Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

When they’re not buying what you’re selling…

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Creative Commons

One harsh reality of social media is that you find out pretty quickly where you stand.  One fairly obvious reality is that the Twitter chat I’ve been working on for a while now — #icchat on internal communications – isn’t exactly setting the world on fire.

This is a little depressing for me, personally. But I shouldn’t be surprised. The truth is, the dearth of participation is traceable to a central problem. Me.

You have to shepherd these things – the most popular and vigorous get a ton of promotional support, and the topic of communication within the enterprise isn’t a social media hotbed.  Nonetheless, we’ve had some great discussions, peaking last fall with about 20 participants and more than 200 tweets. Even the smaller chats have been good, including Thursday’s intimate affair (five of us) where we talked about internal communication outcomes.  (Summary post coming, probably on Friday.)

I am conflicted, however, about whether to continue #icchat.  As I have mentioned, for the past (nearly) two years, I’ve considered social media an experiment, particularly Twitter and blogging. Facebook’s become merely a communication medium, but Twitter’s chat function represents my favorite part of the miniblogging tool.  I like the quick pace, the forced brevity. I like the diversity — #PR20Chat, #KaizenBlog, #MeasurePR, #SoloPR.

But I have to tell you – when one gets paying work, it’s bloody hard to market the chat.  I’ve been fortunate to have pretty steady gigs over the past eight months – both academic and professional. I’ve looked at different days and times to try and hit the best, but it’s been most difficult to get people interested.  I’m disappointed that the organizations – PRSA, IABC – and the commercial groups – Ragan, Melcrum – show not the slightest inclination to participate. I’ve also approached a couple of luminaries in the internal comms space about guesting, but after four or five straight scheduling conflicts, I’d better take the hint.

It is remarkably similar to building a business – it takes a while and takes a lot of effort to market.

To that end, I can’t help but wonder whether to pull the plug on #icchat.  I seem to be doing well at building my business (thanks to some terrific colleagues), am considered a worthy professor and still have a healthy marriage, so perhaps #icchat is odd man out. Gotta think about it some more.  So far, I’m planning to hit it one more time, at least, 19 May at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.

I’m interested in your perspectives.

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Lies, Damn Lies, & Stinking Loads of …

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

Courtesy CBS Interactive & Star Trek

Remember that Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk is stuck on some barren planet with a 9-foot Godzilla-like lizard, and the two of them are supposed to fight rather than their respective armies? The big lizard hisses, “I grow weary of the chase. Wait for me — I will make it quick, and painless(sssss). That’s how I’m feeling about measuring social media right now.

It would be so easy to just give in.

I’ve been pondering how to measure influence, in particular, after a spirited discussion on both Justin Goldsborough’s and Shonali Burke’s blogs. That led to a bunch of posts on how we might use the structure of measuring relationships (Hon/Grunig).   This is heady stuff for peanut-brains like me.  The high-forehead types who make their living in the academe are used to thinking in these terms, but all of this stuff is pretty new for me. I’m just some guy, trying to puzzle out how to make sense of the concepts of influence in the social age, and apply the both new and hoary theories in the process. If I have to explain this stuff, I better have some ideas.

But there’s a lot more traction in just inventing a method and telling people it’s the standard, never revealing the contents of the magic box.  From Altimeter to Syncapse, to Vitrue to Klout, we learn that more-social companies have higher revenue than less-social (correlation is NOT causation); Facebook fans of a brand buy more stuff than non-fans (but which drives which?); Facebook fans are worth $3.60 (no, $136, no…), and that the “standard for influence” has something to do with Facebook and Twitter, but we’re not sure what because the formulas are secret.

H-E-double hockey sticks! I want to fight them all!

But, jeepers, why not just join them?  I came up with an idea last year to evaluate political material — know at a glance whether an article is left-or-right wing, moderate, or a combination of both.  I cooked up how it would work (programmed like automated sentiment), selected someone to write the code and even chose a name.

But it would have been a stinking load of … crap! I wasn’t basing it on any kind of research, just my own desire to make money, preferably by selling the company quickly to someone with deeper pockets, poor analytical skills and a short attention span.  Why go to all the trouble of vetting it, ensuring it actually does what it intends? That hasn’t stopped the flow of snake oil!

The class I teach at Kent State meets Wednesday nights, and on 9 March, the estimable Chuck Hemann, SVP for Ogilvy, joined us by Skype to talk to the class. He’s SUCH a smart dude (and he’s humble, claiming that I taught HIM stuff…) What my takeaway was: There are no easy answers to the social media measurement questions, and the snake oil is still gushing in the space. It takes some primary research, some actual analytical work, to figure this out. No shortcuts, no one-size-fits-all formula.

Here, I thought I’d missed the boat and should be hawking the Oil of Genius.  It’d be a lot easier than fighting the good fight, for sure. But I’m glad I’m still on the ramparts, exalting the troops to victory.

Even if I do, occasionally, “weary of the chase.”

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Metrics on Relationships May Apply to Influence

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Creative Commons

Influence has been on my mind for a while, and on Feb. 24, I posted a thought about using the methods recommended in a paper on measuring relationships by James Grunig and Linda Hon to apply to measuring influence.  The post of Feb. 28 looked at the first three of the six components of that relationship measurement strategy.  This one finishes off the list, but I’ll have more to write on this topic later on as this all percolates.

Continuing:

Commitment – The extent to which each party believes and feels that the relationship is worth spending energy to maintain and promote. Two dimensions of commitment are continuance commitment, which refers to a certain line of action, and affective commitment, which is an emotional orientation.

With no criticism intended, these last two terms are a little tough for me, so a bit of explanation. Affective commitment is the sense that the organization wants to have a relationship with me, there’s a bond between us, and I value this organization over others, so it’s my emotional perspective about that relationship. Continuance commitment if the sense that I see the organization’s actions in support of our relationship… I think.

This may fit with Twitter followers or Facebook friends. If my Twitter posse is retweeting and engaging me in discussion, I can conclude they’re interested in a relationship with me.  Their actions are the continuance commitment and my own feelings about them are the affective commitment.  This type of measurement seems like a good proxy for influence, as I can conclude that the absence of such commitment would stop influence in its tracks.

Exchange Relationship — In an exchange relationship, one party gives benefits to the other only because the other has provided benefits in the past or is expected to do so in the future.

Exchange relationships are the heart of commercial propositions. We pay someone for something and get it.  But, we could say that blog consortia could be evidence of exchange relationships – we agree to promote each other’s posts and comment on each other’s blogs in exchange with one another.  I am not sure whether the extent of that relationship is evidence of influence or commerce. {and not in a bad way, mind…}

Communal Relationship — In a communal relationship, both parties provide benefits to the other because they are concerned for the welfare of the other — even when they get nothing in return. For most public relations activities, developing communal relationships with key constituencies is much more important to achieve than would be developing exchange relationships.

This one’s the stretch, in my mind – organizations have an increasingly hard time convincing stakeholders that they’re really interested in stakeholder well-being. The management-employee communal relationship comes to mind. But on an individual basis, we could say that the maturity of social media depends on creating communal relationships online.  Actual friendship.  It seems like we’d need to see a low quotient of exchange relationship if the communal quotient is high for there to be solid evidence.

I want to explore this further – and I’d like you’re help… How do your own influencers (those who influence you) align with these elements (or not?) Does this make any sense at all to you?

 

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Measuring Influence ‘Might’ Use Relationship Metrics

Monday, February 28th, 2011

 

Creative Commons, by Brian Hillegas

I’ve been thinking again. Last time, I tossed out the idea that measuring influence might be gleaned from Grunig and Hon’s work on measuring relationships.  Usually, you need to get people to fill out a questionnaire to determine the quality of the relationship, but maybe looking at the public evidence is enough.  Here are three of the six elements, with comment following about the potential for adapting to qualitative influence measurement:

Control Mutuality — The degree to which parties agree on who has the rightful power to influence one another. Although some imbalance is natural, stable relationships require that organizations and publics each have some control over the other.

Think about that in context of online influence – being “Facebook friends” might imply a mutual influence, but being friends with an organization if one’s not a customer or other stakeholder wouldn’t seem to greet the same implication.

Still, the idea that an organization would change its behavior as a consequence of interaction with its stakeholders is the essence of Grunig’s Excellence Theory (two-way, symmetrical communication.) Retweeting on Twitter, and a content analysis of the @reply sequence (actual conversations) might lead to an index by topic – it could demonstrate the extent of control mutuality as a surrogate for mutual influence. The question is whether there’s enough in the stream to properly analyze.

Trust – One party’s level of confidence in and willingness to open oneself to the other party. There are three dimensions to trust: integrity: the belief that an organization is fair and just … dependability: the belief that an organization will do what it says it will do … and, competence: the belief that an organization has the ability to do what it says it will do.

This, too, could be accomplished by content analysis, substituting individual for organization. Establishing the extent of trust could also indicate the opportunity for influential behavior, which could be apparent from the stream. We’d need to define the language trusted people use, but that doesn’t seem much different from a normal content analysis.

Satisfaction — The extent to which each party feels favorably toward the other because positive expectations about the relationship are reinforced. A satisfying relationship is one in which the benefits outweigh the costs.

This one’s tough – the nature of the relationship plays in to the analysis of satisfaction. Celebrities may make general comment about loving their fans, but is that a sincere platform for mutual satisfaction? Also, if the expectations are very low (as in celebrity culture, where the connection is, um, tenuous in reality but provides a simulation of a close relationship), does that negate the influence string?  My putative 14 year-old son may get his hair in a Beiber, demand I buy Beiber music and Beiber-esq purple garments, but is that influence or a phase? Or merely effective marketing?

Next post: the remaining three elements.

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Could Measures for Relationships Work for Influence?

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

What IS the formula for calculating influence?

This isn’t a stab at Klout. After reading a number of recent blog posts on influence, and participating in several of the associated discussions, I’m just weary of the chase.

My gut tells me that measuring influence is situational and specific.  You simply cannot look at tweet streams, numbers of followers, frequency of @ replies or retweets, number of Facebook friends, etc., and draw conclusions about someone’s influence, and there’s research that supports that idea.

Trey Pennington, Justin Goldsborough, Shonali Burke and Mark W. Schaefer are in the fray (and I’ve commented in a couple of cases), and I wrote my own post on the topic.  It’s been an interesting conversation split between the “Klout is useless” – “Klout is making a good attempt” and my fringe element rantings that we need better research to figure out how to measure influence.

The deal is that there are few independently researched efforts to investigate the claims of well-intentioned entrepreneurs.  There’s inevitably a black box that contains the algorithms and secret formulas, and no one wants to subject their potential cash cow to measurement that might render it an Edsel.

James Grunig and Linda Hon wrote a seminal paper about measuring relationships that might hold a key to figuring out how to measure influence.  To determine strength of relationships, they write, focus on six components: Control Mutuality, Trust, Satisfaction, Commitment, Exchange Relationship and Communal Relationship.  Coming up next week, a look at each element and how they may or may not apply to measuring influence.

BTW, I found out recently that my Technorati Authority score is 406. My Klout score is 46.  I have no idea what that means.  But I want to better understand influence, so I’m going to run this down for a while.

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Measuring Influence: 4 Learnings

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Measurement isn't just bells and whistles

Measurement for its own sake is a waste of everyone’s time and money. It’s got to be in service of a strategy.

You might say that the foregoing statement is a canard; no one is beating down our doors asking us to just measure something, anything.  But there remain a feisty few, particularly on the social media side of the equation, who keep offering up horsepuckey in the guise of gold bullion.

Witness “4 Ways to Measure Social Media…,” a well-intentioned piece from last summer on Social Media Examiner. Author Nichole Kelly subheads the article with “exposure,” “engagement,” “influence” and “lead generation” — the “4 ways.”  Kelly’s on firm ground about exposure, pointing out the difficulty of a) getting good data and b) ensuring you’re counting only once, though equating reach to awareness is a colossal mistake.  Engagement,  too, is solid (if output-based), covering @replies, DMs, links clicked, comments and subscriptions. Good stuff.

Influence is listed third and lead generation fourth, showing exposure, engagement and influence as the top of the funnel leading to conversion.

The section on influence is underdone, and erroneously says tone (positive, negative, neutral) IS influence.  In fact, according to Yahoo!’s Duncan Watts, Winter Mason, and Jake Hofman, and the University of Michgan’s Etyan Bakshy, influence can’t be credibly determined from content analysis. Read all about it.

I heard Watts speak on this topic during the snowy last week of January at a meeting of the Institute for PR Commission on research, measurement and evaluation, of which I’m a member. Influence is a huge question, and Watts, et.al.’s work made me recall the somewhat hoary idea that understanding your specific audience (whether final audience or intermediary) is a lot more important than trying to calculate the exact number of impressions represented by friends of friends and retweet followers.

I pick on influence because it’s the biggest question in social media.  In fact, it’s been a big question in communication in general since the days of Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet and the two-step flow. Who are the “opinion leaders” and how do we calculate their effectiveness?

Here are four questions that hold promise when considering how to measure influence:

  1. Does the opinion leader “play” in the right sandbox for our intended audience/stakeholder?  Chris Brogan and Brian Solis have lots of followers, tribes that hang on their every tweet. Are their tribes our tribes?  They’ve got awesome scale by sheer numbers, but it’s anyone’s guess how involved they are or whether their followers in turn reach people we care about. We could get Brogan or Solis to talk about our service, product, leader or whatever, but to what end if their followers aren’t the right fit for us?
  2. Can we create a solid chain of links from the opinion leader’s actions to our desired actions?  If we’re working on building corporate reputation, retweets, Facebook “likes” and blog comments should have a relationship to opinions voiced by our final target audience. Simply passing along a leader’s statement (tweet, post, comment, etc.) shouldn’t be construed as adoption! Here’s where content analysis shows promise, especially in blogs and perhaps during Twitter chats. The opinion leader’s output should have some effect if he/she is truly influencing others. Note that this is a qualitative effort and suffers from lack of scale.
  3. Are we mistaking popularity for influence?  Celebrities routinely land atop the Twitter rankings, and there are brands on Facebook with upteen hundreds of thousands of “friends.” But having a lot of friends/followers just makes you popular. See #2 above.  We’ve long wondered about how to judge the effectiveness of influence in conventional relationships, but I don’t think many of us think the most popular student in high school was necessarily the most influential.
  4. Are we inappropriately drawing general conclusions from narrow findings?  Influence is personal and specific.  We make assumptions about readers of newspapers, TV viewers, etc., and have a body of research to back those assumptions up.  In social media, the appearance of influence may be mere output, or outtake at best. Outcomes outside of e-commerce are tough to come by, though clear objectives can solve this problem quickly.

The best measurement starts with research up front, which informs our strategy and objective-setting, followed by more research to determine effectiveness and progress toward objectives.  It’s not just tactical measurement designed to cover our butts or justify our budgets, especially when it’s trying to measure influence.

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How do you sharpen your saw? #ICChat discusses

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

The first #ICChat on internal communications for 2011 was a cozy affair, with great conversation about internal comm skills for the second decade of the new millennium. We didn’t need many questions to prime the pump — just one on how you keep your skills sharp, on whether social media skills were different, and one on how much time each month you dedicate to skills development and polishing.

Getting out among one’s fellow communicators, whether in person or virtually is a solid practice.

CommAMMO: @ShannonRenee I’ve attended a couple of Mashable/social media club type soirees – also try to reach beyond comms orgs. #icchat

susancellura: I continue to identify and attend key webinars, stay involved in my local IABC chapter and interact w/communicators across the world #icchat

ShannonRenee: A1 meetups are good way to stay active & their times tend to be more flexible than formal association mtgs #icchat

ShannonRenee: A1 keeping the saw sharp: collaboration – if I can’t make webinar/event, I have asked our managing editor to go & bring back info #icchat

Thank heavens, our basic skills are still important!

ShannonRenee: A1 still have to know how to write…every so often I attend writing workshops as our language & grammar evolve #icchat

susancellura: @CommAMMO Agree w/@ShannonRenee – writing is still the most important skill needed #icchat

Social media seems mainly to be an application of our existing skills, rather than requiring a whole new set of skills.

susancellura: A2 I think interaction is key for all comms. SM is another tool to build a relationship with clients. It’s about applying the tools. #icchat

susancellura: A2 And, employees have already embraced social media. Not using the tools internally is a missed opportunity to connect. #icchat

ShannonRenee: A2 not sure if the SM skills are “materially” diff from overall comm skills…SM does require us to use our comm skills in new ways #icchat

nishland: @shannonrenee @CommAMMO I think you need good overall comms skills in social media. no diff really. #icchat

I confess to a fair amount of relief at these sentiments. That “old dog – new tricks” thing gets me sometimes:

commammo: @csledzik Huge challenge for me is to keep abreast of all the new stuff – often feel like me brain is full… #icchat

Only one person gave an actual count of hours spent on honing skills — but there was advice on how to do it, and even possible subjects for further learning.

susancellura: A3 Try to push myself every day when interacting with clients. Specifically, I’d say 3 hrs w/webinars, etc. #icchat

csledzik: A3 #icchat I spend a lot of time “learning,” but that’s diff. than “honing.” Scared of doing webinar/workshop on something I already know.

CommAMMO: I am in process of setting a skill goal – interested in learning video tools, 4 examp – but struggling to carve out the time. #icchat

susancellura: @CommAMMO I want to get better at video, as well. Especially if doing it myself, which happens quite a bit. #icchat

It was a nice start to the #ICChat year — we always hope for more participation. Invite someone to our next chat: Thursday, February 17, 2011, at 10 a.m. Eastern.  Read the 20 January transcript here. (Be warned, a couple of spammers laid it on the hashtag pretty thick…as @RJFarr said, “grrr…”)

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Dump Sharepoint for WordPress?

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

The open forum of the last #icchat of 2010 on Nov. 30, brought several main themes, and the most discussed was whether free tools like WordPress could prove a substitute for custom applications like Microsoft Sharepoint.  It’s a worthy question, as most content management systems are complicated, expensive and require lots of IT support.

valeriehoven: @mhellstern no we wd use wordpress as a CMS. it’s more than blogs. allegedly others have done it with success. free, easier to use. #icchat

CommAMMO: @valeriehoven all 4 CMS I’ve used were complex-focused, multi-category, content repeated sev locations, multimedia… CN WP handle? #icchat

Wedge: Underestimating the governance for an intranet based on WordPress would be almost as disastrous as on SharePoint. #icchat #future #scale

steveshultz: SP2010 better social UX. looking @ Newsgator add on. # of studies recomnd keeping knowledge inthe enterprs &off consumr tools #icchat

WordPress isn’t built to be an intranet — it works OK as a website-builder if you’re not looking for mighty robust capabilities, but as intranets are more than just content vehicles, it probably makes more sense to work with tools that are built for that purpose.

We also discussed email newsletters — specifically, whether they’re still of value, and the comments were, well, kind of all over the map.

mhellstern: hi #icchat, I was hoping to hear some thoughts on email newsletters within orgs… we all get so much email every day, are they effective?

mhellstern: and, I suppose, if they aren’t effective, what are some alternatives to email newsletters? #icchat

wheati: I’ve seen email newsletters used as news consolidators for senior leaders. Feedback was positive, and I liked them, too. #icchat

BaehrNecessity: @CommAMMO @mhellstern We didn’t email nwslttrs. Publish print instead, for complex issues, & send employees to intranet 4 news. #icchat

CommAMMO: @mhellstern We used an int e-mail nl at @goodyear – daily, heds/ledes of #intranet stories, opt-in only. 4-day promo (1/2) #icchat

CommAMMO: (2/2) got 5000/28000 to subscribe; 2 add’l promos got 3000 more a year later. #intranet traffic up 200% afterward. #icchat

Related questions arose about measuring the effectiveness of such email newsletters, and further descriptions about how news/info is “pushed” into the organization:

dan_larkin: @mhellstern Have you been able to measure how much traffic the email drives to intranet pages? #icchat

steveshultz: our goal for email nl is to create topical channels and let emplys subscribe to interests. We can seed key news into their feeds #icchat

steveshultz: e-NL with headlines and intros to drive them back to #intranet. Mobile optimized content and site will also be important for us. #icchat

Mobile optimization, ability to handle RSS feeds, targeting to specific audiences were all critical issues, much more than I can put into this very brief summary (apologies!) — Read the transcript: http://bit.ly/commammo63 for the whole story.

We’re done for the year, but plan to resume #icchat at 2 p.m. North American Eastern Time on Tuesday, January 11, 2011.  Hope to see you then!

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Quote-fest on Ragan.com story

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Say, while it’s still in the clear, have a look at a story on Ragan.com about jargon, featuring yours truly (and two #ICChat pals, @RJFarr and @Wheati) as the expert(s). http://bit.ly/dTQmJf

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From Solitary to Social… Becoming a New Communicator

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

By Heather Marks

Heather Marks, Avery DennisonOver the last few years, a common theme has emerged when talking about the future of the communications profession: a shift from creating communication to enabling it.

That doesn’t mean that what I’ve spent years learning and practicing is worthless. To me, it implies that I now need to take everything I know and learn how to apply it differently.

Eeek!

Over the years, I’ve noticed that many employee communicators would rather wrestle with words on paper than engage in live conversation, much less negotiate with clients who think they already know what they want. Probably the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do is force myself to confidently push back and convince a client to stop long enough to consider taking a different approach.

That’s why I’m so passionate about measurement. If you can measure it, you can sell it to senior management! [Hear,hear! Ed.]

Add in the challenge of convincing a client that it’s time for them to learn something new to become a better leader and communicator… now that’s hard. And for me, the advent of employee social networking requires looking at everything I do from different perspective and developing completely new skills. It’s already time to move from enabling to… connecting.

Here’s what I mean. At Avery Dennison, we’ve rolled out a complete suite of social networking tools for employees as an add-on to our traditional intranet portal. Suddenly, employees are in control of the content –not me, nor our executives. Sure, we can still push messages out, but now those communications are in competition with the energy, creativity, hands-on expertise and passionate exchange of ideas that is occurring among employees, without our help. This meant we needed to change how we thought about, planned and did communications.

Our response

First, we relaxed our internal “corporate” voice to be more conversational and engaging. Frankly, that’s something that needed to happen anyway, and it has made employees stop and actually pay more attention to corporate messages.

Second, rather than expecting our executives to suddenly become expert social networkers – or even be experts ourselves – we’re mining the rich content employees are developing to highlight stories that best serve the company’s vision, objectives, values and leadership principles. We’re not eliminating corporate news stories or leadership messages, we’re just giving MORE space and attention to what employees at every level are saying – encouraging, elevating and celebrating the good work that’s already happening.

People move in the direction of the things they talk about. So, why not find the good “talk” that’s happening and get people talking about it even more?

This has fundamentally changed the work I do and how I do it. I write less than ever before – and I’m actually OK with it! For me, corporate employee communications is no longer about getting direction from business leaders and then sitting down alone to develop strategies and formal written communications. It’s about being curious about what other people are doing and saying, shaping a consistent and meaningful voice out of the communication noise – wherever it is generated — connecting ideas and people, and collaborating.

Not everyone is excited about or comfortable with the changes happening in our profession, and there is still plenty of room for those who prefer writing to socializing and connecting. But, I’m more interested in outcomes than output, and I’m excited to see how all of this plays out.

What about you?

Heather Marks is Director, Communications Technology, Corporate Communications, for Avery Dennison Corporation, the producer of consumer products, pressure-sensitive adhesives and materials.

Follow her on Twitter @HeatherLMarks, where she talks food (as the co-owner of Heather’s Heat and Flavor, the spice/sauce/salsa stores in Lyndhurst and Hudson, Ohio.)

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