Lumenatti

Reputation portability

2010-08-30T16:13:19Z

If you had a great reputation as an expert in something, you probably worked hard to earn it. Doesn’t matter if its computers or cooking.

What if that reputation didn’t matter? What if every place you went was like the first day of school? You had to start over to build your street cred.

Just imagine, you work for MegaCorp and you are MegaCorp’s resident expert in say, invisible widget design. Inside the four walls of MegaCorp, noone was allowed to develop invisible widgets without following your guidelines. And, because of your rockstardom in invisible widget design, the company’s culture was to not even think about invisible widget design without at least bouncing their idea off of you. For you, life’s pretty good at MegaCorp.

Now, imagine MegaCorp is bought by a rival. The rival has some really smart experts from Sweden you’d love to collaborate with, dream come true, right?

So what if none of the work you’ve done at MegaCorp can be accessed by the Swedes? What if they can’t verify your bleeding edge work? What if they have to simply take your word?

Worse yet, what if because you can’t be vetted as an expert, you can’t get access to the Swede’s email or phone list? Nobody will give it to you. The Swedes are very protective of their experts.

You can’t find them and they don’t even know you exist. So, you work and work and work to make contact and work some more to prove you are as smart as they are. After all, all you want to do is collaborate, right? Well, after a lot of hard work, you achieve your goal and the Swedes will talk to you. Shortly after all of this, you learn of a new Ninja Master in invisible widgets. He’s in Japan. Again, you reach out to introduce yourself and invite him to work with you and the Swedes on the next new thing…Nano Widgets, invisible of course.

The Japanese Ninja Master of Invisible Widgets has never heard of either you or the Swedes. Not interested unless you can prove to him you are worthy. So, you start again.

From him, you hear of a conference in Moscow on the very topics you know cold. Keynoting is a must and should be a lay-up.

The conference organizers have never heard of you. So you offer up some referrals but the conference organizers have never heard of either the Swedes or the Japanese Ninja Master. Feel free to come and listen but no access to the real thought leaders, all of which are from Brazil, Canada and of course, Luxemburg they tell you. You go, but you are sure you won’t get as much out of the conference as you might have otherwise if you’d be recognized as an expert.

After a while you are spending as much time reinventing your reputation as you do plying your trade. It gets tiresome and frankly isn’t worth it, so you retreat from new places where you aren’t recognized and just interact with your small community of peers…who know you and you them.

This somewhat silly example isn’t really so silly. It spotlights the very real weakness of today’s social sphere. Today, reputation isn’t portable beyond the four walls of any community and that’s the social web’s Achilles' heel. A SME (Subject Matter Expert may recognized as an expert in one place but not another).

Right now, the social web is essentially a large group of city states with roads in between. Sure, you can travel from one community and website to another but rarely if ever, the reputation you work so hard to develop in one doesn’t really follow you anywhere you might want to go. See the problem?

And, reputation within any group of users is increasingly important. Why?

Two facts.

One. For many social venues, User Generated Content (UGC) is king. It drives engagement based on interest and relevancy.

Two. Massive swaths of UCG that we encounter are Trojan Horses for malware.

Would any of you click on a blog or forum reply that says ‘Here is a better way:

http://www.lucktec.ru/web&hl=en&ei=Lsp7TM7uG4LAsAO938iCBw&start=10&sa=N

Probably not.

Back to my MegaCorp example. Imagine the above imaginary link I share is posted in a forum for Brazilian experts in Widgets who focuses entirely on pushing the envelope in Invisible Widget design. The link takes you to a video of a question you posed to a speaker at the Russian Conference you attended and the bleeding edge conversation that ensued between yourself and the keynote speaker in which he took notes.

Imagine the video was posted by one of the Brazilian experts who was there and by clicking on his name, you were able to see a universally accepted profile, with all the appropriate ‘merit badges’ he’s earned over the life of his career and the opinions of others (a lot like you see in LinkedIn) you’d probably be a lot more comfortable in clicking a link you don’t recognize.

Being able to quickly quantify someone’s expertise and value would make the social web a much more effective collaborative environment.

Incredible advances are currently being made in the areas of social web Listening and metrics. However, reputation portability innovation is sorely lacking.

It needs to be a focus for the web to stay on track as a useful, healthy and safe place to collaborate for all users.

Technorati Tags: reputation management,reputation portability,social web,web 2.0,social marketing,engagement,social sphere,community

Blago Blast!

2010-08-25T13:40:51Z

I have a friend who started his career almost 30 years ago as a journalist. Today, he is a PR professional who isn’t quite convinced that the world of journalism and marketing has been fundamentally changed by the onslaught of social media. I have one word for him: BLAGO!

I live in Chicago, which sits in Illinois, the “brown-bag-over-the-citizens’-heads” state Almost more than any other place except perhaps Louisiana, our politicians are regularly charged with corruption and do the perp walk straight to prison. Whether that is the fate of our impeached and recently convicted Governor Blagojevich remains to be seen.

His recent conviction on one count of lying to the feds and the hung jury on the remaining 20+ counts is the country’s side show and our three ring circus! Local Chicago media lead with the story every day and cover it in every granular detail. Jury consultants and trial jury members practically have their own TV shows and radio slots. The national news is beginning to ebb but for the most part the online news media has become the BLAGOsphere.

The most interesting journalistic phenomenon to emerge from all the coverage was the new media definition of man-on-the-street interviews. The other morning, one local network affiliate threw the trial coverage to a reporter who was getting reactions from the locals. The set-up for the piece was something like, “And, now Susie Sunshine has reaction from Illinois residents. She’s on the plaza in front of our Michigan Avenue news center.”

Imagine my surprise when the camera cut to Susie. She was indeed on the street, but not standing next to real people ready to opine. Instead, she was in front of a news van. On it’s hood, she had balanced a laptop open to the station’s Facebook page. She proceeded to run her finger under posts as she read them aloud. After reciting four comments, she proudly proclaimed, “And that’s how our local citizens view yesterday’s verdict.”

Wow. That’s the newest school version of the man on the street interview I have seen to date. I think the fourth estate has officially entered the fifth dimension. I wonder what my old school journalist pal thinks.

This cupcake sucks!

2010-08-16T17:47:20Z

I love cupcakes and gleefully embraced the cupcake phase over the last few years. I sought out the best in my home town of Chicago and tried many places and many different kinds of cupcakes. A persnickety friend of mine, whose opinion on food I value, recommended a wonderful, homey spot called Sweet Mandy Bs, which is right in my Lincoln Park neighborhood. It offers wonderful cupcakes with a fine, velvety crumb and yummy butter cream icing that reminds of the stuff my mom made for our birthdays. Sweet Mandy Bs became my standard for a great cupcake experience.

When I travel, I try different cupcakes. Cooking magazines and reviews are my guide for where and what to try. While none quite measure up, it is a fun pursuit. And, since cupcakes are somewhat ubiquitous, it is easy to experiment along the way.

From time to time, the “celebrity rags” show a star eating a cupcake, usually from Sprinkles Bakery in Beverly Hills. The cupcakes look beautiful and I always wanted to try one. One day, a friend forwarded a link heralding the imminent arrival of Sprinkles in Chicago. Cool…I couldn’t wait!

The hype for the opening of the Sprinkles Cupcake Bakery in Chicago was deafening. It was suppose to open last spring a few blocks from my office, but ended up debuting a few weeks ago. I kept walking by the location to see if I could try one of their sweet morsels only to be greeted by construction barriers and piles of debris. Not very appetizing.

Then about a week before its opening, a well-oiled publicity machine cranked out coverage befitting of a Cubs pennant victory. On opening weekend, coupons for a free cupcake went viral. The wait to get in the front door was 4 hours. Really. I don’t care how good the cake, I wouldn’t wait. Fast forward a few weeks. We were having a late summer pot luck dinner for the ComBlu crew at our house. Someone volunteered to bring cupcakes. And, of course, we had to try Sprinkles. Believe it or not, there are still lines, but now with only 10-12 people. I heard through the grapevine, that the way to beat the lines is to have a dozen or so delivered. Perfect. We ordered a few dozen, but were stunned to have to pay $15 for the delivery. Zappos will ship my shoes cross country for free (and back again if I want) and I had to pay $15 delivery charge for cupcakes from a bakery a few blocks away.

I wish I could say it was worth it! In a word, they sucked. The texture of the cake was more like country bread than cake and had a heavy feel in the mouth. Worse, they had a strange after taste. I sampled little bites of several flavors and the story was the same. In fairness, the icings weren’t too bad.

To me, Sprinkles is another classic example of a brand that has buzz with little long term positive talk value. Buzz does a great job of generating awareness and stimulating trial. For sustained value, the brand needs more. In this instance, a product that tastes as good as it looks. Brands need to engage after igniting the initial awareness flare or be stuck in a cycle of constantly needing new fireworks.

If you think about my cupcake saga, I was so ready to engage and be a customer over time. I love the product category (cupcakes); I am willing to try new cupcake experiences (my travels); I knew about the particular brand (publicity) and was predisposed to try (sought them out several times before I could finally actually experience them.) I was an advocate waiting to happen! And I am, but for Sweet Mandy Bs. They are the best. I recommend them constantly. I purchase from them all the time and several of the people to whom I recommended them, also spread the word. The bakery gives me “surprise and delight” goodies from time to time and recognizes my value. Most importantly, they never disappoint. Their product deserves its great reputation. They don’t have the hype of Sprinkles, but they don’t need it

Next time you’re in Chicago, give Sweet Mandy B’s a try. Tell them Kathy sent you.

Social’s Morning After

2010-08-16T14:09:58Z

Like any good party, there is a period of anticipation, which then leads to excitement and if it’s really a good fling, exuberance (sometimes irrational) which can last till the wee hours, which inevitably is followed by one of two morning after thoughts:

1. “What the hell was I thinking. ” Which usually translates into ‘that is going to cost me.’

2. '”Wow, that was fun, I’m glad I did that.” Which usually translates into ‘that will pay off for me.’

Choice number one or number two depends on how irrational the exuberance was.

The tech bubble party led to one giant hangover. It was one wild party. Trust me, I was there and saw it first hand….eCompany Now’s launch party renting out Candlestick Park and hiring the hottest Top 40 band around for 750 people is a great example (but it sure was fun!).

Sure, we recovered but it took a while. Some lessons were learned. Sometimes you have to go on a real bender and suffer the morning after consequences to learn these lessons.

Social is experiencing some of that morning after right now. However, unlike tech’s ‘What the hell was I thinking’ thought, social has woken up with a smile. You see, social’s party, fun as it’s been was a bit more responsible.

A year ago, ComBlu began compiling it’s first State of Online Branded Communities report. There were a lot of brands trying social on and in all sorts of ways, which was sort of the problem. It was a little chaotic. Lots of experiments lacking any real cohesive strategy and lots of ghost towns. Newly minted relics of the ‘build it and they will come mindset.

Unfortunately, at the time, nobody either thought of or was convinced that a community dedicated to one niche activity and brand (to take a look at who some of these were, click here) would cause consumers to abandon their current trusted, broader social resources and start all over within their walled garden and such a stand alone tactic wasn’t the best idea. You see community isn’t a place but a concept and a promise. It must not exist in one place but many. Early on, this concept was lost or ignored, as the party was on a tear. Today, we are a little wiser.

As summer winds down and we are compiling our research findings of the second annual report, we see a different picture. Responsibility is prevailing and results have dramatically improved. Social is a bonafide business strategy; if done correctly and more and more people are adopting proven best practices and developing disciplined processes. Today, social is proving to be as important as CRM and Product Development in sustaining profitability and market share.

Here’s a simple example of what I mean. Overall, we see this being manifested with fewer and fewer meaningless buzzwords taking root. Of course there are still a number of consultants that sell based on buzzwords and convincing clients that this is all net-new and they are the only resource capable of navigating such unknown waters.

However, in large part, social is speaking the language of business.

It took tech a lot longer to figure this out. Remember ‘The Old Economy is Dead, long live the New Economy’?

Today we see people talking about ‘sCRM’ or social crm and BI or Business Intelligence. Interestingly, it’s simply a social and collaborative version of the CRM best practices in place since the mid-1990’s. BI has been important for quite a while. Or take ‘Listening’. Prevalent but not really a buzz word, just a descriptor that any 70 year old board member should be able to wrap their head around. Lastly, I hear less ‘next killer app’ language in social and with less frequency, which tends to lead me to believe we are focused on making what we’ve got work.

This is all good news. Social adopting business terms means social is adopting business philosophies (which exclude give everything away for free and simply drive eyeballs in volume for endless VC dollars or an IPO). Social is also in love with measurement and usually, measurement shines a light on performance and we see social’s metrics and KPI’s starting to creep toward those seen on the balance sheet.

Within a number of market segments, we see customer engagement assets growing more robust. We also see the evolution, albeit glacial speed, of campaigns as a tactic within long term engagement instead of the defacto-standard. We still have a long way to go here but social is helping to speed this process…which in the end is good for everybody.

So all in all, good progress for only the morning after, don’t you think?

As we work to compile our second annual ‘State of Online Branded Communities’ report, I am sure there will be more on this topic before we release it.

Technorati Tags: social,social business,SCRM,social media,social marketing,business strategy,BI,Business Intelligence,ROI,metrics,social listening,listening,marketing,marketing strategy

Growing Beyond Social Experimentation

2010-08-02T14:59:09Z

I’ve always loved the phrase “Grandmother Research.” It’s a casual approach to gathering input about a topic of interest. The person conducting the survey asks everyone they know about the topic and then forms a point of view that reflects common wisdom. Not very scientific, but probably a good indicator of opinion trends among people you know and trust.

My personal Grandmother Research today is around the topic of social marketing and its adoption among major corporations. I’ve formed an opinion based upon experience in the marketplace and numerous conversations with other practitioners of the art. The common wisdom among this group is this: the sophistication of social marketing is rapidly evolving as the market becomes less experimental and more strategic and integrated in their approach.

Here are five emerging topics that we find interesting and encouraging:

Engagement. Marketers understand today that engagement is a faceted process that gets better and richer over time. The old one size fits all model is giving way to more personal interaction that is based upon profile information, actions, participation patterns and feedback.
Community Without Walls. Some organizations are firm believers in engaging in branded community sites while others stick solely to Facebook and other mass social media outlets. Some do both with very little integration between the two, although our research shows that this is starting to change. The best practice is to do both with tight integration between all social assets.
Reputation Management. The art of rewards and recognition is following the community without walls model. Companies are beginning to understand that they need to aggregate reputation of their members and fans across the cloud. Badges should be present across the full engagement lifecycle; not just on a single property. Likewise, rewards should be tied to activities and contributions throughout the cloud, not as separate programs for each point of engagement. This integrated approach is in the seedling stage, but adoption is growing.
Advocate Segmentation. All brand advocates are not created equal. Many organizations have forwarded a segmentation model for advocates; the most recognized is probably the one created by Forrester. A few years ago, we did a study for a client where we overlaid nearly 100 of these models and surfaced the four most common advocate types. The four (creators, critics, connectors and collectors) work well as a basic segmentation model for engagement. The trick is to understand your business objectives and aligned social engagement strategy, and then actively recruit the type of advocates who will most constantly help you achieve your goals. Your RepMan system and measurement approach should track levels of engagement by advocate type and provide insights for ongoing recruitment, engagement and campaign strategies.
Metrics ≠ ROI. Marketers have lots of metrics, but do not know how to efficiently mash-up suites of them so they tell a story. Social engagement has three distinct pillars: feedback, advocacy and support. Each has its own associated set of metrics that come from multiple sources. The industry is starting to “get this” and approach ROI in a way that matters. For example, knowing engagement levels is a metric, but is not necessarily an indication of ROI. When combined with five or six other metrics, however, a story begins to emerge that shows how engagement can lead to revenue growth or to adoption of a more efficient business process that leads to cost savings. Many organizations are still stuck at the metric level, but the conversation is definitely focusing on true ROI.

At ComBlu, we’re excited about this new level of discussion. In fact, much of it coincides with the current work that we’re doing. Part of my Grandmother Research indicates that our growth will come in these very areas. To handle this, we’re always looking for smart people and feel blessed to have just added one such professional, Dawn Lacallade, to the ComBlu team.

As an expert in community strategy, advocate activation, social engagement and social media, Dawn brings added firepower to ComBlu. Her forte is building healthy, thriving on-line communities and integrating social media into the marketing mix.

Before joining ComBlu, Dawn was head of Social Media and Community at Solar Winds, a Network Management Software Company. In that role, she was instrumental in embedding community experience throughout the product lifecycle from innovation to support. Prior to Solar Winds, Dawn held several community positions at Dell, including Manager-Dell Ideastorm and Manager–Dell Community Forums, where she led the evolution from the focus on support forums to a broader integrated community strategy.

As a recognized thought leader in the on-line community space, Dawn is a frequent speaker at industry conferences including Community 2.0 conferences (3 times), WOMMA Summit, Microsoft High Tech Summit, Google Product Management Leadership Summit, Social Media Breakfast, e-Business Conference and guest speaker on multiple webinars. Dawn is one of the founding members of the Community Roundtable and a member of the Social Media Breakfast and the Social Media Club.

Dawn is great; I even think my grandmother will like her!

Flying kites

2010-07-26T14:19:43Z

I love watching kites skip across the sky. The dips and turns delivered by the wind are both unpredictable and inevitable. One of the most interesting phenomenon about kites is that they can catch both tailwinds and headwinds in a single flight. Compare that to an airplane. When headwinds slow its progress, either the plane is late or the pilot tries to reroute. Once a direction is set, it’s near impossible to turn headwinds into a tail wind.

Great online communities should be more like a kite and less like an airplane. Why? Communities are both organic and organized. They need to provide the right mix of expert content and tools that are easy to find and use along side community generated topics, conversations, ideas and content. There should be multiple ways to engage with the brand and fellow community members. And, the member’s experience should reflect both the information shared via the member’s profile and the activities in which they participated. The more the member accesses content, offers comments, or starts a conversation thread, the more customized and germane the community experience should become. .At the same time, it should be easy for the member to explore and discover new things outside their “prescribed” areas of interest or former actions. Like the kite dancing at the end of a string, the community offers a defined destination for exploration and exchange. The free flow magic of the kite’s moves represents the organic currents that make the community experience also one of discovery and delight. Members enhance, refine and share the knowledge gained both in and outside the community.

Communities need the control of a community manger just as a kite needs the guidance of its on-ground pilot. Without it, the kite careens out of control and quickly crashes. The community manager performs a similar role for the community. S/he is the stabilizing force that lofts the community, lets it dance in the winds of the community’s will and guides the string in and out, depending on the strength and direction of the winds. Most importantly, the community manager is the human face of the brand and makes the experience personal. A great community manager gets to know members and uses their input to guide engagement and content. S/he also regularly recognizes members who go above and beyond.

Late last year, ComBlu published a study called, “The State of Online Branded Communities.” We’ve referenced the report before, but here’s a quick review of what we did. A team of reviewers joined over 135 online communities and noted their experience from that of a consumer first joining the community and attempting to interact with the brand. They recorded both qualitative observations and quantitative data into a scorecard that captured a community’s performance against 23 best practices. One was “evidence of active community management” and a “human face of the community” To our surprise, community management was one of the lowest scoring practices in the study. This is a real missed opportunity to learn from customers as well as extend brand experience. Many people join branded communities because they want to have a more personalized experience.

We believe that many organizations equate “moderation” with “community management”. They subscribe to automated services that search for profanity and other violations of Terms of Service and think they have community management covered. Or, they hire a “celebrity blogger” to be the face of the community. The person’s blog is prominently featured on the community home page, but either the comments feature is not activated or no one ever responds or acknowledges member’s comments. Again, a missed opportunity and lots of potential for frustration. Another flawed model is the automated FAQ approach to community management. Whenever a member asks a question, canned responses are generated that may or may not actually answer a question.

Some communities let the members serve as the sole source of support and reference. While this type of community involvement adds richness and authenticity to helping people get the most benefit from products and services, it’s missing the voice of the brand. Sometimes, a subject matter expert form the company is the only one with the best way to do something or possess the latest information. Again, communities should be the right mix of organized brand experiences and organic member interactions.

One recent example of the latter is my experience with Facebook. I recently had an issue and went to their Help function to search for the answer to my dilemma. Sure enough, there were plenty of people who had the same or a very similar problem. Lots of people jumped in and gave various ways to correct it; none of which worked. This was a long discussion thread and no where, not once did a Facebook SME jump in and offer expert advice. This is a prime example where the community manager could have performed a valuable service. Instead, I went through several frustrating days before the problem was resolved by “tricking” the system. It took two of the tech wizards on my staff to help me figure out the work around. How many people have that luxury? While I still love Facebook as a wonderful way to keep in touch and follow the antics of an interesting group of people, I think less of the brand. They exhibit little respect for their users and are so large that they must not care that people leave in droves or never activate because they don’t have tech wizards to help.

Many organizations are starting to “get it’ and are adding community management as a core skill set in their marketing departments. WOMMA is working on a certification course for community managers in partnership with a major university. This is sorely needed and a welcome resource. Hopefully the course logo will include a kite!

Community management, community strategy, WOMMA, ComlBu, “The State of Online Branded Communities”,

Spamming Social Marketing

2010-07-08T14:47:08Z

Many years ago, I was at a technology conference held in Burlingame, California. One of the panel discussions was on Spam email. This was in 1996, so Spam wasn’t all that prevalent and frankly there wasn’t much interest in the panel. One of the panelists was very much for self regulation of certain aspects of online activity and one of those areas was user privacy and email marketing (sound familiar)? In the end, the audience and the market said, “hey, what’s the big deal? What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

This a screenshot of just one of my spam filter files this morning. I empty it and each day it fills right back up.

Had we acted on Spam before it was a problem, the online fraud and piracy industry would be a fraction of the size it is and we’d all not have to keep throw-away email addresses (c’mon, you know you have them).

Social marketing is exploding. We all see it’s potential and power. Hmm, in 1996 the Internet was exploding and we all saw its potential and power. There is a direct correlation between the growth, maturity and evolution of the Internet and social marketing’s future.

In my humble opinion, we are not that far off from social spam creeping into reality. Don’t believe me? Discount this? We see early evidence of this possibility in Phishing. It’s a reality folks and it will happen unless we begin acting with some unified discipline.

We must pay attention to and apply the lessons Internet entrepreneurs, engineers and marketers have learned over the last fifteen years to social. If we don’t, we will end up with one of two headaches sometime in the near future.

1. Governmental regulation. If you don’t think this is expensive, restrictive and a major deterrent to rapid innovation, ask a healthcare or financial services marketer how they approach trial and error in this space.

2. A bankruptcy in trust. Social is all about engagement, transparency and trust. If a user is suspect about something being transparent and they have no or little trust, they won’t engage. The reason email response rates are so low and firms like Exact Target exist is because of this very issue.

Either one of these will pour cold water on the growing flames of social marketing. Social is a powerful disruptive force that helps brands better align with their customers, stakeholders and constituents. It’s truly a win-win way…that is if we don’t screw it up.

So how can we avoid this? A couple of ways.

1. Tracking cause and effect. Establishing best practices that consistently link the cause and the effect.

2. Establishing accepted general standards of performance and best practices.

3. Training to standards and best practices. Find leaders from across the industry or business to collaborate….competitors, colleagues alike. We are all in this together.

4. Self regulation or holding your organization accountable.

5. Actively, participating in activities where best practices are shared, critiqued and bettered.

6. Taking social seriously at every level of the organization and in every business unit. Social isn’t and shouldn’t be owned or restricted to one tier or one department or BU (imagine if privacy standards only needed to be applied to IT and not to marketing?!)

7. Look outside your organization, industry or team for inspiration, help, advice, insight or criticism. Teams that are closed and intolerant to outside influence are shallow gene pools.

8. Recognize that nothing you do or can do will be perfect. It is always a work in progress. However, remember good habits make things better and bad habits make things worse.

Recently, WOMMA embarked on an ambitious program called WOM-COMM. WOM-COMM is essentially a virtual training program where seven recognized faculty members presented best practices, standards and approaches important to successful social programs. Members were required to complete all seven sessions (with homework). In the end, if the participant successfully completed the course, they were certified as doing so.

(Full disclosure: I am one of the seven WOM-COMM faculty. The below certificate is a mock-up for the purposes of this blog).

Is WOM-COMM the silver bullet? No. Were the first two semesters perfect? No. Was it an important step in the right direction? Absolutely. For social to truly achieve its potential, we need more WOM-COMM and more universal commitment from the marketplace that social spam is dangerous.

My hat is off to the 214 agencies and brands who participated in WOM-COMM to date. This is a great start.

Technorati Tags: womma,social marketing,social media,word of mouth,WOM,WOM-COMM,marketing,social spam,advertising,metrics,business intelligence,BI

True drivers of community

2010-06-21T21:31:12Z

A little girl drowned about a week ago near my weekend home. Sadly, her body has still not surfaced and the massive outpouring of help and support is the true meaning of community.

While most are motivated by closure for her family, different people show their support in distinct and individual ways. Some have used Facebook to organize search parties and to offer prayers and support to the family. Others volunteer to walk the beach or drive for miles on their ATVs looking for her. Some people bring the family food or offer help in other ways. Still others offer volunteers food and transportation. And, of course, the Coast Guard worked tirelessly to find little Sofia in the first intense hours after the tragedy.

The point is that when there is an authentic need, community forms naturally and organically. Word-of-mouth spreads rapidly and people step up to offer what they can: support, prayers, skills, and time. Total strangers stand-by family and friends to fulfill a mission.

This phenomenon extends beyond the short-term, intensity of a search for a missing child. No matter what the purpose, the dynamics of community are the same: people congregate and share support and information when united by a common need, interest or desire. You can not force a phony reason for caring or coming together as a community. The tenet in community initiatives is to first tap into an authentic reason to care and then use all the wonderful tools at our disposal to make it easy to share that interest or passion.

I almost drowned in this same lake several years ago. I still get the occasional flash back and only have the heroic actions of my then 12 year old nephew to thank for my life. As I join the community searching for Sofia, it is with a deep affinity for her family. I think of how my family would have been affected if my outcome had been different. Through the power of pictures and stories shared via social media, I feel as if I knew Sofia and will forever keep her in my heart.

Is SCRM really the answer?

2010-06-14T15:09:31Z

This weekend, our family spent some time at the pool. While at there, I discussed the air show that was in town with a friend. That’s where this idea formed. Planes and business. So here it goes.

Social Marketing, like the tactic in vogue at this hour (Social CRM) in my mind is all about effectively aligning information with activity. To me, it’s sort of like flying. Having the right information is critical to making the right decisions at the right time.

It’s not about too much or too little information, it’s all about having the right information necessary to make a clear decision and then being able to do something about it.

Any pilot who’s flown a Piper Cub knows it’s cockpit is pretty simple. Stick, rudders, airspeed, pressure gauges, fuel gauge, altimeter and maybe a horizon bar gauge is really all you need to fly yourself around at 800 feet on a sunny, lazy Sunday afternoon for an hour.

Managing a small business, like flying the Piper Cub, is pretty straight forward. A simple set of gauges help the business to understand if its offering is aligned with its customer base. When most of your customers you know on a first name basis, it’s easy to determine when something is wrong or if you are missing an opportunity. When a customer who regularly visits you every single week is missing, you simply call them and check in to see if everything is ok. When customers aren’t happy, they typically have a direct line to the owner who has the both the responsibility and the authority to make changes and will tell you. If they don’t, likely you’ll ask them when you see their patterns change.

As the business grows, simple dies. As much as we don’t want to admit it, it’s true. Bigger clients and/or more of them means the business must serve a more and more diverse set of demands originating from the stakeholders. (See? Even the language needed to describe the change gets a little more complex!).

More people + more needs = more variables.

Back to the plane for a moment. While flying a Piper Cub is simple, flying a 777 Dreamliner is not; even though the purpose is the same, air travel. The method and mode are very different. There are a whole new set of variables and realities that bear down on the Boeing jet that simply are not present in the Piper Cub. Each is engineered to navigate within very different conditions.

For the Piper Cub, linking activity to information means glancing at the airspeed indicator to know when to give the throttle a little more juice so as to not stall….or maybe just look out the window. In a Piper Cub, there are relatively few things to worry about and control.

It’s not quite as simple for the crew of the 777. Quite possibly, they might have the same airspeed issue. Knowing it and dealing with it are different. There is a lot to worry about and control.

Here’s the thing, though. In both cockpits, every gauge links to something very important which supports that single overarching goal-safe air travel.

The analogy to business should be the same. The tools and activities we build and deploy should all be linked together in some effective way which we can effectively understand, measure and control.

Like comparing the Piper to the Boeing, we should recognize that as the business grows, things will grow more complex and difficult and expensive. However, like the Piper and the Boeing, the goal and the requirements (i.e. safe air travel and appropriately linking everything) should not change.

In larger business enterprises, to be blunt, our focus shouldn’t be SCRM any more than it should be on adopting a listening tool or building out a social presence unless it is part of some unified engagement approach. Without integration into the enterprise’s operational structure, adopting new engagement initiatives or tools only adds a variable you can’t effectively measure or do anything about. This is sort of like having a gauge on your cockpit dashboard no one can identify (especially when it starts to blink red).

You have no idea how many times I have heard executives say, “I have no idea what to do with this listening report” or “there is so much information here, it is meaningless.” This sort of statement is a symptom of what I am talking about here. No breathing pilot has ever said, “I have no idea what do with this piece of information or blinking red light” or Let’s ignore it.” (Note I say breathing.)

For SCRM, or any of the other litany of social business tools to really be effective, we as practitioners need to spend a lot more time understanding and integrating these tools into the business rather than just getting excited about new ones. I acknowledge easier said than done but reject it shouldn’t be a top priority of the business.

To be successful, we have to link information to activity and tie those activities to a clear and overarching business goal…much like the plane’s ultimate goal of safe air travel. Don’t believe me? Well performing brands such as the behemoth Best Buy to the diminutive Solarwinds are focused on the nuts and bolts of integration every day.

The market place isn’t static, so yes, evolving business functions using new tools, technologies and process is appropriate. We should never stop testing and trying new things but in those situations, treat them as such until the bugs are worked out…and once they are, work them into your existing solution set.

This way, your customers can sit back and enjoy the flight, which is really what they want right?

Elvis has left the building…..

2010-06-07T17:42:50Z

When my dad was in his late teens, he played drums in Al Dvorin’s band. Eventually, Al and my dad enlisted together and went off to fight WWII. They both ended up in the Seventh Army Band and never saw much action. When the war was over, Al and my dad both resumed their music careers. By 1956, they both had made names for themselves and got a gig touring with Elvis Presley on his first U.S. and Canadian tour. My dad hated the screaming mobs and swooning teens that constantly stole his cymbals and attacked his car. When asked to sign-up for a second tour with the King, my dad declined.

Al, however, loved it and eventually became Elvis’ music director in Vegas. Each night, Elvis would perform to unruly crowds filled with fainting women and rapid fans. Elvis had three planned encores. Each time he left the stage, Al kept the band playing at a fever pitch. Elvis would burst back and do another number. After the third encore, Al kept the band playing even though Elvis was exiting stage left into a waiting Cadillac that sped away as soon as his rump hit the back seat. Al would then stop the music, but the crowds refused to leave. They yelled louder thinking Elvis would hear them and come back out. One night, after Al got the signal that the Cadillac was on its journey, he uttered the immortal words, “Elvis has left the building”.

For Al, the phrase was short and to the point and served a practical purpose. He wanted to go home and first needed the venue cleared of people. He had no clue that it would become one of the biggest catch phrases of all time.

This story came to mind when one of ComBlu’s clients was talking about one of his pet peeves when agencies come to pitch: the promise of great viral campaigns. He opined that viral campaign was akin to an oxymoron. Just as Al had no idea his phrase would go “viral”, neither can agencies promise similar “lightening in a bottle” How often do we get requests to “create a viral video’ or “ develop a viral campaign”? As marketing professionals, we need to find out what the client’s real objective is. It may be that a clever online campaign with a share button can achieve much, but it is not an objective and should not be the starting point of the conversation.

Just like Al was trying to fill a need, so are brands and marketers. Al found a great solution that took on a life of its own. A rare occurrence. Those brands that find themselves with this phenomenon on their hands need to be prepared to leverage it and ride its orbit. ( An “Elvis has left the building” community tied to Elvis sightings using Foursquare might be appropriate if Al and Elvis were performing today.) But, companies and agencies can waste a lot of resources trying to artificially create the next big thing. Social marketing has many nodes, channels and disciplines. Finding the right combination to meet business or organizational goals is a worthy strategy.

So the next time an agency promises the next big viral video or a client asks for a viral campaign, tell them that “Elvis has left the building.”

Too many bricks or not enough?

2010-05-27T13:55:06Z

Recently, my neighbor undertook a significant project. With the warm weather, he decided to invest in redoing his back deck. He wanted an ‘Outdoor Room’. In talking to him, it was going to be a real masterpiece, or so it sounded. Two tiers with a gas fireplace, sitting area with a pergola, built in outdoor kitchen. The works. My neighbor, Tom, had gotten the idea from another neighbor who had a similar set up. They’d had a party Tom had attended and he was hooked.

Looking back, things started to go wrong even prior to him starting. Tom thought about what he wanted. Built in gas grill. Check. Beer tap, check. Fireplace, check. Large sitting area, check. A few other amenities. Check, check, check.

What he didn’t think about was how to integrate it fully with his current set up. Hot tub. French doors off of two rooms. Landscaping. View of the surrounding area and surrounding areas view of him. How he’d use the room. Parties, entertainment of large or small groups or just family. Oh and those pesky neighborhood covenants.

Tom was also in a hurry. He wanted to get to the end quickly…and he is somewhat cheap. He got two estimates for his list of stuff. One contractor he didn’t really like because he was “too pushy”. When I pressed him on this (as I’ve used the contractor myself and found him to be excellent), Tom said that he was challenged on his list and layout. As the CEO of a manufacturing company, Tom doesn’t like to be challenged.

Both contractors were “too expensive”. Tom was delighted to find out one day that one of his employees had a brother that was a handyman and could build anything all for $30 an hour. Tom had him out. “No problem” the handyman said, looking at the big job and likely drooling. “I can do it. I have a few friends who can help out with the masonry stuff. Take about a week to do.” Doing some mental math and estimating the cost at a little over half the cheapest of the two quotes he got, Tom jumped at it.

That weekend, pallets of brick and stacks of lumber and other materials were delivered. The demolition commenced and the the construction began. That minute problems began. Problems with design, integration, layout and materials. Oh, the handyman’s ‘friends’ never showed up, so he was on his own.

Moreover, Tom didn’t plan for how he’d use his outdoor room. He focused on certain shiny pennies he thought he wanted or needed (like the outdoor TV that couldn’t be used except at night because of where it was placed and the glare).

Focusing only on price, he used the wrong contractor who had no real plan and not enough experience to source the right materials in the right amount. Tom lamented he should have seen it coming, as the contractor never talked to him about unforeseen problems and work-arounds taken, as well as, the materials sitting in his driveway which where being used in ways that seemed inconsistent to him. It all came to a head when the president of the neighborhood association emailed him and told Tom he was out of covenant on his build out.

Almost a month after the project began (this last week) Tom fired his existing contractor and hired the original one he thought too pushy. He has 1/3 too many bricks he can’t return and not enough of the other material. The new contractor has to demo virtually everything that was done and redo it the right way.

Watching this whole thing unfold, I saw a clear similarity to the approach of brands and the adoption of social media. Specifically:

-Having a strategic plan.

-Ensuring proper integration into existing assets.

-Ensuring you understand the impact of your actions from all angles; both internally and externally.

-Understanding how the enterprise plan’s on utilizing the enhanced business tools.

-Aligning needs, priorities and expectations of all parties.

-Ensuring the right people are involved with the right experience, as well as, ensuring that open collaboration occurs at each phase of the program.

Does Tom’s story resonate with you? I bet it does. Virtually everybody has had some problem or incident that is similar to this on some scale. You get the cause and effect.

Problem is, translate this into adopting new or enhanced social activities and a number of executives turn instantly into Tom.

Whether building an outdoor room or a rolling out a social strategy the cause and effect is the same. Focus on the wrong things, budget incorrectly, skimping on the vendor selection process, etc. will 99 times out of 100 end badly.

Take your time, understand your priorities, how your program will integrate into your existing program and visa versa, your appetite for risk, your timelines, your budget. Insert the right people and the right number of them….and always have a blueprint. If your firm has deployed a social program and it isn’t working up to your expectations, I’d wager that the approach was a lot like Tom’s.

Social works. Like anything else, it is harder than it looks and it requires a disciplined and pragmatic approach.

Death bed heroics are not a good long-term strategy

2010-05-17T18:57:50Z

Today’s “Theory and Practice” column in The Wall Street Journal was about the shelf life of CEOs’ “hunker down” strategies. It seems that the Great Recession inspired some leaders to innovate and seek customer or employee input. One example was Regus, PLC, a company that introduced several new pricing packages for its outsourced office space. The company held focus groups and discovered they were not providing the range of pricing and options desired by its customer base. Before the Great Recession, the company didn’t “bother” to seek customer insights very often. The customer-driven pricing models and packages not only were a success in winning back existing clients, but Regus also opened whole new markets.

Another example was Duke Energy who turned to their employee base for ideas on how to save an aggregate $100 million. The company met its goal and issued bigger bonuses, based on the economies achieved

The executives interviewed for the column claimed that these initiatives would survive past the economic downturn. To me, this is like seeking salvation on your death bed after ignoring your family for decades, and then living past Extreme Unction. While the death bed heroics may force the person to behave differently, imagine how much richer the repentant’s life would have been had s/he practiced a few basic principles like listening, engaging with others and building meaningful relationships before they thought they were going to die!

All of us have experiences with companies every day that leave us stunned and wondering why we are not listened to and treated better. Just yesterday, I tried to print out a boarding pass from home. I had used miles to upgrade and owed a stipend for the privilege. Although I have a current credit card on file with the airline, and have been a member of their loyalty program since its inception, I was not allowed to pay online. Even though it clearly said on “my Itinerary” at the site that I was cleared for online check-in. A call to the airline got this response, “Oh yeah, we get complaints about this all the time. Just go to the kiosk at the airport and use your credit card there.” As it was, I had to get up at 3:00 a.m. to make my flight and wanted to avoid any extra steps when I got there. But, no dice. It didn’t seem to matter to the airline that I was one of their “best customers”.

Obviously, I can only use miles to upgrade if I fly your airline a lot, which means I have an opinion about your products and services. Yet you have never asked me anything. Hello, are you listening? A whole bunch of your best customers have complained about the exact same thing. What are you doing to correct this, or at the very least “message” your online check-in process differently.

Maybe this airline will get religion on its deathbed. In the meantime, lots of smart companies are using both traditional and social channels for seeking customer insights. The really smart ones are acting on what they hear and engaging in real, meaningful conversations. It should not take a Great Recession for a company to decide to get ideas and feedback from customers, employees and other stakeholders. And, this behavior should not be rewarded as “innovation” by one of the most respected business papers around.

Community 2.0 2010: A conference where the primary benefit wasn’t just networking

2010-05-10T16:00:37Z

Community 2.0 was held in Boston May 3-5, 2010. Some interesting facts—First, there was virtually no mention of this “new technology” or that “new app.” Second, the conference was absent of the typical avalanche of buzzwords.

Only two really stuck with me and I thought both were appropriate: “Mocial,” meaning mobile social engagement and “Glittering Generalities,” meaning pundit speak that sounds nice but states the obvious, like “Be Authentic”; there was a tiny bit of this but not as much as I expected. Lastly, it was a small group, under two hundred people, however, of that group, about 2/3 were senior brand team executives. People with experience. This wasn’t a conference where the senior people sent the 24 year old ‘newbie’ to figure this stuff out. In large part, they came themselves.

Overall, the conference's participants were universally higher up in the company hierarchy than any other social conference I have ever been to...did I say ever? Yes, ever! The group in attendance was all business.

The conference was missing the usual euphoria of “isn't this cool?!" and "this is the next new killer app.” Participants wanted facts, figures and know how. Great questions were asked in the work sessions and in the hallway. In general, great answers, great processes and great learnings were shared.

The Community-Roundtable also presented a new Community Report. Rachel Happe socialized this and it was well received.

I want to share this report with you in the hopes you'll like it and find it helpful as well. http://community-roundtable.com/socm-2010/

In case you missed the conference or didn't follow it on twitter, here is a good recap:

http://community20.blogspot.com/2010/05/welcome-to-day-3-of-social-media.html

Kindle’s Going Social

2010-05-03T17:04:48Z

I love my Kindle. It’s a joy to download books while I’m stuck on the tarmac or sitting on the beach. As a road warrior, it’s wonderful anytime I can jettison poundage from my carry-on, and the Kindle helps me do that in spades. I can even email PDFs to my Kindle and review them from there.

Kindle just announced it is going social. In addition to new features, Kindle owners will be able to share book passages with friends on Facebook and Twitter. While this sounds fun and engaging, here’s my beef. I want to be able to share whole books with people. When I read a book, part of the pleasure is thinking about whom among my peeps would also love the book or who would learn something important. Passing along books is part of the community of readers. You never just hand a book to someone without telling them why you think they would like it. And later, you circle back and talk about the book; maybe even debate its various twists and turns. Sometimes people hate the book I thought they would love, or have dramatically different reactions to characters or plot. Talking about it becomes part of the DNA of the relationship.

When I purchase a “real” book, I own it and can share it as I please. There is no copyright infringement if I give the latest Baldacci to my mom. My quid pro quo when I pass a book along is that the recipient does the same when finished reading it. I love to think about the book’s journey, touching, entertaining and enlightening people as it travels from person to person.

Why don’t I own my Kindle books? Why can’t I pass them along to other Kindle owners? I have been a Kindle evangelist and either have influenced the purchase of many Kindles or given them as gifts. What do you think?

Badges? We don’ need no stinkin’ badges!

2010-04-27T22:35:16Z

Everyone knows the line. It’s a classic. Why is it important? Because as social media makes its inevitable evolution from interesting tactic to its grown up form, social marketing; badges, like blogs are on everyone’s mind. We want badges…We need badges. We must have a program that incorporates badges. We require points that are tied to badges.

Do you really need them?

No. You don’ need no stinkin’ badges. What you do need is a viable (and scalable) reputation management system. ‘Rep Man’ for short.

Why do you need to employ a rep man system? Two simple reasons. If you work for a brand you need a way of segmenting customers or community participants. You need to plot their value on a grid.

Measure engagement horizontally, across the spectrum of your community activity. Measure interest and expertise vertically. Think of this like shopping in a store. When you walk in a store and browse around, you are essentially moving horizontally.

When something catches your eye and you stop, lingering over something for a long time you are measuring their vertical performance or their interest in one single thing.

Reputation management in it’s simplest form needs to work the same way. Points and badges are simply provide structure and a visual way to represent Rep Man.

Granted, the structure I show here is an significant oversimplification of a real Rep Man system, but hopefully you get the idea.

Most people (or community members) don’t know this exists or really care about this structure for that matter, nor should they. Users see badges as a visual indicator of reputation (which is skill and ability, as well as, third party validation of that skill and ability) and relevance (which is interest). A good Rep Man system makes badges, points and the availability and awarding of both possible. If you want to see evolved reputation management systems in play, look to MMOLG such as World of Warcraft.

There is a true science to this. The architects of these systems have spent man-years dialing this critical element of social interaction in. Other things you need to consider are the economics of points. Like the money supply of the U.S. dollar, you need to determine the total value of points you want to make available. Like I said at the outset and like anything in life, there is much more to developing a best practice Rep Man system than simply awarding points and assigning badges. Doing it right isn’t just turning on a widget.

And yes, you need to think about how people will game the system. Poachers are everywhere and having the ability to fool people allows them access to things and rewards they don’t deserve.

Reputation badges, like Subject Matter Expert (SME for short) can quickly tell a person whether or not to trust you. These badges must be earned and can’t be self bestowed. Badges for reputation reside on the vertical axis. Just because I say I am an expert doesn’t make it so. I have to prove it.

By looking at SME badges, I can quickly understand this person’s worth to me. For instance, if I had to pick one of two guys to walk my wife through a dangerous area and one wore this badge, I’d pick him. No matter what. Why? It’s a SME badge. Expertise. The Navy Seal Trident. This expertise badge is earned. Any such badge is worn with pride. This is a guy I don’t want to mess with. His badge states this fact. Individuals can and do pick up lots of earned badges. They move both horizontally and vertically in a Rep Man system. These are valuable individuals! They are community gold.

Simply glancing at this fellow’s SME badges tells me I would be comfortable getting lost in the woods with him. He’d know how to get us out. If these weren’t earned but self bestowed badges, I wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable with that assessment.

Given the fact these are earned badges, as well as, badges earned in selected topics of interest…as a community participant, he holds tremendous value to you.

So what about relevance and interest badges? Is the Boy Scout a SME? Sure. However, he chooses the badges or topics he becomes a SME in. So, Interest is important. However, Interest and SME are not mutually exclusive!

Interest badges are self bestowed and have a different value. They provide context. What’s the person interested in?

By quickly glancing at the stickers on the back of this truck, I see a few self-bestowed badges. Hmm, Marmot Pro outdoor, Rock Shox and Sidi…all of which are brands. We have industrial strength outdoor gear, mountain bike equipment and high-end riding shoes. These badges tell me this guy likes to ride and he’s probably a bit more intense of a rider than the average joe.

Oh, he’s a golfer too, since these are all grouped together, they are all important to him.

At a glance, I can see his interest set (horizontal in a Rep Man system). If these are relevant to me, he might be somebody I want to talk to to get the skinny on the best place to ride locally. Interest badges are just as important as subject matter badges but for very different reasons. Interest badges say a lot about personality. His SME badge (his bike hanging off the back of his truck) tells me he’s an expert. Interest badges, as well as, expertise.

If you are going to build a community and somebody mentions badges or points. Stop and shift the discussion to Rep Man. Without a well thought out Rep Man structure, your community will be a chaotic unproductive place where badges and points have little value or meaning. You’ll never be able to segregate worth and value of your different user groups to you and your community members will have a hard time distinguishing each other.

So spend some time and work on the structure and strategy before the tool and the tactic. It’ll pay dividends, and yes, there is a badge for that.

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