horsepigcow

Last night while on a panel at the Social Media Club gathering, I went on a bit of a rant about soup. Soup? Yes. Soup.

Soup Metrics, as coined by John Hagel (Net Gain/Net Worth) after our panel here:

…is in reference to the number of people in your network that will bring you soup when you are sick. The question I asked the audience was, “How many of you have been single and so sick you couldn’t get out of bed?” A bunch of hands went up. Then I asked, “And how many of you have been in that situation without anyone offering to bring you soup?” Heads nodded. Yep. Many of us have been there. It sucks. I’ve had that moment and realized that, even though I have tons of friends, I had no really close friends that would voluntarily bring over a bowl of soup when they knew I was sick. And even worse, this soup metaphor seemed to extend into all parts of my life. Who really has my back?

There is a misconception that there is some sort of delineation between your close-knit friends and those who are in your business network. I believe this is the result of extending the concept of bonded and bridged social ties that was first distinguished by Robert Putnum and more recently extended and discussed in business concepts by people like Ronald Burt. Though I see value in both building close (bonded) ties with people while extending the reach of your network and expanding your loose (bridged) ties, I am perplexed by the notion of dismissing the power of those connections closest to you.

You see…as I’ve experienced online communities, the same people who would bring me soup voluntarily when I’ve been sick have also been instrumental in moving my career forward. These are the people who will go to bat for me no matter what. I need these people ESPECIALLY during times like these: an economic downturn. As the number of people who would bring me soup when I am sick grows, so does my career, business and ability to accomplish really great things. Of course, all my close bonds have to start somewhere. They come to me through the looser ties and slowly grow more bonded. However, if I only concentrated on branching out and failed to build and grow deep, strong connections, I wouldn’t get very far at all.

Therefore, the soup metric is the number of people in your social network that you know would bring you soup if they knew you were sick and/or get your back in any other real friend way – to help you feel better OR help your career. Of course I should add that the soup metric has to be reciprocal to work: the soup offer has to work both ways.

This number is the only metric I, personally, give a damn about. It’s the core of whuffie IMO.

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p.s. I should also note and give a big hat tip to Alistair Croll here, someone who quickly moved from my extended network (introduced by Sean Power whom I met through Austin Hill whom I met through a chance blog encounter because of Jeff Howe) to the soup circle in a very short amount of time. We had a conversation while planting a vineyard together where he expressed his viewpoint on the importance of business relationships being close ties. Without his astute observations on this, there would be no soup metric.

So many businesses and industries are struggling with basic math. So let me ask you, because I know you will know:

Which is greater, 0 or 500?

I know, d’uh, right? Of course. 500 is definitely the larger number of the two. It’s really simple and most pre-schoolers could even answer this question. So why is it that many companies can’t?

The other day, my publisher asked me to send them a list of bloggers/twitterers to send an advanced copy of my book to. Great, I thought. Let’s see who wants one! So, I proceeded to tweet out a message that said I’d send a book to 20 bloggers who want a copy. Instantly, I received a slough of excited messages with addresses. The only ones I didn’t reply to were the ones who lived in countries outside of the current publishing zone. I forwarded them onto my publisher, happy.

Then I get a phonecall the other day telling me that the publisher was going to send books to a few of the bloggers I forwarded, but that many had too few readers to bother. This was followed by the kind of question that really gets stuck in my craw:

Don’t you have a list of bigger bloggers – you know, influencers – that you want me to send these to?

I had to count to ten before I responded calmly, “I want to send the book to people who WANT to receive it. People who are excited and are more likely to write about it, tweet about it, tell their friends, their bosses and everyone who will listen. I want to send my book to people who give a damn.”

I got off the phone, thinking that, surely, the message came across. But no. I receive another message later that day asking for a list of ‘influencers’ I know. I reply, “Everyone is an influencer today.” And then I decided to write this post about math.

Yes, people with a big audience make for big news. It would be amazing for Shel Israel or Kathy Sierra or even Cory Doctorow, himself, to read my book and blog about it. It would rock to be covered on TechCrunch. But the chances are that these influential types are so busy getting inundated with free books, software, goodies and other various sundries in hopes of a review that they won’t even have time to read my book, let alone review it! So, I could send the book to 20 influential types and probably even get one or two of them to read it. Then blog about it? That’s a precious commodity for people these days – especially since every blogger with a large audience I know is writing a book these days! They are pretty busy concentrating on writing their own material. So, if I add it up, the sum total of possible blog posts here is 0, which leads to the reach of…0.

However, of those that answered my tweet and asked for a book are actually looking forward to the book. This group is busy, too. Career and lives get in the way, so I probably will see about half of them able to actually get to reading the book in the near future. And, as blog posts fall off from reading, Maybe 5 of them will actually get around to posting something. Say, their collective readers are somewhere around 500 – and that number is really conservative, since most blog posts will see long term hits, even those with a low readership (I will also do my best to drive people to those posts). Adding this column up, I see a sum total of possible ‘eyeballs’ reading about the book being 500.

And from the test earlier, 500 is greater than 0. Therefore, I’m sending books to people who want them and are more likely to read them. Not to mention that the people who are just starting out on their blogging/tweeting/online community adventure today very possibly could be the ‘influencers’ of tomorrow. I started as a nobody. Kathy started from zero. Cory and Shel both came from being unknown to being well-known. I totally remember when Michael (TechCrunch) was just starting to write about startups – it was about 5 years ago. He went from 0 to over 1 million in less than 2 years. Like I said, today EVERYONE is an influencer.

I’m not saying to ignore or snub the people with a big reach. I’ve reached out at various times and would be honored to have any number of them read my book – review or not. But if they haven’t responded or reach back, it’s most likely the case that they’ve been incredibly busy. I know I have a stack of AT LEAST 30 books waiting for me to read and potentially review. I’ll probably be able to get to them around 2020. Not because I don’t want to read them, but because any time I have left in my day (which is rare) needs to be spent with my family and even sometimes sleeping.

So, keep the math in mind and remember that even someone whose blog is read by 5 people is someone who will reach 5 people. And that is better than zero.

From page 16 of this awesome presentation by Paul Jones.

The idea of Throwing Sheep has been tickling my brain for the last few weeks now. Everywhere I turn around, I notice that the lack of accounting for throwing sheep is exactly the point at which something goes from being an interaction to being a transaction. Interactions are warm, they are human, they connect us and are often repeated and deepened over time. Transactions are cold and distant and keep us at arms length and are often one-offs. And there is no doubt in my mind that in order for something to be an interaction, there needs to be Sheep Throwing.

Take these scenarios for instance:

• An e-commerce site that is maximized to push customers through to a shopping cart and transaction, versus an e-commerce site that includes the ability to post photos, comments, ratings, share items, bookmark for later, post to facebook or twitter, and other fun and potentially frivolous things before someone gets to that shopping cart. The latter is, well, basically Amazon.com, the most successful online shopping mall in North America. The former? Most everyone else that wishes they had Amazon’s momentum.
• A salesperson who takes you to dinner and wants to talk about their offerings and how they can do business with you from beginning to end, versus a salesperson that engages in light, personal conversation, finding the things you have in common, sharing a laugh, connecting and saving the business talk for when you suggest it. I’ve dealt with both and, well, I have longer term relationships with the latter. The Sheep Throwers.
• A networking event where you bring your business cards and are told to circulate and find as many people as possible to talk with and exchange business cards, versus an event like SXSW Interactive, where I’ve gone for years and forged the strongest connections to people with whom I’ve shared a karaoke mic on an RV or a plate of Texas BBQ. SXSW is more about Throwing Sheep than any other conference I’ve been to…except maybe for TED, where, believe me, the Sheep that are thrown are a little heavier, but make a pretty significant impact on the recipients (i.e. you get really deep with people really fast).

Throwing Sheep isn’t just for websites…it’s the core of building relationships. Unless we are obliterated drunk in Vegas, we don’t generally marry a person until we get to know them for a while. We don’t just go into business with the first person that hands us a business card in the first 5 minutes of meeting them. We need to feel comfortable and listened to and connected to a person before we start doing the serious stuff.

In everything we do, no matter how serious the outcome, there needs to be onramps. Those baby steps and lightweight interactions that help a person familiarize and connect with their situation. Twitter, as joked about in the above illustration, is probably 90% about Throwing Sheep. “What are you doing?” is a pretty light question. It usually starts with, “Well, I’m trying this thing out” then moves along to food, heading to the gym/store, meeting up with friends…then gets deeper as people respond and as you follow other people’s deepening tweets. But day to day to fill the spots between us being utterly profound, we are still Throwing Sheep to keep connected.

Paul Jones, who created the presentation that includes this amazing slide, said this to me on Twitter:

@missrogue Just spoke at UNC Law School explaining how casual communications keep loose ties alive & allow deeper convos to begin Go mundane!

Go mundane, indeed. There is nothing in this world that I can imagine will survive for long without at least some thought put into how Throwing Sheep fits into the picture. It’s a key component to raising Whuffie.

During an internal meeting the other day, my team was discussing the implementation of some of the ideas we have around blending the social with the professional to really help small businesses meet their needs. One of the main reasons I joined the Intuit Partner Platform team was because I really felt aligned to their vision around helping SMBs connect to any application required to succeed. The platform, itself, is -well- just a platform. There is a bigger need to have that platform as just a part of the customer experience (without even realizing there is a platform). There is an entire ecosystem available to small businesses, both inside and outside of Intuit that should be working together to achieve this.

So, my first order of business was to sit down and think about the experience purely from a customer point of view. I asked myself, “In the day-to-day operations of a business, what would be my needs?” The answer to this question led me to the Intuit Customer Community, where SMBs are highly active in both asking and answering questions, learning from one another and supporting the growth of their businesses. The platform makes a nice fit here, too, as the marriage covers the social and technical needs of the community members.

But there was still something missing. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Until the team meeting where we started to spec out how we would structure such a marriage. Everything seemed to be there: asking and answering, connecting, collaborating, sharing, trying apps, buying apps and recommending apps. Without even thinking about what I was about to say, I blurted out:

Where do we account for the ability to throw sheep in this plan?

There it was. The thing that was nagging me all along: when you are designing a user experience, how do you leave room for (or even encourage) the fun, seemingly non-productive behavior that users engage in. The stuff that encourages light interactions between community members. The stuff that includes throwing sheep, poking, giving virtual gifts and nudging. It is this fun stuff that helps community members break the ice, bridge and dabble with connections. It can be noticed by all or behind the scenes, but represents a fun and light interaction between two people that opens the door to deeper interactions. And it is as important in business as it is in social circles.

So, as you go through and design your product, website, community site, etc. ask yourself: “Where are we accounting for the ability to throw sheep in this plan?”