Gauravonomics Blog

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Quick Summary: Businesses based on the influence curve of an idea cluster are likely to be more robust and less risky than businesses based on the influence curve of one idea.

Ideas have a bell-shaped influence curve. Over time, ideas gain influence, reach a peak influence at a point in time and decline in influence thereafter. If your business is based on an idea, like all businesses are, your business is limited by the idea’s influence curve. To build a successful business, you would like to identify an idea early, build competence/ credibility before others during the growth phase, make money at peak influence, and exit/ diversify during the decline phase.

Different ideas have different influence curves. You can think of an influence curve in terms of height (peak influence), gradient (rate of acceptance) and width (life of idea). To build a successful business, you would like to identify an idea that has a fast rate of acceptance, a high peak influence, and a long life.

Quick Summary: I have set myself three blogging goals for 2008 — write 100 posts with original content, reach 1000 subscribers, and enter Technorati top 1000.

Daniels at Daily Blog Tips is doing a Group Writing Project on Blogging Goals for 2008 and more than 130 bloggers have participated so far.

While most bloggers participating in the project have set themselves goals on as many as ten metrics related to blog redesign, post frequency, promotion techniques, comments, traffic, link-backs and revenue, I have decided to focus on three simple goals — write 100 posts with original content, reach 1000 subscribers, and enter Technorati top 1000.

Goals only work if they are linked to a long-term objective and blogging goals are no different.

I decided some time back that I’m not interested in using my blog to earn money. Instead, my objective is to use my blog to establish myself as an authority in the marketing, strategy and social media niche. In fact, as I have built a library of quality original content on my blog over the last few months, I have even started putting my blog URL on my resume.

Read about how a soft-hard-soft leadership style works best in an environment that is constantly changing.

Management literature is littered with debates on what is the right leadership style. Most of these models recognize that there is no right leadership style, that different leadership styles work in different environments.

Based on my own experience over the last few years, I have found that a soft-hard-soft leadership style works best in an environment that is constantly changing.

Simply put, a soft leadership style is focused on people and a hard leadership style is focused on targets and processes.

According to my Soft-Hard-Soft Leadership Style Model, managers need to adopt their leadership styles to how easy or difficult their environment is.

There are three stages in the Soft-Hard-Soft Leadership Style Model model –

Stage 1 - Soft-Soft

When the environment is soft and targets/ processes are not under pressure, managers should adopt a soft leadership style to maintain the feel-good factor in the team.

Stage 2 - Hard-Hard

Quick Summary: Read about the five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being, and the three laws that govern how brands move between them.

In an earlier post, I had written that, like the Renaissance Chain of Being, there is also a Marketing Chain of Being.

In this post, I’ll explain the five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being, and the three laws that govern how brands move between them.

There are five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being –

1. Commodity Hell, in which brands basically focus on price and channel promotions to sell more (think groceries).
2. Differentiation, in which brands highlight product features and benefits to command a price premium (think automobiles).
3. Engagement, in which brands use service (in both its customer service and conversation meaning) to develop relationships with customers (think Dell).
4. Cultural Currency, in which brands become shared social objects and help customers define their individual and group identities (think Nike+iPod).
5. Meaning, in which brands become the tools that customers use for self-realization or restoration (think Google).

Quick Summary: Read about how engagement is only the middle level in the ‘Marketing Chain of Being’ and how social media and customer service are only tools to create engagement.

The topic of the week in the marketing and public relations blogosphere is whether customer service is the new marketing, so much so that there’s even an upcoming event on the topic.

Most of the posts on the topic have focused on how social media is causing customer service and public relations to merge into each other to form the fabric of a new marketing paradigm.

I’m a brand manager, not a PR practitioner, and I can’t but feel that the above statement is rather simplistic. Yes, customer service is important. Yes, word of mouth is important, and, by association, public relations is important. Yes, good (or bad) customer service is an important factor in creating favorable (or unfavorable) word of mouth. Yes, social media gives customers the tools to amplify word of mouth. Yes, yes, yes and yes. But that’s only part of the story. Let me tell you the real story by going back to my post on the Marketing Chain of Being.

Quick Summary: Read about how the long tail doesn’t only apply to culture and commerce, but also to relationships.

In my earlier post about the Long Tail of Pain, I just drew a diagram of how social media allows us to experience pain anytime, anyplace, in any form, but didn’t elaborate on the idea adequately.

In this post, I’ll explain what a long tail is and how digital media has changed it. I’ll also explain how the long tail doesn’t only apply to culture and commerce, but also to relationships, specifically pain, via the Three Laws of the Long Tail of Pain.

Let me first explain what a long tail is.

A long tail curve is a statistical distribution in which a small number of data points have disproportionately high values compared to a large number of other data points that have progressively low values. If you rank these data points and plot them in the decreasing order of their values, you get a curve that first falls very sharply (forming the almost vertical head) and then falls more slowly (forming the almost horizontal tail). The Pareto Principle (the top 20% contribute 80% of the total) is an example of a long tail curve.

The Long Tail doesn’t only define the new economics of culture and commerce; it also defines the new economics of relationships.

My new favorite idea is The Long Tail of Pain - how social media allows us to find pain anytime, anyplace, in any form. (Twitter)

By the way, are we friends on Facebook or Twitter yet?

Quick Summary: Read about how your following/ followers ratio is a foolproof indicator of your position on the blogging chain of being.

Today, I found myself Twittering about the following/ followers ratio, that is, the ratio between the number of people whose blog you read/ who you follow on Twitter and the number of people who read your blog/ follow you on Twitter. Then, as I compiled my updates into a Twitter thread, I had a Eureka moment — I realized that your following/ followers ratio is a foolproof indicator of your position on the blogging chain of being.

If your Following/ Followers ratio is > 2 or < 1/2, you are listening or talking, but not communicating. (Twitter)

That signal to noise (Following/ Followers) ratio rule holds for Twitter/ Pownce, but it also holds for blogs/ RSS feeds. (Twitter)

When you start communicating via a new medium, your Following/ Followers ratio will be typically > 2. (Twitter)

If you are good at using the medium, over time, you will build a following and the Following/ Followers ratio will fall between 1/2 and 2. (Twitter)

Quick Summary: Read about the marketing and blogging chain of being.

Have I ever told you why Grant McCracken is brilliant — because he often makes me think. Like he did today when he asked –

Could there be a great chain of being in the marketing world?

Of course, Grant, there is a great chain of being, not only in the marketing world, but also in the blogging world.

The Renaissance Chain of Being

The Marketing Chain of Being

The Blogging Chain of Being

By the way, here’s the inside story on why most bloggers blog — blogging allows the world to find out how brilliant we are, individually and collectively.

If you think I’m totally brilliant, do let me know via a comment or an e-mail.

Quick Summary: Read about how Nike is helping customers create their own cultural currency with Nike+.

The Economics of Free

In an earlier post, I wrote about the ‘economics of free’ —

Free content -> Attention -> Free product -> Lock-in -> Paid bundled services -> $$$

The ‘Free content -> Free product -> Paid bundled services’ model is an extreme example of a trend we have been seeing for a while now — marketers bundling services with basically undifferentiated products in order to build a differentiation.

Free Content Can Convert Brands Into Cultural Currency

Take Nike as an example.

In spite of all the technology that supposedly goes inside a typical sports shoe, if you take away the logos, it’s almost impossible to differentiate between a Nike, a Reebok and an Adidas (or Puma or New Balance or…) shoe. So, Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have instead focused on differentiating themselves by converting their brands into cultural currency. We have started talking about marketers becoming publishers and using free content to grab attention only now, but Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have been doing it for decades. What’s more, it has worked out brilliantly for the sports shoe industry — even non-athletic types like yours truly have four pair of sports shoes — one for jogging, one for trekking, one for cross-training and one for tennis.