The Globe and Mail reports that embattled oil company and environmental villain is set to experience a social media backlash. Virtually overnight, Facebook and Twitter lit up with former customers of the British company complaining and boycotting the providers services.
From The Globe and Mail report, the Boycott BP Facebook group is now hovering around 100 thousand fans. There are approximately a dozen albums of user-generated photos, showing everything from a pelican soaked in oil to images of a BP rig sitting on Planet Earth with a bloody sword, complete with the caption “How does it feel murdering your mother? British Punks!!!”
and
The backlash against BP is indicative of what has become commonplace in our hyper-connected society. If you mess up, your family might forgive you but the web world will not -- they will hold you accountable. While some companies are looking to social media as a way to clean up and promote their image, the online audience has a tendency (and the smarts) to sniff out the good from the bad (and put emphasis on the evil).
What do you think? Is this the continuation of a digital, global citizen's arrest?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Students creating decentralized social network
Four students from NYU have set out to create a social network where large hub servers do not host users information. They have promised a completely secure platform where a users information will remain private. The group decided to put a call out for funds on the internet, and received $23,676 in donations as of Tuesday of this week. According to Finn Brunton, a professor of the four students behind the project, they have a solid plan to extend the network beyond just technical users, but to the general public. Follow them at @joindisapora and visit their webpage here. Read the full article at the New York Times here.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Guest Post: Virtual meets IRL, again…Social Media 2.0 / #socialc20
Below is a special post from one of our 2010 attendees of Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies. For more information on the event, please click here.
The presentations at this conference were, IMHO, fantastic. The presenters were all very frank and pretty open in terms of sharing experiences – both successful and the kind one learns from. Everything was discussed from blogging to Facebook to Twitter to Foursquare, and beyond.
This conference was also unique in that we had a “mingling”, almost “speed-dating” session with other conference attendees. The art of being social and responding in a stream-of-consciousness. It was during these conversations that I met the people I would end up speaking with most (even having dinner with!). Although, the use of the #socialc20 hashtag also linked me with some folks I would later meet IRL, as they know me as @kerbehr, and I knew them by their Twitter handles.
There was no shortage of interesting content and hearing from brands that we all know all too well: McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Sega, Intuit/Turbo Tax, NHL, Chicago Bulls, Scholastic Books, Washington Capitals, Pepsico, Wells Fargo…the list goes on! We also got sneak peaks into @charleneli’s new book “Open Leadership” and @jbernoff’s new book “Empowered”. I’m looking forward to reading both, Charlene’s comes out this month, and Josh’s sometime in September.
So, in the course of two days, I feel like I made some solid contacts, met some tremendous people, and hopefully, have some interesting things lined up for work. I also got to drink LOTS of bottled water (contaminated water situation in Boston) and was evacuated during a panel discussion Wednesday morning (I heard it was a broken pipe), so it wasn’t just the presentations that were interesting during this trip!
Some quotables (in no particular order):
“ If people get what they expect from your prod. they don’t talk. Your prod needs to exceed expectations.” - David Witt, Gen. Mills.
“No one social app is big enough to drive major sales, but they help us to engage.” – Bonin Bough, Pepsico
“‘Social networks will be like air” It’s everywhere. It’s a natural state of being. – Charlene Li
“We tend to overvalue what we can measure, and undervalue the things we cannot” – John Hayes, AmEx, via Charlene Li
“I love any application where you can make money & pay people with love” – Josh Bernoff
“Access creates content, content creates traffic” – Jeremy Thum, Chicago Bulls.
“If someone talks about you negatively, its probably better that they do it in your house.” - @stevealter.
“”If you don’t build it, they will come anyway. If you build it, but don’t know why, they will come once…and never come back again” – Steve Alter
“ The fastest way to not be a faceless corporation is to not be one. Put personality into your soc med efforts” – Kellie Parker
From: kerbehr.wordpress.com
The presentations at this conference were, IMHO, fantastic. The presenters were all very frank and pretty open in terms of sharing experiences – both successful and the kind one learns from. Everything was discussed from blogging to Facebook to Twitter to Foursquare, and beyond.
This conference was also unique in that we had a “mingling”, almost “speed-dating” session with other conference attendees. The art of being social and responding in a stream-of-consciousness. It was during these conversations that I met the people I would end up speaking with most (even having dinner with!). Although, the use of the #socialc20 hashtag also linked me with some folks I would later meet IRL, as they know me as @kerbehr, and I knew them by their Twitter handles.
There was no shortage of interesting content and hearing from brands that we all know all too well: McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Sega, Intuit/Turbo Tax, NHL, Chicago Bulls, Scholastic Books, Washington Capitals, Pepsico, Wells Fargo…the list goes on! We also got sneak peaks into @charleneli’s new book “Open Leadership” and @jbernoff’s new book “Empowered”. I’m looking forward to reading both, Charlene’s comes out this month, and Josh’s sometime in September.
So, in the course of two days, I feel like I made some solid contacts, met some tremendous people, and hopefully, have some interesting things lined up for work. I also got to drink LOTS of bottled water (contaminated water situation in Boston) and was evacuated during a panel discussion Wednesday morning (I heard it was a broken pipe), so it wasn’t just the presentations that were interesting during this trip!
Some quotables (in no particular order):
“ If people get what they expect from your prod. they don’t talk. Your prod needs to exceed expectations.” - David Witt, Gen. Mills.
“No one social app is big enough to drive major sales, but they help us to engage.” – Bonin Bough, Pepsico
“‘Social networks will be like air” It’s everywhere. It’s a natural state of being. – Charlene Li
“We tend to overvalue what we can measure, and undervalue the things we cannot” – John Hayes, AmEx, via Charlene Li
“I love any application where you can make money & pay people with love” – Josh Bernoff
“Access creates content, content creates traffic” – Jeremy Thum, Chicago Bulls.
“If someone talks about you negatively, its probably better that they do it in your house.” - @stevealter.
“”If you don’t build it, they will come anyway. If you build it, but don’t know why, they will come once…and never come back again” – Steve Alter
“ The fastest way to not be a faceless corporation is to not be one. Put personality into your soc med efforts” – Kellie Parker
Thursday, May 6, 2010
One FREE pass to the Youth & Family Marketing Mega Event next week!
One FREE pass to the Youth & Family Marketing Mega Event next week! If you would like to attend the event on us and can take copious notes – this opportunity could be for you. We are looking for someone with excellent writing skills to attend the event and publish a post conference wrap up highlighting key takeaways and lessons learned at the event. If you are interested and available to attend the conference May 11 and May 12 in Chicago, contact Conference Director, Krista Vazquez at kvazquez@iirusa.com.
More info about the event can be found at www.iirusa.com/family. This is a great opportunity for a marketing student or job seeker.
Social Media & Community 2.0 2010 Wrap-Up
Thank you to all who joined us and all who followed our coverage during this year's event. We surpassed our already high expectations for this year with the amazing keynotes, speakers, sponsors and attendees. We hope that you found our coverage useful as we work to continuously bring you information to spur conversation and discussion with your peers.
To continue the discussions well into 2010, we encourage everyone to join the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies LinkedIn Group. Join other brand community advocates, community pros and social media professionals in this exclusive group. For those of you already in the group, let's start discussing many of the topics featured at the conference and consider new ones as we enter this new decade.
Our ongoing coverage of industry news and professional posts from across the social media spectrum doesn't end with the conference. Keep up with the latest news by subscribing to daily updates right here on our blog.
If you are interested in being a guest blogger for Community 2.0 please contact Melissa Sundaram at msundaram@iirusa.com. We'd love to have your input!
To continue the discussions well into 2010, we encourage everyone to join the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies LinkedIn Group. Join other brand community advocates, community pros and social media professionals in this exclusive group. For those of you already in the group, let's start discussing many of the topics featured at the conference and consider new ones as we enter this new decade.
Our ongoing coverage of industry news and professional posts from across the social media spectrum doesn't end with the conference. Keep up with the latest news by subscribing to daily updates right here on our blog.
If you are interested in being a guest blogger for Community 2.0 please contact Melissa Sundaram at msundaram@iirusa.com. We'd love to have your input!
Technology Isn't an Idea
It's late, and I just got home from a five hour plane ride, but I wanted to give a much-deserved shout out to Stephen Gates from Starwood Hotels & Resorts. He provided this gem this afternoon:
"Technology isn’t an idea--nobody cares if you have a Twitter feed if you have nothing to say. It’s a tool…..like a pencil; without anything to draw, it’s just a paperweight. Technology is not the leader of what we do. We create user experiences and communities driven by the core attributes and insights of our brands, not by technology. Look at the concept or what we want to do, then look at how we can accomplish it through various channels."
Now, that said, I'll meet you in the Sheraton's online Pillow Fight ad. How cool is that?
"Technology isn’t an idea--nobody cares if you have a Twitter feed if you have nothing to say. It’s a tool…..like a pencil; without anything to draw, it’s just a paperweight. Technology is not the leader of what we do. We create user experiences and communities driven by the core attributes and insights of our brands, not by technology. Look at the concept or what we want to do, then look at how we can accomplish it through various channels."
Now, that said, I'll meet you in the Sheraton's online Pillow Fight ad. How cool is that?
Bringing Your Online Community Offline
Matt Warburton (@betfair) offered session attendees some good advice and ideas for taking your online community offline. He suggested that offline participation can:
- Engage and recognize power users
- Offer education
- Collect feedback
- Communicate news
- Build loyalty and Word of Mouth
- Put a face on your brand
- User Advisory Panels (fly them out in person; recruit people based on behavior; get a good mix of customer base; stay connected via phone calls; involve CEOs in the process; keep participants for 12 months to keep it fresh and avoid a sense of "entitlement")
- Meetups Parties (usually a little cheaper; most often a casual gathering; regional, mostly social; keep tied in to brand)
- Town Halls (regional events; use a cross-functional level of staff; usually held at a hotel banquet room with a meet and greet for an hour; open up mic for traditional Q&A)
- User Conferences (large scale user conferences education, networking, and social components; high level executive participation (examples: eBay Live; Microsoft MVP conference; users often pay their own way to the event)
- Official Member–Organized Events (appoint ambassadors to do the events for you; officially sanctioned member-organized events; guidelines are established to ensure standards; company provides collateral; no staff participation)
Matt offered council for judging or measuring the benefits of the offline events, as well as thoughts on how to stay connected with these users once the events were over. The key, it seems, is to make the events interactive, keep them on-brand, and then to follow up. "Real," "trust," and "engagement"can happen anywhere.
Pfizer Gives Two Stars to Amazon’s Five Stars
I had to LOL at Robin Spencer’s (#Pfizer) call out to the “Tambourine” people—folks who just want to connect everything because they can and because everyone else is doing it. Hopefully it’s been (in keeping with the musical theme) drummed into our heads by now that the primary goal of social media is always business problem solving. Yet, the biggest conundrum in social media, says Robin, is often confusion about goals.
Robin shared this Dirty Little Secret with the group: The simpler the task, the less representative the results. The example he used (after some blank stares, I imagine) was that of ratings on Amazon.com—the process whereby users click a star to indicate their level of satisfaction with a product. Have you noticed that a whole lot of products on Amazon.com have 4.5 stars? Users can “contribute to the community” with very little effort or thought. Obviously, then, the opposite of the dirty little secret is true, too: The harder the task, the more representative it is. This is where Chris Anderson’s Long Tail work comes in.
“Watch the tail,” Robin admonished. The people who answer one question each are often more important over the long run than those who answer repeatedly. Large-scale behavior is largely predictable; you’ll find that most of your contributions and value come from the occasional contributors. Don’t bias your system by quantity or reputation; you may exclude your best contributors.
Nice presentation, Robin, but I suppose five stars would be inappropriate…. :)
Robin shared this Dirty Little Secret with the group: The simpler the task, the less representative the results. The example he used (after some blank stares, I imagine) was that of ratings on Amazon.com—the process whereby users click a star to indicate their level of satisfaction with a product. Have you noticed that a whole lot of products on Amazon.com have 4.5 stars? Users can “contribute to the community” with very little effort or thought. Obviously, then, the opposite of the dirty little secret is true, too: The harder the task, the more representative it is. This is where Chris Anderson’s Long Tail work comes in.
“Watch the tail,” Robin admonished. The people who answer one question each are often more important over the long run than those who answer repeatedly. Large-scale behavior is largely predictable; you’ll find that most of your contributions and value come from the occasional contributors. Don’t bias your system by quantity or reputation; you may exclude your best contributors.
Nice presentation, Robin, but I suppose five stars would be inappropriate…. :)
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
The Kenny Rogers Rule
Kellie Parker of SEGA (who we’ve heard from earlier) did a short and sweet presentation on managing multiple brands, and then turned the conversation to the audience. The great part about Kellie’s presentation fits into what we heard in this morning’s keynote: leadership is moving away from network model to cross-functional teams.
Here are a few of Kellie’s suggestions on how to bring order to chaos:
Specialization. Each team has a brand specialist—someone who deeply understands the brand and can instantly tell if something is going to work or not. Each team also has a specialist in terms of tools.
Automation and flow. Create a process to your flow of content. Sega uses the blog as the main source of information, and then links back to Facebook, etc. But only use the tools that work for you, and makes the most sense.
Kenny Rogers. Know when to hold ‘em/fold ‘em. Sega consolidated their many forums into 
into one with different channels. They found that members started clicking around in places that they wouldn’t have gone before.
Should We Listen?
Though “listening” was a key word in every session yesterday, Conference Chair Jaime Punishill, opened the conference this morning challenging that idea. See his thoughts on that below (with his other ruminations on yesterday’s sessions). Punishill also pointed out a cool tool, Twapper Keeper—a site that archives tweets around a hashtag.
Punishill’s take aways from yesterday’s conference:
Experiment, learn, adapt
Most of the time, we don’t even know what you’re listening for in the beginning. And we don’t yet know how to interpret the information.
Leadership is clearly changing
We spent a long time listening to Charlene’s robust conversation about being open. Make sure you’re being open only to your industry. We’re naturally getting rid of pyramid system, and moving to a network model with cross-functional teams.
Metrics matter. A lot.
There are no right metrics, but they matter to your leaders.
Social Crosses the “T”
It allows us to be flat global connection, and also one of the greatest technological acceleration. It’s not an “either/ or” but an “and.”
Social media must die
Social is an extension to our entire franchise, but with social services to it. It’s marketing, research, customer services, product development, etc. It’s both not different and totally different.
Punishill’s take aways from yesterday’s conference:
Experiment, learn, adapt
Most of the time, we don’t even know what you’re listening for in the beginning. And we don’t yet know how to interpret the information.
Leadership is clearly changing
We spent a long time listening to Charlene’s robust conversation about being open. Make sure you’re being open only to your industry. We’re naturally getting rid of pyramid system, and moving to a network model with cross-functional teams.
Metrics matter. A lot.
There are no right metrics, but they matter to your leaders.
Social Crosses the “T”
It allows us to be flat global connection, and also one of the greatest technological acceleration. It’s not an “either/ or” but an “and.”
Social media must die
Social is an extension to our entire franchise, but with social services to it. It’s marketing, research, customer services, product development, etc. It’s both not different and totally different.
Citibank's Hard Fought Journey
Rachel Happe of Community Roundtable interviewed Jaime Punishill of Citibank and starts by asking Punishill about the ranking, or lack there of, within the social media sphere. Punishill said that it was easy to make the switch to social because many of their customers were web and digital-savvy. There wasn't a choice for Citibank to go social (there was they could choose not to) but because their customers were so web-savvy; it had to happen and because of Punishill's digital background he was a perfect fit to lead the campaign. Punishill took a "design, build, fly" approach to the social media campaign. He took one project, Twitter for customer service, and tried to move it to make meaningful impact and buy-in. By having this first campaign, it allowed Punishill and his team to write the policies and procedures manual and gave them a great first-run at the social sphere. After extensive training of their customer service representatives, soon Citibank's CSR's will take over the Twitter feeds. Now there are 40 CSRs online from 8am-9pm daily. Citibank did try to pre-script the Twitter dialogues, but that lasted about five minutes - it's very difficult to pre-script a live conversation.
What we're learning from today's conversation and from the presentations Monday and Tuesday is that process is important, but ethics and simple codes of conduct are even more important when dealing with social media at an organization. As social media moves forward, we see more and more emphasis for social media professionals to be social media educators. In fact, today's discussion highlighted that about 50% of a social media manager's time is spent within the organization, educating their companies about social media. From watercooler chats like, "So do you just Tweet all day? Must be nice." to proving (or trying to prove) ROI to the executive staff, social media is now social media education.
What we're learning from today's conversation and from the presentations Monday and Tuesday is that process is important, but ethics and simple codes of conduct are even more important when dealing with social media at an organization. As social media moves forward, we see more and more emphasis for social media professionals to be social media educators. In fact, today's discussion highlighted that about 50% of a social media manager's time is spent within the organization, educating their companies about social media. From watercooler chats like, "So do you just Tweet all day? Must be nice." to proving (or trying to prove) ROI to the executive staff, social media is now social media education.
Welcome to Day 3 of Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies 2010!
Welcome to our third and final day of coverage at Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies 2010. This week we’ve heard great case studies on using social media for innovation and leveraging communities for customer support, as well as some new insights from Charlene Li and former Groundswell winners. But there’s so much more to come! Today’s line-up includes multiple panel discussions, a fire-side chat, networking breaks and 8 more case studies.
Our team’s coverage continues today as we share in the twitter discussion at #socialc20. You can also follow us at our own Twitter feed, @Community20.
See you at morning coffee!
Our team’s coverage continues today as we share in the twitter discussion at #socialc20. You can also follow us at our own Twitter feed, @Community20.
See you at morning coffee!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Buy the Book: How Barnes & Noble Leverages User-Generated Commerce
How do we get our customers to help us do the things we’re here for? Kevin Ryan (@KevinSRyan), formerly of Barnes & Noble, shared how B&N enabled user-generated commerce as part of their community interaction.
Obviously, much of the discussions on B&N center around book recommendations. So…..B&N integrated a product widget into their message editor that allows users to search for a product/book while composing a message or recommendation. With a direct link to “Add This Book to My Cart” available in all messages, the company has been able to drive commerce through trusted community activity—and has done so without any backlash from the community.
You can also see how B&N is empowering regional employees to aid in customer support at their Blogging Booksellers Web site.
Obviously, much of the discussions on B&N center around book recommendations. So…..B&N integrated a product widget into their message editor that allows users to search for a product/book while composing a message or recommendation. With a direct link to “Add This Book to My Cart” available in all messages, the company has been able to drive commerce through trusted community activity—and has done so without any backlash from the community.
You can also see how B&N is empowering regional employees to aid in customer support at their Blogging Booksellers Web site.
And They’ll Tell Two Friends….and They’ll Tell Two Friends: Wells Fargo Builds a Business Case for the Social Web
Remember that Faberge Organics shampoo commercial from the 80’s where Heather Locklear promises that you’ll tell your friends about the shampoo, and they’ll tell their friends….and so on? Well, Kimarie Matthews and her team from @ask_wellsfargo have implemented a Twitter strategy that seems to be doing just that: 40% of their customers who received support through Twitter turn around and make a positive comment and 13% turn around and post to their followers. On average, Kimarie says that a re-tweeted tip is shared with 1,869 other users—a conservative estimate, she admits. In addition, WF’s support responses via Twitter are quoted by the media almost as often as formal messages from corporate communications.
Wells Fargo’s Twitter strategy? Offer help, thank customers, answer questions, share relevant content, and then measure. More importantly, though, she acknowledges that customer support is still you listening to someone else and demonstrating that you care. Customers feel loyalty when their needs are met and they feel appreciated—a huge factor knowing that “the most trusted information source about a company is from ‘people like me.’”
Kimarie concluded by saying, “What we’re doing in Twitter is incubating the next generation of customers.” The good news is, this generation is more poised than ever to tell their friends, and they’ll tell their friends, and so on….
Wells Fargo’s Twitter strategy? Offer help, thank customers, answer questions, share relevant content, and then measure. More importantly, though, she acknowledges that customer support is still you listening to someone else and demonstrating that you care. Customers feel loyalty when their needs are met and they feel appreciated—a huge factor knowing that “the most trusted information source about a company is from ‘people like me.’”
Kimarie concluded by saying, “What we’re doing in Twitter is incubating the next generation of customers.” The good news is, this generation is more poised than ever to tell their friends, and they’ll tell their friends, and so on….
Yes Virginia there is ROI in Social Media
A common theme today revolved around getting management to buy-in to social media initiatives.
Promoting what, Dawn Lacallade, Solarwinds, calls community health – participation, feedback – might be a nice measure of success for a community manager, but they aren’t going to convince a CEO to invest.
To gain a CEO’s commitment you need to demonstrate business value. You need to think in terms of ROI.
- Improved net promoter score driven by a closer with your customers
- Reduced customer service costs due to the community answering the consumer questions
- Increased sales by better knowing what the consumer wants
- Solarwinds’ R&D budget allocation runs approximately 50% lower than industry average driven by their community involvement in product development
- One of the 35 ideas by Turbo Tax’s Inner Circle members has generated $19MM in revenue over three years
- Scholastic tapped into its community to redesign its flyer resulting in a 3% increase in sales versus its former design
Making Support Social with Consumer-Generated Answers
Steve Alter threw out some impressive numbers from Microsoft Answers help community right from the get-go:
· 114 million pages
· 250,000 visits/day
· 24,000 returning visitors/day
· 77% of all questions are answered within seven days
What got more “Ooos” and “Ahhhs”, however, were these stats:
· 31% of all answers come from Microsoft MVPs
· 35% of all answers come from general users
Steve pointed out that top users are scarce and can’t scale – the key is getting one person to answer one question. There are a large group of people who will be engaged at a lesser level, so DON’T just focus on top influencers—make sure you reach out to the pool in the middle. He supported this assertion with these Five Truths of Community Support:
1. One answer goes a long way
2. Hundreds will make ordinary contributions
3. Hundreds of thousands will make single contributions
4. People will take help wherever and from whomever they can find it
5. A post is forever
Steve states that one “myth” of community support is that the community will do all the work now….maybe they won’t do ALL the work, but it appears they can potentially lighten the load.
Follow Steve at @stevealter
One afterthought: My favorite quote from Steve’s presentation (referring to community support) was this: “If you don’t build it, they will come anyway, and they will be really unhappy that you didn’t build it.”
· 114 million pages
· 250,000 visits/day
· 24,000 returning visitors/day
· 77% of all questions are answered within seven days
What got more “Ooos” and “Ahhhs”, however, were these stats:
· 31% of all answers come from Microsoft MVPs
· 35% of all answers come from general users
Steve pointed out that top users are scarce and can’t scale – the key is getting one person to answer one question. There are a large group of people who will be engaged at a lesser level, so DON’T just focus on top influencers—make sure you reach out to the pool in the middle. He supported this assertion with these Five Truths of Community Support:
1. One answer goes a long way
2. Hundreds will make ordinary contributions
3. Hundreds of thousands will make single contributions
4. People will take help wherever and from whomever they can find it
5. A post is forever
Steve states that one “myth” of community support is that the community will do all the work now….maybe they won’t do ALL the work, but it appears they can potentially lighten the load.
Follow Steve at @stevealter
One afterthought: My favorite quote from Steve’s presentation (referring to community support) was this: “If you don’t build it, they will come anyway, and they will be really unhappy that you didn’t build it.”
How Open Do I Need to Be REALLY? Charlene Li Responds
I've never heard Groundswell author and Altimeter Group founder Charlene Li speak before, and I'm glad I had the chance today. She makes "social" seem less scary; audience members that didn't speak up before are comfortable asking her the questions that most bother them.
The points she made in sum:
- Focus on relationships. This is about having a relationships strategy, not a social media strategy.
- Align social strategy with strategic goals.
- Support your open leaders.
- Plan for failure - there will be many.
Relationships and planning in advance for failure are two themes that keep popping up this week, so it merits taking special note of those.
Here's what Li discussed in more detail.
A recurring question she gets from companies: "How open do I need to be?" The answer: Have confidence and humility to relinquish the need for control, while inspiring commitment from people to accomplish goals. That's how you stay in command without whipping out the iron fist.
A good rule of thumb if you still feel murky about this "being open" thing: Don't just look at where people are being social; examine to what degree they are being open to one another.
This isn't about complete balls-out openness; this is about cultivating the openness that is appropriate for your strategy. An example she gives is that she walked into a room full of people and bared her soul, it would probably make everyone uncomfortable, and she'd feel weird about it too. But if she's walking into a roomful of her closest friends, it would be okay to do that, and people would get it.
Another nice example is considering Apple: people feel it's incredibly closed, and in a lot of ways it is, but the fact is it would probably hurt more than help if they were more open. When will Apple need to be more open? When it stops designing exceptional products, Li says.
Seven guidelines for moving forward in your relationship strategy:
1. Align openness with strategic goals, say, for 2011. Pick one where "open" and "social" can have impact. Make sure the strategy aligns with one of the five-odd things your CEO truly cares about; if it doesn't, you're toast.
2. Understand value. "We tend to overvalue the things we can measure, and undervalue the things we cannot." - John Hayes, CMO American Express. What's the value of Coca-Cola's five million fans, versus people that are exposed to a Coke ad?
3. Understand how open you need to be.
4. Find and develop open leaders inside your company. You may see four types: worried pessimists, transparent evangelists, cautious testers, realist optimists. Treat and use them accordingly. The higher up the organisation you go, the more "worried skeptics" you find. By far, the most effective archetype is the "realist optimist" - they see the problems the company has, but understand the end point and have an idea how to get there.
Cultivate a culture of sharing inside your company, because it's a safe place. If people can't share inside, they won't do it outside. "Mindsets only change if skills and behaviour change," sayeth Li.
5. Prepare your organisation. What areas do your frontlne people need to be ready for?
6. Organise to meet your goals. Try the social media triage:
7. Embrace failure. Wal-Mart underwent at least three major social media failures before it came up with the Check-Out Blog, which hit the right note: saving people money, no longer fabricating user conversation.
Four goals define your strategy:
Understand that the dialog is important, and you can't get to the "support" and "innovate" parts of that graph without it. Learning to create a dialog teaches you what you need to do to support users; with that, over time, you can innovate.
Finally, manage risk with Sandbox Covenants: define the limits of your company's "comfort" sandbox, so it's clear to all participants. As your relationship strengthens with users, the sandbox will expand organically - yielding not just more openness and comfort with different technologies, but innovations, too.
Don't forget users have sandboxes too; consider them. What do they expect from you? Create mitigation/contingency strategies for what happens when a line is crossed.
Li wrapped with a pretty idea: In the future, social networks will be like air. It'll seem quaint that we had to go to a space like Twitter/Facebook in order to feel connected.
Photo via Logic + Emotion, who in turn found it on Waiting for Dorothy.
Don't Build Alone! How Community Improves Product Development
Community manager Dawn Lacallade of Solarwinds is not an ordinary social enthusiast. Her talk this afternoon was less a vague preachfest about the value of transparency than a practical application of the social gene in the production process.
The talk was called "Outsourcing Product Development to Your Community." She started by observing, "We're in an industry with high-tech people that make [building community] particularly easier to do."
Communities, properly cultivated, can be integral to product ideation and development. You can literally change what you hope to accomplish, just by listening, down to the core of what your brand's supposed to represent:
"When you start actually listening to your community, you actually find out what your brand is."
Community members don't just give input; they bug fix, provide free development, and make contributions across nearly all stages in a product or service's birth.
Lacallade illustrated this by showing how Solarwinds took the typical product development cycle and souped it up with select elements of user contributions. All elements of the cycle are affected, with the exception of the release phase:
These are Solarwinds' users, and the value each level brings:
- 80% Watchers - validate directional feedback
- 9 Contributors - solicit for direct feedback
- 1% Power Users - partner for deeper engagement
The 1% of Power Users tend to be the primary focus of people seeking to build a community (in lay terms, this group is often labeled "influencers"). The thing is, Watchers are not just impassive lurkers; they have a different sort of worth.
A number of hardcore users are given an NDA and invited to early reviews/product strategy discussions. They can beta test prototypes, and are invited to work hard to find what's broken - something they often succeed in doing before the product ships.
While Power Users help define what features to prioritise, and while they may be most vocal about problems or solutions for your business, it is the regular activity of the Watchers that determines whether the implementation has staying power.
In toto, Solarwinds' community efforts are composed of 90,000 content items, circulated among 40,000 members that hit an average of 8-9 pages before leaving the site. Content includes forums, blogs, content exchange and product feature discussions.
In terms of R&D spend, the difference this has made is significant.
Lacallade added that it wouldn't be possible to maintain an R&D cap of 9% if not for quick release cycles: the system has to be as responsive and quick-moving as the feedback it receives.
How do you start implementing a similar process? To start with, forget the "Field of Dreams" style community: this idea you can build a place, then get people there. "It doesn't really work," Lacallade says.
Don't get caught up in the bells and whistles of the moment; what is the tool your users will be most comfortable with? Advance them at a pace that makes sense.
Finally, make sure your measurement metrics are relevant and clear to those that need to use that data.
The full presentation above has way more useful information than this. You can also follow Lacallade at @dawnl.
Social Media & Community 2.0 In Pictures
Not only are we live-blogging from the event, we're also uploading photos! Check out our Flickr feed for great pics of this years event!
Stay tuned! More photos to come!
Stay tuned! More photos to come!
First Up: Jamie Punishill
Jamie Punishill, of Citibank, set the stage for the first “official” day of the conference. According to Jamie—and we heard this a little bit yesterday—2010 is when the kids are going to give way to the adults. Meaning, 2010 is the year of the brands (it also feels like its 1998). Social media is already regarded just as effective as a corporate website.
What you can expect for the next two days:
How to avoid pitfalls of social media
How large companies can use real-time social media
How online meets offline
Turn customer’s interest into a brand
Intersection of mobile and social strategies
The Four Horsemen of social media: Legal, compliance, security and risk
A Conversation with The Top Corporate Twitter Brands: How Can I Unlock the Business Value of Twitter to Innovate, Interact, Inform?
Kellie Parker of Sega, Winnie Hsia of Whole Foods and Christi Day of Southwest Air are our panelists at this morning's discussion on how businesses can utilize Twitter to market and to engage with their customers.
How did your brand get into Twitter?
Sega: Twitter was started at Sega about 2yrs ago. They made the decision to have an account for both USA and Europe; but they found that customers were following both Twitter streams so they combined them, providing messaging to all locations.
Whole Foods: Twitter was started at 2008 for the company and now they've provided 2/3 of their stores with their own Twitter. Shoppers want to connect with their store, Whole Foods is actively working for a 100% adoption of Twitter by all of their stores. There is a dedicated person at each store who controls the Twitter communication.
Southwest: Started slowly with Twitter then hit 7,000 new followers per day. Southwest now boasts 3M followers.
In order for the Twitter accounts to be successful, managers must listen and be human with the customers. The focus should never be a "hard sell" it should be a conversation, not a promotion. Finding out your brand advocates and the influentials and work with them, highlight them and make them part of your mission.
There is a customer service component to Twitter, and it helps your customers connect with a real person when they're having difficulties; but what if customers are having a great time with your brand? Christi Day showcased an example for the "Nerd Bird," a flight scheduled from California for Austin, TX for the South By Southwest conference that included a bunch of self-proclaimed "nerds" to the conference. Once Southwest's Twitter team found out about this "Nerd Bird," they were able to schedule a wi-fi plane for the crew - bonus!
What about promotions/coupons?
Sega does "Free Stuff Friday" which works like a radio call-in show, "I've got this t-shirt, the 10th person that DMs us gets it for free." It's worked so well that they've pre-announced the giveaways, blogged about the giveaways and now they've started to videotape the giveaways. It's been a success and now it's a great promotional tool for upcoming games.
Whole Foods does "Twitter Thursdays" and "Facebook Fridays" with giveaways that have included an all expense paid trip. When they give away really cool stuff, something more than gift cards, like a case of peanut butter - it's a success. If people have something that they can really rally around, or they are a fan of something, it matters so much more.
Southwest Air source codes everything that comes from Twitter to the Southwest Air website. By only using their channels, Southwest Air had the largest increase in fare sales in 40 years just by using social media. Before the holidays, Southwest Air gave away 12 gift cards based on the 12 Days of Christmas, asking users to send pictures - the winners won a $1000 gift card for air travel.
Within your Twitter team, it's important to have well-defined roles and a well-defined organizational system. Each member of the team should be able to fill in for one another, to keep the communication and the messaging consistent.
How did your brand get into Twitter?
Sega: Twitter was started at Sega about 2yrs ago. They made the decision to have an account for both USA and Europe; but they found that customers were following both Twitter streams so they combined them, providing messaging to all locations.
Whole Foods: Twitter was started at 2008 for the company and now they've provided 2/3 of their stores with their own Twitter. Shoppers want to connect with their store, Whole Foods is actively working for a 100% adoption of Twitter by all of their stores. There is a dedicated person at each store who controls the Twitter communication.
Southwest: Started slowly with Twitter then hit 7,000 new followers per day. Southwest now boasts 3M followers.
In order for the Twitter accounts to be successful, managers must listen and be human with the customers. The focus should never be a "hard sell" it should be a conversation, not a promotion. Finding out your brand advocates and the influentials and work with them, highlight them and make them part of your mission.
There is a customer service component to Twitter, and it helps your customers connect with a real person when they're having difficulties; but what if customers are having a great time with your brand? Christi Day showcased an example for the "Nerd Bird," a flight scheduled from California for Austin, TX for the South By Southwest conference that included a bunch of self-proclaimed "nerds" to the conference. Once Southwest's Twitter team found out about this "Nerd Bird," they were able to schedule a wi-fi plane for the crew - bonus!
What about promotions/coupons?
Sega does "Free Stuff Friday" which works like a radio call-in show, "I've got this t-shirt, the 10th person that DMs us gets it for free." It's worked so well that they've pre-announced the giveaways, blogged about the giveaways and now they've started to videotape the giveaways. It's been a success and now it's a great promotional tool for upcoming games.
Whole Foods does "Twitter Thursdays" and "Facebook Fridays" with giveaways that have included an all expense paid trip. When they give away really cool stuff, something more than gift cards, like a case of peanut butter - it's a success. If people have something that they can really rally around, or they are a fan of something, it matters so much more.
Southwest Air source codes everything that comes from Twitter to the Southwest Air website. By only using their channels, Southwest Air had the largest increase in fare sales in 40 years just by using social media. Before the holidays, Southwest Air gave away 12 gift cards based on the 12 Days of Christmas, asking users to send pictures - the winners won a $1000 gift card for air travel.
Within your Twitter team, it's important to have well-defined roles and a well-defined organizational system. Each member of the team should be able to fill in for one another, to keep the communication and the messaging consistent.
Welcome to Day 2 of Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies 2010!
Welcome to the first main conference day of Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies 2010! We're looking forward to full day of industry leaders providing you the latest case studies, panels and innovative discussions. We encourage you to follow Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies 2010 event coverage and share with your colleagues.
Thank you to all of you who joined us at last night’s Tweet-Up! What an amazing crowd!
As a reminder, if you're attending the conference and twittering from the event, use #socialc20 in your tweets. You can follow the discussions on Twitter @Community20. You can also review details of many of the sessions you may have missed by keeping up with our blog for the latest presentation posts.
See you at morning coffee –
The Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies Event Team
Thank you to all of you who joined us at last night’s Tweet-Up! What an amazing crowd!
As a reminder, if you're attending the conference and twittering from the event, use #socialc20 in your tweets. You can follow the discussions on Twitter @Community20. You can also review details of many of the sessions you may have missed by keeping up with our blog for the latest presentation posts.
See you at morning coffee –
The Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies Event Team
Monday, May 3, 2010
Key Take Aways from Community Pros Panel
The concluding session of the day at the Social Media & Community 2.0 Conference was a panel of seasoned community managers. The panel addressed questions ranging from stakeholder support to community culture and transparency to recruiting internal evangelists. Key points from the discussion:
- --When you launch a community, you’re saying, “We’re willing to listen ... and listen in public.”
- --The biggest Do Not Do for a new online community is overpromise what the community will provide or do.
- --A water cooler is often the number one entry point into a community—it goes a long way toward getting people onboard. It’s opinion based ("I like this, I don’t like that"); it's a safe start.
- --Determine who the fish are and who the sharks are and structure the community to protect the fish.
- --A lot of participation and community work doesn’t appear on the Web site; it's behind the scenes.
- --There’s still nothing like getting on the phone or chatting face to face.
Looking forward to a great day tomorrow!
Where Are You on the Community Maturity Model?
During a session called "Getting it right the first time: stories from community pros," co-founder Jim Storer of The Community Roundtable showed us this handy-dandy chart that measures "community maturity."
You can read more about it at the Community Roundtable website (there's also a high-res version you can download), but in essence it illustrates the evolution companies experience from hierarchically-organised to primarily network-organised.
It's interesting. Where's your brand?
Mario Anima, Current TV: "I'm in the club"
Like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, we all want to be a part of something. Ralphie wanted the BB gun, he wanted to be liked and he wanted this "badge of honor" to be included in something bigger than himself. Most of us are a lot like Ralphie, we may not want the BB gun, but we want to be a part of something different, something greater than ourselves.
In addition to this BB gun, Raphie also wanted to be a part of Little Orphan Annie's secret club, using the decoder key that was sent to him that enabled him to decipher the secret message broadcast during the Little Orphan Annie program. Ralphie was part of a branded experience, a form of interaction and it allowed him to be a part of the action - while being a part of the marketing game.
Today we're using the same technique throughout social media. People want to be connected to the product, to belong and to be involved in something bigger than themselves. It's important, as community managers to get them involved into the product and its distribution. At Current TV, their mission has been inclusion, from The Rotten Tomatoes show to some of the earliest user-generated documentaries. Now, every show on Current TV has user-submitted content. Current TV does a weekly call-out to the community giving assignments for movies to watch and then the user-submitted content that is chosen to be on the program gets $100.
We see the example of the popular superhero movie, Kick-Ass from user-generated content to the professional hosts of Current TV, we see how being a part of the movie is a club - and we want to join. Do we need to join? Nah, but heck, the party is happening - I wanna come, too!
The most important aspect of the program is why and how you communicate your mission to the community. The Current TV team tells the community exactly what they want, be it a review for a specific film and that review only. They showcase the best of the best on the Current TV program, thereby providing examples to the community on what to do and what not to do.
Current TV also makes their staff members accessible through popular social networks. Using the example of That's Gay segment host, Bryan Safi, we saw how Current TV hosts respond to their community. One thing to note is that the staff members do not have a Current TV speak - they speak to the community like real people, they ARE real people. If we're B2B/B2C/Old School/New School, we must remember that we're real people - is there really a need for corporate speak? After all, we just want to be part of the club and included in the conversation.
In addition to this BB gun, Raphie also wanted to be a part of Little Orphan Annie's secret club, using the decoder key that was sent to him that enabled him to decipher the secret message broadcast during the Little Orphan Annie program. Ralphie was part of a branded experience, a form of interaction and it allowed him to be a part of the action - while being a part of the marketing game.
Today we're using the same technique throughout social media. People want to be connected to the product, to belong and to be involved in something bigger than themselves. It's important, as community managers to get them involved into the product and its distribution. At Current TV, their mission has been inclusion, from The Rotten Tomatoes show to some of the earliest user-generated documentaries. Now, every show on Current TV has user-submitted content. Current TV does a weekly call-out to the community giving assignments for movies to watch and then the user-submitted content that is chosen to be on the program gets $100.
We see the example of the popular superhero movie, Kick-Ass from user-generated content to the professional hosts of Current TV, we see how being a part of the movie is a club - and we want to join. Do we need to join? Nah, but heck, the party is happening - I wanna come, too!
The most important aspect of the program is why and how you communicate your mission to the community. The Current TV team tells the community exactly what they want, be it a review for a specific film and that review only. They showcase the best of the best on the Current TV program, thereby providing examples to the community on what to do and what not to do.
Current TV also makes their staff members accessible through popular social networks. Using the example of That's Gay segment host, Bryan Safi, we saw how Current TV hosts respond to their community. One thing to note is that the staff members do not have a Current TV speak - they speak to the community like real people, they ARE real people. If we're B2B/B2C/Old School/New School, we must remember that we're real people - is there really a need for corporate speak? After all, we just want to be part of the club and included in the conversation.
Current TV: The Tao of the Secret Decoder Ring
This is a picture of Ralphie, the protagonist of A Christmas Story, dreaming about the obsession of his childhood: The BB gun.
The BB gun, and what it represents, is an undercurrent of the film, but it's less what the BB gun is than what it represents that so bewitches little Ralphie: he wants to belong to something, to be a hero, and he thinks the BB gun will get him there.
Current TV's Mario Anima used this as his opening gimmick for a talk that focused primarily on how you can build community by catering to that most human of desires: the need to belong. And oddly, instead of harping longer on the BB gun, he used a separate Ralphie obsession to structure the rest of his talk: the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring campaign, a partnership between the '30s-era radio series and Ovaltine.
How it went in the film: Ralphie, a dedicated listener of "Little Orphan Annie," collects UPC codes for Ovaltine in order to acquire the aforementioned secret decoder ring, which is supposed to reveal a secret message about the future of the show. The ring is mysterious-looking and comes with a letter signed by "Annie" herself.
But when Ralphie finally decodes the message, all he finds is an ad encouraging him to drink more Ovaltine. PWNED!*
"A lot of what we're doing is the new version of the decoder ring," Anima says, wistful.
The purpose of the decoder ring campaign: to build inclusion, exclusivity, interaction, accessibility. These should also be your objectives. The trick is, at the end of the day, to not give your participants a Ralphie payoff. You want them to feel all their labour on your behalf has been worthwhile.
To illustrate how Current TV caters to exclusivity/inclusion, Anima gave the example of the Rotten Tomatoes Show, which solicits opinions for a given film, then stitches all the videos it receives from users into one big video response. It's the old "You're gonna be on TV!," with lower barriers to entry.
Every show has obvious participatory/shareability elements, too.
Then there's this question of interaction. Anima says most Current TV employees are on Facebook and Twitter; they're accessible, responsive and solicit opinion. Consider Bryan Safi, the host of the popular "That's Gay! video series. He answers questions users provide in a closed feedback system:
Curiously, after all this Anima hastened to add that you should encourage users to appear on Twitter, but how they behave on Twitter will determine whether you want to claim their profile as a company one - or, implicitly, even if you want to expand them as a social media star personality. (It's not my view that this is something you can really control, but Current TV tries: not all of its employees are permitted to answer questions like Safi can.)
If you want, you can follow Mario Anima at @manima.
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*The Wikipedia article on this campaign says that it was only an urban legend that kids got Ovaltine ads for all their effort. But hey, thanks to Ralphie, the urban legend is all we remember of the effort today. Tough luck, I guess.