May 1st - Relevant Links
Friday, May 2nd, 2008Sharing the links for the day:
5 Incomplete Thoughts on Social Media
Friday, April 11th, 2008Remember the title….
1. Manufactured Market?
There is so much noise about the market opportunity and the necessity to fund community initiatives for enterprises but little has materialize in respect to direct revenue and meaningful metrics. This is a challenge for traditional marketers on many levels and the type of topics I suspect are being at the Forrester Marketing conference. There is a after the show workshop that asserts the following which might be close to revenue:
Experiments with rich media, blogging, RSS, and social networks show how dynamic marketing techniques can touch on buyers’ emotions, educate and persuade them, measure interactions more effectively, and generate additional business.
2. Perpetual Social Markets
Shel’s interviews of Jeremiah Owang and the Sea World folks are both emblematic of the challenges of linking social media investments to a return. How can you effectively measure and manage social media as a growth engine? Examples exist where a specific event or a series of inferences can be leveraged to assume the impact of social media, as evidenced in the description of Sea World video at Fast Company:
Measuring social media is one of the pain spots for the enterprise. As Kami Huyse, says in this clip of her client SeaWorld San Antonio. “It all depends on what you measure.” …
What to measure indeed - hits, downloads….. Ultimately most businesses measure revenue from Marketers, so perhaps Sea World is an anomaly and most businesses know how to convert the social media marketing budget to revenue and understand how to successfully deploy/develop a community. Let’s see if this is the case from Shel’s interview of Jeremiah, you probably only need to listen for say, the whole thing:
3. Social Media as Infrastructure
With the metric challenges and elusiveness of revenue is social media a function of retention more so than demand? If marketers are unable to deliver/verify incremental new revenues base on investment, should the metric hunt move to revenue retention and customer satisfaction?
Cool technology should never be relegated to the “post-transactional” budget fight…..
4. Platforms as Markets
Is Twitter a market? Facebook? Myspace? With increasing platforms for exchange more and more opportunity appears to emerge as populations flock to platforms. Where people gather transactions happen right? There are many example of this in the physical space - Burning Man, dead shows and in the parking lots of panic shows. So if people are gathering, there has to be transactions to be had - right?
Information as currency and messaging as a service continues to be the key commodities being exchanged on social media platforms….
5. Community as a Commoditizer
The transactional efficiencies of social computing by it’s very nature puts downward cost pressure on goods. Ease of comparison, ease of purchase and ease of access to other consumers/product customers. Ease of discovery. Product differentiation through a cost center represents…
Maybe the title should have been 5 Incoherent Thoughts…
~cheers!
April 6th - Relevant Links
Sunday, April 6th, 2008here you go:
5 Early Warning Signs that YOU are a TRUE Fan of Social Media
Friday, March 7th, 2008So with all the buzz around Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans, the holy grail of social media artist, I was thinking how do you know if you’re a true fan, so I got a little introspective and did a little browsing of my network to TRY and identify 5 attributes/activities/attitudes of a true fan of social media:
1. YOU realized Facebook is not just a way to stay in touch, but a way to for YOU to understand: With the myriad of applications available, there are a lot of things you can do on Facebook, but do you use the network to better know people, what they do and WHO they are and WHY?
2. YOU use tags as your main browsing/search option: You prefer to browse by bookmarks rather than traditional search on google. Has folksonomy become your taxonomy?
3. YOU appreciate contribution/sharing as much as consuming: Community is about engaging and sharing and as much as any other noun, social media is about community and the conversations which emerge. This item also means you want your favorite sites to be up, rather than down, (think twitter) and you understand it’s the value of your network, not the size.
4. YOU are constantly on the lookout for the next killer widget: When new platforms emerge, new widgets show up on someone’s blog or you get an invite to participate in a beta -you do it because you want to see if it can improve your life and your relationships.
5. YOU vote with your spend/click for your key influencers: This is the final stop in social media fan-dom, you appreciate the folks who influence your social media experience and click on ads which are of low interest, buy their book or hire them for a speaking or consulting engagement. (That being said - I don’t like keyword ads.)
So how do you Facebook?
Sunday, February 24th, 2008I would have never thought Facebook was a verb, but it is a framework where verbs are in action. Nice primer on FB - this is “the what is facebook all about” slide show.
What’s your CRM Strategy?
Saturday, January 26th, 2008Many organizations and individuals have had the opportunity to access and understand their customer relationships, but how does social media change customer relationships? In fact millions have been invested in monolithic implementations which may not be able to manage the complexity or drive value from the changing customer dynamics. Will/does social media drive loyalty or materially revenue? Will your CRM system be able to scale to the need? This post will ask more questions than provide answers. Or perhaps the post will imply answers through the questions.
Significant investments in CRM applications over the past decade and continues to drive improved understanding and value, but is there an expiration date on your CRM application? Does CRM need to morph in to Social Customer Relationship Management? I know it needs to have a 3 character acronym, but nevertheless it may just represent the next Killer App. A CRM application that provides a way to support social attributes of your customer, it involves identity, influence and managing against infinite consumer personas.
So let’s just think about the benefits of thinking social when deploying a CRM solution:
Identity
Through the ability to enable customers to manage their own data is a core value of the customer self-service, I know how late 90’s of me, but isn’t this the value of social networks too? Who, Where, Why and How are typically why social networks exist and infrastructures for managing users. The benefits of using Facebook, openID or another identity framework allows for not only better management options, but richer attributes as they relate to relationships and transactions outside of an enterprise. What is the value of where they participate? Is there any value in the content they create? Is this even worth knowing?
Understanding Influence
Customer relationships are complex things - they drive revenue, they impact profitability and can defer revenue and the social customer is a growing influence on ALL of these. If there is a shared identity or a better understanding of the influence of a user, marketers can use this data to prioritize online ad spend and drive a focused social media agenda, rather than the almost product centric or the other extreme - the buzzword shotgun approach. What is the value of linking a customer user to the online rantings of a user on a forum? What is the value of knowing what their interests are?
Customer Persona’s are just Tiers or Use Cases - A new business Model
Old world CRM manages customers by products, groups or companies - not by the myriad interactions which are not unique to a given business, but driven by relationship, interactions and membership. These items effectively are the spatial relevance of a user and the value of place online. As we drive value from online relationships the complexity of a user is no longer the product, the company or service requests a user places, but something else. CRM is so centered on the revenue and costs of a customer, rather than the value a customer brings to an organization.
Where do your customers congregate, contribute and have conversations online and how can a business leverage this would be a benefit of SCRM. How can we prioritize effort, spend and relationship management of customers - more specifically their employee users on the value they bring to the business beyond the credits and debits. This is the challenge or business issue which a Social Customer Relationship Management solution would solve, not just orders and support tickets.
So where is our Seibel Facebook App?
From the stream: Transactional Identity and Communal Data
Sunday, January 20th, 2008So I got to thinking about a link from Chris Brogan via Twitter. The link had a very interesting post on communal data and trust. Which got me to thinking about ownership, the right to assign and what owning an identity meant and what attributes are portable. Is identity essentially a concept/social construct, where a “user” is an identity instance or sliver effectively shared within the constructs of the service and within a service’s capabilities. As a user, we overtly agree to acceptably use the service with certain constraints. Can trust be a function of shared identity transactions?
What a terrifically conceptual afternoon today has been thanks to Twitter.
The Lazy Bloggers way to efficiently managing content
Saturday, January 12th, 2008I know we are all enamored with widgets, social networks and alike, but it can become just a bunch of WORK! So I spent the weekend overhauling my tools, blog and networks to make it just a little easier. So to save YOU time, I’ve put together some insights I received from the let’s say - at least the last 7 days of work.
Tools
The right tools for the right job, not just relevant to carpenters, appears to be good for bloggers as well. I’ve been watching folks use tools on twitter, like twitterific, I’ve been playing with my bookmarking sites and just seeing how it might best be coordinated. My previous content management strategy very much had a herding cats feel to it. Here are some of the tools which I’ve centered on based on input from other folks:
- Shareaholic - a single firefox plug-in which manages all of my go forward social networks. No more crazy toolbars or additional buttons - a single drop down! Needless to say, Firefox is a must have tool.
- Feedburner - Yes, I know everyone knows about Feedburner, but did you know the Pro tools are FREE now? Each tab now has new cool stuff you can use, not just for optimizing your feed, but also your site. There are a whole bunch a goodies in there for you - Feedburner, not just for RSS - a single interface to Optimize, Publicize and Monetize (I’m not monetizing, but I guess I could go for the $.04/mo I might get) and Troubleshootize.
- FeedFlare - I know, it’s part of feedburner, but it’s so cool because it replaced my previous WordPress plug-in for bookmarking and I think my site is faster, just because of this.
Your Friends and Your Networks - Your TIME
Managing networks, bookmarks and actively participating is a bunch of work. So I QUIT! Sorta anyhow - I’ve centered on only a handful Facebook, del.icio.us, Digg and StumbleUpon (I only kept stumble since it’s a lightweight commitment). Last but not least - Twitter, I’m not sure why I like this so much, it is just fun - I think because it is iPhone friendly and not that much of a commitment - getting the theme here? Social Media-Life Balance
Intelligent Design
Since I’m fundamentally a lazy cat, I really needed to step back and think about how I wanted my online experience to evolve. So I found myself just getting way into the constructs of understanding relationships, what smart folks do online, (this requires a bunch of reading) and what I really want to do with my spare time and why. So I mapped out goals, systems, tools and traffic patterns to understand where I should focus on delivering reasonably meaningful content to the marketplace and I realized I had an accidental architecture. I had bits of mediocre content flying all over this Arpanet.
So what did I do? I decided to literally diagram where I am, where my readers are spatially on the web compared to where I am and weighted “objects” on benefit, effort and a totally subjective cool factor. Yes, I think everything can be put into model. Once I did that I figured out my haphazard hairball or spaghetti online existence just wasn’t what I wanted. So where did I start? My blog and worked out from the brand nucleus.
- Usability: Your stuff has to easily navigated to be read! That’s right, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about what goes where and why is something is on my blog until now. Guess what - there’s less clutter and in just the short time I’ve been re-designed, I’ve had more subscribers than any other single day! Clean is good.
- Consistency: This is as much about content, as it is about the frequency, so I automated a few things with behind the scenes posting automation/replication. I still need to clean things up a little, but Twitterfeed and the Wordpress plug-in Postalicious will be making my life just a little easier and establishing a reliable flow of content, I would like to read. I think I still have a little recursive content, but I’ll have that fixed by Wednesday.
- Necessity - Only use things that add value. If a widget doesn’t derive benefits which you can PROVE in your analytics, then its got to go. You know what there’s an interesting side benefit- less widgets = faster site.
This is what I have for now, I’ll keep thinking about it and if you have ideas or recommendations let me and my readers know.
Technorati Tags: twitterific, Feedburner, iPhone
What the world needs now
Saturday, December 22nd, 2007Is another pop singer, like I need need to read another obtuse article on Web 2.0. Nevertheless, I do think we need a new way to look at web 2.0/enterprise 2.0 and Jeff’s piece prompted me to finally write something on this. The challenge is the current labels are just BIG and somewhat empty - is the technology? The application? The deployment model? What’s WOA?
Not that these new modes of development and use of mashups don’t produce value, because they are and will grow in value, but the label is just a little too cutesy for traditional business folk to be readily supportive, IMHO. A software analyst, at a leading analyst firm, recently noted that when Enterprise 2.0 was coined it’s genesis was sorta tongue and cheek, not sure how he knows, but he said so and I believe it and thats it. Relationships can taint any reality, which might be why Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 is such a big and hot topic, since it is as much about the workplace as it is about people which has this egalitarian feel to it and phreaks business people out, so does spelling words with PH.
If you don’t think folks are backlashing against the cool nomenclature, then you might not be paying attention and Andy’s blog would not have the “if a tree falls in the woods” feel, which at times seems more tempered than evangelistic. Admittedly I read it and I clearly am hearing the tree fall along with 1000’s of others, but the core concern for me is how to take this stuff seriously and deliver an actionable plan/platform for businesses. The answer? It could be as simple as a new name, yup, marketing 101. It might not be THE answer, but could be AN approach to refine the space, since I’m not sure the 2.0 will be “jettisoned” and I think we will get a 3.0 soon enough from some smart person. Right now, we might as well talk to the concept as “Super cool stuff you can do online for your business and you users”.
So what would this new thing be labeled? The common theme is share infrastructure, combined function and pervasive content consumption and creation by users. So this is my stab at it the New, Improved, Faster y mejor suave look at these applications:
Enterprise Internet Asset Platforms: Manages the interaction of corporate assets in a distributed framework from multiple vendors. These applications and frameworks manage the content, users and functionality in a secure environment on demand based on individual configuration driven by role based productivity needs within an enterprise’s given governance model.
These platforms represent frameworks and deployment models which allow for use of best-in class feature delivery at the user level, ultimately delivering user specific productivity enhancements not available in monolithic business applications, but also include features and capabilities from traditional enterprise applications.
I’m not married to this market definition, but directionally I think this is what is needed. We need a less nebulous way to speak to this than Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 is too big and requires you to sell down the value, when starting with a set of known things and selling up into the vision is a whole lot easier. Just my random idea on how to ignite E2.0 and reduce the confusion.
So let’s think about how we can better package the concept around real business problems and address the concerns of opening up the enterprise to social computing, which is both inside and outside of the enterprise. The concepts of user based application selection for many reasons may challenge traditional thinking, but if users could carry their knowledge, applications and networks to a new business this has to bring value to organizations.
The first real application to think about enabling Facebook for businesses which has received attention of late is Workbook. Workbook however needs a little help with their product description, but if their marketing guy or gal can move away from the verbiage below and couch it in an ROI it could go hockey stick:
WorkBook: Secure Facebook for the Enterprise
WorkBook - a secure enterprise overlay for Facebook. WorkBook allows employees to securely interact with their peers using the hugely-popular Facebook service. WorkBook combines all the capabilities of Facebook with all the controls of a corporate environment, including integration with existing enterprise security services and information sources. With WorkBook, employees can find and stay in touch with corporate colleagues, publish company-related news, create bookmarks to enterprise application data and securely share the bookmarks with authorized colleagues, update on status change and get general company news. Employees can freely use Facebook, with the WorkBook overlay, with no danger of information leaking outside the organization or access being granted to unauthorized personnel.
Just a little too techno-centric for more my decision making, but someone has to start the discussion and Facebook governance is as good a place as anywhere to start.
Where and when are you going to start?
Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0, E2.0, WorkBook, governance
