The classic “Marketing Mix” created in 1953 by Neil Borden and taught in business schools around the world needs to be officially updated.  Originally consisting of Product, Placement, Promotion, and Price, it outlined the fundamental issues a company should consider when developing a marketing strategy.

PEOPLE - The 5th P in the Marketing Mix

PEOPLE – The 5th P in the Marketing Mix

The social web is now so critical for companies that it’s time to update marketing textbooks, strategies, and approaches.  PEOPLE, and the way the share opinions, recommendations, and personal stories are critical to a company’s success.

The importance of PEOPLE is obvious to most readers of this blog…so why the post?  By looking at how companies treat the other 4 Ps, we can make recommendations on how to treat PEOPLE as the 5th P.

Businesses take action with the other 4 Ps by staffing an organization, investing money, & partnering with other companies.

STAFFING

Product, promotion, pricing, and placement all have large roles in an organization. Entire org charts are filled with PRODUCT Managers, PRICING Analysts,  PLACEMENT Specialists, and PROMOTION experts.  Now it’s time to add Social Media to the organization chart.

Hiring staff focused on the PEOPLE aspect of your marketing plan signals does the following:

• Signals to the organization that PEOPLE are a key piece of your marketing strategy
• Makes the responsibility of engaging the consumer a full time job rather than a side project of an existing role
• Holds someone accountable for executing the strategy and measuring the results

INVESTING

Companies spend millions of dollars on PRODUCT development through R&D. Additionally, major capital investments in distribution (PLACEMENT) technology help get the product where consumers can actually buy it.  Oh and then there’s PROMOTION…you see how much a Super Bowl ad costs nowadays?

Making an investment on the PEOPLE aspect of your marketing plan does the following:

• Improves a company’s ability to execute quickly and effectively on strategy
• Drives results by forcing actions to tie back to Return on Investment
• Signals to the organization that a PEOPLE aspect of a marketing plan deserves as much attention as other functions and projects

PARTNERING

Advertising agencies, distribution experts, retail agreements, and product development firms are all multi-billion dollar partnerships for a reason.  They provide incredible external value to an company looking to specialize in what they do best.

Forming partnerships with agencies, bloggers, social networking sites, and technology consultancies is critical for the following reasons:

• External partnerships help spread best practices to your organization as outside sources typically see a broader perspective of the space
• Outsourcing work to experts is not only more resource effective, it typically leads to better results…Unless you didn’t ask your Social Media Consultants the right questions
• Working with bloggers can increase the potential for earned media and also create a steady supply of traffic and link juice

It’s time to place PEOPLE at the same level of importance as Product, Placement, Promotion, and Price.  What other areas of business can we apply to PEOPLE to drive organizational change?

Photo Credit --> Jim Kuhn via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/takomabibelot/ / CC BY 2.0

Social Media is now on a subject at corporate strategy meetings, executive off-sites, and a part of brand strategy.  Even the most conservative companies are dipping their toes in the water and trying to increase shareholder value through the new web.

Great job everyone…you’ve lived up to the hype of the Social Media Revolution Video…

It’s time to start thinking about what to do next.

Setting Next Year’s Social Media Strategy

As Jeremiah Owyang reasoned, if you like boxes and have a decision to make, use a 2×2 matrix.  They are great ways to organize thinking.  Good strategies have clear business objectives for Social Media and well defined user problem or need.

What business objectives are we trying to accomplish with Social Media?

• Reduce Costs
• Increase Sales

Who are our target users for this initiative?

• Customers
• Employees

NOTE:  Some people will argue Suppliers, and I think there are selective industries where that would apply.  However, for right now, the most benefit for companies is focusing on Customers and Employees.

Social Media Strategy Matrix

Each part in the 2×2 has unique business objectives.  Examples of types of projects can be seen in the box.

Setting Next Year’s Social Media Strategy

• Step 1 – Do a Social Media Audit of all your projects
• Step 2 – Plot those in the box based on their objectives and target users
• Step 3 – Plot where your COMPETITION is focusing their efforts
• Step 4 – Identify the Social Media White Space in matrix
• Step 5 – Pick an executive sponsor or key function
• Step 6 – Research the users and analyze the problem
• Step 7 – Brainstorm and prioritize potential ideas
• Step 8 -  Select and staff the projects
• Step 9 – Use a a portfolio approach for Social Media Governance

I was trying to find a way to rinse a paintbrush and I typed “Is ” (Is + SPACE) and then I got all these suggestions.  Fascinating!

1. Is Lady Gaga a Man?
2. Is Lady Gaga a Hermaphrodite?
3. Is the World Going to end in 2012?
4. Is Bronchitis Contagious?
5. Is Pneumonia Contagious?
6. Is Limewire Illegal?
7. Is Lady Gaga a Transvestite?
8. Is Wendy Williams a Man?
9. Is Twitter Down?
10. Is Shingles Contagious?

Type "Is" + SPACE into Google and watch what coes back...

Business objectives are the most critical, yet most overlooked, part of a social media strategy.

Now that we’re past the point of early adoption, many brands are citing “Everyone else is doing it” as their business objective  Who is everyone?  Customers? Target Market? Competitors?  Employees? Suppliers?

A poor business objective causes many problems, the worst of which being a social media strategy execution that is vague and generic.

Take this example from Putnam Investments:  The Retirement Savings Challenge. The blog seems well intentioned, but what is this doing for Putnam?

The “About” section says, “At Putnam, we’re starting a conversation about America’s existing workplace savings plans, because we believe they can become a more reliable foundation for our nation’s retirement system.”

Awesome! The nation’s retirement system definitely needs some help, bravo to Putnam for trying to use business to help society.

But…how can you start a conversation about America’s retirement system without a comment field?  I would love to comment on this great post about retirement savings.

Possible Social Media Objectives:

• Brand Preference? Could be, but where’s the tie?
• Brand Awareness? Okay, this might be it, but with a low PageRank how will anyone get to the site?
  • Perhaps from Putnam Investment’s Twitter account?  The tweets are all good PR or Corp Communications tweets, but there’s nothing driving content.

3 Components of Good Social Media Business Objectives

A good business objective should have 3 components

• Business Impact (Speak to Shareholders)
• How (Speak to Employees)
• Consumer Value (Speak to Consumers)

Here’s an example I reverse-engineered from Time Magazine’s Twitter account:

Drive traffic to ad-supported website through timely, simple updates of new articles that are easy to understand, receive, and manage.

• Business Impact:  Drive traffic to ad-supported website
• How:  through timely, simple updates of new articles
• Customer Value – that are easy to understand, receive, and manage

Notice, the word “Twitter” was intentionally left out of the business objective.  The tool doesn’t matter, what matters is that managers understand how they are going to do something for consumers that will give the business value.

Tips on Writing the Business Impact

• Start with a verb.  An objective is an action.
• Think Accounting 101 –obvious connection to revenues or expenses.
• “Brand equity” or “brand awareness” are okay to use, but expect organizational resistance.  If using these, be able to explain how you will measure it and isolate the social media initiative as a variable.

Tips on Writing the How

• Avoid technology specifics, buzzwords, and industry vernacular.
• The test of clarity is that a non-tech or non-business person could easily understand it.
• If you have an obvious technology in mind that fits, don’t be afraid to write the How that leads to it as an obvious solution.

Tips on Writing the Consumer Value

• Read existing research to understand consumer behavior.  This will ground you in reality.
• The value should lead to a benefit.  It’s trickier than it sounds…but think of a benefit as how a consumer would rave about your brand to a friend.

• Photo by lowjumpingfrob

  Would someone pay for it?  It doesn’t matter if you’re going to charge for it, but this is a good test of whether or not you have value.

Mobile consultants are rapidly replacing Social Media consultants as people most likely to cold call.  That makes sense, according to the recent CITA survey released in June 2009, there are more than 276 million wireless users in the US.  That’s a lot of people.  And where there are a lot of people embracing a technology, there are a lot of consultants.

Photo Milica Sekulic

So naturally, many companies are trying to design apps for mobile devices.  There are good ones:  Chase’s iPhone app makes my life easier by allowing me to conduct banking business through my phone.  And, there are bad ones:  Pepsi’s Amp was not only sexist, it didn’t do anything.

A Mobile Strategy Isn’t Necessary for All Brands

A couple years ago, we all jumped on Social Media strategies for our brands.  Sure, it felt like a fad, but it made sense.  The Social Web is simply a better way for the web to function.  The Social Web is really just tools and technologies that make it easy to share information with your connections.

The Social Web, and Social Media, works for all brands because it is the logical evolution of how content on the web should look and behave to be more relevant.

But the term “mobile web” is a fundamentally different concept.  It is a distribution method, not a type of content.  I understand that iPhone apps are popular.  However, they are simply delivery methods of content we’ve seen before.

I now run 3 apps on my iPhone for Twitter.  Echofon, SimplyTweet, and TweetDeck.  I love them all.  Having these applications on my iPhone makes my life richer and more enjoyable.  I can say the same thing about Chase’s mobile app, ESPN’s Fantasy Football app, and the World of Warcraft Armory.

However, it’s the technology behind these, not the distribution itself, that makes them important.  The Twitter platform is what makes having those Twitter apps important.  The need to pay a credit card balance, check scores on a Sunday, or pass time during a meeting makes my other apps important.

When mobile isn’t necessary: When it doesn’t do anything

I am a rabid fan of Maker’s Mark bourbon.  They have a tremendous Social Web initiative, Maker’s Mark Ambassadors, that helps me feel a personal connection to the brand.  I was surprised about how well the program is run and how much I enjoy receiving their information

Never, ever would I consider downloading a Makers Mark application.  I love the brand, but there is no way I would put an app on my phone for it.  I want their emails to be visible through my mobile web client, but that’s it.  End of story, there’s your mobile strategy.

What do you think?  Is there a room for everyone on the iPhone home screen?

We’re told by the experts that Social Media is a Groundswell.  It all starts with “ordinary” people, customers & employees, who group together around a common theme.  “It’s grassroots!  It’s organic!  We just need to enable them!”

Well, this is true…but effectively harnessing that power requires resources and coordination.  The fastest way for organizations to get those resources is with senior leadership support.

Credit Ross_Angus

Ironic?  Yeah…I suppose.  These technologies were supposed to change the world!  We’d move from political decision making to a meritocracy.   While this may happen in the future, to prepare your company today you need senior support.

Well, easier said than done…How do you ensure that you get this support?

History should serve as our example.  A public declaration outlining the need for change with a signature of leadership sends a message to others that commitment is real.

• The Protestant Reformation had Martin Luther’s 95 Theses nailed to a door
• The American Revolution had the Declaration of Independence signed by our Founding Fathers

Want to drive a similar change?  Consider asking leadership to sign this document, post it on your intranet, and refer to it often!

Leadership Commitment for Social Media

I ________________________ understand that the Social Web is powerful not because of what WE, as a company do, but by how we enable our customers, employees, & business partners to do.

• I understand that we can not control what people say about us.  I understand that some people will criticize, condemn, and complain about us.

• I recognize that censoring, hiding, or deleting this criticism is a short term solution that does not fully address the problem facing our business.

• I commit to acting rationally, rather than emotionally, to what people might say about us online.  Rather than taking it personally, I will work to solve the problem so that this does not happen in the future.

• I recognize that measuring Social Media activity is not as easy as measuring other parts of my business.

• As an obligation to our shareholders, I will continually challenge our company to measure our return on investment.  However, I understand focusing on ROI can be a distraction since the technology and concepts are so new.

• I recognize the power of the Social Web and Social Media.  I will commit resources (money, time, and employees) to understand the potential these technologies have for my customers, my company, and my industry.

• I understand that the strategies and technologies in this space move fast.  I also understand that they will move faster tomorrow.

• I commit to pursuing business objectives, rather than technologies, to reach our goals.

• From Commenter Kathy Heasley – I recognize that this is the age of integrity and that social media has the power to enable all employees to be advocates for our company and our customers.  I will encourage their participation by establishing standards of acceptable practice so they may use this media with confidence and without fear of reprimand.

Signed _________________________________

What would you add?

You should also try these posts, they’re tasty!

• Twitter Metrics – How to Fool Your Leadership
• How to Manage Your Company’s Social Media Efforts Through a Portfolio Approach
• Matrix for Staffing a Social Media Initiative
  

It’s no secret that brands are rushing to Facebook to create pages to broadcast their message, establish “friendships” with customers, and leverage the platform’s functionality to execute savvy campaigns.  Many brands and celebrities have used Facebook very well, but does their success mean that your brand will be able to replicate it?

Most brands are sophisticated enough now to ask the obvious strategic questions around business objectives.  Many also know to study the customer problems that their looking to Social Media to solve.

But, as a tool to execute Business Objectives, Facebook is different than other Social Media tools.  The reason for this is the intensely personal nature of relationships on Facebook.

As compared to Twitter, blogs, forums, or other Social Media tools, relationships are closer and generally confined to family, friends, and trusted work colleagues.

Activity, assocationas, and content added by Facebook users is much more deliberate than other sites.  As a result, people are very careful about being a “Fan” of a brand.

People don’t become a Fan of a brand they like; they typically fan a brand has that makes them look “cool” in front of their friends.

“Would A Person Wear a Tee-Shirt with My Brand On It?”

Throughout human history, clothes and fashion have been used to communicate summary-size bites of information to other people. Rightly or wrongly, we look at what others are wearing and pass judgement, develop opinions, and summize a person.

This same principle applies on Facebook.  I choose to be fans of brands just as carefully as I choose what Favorite Music, Quotes, and Movies to select.  They can communicate information to others about who I am quickly and clearly.

Because people use their Facebook profile to shape their perception in a network, brands that can’t offer a customer “cool points” are likely to not gain followers.  People want to fan Apple, because Apple is cool.  Adding Apple to your profile is like wearing an Apple t-shirt, we know what types of people use Apple.

Example:

• Say you manufacture kitchen appliances.  A good Social Media Strategy would be to increase usage and affinity for your product through content like recipes, tips/tricks, and service/support that can be improved by a loyal community.
• Using Facebook to execute this strategy and distribute this content might be difficult.  Sure, there are likely some rabid fans of your product….but would a typical customer wear your brand on their clothing?  Compared to Apple?

Of course, you could throw money at a Facebook campaign to increase followers…but the ROI is likely lower.  Consider a blog/forum community site.  Consider using Twitter to promote that site.  Consider an iPhone app targeted to connecting loyalists together.

Here’s who I fan on Facebook:

I’m a Social Media Marketer’s dream.  I love Facebook, I love experimenting with it to learn more…But look at who I fan.   It’s stuff that speaks about me to my friends.  I do this as much because I care about association as I do because I care about the updates.

Happy to remove any photos, please email me or comment.  I am using photos simply to comment on the world around us.

Foster’s

Products

Trust Agents

Products

Miami RedHawks

Sports / Athletics

Facebook for Influencers

Consumer Product

The Economist

Communications

Papa John’s Pizza

Food and Beverage

Pitchfork

Communications

Social Network Roadmap

Professional Service

Careers at Allstate

Financial Service

Allstate Insurance

Financial Service

Nine Mile

Restaurant

Skyline Chili

Restaurant

PrepMe

Education

Miami University

Education

Miami University Alumni – Chicago Chapter

Education

University of Chicago

Education

Miami University

Education

Barack Obama

Politician

Budgetball

Non-Profit

You Can’t Do That on Television

TV Show

Chicago Cubs

Sports Team

Chicago Blackhawks

Sports Team

The Fourcoursemen

Other Public Figure

Kristin Wiig

Other Public Figure

Tucker Max

Writer

Veronica Belmont

Other Public Figure

E*TRADE Baby

Actor

This American Life

Other Public Figure

Spaghetti Cat

Other Public Figure

Elizabeth ‘Tina’ Fey

Actor

Kristen Wiig

Actor

6 DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Musician

Gringo Star

Musician

Sixteen Candles Band

Musician

Good Hands (SM) Community

Website

8tracks

Website

Chicago Cubs

Application

Driving website traffic is one Twitter’s top benefits for marketers.  It’s a simple recipe, get a large number of followers, write a catchy tweet, publish it at the right time of day, and then measure the conversions.

Twitter Analytics - Advanced Twitter Metrics

If you’re interested in driving traffic through Twitter, then you probably use measurements like these:

• # of Followers

  • Having Twitter Followers is NOT the most important metric, but having more followers gives you more at-bats

• # of RTs

  • A good proxy of the quality of your tweet

• # of Clicks

  • With reports that Google Analytics and URL shorteners like bitly aren’t matching, it’s best to measure this in as many ways as possible

• Site Activity

  • Segmenting Twitter traffic from Search/Direct traffic and measuring conversions and site activity can help quantify the value of Twitter

You can learn a lot from these metrics, but there is a major variable of Twitter that frustrates those who use it for traffic.

Serendipity Problem and Twitter Metrics

A user sees the most recent update posted.  This “serendipity” is frustrating and makes much of how Twitter functions as a source of traffic a guessing game.

Recently, Twitter announced they were looking to monetize advanced analytics for site owners.  Having the right analytics would benefit both marketers and Twitter.

The benefit to marketers is that many questions about how Twitter works would be answered.  Twitter, of course, benefits from people able to better quantify the value of Twitter for their site.

Here are questions that Twitter Analytics should consider answering:

Search Traffic or News Feed Traffic?

• How many users clicked from their standard feed vs. from search
• If from search, what terms in the tweet did they search for?
• If from the feed, how far down on the feed was the tweet?

Twitter Client Usage?

• How much traffic came from a like TweetDeck, TwitterFon, etc vs. twitter.com?
• Did the click come from a “group” in the Twitter Client?  If so, what was the name of the group?  Who else was in the group?
• What groups are my accounts associated with?

Clicks from Other Users

• What traffic was from users following the account?
• What traffic was from ReTweets or mentions?

Twitter Metrics Are Too Easy to Manipulate

Metrics to track Social Media initiatives are the first topic in many leadership meetings.  Social Media is very difficult to understand, especially for leaders who have demanding schedules.  But numbers are not difficult to understand, they are clear, objective, and easy to compare.

However, when you create a metric, you create an incentive to focus on that metric.  Ask anyone that works in sales to tell you a story of how they’ve “worked the system” to maximize their metrics.  It happens all the time.

To prevent social media metrics from hurting your company, here are some common Twitter metrics and how to game them.  By exposing these metrics, I hope to advance the discussion and take a more holistic view of social media’s effect on business

Number of Followers

• Why people measure it – Easy and transparent measure of how interesting someone is
• Why it sucks – Quantity does not equal quality
• How To Cheat This Metric
  
  • Follow everyone you can; roughly 30-40% will follow you back
  • Join one of the hundreds of pyramid schemes advertised each day; Check out “Sponsored Links” on this search
  • Auto-Follow people using search terms like “Make Money Fast“, or “New Post Social Media“;  They’ll follow you back

Number of ReTweets (RTs)

• Why people measure it – Similar to “Net Promoter Score“, it shows how often a user’s content is recommended
• Why it sucks – Automatic Retweet bots and hard to benchmark
• How to Cheat This Metric -
  • Find an auto-retweet user like @CharityRT that RTs everything with a tag #CharityRT
  • Partner with a spammer to retweet each others’ tweets
  • Put “Please Retweet!” in every post; it works
  • Provide leadership with a low target on # of RTs per week (no one knows what a “good number” is)

What Twitter Metrics Matter?

The problem with Twitter metrics is that we focus on the transparent metrics rather than the ones that matter.  The metrics that matter is what happens on your site as a result of Twitter.  Use your analytics software to compare Twitter traffic to Organic Search and Direct Traffic.  My favorites are as follows:

• % New Visits
• Time on Site
• Conversions

Posted by Ben Foster

Photo Credit to szlea via Flickr

Does Twitter drive business results?

Well, I certainly like to think so…but here’s an interesting look at the cable news networks use of Twitter and their cable ratings.

One would think that Twitter is perfect for news.  It provides real time information at very little cost to millions of people.  Let’s look at the numbers:

# of Twitter Followers for Major News Networks as of 8/20/09

1. CNN – @Cnnbrk – 2,650,015 Followers
   
2. Fox News – @Foxnews- 100,868
3. msnbc @msnbc_breaking – 30,113

Cable News Ratings for 8/17/2009 (From TV By The Numbers)

1. Fox News – 1,364,000 viewers
2. CNN – 482,000 viewers
3. msnbc – 382,000 viewers

The obvious argument is that Twitter drives web traffic, so CNN should be thrilled.  But I’m guessing CNN executives are slightly jealous that Fox News has nearly 3 times as many viewers.

But, it doesn’t matter…here’s the only thing you need to know about Fox News

On the internet, nobody can tell if you’re a dog, or a cat, or a super-human god.  But your behavior on social networking sites can say a lot about who you are as a person.

Below are some popular, fictional characters in cartoons and comics.  We find these characters interesting because we can relate their behavior to a person in our own life.

Here are some archetypes of Social Media behaviors that resemble the personality of popular cartoon or comic book characters.  Sound like anyone you know?  Or…does it sound like you?!

Marmaduke

• You act entirely in your own self-interest and do whatever you want without apology.
• You bend people to your will because you are strong, powerful, and unable to listen to what others are saying.

Lisa Simpson

• You are a brainy know-it-all who is self-concious about your social standing in the world.
• Rather than using your intelligence for good, you use it as a way to attack others and feel better about yourself.

Kenny from South Park

• You are incredibly hilarious and constantly have funny insights that make your friends laugh.
• However, your thoughts are garbled and incomprehensible to others.

Garfield

• You are an astute observer of the world around you and a master cynic.
• Rather than speaking constructively, you tend to criticize others with words that are more appropriate as “thought bubbles” than actual speech.

Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen

• You are able to predict everything that will happen and know all there is to know about the world around you.
• But, your super-human ability makes it impossible to relate to typical human beings.  You spend much of your time thinking, “What’s the point of all this?”

Beavis and Butthead

• You are interested in the same things as 15 year old boys:  loud music, scantily clad females, and fart jokes.
• Rather than growing up, you embrace your immaturity and focus on entertaining those with the same childish interests as you.

Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes

• You are the voice of reason and are able to make sense of the human condition because of your astute ability to see a larger perspective.
• However, those you associate yourself with are childish which makes others perceive you as imaginary or non-existent.

TechCrunch broke the news today that Facebook is acquiring the wonderful site FriendFeed.  There were few cues in either the official Facebook press release or the press release from FriendFeed.

The following is what’s clear to date:

• All 12 FriendFeed employees will be joining Facebook
• Facebook has borrowed many design features and functionality from FriendFeed
• Most content on FriendFeed comes from Twitter posts
• Most discussions on FriendFeed come from popular users

Facebook’s Strategy for Acquiring FriendFeed

• Engineering Brainpower of FriendFeed

  • In the first paragraph of Facebook’s press release, they said “As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.”
  • Jeremiah Owyang pointed this out as the most likely reason that FriendFeed were acquired.
  • Given that Facebook has continually used features like the “Like” button, and a focus on “real-time” streaming, they obviously think that the engineering talent has a great understanding of their customers

• Blocking Innovation at Twitter and Google around Conversations and Replies

  • The “reply” functionality on Twitter is not very valuable.  Even Twitter has said that replies are “not perfect”.
  • Rob Diana at Regular Geek chimed in on a post about FriendFeed being ripped off and said that the real source of innovation in conversation is FriendFeed.
  • Organizing the FriendFeed innovations into the Facebook patents makes it easier for Facebook to control the valuable features that users want.
  • If Facebook can implement some of the talked about features of Google Wave (like Real-Time and Embeddability) before Google Wave is released, they can better argue in front of an IP or patent court.

• Ownership of Data in Conversations

  • The conversations on FriendFeed are more robust and detailed than Twitter or Facebook.
  • Facebook could use this data in advertising in two ways:
    • Better data to sell to advertisers about what people are saying
    • Better data around who are the key influencers in networks to target for a new product
  • Additionally, Facebook could use the data to help shape their vision of the semantic web as people tend to have better and more diverse network discussions about the content being shared.

Social Media Strategy is a widely talked about topic…but what does it mean?  The final post of this series covers Social Media governance, how to get started, and evaluating your efforts.  The first two posts covered how to create a Social Media strategy and how to figure out what tactics to use in your Social Media Marketing portfolio.

Photo by Blumpy via Flickr

Through establishing measurements and Social Media metrics, avoiding consultants and doing the work yourself, and then experimentation and refinement, a company can better position itself for success.

In this post, I’ll cover how to execute the middle 3 stages of the strategy; the ones most traditionally associated with governance and experimentation.

9 Social Media Strategy Execution Steps

1. Start with Business Objectives
2. Staff a Diverse Team
3. Study Customer Research
4. Structure Problem Solving around Customer Needs
5. Solve Problems Through Brainstorms
6. Create a Social Media Portfolio
7. Establish a Set of Metrics
8. Learn by Doing
9. Learn, Fix, Then Apply

7 – Establish a Set of Metrics

What does this mean?

• Much has been said about the need for metrics, and it is often the biggest roadblock for Social Media practitioners
• Here, you should focus on how you are going to determine which elements of your Social Media Portfolio are working
• Metrics can be thought of as characters in a story; the story only makes sense when characters interact with each other

How to Execute

• Communicate to executive sponsors that in this case, metrics do not mean a “dashboard” with red and green lights
• Explain to leadership that a set of metrics can tell a complete story about how your efforts are meeting customer needs
• Align each part of your portfolio (from Step 6 – Create a Social Media Portfolio) to the Step 1 – Business Objectives
• Write down the answer to this question, “What would indicate that we have satisfied this business objective?”
• Pick 3-5 metrics from the hundreds available that reflect that vision

8 – Learn By Doing

What does this mean?

• Skills and expertise will come from doing the hard work, not through training, delegation, or outsourcing
• Allocating resources and allowing them time to explore and experiment at their own pace
• Setting expectations across the organization that success will not come fast, but it will grow exponentially

How to Execute

• Explain your plan to leadership emphasizing that “failure” is just as important as “success” so long as lessons are learned and communicated
• Assign each team member a primary and secondary tactic so that they have a partner to discuss ideas and lessons
• Start work immediately
• Communicate to the team the need for initial micro-management so that they feel comfortable with the assignment
• Meet frequently (2 – 3 times per week) to share  lessons, frustrations, ideas, and successes

9 – Learn, Fix, then Apply

What does this mean?

• By establishing hypotheses and testing them in the real world, you can better understand how Social Media applies to your brand or industry
• The best lessons come from failure, but this is hard for employees who are trained to win rather than to establish and share knowledge
• Fixing is analogous to rapid software prototyping; figure out what can quickly be fixed then experiment again!

How to execute

• Review your metrics in a group that asks “Why?” about every metric and drill down on the metrics until you get the answer
• Use 3-5 metrics to tell a story about how your tactics performed against your business objectives
• If possible, pull in someone from your Six Sigma department to help you test data against your hypotheses
• Brainstorm ways to make changes that would directly impact the metrics that are holding you back

FiLife is an amazing site, not only because of their innovative Stacker tool which is a great Social Media case study that helps consumers figure out how they “stack-up” to their peers, but also because of all their great financial content.

Recently, FiLife created a contest to crowd-source content by challenging people to come up with their own stackers.  I created a stacker I was interested in that asked, “If Facebook forced you to pay a monthly fee, how much would you pay?”

I decided to embed this here to see what people think.  Full Disclosure:  I wasn’t aware that you could embed stackers on a blog (which is awesome).  I did this after a suggestion from Paul Kennard, Project Manager at FiLife because I think it’s a good fit for the content of this site.

Filife – Family Finance

Disclaimer:  My entry is the $5.00 because I believe that Facebook is a valuable part of my life…However, once something is “free”, is it impossible to start charging for it without losing a user base?

Having a Social Media strategy means nothing if you can’t actually do it. In the last post, I outlined the need for not only having a plan, but also how to execute a Social Media Strategy.

Photo by Blumpy via Flickr

By addressing these areas, a company can better position itself for initial success and improve its ability to scale a Social Media program.  These 9 steps will be covered in detail across 3 separate posts.

In this post, I’ll cover how to execute the middle 3 stages of the strategy; the ones most traditionally associated with Social Media Marketing Strategy.

9 Social Media Strategy Execution Steps

1. Start with Business Objectives
2. Staff a Diverse Team
3. Study Customer Research
4. Structure Problem Solving around Customer Needs
5. Solve Problems Through Brainstorms
6. Create a Social Media Portfolio
7. Establish a Set of Metrics
8. Learn by Doing
9. Learn, Fix, Then Apply

4 – Structure Problem Solving around Customer Needs

What Does This Mean?

• Anyone can sit down and come up with 999 or so “great ideas” on paper.
  
• But, executing a Social Media idea becomes easier if it’s clear how it solves a customer problem.
• If you don’t understand the detail behind the problem, your efforts in Social Media could resemble a Cure Chasing a Disease.
  

How to Execute

• Organize all the customer research you collected in Step 3 into themes or insights.
  
• Consider doing some ethnographic research to help your team members better understand the problem.
• Create stimuli for a brainstorming session around these customer themes or insights.

5 – Solve Problems Through Brainstorms

What Does This Mean?

How to Execute

6 – Create a Social Media Portfolio

What Does This Mean?

• Social Media is too new to know exactly what is going to work, so try a bunch of ideas on a smaller scale.
• Think of Social Media Strategy as a portfolio of projects, just like a VC firm or a conglomerate.  This helps to spreads risk, improve chance of success, and embed skills across your organization

How to Execute

• Before starting, agree upon who will make the final decision
• Organize the ideas you brainstormed in Step 5 into similar portfolio (or platform) areas.  Examples could be consumer need, emerging trend, or strategic priority.
• Discuss the benefits, drawbacks, risks, and rewards of each portfolio or platform area with a strategic team.
• Feel free to “copy and paste” ideas into other portfolio or platform areas to make the portfolio more robust.
• Balance your portfolio across areas like the following:
  • Business Function
  • Level of Risk
  • Customer Segment
  • Scope and Time Frame
  • Uniqueness and Ingenuity

A Social Media strategy is a critical piece to making sure that your efforts with New Media are helping your customers and your company.  But how do you actually “do” it?  A well defined strategy is nice to have, but without execution, you aren’t going to make your customers or your shareholders happy.

Photo by Blumpy via Flickr

Strategies are tough, which is why many consultancies sell a solution.  But the solution of consultants often doesn’t come with a guide on how to execute.  How do you execute a Social Media strategy and make a tangible business impact?

Below are my thoughts on the 9 areas critical to executing a Social Media Strategy.   By addressing these areas, a company can better position itself for initial success and improve their ability to scale.  These 9 will be covered in detail across 3 separate posts.

9 Social Media Strategy Execution Steps

1. Start with Business Objectives
2. Staff a Diverse Team
3. Study Customer Research
4. Structure Problem Solving around Customer Needs
5. Solve Problems Through Brainstorms
6. Create a Social Media Portfolio
7. Establish a Set of Metrics
8. Learn by Doing
9. Learn, Fix, Then Apply

1. Start with Business Objectives

What Does this Mean?

• Business objectives describe the overall point of what you’re trying to do.
  
• A good business objective is one that would make a board of directors or owners of a company want to give you resources to execute.
  

How to Execute

• Convene top management during strategic planning sessions and figure out what is important to the business.
• Use overarching strategic priorities, like “Grow in new markets”, “Improve profitability through cost reduction”, or “Maintain existing customers” to guide the objectives you set for Social Media.
• Avoid picking a Social Media tool like a Blog or Twitter when thinking about the objectives.  Your discussion should be focused solely on the business at this point.

2. Staff a Diverse Team

What Does This Mean?

The key here is diversity.  Many companies are tempted to align Social Media on an Org Chart within a function like marketing or technology.  This may work for some companies, but it’s not likely to help you achieve all your business objectives.

How to Execute

• Assemble resources from across the company.  The best Social Media teams are ones that have a diverse set of talents and experience.
  
• Don’t underestimate the importance of balance.  You need people that are “Social Media experts“…but you also need people who can influence the organization.
  
• Use “non-traditional” resources like Social Media interns, “rotational programs”, mentees, or any other interested employee that can help.  There’s always more that can be done, and with proper planning you can take advantage of every single opportunity.
• Staff the best resources by providing them with the tools required to execute a Social Media Initiative.
  

3. Study Customer Research

What Does This Mean?

• Study the customer problems, understand what they need help with, and provide content through a technology that helps them.
• This is the easiest way to get a competitive advantage because the customer data exists throughout the organization, but you’re competitors aren’t taking the time to do it.
• This is critical, you are doing Social Media to help your customers, but unless you know how your customers are using Social Media to solve their problems, you can’t possibly succeed.

How to Execute

• Collect and analyze as much existing research from your marketing and new product development group.
• Evaluate a Social Media Market Research Consulting firm and their ability to surface insights from listening to existing conversations.
• Dive into the details of your customers’ needs, problems and frustrations.
• Ask yourself, How are my customers solving their problems?  Are they using the internet or Social Media?
  
• Create a customer experience life- cycle model to prioritize your Social Media efforts.
  

Photo Credit - Life in LDN

About a year ago, corporate leaders were asking “Should Twitter be a key part of my Social Media strategy?”  Management struggled to understand how the medium could help fulfill business objectives and therefore didn’t implement a successful program.  Expert bloggers like Chris Brogan helped create a tipping point for companies by pointing out all the different ways a company could use Twitter to further its business objectives.

Currently, having a well-run Twitter account is moving from strategic advantage to competitive necessity.  From Comcast’s customer service to Dell Outlet’s profitable sales channel, Twitter is proving that it is graduating from fad to tool.

Strategic Competitive Advantage Comes From Multiple Twitter Accounts

Most industries now have multiple competitors on Twitter battling it out for followers and share of mind.  This is great…until we remember that competitive strategy teaches us that more players means less value captured by any individual firm.  So how can you differentiate yourselves from competitors?

Having multiple Twitter accounts allows a company to create a strategic advantage in the following 4 ways:

1. Improved focus on business objectives
2. Develop employee skills and talent
3. Test and refine multiple Social Media strategies
4. More effectively attract the attention of a specific audience

Improved Focus on Business Objectives

The most important benefit to a company is the improved ability to accomplish multiple business objectives through better focus.  We’ve seen Twitter prove its value across a variety of business functions, but with one account serving many purposes, it’s hard successfully achieve results.

Consider the following 4 areas where Twitter has provided business benefit:

• Customer Service – Comcast, Zappos
• Marketing/Sales – Dell Outlet, Starbucks
• Public Relations – GE Reports, Tyson Foods
• Recruiting – Allstate, EMC

Many companies try to accomplish all the objectives of these business functions across one account.  Imagine if your boss asked you to do the job of 4 functions…something would have to give!  Stretching a single resource across all these functions will likely dilute your content and prevent you from reaching your objectives.

Develop Employee Skills and Talent

Developing employee talent and skills through “learning by doing” is an often overlooked, yet extremely critical benefit from using multiple Twitter accounts.  Many  companies have multiple employees tweeting, which is great…but this can be expanded even further by taking it across the organization.  Multiple people writing multiple tweets across multiple functions.

Social Media should not be confined to Marketing, Strategy, or Communications.  Train employees on Twitter and allow them to Tweet on their own to give them first-hand experience of how the medium works.

Test and Refine Multiple Social Media Strategies

A strategy is simply a well-thought out approach to a business problem.  The thing about strategy is that it needs to change the minute that execution becomes reality.  The best strategic organizations are ones that test a strategy in the real world, study the results, and then refine and revise it.  Learn, Fix, Apply.

Having accounts focused on specific and defined strategies allows a company to better assess the efforts and make adjustments based on real-world execution.  With just one account testing multiple strategies, results can be skewed by the multiple variables involved.  Additionally, if you need to make a change, it’s hard to do so without affecting other components of the strategy.

Attract the Attention of a Specific Audience Segment

Twitter uses the follower system to allow users to share with people that have the same interests.  If you’re using Twitter for customer service, you likely have a base of followers who are already customers of your product.  Providing recruiting content to your loyal and committed customers is likely to annoy them.  Best to separate the two and allow users to follow as many or as few as they wish.

Companies have tons of employees who are Social Media Experts and tons of managers who are Masters at Leadership Influence.  However, rarely are the two skills possessed by a single employee.

Companies should encourage leaders to actively participate in Social Media to “Learn By Doing”, or develop younger talent who have Social Media skills into better management influencers.

Greg Matthews (@chimoose) from Humana tipped me to this in a tweet that read: “Have read this 3x. It’s that good. @katfrench on Social Media Pros: Where Do We Go from Here?

So, I’ve also read this three times and can’t stop thinking about it’s impact on organizations.  I particularly liked this excerpt:

On one side, you’ve got a vision of social media as a way of making business communication more human and more effective, while making the bottom-line results more measurable. In that vision, social media is integrated fully into existing business disciplines. It’s obsolete as a specialization in itself.

On the other side, you’ve got the day-to-day life of someone paid to help clients use social media tools to their advantage—within their comfort zone, within their restrictions, and within their existing business paradigms.

The distance between the two, on some days, seems like an enormous gaping canyon.

It goes back to what I think is the biggest obstacle in adoption, skill set.  Making Social Media work requires two critical skills:

1. Social Media Expertise – Laugh all you want, but you have to know the territory.  Practicioners need to have the skills that come from “learning by doing” rather than “learning by reading Mashable”
2. Leadership Influence – The ability to change the minds of senior leaders by showing “What’s In It For Them”.  Keep in mind that leaders have major financial incentives tied to business performance metrics and because 2.0 is still so new (relatively speaking), it’s hard to see how implementing radical change will affect year end bonus.  This means you need a skilled influencer to convince leadership of adopting technologies.

While most organizations have employees that posess these skills, rarely do the two overlap…which I think might be the problem.  We need experts that can influence.  We need influencers who are very active in social media.

How do we bridge that gap? Is it training?  Is it “stretch promotions”?

Is it a function of age?  I.e. Younger employees are the experts, senior employees have the political skills.

Stock Price is the ultimate metric for a company looking to evaluate a business strategy.  When thinking about Social Media Strategy, a company can choose from many different metrics to evaluate their efforts. Ultimately, we will have to stock price at those companies with good Social Media to understand whether or not Social Media is the management breakthrough we’re all hoping for.

So, does Social Media affect stock price?  It might be too early to tell, but I wanted to see what I could learn.  I consulted some of the “Best of Social Media” lists from Mashable, Forrester, and Groundswell, and came up with these companies.  When people ask me, “Who is doing it right?”, these are usually the companies I’m thinking of (Feel free to add other suggestions in comments, and I’ll compile the numbers):

• AmEx (AXP)
• Comcast (CMCSA)
• Dell (DELL)
• Ford (F)
• Intel (INTC)
• Jet Blue (JBLU)
• Kraft (KFT)
• Nike (NKE)
• Starbucks (SBUX)
• Wal Mart (WMT)

Then, I compared their 1, 2, and 3 year annualized return (CAGR) to market benchmarks (in green) like the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, Russel 2000, and Nasdaq Composite.  Below are the results.

Stock Returns of Companies with “Good” Social Media Examples

1 Year Annualized Return

Does Social Media Impact Share Price?

• It’s hard to tell with this data, but it’s encouraging.  Especially when you look at the 1 year numbers which are the most favorable.
• Most companies were still experimenting with Social Media 3 years ago.  Perhaps it’s now that we see the leaders start to take off.
• This is a simple calculation with companies that were subjectively picked.  My prediction is that a good Social Media strategy will soon be a competitive necessity.  In other words, it will prevent you from being below the average.

]]> http://www.benphoster.com/does-social-media-affect-a-companys-stock-price/feed/ 0 http://www.benphoster.com/simple-twitter-101-training-in-140-characters-or-less/ http://www.benphoster.com/simple-twitter-101-training-in-140-characters-or-less/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:13:15 +0000 Ben Foster http://www.benphoster.com/?p=1298

Photo By Dan4th

I believe the best way to learn Social Media is by doing Social Media.  There are tons of great Twitter Trainings already on the web.  My spin on it is to provide the basics in 140 character “bullet points” that you can Tweet through your own account.

Value to Trainees

The value to your trainees is that they can learn about Twitter while using the site, instead of a boring PowerPoint.  This makes the training feel more real and makes you look more creative.

Feel free to use, adapt and make suggestions to this list. I’ll update this document from suggestions in the comment.

Twitter Training in 140 Characters

• What Is Twitter?  Website where people write brief messages (140 characters or less) for everyone to read and share with others
• Why is Twitter Important?  Real time information. For example, Hudson River plane crash was first reported on Twitter http://bit.ly/num4a
• TWEET – A single update(message) from a user is a TWEET. You can TWEET from the web, mobile phone, text message, IM chat, or applications
• FOLLOWER – Someone who “subscribes” to your TWEETS.  Many people consider # of followers an indicator of one’s Twitter influence
• FOLLOWING – People whose TWEETS you “subscribe to”.  To better enjoy Twitter, Don’t just follow everyone, follow people who are interesting
• DIRECT MESSAGE (DM) – Private message that can ONLY be sent to someone following you. Used for privacy or individual communication
• @ Sign – Notifies or Replies to a specific person.  An @ before someone’s name links to their profile & notifies them of a TWEET you made
• @ Sign – You can check who has notified or replied to you by clicking on @yourusername on the Twitter homepage http://twitter.com
• # Hashtag – A “#” helps manage topics.  Many people search Twitter for a particular topic. A # sign helps them find it http://hashtags.org/
• RETWEET – Like “Forward” on email, used to share others’ good messages to your followers.  How to Retweet: RT @username “original message”
• URL SHORTENER-  Make long web addresses smaller to meet 140 character limit. Popular ones http://bit.ly http://tinyurl.com http://is.gd
• How do companies use Twitter? Direct – Marketing; Indirect – Employees; Internal – Share info; Signaling – Listen to customers [SOURCE @rww]
• Direct- Marketing/PR; extension of corp messaging. Credibility lost if it feels like spam.  @delloutlet – $1m sales channel [SOURCE @rww]
• Indirect – Employees tweet building company credibility. Forrester analysts like @jowyang, @jbernoff, & @steven_noble [SOURCE @rww]
• Internal – Share info about projects – Risky because it’s open. Humana (@chimoose) shares meeting notes through #hcoc [Source @rww]
• Inbound – Listening to customers to improve service, develop products, and respond to problems (@jetblue and @comcastcares) [SOURCE @rww]
• Twitter is more http://twitter.com. Through an API (Application Programming Interface), anyone can write programs to extend Twitter usage
• Fun Twitter Programs – http://cotweet.com manage multiple accounts, http://tweetgrid.com multi-search, http://zeitheist.net – guessing game
• Export Tweets – Infinity Plus One Consulting has a great Search & Export tool at http://twitter.infinityplusone.com/
• Trending Topics – Twitter automatically lists “Trending Topics” on the main twitter page.  News often breaks there Http://twitter.com
• Effective Twitter: Quality over Quantity; Share Posts & Ideas; Interact, Retweet, Share; Don’t Spam, Don’t only share personal info
• When you first join Twitter, you can find people you know by clicking “Find People” and then “Find on Other Networks”
• My Favorites @mashable @rww @andygadiel @jowyang @chimoose @simonmainwaring @tw1ttertracker @GHCommunity @cubsticker @scobleizer @vctips
• Beginner Tips – Upload a picture of yourself.  People generally don’t follow anyone with a “default background”
• Beginner Tips – Avoid “what I had for breakfast” tweets; build a following by being interesting and creating fresh ideas
• Beginner Tips – Ways to Search Twitter – http://search.twitter.com, http://twitscoop.com, http://monitter.com
• More training at these sites: http://bit.ly/14nw2A http://bit.ly/1Jua4W http://bit.ly/Aqk4x http://bit.ly/ZxZzU http://bit.ly/ux0C1

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Social Media is new and companies aren’t yet capable of managing it like traditional business processes.  Previously, I discussed how managing Social Media through a portfolio approach can help organizations reduce risk and increase overall success for the following reasons:

Photo By - Librarian Avenger via Flickr

1. Diversification - Increase overall return through multiple small bets in Social Media
2. Focus - Avoid distraction by focusing Social Media efforts on specific business objectives
3. Knowledge Transfer – Apply best practices and lessons learned to improve ALL components of a Social Media portfolio

“Cures Chasing a Disease” – Social Media in Business

Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, I argued that organizations tend to look at Social Media as a “Cure Chasing a Disease”. As practitioners, we become excited about Social Media technologies and we quickly try to apply them to a problem that customers, our business, or our supply chain don’t even have.

Organizational Benefits from a Portfolio Approach to Social Media

• Determine which strategic business objectives are best solved with Social Media tools through narrower scope
• Gain broad Social Media experience through multiple efforts at a smaller scale
• Embed Social Media capabilities throughout an organization by dividing execution from governance

Governing a Social Media Portfolio

Here’s a simple framework to help your organization better think about a portfolio

1. Project Identification and Selection
2. Using Metrics to Tell a Story rather than Evaluate a Project
3. Spread Best Practices and Apply Lessons From Failures

1 – Project Identification and Selection

• Define Business Objectives – Never start with the tool
  • Instead, figure out what you’re trying to do for your business.  It could be as simple as “Promote new product” or “Improve customer service.”
  • The greatest thing about having good business objectives is that metrics become much easier to define.  You don’t have to guess about what to measure, instead you have a clear goal which makes it easy to derive metrics.
• Distribute Social Media Projects – Avoid centralized ownership
  • Recent research from Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang defined a “Hub and Spoke” model for Social Media governance.  Owyang summarizes, “The hub facilitates resource sharing and cross-functional communications (via the “spokes” in the wheel) to those at the edge of the organization (or the ‘tire’)”.
  • Governing Social Media from a central location, rather than claiming full-ownership, helps individual groups apply specific knowledge and detailed experience to the problems they know best.
  • Additionally, it helps leadership see the business benefits as part of a broader effort.

2 – Using Metrics to Tell a Story

• Use metrics as characters in a story – Avoid “One Number to Rule Them All”
  • Raise your hand if you’re sick of hearing this question, “How do we measure Social Media”?
  • If it were as easy as compiling a number, throwing it on a dashboard, and then applying resources to red lights, we wouldn’t need leadership.  If you’re still stuck, Rachel Happe gives a great list of examples of Social Media metrics.
  • Use a variety of metrics to tell a story to your organization.  For example say your business objective is “to improve customer service”.  If you have a high number of pageviews on a customer service portal, but few of them come from search, you can use a story to make a case for investment in Search Engine Optimization.

3 – Share Best Practices and Apply Lessons from Failures

• Share Best Practices Quickly – Use Social Media!
  • A great business objective that can be solved by Social Media is “Disseminate information to employees”.  The job of the governing body is to identify those groups that are meeting business objectives and connecting them with similar efforts across the organization.
  • Organizations are already good at this using cross-functional teams, internal communications, and training/seminars to spread the knowledge.  The key is to identify which functions of the organization need this information.
• Celebrate Failure – Reward Those Who Take Risks
  • A.G. Lafley, CEO of P&G, consistently remarked that he was looking for a new product success rate around 50-60%.  He argued that if you take that any higher, you’re not taking enough risks.
  • The same principle applies to Social Media.  If you’re succeeding 100% of the time, you’re probably not taking enough risk.  So communicate to your employees that failure is okay so long as the entire organization can learn from mistakes and apply those to future projects.

Written By Ben Foster

What can Venture Capital Firms and conglomerates like General Electric teach corporations about Social Media strategy?  By using a portfolio approach, they can increase their overall performance through diversification, focus, and transfer of best practices.

Managing Social Media Risk Doesn’t Mean Moving Slowly

A slow approach to Social Media seems logical.  “Let’s try Social Media out by creating a blog post or two, let’s tweet something cool about our brand, let’s put our advertisements on YouTube.”

But moving slowly is not likely to help your company reach its objectives because most firms in your industry have already done something similar.  While you can increase your chance of avoiding a Social Media disaster, you aren’t likely to make much progress.

Why Businesses Use a Portfolio Approach

Portfolios have been used by mutual funds, venture capital firms, and conglomerates for many years for the following reasons

1. Diversification
2. Focus
3. Knowledge Transfer

• Diversification – Increase chance of average positive return through multiple small bets

  • A diversified portfolio has a balance of initiatives.  Some will win, some will lose.  On average, the gains from the winners will out perform the costs from the losers
  • Mutual Funds and Venture Capital firms increase overall return by offsetting losses from poor parts with gains from great parts

• Focus on Objectives - Increase overall company success by focusing on specific business objectives

  • Too many companies launch a social media initiative that tries to boil the ocean and do everything at once, but Social Media is too new for leaders to fully understand where it bests satisfies business objectives
  • Conglomerates like General Electric use a portfolio approach to focus on specific objectives
    • Consumer Products (Lightbulbs or Appliances) help to improve brand image and provide reliable cash flow
    • Infrastructure helps GE gain a foothold in emerging global markets like the Middle East, China, India and Brazil

• Transfer of Best Practices – Improve component success by spreading what worked and learning from failure

  • A portfolio with separate tactics and focused strategies can provide detailed market-tested lessons to other portfolio components
  • Conglomerates like GE are legendary for spreading managerial knowledge to other businesses
    • Six Sigma was applied first in the manufacturing businesses and then successfully deployed across the entire organization
  • Venture Capital firms learn from the dogs of their portfolio and then apply the market lessons to other businessess across the portfolio

Internal Benefits of a Portfolio Approach

• Try more things – The greatest thing about a portfolio approach, besides the clarity it provides to management, is that it provides the Social Media function with more opportunities in the market

What are some drawbacks to a portfolio approach?  In my next post, I’ll talk about governance strucutres to manage your Social Media efforts.  In the meantime, let me know what you think the disadvantages are to using a portfolio approach versus a large mass initiative.

Previously, I presented the Customer Experience lifecycle as a framework for companies defining Social Media Strategy and Business Objectives. This model shows you where consumers are looking for information to meet their needs.

By focusing Social Media efforts on where your customers are looking for information, you can better define your Social Media Strategy around helping customers solve their problems.

Here’s a quick reminder of the framework:

The Customer Experience Lifecycle:

1. Realization - Recognition of a problem or need
   1. Best Practice – FiLife Stacker Tool
   2. Learn From – Motrin Moms Commercial
2. Awareness - Connection between need and your product
   1. Best Practice – Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?”
   2. Learn From – Target Rounders
3. Evaluation - Consideration of you (and your competitors) product benefits and tradeoffs as a solution to the need
   1. Best Practice – Best Western’s On the Go With Amy
   2. Learn From – Skittles’ Interweb the Rainbow
4. Transaction - Money is exchanged for product
   1. Best Practice – DellOutlet on Twitter
   2. Learn From – Belkin’s Fake Product Reviews
5. Consumption - Product is used
   1. Best Practice – Lego’s User Communities
   2. Learn From – Kraft Digiorno Pizza – The Ditcher
6. Service - Post-purchase support for your product
   1. Best Practice – Comcast’s Twitter Account – @ComcastCares
   2. Learn From – Any Company Not Using Twitter Search

Consumption – Product is Used

Best Practice – Lego’s User Communities

• Business Objective: Drive repeat sales and increase brand image by educating consumers on new and better ways to use products
• Tool: Social Communities – Through official Lego communities as well as support of external “fan communities” through Lego Ambassador’s program

• What They Do Right:  Encourage passionate fans to create and share content about how to use Legos creatively
  • Technologically adept Lego fans had been connecting to each other for years; how could Lego extend this to less-technical adults and children?
  • Through the exclusive Lego Ambassador program, they harnessed the power of super users to help others connect and share ideas
  • Additionally, the Ambassador’s feedback was captured to improve innovation and new product development

Company to Learn From – Kraft DiGiorno Pizza – The Ditcher

• Business Objective: Increase sales of new product line
• Tool: MySpace Mashup with automatic Texting and Emails – Customers could text or email “excuses” to avoid friends so they could be left alone to eat the pizza
• What You Should Learn From:  Just because there is a consumer need (to avoid friends), doesn’t mean you should leverage it
  • Though some very well-respected analysts like Jeremiah Owyang liked this for it’s “unique interactive experience,” it seems to me like Kraft enabled lying to your friends while trying to create “new” opportunities for customers to enjoy the products.
  • David Title summed up Kraft’s misjudgement perfectly on MyMediaMusings, “Why would Kraft want to put itself in the position of being a liar and helping people deceive others?”
  • Some of the messages were scary…AdFreak reports that one message was “Your kid is in trouble…”
  • What if they would have focused on personalization of pizzas?  I could enjoy pepperoni while my vegetarian friend could enjoy a plain cheese pizza?

Service – Post-Purchase Support

Best Practice – ComcastCares on Twitter

• Business Objective: Improve customer retention by responding to customer problems
• Tool: Twitter – Social Media Pioneer Frank Eliason responds to customer needs in real-time
• What They Did Right: Delivered quick service where customers did not expect it
  • Not too long ago, Comcast was a victim of Social Media with the Sleeping Technician video
  • Frank Eliason recognized and opportunity and through @ComcastCares they created the industry standard of searching Twitter and responding to customers
  • Comcast took an industry cliché (poor service) and reinvented it through great Social Media.  Also, I love how he’s already thinking about how @ComcastCares will scale

Company to Learn From – Any Company Not Listening to Twitter

• Business Objective - Listen to what your customers are saying, publicly, and help them
• Tool: Twitter Search – For your company, for your competitors, and for words your customers use when describing your product
• What You Should Learn From – Because organizations have made customer service a “process”, people will quickly voice disgust on Twitter
  • No longer can we wait for customers to come to us with their problems…they are already complaining, actively, on Twitter
  • Customer service on Twitter has been covered many times but it still isn’t being fully utilized by all companies
  • Customer service over Twitter is rapidly moving from strategic advantage to competitive necessity

What other examples come to mind?

Posted by Ben Foster

Here are my favorite links from around the web for June 12, 2009. Because this space moves so fast, I wanted to surface great content rather than try to comment on everything. Have a great weekend!

Photo Credit – Shadowgate via Flickr

There’s an art to writing on Facebook or Twitter — really [From USA Today]

• When Social Media stuff hits the mainstream press, it’s usually bland and irrelevant
• But this great article from USA Today written by Maria Puente gives tips that I found myself ignoring

5 Reasons Content Strategy Comes Before Social Media [via Junta 42]

• Most brands getting involved with Social Media are not Media companies.  Media companies possess very specific skills and talent to create content, so what’s a non-media company to do?
• The first reason is really the most important, “Social Media does not work unless you have something valuable to say.”  Brilliant in its simplicity, largely ignored by many companies

Dedicated Social Media Silos?  That’s the Last Thing We Need [via Ad Age]

• Staffing for Social Media is all the rage right now, and this article brings up lessons from past media initiatives
• I think it Social Media should go beyond marketing and spread through the entire organization

23 Essential Elements of Sharable Blog Posts [via Chris Brogan]

• A checklist many content strategists simply aren’t using.
• I like #7 – “Write in small words where possible.  Remember:  eschew obfuscation.”

Fun Link of the Week – 30 Rock is a rip-off of The Muppet Show [via Brian Lynch]

• The musings on Jack Donaghy are very well-written.

Have a great weekend!

Previously, I presented the Customer Experience lifecycle as a framework for companies defining Social Media Strategy and Business Objectives. This model shows you where consumers are looking for information to meet their needs.

By focusing Social Media efforts on where your customers are looking for information, you can better define your Social Media Strategy around helping customers solve their problems.

Here’s a quick reminder of the framework:

The Customer Experience Lifecycle:

1. Realization - Recognition of a problem or need
   1. Best Practice – FiLife Stacker Tool
   2. Learn From – Motrin Moms Commercial
2. Awareness - Connection between need and your product
   1. Best Practice – Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?”
   2. Learn From – Target Rounders
3. Evaluation - Consideration of you (and your competitors) product benefits and tradeoffs as a solution to the need
   1. Best Practice – Best Western’s On the Go With Amy
   2. Learn From – Skittles’ Interweb the Rainbow
4. Transaction - Money is exchanged for product
   1. Best Practice – DellOutlet on Twitter
   2. Learn From – Belkin’s Fake Product Reviews
5. Consumption - Product is used
   1. Best Practice – Lego’s User Communities
   2. Learn From – Kraft Digiorno Pizza – The Ditcher
6. Service - Post-purchase support for your product
   1. Best Practice – Comcast’s Twitter Account – @ComcastCares
   2. Learn From – Any Company Not Using Twitter Search

Evaluation – Consumers compare product benefits

Best Practice – Best Western – On the Go With Amy

• Business Objective Increase sales by providing travel tips (and Best Western deals) through informative content
• Tool: Blogs – Through “On the Go with Amy”, Best Western offers good content mixed with deals on their hotels
• What They Do Right:  Provide tips and advice on how to make the ENTIRE trip more affordable
  • Hotel costs are just part of the travel budget; by sharing tips on how to reduce the total cost, they increase the value to their customers
  • Content is relevant to customers for example use smaller cars which are cheaper to rent AND have higher gas efficiency
  • While the blog isn’t highly trafficked (Alexa rank of #2,201,016 on June 8, 2009), that’s an easily solvable marketing problem. The content is great and is a perfect place to start a dialogue

Company to Learn From – Skittles Interweb the Rainbow

• Business Objective: Encourage consumers to redefine brand
• Tool: Mashup – A combination of Twitter, Wikipedia, and Facebook
• What You Should Learn From: A PR play is not Word of Mouth
  • There’s no such thing as bad pubicity, but Social Media seems to work best when it’s a 2 Way dialogue
  • To paraphrase a famous chart, 1% of traffic were people who care about Skittles; 99% of traffic were Social Media Bloggers
  • Skittles should do more than promote consumer dialgoue, they should USE this as insight for a two way dialogue

Transaction – Money is exchanged for product

Best Practice – DellOutlet on Twitter

• Business Objective: Increase sales by offering exclusive deals on Twitter to PEOPLE WHO WANT THEM
• Tool: Twitter – Using Twitter Search to find and Twitter to execute, DellOutlet promotes deals
• What They Did Right: Increase the outlet store’s value by responding to customer needs in the moment
  • Many companies are using Twitter to promote deals, but Dell takes it further by responding to people’s needs
  • By selling refurbished, scratch and dent, and previously ordered Dell products through Twitter, they increase the perceived value of “used” merchandise
  • Not all posts are deals – Lots of times they offer tips like this one to a new student

Company to Learn From – Belkin’s “Fake” Reviews of Products

• Business Objective - Increase sales through reviews of products at Amazon.com
• Tool: Customer Reviews – Or more specifically, manipulated customer reviews
• What You Should Learn From – Customer reviews are sacred; manipulating reviews is never worth the benefit
  • Though Belkin says they have a high standard of ethics, Gizmodo reports that Belkin had a culture of “doing whatever is needed” to get good reviews
  • Customer reviews are sacred in Social Media.  The payoff for faking a review does not stack up to the damage from getting caught.
  • If you google “Belkin Reviews” , the first thing to pop up is a story about Belkin paying for reviews

What other examples come to mind?

Posted by Ben Foster

Here are my favorite links from around the web for June 5, 2009. Because this space moves so fast, I wanted to surface great content rather than try to comment on everything. Have a great weekend!

Photo Credit – Shadowgate via Flickr

Electro-Harmonix and social media: You’re doing it right [via TechCrunch]

• My favorite posts to read are Social Media case study examples of strategy and execution.
• Electro-Harmonix are using videos to help their customers understand and better use their products.
• Perfect example of a well defined business objective (increase brand awareness to solve problems) executed by social media (video sharing)

Congressman Uses Wisdom of Crowds to Redesign Website [via Mashable]

• The point isn’t that Mike Honda (D -CA) is using  CrowdSpring to design the site.  The insight comes from the great execution – allowing the public to vote .
• Constituents feel more engaged by voting AND the content delivery will be better because of the vote
• The price was $1,000…the PR and media buzz was priceless.  Well done.

Bing off to a Good Start – #2 Behind Yahoo [via ReadWriteWeb]

• I watched Darkon on Hulu last night and kept seeing these great (but non-informative) videos about the Hulu and Bing “Live” Party.
• The #2 rank is the result of good PR, let’s see if it lasts.  With allegedly $100 million of marketing behind it, it just might

The 9 Ways People Respond to your Content [via Lateral Action]

• Visitor behavior on your website (e.g. Scan, Spread, Save…) and the value it provides in a hierarchy.  I’ve never thought that “to subscribe” is better than “to spread”.  Very different thinking
• I love posts like this, it feels so familiar…yet so new.  Rajesh Setty did a great job making a framework that is easy to understand and valuable.

FUN TIME!  – Literal Video – Total Eclipse of the Heart

Posted by Ben Foster

In my last post, I presented the Customer Experience lifecycle as a framework for companies defining Social Media Strategy and Business Objectives.  This model shows you where consumers are looking for information to meet their needs.

By focusing Social Media efforts on where your customers are looking for information, you can better define your Social Media Strategy around helping customers solve their problems.

To illustrate how the Customer Experience lifecycle is important, the following are examples from the first 2 stages:  Realization and Awareness.  I’ll cover the next four in future posts.

The Customer Experience Lifecycle:

1. Realization - Recognition of a problem or need
   1. Best Practice – FiLife Stacker Tool
   2. Learn From – Motrin Moms Commercial
2. Awareness - Connection between need and your product
   1. Best Practice – Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?”
   2. Learn From – Target Rounders
3. Evaluation - Consideration of you (and your competitors) product benefits and tradeoffs as a solution to the need
   1. Best Practice – Best Western’s On the Go With Amy
   2. Learn From – Skittles’ Interweb the Rainbow
4. Transaction - Money is exchanged for product
   1. Best Practice – DellOutlet on Twitter
   2. Learn From – Belkin’s Fake Product Reviews
5. Consumption - Product is used
   1. Best Practice – Lego’s User Communities
   2. Learn From – Kraft Digiorno Pizza – The Ditcher
6. Service - Post-purchase support for your product
   1. Best Practice – Comcast’s Twitter Account – @ComcastCares
   2. Learn From – Any Company Not Using Twitter Search

Realization – Recognize a Problem

Best Practice – FiLife

• Business Objective: Drive traffic to an ad-driven site
• Tool:  Social Comparison – Through their innovative “Stackers” tool, they allow consumers to compare themselves to others
• What They Did Right:  By seeing “how you stack up”, consumers can recognize a need to do more in a certain area
  • A consumer saving 3% of their paycheck through 401(k) contributions would see that they are in the 10th percentile
  • This consumer would likely recognize the need to save more for retirement
  • And guess what…FiLife is there with a variety of resources and ads to help the consumer solve their problem

Company to Learn From – Motrin

• Business Objective: Increase sales by creating a “new need” for the product
• Tool:  Viral Videos – For the start of International Baby Wearing Week, they promoted videos with a mom describing that carrying her baby is cool as long as she carries Motrin
• What You Should Learn From: They tried to create a need where no problem existed
  • All consumers know pain; all consumers know that pain-killers kill pain
  • Some say it wasn’t tested, but large companies generally do not put out ads without focus group testing
  • But people act funny in paid focus groups.  I’m guessing that either no one spoke up in front of the group or that they wanted to “help” Motrin by telling them what they thought Motrin wanted to hear
  • Viral videos are typically watched alone and without financial incentives.  This behavior led to a significantly different reaction, like these on Twitter

Awareness - Connect Product to Problem

Best Practice – BlendTec

• Business Objective: Drive sales by increasing brand awareness
• Tool:  “Will it Blend?” videos that show the power of the blender
• Why They Did It Right – They created brand awareness by entertaining consumers and showing them EXACTLY what they were looking for
  • Blenders are not exciting and therefore not talked about (especially among friends on the internet)
  • The main (and only?) question facing consumers when purchasing a blender is, will it blend?
  • Rather than adding complexity to the need (like competitors were doing by promoting fancy features), they kept it simple (and funny)

Company to Learn From – Target

• Business Objective – Drive sales using recommendations of friends
• Tool: Facebook Group with Insiders- Created a Facebook group with a set of insiders, Target Rounders, that encouraged people to recommend products to friends
• What You Should Learn From This: You can’t force word of mouth to inform customers about products
  • On the surface, it’s not a bad idea;  Target is a great brand.  How many times have you walked out of Target with more than your shopping list?
  • When people need something, recommendations of friends is critical; but recommendations must be authentic
  • Target tried to force secrecy with emails to Target Rounders that read, “Your Mission: Try not to let on in the Facebook group that you are a Rounder”
  • No one wants to compromise their reputation amongst friends by being a shill for a corporation

Other examples you can think of?

]]> http://www.benphoster.com/social-media-strategy-case-studies-using-the-customer-experience-lifecycle/feed/ 11 http://www.benphoster.com/how-to-define-social-media-strategy-and-business-objectives-by-using-the-customer-experience-lifecycle-model/ http://www.benphoster.com/how-to-define-social-media-strategy-and-business-objectives-by-using-the-customer-experience-lifecycle-model/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:40:51 +0000 Ben Foster http://www.benphoster.com/?p=991

Well defined business objectives are the cornerstone of any corporate Social Media initiative.  Defining strategic objectives for social media has been pretty well covered across the social media blogs, but many businesses seem to be missing it.

Photo Credit - Beck Tench

So why the struggle?  Well, good strategy isn’t easy.  It takes a lot of hard work to build a strategy and even more work partnering across the organization to make it work.

Social Media is all about listening to your customers and having a dialogue that increases the ability of your company or brand to meet their needs.

But as savvy marketers know, the process consumers go through when considering, purchasing, and ultimately recommending your product or service is complex.

Many Social Media strategists try to focus their efforts across ALL steps of this process.  But a detailed understanding of customer needs for information at each point in the process holds the key for where to focus your Social Media efforts.

For discussion, here is a simple Customer Experience framework

1. Realization – Recognition of a problem or need

2. Awareness - Connection between need and your product

3. Evaluation – Consideration of your (and your competitors) product benefits and tradeoffs as a solution to the need

4. UPDATED:  Transaction – Money is exchanged for product (Great Suggestion from Alain Breillatt)
   

5. Consumption – Product is used

6. Service – Post-purchase support for your product

You’re probably already thinking of this cycle as how it relates to your own company, and it may seem simplistic.

But compare a product like HDTVs to a product like Search Engines.  Customer information needs at each point in the Customer Experience Lifecycle differ based on the product.  Understanding the details behind customer behavior and the need for information can help focus your Social Media efforts.

HDTVs – Customer Experience Life Cycle

Social Media Business Objectives for HDTV marketers should focus on creating consumer recognition of the need for an HDTV, evaluating the differences between solutions, and providing customer service.

• Realization – [HIGH] – Many don’t recognize or have a need for an HDTV
• Awareness – [LOW] - Consumers who have recognized a need likely understand how an HDTV can solve it
• Evaluation – [HIGH] – Consumers need information on the benefits of various HDTV options relative to cost
• Consumption – [LOW] – Most customers are well aware of how to use an HDTV
• Service – [HIGH] – Customers who have a problem with their HDTV need information on how to service it

Search Engines – Customer Experience Life Cycle

As an illustration of the opposite, Search Engines (who aren’t Google) should focus Social Media efforts on Awareness and Consumption.

• Realization – [LOW] – Consumers know when they need to search for information
• Awareness – [HIGH] – Consumers often don’t understand how search engines can meet their information needs
• Evaluation – [LOW] - Consumers can quickly search multiple sites at little cost
• Consumption – [HIGH] – Many customers struggle to do anything but a basic search
• Service – [LOW] – Once customers use the search engine, there is really no need for “service”

In my next two posts, I’ll cover companies I think are doing this right and companies I think have their business objectives misaligned.  In the meantime, I’m open to suggestions on the lifecycle model (should there be a step for “Decision/Transaction”?)

Also, I’d love any examples of companies you think have properly aligned objectives to their Social Media strategies through a detailed understanding of their customers.

Posted by Ben Foster

Here are my favorite links from around the web for May 30, 2009. Because this space moves so fast, I wanted to surface great content rather than try to comment on everything. Have a great weekend!

Photo Credit – Shadowgate via Flickr

Google Wave:  A Complete Guide [Mashable]

• This week was the week of Google Wave, oh yeah…Microsoft Bing also… This is a good guide, but it takes a couple reads to fully understand.
• To me, Google Wave is a way to organize all your conversations in one place and make them interoperable.  It seems comples, but knowing Google, it will be unbelievably simple to use and understand.

Beware Social Media Marketing Myths [Business Week]

• Gene Marks writes about a topic that’s been covered a million times, even as far back as 2007.
• You should pay attention to this article not because it’s news, but because it’s in Business Week.  I included this article because BusinessWeek is influential to corporate leaders.  Even though it’s been covered before, these thoughts will now become ‘more important’ in your organization because Business Week talked about them.

Larry Page’s Law – Software gets Twice as Slow Every 18 months [Gawker]

• While making a point about Google’s Web Apps, Sergey Brin makes his co-founder (even more) famous by coining this phrase.
• I used to love Firefox, because of the plugins, but now I’m obsessed with Google Chrome because it’s so fast.  News like this makes me think a Google OS (of some sorts) is in the works.

Updated – Insurance Industry Explores Social Media [Web-Strategist]

• Jeremiah Owyang updated his blog to include the site I’ve been working on, The Good Hands (SM) Community.

Funny Link – 15 Sexist Vintage Ads [Oddee]

• I would like to say that Marketing has come a long way since these days…but, I don’t think I could defend that…

Posted By Ben Foster

Recently, I led a Consumer Research project that featured some very wonderful Innovation Consultants from Strategos who preached the gospel of “learning by doing”.  Or, as Vas Vasiliadis would say, “You got to get in there and make the sausage, man.”

“Learning By Doing” has since become my professional mantra.  I started this Social Media Strategy blog solely to learn techniques for my current job.  Writing a blog teaches you a lot about content strategy, search engine optimization, and community building.  I wanted detailed knowledge on these topics so I could better execute Social Media Strategy.

Google Webmaster tools have taught me so much about the way people look for information on the internet.  Search Engine Optimization is truly an art-form and the most skilled practitioners are worth their weight in gold.

Today, while checking my account I noticed that my page had a high search engine result for “Annoying Facebook Pictures.“  I Googled it, and the results weren’t quite what I intended when I wrote my post about Facebook’s Monetization Strategy for Facebook Credits.

Google image results for “annoying facebook picture“

“Nice Etch-A-Sketch, Jerk Store” – Tripp Barry

However, Google…we’re still friends.  I like the way you think about “corporate strategists.”

Posted By Ben Foster

Metrics play an important role in modern organizations because they provide an efficient way to determine process effectiveness.

Are Metrics the Problem? - Photo by batega via Flickr

While we all have an understanding of ROI, a manager can justify a lack of Social Media understanding by simply insisting that measurements are the most critical part of the initiative and that Social Media should be measured like any other business process.

This is why in preliminary discussions about Social Media, managers typically ask, “How are we going to measure it?” This is an important question that should not be overlooked.  However, does anyone fully understand Social Media?  When people say “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”, I often think “I can’t measure what I can’t define.”

The ROI of Social Media is Unclear; the Impact of Social Media is Very Clear

Social Media Impact – Word of Mouth Marketing

I can’t tell you all the ways that Social Media will impact your business strategy.  I believe that anyone that says they can tell you is likely a consultant or technology vendor trying to tell you something.

What I can tell you is that your customers are telling your prospective customers what they think about your product.  Marketers have known the power of Word of Mouth for years, but what’s different now is that it is REALLY EASY for prospective customers to find word of mouth recommendations.

So how do you measure this???  You can ask questions in follow-up surveys, but we all know that word-of-mouth is often “hidden” in these types of questionairres.

Social Media Impact – Innovation and New Product Development

Also, I can tell you that your competitors are listening to what consumers are saying about their problems, needs, and frustrations; these consumer needs are the primary stimuli for innovation.  People every day are commenting on blogs, posting their frustrations on Twitter, and offering solutions through platforms that encourage open innovation.

It’s hard to tie metrics, like new product sales, to these insights.  But if you’re not listening to your customers and sharing that feedback with your organization, I can tell you that your stock price will under-perform those competitors that are.

How do you measure this?  By the time an idea makes it into a marketplace, so many functions have made changes through countless iterations of the product development lifecycle.  Additionally, many companies can take 12-18 months to bring a product from concept to reality making it hard to directly correlate to a Social Media Insight.

Relative Benchmarking for Social Media Metrics

If you’re struggling with metrics, try starting with ones that you can directly compare to other initiatives.  Here are a couple ideas:

• Alexa’s Traffic Rank Metric – Transparent and publicly available, this metric is based on a combined measurement of reach and pageviews which makes it objective and easy to explain to leadership.  Also, you can put a plugin in the bottom of Firefox that gives you INSTANT feedback as to how you are doing.
• Twitter Followers – I understand that there are ways to cheat this metric, but it’s rapidly becoming the currency of influence in the Social Media space.  Showing your leadership that your brand has more followers than your competitors can be a wonderful “win” for your group.

Metrics are Important, but different for Social Media

This is a sticky issue; I don’t want to downplay the importance of metrics.  The point here is that measuring Social Media in the same way you measure long-standing business processes will delay action.  Social Media is too new and not fuly understood enough to determine the “right set of metrics”, but you

What did I leave out or forget to include?

Posted by Ben Foster

Photo Credit – Shadowgate via Flickr

Here are my favorite links from around the web for May 22, 2009.  Because this space moves so fast, I wanted to surface great content rather than try to comment on everything.  Have a great weekend!

[Video] - Robert Scoble Talks Explains How He Uses Twitter and FriendFeed effectively

• I finally understood FriendFeed’s potential after watching this.  Robert also talks about feedly.com, which improves usability over Google Reader.

Banks and Financial Institutions that Use Twitter [Visible Banking]

• Christophe Langlois has been doing this watch for a while, and it’s something I watch for regularly.  He tracks 121 Twitter accounts of financial institutions.  The companies with the most followers are Somerset Mortgage Lenders (6,075), Wachovia (3,620), ING Direct (2,933), HR Block (2,831), and USAA (2,740).
• I really enjoy watching what ING Direct is doing for banking on the web.

Mint Considers Selling Anonymized Data from Its users [ReadWriteWeb]

• The twitter buzz was one of paranoia, freaking out that mint would invade people’s privacy.  Personally, I’m a huge fan.  I believe it’s a consumer benefit to compare your own personal data to that of your peers (aggregated anonymously).
• It all comes down to the details; as Malcolm Gladwell suggested in The New Yorker, ideas are everywhere and execution is king.

Twitter Beats Facebook in 140 Characters [Motley Fool]

• Writer Rick Aristotle Munarriz challenges fellow Motley Fool writer Tim Beyers his argument on why Twitter will beat Facebook in 140 characters
• The Tweet:  “Dell and Amazon sell goods via Twitter. Tweeps find homes and jobs and create companies. Businesses don’t depend on Facebook.” – Tim Beyers (@milehighfool)

Funny – 3 Wolves Howling at the Moon [Amazon]

• A great tee-shirt at Amazon sparked some really funny customer reviews.  According to my buddy Sevick, this has been around for a while…I learned about it this week while listening to CNet’s BuzzOutLoud Podcast
• Excerpt from A Customer Review:  ”So I’m looking for threads that say, ‘Hey baby…I’m real boss!’ when I stumble upon this epic creation….I mean, one wolf howlin at the moon is major…but three???” - T. Guymon at Amazon

Have a safe Memorial Day 2009!

There are 6 Principles or Laws of Communication that are critical to Social Media Strategy.  I introduced these as part of my presentation to the Chicago Chapter of the Scleroderma Foundation, a non-profit looking for guidance on how to get started in Social Media.

Earlier, I covered the first 3 laws:  1) Open and transparent communication is best 2) Two-Way Conversation and 3) Listening is more important than talking.

Here, I’ll cover the final 3, but first, here’s the list:

The 6 Laws of Communication Critical to Social Media Strategy

1 – Open and transparent communication is best

2 – Two way conversation

3 – Listening is more important than talking

4 – Everyone has a different style of communication

5 – Adding more people to the conversation requires more organization

6 – The message is impacted by the method

Law 4 – Everyone has a different style of communication

• In the Real World
  • A sad admission…I am more familiar with the preferred communication style of my co-workers than I am with their spouses’ first names.  I know who responds to emails fast, who prefers voicemails, and who likes it when I drop by to say hello.
  • I know this because knowing how people communicate is critical to helping me get things done.
• Social Media Strategy Implication
  • Your customers all have a preferred style of communication and to execute your strategy, you must be able to adapt your methods.
  • The ability to embed video, burn feeds, and even use Twitter to micro-communicate are all tools to give your customers content they can more easily digest.
  • Additionally, allowing your customers to communicate how they want makes it easier to listen; see Law #3 – Listening is more important than talking.

Law 5 – Adding more people requires more organization

• In the Real World
  • I enjoy meetings.  Complaining about them is a cliché because so many people are bad at organizing them.  For me, meeting with my co-workers is the best way to solve a difficult problem.
  • However, too many people in a meeting increases the chance that you will go off topic and get nothing done.  Large meetings require a rigid agenda, timing, and facilitator to control disruptive people.
• Social Media Strategy Implication
  • The dream of Social Media strategists is to have large numbers of consumers discussing their problems, talking about the brand, and recommending it to friends.
  • But just like in large meetings, too many people can lead to distracting conversations that don’t get anything done.
  • For example, I love that more people are joining Twitter, but the potential value of real-time search is harder to see than it was mid-2008 because of all these extra people.

Law 6 -The message is impacted by the method

• In the Real World…
  • To illustrate this law, let’s deliver 1 message in two different ways:
    • Message:  “Great job on the presentation, we’re going to take your recommendations to the Board of Directors.”
    • Method 1 – Email from your boss to all members of the team
    • Method 2 – Your boss says this at the end of your presentation in front of the rest of leadership
  • Same words but a tremendous difference in impact.  The method by which you choose to deliver your message has more of an impact than the message itself.
  • This is obvious…but how often do you spend crafting the words versus crafting the RIGHT PLACE to deliver the message so that your words have the most impact?
• Social Media Strategy Implication
  • Same exercise:  Let’s deliver 1 message in two different ways
    • Message: “Thanks for recommending us to your friends, we appreciate your business!”
    • Method 1 – Email blast to all customers who have recommended business
    • Method 2 – @Tweet to customers who have recommended business
  • The words don’t matter!  But the thought you put into using a personal method to communicate your message to your customers is infinitely more valuable to them.
  • You now have more ways than ever to reach customers and build a relationship.  Don’t be lazy, do it right!

So those were my 6…what did i miss?

Has anyone else heard this from management the past couple of weeks?   “Now that Twitter has jumped the shark, what technology should we move our social media resources towards?”

On one hand, this is great because it shows forward thinking…however, we know that it doesn’t really matter what technology is next.  Chasing technology doesn’t meet business objectives, better communication through Social Media does.

Social Media Technologies are another set of solutions to strategic business problems.  But, if you don’t fully understand the problem you won’t apply the right solution.  When evaluating Social Media strategies and business objectives, I evaluate them based on these 6 Laws of Communication.

I covered these as part of my presentation to the Chicago Chapter of the Scleroderma Foundation, a non-profit looking for guidance on how to get started in Social Media.  Recently I’ve found a renewed need for these and thought they’d benefit from further explanation and discussion.

In this post, I’ll cover the first three and follow it up on Thursday with 3 more.  Here’s the list

The 6 Laws of Communication Critical to Social Media Strategy

1 – Open and transparent communication is best

2 – Two way conversation

3 – Listening is more important than talking

4 – Everyone has a different style of communication

5 – Adding more people to the conversation requires more organization

6 – The message is impacted by the method

1 – Open and transparent communication is best

• In the Real World
  • As Social Media Strategists, we can all relate to a story about “hidden agendas”.  Have you ever googled for a way to find out who was BCC’d on an email? Or had the sense in a meeting that someone wasn’t giving you the full story?  Yeah…it feels crappy.
• Social Media Strategy Implication
  • The Open and Transparency principle is fundamental.  It’s tempting to hire bloggers to write about your products like Wal*Mart or to sell your soul on twitter by paying people to tweet for you like Apple, Cisco, Stub Hub, Fat Cow, Skype…. But the risk is not worth the reward.
  • Bloggers make their living finding examples of companies doing this and you will lose tons of credibility.

2 – Two way conversation

• In the Real World
  • We can all quickly name the one friend that we have that talks about himself without listening to anyone else.  In the “real world”, you handle these types of people by just ignoring them.
  • Also, we all have friends that we absolutely love to engage in conversations.  These people build on your thoughts and offer you great nuggets to expand your thoughts upon.
• Social Media Strategy Implication
  • We can also all quickly name the companies that both talk and listen.  For me, it’s Best Buy.  I am surrounded by Best Buy ads on the TV, the Web, and in my Mailbox.
  • However, when I go into the store, it becomes a conversation between me and the associates who help steer me to a video game or TV show based on my likes and interests.

3 -  Listening is more important than talking

• In the Real World
  • Nearly every introductory manager training course talks about active listening, or the ability to extract insights from communication in real-time.  Great leaders know that talking effectively comes from listening to your employees.
  • On the other hand, bad leaders talk about themselves the whole time which causes their employees to ignore them.
• Social Media Strategy Implication
  • Think about what happens when your consumers choose to ignore your Social Media efforts because you are talking about yourself the whole time.  Sure, they may not visibly complain, but they will not invite you to discussions they are having.
  • The inability to listen obviously prevents you from learning today.  But more importantly, the inability to listen will prevent you from being invited to conversations in the future.

Posted By Ben Foster

This is Volume 3 of my weekly feature to provide the Top Social Media, Strategy, and Fun links to my regular readers. Because this space moves so fast, I wanted to surface great content rather than try to comment on everything.  Have a great weekend!

6 Things World of Warcraft Can Teach You About Social Media Success [Mashable]

• I love this game…it just took to much time and energy to play.  I particularly like Stuart Foster’s first point #1 – Success Requires Constant Dedication – “Your goal should be to turn every article you write into a phenomenon.”

New WSJ Conduct Rules Target Twitter, Facebook [Editor and Publisher]

• Even with Wall Street Journal’s content strategy to make people pay, they are not avoiding Social Media.  The most interesting point was “Let our coverage speak for itself, and don’t detail how an article was reported, written or edited.”

7 Questions Some Brands Are Asking About Twitter [Web-Strategist]

• Jeremiah Owyang, my favorite analyst, reports on what he’s hearing clients ask about Twitter.  What’s interesting is the level of sophistication. 
• If you aren’t asking these questions…you’re behind.  There are also some great comments that add to the discussion and Jess Sloss of Social Squared answers these questions about Twitter pretty well.

The Dangers of Relying on Your Corporate Network for Social Media Market Research (or SMMR) [Knowledgeistics]

• Knowledgeistics is a blog that links Innovation, Social Media, and Market Research run by friends of mine (Rishu Mandolia, John Rood, and Alex Kemmler) who are strategic thought leaders around merging Social Media and Market Research. 
• In this post they surface the Business Week article warning against starting a Corporate Social Network. They highlight the great point that there are reasons for starting a corporate social network but advise us to spend a couple hours thinking about the points raised by Stephen Baker in the article.

HUMOR!  Awkward Family Photos

• My new favorite photo blog.  I have so many of these types of photos that I hope my mother never releases to the public!

Posted by Ben Foster

Content strategy at traditional media companies is moving in two different directions.  Companies that focus on written content are making it tougher to leverage their word-based assets.  The AP is suing blogs who “scrape” content from their sources and Newscorp chief Rupert Murdoch recently announced that they are exploring micro-payments for content.

On the other hand, video content providers are opening their doors to sites who want to embed their video.  Hulu, the joint venture started by NBC and Fox, permits web sites to embed video content they own.  ABC, a unit of Disney, decided that this model was something worth paying for, as they recently took a 28% stake in Hulu.

Good Written Content Is A Commodity

As a medium, written content is far more ubiquitous than video content.  Even at the high end, there is not much difference between the New York Times Week In Review and Slate Magazine to the typical consumer.

News companies are desperate for revenue, so perhaps giving micro-payments a shot is a last-ditch effort at survival.  But even a Hail Mary towards users payment doesn’t seem like a sustainable business model as content publishers grow more numerous on the web.

Quality Video Content Is Expensive

Relative to high quality written content, good video content is very expensive to produce.  The move to foster embedded video content seems to reflect certain media companies’ strategy to gain more of the benefit of viral content and reduce the resources it takes to chase down illegal copies.

The strategy also appears to be a desperation move, but a slightly more calculated one.  If everyone is going to watch the latest Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg video, they might as well watch it from a site the companies control.

By making it easier (and legal) to distribute video content, you can at least get some revenue from embedded advertising and traffic as well as the ability to show users “related videos”.

Someone is Making a Strategic Content Pricing Mistake

Classic micro-economics suggests to me that a non-scarce good (written content) should cost significantly less than a scarce good (video content).  Therefore, it seems one of these two groups of firms are making a strategic error.

The AP and Newscorp stand to lose more if they are wrong.  If they charge a price where “good-enough” substitutes are free, consumers will shift to the free good.  This shift could increase the reputation of alternate news agencies and diminish the brand equity of AP and Newscorp, even if they return to a free price.

If NBC, Fox, and ABC are wrong, they simply miss out on “extra” revenue.  Strategically, they benefit from destroying content pirates as well as from the savings in no longer pursuing legal action against the pirates.

Posted by Ben Foster

Photo Credit - Jayel Aheram

Making sure your customers are interested in your site’s content is one of the toughest challenges of content strategy.  Most companies trying to engage their customers through Social Media are not in the media industry and struggle with developing good content.  The employees producing content at these companies are often so focused on the brand that they can’t separate themselves enough to produce something interesting.

In Getting Things Done, David Allen talks about the use of checklists for reoccurring tasks to reduce the stress of thinking about how to get something done.  Here’s a checklist to help make your content interesting and relevant for your customers:

Is the content addressing “Tension”?

Burger King’s widely successful recent ad campaigns all have the same thing in common, tension.  Marketing Chief Russ Klein explains here:

“…My personal philosophy is effective advertising stems from tension, and when it’s provocative it’s more ingrained in the culture…I think viewers today appreciate clever and provocative advertising.”

Addressing tension is also a cornerstone of good content.  Tension comes from an issue or question with reasonable arguments on all sides, banning trans-fats for example.  Content that adds perspective to tension works well because people keep thinking about it as they wrestle with the issue.

Would your audience Recommend this content to their friends?

Companies have a habit of producing content that is of interest to the company, not their customers.  But a content strategist should think of her content as a tool.  Ideally, customers will use this tool to help their friends and colleagues.

A good way to think of this is comparing it to the Net Promoter Score which measures the likelihood that a customer would recommend a company to their friend.  Is it any wonder that Apple’s ability to make satisfying products and services a major contributor to their high Net Promoter scores?

Does this relate to a customer Problem or need?

Sounds simple, but this is the main thing most companies miss.  The funny thing is, they miss this because the people running the content strategy often do not leverage the consumer research done by the marketing department.  Studying the details of existing research gives content strategists a way to evaluate their existing content AND it also provides plenty of stimuli for new content.

Can the main point be described Succinctly?

This is an easy test to perform – Can you make an compelling tweet of the idea? Many companies who aren’t familiar with producing content (read:  all of us not in the media industry) try to cram too many ideas into one piece of content.  This dilutes the idea and makes it harder to understand.

You want to leave consumers of your content with an idea that sticks in their head long after they’ve read the content.  The best way to accomplish this is to have a clear point of your article that you can describe quickly.

Have you Proofread the content?

This should go without saying, but I’m including it because it’s one I always leave out!  There are really no excuses for sloppy content (I’m guilty), and it leaves a negative impression on your audience.

Don’t believe me that it’s a problem?  Well, it’s such an issue that companies are developing services to address this for content providers!

Posted by Ben Foster

This is Volume 2 of my weekly feature to provide my regular readers with the Top Social Media, Strategy, and Fun links that I really enjoyed throughout the week.   Because this space moves so fast, I wanted to surface great content rather than try to comment on everything.  Have a great weekend!

Photo Credit - Shadowgate via Flickr

Rupert Murdoch says Newscorp will start charging for content [Guardian UK] - The WSJ has had this model, though there are some workarounds.  I agree that the business model is broken, but is this the fix?

Twitter says they aren’t for sale [Mashable] – Gawker rumored on Tuesday that Apple was looking at a $700 million deal, but Mashable said they aren’t interested.  Everyone has a price…I still think Google will make a play to buy them

Anthropology and the Social Web [ReadWriteWeb] – I’ve read this post a few times, and it’s confusing at first, but relevant after discovery.  It adds a layer to the decision of First To Market vs. Get It Right

Facebook Challenged by Firefox? [ReadWriteWeb] – Sort of sensationalistic journalism, but they have a point.  If Social Networking were integrated into your browser, do you need to go to a site?  Makes me think that the more important Merger/Acquistion rumors this week would be Mozilla and Friendfeed

Fun Link – The 50 Best Costumes at the London Marathon [BuzzFeed] – My favorite is #16, the gnome.

Posted by Ben Foster

Photo by adpowers via Flickr

Summer interns are one of the greatest traditions of capitalism.  Each summer, notoriously ambitious interns join companies eager to make an impact and deliver results.  For the Social Media Strategist, interns can provide a fresh perspective to companies looking to embrace Social Media.

At the dawn of E-Commerce (way back in the 1990s), GE executives gathered for a now infamous strategic session called DestroyYourBusiness.com.  Realizing the threat facing GE from the thousands of start-ups thinking differently, Jack Welch had his managers pretend to be one of the many Dotcoms trying to destroy GE’s existing business models.  This exercise helped GE’s leadership think about how the internet could quickly exploit a company’s weaknesses.

Here’s an adaptation of GE’s classic management idea for a meaningful 12-week summer internship.  Not only will your interns love the challenging and exciting assignment, this can also provide your company with fresh strategic thinking.

Weeks 1-2 – Industry and Competitor Assessment (2 weeks)

• Objective – Develop a detailed understanding of industry adoption of Social Media through assessing competitors
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Analyze the competition and document the best uses of social media
  • Support findings with external validation of competitors’ strategies from secondary sources
  • Develop a ratings scale to score industry players on dimensions like traffic, customer conversations, revenue impact, and scalability
  • Interview managers to develop 5 orthodoxies, or “The Ways Our Industry Always Does Things” that could be overturned by Social Media

Weeks 3-5 – Discover Customer Needs, Problems, and Frustrations

• Objective – Act like a Social Media Market Research consultant to study what conversations are occurring on the web about your brand
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify the top sites where consumers are talking about your products or services as well as your brand
  • Compile a database of customer quotes about their problems and how they are using products and services from your industry to solve them
  • Categorize the quotes into topic areas for a qualitative analysis
  • Create findings from categorized quotes to identify customer needs that could be met through Social Media technology

Weeks 6-10 – How would a Start-Up Disrupt the Industry Business Model?

• Objective – Take the role of an entrepreneur and create a business plan ready for a Venture Capitalist that could radically alter the industry
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify the vulnerabilities of the current business model used by your company and competitors
  • Develop a hypothetical business plan that a start-up could present to a VC that would radically change the industry business model
  • Analyze 5 start-ups that are already pursuing this model and what the company should learn from their early results

Weeks 11-12 – Create a 12 Week and 12 Month Plan for the Organization

• Objective – Highlight quick changes that can be made to lead the organization to a long-term change
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify hypotheses that could be tested through experimentation and prototyping
  • Test these hypotheses by building an implementation plan for quick-fixes that could be made in 12 weeks
  • Brainstorm longer-term ideas that could be implemented in 12 months with knowledge gained from the 12-week experiment

I think this could be a very interesting business school project or paper.  Thoughts on how to adopt this for the classroom?

This is the start of a weekly feature to provide my regular readers with the Top 5 Social Media, Strategy, and Fun links that I really enjoyed throughout the week.   Because this space moves so fast, I wanted to surface great content rather than try to comment on everything.  Have a great weekend!

Picture by Shadowgate

• Twitter rolls out new interface [Mashable] – For new users who are less familiar with sites that have this functionality
• Future of the Social Web [Web-Strategist] – Distributed Social Networking will lead to an Era of Social Commerce, companies should prepare products and services for community development
• Bacon Pox (Swine Flu) and Social Media [CNN] – This was the week of swine flu, and Social Media has helped (and hurt) public preparation
• Making an Impromptu Speech a Story [Success Marketing and Selling] – Stories are what move ideas in organizations.  I am scouring the web for articles like these to improve my skills
• Passive Aggressive Office Notes [Funny] – A fun link highlighting the joys of sharing workspace with other people

Posted by Ben Foster

]]> http://www.benphoster.com/social-media-zeitgeist-may-1st-09/feed/ 1 http://www.benphoster.com/5-questions-to-ask-social-media-market-research-consultants/ http://www.benphoster.com/5-questions-to-ask-social-media-market-research-consultants/#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:43:37 +0000 Ben Foster http://www.benphoster.com/?p=708

Of all the firms rushing to provide Social Media consulting services, I’m most interested in the potential in new Market Research methods.  If executed perfectly, Social Media Market Research will solve many problems with traditional market research:  1-Expense, 2-Bias, and 3-Confusing Data.

But, we’re not quite close to perfect execution yet.  In fact, even though a Twitter Search is an easy way to find quick insights, quickly poll your Market Research leaders to see if they’ve done it.  Chances are, they haven’t done much with this tremendous data set.

Bring in the Consultants

As any good manager knows, if you don’t have the talent, hire some brains (read: consultants).  It’s easy to find a list of these firms, but to me, they all feel the same.  Social Media is too new for any firm to have an established track record and most web sites and informational decks are going to look the same.

It will be tough to find the market leader in Social Media Market Research until we can better highlight clear results.  Until then, you’re going to have to trust the consultants giving you the pitch and really question them to find the right partner.

Questions to Ask Social Media Research Consultants

Here are questions I think can reveal the expertise of Social Media Research Consultants.  As always, watch out for answers at the extreme.

• If my competitors have access to the same data, how can I turn this research into a competitive advantage?

  • Bad Answer: We’re the best consulting company in this space so it’s our consulting output and a Non-Compete Agreement that provides the advantage
  • Good Answer: This is a new approach that will be standard in the future.  It’s best to build and embed capabilities now while the approach is in its infancy

• How do you match and prioritize my business objectives to this research?

  • Bad Answer: Social Media solves everything so we’ll customize the research to meet your business objectives
  • Good Answer: We’ll consult with you to refine and select business objectives that can be fulfilled through Social Media Market Research

• How will you help us research a certain demographic?

  • Bad Answer: We can provide great detail on micro-demographic segments because Social Media is so awesome at defining people
  • Good Answer: Social Media Market Research can provide higher quality insights on specific demographics by combining them with traditional research methods

• Is your research quantitative or qualitative?

  • Bad Answer 1: We only focus on quantitative data because qualitative data is so subjective
  • Bad Answer 2:  We only focus on qualitative data because quantitative data is not rich enough
  • Good Answer: A good insight comes from triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data to explain the contradictions and inconsistencies between them

• Which functions within my organization will benefit from your insights?

  • Bad Answer: Social Media is so awesome that it impacts ALL parts of your organization
  • Good Answer:  It depends on your customers.  If your product or service is information rich, your marketing or service department is going to benefit.  If your product is highly technical, your engineering department will benefit from understanding customer dialogue.

Posted By Ben Foster

All these people got to learn that I made Jeff Thompson's day.

A couple months ago, Facebook introduced us (who weren’t using FriendFeed) to the “Like” button.  Users could quickly indicate their appreciation for content without having to think about writing a witty comment.  Users improved their understanding of how to make their friends happy.  Facebook built even more data around micro-demographic preferences to further their strategy of people organization.

The Problem:  28 Notifications

Whenever you click “Like”, you are notified via email of anyone who comments on the item.  There is no way to turn off this insanely annoying feature.

Why does “Like” function the same as a comment?  When I comment, I am commenting with the direct intent of creating a discussion so I look forward to follow-ups.

However, when I “Like” something, I’m simply telling someone that they are neat.  I do not want to hear what others have to say, the “Like” button is merely of a personal feedback mechanism.

Is Facebook Doing This To Sell Credits?

My friends who stopped clicking “like” told me they hated notifications from strangers.  This functionality seems easy for Facebook to make and would make Facebook users happy.  Facebook are a very smart group of people…is this annoyance intentional?

Facebook has talked about offering Facebook Credits to reward users for good content which is a logical step.  Now, if you knew that by using a credit to “like” something that you wouldn’t get notified, wouldn’t you buy a couple?  Even if you wouldn’t buy any, wouldn’t you use a few that were gien to you rather than cash them out?

photo by llawiet via flickr

The first 30 days in a new job is stressful and it’s hard to be able to think quick and act even quicker.  I recently talked about some myths I always believed about corporate strategy jobs and ways to think about selecting a job.  What follows are thoughts on starting a new job off right:

The Fine Line Between Smart and Annoying

I always want to sound smart in initial meetings, however..I don’t want to be the guy who talks just to hear the sound of his own voice.  Here’s what has worked for me:

• Culture of Meetings  - Does the most senior person talk first?  If you’re concerned about something, do you ask a question… or make a statement?  Wait for Q&A… or chime in when needed?  
• 15 minute rule – I once received advice that said if you don’t speak within the first 15 minutes of a meeting, people have already forgotten about you.

Try for Personal Introductions

If your to-do list says, “Ask Greg about ___”, it’s tempting to want to send Greg an email.  You’ll probably save a lot of time… but is it worth it?  I’ve always respected someone who talks to me in person or phone before an email.  Seems much more real.

Read Everything You Can

It’s hard reading what you don’t “have” to read.  But I’ve found great nuggets by absorbing as much as I could find.

Internal Materials – There are going to be a lot of “decks” forwarded to you to “bring you up to speed.”  However, I’m always amazed at what you can discover by clicking on every link on your corporate internet.  It’s a great way to learn the initiatives and acronyms of other functions and how those all fit together.

External Materials – Over-subscribing to content and then weeding it down to the best seems to work here.  Here’s what I try to do:

• Subscribe to every blog covering your space.  Don’t know where to start?  Try AllTop for a directory
• Listen to what your customers are saying through a Twitter Search for your company and competitors
• Google News Alert works really well for keyword searches.  My  ”content strategy” search has turned up great stuff
• Forward the best your team – nothing beats being the first person to the link!

Photo by llawiet via Flickr

Do You Feel Like This Guy? Then read on...

In my last post, I covered some of the myths about working in corporate strategy.  Here, I’ll share what worked for me when I was last searching for a job.  Step One is to do a quick self-assessment to make sure you would be comfortable with the job.  Then I’ll talk about what you can be doing now to prepare yourself.  After that, I’ll cover tips for networking and surfacing the right opportunity.  In my next post, I’ll talk in more detail about the interview process as I’ve experienced it with various companies.

Check Your Gut – Do You Really Want This?

Great strategists can listen and rely on their gut instincts to a decision.  Ask yourself these 3 questions and listen really hard to your first reaction.

• “Am I comfortable with ambiguity?”  – This is the big one, if you’re the type of person who sees things as either black or white, right or wrong, then start looking for a more analytical job.  In strategy, you will never have the right answer, your goal is to get to the best reasoned answer.
• “Can I tolerate office politics?”  – Politics exist everywhere, and a key part of your job is using influence to change people’s hearts and minds.  If politics didn’t serve a purpose in large organizations, the market would have forced firms with political environments out of business.
• “Do I like creating and telling stories?” – The easiest and most effective way to deliver a message is to engage your audience with an interesting story related to your idea. If you stop at the “thought”, then people won’t internalize the story and be able to spread its message.

Start Preparing For a Strategy Job

• Strategic Thought Library – Start bookmarking, saving, and filing every framework, powerpoint model, and thought-piece you can.  While completing my MBA at Chicago Booth I did not do a good job capturing and organizing all the frameworks we used to analyze strategic decisions.    I wish I had because having a library makes your job easier.  You don’t have to spend valuable time recreating ways to approach a problem.
• Join Every Cross-Functional Team You Can – Try to become the representative from your function on as many projects as you can find the time for.  This does two important things for you:

1. Teaches you about how different functions operate and work together
2. Gives you powerful network connections which will one day end up benefitting you

Finding and screening available positions

• Exert Exhaustive Effort in your Search – Some of the best positions are more readily available than you think, you just need to be in the right place at the right time.  have to be in a position to find them.  Executive recruiters LOVE to crawl LinkedIn for good people, make sure your profile is up to date and contains keywords like “strategy”, “business development”, and “strategic” somewhere in your profile.
• Read the Job Description Carefully – The first few descriptions you read will sound very generic with words that consultants typically speak.  But as you view more opportunities, you can gain an advantage over other candidates by understanding the details.  Examples of what to look for are as follows:
  • How Strategy Aligns in the Organization
    
  • What the Time-Frame of Projects Typically Are
    
  • How Centralized is the Control of the Group
    

Be Selective In Companies You Choose

Of course, this is easier said than done, and I understand that a paycheck is better than no paycheck at all.  However, having to craft, explain, and defend a strategy that you don’t believe in will doom your career.  In other words, if you’re a vegan, you probably shouldn’t take a strategy job at a fast-food retailer.  Be patient…finding a position where you can argue effectively a strategy that reflects your passion will be rewarded.

Photo by Y via Flickr

Jobs in corporate strategy always attract the attention of eager MBAs and Undergrads.  I always wanted to go into corporate strategy because the group at my old company contained some of the smartest people in our business.  But what does it mean to “work in strategy”?  Here are some commonly held beliefs about corporate strategy positions, and my thoughts about how they are changing.

Photo by pshutterbug

Myth 1 – Ivory Tower

• The Myth – Corporate Strategists are an elite group separated from the organization like a think-tank
  
• Why The Myth Exists – It used to be that strategy functions would hire high price consultants to sit in all day meetings and talk about the future.  Frameworks describing the business in four boxes or less were compiled leaving all parties confident about the future.  Soon enough, you’d see the presentation quoted by the CEO and available on the intranet.
• The New View - Management is demanding thought leadership that can be executed by the organization.  This requires strategists to spend as much time on practical details of execution as they are on thinking.  The ability to recall facts become less important as the internet has compiled and organized the wealth of information once exclusive to large strategy firms.

Myth 2 – Consulting Rejects

• The Myth – People who work in corporate strategy couldn’t cut it in a big consulting firm
• Why the Myth exists – Large consulting firms pay employees a lot of money to travel the world and meet with Senior Leadership.  This money, experience, and network is desired by all potential recruits, therefore, the best work for Big Strategy Firms.  If you’re not promoted to partner, then you go corporate with a made-up an excuse about work/life balance.
• The New View– Simply put, some people don’t want to be paid for creating PowerPoint decks that sit in an corner office and are never used.  The best corporate strategist love seeing things created that they have helped to shape.

Myth 3 – Perfectionists Wanted

• The Myth – Your presentations and recommendations must look perfect
• Why The Myth Exists – Corporate strategy groups used to resemble big strategy consultancies.  These firms required their content and presentations to be perfect because it reflected on the quality of their work.  Corporate strategy groups assumed that attention to detail was just as critical for them.
• The New View – An unpolished presentation makes other functions feel more comfortable about adding input.  This makes it easier to gain buy-in from other functions which is critical to corporate strategy success.  Keeping it raw sends the signal that you are looking to build or shape the strategy.

Myth 4 – Cookie-Cutter Leadership

• The Myth – The leadership skills required for Corporate Strategy are the same as any other function
• Why The Myth Exists – Companies want strategy to “fit-in” with the rest of the organization, so they treat it like any other function.  Leading that function requires motivating a team, representing strategy as a Subject Matter Expert, and communicating a vision.  Therefore, firms wanted to hire great managers…not great analyzers.
• The New View – Most employees in corporate strategy are highly motivated by the work and require minimal direction.  Additionally, no one wants to hire a “Strategy Expert” so the role of Subject Matter Expert (SME) on cross-functional teams doesn’t apply.  The best corporate strategists are Subject Matter Questioners (SMQ) who possess a broad knowledge of business with the ability to link it together.

Photo by pshutterbug via flickr

Now that businesses are starting to embrace Twitter, there have been some fascinating examples of great customer service.  Ford Motor Company is helping customers find parts, solving problems with accessories, and escalating customer service requests.  Comcast appears to be the Gold Standard with their Comcast Cares account which is solving customer problems with equipment, answering questions about service features.  Bloggers are also helping companies by raving about great experiences.

Photo By CarrotCreative

Can we scale it?

• Be Prepared For A Flood – We all know Twitter is growing very rapidly, and as more people learn about great Twitter customer service, you can count on more requests for service.
• 24 Hours; 7 days – Companies that don’t have this staffed around the clock with clear processes and control will suffer as customers rush to the site.

Who will own it?

• Not the Social Media Team – The Social Media team often start this process and are stuck with owning it as it grows.  Good customer service over Twitter depends on fast responses to customer problems.  But, because the organization considers Twitter to be “social media” (read:  confusing), the responsibility for managing these usually falls to the team handling social media.
• Integrate into Customer Service - Ideally, customer service should own the process, staff for it, and tie metrics to it.  Ideally, this means 24 hours, 7 day a week coverage, a dedicated team of individuals, and clear metrics integrated with the rest of the customer service.

Can we handle the truth?

• Get Ready for Negativity – Every executive will tell you that they are ready and willing to hear what their customers have to say, until they actually hear it.  By committing your business to open customer service through Twitter, you are tying your name directly to negative customer feedback.
• Manage Your Brand – Tying your brand to both positive feedback and negative feedback can aggravate your Brand Managers.  The millions of dollars spent on advertising and promotion can be compromised by a  few snarky Tweets and a well-written blog.

It doesn’t surprise me that many major companies like Microsoft aren’t fully using their Twitter accounts.  Sure, it can be powerful, but if not managed correctly, 140 characters can destroy years of successful marketing.

Photo By Carrot Creative from Flickr

Facebook is so worried about Twitter that they are creating monetary incentives to keep people on Facebook to check their statuses.  Mashable provides great coverage, as always:

Facebook Credits seem to (be) Facebook’s baby steps into the world of virtual currency. Right now, users can only give credits to friends for sharing great posts or having a status people like. However, it isn’t a far stretch for credits to be the medium in which people pay for things on Facebook applications or even pay for things on other websites via Facebook Connect. Imagine connecting to Amazon and buying a new mouse with a couple thousand credits.

But seriously, will anyone buy these to give to their friends?  Facebook has struggled with monetization of gifts for friends, and this is no time for users, particularly in Facebook’s demographic, to be spending money frivolously.

Rather than paying for credits, which seems to be unrealistic, Facebook should study its data to find the best creators of content and provide them with free credits to get the virutal economy in information rolling.  Giving credits to the best content creators will allow them to “trickle-down” the credits to those they recognize as providing great content.

Great Content Recognizes Great Content

• We can safely assume that Facebook knows more about us than our actual friends do.  Facebook should mine their data to find the users who share the most links, that are most commented/liked, and that are re-shared with others.
• Users who can create good content are more fitted to recognize great content than users with money to burn.  Having good users recognize content increase the value to Facebook for that recognition.

Let Great Content Providers Trickle-Down the Facebook Wealth

• Selling Facebook Credits will put power in the hands of those with wealth; this conflicts with a basic principle of Social Media, let the users determine what is good content.
• Good content creators can give credits to other good creators who will then do the same continue to “spread the wealth”.  Sound like socialism?  Well, it’s actually more like the theory behind Trickle-Down economics.

Existing creators of good content rewarding others who can create good content will provide Facebook with much more relevant, and therefore more financially valuable, data.  By selling the credits, not only will the program look silly and likely fail, the data created by the program would not be as valuable as allowing the best users to highlight where others are doing the right thing.

Will Wright has created some of the best video games in history including SimCity, The Sims, and (slightly less successfully),  Spore. Will Wright’s keynote speech during the Web 2.0 2009 Conference was billed as “A Conversation”.  It was by far and away the most talked about keynote of the entire convention that had implications far beyond video games.

So why was everyone interested in what Will Wright had to say about Web 2.0?  Well, the man can see the future and his insights were invaluable.  Here’s how what Will Wright had to say and how it impacts Social Media Strategy:

Don’t Educate Me; Motivate Me

• “Education is not the filling of the pail, but the spark of the fire.  I’m interested in how to get kids motivated.  Once they are motivated, get out of the way, and they will learn themselves.”

• Impact: Let wikipedia provide the facts, give your users frameworks or a set of tools.  I see many Social Media Strategies along the lines of “Our site will educate customers on how to improve their daily lives.”  Facts are a commodity on the internet right now.  What matters to your users is how they can APPLY THE FACTS to their specific needs.

Keep (The Content) About Me

• “My central premise in game design is that people are narcissistic.  The more you make it about them, the more they like it.”
  
• Impact - Study the deep detail behind what your users or customers want or need, and then, with laser-like focus, give them what they need.  Companies have many great ideas about what they THINK people want, but so rarely do they understand the customer enough to give them what they want.
• So rarely does our content truly match up with what our customers want.  Talk to your market research department, study what the blogs are saying, or RUN A TWITTER SEARCH!  Just make sure you aren’t guessing.

Revolve the Universe Around Me

• “The Web allows us to make games asynchronously.  Spore was a Massively Single Player Online Game; you are God in your own universe, but you are affected by others.”
• IMPACT: Give users the ability to access your content on their own terms.  Many companies have to measure Social Media Strategy with metrics like page views or unique visitors, but forcing measurements like that do not easy ways for users to see your content.

BusinessWeek’s March 23-30, 2009 issue focuses on Smart Ideas for Tough Times which describes how managers are trying new things to weather the downturn.  The most interesting part of the series covers 11 management ideas that are the basics of any business education, but were quite revolutionary at the time.

This 4 part series (See Part 1 here, See Part 2 here, See Part 3 here) will examine these ideas alongside social media to see if we are witnessing a world-changing idea, or just another management fad.  First, here is the recap from BusinessWeek:

Some of the most powerful and lasting management methods were launched during tough times, when companies needed new ways to manage costs and grow. Here is a look back at some of the biggest ideas over the past 100 years.

1910 – The Assembly Line – Explanation

1920 – Market Segmentation – Explanation

1931 – Brand Management – Explanation

1943 – Skunk Works – Explanation

1950s – Lean Manufacturing – Explanation

1967 – Scenario Planning – Explanation

1973 – 360 Review – Explanation

1987 – Six Sigma – Explanation

1989 – Outsourcing – Explanation

1990 – Reengineering – Explanation

2000s – Open Innovation – Explanation

#11 – Reengineering

The Breakthrough: Radically redesign business processes to make them more efficient by removing functional silos and focusing resources on end to end processes.

The Question: Can Social Media help businesses effectively organize resources around complete processes to make them more efficient?

The Answer: Yes, empahtically!

• Cross-functional teams are at the heart of reengineering, and these teams often suffer from poor communication and unclear responsibilities.  Creative applications of Social Media will help cross-functional teams more quickly and easily share information that is relevant and accurate.
• Organizing a business around processes requires suppliers of the inputs to be well aware of the needs of the customers of the outputs.  Social Media improves the communication at all levels of the supply chain allowing for problems to be quickly solved.

#12 – Open Innovation

The Breakthrough: Companies should look beyond their R&D departments to customers, suppliers, and even competitors for innovative ideas.

The Question: Can Social Media help companies discover ideas while still allowing for control over Intellectual Property rights?

The Answer:  Probably Yes

• Open Innovation uses many of the same technologies that launched Social Media.  It follows that Social Media will help Open Innovation succeed because they both allow for increased information distributed to the people who will find it most useful.
• The problem is whether all companies can adopt the concept.  Open Innovation works for Starbucks because a competitor would have a difficult time implementing an idea without the huge distribution network Starbucks has.
• Other industries, like Hedge Funds or Restaurants, will never completely adopt Open Innovation because they can gain no competitive advantage they could protect from competitors

BusinessWeek’s March 23-30, 2009 issue focuses on Smart Ideas for Tough Times which describes how managers are trying new things to weather the downturn.  The most interesting part of the series covers 11 management ideas that are the basics of any business education, but were quite revolutionary at the time.

This 4 part series (See Part 1 here, See Part 2 here) will examine these ideas alongside social media to see if we are witnessing a world-changing idea, or just another management fad.  First, here is the recap from BusinessWeek:

Some of the most powerful and lasting management methods were launched during tough times, when companies needed new ways to manage costs and grow. Here is a look back at some of the biggest ideas over the past 100 years.

1910 – The Assembly Line – Explanation

1920 – Market Segmentation – Explanation

1931 – Brand Management – Explanation

1943 – Skunk Works – Explanation

1950s – Lean Manufacturing – Explanation

1967 – Scenario Planning – Explanation

1973 – 360 Review – Explanation

1987 – Six Sigma – Explanation

1989 – Outsourcing – Explanation

1990 – Reengineering – Explanation

2000s – Open Innovation – Explanation

# 7 – 360 Review

The Breakthrough – Employees get a better perspective from feedback collected from their supervisors, peers, subordinates, and customers/suppliers

Question – Can Social Media provide a more candid, well-rounded assessment of one’s performance?

• Answer:  Yes, with limitations
  
• Social Media greatly improves the ability for managers to assess their talent.  It is now easier to reach more people that can provide feedback as well as reduce the time it takes to collect the feedback – the major complaint with 360 Review
• Because the technologies make it quicker to communicate, employees can receive feedback in real-time, making it more relevant and more actionable
• However, 360 Review feedback requires anonymity which, if not managed properly, can take away the benefits of reach and speed

# 8 – Six Sigma

The Breakthrough: Quantifying processes through statistics to improve and control their outputs

Question – Can Social Media improve business processes through identifying defects and improving outputs?

• Answer:  Nope, not even worth it
• Six Sigma removes subjectivity and boils processes down to data and statistics.  There is no room for interpretation in Six Sigma, and this is important because it is used to make jet engines, medical devices, and nuclear technology
• Social Media is most successful when it facilitates the exchange of ideas and information between people who share the same interests.  It works best when it’s open to interpretation

#9 - Outsourcing

The Breakthrough: Identifying partners who specialize at performing complementary tasks for an organization at a fraction of the cost

Question – Can Social Media provide more opportunities for companies to focus on the tasks they do well and pay for tasks that are not a differentiating part of the value they bring to customers?

• Answer:  No, value comes after the fact
• A company should outsource tasks that distract from their ability to improve product value.  This is why most companies outsource processes like Benefits Administration, Facilities Management, and – interestingly enough – Customer Service.  Many brilliant leaders have weighed the value these provide and determined that profit maximization comes from hiring these outside.
• With Social Media, you can learn the impact of these decisions through a richer discussion with your customers.  Social media allows you to better listen and quantify the level of customer dissatisfaction associated with the outsourcing decisions your are making.

BusinessWeek’s March 23-30, 2009 issue focuses on Smart Ideas for Tough Times which describes how managers are trying new things to weather the downturn.  The most interesting part of the series covers 11 management ideas that are the basics of any business education, but were quite revolutionary at the time.

This 4 part series (See Part 1 here) will examine these ideas alongside social media to see if we are witnessing a world-changing idea, or just another management fad.  First, here is the recap from BusinessWeek:

Some of the most powerful and lasting management methods were launched during tough times, when companies needed new ways to manage costs and grow. Here is a look back at some of the biggest ideas over the past 100 years.

1910 – The Assembly Line – Explanation

1920 – Market Segmentation – Explanation

1931 – Brand Management – Explanation

1943 – Skunk Works – Explanation

1950s – Lean Manufacturing – Explanation

1967 – Scenario Planning – Explanation

1973 – 360 Review – Explanation

1987 – Six Sigma – Explanation

1989 – Outsourcing – Explanation

1990 – Reengineering – Explanation

2000s – Open Innovation – Explanation

#4 – Skunk Works

The Breakthrough – Lockheed Martin organized an autonomous, high-performance team separated from bureaucracy to develop a plane in 143 days.

The Question:  Can Social Media improve productivity by minimizing the organizational need for bureaucracy?

• Answer:  Somewhat, but not completely
• We like to complain about bureaucracy, but it has a purpose in organizations.  Don’t believe me?  Well look around and talk to people in the world’s largest organizations.  If bureaucracy were not a competitive necessity, it would not be present in ALL of the world’s largest firms.  Skunk Works was a success because it gave TOP TALENT the ability to work around the controls required to make a large organization run efficiently.
• For non-Skunk Works teams, made up of Typical Talent where control and oversight are necessary, Social Media can streamline the governance process through more timely communication.  It can allow teams to break from painful state-gate cycles to move to an environment of more iterative, constant feedback.

# 5 – Lean Manufacturing

The Breakthrough: From Toyota, an approach to efficiency that allocates resources only to those processes that create value for the customer.

The Question:  Can Social Media identify and improve those processes that create value for the customer?

• Answer:  Not really
• Social Media is all about communication which is more art than science.  In order to improve communication skills, you have to practice.  Practicing communication has a fuzzy connection, at best, to creating consumer value
• There’s a soft argument around Social Media democratizing communication to allow front-line employees to identify processes, but most modern production facilities have processes/systems in place already to do this.

#6 – Scenario Planning

The Breakthrough: Shell Oil improved strategic planning by creating scenarios, or possible outcomes, that take into account the combined effect of many different possible factors.

The Question:  Can Social Media improve strategy by offering a better view of the possible future?

• Answer:  Yes, emphatically
• Good strategy is hard evaluate because it can only be measured in hindsight.  Bad strategic decisions are is easy to justify because you can always tie a bad outcome to something not considered in the strategy.  Social Media can offer exponentially more points of view on the future than currently used by strategy managers and consultancies.
• Social Media can also improve the quantification of probabilities of possible outcomes through technologies that can collect and measure the perspectives of millions of people.  These technologies are in their infancy, but will scale rapidly as more data is collected and analyzed.

BusinessWeek’s March 23-30, 2009 issue focuses on Smart Ideas for Tough Times which describes how managers are taking innovative approaches to weather the downturn.  The most interesting part of the series covers 11 breakthrough management ideas that are now the basics of any business school education.

This 4 part series will examine these breakthroughs alongside social media to see if we are witnessing a world-changing idea, or just another management fad.  First, here is the recap from BusinessWeek:

Some of the most powerful and lasting management methods were launched during tough times, when companies needed new ways to manage costs and grow. Here is a look back at some of the biggest ideas over the past 100 years.

1910 – The Assembly Line – Explanation

1920 – Market Segmentation – Explanation

1931 – Brand Management – Explanation

1943 – Skunk Works – Explanation

1950s – Lean Manufacturing – Explanation

1967 – Scenario Planning – Explanation

1973 – 360 Review – Explanation

1987 – Six Sigma – Explanation

1989 – Outsourcing – Explanation

1990 – Reengineering – Explanation

2000s – Open Innovation – Explanation

#1 – The Assembly Line

The Breakthrough: Ford dramatically lowered labor costs through standardized parts.  This made an expensive technology cheaper and therefore increased mass market demand.

The Question:  Can Social Media make expensive technologies more affordable for the Mass Market?

• Answer:  Probably Not – Social Media makes communication faster and more relevant through online social networks.  This makes knowledge workers more productive than in the past.  However, big industries that rely on knowledge workers (pharmaceuticals, software, finance) can profit more from using this information to increase features, and therefore price.
• Additionally, while collaboration is now less expensive, globalization and other technological improvements have already made streamlined labor costs a barrier to entry in most industries rather than a competitive advantage.

# 2 – Market Segmentation

The Breakthrough: GM divided customers into groups based on their unique needs and focused their products on meeting those needs.  This decreased competition and cannibalization between their brands.

The Question:  Can Social Media allow companies to better identify and meet distinct consumer needs?

• Answer:  Absolutely Yes  – Tremendous amounts of data are being created by users of social networks and organized by marketing-savvy companies.  A company’s biggest challenge is how to make sense out of all thea data that is out there.
• Eventually, managers will have the tools to micro-segment their consumers and offer highly specialized products that do not contain features that would compete with other products they offer.

# 3 – Brand Management

The Breakthrough: Organize brands into “mini-businesses” that must differentiate themselves from both internal and external competitors to survive.

The Question:  Can Social Media allow organizations to more effectively align their resources to maximize total profit?

• Answer:  Sometimes – Social Media can extend the communication and collaboration ushered in by the first generation of internet technologies.  Larger organizations with many brands competing for internal resources will benefit from improved information flow, but this will be a one-time, medium-size improvement rather than a radical redesign.
• However, the majority of the benefits from improved internal communication have been realized through the adoption of first generation internet technologies.

We’ve all said something on the internet we wish we would could take back.  It could be a a rush to judgement, or even pure stupidity like this classic exchange between a Cisco Applicant and a Cisco Employee.

A prospective Cisco hire (@theconnor) tweeted:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

A Cisco channel partner advocate responded with a tweet of their own

Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

By Kevin Marks

Step 1 – Hit “Eject”, Disconnect!

Leave behind any internet capable device and physically Eject yourself to another location.  Take a walk, get a coffee, or go to your favorite store.  It doesn’t matter.  Right now you need your thoughts to be Disconnected from your emotions.  Preventing yourself from over-reacting to the situation can make what seems to be severe much more calm.

Step 2 – Redirect your Intellect

Now that your emotions have settled, you’re going to need to start thinking again.  But don’t rush back into email, Redirect your focus to sites that make you think.  Your mind should be nice and clear from Step 1, so here’s a to chance to get your Intellect working for you again.

Step 3 – Collect, before you Reflect

Listen or read as many points of view as possible before trying to make sense of them.  Collecting a variety of feedback helps you see all sides of the issue.  Don’t try to make sense of any one person’s words until you have a complete set of information.  No scientist would make a conclusion off of one data point, so just observe all the feedback then Reflect on what it all means.

Step 4 – Reconnect, but not Perfect

You have relaxed, prepared your mind, and thought about the issue.  It’s time to now Reconnect with your community.  However, fully understand that it is impossible to make everyone happy.  Don’t worry about Perfecting your response, once it feels 80% good, get it out there.

Step 5 – Correct and Neglect

You’ve put a lot of effort into understanding the situation and probably learned how your personality may have caused the problem.  Correct that flaw and you won’t have to go through this stress again.  Whether its ego, laziness to proofread, or bad taste in humor, you probably have received this type of negative feedback sometime before.

Here’s the key, you need to Neglect that this ever happened.  Put it behind you and move on.  If it’s on your mind, it will continue to impact your life.

In summary, a bad situation on the internet will happen to all of us.  What determines success is the ability to understand and address the situation so that you can prevent it from ever happening again.

I am constantly hearing from executives and leaders, “Okay, I get Facebook and Twitter…what’s next?” Even though most companies haven’t fully embraced the second growth of web development, smart managers are deploying Web 2.0 technologies with an eye on how to scale based on what might come next.

The easiest way to impress your manager is to answer, “The Semantic Web”.  Here’s an explanation from “Where is the web going?

Twitter Adds Semantic Human Meaning To Web Documents

Think of how your Tweets add to the description of documents you link.  People are posting pithy descriptions of web links specifically designed to attract others to the content.

What could possibly be better for the development of the semantic web than humans describing web pages?  Current semantic technologies ask the author of the document to describe it or try to derive meaning from existing descriptive data in the document.  With Twitter, we have a concise user description of a web page that means something to others.

Improve Twitter – Replace URL Shorteners With a “Link” Field

My favorite URL Shortener, bit.ly, uses 19 of 140 characters before you can add a description to the tweet.  However, if there were a “Link” field that follows the Tweet, we could increase the description (or meaning) by 15.7%.   Here’s an example:

Old Tweet -

New Tweet -

More characters = More Meaning

By adding the LINK field, we can free up 19 extra characters for me to add “co-workers, & family”.  This provides a better description of the document AND removes all the crazy looking characters that can intimidate novice users.

Photo by ChrisL_Ak

Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta write an ambiguous, bland, and wrong piece on Forbes.com about the need for CEOs to use Social Networking technologies.  Their seemingly decent argument cites Web 2.0 Evangelists (no one particular, just the “evangelists” in general) who apparently claim the following:

Web 2.0 evangelists, on the other hand, argue that social software can be used to boost productivity. They say it can facilitate an open-ended corporate culture that values transparency, collaboration and innovation. Most important, it can be an effective way to build a customer-centric organization that not only communicates authentically but also listens to customers and learns from that interaction.

Of course all this is true, but two of the examples they use, Blendtec CEO’s “Will it Blend” series, and Zappo’s CEO Twitter Feed, feel like a simple marketing channel.

Simply put, CEOs make a lot of money because they are good at managing talented people.

Average CEO of an S&P 500 company was $10.5 million in 2008

Say whatever you want about executive pay…but CEOs have unique skills and are therefore highly compensated.  At $10.5 million a year, and assuming no sleep, that’s about $1,200 an hour.  Shareholders demand that CEOs should focus on what they do best…

CEOs Would Need to Spend Many Hours Building Social Media Skills

It takes a decent amount of experience to use this technology authentically without sounding artificial.  And, the only way to do this is “learning by doing”.  So, if anyone says, “It only takes a couple of seconds to Tweet”, remind them that the best Twitter users are ones that have practiced writing pithy updates.

Johnathan Schwartz is the rare example of a CEO who can do this, but I suspect there is some ghost-writing behind this blog.

The Best CEOs Hire People Who Are Smarter Than They Are

Find a social media expert, apparently they’re everywhere.  But hire them and have them communicate to you like any other functional leader in your organization.  Find a strategic thinker who can drive change at all levels of the organization to impact your business objectives.  Don’t have a CEO spend their valuable time learning Social Media skills when they are experts in the much rarer skills of Management.

Now that all your friends have stopped wondering whether or not they like the New Facebook Changes, we can study what this is doing for Facebook and it’s users.  First, here’s Jared W. Smith with a great summary of the changes:

The area where you enter status updates has been made into a more ambiguous “publisher” which will post status updates, notes, photos, and the like. …  A lot’s been made of a comparison to Twitter, but I think FriendFeed is a far more effective analogy because of the range of items you can share … Facebook was pretty straightforward to use because a status update was a status update, a photo post was a photo post, and the like. It’s all been melded together now…

Where’s the Real-Time Search?

With all the recent talk about Twitter threatening Google (unlikely, Google has massive amounts of personal data) why didn’t Facebook include a Real-Time Search like Twitter?  For example, this weekend I wanted see which friends were at the South by Southwest conference (SXSW) but couldn’t.  So I went through hundreds of updates trying to find out.

Facebook is Forcing  Friend Categorization

The seemingly intentional omission of real-time search suggests that Facebook’s strategy is to solve for real-time search by forcing Friend Categorization.   I found myself wanting to organize friends into a “tech” friend group because those would be the most likely attendees of SXSW.

Friend Tagging/Categorizing is Insanely Valuable to Facebook

Facebook benefits if users are labeling, tagging, and categorizing their network.  Most of us aren’t self-aware enough to properly label ourselves, so having our network label us (anonymously) provides a hyper-accurate categorization of who we are.

Search is probably coming…but not until we’re all labeled

It’s easy for Facebook to implement real-time search and it is valuable to users.  Facebook is intentionally waiting to roll it out until we’ve all done our job helping Facebook categorize ourselves.   As a user…I don’t know if I’ll ever spend the time to organize everyone.  As a strategist, I congratulate you Facebook.  Great move.

Social Media Elitist Michael Gray called BS on all the people who are “doing nothing” but creating crap on social media networks:

This weekend I watched an amazing video from Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs at a Ted Conference, and what really hit home is how many people struggle to be new media douchebags in a web 2.0 world. If you’re the kind of person who wants to have 50,000 twitter friends, be a power Digg user, make the front page of  Techmeme, get mentioned on Techcrunch, avoid getting mentioned in Valleywag, and it isn’t filling your wallet, then you are a Web 2.0 Weenie Living on …(bad) Social Media Economics.

Your Network Sucks; Weenies Have Diverse Networks

Social Media Elitists perceive that “Everyone is a Social Media Expert” because they associate a large network with a good network.  You may influence thousands of people; but they are the same types of people…Social Media Experts.  If your network contains a true cross-section of corporate America, (i.e. companies with cash flow), it becomes apparent that no one understands the details of social media strategy.

We are Weenies, You are Elitist World of Warcraft Players

Technology gets better as it is adopted by the mainstream.  Increased volume reduces cost.  Increased demand improves functionality.  There are so many experts because there is so much opportunity.  You recognized a good idea before most of the world did, Congratulations!.  Now keep up the good work and let’s find a way to make this scale.

You’re Not the Audience Weenies Are Trying To Reach

My favorite marketing professor, David Rosenthal, casually remarked, “If you don’t understand a commercial, you’re not in the demographic.”  We’re not writing for you.  We’re writing for people who read an introduction to Twitter on Slate.  We’re interested in the executive who was flipping through Time Magazine.

Mashable’s wonderful update on new Facebook explains many of the changes, including a link to the most relevant changes for social media marketers.  In the Opportunities section, they highlight these 4 points:

Opportunities

1. Stronger Interaction with Fans
Because the Wall tab will become the focus, Pages will feel much more active and dynamic than ever before. This will encourage more participation and interaction between brands and their Fans.

2. Increased Virality
Content posted on the new Wall will also show up in Fans’ News Feeds more often. This means that posting updates to your Page is much more viral and has the potential to drive significant traffic to your Page.

3. More Ways to Communicate

The Status Update will provide a powerful way for Pages to share short interesting blurbs with Fans in a way that is less obtrusive than an Update delivered to their inboxes. Brands that use Twitter can sync their accounts so that selected Tweets will automatically post to Facebook as Status Updates.

4. Specific Landing Page for Non-Fans

The Wall tab will be the point of entry for all Fans when they visit a Page (with the idea that they’ll first be exposed to the newest content). When it comes to non-fans, Page admins will be able to choose which tab they’d like to use as the landing page. This means that if a Page has a new application or custom content that they’d like to promote, they can set this as the point of entry for all new visitors to the Page.

But seriously…how many brands are you a fan of?  Probably your company and a few others to make former high school classmates think you’re cooler now than when you were 16.

Don’t recycle Twitter Content

The biggest implication is in Mashable Opportunity #3, More Ways to Communicate.  Specifically, “a powerful way for Pages to share short interesting blurbs with Fans”.  However, don’t take the lazy way out and recycle your Twitter messages; your fans are interested in you so give them more interesting stuff than what you are spamming to the legions on Twitter.

Create short URLs from your domain

If you are providing links to content you host, don’t bog your URL down in a mess of directories.  Additionally, if you have to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl.com avoid the random letters and make it your own.  Simple is key, for example, a post from CareerBuilder.com offering advice for job seekers should read like this

“Tips to make your resume stand out to recruiters – careerbuilder.com/resumetips”

Provide “How-To”, not “Buy Me”

No one wants to see an advertisement in their news feed, that’s why facebook puts their ads on the side.  Make your updates a source of information to help your fans make a purchase decision.  Sorry Skittles, not much you can do here…however Guitar Center, pay attention.  A great Guitar Center status update would read something like the following:

“How do guitar strings affect the sound of your music? – http://bit.ly/GuitarStrings“

Beth Kanter wrote an incredibly relevant piece on the importance of story-telling in presentations.  She cites Andy Goodman in her article:

Andy is a master at storytelling.  In his workshops, he offers the following formula for a storytelling based on Hollywood script writing:

* Introduce the central character
* Inciting moment:  something bad happens to the character that will prevent them from achieving a goal related to the goal of your presentation
* Barrier to resolution #1:  Character tries to solve the problem, but can’t
* Barrier to resolution #2:  Characater tries to solve the problem, but can’t
* Resolution:  What you’re going to share in your presentation
* Widen the Lens:  The bigger picture

Sounds simple enough…but not all of us are master story-tellers. How do you know if your story is good?

• Does your story give your audience an lesson they can use?  – Give your audience the ability to apply a lesson from the experience of someone else
• Is the ending of the story an excellent beginning to your presentation? – It’s tempting to tell a joke, but don’t take time away from communicating your message
• Would your audience tell the story to someone else? – Don’t confuse this with simplicity; the point is to create a group who can spread your message to others
• Have you practiced telling the story to someone else? Don’t test your story on the audience; master the timing by practicing with a friend or colleague

Last night I gave a presentation to the Chicago Chapter of the Scleroderma Foundation about the basics of Social Media and implications to a non-profit.  You can download and use the presentation here. Scleroderma or systemic sclerosis, is a chronic connective tissue disease generally classified as one of the autoimmune rheumatic diseases.

They had 3 great questions that I would love to solicit your feedback

1. How could we use Social Media around goals as well as discussions?

2. How does Social Media involvement at the national level differ from the local level?

3. Should we lock down certain areas of discussion to specific people or keep it open and transparent?

We look forward to your responses!

Download Slides Here

Diversity of skills and experience is key to making a Social Media Initiative stick.  Many companies rush to staff a social media initiative by assembling a diverse team across functions, experience, and interests.  However, companies need a balance of skills to succeed and often sway to the extremes by staffing either ALL social media experts or ALL organization insiders.

This matrix can help you staff your team by identifying skill gaps, both in social media and in organizational change, that can help you fill key roles in your initiative.

When you are done, ask yourself this question:   “Does this look like a winning Bingo card?”  If yes, then identify your gaps and look to bring in Subject Matter Experts to help strengthen your initiative.

Download Slides Here

Organizational Change Skills

Influences senior leadership

• High – Has relationships that can be used to influence change outside a presentation setting
• OK – Presented compelling arguments to senior management

Deep industry experience

• High – Has 10+ years in industry and deep relationships with suppliers and partners
• OK – Has 5+ years in industry and contacts with suppliers and partners

Creates new metrics and communicates their importance

• High – Developed metrics beyond revenue/profit for a new business initiative
• OK – Has used new metrics to inform business decisions

Empathizes with customers

• High – Conducted customer ethnography to develop actionable insights
• OK – Customer facing experience in a sales, service, or marketing function

Rapidly iterates technology projects

• High – Led a major technology initiative requiring quick implementation to requirements changes
• OK – Participated on a technology team to define enhancements and changes

Leverages experience in a corporate change initiative

• High – Has led a major corporate change initiative like Six Sigma or Innovation
• OK – Has participated on a corporate change initiative team as a Subject Matter Expert

Social Media Skills

Understands the details of good content

• High – Has a high traffic website
• OK – Writes content 2-3 times per week

Analyzes qualitative data to determine audience needs

• High – Developed insights from qualitative consumer data
• OK – Collected and understands limits of qualitative data

Surfaces diverse information from online resources

• High –Gathers information from diverse RSS feeds
• OK – Familiar with getting information beyond “Google

Exhibits patience with community detractors

• High – Manages an online community with 100+ members
• OK – Has added to discussions of controversial topics in an online forum

Turns virtual connections into real-world connections

• High – Participates in real-world “meet-ups” of online communities
• OK – Has developed REAL relationships with people met online

Creates buzz through pithy writing

• High – Has a high number of followers on a site like Twitter
• OK – Can write headlines that catch your attention

Download Slides Here

I’ve seen a couple tweets pop up from managers recognizing employees for a great job. Rochelle Grayson started some thoughts back in May of last year, that I thought should be built upon.

First and Foremost, It SHOULD NEVER replace the handwritten note made famous by Jack Welch, but for quick “atta-boys” or “atta-girls”, it can go a long way

1 – Quick – 140 characters, bam.  It’s a perfect medium for quick recognition for a job well done.  I’ve seen so many managers get nervous and hesitate to properly recognize their employees…but this is a overwhelmingly easy way to give quick feedback.

2 – Public – I would love for my followers to see that I did a great job at “making a coherent argument for an idea in a meeting…”   A simple @benphoster, and I’m working nights to come up with better arguments.

3 – New - As of right now…no one is doing this.  Show your team that you’re one of those “forward-thinking” manager types that they’ve been hearing so much about.  Set up a #tag for your team to allow the group to publicly see the motivation.

BUT NEVER LET IT REPLACE A HANDWRITTEN NOTE!

I’ve heard of Social Media being aligned in a bunch of different functions across the organization.  In a perfect world, Social Media is its own function with the leader reporting directly to the CEO.  But…we’re not quite there yet.  TheSocialOrganization.com had a great post about corporate initiatives being staffed in its own “function”, but until we get there, here are 3 common approaches and their pros/cons.

Marketing

Pros

• Easier to tie results to key business metrics (revenue, profit, brand awareness)
• More natural fit for organization makes it easier to gain stakeholder buy-in

Cons

• Can limit potential – initiatives focused on increasing sales
• Customer perception of spam – lame company attempts at Twitter

Information Technology

Pros

• Easier to iterate/change technology applications
• Employees with more experience in the space

Cons

• Over-engineered solutions that complicate content
• Many tech departments aren’t known for being user-friendly

Strategy

Pros

• Provide longer-term, “big-bet” focus to the initiative
• Able to apply value to multiple organization functions

Cons

• Can be focused too focused on “great thoughts” instead of quick action
• Often balancing multiple strategic initiatives which could divert attention from Social Media

Download Slides Here

Shortly after taking a Social Media position, I realized 1- How many of us there are and 2-Titles are ubiquitous.  At the recent TechCocktail 10 in Chicago, I overheard someone yell  ”What the f_ck does being a Social Media Expert even mean?”

Certainly there are more people building knowledge in the field…but it’s not as many as you think…we’re a growing community that ALL USE THE SAME METHOD OF COMMUNICATION. However, with any large technology change (think internet and/or  e-commerce), corporations want to maximize profit and prevent being beat by the competition.

This fun + profit equation is why you are seeing so many Social Media Experts; it’s not necessarily a a bad ting.

1 – Your network isn’t as diverse as you think

Look, I know you think you have a diverse network, but given the low level of adoption, anyone you have connected with is really into social media.  It’s not that everyone is a social media expert, it’s that your network is more insular than you thought.  You are exposed to all of them(us).

2 – Social Media Is Fun

Sharing ideas with other people is pleasurable.  This natural enjoyment causes the “groundwell” that you are perceiving as a large number of “experts”.  With layoffs and a down economy, people are craving professional assignments that are both interesting and in-demand.

3 – Easier to Use Technology

Connecting to people over the internet is not new.  Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) were around before most self-proclaimed Social Media Experts were born…but they were very hard to use.  Recent technology is not only making it easier to publish, but easier to have your content reach others (how many of us now have Aunts/Uncles on Facebook?)

4 – Businesses Like Making Money

Never underestimate this classic economic point.  In fact, most major technological change has been made mainstream by businesses seeking to adopt it.  It still makes me uncomfortable seeing businesses on facebook, but it’s good for the technology, and good for users(us) in the long run.

5 – Businesses Don’t Possess the Necessary Skills

It’s much more efficient for a business to purchase skills than to try and build them internally.  It is time consuming, risky, and less effective than hiring someone with the requisite skills and experience.  This is why consulting is an industry in the 100s of billions of dollars.

6 – Experts Make More Money

The demand for Expert Services, the inability for anyone to truly define what a Social Media Expert is, and the crap economy that is forcing everyone to find work is what is driving this trend to Social Media Experts.

Again, this isn’t a bad thing.  Technologies generally get better when there is an economic incentive for businesses to pay for the brain-power to make them better.  So, as your Social (Media) Life improves, you can bank on thousands more newly-minted Social Media experts ready to receive your Thank You.

Brandweek reported on Skittle’s move to make their homepage a wiki.  I was directed to a twitter page rather than their wiki page, but the point is clear:  whether or not they achieve their goal of “leveraging what we think are the key consumer social media touchpoints”, they have received a tremendous amount of free publicity (positive and negative) from this.

Rather than rush to copy what Skittles (brilliantly) did, think of taking a bet and FULLY adopting a social media technology boldly and brashly to get some good publicity for your organization.

Here are key considerations:

• Pick the right thing- Mars candy did not let their entire corporate web page be the wiki/twitter.  They picked a good brand.  As Brandweek put it, “The effort underscores Skittles’ brand positioning, which Walker said was ‘a border zone . . . Skittles lives in a world that is unexpected.’ “
• Prepare to respond quickly – Skittles wikipedia page is now under “semi-protection” and there is the dreaded, “This article is written like an advertisement.” at the top of the wikipedia page.  Have a plan to monitor, respond, and manage the move and MAKE SURE that all internal stakeholders are informed of the change.
• Do something different with something familiar – The eTrade baby on twitter is a great example.  eTrade has a ton of brand permission to do something different with their young corporate spokesman.  It is engaging, different, and won’t likely produce a lot of backlash.

Here are some free ideas to exploit:

• Investment Professionals – Open your personal portfolio, debt, and budget numbers to your clients and prospects
• CPG Companies – Put old concept boards your company is no longer developing on a site for people to vote
• Car Dealers – Put your recent sales prices right next to current inventory to allow customers to see what others have actually paid
• Restaurants - Put all your recipes, down to the letter, on a wiki that’s open to the public

What other ideas can you think of?  What will it take to get as much value in the technology as in the publicity?

Forrester’s classic 2007 report on Social Technographics is an easy way to explain the use of Social Media.  I’ve used this construct many times to show how broad social media participation is.  Additionally, this construct increases Social Media Strategy understanding since most everyone has done one of these activities.

Recently, some of the most valuable people in my networks don’t really fall into a class on this ladder.  I’ll propose we call them “Surfacers”.  You know who this person is, it’s the person whose links on facebook or twitter you ALWAYS read.   They don’t add commentary or content, but they play a HUGE role in what you click on every day.

Here is Forrester’s classic construct:

The Surfacer falls somewhere within the Top 5 rungs…but has these unique characteristics

• Digests massive quantities of content through RSS feeds, their friends’ content, and their own curiosity
• Avoids posting content that is super-popular
• Takes pride in ability to share new information
• Focused primarily on sharing information with friends, not with broader community
• Credits friend/source of information

I have no idea how to get to the percentages that Forrester did, but the strategic implication is clear.  These are the “taste-makers” that marketers dream about.  They provide tremendous value to their friends by finding and filtering the best content from around the web.   The implication for content creators is to make it easy for them to find information, determine its uniqueness, and allow them to clearly share and communicate its value with friends.

For Discussion:  Is this a common role in social networks?  Are those who want to play this role constrained by technology?

A great post at davefleet.com outlined eight questions to ask Social Media experts.   Josh Peters at shuaism.com gave some great answers.  Almost as common as Social Media experts are Social Media teams in organizations.  I thought this excerpt was very relevant:

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of seeing people sign up for Twitter, follow ten thousand people (many of whom follow back) to build a substantial following, then start spouting advice as though followers equals expertise. Some of them are experts, for sure. Others, however, seem to have little beyond a big mouth to back their words up.

Almost as annoying, but just as dangerous, are the hordes of traditional practitioners that have realized they need to include social media in their pitches nowadays, but have no experience whatsoever using those tools.

Every company is starting a Social Media group/team/initiative, here are 6 questions to ask your organization’s Social Media team:

1 – Will the team have access to any tool, technology, or website they want?

• Watch for any hesitation towards full and complete access
• Probe for the process required to get access from tech admins and compliance teams
• Sounds like a ridiculous question, right?   It’s not, if admins don’t trust their social media teams, chances are that management doesn’t yet trust them either.  You’ll be surprised how many times you hear “well, we just don’t support Firefox.”

2 – What is your “VPV” – Visitor Value Proposition?

• Watch for any answer that could be translated into “Build it, and they will come”
• Probe for specific examples on why this improves upon the current solutions available to potential visitors
• Many otherwise brilliant senior leaders expect the love they have for their organization is common….but unless you are providing visitor-driven, stunning content, no one cares about your company.

3 – How does the organization deal with negative feedback?

• Watch for a sugar-coated answer that is too good to be true
• Probe for examples of leadership acceptance and response to negative feedback
• Social media teams are trained to expect negative feedback but rarely does management understand the true essence of negative comments that customers, partners, and employees post.

4 – What is the biggest regulatory/compliance restraint facing the social media strategy?

• Watch for answers at the extreme, positive or negative
• Probe for the ability for the organization to respond quickly without bureaucratic constraints
• Every organization faces regulatory constraints.  An answer like  “we’re free to do whatever we want” is naive.   However, some industries simply can’t maximize social media’s potential because of their industry regulations.

5 – Who does the social media team report to?

• Watch for organizational layers without a direct reporting structure to top management
• Probe for the strategic objectives of the function that Social Media is most closely aligned
• I’ve heard of social media groups in marketing, strategy, technology, innovation, and even customer service.  Ideally, the social media team will be it’s own function with a a direct report to the CEO to make management buy-in quicker.

6 – What metrics are management using to measure success?

• Watch for a direct answer with narrowly defined metrics or an ambiguous answer with little thought
• Probe for measurements in other functions that tie to social media objectives and for a set of metrics that work together to measure progress
• Social media has multiple ways to impact the bottom line, but the answer here shows strategic thought given to the business model.  The metrics don’t matter as much as the thought process behind them.

What are good answers to these questions?  What else would you include in this list?

Social Media is a hot topic in the corporate world, but many employees are skeptical of the value it can add to their business.  By viewing Social Media in the context of two recent corporate initiatives (Six Sigma and Innovation ), leaders can learn from a historical management perspective of how to implement the radical change taking place around us.

1 – Six Sigma

• Organization Ability to Understand Difficult Concepts – My three favorite Six Sigma companies, GE, Motorola, and Amazon spent tremendous resources, financial and human, to embed Six Sigma capabilities across their organization.  While the low hanging fruit ripe for Six Sigma may be gone, there is no question that the focus on fixing defects that annoy customers will continue to be critical to organizations.  Just like Six Sigma, Social Media isn’t the easiest concept for people to understand (ever try explaining the value of Twitter to someone?)  Not every employee needs to understand regression analysis but Six Sigma forced all employees to look at their work in the context of a business proces….which brings me to my next point.

• Business Process is a Common Language between Management and Employees – Leadership doesn’t have the time to understand the details behind every function in the organization.  But, Six Sigma tied the day-to-day work of front-line employees to metrics and results that leadership understands and wants quantified.  Businesses will always benefit from effiicient processes, but Social Media strategy execution requires rapid iteration and an almost wiki-like approach to the details of the execution.

2 – Innovation

• Solving Unarticulated Customer Needs – Since the dawn of capitalism, economic value has been created by those who can recognize a customer problem and solve it profitably.  It used to be a competitive advantage to have an innovation focused strategy, but it is now a strategic necessity because most companies have adopted a disciplined, consumer-driven approach to developing new products, services, and business models.  Social Media strategies and execution must follow the same process in place at innovative companies:
  • Ability to Surface Unarticulated Customer Needs – No one specifically said to Twitter, “I need a way to share 140 characters of text in as many ways as possible.”  Rather, the founders listened to people who wanted simplicity in communication and openness in idea sharing.  Social Media teams benefit from a member who knows advanced market research techniques (like ethnography) to surface customer data.
  • Skill to Quantify the Breadth and Intensity of Customer Needs – Just because someone says they need something, doesn’t mean you have to solve it.  Social Media teams must spread their customer insights across the organization to solicit feedback and perspective.  It’s not always a hard number that measures the need for a solution.  But through a diversity of opinion, you can separate customer insights into those that are interesting and also relevant to your business model.
  • Generating Ideas that Solve Problems – The IBM commercials made this concept famous.  But, a simple ideation session can yield a high number of ideas, few of which have staying power because they don’t solve a customer problem.  Social Media teams are prone to adopting fancy technology ideas that aren’t necessarily the solution to a customer problem.  However, they can learn from Innovation’s structured ideation sessions that focus creativity on real problems
  • Focus on Execution over Ideation – Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article shows historical examples of simultaneous discovery like calculus and the telephone.  Simply put, ideas aren’t the magic bullet.  A Social Media team needs to understand that tradeoffs between the idea and reality will be required.  Execution is typically a function of hard work, so as long as the Social Media team can immerse itself in the details required to execute their solution to an unarticulated consumer need, success will not be lost along the path to realization.

• Strategic Risk-Taking over the Long Term – Innovation requires “big bets” often without an immediate payback to the organization’s goals.  Leaders are trained not to argue with the “big bet” principle, but true innovative companies are those that adopt risk-taking and measure management on the ability to take smart risks.  Social Media teams should seek to understand management’s commitment to patience and constant re-calibration of goals and objectives based on findings from constant iterative customer feedback.

For Discussion:  What other hot-button  ”management trends” are relevant to Social Media teams?  How can you leverage past organization-wide initiatives to better suceed in your goal for change?

Seth Godin recently posted Hamster Burial Kits & 998 Other Business Ideas which hit my radar from many eager entrepreneurs.  Not so fast, ideas are only thoughts.  Without solid execution, the idea is worth nothing.  Want more proof?  Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece about “simultaneous discovery” provides a lot of historical background to support the theory of execution over ideation.  Below is a simple analysis to see what words are being used simultaneously to see if any insights can be gained from the ideas generated.

Let’s  start with the statement excerpted from the original post:

Ideas are a dime a dozen. The money is in the execution.

Need proof? For Seth Godin’s Alternative MBA program, this week the nine of us came up with 111 business ideas each. But ideas are only valuable when someone (like you) makes something happen.

5 Quick Thoughts

I only included important words by removing words like “a”, “the”, and the like from the complete list.

• “Service” was the most commonly used word (133 times) which makes me think about the balance of these two ideas
  • “Service” is a fine word for a high-level description, but it is now so generic that any relevant business case needs to put a unique spin on what ’service’ means to get noticed
  • Or….services are so necessary to solving consumer problems that any new idea should have some service feature/component
• “iPhone” was used more than “food” and “phone”, though more people use (and search for!) “food” and “phone“s than use iPhones
• “Restaurant” cracked the top 100; anecdotally, I’ve heard that many restaurants fail
• “People” ranked really high (3rd after my filter) which says emphasizes the (obvious?) point that new ideas must not be fluff, they must relate to people
• “Podcast” (and its derivatives “podcasts”, “podcast)”) was only used 6 times…but it amazes me to see so many new content-rich podcasts around.  Simply put, I wonder how much time podcasting is worth, business wise

Statistics on Words

• 18,949 words - Total words describing 999 ideas
• 174 words – Most words in an idea
• 19.25 words – Average words/idea
• 2 words – least words in an idea

Top Words in an Idea

DISCLAIMER – The intention was to make this quick so I didn’t spend a tremendous amount of time worrying about what words to exclude/combine.  I’d appreciate constructive adjustments in the comments!

#14 – ’service’ – 133 counts – (0.4%)

#16 – ‘company’ – 119 counts – (0.36%)

#18 – ‘people’ – 113 counts – (0.35%)

#22 – ‘Online’ – 78 counts – (0.24%)

#32 – ‘website’ – 59 counts – (0.19%)

#34 – ‘Get’ – 57 counts – (0.18%)

#44 – ’site’ – 46 counts – (0.15%)

#46 – ‘business’ – 44 counts – (0.14%)

#49 – ‘etc.’ – 39 counts – (0.13%)

#57 – ’store’ – 31 counts – (0.1%)

#60 – ‘Consulting’ – 30 counts – (0.1%)

#62 – ‘video’ – 29 counts – (0.1%)

#65 – ‘app’ – 28 counts – (0.09%)

#65 – ‘Create’ – 28 counts – (0.09%)

#65 – ‘Help’ – 28 counts – (0.09%)

#65 – ‘iPhone’ – 28 counts – (0.09%)

#71 – ‘digital’ – 27 counts – (0.09%)

#71 – ‘go’ – 27 counts – (0.09%)

#74 – ‘allows’ – 26 counts – (0.09%)

#74 – ‘book’ – 26 counts – (0.09%)

#74 – ‘way’ – 26 counts – (0.09%)

#77 – ‘based’ – 25 counts – (0.08%)

#77 – ’school’ – 25 counts – (0.08%)

#77 – ‘want’ – 25 counts – (0.08%)

#81 – ‘local’ – 24 counts – (0.08%)

#82 – ‘one’ – 23 counts – (0.08%)

#84 – ‘find’ – 22 counts – (0.07%)

#84 – ‘kids’ – 22 counts – (0.07%)

#88 – ‘companies’ – 21 counts – (0.07%)

#88 – ‘food’ – 21 counts – (0.07%)

#92 – ‘best’ – 20 counts – (0.07%)

#92 – ‘car’ – 20 counts – (0.07%)

#92 – ‘home’ – 20 counts – (0.07%)

#92 – ‘phone’ – 20 counts – (0.07%)

#92 – ’set’ – 20 counts – (0.07%)

#92 – ’students’ – 20 counts – (0.07%)

#92 – ‘Users’ – 20 counts – (0.07%)

#100 – ‘don’t’ – 19 counts – (0.06%)

#100 – ‘good’ – 19 counts – (0.07%)

#100 – ‘more’ – 19 counts – (0.07%)

#100 – ‘new’ – 19 counts – (0.07%)

#100 – ‘restaurant’ – 19 counts – (0.07%)

#100 – ’software’ – 19 counts – (0.07%)

#100 – ‘time’ – 19 counts – (0.07%)

Link to Data Files extracted from Seth Godin’s site

• Raw Data CSV
• Summary CSV