The DNA of a Social Group

The Building Blocks

The building block of a group begins with the creation of purpose. This purpose provides the direction and defines its core. By default the nature of the social groups is to spread or grow of its own kind ( especially the ones with a purpose) . Autonomy & purpose are the core traits or the nucleus of the group, the concept of  growth and Sharing form the Double helix of their DNA and their basic building blocks/ bases that genetic code is defined by their

• Learning: All individuals in the group share New knowledge, preferences, skills and understandings
• Cognition: All individuals of the group share a  defined and accepted thought process
• Communication: a response and feedback mechanism and media choice
• Efficacy :The capacity to produce an effect by the group
• Social Control: All individuals accept and agree certain basic protocols in dealing with somebody not from the group

(There may be many more such building blocks)

Interestingly, it is observed that certain well grown groups often act like a system and depict behaviors known as positive feedbacks or negative feedbacks ; whereby In response to certain external stimuli or perturbation (offline or online) they act to increase the magnitude of the perturbation. That is, “if A produces more of B the groups in turn produce more of A”. In contrast, a system that responds to a perturbation in a way that reduces its effect is said to exhibit Negative feedback. A typical example of these types of groups could be the hacker groups and the white knight groups. Chinese hackers have depicted their nationalism in early 2009 by hacking Malaysian Government websites in response to introduction of new laws for Chinese Diaspora. They also attacked French Websites in 2008 for disruption of Olympic torch relay through Paris.

The Heroes in a group

Although I reiterate that hierarchy does not exist in a group but individuals within a group play key roles of spread and share; my current understandings and observation filters down to three distinct individual types or roles as described by Malcolm Gladwell in his notoriously famous ‘The tipping Point’

• The connectors: They are the individuals of a group who spread the values, opinions, Knowledge, ideas, insights, etc to everyone through their conversations, transactions, apps, videos, pictures etc etc.

They do it in a really fast & efficient way and can be identified by the fact that they are connected to everyone or are friends with everyone. These individuals are the most easily identified members of the group because they are everywhere and know everybody. They are not restricted to just part of one group but multiple groups based on their interest i.e they are available in multiple groups, multiple platforms ( twitter, facebook, orkut, bebo…)

If you are on a social networking platform like Face book or orkut ; try Looking at  some of your friends network ( of face book & orkut) carefully and you will find a few friends who are connected to over 300 or 400 friends or comparatively huge no of individuals. It seems that they are friends with everyone. These are the individuals that interact with other individuals and groups and pass messages, information and insights (through posts, tweets, videos, Pictures, Apps etc.).

• The Opinionators / Mavens: As Malcolm Gladwell puts it they are intense gatherers of information and impressions, they also have strong opinions and are often the first to pick up on new or nascent trends. They are the message or information source for connectors who pick up the opinions. The connectors and the mavens form a deadly combination duo and distribute the ideas, insights and values of their group, within the group and outside of their groups, thus contributing to the growth and critical mass of the group. These two individuals together are capable of starting a movement or even a revolution in no time.

The opinionators or Mavens can also be identified easily by their following traits:

a)      They will let the world know about their opinion/ Impressions through their blogs, discussion groups, wikis etc.

b)      The conversations are most profound and reflect the intensity and at times passion of their beliefs and thoughts

c)      Of course they are connected with the connectors

• The contexters: They are someone who provide the direction and start the context or the cause (read as spark) in a group. They are the one who provide the idea starts or trend starts or sometime even have a distinct idea which form the context for the Opinionators/ mavens. They are obsessed with achieving critical mass for the group. They treat their context like a cause and may not necessarily be active during the entire spread process. In fact they are mostly invisible but are passionate followers of the movement initiated by them. Its usually difficult to identify them, but a good way to identify them would be in an offline scenario. Its because they believe in their cause so deeply that they dedicate and spend most of their offline time for this cause as well, sometimes even start new offline / real world groups for the cause.

In a entire flow of things, the Contexters facilitate the exploration of the idea or provide the idea itself, The mavens, sense the intent and provide the stickiness factor and the connectors provide the epidemic factor. Now that’s quite a way to spread or grow 🙂

How can a marketer benefit from Social Media?

A marketing organization can benefit enormously provided they are addressing the right or relevant groups and have a long term objective association. My understanding depicts that a marketer should firstly accept the social groups as it is and should not make a conscious attempt to change or influence their context with marketing messages right from the word go. It’s not only invasive to their space but also its like saying you are not complete (Therefore use my product/ service).

In other words, The social media should not be treated as a lead generation platform but as a platform to manage reputation and creation of support groups and friends. It is also a great platform to acquire new product ideas and solutions to the current problems.

A marketer can reap the following benefits through well defined set of processes

1)      Identify the groups that one wants to associate with and Listen to their conversations and utilize the benefits of cooperative framework to harness the collective intelligence. Its because best products & services don’t talk about themselves, they are talked about. one can end up with amazing new ideas, Insights and solutions if the marketer just listens. It is suggested that employees of an organization be exposed to these groups so that they can understand the needs first hand

2)      Test your new products and services by introducing them to the potential groups, and they would be more than willing to share first hand un adulterated views and opinions. The marketing organization can save a lot of effort and resources that they would otherwise spend in market research.

3)      Nurture the groups with strong purposes and radical ideas and just watch them grow and one may end with great product, applications or processes itself. The best way to nurture a group is to become a sponsor (without influencing or interfering in the group activities)

4)      Try creating self help groups ( individuals consisting of your employees and customers), and follow the main groups closely

5)      Engage with the groups and provide direction to groups with potential, but it is suggested that it be done only by engaging the right individuals rather than the entire group. The right individuals to engage within a group would be the contexters and opinionators/ mavens; although it is usually considered difficult; but for a right reason and the prospect of spread/ growth of group they might get aligned to a cause and spread it rapidly.

6)      Provide the dormant groups with a cause or direction and equivocally participate in their growth and spread. You can win uncoditional friendship and support of these groups.

These are a few ways a marketer can harvest Social media. However, the social media is still in evolving stages and so is our understanding about them. We need to make sure that our learnings grow at the same pace as the growth of the social media. Social media at the end of the day does not deal with only media/ mediums, but also with factors of user generated content, Group psychology and direction.

Such unconventional mediums require unconventional means and techniques of measurement. But that should be another story. That i will be writing about soon.