I’ve been working with Jose Leal, CEO of wikiDOMO on something we are tentatively calling “Open Marketing.” The idea is to create an evolving, collaborative conceptual framework for new marketing tools like wikiDOMO and many other solutions that are either already being created or will be in the future. The idea is not to try to replace or usurp any current thinking in this area, but rather to join the conversation and hopefully to be a catalyst for new ideas that can benefit all of us interested in the changing state of marketing.
One of the challenges Jose and I found in trying to flesh out some of these ideas was discussion of the different kinds of connections people and businesses have with one another. We know we’re certainly not the first ones to have this kind of discussion, and I’ve talked in the past here about the nature of community and relationships as they pertain to the social media space and beyond.
We’ve taken a first crack at a framework for helping to understand the different kinds of connections that exist in these spaces. Here’s what we have so far:
DEFINITIONS (DRAFT)
Relationship — At some level, you have a one-on-one relationship with this person. It would not be unexpected, under the right circumstances, for you to contact them directly.
Friend — In the traditional sense of the word, this is someone you might share a causal meal with or invite to your house.
Customer — Synonymous with client or consumer. Someone you sell a product or service to, or make money through their actions. You may or may not have a personal relationship with this person.
Audience — Someone who consumes information about you or has an interest in you. They may or may not be a customer, in that you may not sell them anything or make money through their actions.
Personal Community — This person may be a member of a community of which you are an active part.
Commercial Community — This person may be a member of a community of interest about you, or about your product or service.
Broader Community — This personal does not see themselves as part of a formal or information community of interest about you, but feels a connection to you in some way.
Now, Jose and I both think we are pretty smart guys, but we by no means have all the answers. We would LOVE to get input on this, to fill in the gaps and expand it to make it something that can be used by anyone to help in understanding these connections.
Please leave your comments here on the blog if you think this has any use, or if you think we’re totally off our nut. And if you’d REALLY like to get involved in developing this, let me know and I can give you access to the Google Doc presentation we are using. Maybe you think our definitions need work, maybe we’re missing some essential kinds of connections completely. You can make your own changes and additions to what we’ve done so far –- maybe we’ll end up with something totally different, or even a few variations that suit different needs. That’s great!
Ultimately, whatever we come up with will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, so anyone will be able to copy, distribute and adapt the work in any jurisdiction for any purpose, including commercial use.
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I wonder if the circles need to represent proportion of population to get a better idea of scale. Also… what about detractors, competitors and other foes. How do they impact this chart. Should they?
The one problem I’d see with trying to use size in representing population is that you’re going to have different sizes relative to different kinds of business or personalities. So for instance if you’re a small ad agency, you might see the relationship and customer circles as big and the audience one as small ‘cus you don’t have much potential audience that isn’t in the other two circles — on the other hand, if you’re Madonna, that audience circle is HUGE ‘cus the number of people who pay attention to you is massive.
What that could mean is you do different versions of this for different applications, which I think could be very valuable.
As far as detractors etc. that’s a really interesting question. I’d almost see it as a separate flow that goes along with this, representing your relationship with different parties. Part of the opportunity is to move people from friend to foe. A competitor is always going to be a competitor, but we know that an individual detractors (such as a disgruntled customer) can be moved to a supporter if you relate to them correctly. I’m just not totally sure how you’d represent that.
I wonder if the friend V foe relationship couldn’t be worked in somehow with a vertical scale. As it stands the horizontal scale shows personal-business-global. Maybe a vertical scale showing friend-acquaintance-foe?
Hmmmm, interesting… I’m just sure how to make it relate to idea of what’s in the circles… thoughts?
I think Collin makes a really good point. Though, I agree that it’s difficult to represent size of population in this kind of chart, it does make for an interesting issue that should be dealt with somehow. We have few friends and customers (well not Jay), certainly fewer than relationships or audience. Yet, most of us want to grow those parts of our community.
That leads me to both Jay and Collin’s points about the detractors. They too are part of the community and more importantly they need as much or more attention than other parts of the community. I’m not sure I agree with Jay about making it a separate flow. If competitors and foes are represented then the community landscape is more accurate. Jay’s right in saying that everyone’s chart would be different, but I think we can and should try to create a general (average) chart.
aye Jose and there is no reason that a competitor can’t be a supporter as well. They needn’t be an absolute foe.
This is great, we are moving forward with this I think. If anyone would like to view the updates so far, check out:
http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=df57trrb_40dvrdshg8
And if you’d like to participate in making changes, let me know here on the blog or via email at jay @ jaymoonah {dot} com.
It’s so true that competitors can be supporters. There’s so much of that going on today. I’m a little confused about the definition of relationship. How does that differ from the areas where the circles overlap? Also what about those who are not yet a customer or audience. It seems that part of the social networking process (and I’m very new to this so pardon me) is to draw people in as friends, customers, or audience. But I don’t see the “pre” step represented — for instance, you want to increase your audience or customer base.
Yeah, “relationship” might be a little problematic because the term is generally used more broadly than how I was trying to use it here. I was originally thinking of “associate” or something like that, the idea being there are people who are “friends” in the traditional sense (not necessarily the Facebook sense) and that’s usually a subset of all the people you might have a one-on-one relationship. Are you a friend of your plumber, in the traditional sense? Not usually, but you certainly have a relationship with him.
Is it the term “relationship” unclear in this context? Is there a better term?
How about “acquaintance”? I think that might be what we are looking for.
I don’t know if “acquaintance” says to me that this could be a business connection — I think of an acquaintance as someone you know socially, where “associate” has the opposite problem, it sounds totally business which is why I originally didn’t go with that either.
If there was a term that combined those two ideas, I think it would be perfect.
This is really great that you’re trying to sort all this out. About the definitions, I think one thing that might help (me at least) is to point out if not already that there are different degrees of friendship, customer, community, etc. That might help make it clearer. Actually the circle drawings and arrows may say that already — that as you move further away from where the circles intersect, this defines a looser form of customer, one who may have purchased on a one-time basis. The cross over or overlap is customers (or friends, etc.) who are in tighter relationships. The ideal goal perhaps being to have total overlap (but unrealistic). I may be confusing the issue but I am thinking of some literature that I’ve read recently that describes “The Evolution of Customer Relationships” — from strangers to acquaintances to friends to partners.
What you’re doing here that is blowing my mind is tying the social network scheme (which includes social as well as commercial friends) to the customer scheme. I think this is really COOL as I am unfamiliar with that literature (or social networking for that matter).
[...] “The Connection Continuum — an invitation to collaborate on a community/relationship modelling tool” on Media Driving [...]
Where do (business) partners fit in this continuum? I think they are a pretty important part of the ecosystem, as they often sit alongside or between you and the customer – in other words they can be a key link between you and the customer (often the broker).
I would ordinarily see business partners as being in the circle we’re currently calling Relationship, to me that’s actually a perfect example of what that circle is for. They could also fit inside of Customer and Friend. Does that make sense?
Note that this model is mainly useful for mapping a one-to-one relationship — in other words, the relationship of two parties to each other. If we want to get into viewing multiples like your relationship to a partner, and then THEIR relationship to an ultimate customer, I would think we’d need a different visual. I could actually see some use for that as an additional tool.
Wow, lots of food for thought. You’ve made a great start. I like the definitions, and agree it would be difficult to represent relative sizes. Not sure size matters. About competitors: sometimes they are friends, sometimes they fall into other categories. And they can be fluid, no?
Thanks for your work on this.
We actually DID end up taking a crack at using relative size with the latest version:
Here’s the link to the Google Doc:
http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=df57trrb_40dvrdshg8
I totally agree that Competitors should also overlap with Friends though, there’s tonnes of examples of that.
BTW Donna (or anyone else!) if you want access to the Google Doc please drop me a line at jay {at} jaymoonah.com.
I’ve made a few additional changes to the diagram, here’s the latest version:
I went backwards a bit on trying to use relative size to represent populations within the different circles, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to get them to intersect correctly otherwise. Any feedback is welcome, check the Google Doc link above for the latest plus the previous versions.
About the “partner” issue, I think that’s it. One key is to try to get customers to become partners (as the ultimate relationship in the business world — as in social relationships that are really strong). Then if I understand you all correctly, these partners then can become links between you and other customers (who may be at any level of relationship development, but ideally attempting to make all of them partners, loyal customers).
It looks like this (diagrams) is describing the real world of business — dynamic but messy (no offense to your diagrams — it’s reality of the thought process and the business process. So, trying to figure all this out. . . hmmmmm. . . . It’s getting a little more challenging and difficult to represent as you said. I like the different colors. They help to represent different dimensions or levels of this one-to-one relationship. If this could be drawn in 3-D it would be wonderful! Maybe someone has a software program?
You think you could briefly explain your perception of what it all means — the latest draft (version 5). What are you interpreting this to mean? I’d love to hear your interpretation and any others.
[...] Since I posted an early draft of the “connection continuum” produced initially by me and Jose Leal of wikiDOMO, we’ve had a TONNE of support, both here on the blog as well as through various backchannels. Here’s the latest version: [...]
[...] For the last few weeks, I’ve been working along with a number of other folks (including some of the very gracious and thoughtful readers of this blog) on something called the Connection Continuum. Although I’d hesitate to call this the ‘final’ version, I believe what we have so far could be a very useful tool in helping businesses, media creators and anyone who wants to better appreciate their relationships with individuals in their various communities. [...]
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