All Things Social

Does anyone really own your community?

Just as in the above clip, if you do not have an answer to this standard question, there will be much confusion.

As stated on dictionary.com, to “own”, as a verb – to have or hold as one’s own; possess.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/own 

Do you not think that your members hold your community as their own?
In order for your community to thrive and grow, ownership is a very important aspect to project outwardly to your members . Your membership will (hopefully) always be there, interacting with your business as well as with one another. They will be there when you may not, afterhours and during the weekend. Members who participate within your community are passionate about you (either in a positive or negative way), so you should allow them to have ownership, within reason, of the community area and the content that they post.

Do you believe that you have carte blanch in your community?
While you will manage your membership and the content that they post, you do not have the right to remove content simply because you do not like it. If you do so, you will drive people away and end up with a ghost town. The fact is that there are definitely ways to turn critical content, criticisms and feedback into positive situations. When handled correctly, these situations and the way that they are handled can strengthen your community. Empower your members to report content that they feel is in violation of your policies for you to review and remove if appropriate. Just make sure that you follow your implemented policies.

While your business may design, develop, market and manage the community portion of your website, that does not mean that you “own” the community. A true partnership between your business and your members will result in a thriving community where both the business and the community take ownership.

The last thing that you want to do is to make your members feel the way that the goalie feels in this clip. Right now, who “Owns” your community?
 

Our CMS is a very valuable Solution for a number of reasons. We have our Marketing Optimization Suite  and Web Content Management tools, as well as our Social Software. With this post, I wanted to focus on our Social Suite (as you would expect).

Within our core offering, we have the entire suite of Social tools, features, and functionality – from blogs to wiki’s, from activity streams to “friending”, from ratings & reviews to broadcasting your messages to external networks such as Twitter and Facebook…and more. As you can imagine, having these tools integrated within a CMS is a very attractive offering for our current and prospective clients.

An important aspect of any website is to create a more inviting and engaging experience. Something that is interactive in nature, that can also provide personalized content to its’ visitors. Having a CMS that can provide this personalization as well as the interactivity and engagement of Social tools is a great 1-2 punch.  PS - Make sure to read our most recent Facebook integration announcement as well 
 

Your needs and your audience will dictate what tools that you need and how you will and can integrate them within your website.

When you are choosing a CMS to build your website on, make sure that you not only think of what your current needs are, but also to think of what you may need down the road from now – especially from a Social standpoint. Make sure that your CMS partner is building for the future, open and flexible. This will play an important role for the future when it comes to integrating different types of Social Media (user-generated content) within your website.  

Back in the day, you could run your business the way that you wanted to with little to no interruption from anything or anyone. Everyday you could get up, go to work, and status quo would rule your day. Or at least that seems to be the perception from what I have heard and observed from the “Walk-both-ways-uphill-in-driving-snow-to-school” generation.

As we all know, times have changed, and that way of running your business gets you into serious trouble. Customer’s now have the ability to voice their opinion in open forums where millions and millions of people can read their thoughts. The playing field has been leveled and businesses no longer have the control that they have held on to for many, many years. Those that have adopted new communication strategies and have engaged with their audience are surviving the current storm, while those who have rejected this communication change as a passing fad have come to pass.

Customers have the ability to really jump-start your business and get it back on track. If your employees seem to be struggling with what they should be doing, or where their next project to come from, they should look no further than what is happening online – both what is being said about your business as well as what is being said about your competition. There is so much information at your immediate disposal; so many great ideas that you can harness….it really is a great resource. I have also heard of some businesses offering their employees “free-time” during their work week in order to think of new ideas and ways to improve the current state of their company. What a great idea.

Please drink up!

*cross-posted from mikepascucci.com

As with everything that is done in business, there are measurable accomplishments that need to be tracked in order to validate success. In looking at what Old Spice did last week, I have to wonder what they were planning to measure. Was it page views? Was it Media mentions? Was it Comments on Twitter? Was it Video’s produced? If these were the numbers that they were measuring, then I would say that the campaign was a huge success, and I know many others that would agree.

but..

There have also been discussions concerning how those mentions, comments and videos translate into sales. I have heard people say that “Top of mind” advertising was key with this campaign, and that mentions and comments will eventually translate into additional sales, but where is the proof? How can they directly attribute additional sales to that campaign?

A comment that I have made on a couple of blogs concerning the Old Spice marketing effort is why did they not attach or promote coupons during the campaign, with codes or something that could be tracked specific to the campaign? While this could be seen as “salesy”, it would have been a great way to track as well as to convert potential customers, and reward current customers.

What do you think? Would that have been appropriate or would that have been seen as too much and over the top for a campaign of that caliber?

In my last post, I discussed the Lurker community and how they are an important, often large majority, aspect of any community. During that post I also talked about a couple of different types of engagement that you can have with your members. I did not mean to gloss over that point, as it is an important factor to define so that you can measure success.

Just as Social Media means different things to different people, engagement also means different things to different people. Social Media could be something as simple as incorporating a “Share this” widget on your website, encouraging your audience to share pieces of content and webpages with their communities on Facebook and Twitter or on external social bookmarking websites such as Digg and Reddit. It can also include Ratings and reviews of content, providing “Social Proof” to your audience. It can also extend all the way to creating a “Faecbook-like” social network within your website to engage with your audience on a more personal level, and target content to specific individuals.

Engagement can also take a number of different forms. Are you looking at encouraging your audience to click on a link within an email that drives them back to your site? Are you looking to get them to register on your site? Do you have corporate blogs and do you allow for commenting on those blogs? Does your website include discussion forums where your audience can start discussions and comment on them? Are you allowing your audience to form “groups” and have topical discussions within a more private setting?

Up-front research into your audience and leveraging the appropriate tools are an important aspect of any Social Media or online community initiative. Defining what Social Media means to your business is the next step so that everyone is on the same page, and as an extension of that, making sure that you define what engagement means to you is the next key. So what does engagement mean to you? 

The other day I saw a Tweet by @kikilitalien during #assnchat and was really interested in the question, "if ‘lurkers’ make up 60-90% of your online community, should you try to engage with them?” That may not be the exact way that the question was phrased, but I think that you get the picture.

* image courtesy of iwacu.wordpress.com

The majority of your members are not participating, so what can you do to get them involved? Or better yet, do you do anything to encourage their involvement?

#1 – You will likely never have 100% participation, please understand that.

#2 – While lurkers may not participate online, they likely have conversations with others around what they have learned from lurking in your community.  That’s still engagement, even while not specifically online and within your community.  They are simply taking the conversation off-line.

#3 – The reasons as to why people do not get involved and engage within an online community are endless. From not wanting to be “tracked,” to keeping their information private, to the uncertainty of how people will react to what they say, everyone has their own reasoning. In saying that, you can not look at each reason individually and try to resolve their problems in an individual manner.

The main focus and question that you need to ask yourself is “How can I improve 'participants' experience through the information that they provide to us?”

Personalization is a key aspect to any online community, or to any successful web presence. If you can encourage your members to register and log in, you can then provide a custom and tailored experience to each individual member. Once your members recognize this, they will feel more compelled to log in, as they understand the benefits.

#4 – How do you define engagement? If someone registers on your site and you email them a newsletter; they then click on a link within the newsletter and are brought to your website with information around a specific topic, do you consider that engagement? After all, they did click on a link.

* image courtesy of masternewmedia.org

Engagement and Social Media mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but the key is to make sure that you start with the appropriate definitions to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to measurement.

When I was at eBay we took a couple of steps to try and convert “lurkers” into active participants. We created individual threads of conversations that were directed to them, inviting them to join. We also created individual discussion boards that were “friendlier” than others and the community knew about these areas.

The individual threads were a great start, as once a “newbie” came in and posted, other more experienced members would welcome them with open arms, and once other lurkers saw this interaction, they felt more comfortable participating and interacting, because their “uncertain feelings” of how others would greet them disappeared. The fear of the unknown is a huge barrier of entry, but if you can remove that, you can activate some, but you will not activate all.

Thoughts? What tips and trick do you have?

Over the past couple of weeks I have attended and spoken at a couple of Tradeshows and Conferences. I must say that it is great to validate a lot of the things that we are doing with the thoughts of some of the ‘Thought leaders” out there. I will say that one important thing really began to stick out within a lot of the discussions that I heard and was a part of. It is the concept of the importance of how many businesses need to begin the process of changing their corporate culture and embrace new ways to interact with and communicate with their audiences. Now this is not an easy task by any means. A change in corporate culture? Is this how you feel when you hear that?

* photo from bostonbiker.org

Talk about a tough assignment. But the fact of the matter is that in order to be successful in this ever changing environment, you do need to change the way that people talk, feel and believe in basic everyday functions. We are talking about changing the way that people communicate and interact with one another, definitely not an easy task. There are a couple of things that you can do to help begin your journey, and while it will not be an easy one, or one that will happen overnight, it will be very beneficial for the future of your business.

Internal advocacy

You really need someone internally to meet with different departments and provide them with an overview of what the tools are and what benefits that they have. The story also needs to be tailored to the audience, you can not tell the Marketing team that they can answer support questions, or the sales team that they can hear how their customers are complaining about the services or product. Tell the sales team that it is about leads; tell the marketing team that it is about acquisition and the support team that it is about answering questions…….you need to reach your audience with this type of approach. If it is for internal purposes (eIntranet) discuss how much more productive and creative they can be.

External Networking

Building up networks on external sites is a great way to funnel all information directly to you and to engage with your audience. This interaction and engagement needs to be authentic and genuine and can not be focused towards broadcasting a message with a bull-horn. It really needs to be an interactive experience for both you and your audience. Once you build up this trust, you will then have the ability, organically, to increase brand awareness through your friend’s networks as well. All of this information needs to also be brought in to your Intranet so that all can observe what people are saying. Whether it is your customers, partners, or your employees (intranet), it is important to provide as much as a transparent experience as you can in order to be successful.

Now these are only two ways that you can begin to change your corporate culture. I know that there are many more out there, but what have your experiences been? Have you been put in charge of such a change or experienced it from an employee standpoint? Please share your stories. Being a major initiative for many businesses, it would be great to hear first hand from others. Thanks for reading.

                            This seems to be a question that many businesses are dealing with at the moment. People hear the stories about Dell ($6.5MM in sales in 2009, http://econnect.entrepreneur.com/group/3/discussion/4590/) and Comcast support teams (@comcastcares) and think that they can jump right in and accomplish what those two companies have already accomplished. There are opportunities to get involved on Twitter and to create a corporate presence within Twitter, but you can not go in with those expectations, because if you do, you will likely be disappointed.

Twitter is another avenue for businesses, all businesses for that matter. It is not the end-all-be-all and is not the answer to all of your prayers/questions. There are very different ways for businesses to leverage Twitter, from customer support, engagement, networking, brand awareness, information gathering, polling…..the options are truly endless. No one really thought that Twitter would be a major support channel for large businesses; no one thought that Twitter would be a sales channel and provide the results that it did. What do you want your Twitter account to do for you?

Let me describe to you what we use our Twitter account for here at Ektron (@Ektron).

When we were first able to secure the Ektron Twitter account on Twitter, (http://www.ektron.com/Corporate_Twitter_Accounts_Securing_your_Brands_Identity.aspx), we had a good idea of what we would be able to do with it. The reason that we did was because there were people like @ektrondave and @twentworth12 and myself, @mikepascucci who had Twitter accounts and who had been participating on Twitter.

We knew that we had support questions; we knew that we had our competition out there; we knew that there were “analysts” out there, and we knew what the landscape was before we entered. Because of that, we were able to gauge the specifics around how we should involve ourselves on Twitter. This is an important first step.

Before you begin:

• Do a search for your brand, product, industry
• Do a search for your competition to see if they are there, and what they are doing
• Monitor the activities within both of the above searches

By observing the above results, this will help you to gauge interest in your brand and observe others’ behavior. It will also help to you develop a plan to move forward, but without that plan, you are not starting off on the right foot. Do you have other tips that you would like to share?

As a follow up to last week’s webinar, I wanted to draft a quick blog post around Social CRM, for those of you who don’t wish to listen to the half hour webinar; I do recommend it though. So if you are interested in watching it, click the link - The Social CRM webinar .

Social CRM is an important aspect of so many corporate functions that it can not be overlooked or ignored. Just as Social Media and Online Community Networking have improved the way that a business can build relationships with their potential and current customers, Social CRM can improve the way that a business can manage accounts and funnel data into a streamlined process – improving their current processes, rather than replacing them.  As I draft this post up, I’m starting to become confused with what the difference is between Social CRM and Online Community Networking. So to that point, I would first like to post a definition that I found to be very helpful:

“Social CRM is the tools and processes that encourage better, more effective customer interaction and leverage the collective intelligence of the broader customer community with the intended result of increasing intimacy between an organization and its prospects and customers.” – Michael Fausscette, IDC

I think the key that differentiates Social CRM from Online Social Networking is the “tools and processes” aspect of that definition. Communication points between your business and your consumers have generally happened with your support teams and your sales teams. Most communication has happened on the phone or via email, but times have changed. Your audience now has access to many different avenues to communicate to you and with others.

Social CRM puts a holistic vision around every touch-point that your business has with its clients and the individuals who are associated with each account. Whether it is an online community that you manage, Twitter, LinkedIn, or whether it is just downloading a Whitepaper or requesting additional information on your site, wouldn’t it be great to track that behavior and aggregate it within an easy to manage toolset, leveraging Salesforce or other management tools as the centralized “hub”?

So let’s talk about how this can be leveraged and integrated within current processes. The following screenshot displays the profile for a Sales manager here at Ektron. Within his profile on the site, he has a “dashboard area” that will update when his clients take any action on the site, from registering, to downloading a white paper, to searching for specific terms on the site, you can track any activity that you are looking to track. It will also update if that person uses Twitter and make a tweet specifically to his account. Other actions and external platforms can be tracked as well, so that is just 2 that I am outlining in this post.

Now, let’s see what happens on his Dashboard once someone whose account that he manages goes onto the Ektron Tech website and requests some information.

As you can see, Jane Member has visited the Ektron Tech website and searched for the term, “pricing information.” She has also submitted an “Ask a question form” with the above information being requested. This information is directly funneled to Joe’s activity stream, immediately informing him of what Jane is doing, and what she is looking for. You can also see that there are specific actions that Joe can take against those activities. He can create a discussion, send Jane a message, or create a Salesforce task around that specific piece of content. The following screenshot displays what the person will see once they click on the Salesforce and Message links in the highlighted area:

The Salesforce task link will automatically create a task in Salesforce where Joe can track this activity and reference it at a later date. The “Send Message” option is set up to send Jane a message within her community profile. This way she knows that Joe is watching after her account and following up with her in a timely fashion.

This is just one example of where Social CRM can really make a difference in delivering information to the right person at the right time, so that they can make the appropriate decisions and take the necessary steps in order to manage that account and build their relationship with that client.

Please make sure to follow my blog for more examples coming soon.

What do you think? Are you ready to integrate Social within your CRM processes?

Just as important as integrating Social applications within your website is the importance of having a central location where the information lives. You can highlight an ‘All-Hands” company meeting on the home page, and display the day, but what about other meetings? If you have your own group, wouldn’t it be nice to have your own calendar? What about mashing up calendars? Wouldn’t you like to see other meetings that you may have before you schedule a new one, mashing more than one into a holistic view? All that is available in our new eIntranet Solution, not to mention the ability to add the meeting into your Outlook calendar.

Note: while this is highlighting an “Intranet Solution”, you can also leverage the calendaring functionality for your “External” Social community as well.

As you can see, the calendar is very simple to read and easy to navigate. On the left side navigation displays company-specific information that we would like to highlight within this area: News, Messages, Announcements, Blog Calendar and Photo Gallery – all designated by their own icon which makes them easy to distinguish.

Across the top you can navigate to other months and days, or display a week’s worth of meetings with a simple click of the button.

Within the calendar I have highlighted a specific event, the “All-Hands” meeting. By hovering over the event, you can review specific details of that event. You can designate specific events by highlighting them with colors as well. By clicking on the “download” link, you can automatically add the event into your Outlook calendar. By clicking on the “more” link, you can go directly to the event listing page and view more information about that event.

Calendaring functionality is a natural extension of an intranet, external community and group space. We understand the importance of this inclusion which is why we have made specific enhancements to the functionality. Interested? Please let us know if you are interested in a demo, http://bit.ly/biDiEM