COMP6044   Just another ECS Blogs weblog

I was considering the two topics – social networks and consciousness from the perspective of Psychology and Marketing. But as I found later the more appropriate fields would be Sociology and Social Marketing.

After the class on Wednesday, one nice colleague boroughed me the book Social Psychology by Brehm, Kassin, Fein with the suggestion that I could also look into Sociology. As I was reading through this book and thinking about the topics, I came across the The Self-Concept which is just another term for self-consciousness. We can describe self-consciousness by looking at the main methods through it is achieved:

1. introspection = looking inward at one’s thoughts and feelings
2. perceptions of our own behavior = analyzing your own behaviour you can find out how you react in certain situations
3. influences of other people = identifying yourself through comparison with others
4. cultural perspectives – depending on the origin of the individual he might be an individualist (its values are independence, autonomy, self-reliance) or a collectivist (its values are interdependence, cooperation and social harmony)

So point 3. states that self-consciousness is influenced by others. In the Royal Society presentation called Understanding social and information networks given by Professor Jon Kleinberg: http://royalsociety.tv/rsPlayer.aspx?presentationid=499 the speaker shows the probability of joining a group based on the number of friends already joined:

The web is now a social phenomenon, it isn’t just a place to access and share information, it is a world of its own where people interact, live and change. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in human history.

And as the world changes, the way of doing business also shifts from the traditional marketing techniques to a more valuable, customized approach. A suitable quote from Socialnomics by Erik Qualman would be the following:

Marketer’s Philosophy Yesterday

• It’s all about the sex and sizzle of the message and brand imagery
• It’s all about the message; good marketers can sell anything
• We know what is right for the customer – we are doing the customer a service because they really don’t know what they want

Marketer’s Philosophy Today

• It’s important to listen and respond to customer needs
• It’s all about the product; it’s necessary to in constant communication with all the other departments
• We never know what is exactly right for the customer; that is why we are constantly asking and making adjustments

The topics that I touched in this post (and will in the next ones) were the self-concept and how it relates to the social-self, new ways of doing marketing taking into account this new type of individual. Until the next post, I will

• have a look into Sociology to understand the driving forces of social networks
• read more from the book Socialnomics because it describes how social media transforms the way we live and do business (this is actually the book subtitle)
• look into more social marketing books to find out the methods of doing business in this brave new world