The Matter of Scale

I think no, SM doesn't scale -- past a point. It does extend our Dunbar number of possible relationships from perhaps the normal 150 in "real" life to maybe 1,000 or 2,000 -- but beyond that, personal one-on-one gets lost and transitions to broadcasting.

One of the reasons I don't follow many "A list" bloggers, including you, dear Chris Brogan, is you follow so many people on Twitter and other SM systems that it seems futile to try to connect with you on a personal level. That's no crime or shame, just the fact that some people scale SM beyond the personal into the broadcast level. It's OK to be a celebrity, but it's a different communication dynamic and not one I'd expend effort in trying to connect to.

I'm capping my own contacts at 500 ... and trying to maintain them if I can. Tis tempting to go too far, but at that point social media might as well be publishing a personal newspaper.

So my answer is SM, if scaled too far, becomes MSM.

I believe the minute you start thinking/acting with a one-to-many mindset, you lose the magic and beauty of twitter. Twitter is all about connection and conversation. If you morph to a one-to-many strategy, you lose both the connection and the conversation, because both require someone on the other side to exist.

I make a habit to check once in a while who I am following, that isn't following me. If they aren't like a genius I just know I want to listen to, I unfollow them.

Just my personal stance.
Terri Z

What does one do when they get bigger? If we are going to be part of the social media scaling and maintain the personal touch our community does and will continue to demand, we will have to take advantage of every social media tool we have available.

Some our community members will come from our blog, others from twitter or Facebook. We will have to learn how to interact on each. However, I am not sure there is not going to be a point we might get too big. Can we really, even using all the available tools, maintain the personal touch? I don't think we can. We are going to have to decide at some point, how big can we get and still maintain the community.

While we can still reach a large number of community members. Only a select few will actually receive the personal touch when we get so large. Will this be a problem. For some it will be and they may drop out of our community. If they do, we move on. We simply can not be everything to ever one. Our community by its very nature will morph into its own "monster" Some will expect and receive personal attention. Some will not care. Others will be part of the community since we will continue to provide them with the location to build their community. In that case, our community members will then start to interact with each other on a more personal level and relieve us from that responsibility totally.

By their very nature, our community will then become somewhat self-efficient. And we will then spend our time continuing to build our community. Bringing new members in who will then adopt and migrate to that part of the community which will give them what they need.

Chris, I am not sure that made any sense. But I do believe we can maintain the community and still reach a large audience. The community will learn to take care of itself too if they want to remain part of it. We can still give personal attention to those who might need it more then others.

Blogs, especially, are a form of broadcast. Despite the ability to easily share and comment, they are much like other forms of one-way communication. My buddy Richie (@vedo) even compared blogs to radio talk shows here - http://tinyurl.com/5hlxhp.
That said, I don't see scaling as a huge issue. The writer must adjust to the challenges of a larger audience, but the audience is still made up of individuals. And the audience still came to the information the same way.
All for now. Thanks Chris, you always make me think.

Hey Chris,

I think I'd go back and take a look at that quotation again:

"Once you have a large audience with many people commenting and discussing, you become a 'Broadcaster' since you are now communicating one to many. The laws of one-to-few or one-to-one change radically. Yet your audience or customers 'expect' a personal response."

I think this is correct in some ways and short-sighted in others. Sure, as the numbers increase it is harder to scale your ability to respond to everyone. But I don't think this is a question of broadcast/narrowcast.

As an essentially dialogic (two-way communication) platform, I don't just sit back and passively read this blog. Sometimes I lurk, I read and take the thoughts away to mull over a while.

But other times I get stuck into the comments, or I get stuck into one commenter, or I start my own conversation in the comments and see who gets involved.

If you see this (or many other) blog(s) as a one-way broadcast channel, and a blog where it is only the author who responds to you personally as a two-way narrowcast channel, then scalability becomes an issue.

But I think blogs aren't just about what the author writes and whether they respond individually to each commenter. I think they're also about starting conversations among the readers and commenters. About generating a sense of community that doesn't rely solely on the one-to-one communications of authors and individual commenters.

Great blogs are happy to hand over the thoughts, ideas, and conversations to their community to discuss (usually in the comments). In this sense, great blogs are community facilitation tools rather than uniquely broadcast or narrowcast.

Hey Grant,

I agree with much of what you said. As the community grows, it will take on its own internal rules and dynamics that can't be dictated by one blogger (or better, might not want to be dictated by one blogger).

I also think you're right when you highlight the fact that the blog is just one touch point for the community, and as such does need to be thought about in terms of an overall integrated perspective on scalability.

One thing you get close to suggesting, which I'll explicitly state, is that the role of the blogger behind a large audience might well be that of a community manager/facilitator.

If the blogger is struggling to scale the personality and personability of the blog, then I think it is up to the blogger to seek out and actively incentivise existing community members to come on board the blog as authors and help with issues of scalability.

A customer/reader service rep for a blog? Perhaps it's not as crazy as it sounds.

By the way, even though I don't currently have a blog (working on this) you can find out what I'm like, what I like to think about and whether you like me by checking me out on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/Scott_Drummond

I really like the positive evolutionary vision Grant and Scott mention. If you really build great relationships, those morph into community, and eventually the community transcends its owner. Brilliant thought!

Chris,

Yes, I believe it does scale – though maybe not in the traditional meaning. Since I’ve been up to my ears in Triiibes.com the past two months – I look at everything through “tribal glasses” – however, that’s where I believe you’ll find the answer. Before you go much further, you’ll need to stop thinking community and start thinking tribe.

First, identify a few tribe leaders in your own tribe. Work on building stronger relationships with those leaders you’ve identified (use lots of carrots). Work on projects with them and get them involved in what you’re doing.
Before you know it – they’ll be like amplifiers for you.

Then, when some of their tribe members come along – allow them to reach out and touch you. Sure, things won’t be quite the same past the first few levels – but it’s much better than mass broadcasting.

How many people are following you on Twitter? 17,426? Nope, not all of them are REALLY following you. Many of them are actually following someone else - but know about you because of that other person.

Here’s a good working example. If I weren’t a follower of Seth Godin, I would never have even cared who you are Chris (sorry, just being honest). However, Seth told us that you’re a great “tribal tactician”. Hearing that, I certainly needed to learn more about you. Now, I’m following you on Twitter and learning cool things from you. In this example, Seth is one of those “tribal leaders” I’m talking about.

I’m also in the process of growing a tribe. As my tribe grows, not only will I write about Seth, I’ll write about the work of Chris Brogan, etc. It’s not perfect, but it’s the way I see social media scaling. And, the better you plan it, the better it works.

Hope this makes sense. I see it very clearly, but I'm not sure if it's coming out clearly. ;)

Ed

Of course social media scales - but NOT the way it's being done right now.
We would never expect one Doctor to see every patient at a clinic as the practice grows... but the examples you mentioned - Frank, Connie, Gary? they are all individuals. So do you expect them to handle ALL social media for one company? No.
You expect them to bring in partners. To introduce new people that are as passionate about helping customers as they are.

I would point to @Zappos as an example. Tony isn't the whole company - nor the only Zappos employee on Twitter or Blogging or writing. They've scaled social media by having the *company* involved, not by having the interaction revolve around one person.

Social media scales when you quit focusing on "rockstars" and "thought leaders" and start focusing on "dialogs" and "teamwork".

Sorry, I have to disagree with the "it doesn't work on a large scale" because someone - namely Zappos.com - has already proven that wrong.

Chris,
This is one of your shortest, but not less thoughtful posts. You're not a broadcaster -- that has a whole different meaning. You spend time reviewing comments, even commenting on the commenters. But, at some point, you will dialog less with those who are not within your immediate sphere. You may reach out occassionally, but volumne and time will work against you. Instead, your next-level followers will reach out and begin to answer for you. I know this sounds odd, but I think Ed (iii) is correct -- you are leading a sm tribe and it will answer for you. You can see small effects on twitter -- people RT a good comment, they RT / Digg / Link / FF / whatever a good post or link. It is how the tribe shares knowledge on behalf of its leaders and other members. So, yes, sm scales, but not necessarily how you might think or like.
ahg3

I totally agree with Lucretia. Social media is scalable in my mind, there's no breaking point really.

The scaling factor is definitely up to you on being available to respond to and interact with - even if that needs be recruiting others to help on your side.

Now the real hurdle is to convince your boss or CEO for the help (that's probably the #1 show stopper I am sure)!

Lucretia and Ed both had the answer right. Tribes now, to use Seth's words.

If you look at what Chris Pirillo has done with his Geek community it looks like social media can be ramped up if it's attractive and meaningful to its members.

To scale or not to scale --- whether 'tis nobler...

But people scale in different ways. Can Chris scale his commenting and sharing?

Steve Rubel has already scaled to over 600 feeds he monitors daily. And his (fewer) comments are still welcome.

Gladwell notes in his "Tipping Point" that there are (at least) three different types of people required to do this social media stuff we revel in. Some "connectors" have hundreds and hundreds of people they interconnect. His "sneezers" have fewer, but are concentrating on their sources for new trends and ideas.

To that relative degree, the Dunbar number is an inexact estimate - more inexact if you consider the different uses "tribes" are put to, and the different functions a person has in the various tribes he belongs to.

Long Tail niches play a part - in that we are part of oh-so-many interconnected and loosely joined tribes when we do that. This is why social media is thriving and broadcast "MSM" is dying, ever so slowly. Even politics is affected by these long tails - people are elected by collecting votes of confidence from tribal elders, while their followers tend to go along (for the most part).

And yet you see politics with just two main parties tending to fissure on both sides of that fence. So many more "undecideds" this election year - and so many more who admit they really only decide on that day. Are we breaking the mold of our own political social media because it won't scale? These two parties possibly can't actually represent the expanding diversity of their namesakes? So many are "conservative" on one subject and "liberal/progressive" on another. I heard one analyst call for a great party of the center and let the extremists of each side form their own...

Is it scaling - or evolution we should look to? As only change is constant, would we be better spent looking for that ideal wave to surf toward the shore, or better to take what we have in front of us, then paddle back for more when it winds up spent on the shore?

Those are the questions we ask about social scaling...

And the answer comes back yes - and no. Depends.

You should've caught the last social media breakfast in Boston.

Speaking of industrial technology Freud remarked, "Motor power places gigantic forces at [man's] disposal, which, like his muscles, he can employ in any direction...Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God."(From Civilization and its Discontents). Viewed in this light Social media is a conversational prosthetic allowing us to keep in touch with hundreds of people in a fraction of the time. The only constraint to its scalability is time. There's only so much time to post, to reply to comments, to tweet, etc.

Definitely an interesting conundrum. I'd like to say that it can scale as a team - but that does lessen the community effect.

I did a bit of writing about this on my own blog, and I agree with some of the comments above.

I think there are two ways it scales:

1. You expand your team.

or

2. People learn to accept that someone attempting to connect with lots of people won't be able to respond to every message, from every person, individually. I think social media is shown by the fact that if I post something of interest, or occasionally, just a random comment, someone like yourself, or Hugh McLeod, or Chris Anderson etc will respond if possible.
I don't expect to get a response from you if I'm bombarding you with messages about the sandwich I ate this morning.

You can share your stuff with the world, but a smaller percentage of people will actively comment and respond - so it's all about finding the best ways to reach as many of those people as possible, with the reasonable expectation of the amount of time and effort anyone can reasonably put in!

Hey Chris,

Great question! As a person desperate to get a UK-based <10,000 employee company moving in this SM stuff, the thoughts and comments here are GOLD.

Thank you community (and RSS/Twitter for making it easy to track with you guys)

Thanks Chris...this is one of the "Ghosts" :-) at MediaBadger, Giles Crouch (a.k.a Webconomist); thanks for pointing out that, and I will start signing my posts. I wrote that one.

Thank-you for commenting. Much appreciated. We respect your work here very much.

The "tribes" concept of Seth may in part be the answer to this dilemma. Ed Welch made a great example.

But I still think we all hit a point that we can't respond to absolutely everybody as an individual; the dynamic shifts because a group forms and tensions change in expectations.

I interviewed Frank back in April when he was first "blowing up" and we've spoken several times since. What I've found is that his success has been through sheer ubiquity. But he has a team backing him up. While he has become the face of a commendable SM outreach program and proactive customer service, the model we expect needs to shift away from Frank and move towards teams of a bit more anonymous "Frankettes" (he can use that term if he wants) who have the same work ethic and commitment to customer service, but don't leave the company dependent on one person as a face of their SM outreach.

In a perfect world, the SM outreach could be localized, so instead of Frank @comcastcares who lives in Philly spending all night on Twitter, Joe the SM Outreach Rep @ComcastCaresBay could handle Bay area when it's 3am in Philly, @ComcastCaresDC could handle DC-related problems, etc etc.

We know Frank has a great team that he has built...but the next step in a good SM operation has to be letting operation become more than just one person.

Social media does scale. Chris, I've watched you grow your network so successfully. I've been transitioning to the new levels & learning to deal with it.

But your question is in terms of the enterprise. This is a question that I've been exploring with Dell & Techsmith. How to scale community management? Lucretia & others have the answer, you just grow the team. A strong leader is important along with communication & organization. As the number of advocates grows I think it's important to scale wisely to ensure their needs are met (not referring to financial either as these are mostly unpaid). Even at the small company of ACD I had built to having 26 under me. Sean McDonald of Dell has an interesting perspective that the future is that the culture should shift so that all employees are spokespersons (comm mgrs). This is a great idea but it can't happen until the company can trust everyone with their brand (Some depts hold that pretty tightly). It also requires transparency.

Next week I will have the opportunity to meet people from Intel, Yahoo & companies that have multiple comm mgrs so I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Hi Chris,

Great point on how to scale a perosnal relationship. I agree with Dan thorton on expand your team. We have done that at m I am amazed at how you manage to stay personal with so many channels and messages that must be coming at you. What's the mantra?

Are you going to be at Pubcon next month?

Regards,

Shashi

Is it less "genuine" to have a team behind your brand? I don't think so, but am curious to know what you think. Do you divulge it, or do you keep it quiet?

In my case, I'm taking my first intern on and that will change things.

You divulge it, of course. And how is it less genuine? The result and the quality of service that comes from a SM outreach is what matters. While I agree that putting a human face on CS w/ social media is important, I think that when the operation becomes large enough to warrant a team the "face" should be one of responsiveness, transparency and aggressive outreach to customers when trying to solve problems. That goes beyond one person. In fact, if your SM outreach effort is so reliant on one person that a well-trained team can't follow that person's example and provide the same level of satisfaction on a more granular level, the idea of corporate SM in your operation is a total failure.

Changing the culture in customer service with SM means it should become the norm, not the exception. It's ok to have lots of small faces, but they should be positive enough to give the business a friendly face and keep the customers well-served.

I think it's all about the team approach in order to scale.

Podcamp succeeds because someone from the epicenter need not attend a Podcamp elsewhere to make it a great Podcamp. It's great because it focuses on the local tribe and expands the idea and "trust circle".

For example, in a classic company, a secretary handles a bunch of communication for the boss. People know to respect him/her, and take the messages and correspondence as if it comes from the buy guy, or gal, directly. At home, I am CFO, so I manage all of our finances and interactions with businesses, because my husband doesn't have the time to do so.

We all need surrogates, if just for time management purposes! And people in the real world so understand that your surrogates are just as good, because you trust them and have vouched for them, as you are sometimes- that's where the trust agents come in. Scale by using surrogates, referrals, and the like, and you'll win.

The tribal analogy is such a rich one for what is unfolding through these tools. Anybody can talk to the chief, but the question is, do you have anything to talk to the chief about? What at least one of the above posts seems not to recognize about the value of "centralization" to use the twinfluence jargon, is that one can observe and follow the direction of the "power" conversations within these platforms. In that way, centralization gives one access, regardless of your level of engagement. I offer a further analogy: a gathering of world leaders at a UN General Assembly. Initially a platform like Twitter is a general assembly. The question is who do you connect, engage, and move the relationships into your business(and here I mean the general as well as the specific -our business is what we DO)goals.

After a certainly number of contacts, as Ben mentioned above, the ability to devote time and attention interferes with your ability to get things done.

There are probably a lot of things you can do to expand that number though: automatic reminders to drop someone a note if you have not heard from them in a while; become a more practiced writer so you can communicate more quickly and effectively; set expectations that you can't respond to every tweet; etc.

As for enlisting a team to help, I have seen it done in a genuine fashion. A couple of years ago, I attended an Edward Tufte presentation, and while that was all his personal brand, he had a number of people helping him.

What things should we be doing personally, and what things can we safely hand off to someone else?

It's hard to scale and keep track of. Expand and pull the Britney technique on Twitter and have a team respond, or selectively big random comments to stay in the game. As long as your presence is seen somehow, it can be scalable.

Craig
www.budgetpulse.com

As Richard Reeve covers (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-matter-of-scale/...), the tribal analogy converts to the General Assembly analogy. Our problem is a lack of models for this.

Consider: the General Assembly is a top-down organization. There is a parliamentary order which can stifle origination from the floor.

People can/do belong to several long-tail tribes.

Scobelizer points out they scale for broadcasts.

But others point out that blogs are essentially broadcast - however Chris, you use yours for interaction and spiking community involvement.

Perhaps Amazon is another model - people can get any book they want and leave reviews, contact the author or her publisher, etc. They can read the book any amount of times. And everyone can be told when another installment from that author is coming out (even though books are so few and far between...)

Certainly, while blogs and social media are technology-new, the tribal basis stored in our genes is using these new outlets for expression.

Social media both scales and doesn't - as Scobelizer says, it depends if you want to drink beer or talk about it.

I almost wonder if there is a way to avoid scaling, no matter how large your "broadcast" becomes. Can a large blogger still concentrate their efforts in the same fashion as a smaller blogger? Perhaps you will be unable to respond to each comment individually at some point, but I don't believe that scaling has to accompany growth where social media is concerned.

You asked: "Is it less “genuine” to have a team behind your brand? I don’t think so, but am curious to know what you think. Do you divulge it, or do you keep it quiet?"

It isn't less genuine at all - they are called evangelists, advocates, etc. You have us - your readership is your team. And if they're paid like your intern, then staff. If your intern is promoting the 'Chris Brogan' brand then why not make it public? You are a company of one that is growing :) (otherwise your intern will confuse people if it's a secret). And if the intern is for Crosstech = then that's easier.

Social media scales well for you (Chris Brogan) because you have mastered the art of making the consumer feel like the specific recipient.

The trick, I guess, is to make sure each person who is reading/listening/following feels like the "one". You do it marvelously.

Furthermore, there is a certain continuity in your different pieces, something deeper than the words that ties them together. Those folks who say it won't scale haven't figured this part out yet.

Using these tools for the "enterprise" (that word always transports me to the bridge in front of Cpt. Kirk) raises a whole different set of issues. First let me say that for me, the social media tools are kind of a "so what?" Don't get me wrong, I love that I can publish wide varieties of content at will, but really, they're just communication tools. They will change things for the enterprise slowly, the same way the telephone changed things. The phone was unique when it came out because it connected people by voice who were miles apart geographically. Eventually, though, a telephone just became one more reality of modern life, for better or worse. I assume (and hope) that in your role as a true thought leader, that you would use SM the way a field general uses his communication technologies - to assemble your troops and lead them to the battle front. And not the way a telemarketer uses the phone, that's just a silly waste of time.

Chris,

I think you pose some really interesting questions and ones that I'm sure you and other A-list bloggers face often. However, the one thing that I love about this space is that many of the top bloggers, you include, take the time out to develop friendships with as many people as possible and you're truly genuine about it.

Does that mean that it scales? I think it scales but is harder and harder to maintain at that level. It makes it hard to respond to every single question, email, request, etc that you might receive. It involves having to start saying "no" when you were always used to saying "yes". It also means having to start looking at forming a team to help you manage your other responsibilities. I think the thing that you have to always be careful of though is not to let go of the very things that got you to the level you're at. For instance, Gary Vaynerchuk has a whole team that now helps him manage his skyrocketing career, however he still stays involved with his community on a daily basis.

I think you are doing an excellent job Chris though I'm sure it's difficult to manage with the number of contacts and opportunities you receive daily. Keep up the great work!

Good stuff Chris… as usual. Your readers make some interesting points. I tend to agree with a lot of what Andrew Feinberg says in this thread. Having lived corporate social media for Dell for well over 2 years, I can definitely confirm that being “out there” in as many social sites/ commenting on blog posts/ message boards, etc. is the way to build your own personal credibility as well as your company’s.

That said, any single person can only scale so much.

So, back to the question at hand… yes, I believe social media does scale, but it’s not easy. Building a team is the only way to do it. We’re still trying to build processes and tools to support our customers within our own sites and outside of them. That means we need teams of people in place all working toward a common goal. In my experience, customers don’t really care if they hear from me directly or someone else from our team—all they care about is connecting with someone at Dell who can answer their questions/ solve their issue.

In my experience, being a corporate blogger means being a customer advocate, a writer/ editor and a social media evangelist who is both internally and externally focused. Not easy, but it sure is fun.

How could I leave this part out? Building a team also means building a community of customers on our Dell properties. Dell fans who are not Dell employees are the most effective kind of advocate we could ask for.

We have to give customers a reason to be Dell advocates. Getting that point across to colleagues in the business is not always an easy task.

I think you have to consider a LARGE audience each time you post, but share material that is (or seems to be) on the one-to-one (personal) level. If you post in a personal manner that seems to speak to each individual reader...then you are both, touching the individual aspect, but for a larger, broad audience. I think even when you post to a group of 1000+ readers...you can maintain the personal (one-to-one) feel by commenting back to each reader who responds and addressing them each.... You will NEVER be able to attend to each reader when you begin to gain a greater reader base....but you can at least give the impression that you are willing to communicate with each reader as it applies... and that I believe is honest enough to keep readers coming back...

It's a hard thing to do. I know...this year I went from 20 readers per week to 50+ readers per day...not LARGE scale compared to sites like yours but a definite change in communication and approach from a personal blogging perspective.

~Bobby Ozuna
Drawing Stories...With Words

And let's not forget the drab consequences of the FEAR of not scaling: not trying. I think companies will find their equilibrium over time but I've seen many team simply not make the effort because they don't want to fail along the way by not being able to attend to the inquiries and needs of the community.

I think the answer is that to scale community you need to bring more people up to the conversational level. A blog is very much a broadcast medium, One speaking to and interacting with Many. Find a way to move your conversation to a realm where members can converse with each other and more voices are heard. As it is with so much of social media, the best way to scale is to engage your members as part of the solution.

A little late to the party here, but still think it's worth commenting...Kami Huyse of Communication Overtones and I, along with Susan Getgood, were having this very discussion back in August. I consider scalability social media's weakest point, ( http://is.gd/1U1L ). It's going to be interesting to see how communicators and PR pros approach the high-touch need of social media with reduced budgets, fewer staffers, etc. that are (or will be) a product of the economic downturn.

Jen