bay Area bloggers have begun meeting on third Thursdays…
To me…limits such as these go against the nature of the virtual community…where some of the power is the fact that there are no such imposed boundaries.
Great topic!
4/13/2006 at 12:36 am
Eric Eggertson
Kami:
I agree with David that people who never do media relations are going to gravitate toward PR blogs that aren’t heavy in media relations, and so on. However, anyone who focuses their reading, writing and commenting too narrowly runs the risk of never learning from cross-disciplinary best practices. Adopting things that work in one field is sometimes a way of innovating in another field.
4/16/2006 at 4:09 pm
Wes
As as student I do not consider myself to be in the A-listers group. One, I am not influencial in the industry. Two, I have a very small audience.
But I find myself reading the A-listers’ blogs daily and only commenting once a week for my class. So that poses the question what small group do I fit into?
Kami you brought up those that simply just read the blogs, but what group do they(we) fit in?
Do the students here at Auburn form a small community? I think it is possible. I would be the first to admit that I only read about 3 or 4 blogs from my classmates. Even if we don’t each other’s blogs, we still do the same things every week:
We comment on marcomblog.
We write two posts on our personal blog.
We read blogs from a particular list and comment on at least one post….
Therefore, I think we do make our own small community here at Auburn. Some members of our small community branch out to other communities. But as a whole we are confined to marcomblog contributors and other key influencers.
But do I fit into that marcomblog small community? I don’t think I do. I just read it and comment on it.
4/16/2006 at 9:10 pm
Katherine
Hi Kami! First of all, I just want to thank you again for speaking with our class on Skype the other night. I think we all gained a lot of insight into the roles women play in PR thanks to ya’ll.
I found this post very interesting. I think it is definitly true that blogging is becoming a large group of smaller “social groups”. Like you were saying when we were talking with you the other night, all those people who were commenting on the infamous blog were your friends. People are starting to form real relationships through blogging.
I can see how it would be hard to keep up real relationships with people once your blog draws a large following. I guess I can say that luckily, I don’t have that problem yet. I think once that begins to happen, people who are really devoted to their blogging should start another blog and make each blog more specialized in what it discusses. Maybe then, people will switch to reading the blog they are more interested in and it could be easier to keep up with comments and relationships. Just a thought.
4/17/2006 at 7:45 am
Kami Huyse
Wes; You bring up some fantastic points, namely that you participate in a community but don’t feel as if you are really a part of it. Maybe that is the diffrence between communities that form organically and those in which you are obliged to participate? I don’t know.
Katherine; As for starting smaller niche blogs, those who have been blogging for awhile especially seem to do this. I have only been blogging since last September, but even I participate in a few specialty blogs, such as Marcomblog here and the PRSA San Antonio blog, for example.
4/17/2006 at 2:16 pm
Amanda
Hey Kami! Thanks again for talking to our Style and Design class two weeks ago. You and Susan provided us with interesting insight and advice.
This post was especially interesting to me. It is amazing to see how the blogosphere has really taken off in the past year or two. It seems that everyone from PR students at Auburn (like myself) to top PR executives are blogging and commenting to others. So, you’re right, there is a large community that isn’t as “connected” to each other as a smaller group.
However, like Dee said, I think that blogs are evolving as a tool for disseminating information not covered in the mainstream. Especially since blog posts can be set up so that posts are sent to the media outlets.
Like Wes, I sometimes feel that even though I read blogs and write my own posts, I am not really part of a blogging community. Do you have any advice on how to get “connected” in these blogging communities?
4/17/2006 at 3:45 pm
Kami Husye
Great question Amanda, one of the reasons I started blogging was to better understand the culture of of the blogoshere. What I found is that it wasn’t a monolith; however, bloggers universally like and dislike certain things.
5/1/2006 at 9:57 am
Courtney
Blogging is growing at a tremendous rate, and as PR blogging moves out of the early adopter stage it is currently in, people will begin to join out of necessity. That is the evolution I will be waiting to see.
Content will totally change when a group will use it to survive. Certainly there is a fear and respect for the blogging community and most will read before they jump in and blog on their own. When it goes mainstream, I think the thoughtful posts that we are accustomed to will be harder to find. The relationships that define PR blogging as we know it will undergo changes as well. There has always been a joyful, welcoming atmosphere when someone joins the blogging community and begins to post. There is link love. As blogging begins to saturate our industry, I believe there will be less of that which will decrease the probability of forming relationships between older and newer bloggers. I think one of the ways this segmentation will manifest itself is through older vs. newer bloggers.
5/1/2006 at 1:25 pm
Amy
Kami, those are some very interesting thoughts. We always seem to think of blogging as being a completely separate thing from normal group communication; however I think it is very similar. You say that the social communities of bloggers tend to break down into smaller social groups, this is seems to be no different than actual, physical social groups of people. If you have an organization, such as the Auburn Student Alumni Association, the members will stay close and whole as long as the organization is relatively small. But, as the group grows it will begin to break down into smaller social groups within that organization. Members will group with other members that are similar to themselves. They are all still connected as a whole because of the organization, but they have simply broken down into smaller groups within a large one. I believe this is the same thing that is taking place in the blogosphere. While a blog following is relatively small the members of it will remain united because of one similar interest. But, as the following grows it is only natural for the members to break down into groups as well because that is what we typically do in social situations. I think people are just more satisfied in a smaller, more familiar group than in a large impersonal one, even when it comes to blogging.
5/1/2006 at 1:33 pm
Ashley Imsand
I think as blogging grows it will have to struggle through some of the same things that the Internet as a whole has had to face. We will have to look at everything with a skeptical eye.
I’m sure at first when resources were so easily found on the Internet, people welcomed them with open arms, but obviously now you have to weed through the joe-schmoe websites that claim they are experts on anything.
And even though as all of us humble Auburn bloggers have mentioned, we aren’t exactly the A-listers in the blogosphere. But we do enjoy the credibility out there in the PR blogosphere right now, and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that it won’t be so intimate in the future. But with everything, if it doesn’t grow it doesn’t reach it’s full potential even though there will be some negative aspects of the growth.
10/8/2006 at 4:16 pm
Mary
I am still in the stage of researching the blogging community. I participate in it, but am not at a level where I am completely comfortable. I think in order to become a member of the community, you have to do the research into what and how they think about different things. This class provides us the opportunity to be a member of one community where we feel completely comfortable while researching a community that we will all hopefully be a part of when we graduate. Becoming informed of this community will give us the knowledge to offer valuable insight to the blogosphere and other social media outlets.
10/9/2006 at 3:25 pm
Rachel M
Everything has a negative and a positive side. It is only natural that the blogosphere would. I understand that the more people that are in a group the harder it becomes to be personal with each one of them. On the blogs that I have recently posted on and recieved comments back on them the people behind the blog seem geniunely interested in what I had to say. I am not sure how large these communities are but the more I blog the more comfortable I become in the community. It is a lot easier to get things said, feel more comfortable and be able to communicate with a smaller network.