The social web is pretty much grounded in reality … its spontaneity … its authenticity … and very often its unvarnished dialog, commentary, and visuals. For the most part, pre-programmed and polished content only excel when it engages, builds genuine communities, demonstrates immediacy, and/or facilitates collaboration. The first part of “Diving into the Social Web” set the stage and discussed these first four social web dynamics (link). Continuing the journey, we’ll explore interactivity, discovery, self-expression, transparency, democracy, and viral.

Interactive

Interactivity is a timeless element of communication where participants pay attention, listen, and share. While not new – or even exclusive to the web – the term “interactive” has become a buzz word for tactics like search optimization and keywords, pay-per-click advertisements, re-targeting campaigns, and email blasts. Yet these don’t come close to the level of interactivity delivered by social networks.

Here, interactivity is genuine. Exchanges may be very quick probes to gain feedback on one’s thoughts or extended discussions over a period of time. They occur across a person’s network and can span geography, generations, language, and even culture.

Within social networks, interactivity continues to grow in sophistication and complexity. Beyond text-based functions, people are now sharing their aspirations, fears, and desires through creative mash-ups, self-produced videos, and even multiple player games.

We believe that much of the explosive growth of social networks is due to their interactivity. Sustaining this growth demands continuous expansion of functionalities and features. These are so crucial that even third-party services like Ping.fm have emerged for managing interactions across social networks.

Discovery

A huge motivation of the social web is the desire for discovery – of yourself, your friends, your peers, your family, your community, and the world.

Most often discovery is the finding of some new and valued revelations about a person’s experiences, character, and inner feelings. I’m amazed about the number of personal discoveries revealed through the social web. These include discovery of shared connections between friends, expanded understanding of a friend’s interests, and the introduction of new friends.

I recently stumbled upon a social tagging site called “Blinklist.” This network’s distinguishing characteristic is that it introduces people whose tag lists share a high degree of similarity. Once connections are accepted, each person has access to their new friend’s entire tag list.

One brand that has leveraged discovery to build loyalty is Nike. In 2006, Nike owned 48% of the U.S. running shoe market. By the end of 2008 their market share increased 13 points to 61%. Much of this growth is attributed to Nike+. Nike+ is more than just a tool for tracking distance run, total time, average pace, and calories burned. More importantly it is a discovery community that taps into the social web to challenge friends, compete in virtual races, and find local running partners. Given the success of Nike+ for runners, the brand recently created a new community focused against basketball players. They call it “Ballers Network.” Yet this community is mostly built on Facebook.

In all cases, Nike continues to establish and sponsor affinity communities to support engagement, interactivity, and self-discovery.

Self-Expression

Most people (especially extraverts) have a deep psychological need to express themselves and reach a wide audience. Social networks are exceptional vehicles for conveying one’s passions and distinct personality through words, music, art, photos, videos, and other artistic means.

A fresh example of self-expression on the social web is “United Breaks Guitars.” This inspired music video strikes a chord by touching on people’s apprehensions regarding travel. It is incredibly well-produced and shares Dave Carroll’s frustration over an airline’s apathy. During its first week on YouTube, over three million people had experienced this viral video. Only then did United approve the claim. Today, United incorporates this video into their customer service training.

Facilitated by a wealth of technologies and apps, creating expressive, viral content has become incredibly easy. Anybody can become the next “anti-brand” hero. Yet brands can harness this dimension to their benefit by helping people express their individuality through “make it mine” customization tools. Among others, these include pre-defined and customizable themes, plug-in apps, photos, and mash-up opportunities.

Transparency

Historically conversations have been localized and face-to-face. Information rarely went beyond our immediate peers. But on the social web, opinions are shared instantaneously with our true friends, acquaintances, and even some complete strangers.

The social web imparts vast, unframed, and often unfiltered visibility into participant’s lives. Personal profiles summarize their self-identity and public persona. Through postings and community involvement, enhanced insights into one’s true motivations, ambitions, dreams, and purchase behaviors can be deduced.

Brands like Zappos, Amazon, and eBay routinely leverage social neural networks to knit seemingly inconsequential data into precise, predictive models targeting future behaviors. They exploit these proprietary insights to nurture brand relationships and build positive brand buzz.

In this connected, online society there are no secrets. The implications are endless and dramatic.

Similarly, a brand’s employees reflect the brand’s soul. Through its employee blog, “Nuts about Southwest,” Southwest Airline’s distinct culture is revealed to the world. Any employee – not just marketing and PR – can supply original content. Outsiders are invited to read and comment. Keeping with the brand’s “spirit of fun,” many of these posts are incredibly entertaining. Complementing these robust employee blogs are an extensive flickr photo group, robust collection of YouTube videos (including landing gear fire in Houston on May 12), up-to-date news feeds, polls, and links to brand-developed media and imagery. Taken together, the brand’s heart clearly beats in its employees.

Democratic

Through control of traditional media, public discourse, and the dissemination of official facts, repressive regimes historically contain an individual’s voice and vote. Yet the social web has made it possible for ordinary citizens to share their stories with the world. As such, the social web has the potential to become a greater democratic equalizer than all the economic embargoes, foreign aid projects, and surreptitious tactics that have failed to incent regime change.

Borrowing a page from President Obama’s campaign, former Iranian Prime Minister Mousavi organized his ill-fated, yet fearless campaign through Facebook. Many predicted the vote to be extremely close. In an attempt to suppress his message, authorities blocked all access to Facebook for three weeks prior to the election.

The official results were so unbelievable that protests were quickly organized and broadcast to the world through social sites like YouTube, Flicker, and Twitter. The street demonstrations continued for over a week and the struggle continues today within the clerical powers.

Closer to home, sharing one’s opinion has never been so easy. Consumer’s rate, review, and recommend brands at an ever-growing number of sites. The collective voice of this grass-roots revolution empowers consumers to bypass traditional media channels.

Here, the most trustworthy sites require a log-in to post comments. But even anonymous ratings can be powerful persuaders when enough people contribute. Size truly does matter as it makes manipulating cumulative results more difficult, but not impossible.

Given the social web’s vast transparency, attempts to manipulate rankings are ultimately rendered mute. TripAdvisor alerts visitors with warning language when they suspect coordinated attempts to influence results. In cases like these, the truth is always revealed through other content including property reviews, visitor comments, and supporting photos / videos that clearly illustrate the experience.

Yet not everybody has an equal voice. Some have the ability to influence public opinion through the sheer quantity and high-quality of their postings. Brands can multiply their impact by getting these first-class influencers on their side.

Viral

In the social realm content is shared from person to person. When this content is so compelling that our friends pass it along to their friends – it has the potential to go viral. Viral happens when content is shared – like a chain letter – at least six levels deep.

While virality is one way for brands to reach huge audiences through a relatively small number of influencers, it is an unpredictable, double-edged sword. Content that spreads in this manner elicits a highly-emotional response. This can be either excessively charming or repulsive. Furthermore, viral content tends to have a very short half-life as fresh content replaces old. Yet brands can influence virality through short duration keyword purchases and paid YouTube placements.

The speed at which brand damaging content spreads across the social web cannot be taken lightly. This spring, Domino’s took 48 hours to request YouTube to remove an unsanitary video. By this time, the damage was done. Given the immediacy of the social web, brands cannot hesitate to take decisive action in a public relations disaster.

Engage and Connect

As customers share their experiences on the social web, brands must become more proximate, more immediate, more interactive, more innovative, and more personalized. These are the new paradigms.

It’s about grabbing target customer’s attention and bringing the brand’s pillars, personality, and storyline to life. It’s servicing immediate needs, establishing relationships, and enhancing preference among loyalists. It’s nurturing emotional connections through engagement, community, immediacy, collaboration, interactivity, discovery, self-expression, transparency, democracy, and viral.

Lifestyle brands like REI and Nike exhibit great agility in leveraging these dynamics. For them, the addition of social web channels is both natural and authentic. They see these as an integral extensions of their brand, ones that facilitate their ability to interact with customers. As such, the social web cannot be perceived as a campaign.

However, participating in the social web also demands dedicated resources and experiential tactics. Seed them, sustain them, track them, reinvigorate them, and integrate with traditional marketing. These are the keys to social web success.

Rick Gonzalez & Scott Hall