Consumers, what are your support preferences?

Did I mention that I will be speaking about Social Support Communities at Parafest ’10?  I am spending time chatting with some of the larger Enterprise companies in the world to bring you more information on that front and I know you will find the session valuable.  However, I want to go beyond the Enterprise perspective and better understand what real consumers expect, want to help?

Of course  you do.   I have put together a very simple survey that I would love your feedback on.  It should take you less than a couple of minutes to answer the survey, just remember to answer the survey from the perspective as you, the consumer.  I will leave this survey open until the end of March (or until I need to give Parature my final presentation).

Please take the survey by navigating here.

Thanks everyone, hope to see you in Las Vegas.

John

PR, Social Networking, and the traditional business/agency

The older the profession, the less likely they are to make great use of social networking. Although <insert inappropriate Tiger Words and prostitute joke here> clearly demonstrates that not everyone has a problem with social networking.

Okay, come on, it’s Saturday morning and I couldn’t resist.

I was excited to chat with Abbie Fink at HMA Public Relations.  Abbie Fink is Vice President and General Manager at HMA, and we discussed her insights on the strugglesbusinesses/agencies face around the use of social strategies.

Q. First, who is HMA?

A. “HMA Public Relations is a full-service marketing communications and public relations firm. We are based in Phoenix and are part of an international network of independently owned and operated firms (www.prgn.com).”

Q. Are your clients aware of social media, do you find people who are not?

A. “Aware yes, but definitely still a bit hesitant to jump on board. We work with our clients to understand the role of social media, how we can incorporate it into our overall communications strategies. It is important to recognize that not everyone wants to be involved in social media, but whether you actively engage or not, your audience is going to bring there anyway. At this point, I believe everyone is aware of social media but certainly do not have a deep understanding of what it is or how it could work for them.”

Too often I hear about the mainstream nature of social networking, of social business strategies, of social CRM…  The reality is that there are major differences from business to business, from agency to agency, from one geography to another.  Abbie sees, as I do, that her B2C clients more easily see the benefit of these new channels and leveraging them for PR just makes sense.

However, as you look to the more old-school, traditional professions, like doctors, lawyers, accountants, as examples, much more education is required.  These businesses are aware of this social networking/media trend but are struggling with how legal restrictions and regulations impact their ability to be social.  Using social as part of your PR strategy is optional, you don’t have to join in.  HOWEVER, the conversations about you are still happening.   With law firms, as an example, the Managing Director may not understand the need.  But, when you explain to them that their paralegals, their attorneys, their clients, are conversing on social networking sites about them, they often understand the need for listening.

Begin with listening.  Engagement will follow.

PR social strategies in Government agencies and non-profits is often even harder.  Abbie noted that she often finds they are blocking social media access with everything flowing through their IT teams who are not interested in opening up the network.  In these cases PR firms must often act as a person in the middle, distributing the agencies message and working through traditional channels (e-mail, phone, in-person) to move the message, and the responses, back and forth between citizens and agencies.

This will change in time.  However, remain skeptical of data that shows anything other than the majority of agencies blocking at least some, if not all, users.  Government changes slowly, be encouraged that there is a desire to change.  We will get there.

Q. On ROI

A. “This is a tough one to answer – ROI in the social space is measured differently. Its not about how many fans you have or how many followers, but rather what are those fans and followers doing with your brand – are they interacting with you, commenting, posting, re-tweeting, etc.”

People are still arguing the ROI of traditional PR, social networking is not any easier to measure.  We must seek to understand both ROI and the cost to not implementing social strategies.  If you look at both of these numbers, it will be clear what you, and your clients, must do.

Good luck out there.

John

Why I am walking away from Foursquare

It is now, in my opinion, a waste of my time.  Blunt, perhaps, but let me walk you through my thoughts on why I’m not going to actively use the service and also why I think services like this will offer real value in the future.

Why is it a waste of my time?

• Easy, I really do not want people to know where I am.  Do you really care to know if I am at the local CVS, my office, or some other place?  The majority of you do not care, nor should you.  Yes, those businesses I visit, or am near to, should care.  However, the truth is most of them do not yet care either.  They will, just not yet.
• The mobile interface, especially on my Motorala Q (Windows Mobile) is painful to use.  Searching for the venue, checking into the venue, a bit of a hassle and actually pretty slow.  The performance of checking in takes seconds, not milliseconds.  I don’t want to deal with this while I am on the run unless it’s fast. 
• The majority of businesses I chat with are still waiting to see what happens with Foursquare before they decide their approach.  There are not enough case studies with demonstrable results for most companies to jump in.
• I setup an experimental venue, to play with the To Do lists, activities, and associated items that should give a venue owner value.  Upon creating the venue I was not provided any way to take ownership.  I know that  a select list of super uses do have more rights, Joe-average user does not.

My blog, as a venue, was shut down.  Okay, bear with me because this is not simply John whining (okay, a little whining, but a real argument too).  First, four great statements were made by my twitter community, people who I respect, who understand Foursquare better than I, but who I still disagree with.  Here are their quotes:

• @SteveHall
  • “Foursquare is a gold mine for retail. It’s a digital service that’s all about physical place. We have Digg, etc. for virtual”
  • “Well. I’d have to agree with that venue being closed. A blog id not a not a place. Foursquare is about physical space.”
• @Courtenaybird
  • “Marketers can still leverage 4SQ real/online creatively. A website as a checkin isn’t creative.”
• @Jenztweets
  • “I agree with @stevehall, foursquare is about actually going places, not visiting websites.”

First, picture me whining “but… they shut down my venue…. “.

• Super users can shut down your venue without notice.  You do not find out until you happen to discover this yourself.  Ah…  does Starbucks want to run on a platform where there is no process to block this shut down, no notification?
• Foursquare has been defined as being about physical space.  Like Facebook, which was originally defined as something for college students, went beyond its original purpose, it’s time for platforms like Foursquare to look beyond.  The merging of the virtual worlds (Second Life, Forums, Blogs) with our Real World (Retail Stores, Coffee Shops) is happening.  Did someone miss a meeting?

Why is there potential in a Foursquare like system?

Systems that tie our real-world to our virtual existences, that bring incentives, will motivate behavior.  Pavlov’s dogs are not the only ones salivating when that bell rings.  The system, to succeed, must:

• Be fast and be easy to use on a mobile device. 
• Tie my past buying patterns to deals being offered.  If I buy toothpaste from CVS every three weeks and I am walking in three weeks after my last purchase, remind me and give me a coupon.
• If I am checking in on the Rite-aid web site  (yes, checking in), tell me about the 2 for 1 sale they have on toothpaste at the store two blocks from my house.
• Provide tools for local chambers of commerce to put together buying packages, scavenger hunts, fun games, that lead to people checking out more of the local places (sites, stores, whatever).  I want you to come to my local town, check out a local restaurant, rent a movie from any of our video stores, by 2 boxes of candy at the local CVS and yes, you will then be rewarded with a $5 gift card to any store in town.
• If people visit my web site and read three blog posts and make Mayor of my blog I might want to provide them with a discount at one of the local stores in my town, driving traffic back to local venues.

Alright, I want my venue opened up again….. I guess it’s time to go check out Gowalla, maybe they get what I am talking about…. 

John

Help for my February Social Senate Experiment?

I will be launching phase 2 of my social senate experiment and I am looking for your comments on names for round 2. While I was not going to change it up until March, I’m trying to pick up the pace.

So, here’s the question. For my February polling, what US, Canadian, UK, and Australian Twitter accounts should I reach out to with this simple question: “What are your thoughts on open government and how can social media tools benefit your citizens?”

Simple, right? Let me know who you think I should talk to.

John

Community Insights, Listening Platforms from Biz360

I have spent time with the Social Conversation Listening/Monitoring solution from Biz360 and I wanted to share my findings.  Biz360 has been a monitoring and measurement company for years, 10 years. While they started out with more traditional media measurement they have analyzed blog data for 3+ years and added Twitter, discussion boards, forums, etc., to the mix in 2009.

Pricing?

The Biz360 team compare themselves to some of the more well-known solutions in the market and feel they can service the lower end self-service accounts up through the enterprise. I’ll share my thoughts on how they compare functionally in a minute, for now, some insights on pricing.

• They do a great job of keeping pricing up front on the web site.  You can navigate to their website and find current pricing at any time.
• At $399 per month they cannot be considered a serious choice for the majority of small and mid-sized business users on the market.  While they might be a good fit for some projects I would encourage them to consider an additional tier of pricing if they want to offer a solution to meet the small business need.
• Their pricing is, however, competitive in comparison to other comparable solutions with automated sentiment analysis, customized reporting, and ticketing systems.
  • Lets compare them to Radian6, as one example.  At the low end (from a price point) you can begin using Radian6 for a cost of $500 per month for 1 topic and 10,000 results. Biz360 clearly beats that pricing and can compete well on functionality at this lower end.
  • At the higher end of usage you will need to run a thorough analysis that reflects your strategic needs. At the high-end, Biz360 comes in at $2799 a month for 50 topics and 20 users. Compare that to Radian6 at $1500/month for 50,000 results (plus $100 per registered user) and you will need a spreadsheet to figure out which solution is the cheapest for your needs.
• I have said it before but I will say it again. I dislike the idea of charging based upon the number of results.  It leads to lower usage, surprise charges, bad feelings.  Kudos to Biz360 for not going this route.

Talk to me about Sentiment Analysis

Biz360 has automated sentiment analysis support and continues to train, test, train, test, using a mechanical turk method. Individual results will vary but Biz360 appears deliver results as accurate as the other tools on the market. Sentiment analysis is not 100% right in all use cases. sometimes it will be 0%, sometimes 100%, averaging out to around 70-80%.  hile important as a tool to help in first pass analysis, do not bet your analysis, or your job, on your tools sentiment analysis exclusively.

Biz360 gives users the ability to override the system-derived sentiment.

Performance?

I did not pull out my stop watch but I was impressed by the performance of the solution.  You should not find yourself running out for a cup of coffee while your search runs.

Tell me about the Ticketing System

Biz360 needs to give more depth, more workflow capabilities, as it is falling short of competitors like Radian6 and others with its current ticketing solution.  This system allows you to assign a message to another user for follow-up at which time an e-mail is sent to them.  Once they follow-up on the message, entirely outside of the system, they can login and update the ticket as appropriate.  A basic dashboard shows overall system statistics.  I would like to see much more ticket and workflow management, the ability to tie tickets to future activities, and much more. 

I have data that I want to get out, what is possible?

Biz360 does not have any CRM integrations yet, this work will be coming in the future.  However, their API, a very simple XML REST-based API, should make the data extraction part straight-forward.  This API provides the ability to get the list of topics, and the data associated with those topics, out as a standard XML object that can be manipulated programmatically by any developer with basic development skills.

What did I leave out?  Anything else I can tell you about Biz360?  Let me know.

John

A community post for the community, demo preparation

I reached out to my friends on twitter and asked them how they prepare for a customer demo.  Here are a few responses, each less than 140 characters.  I hope you find value in their advice, I know I did.

• Just have complete faith in what you’re showing and avoid saying anything about competition @Wi_FiMan
• If you were demo’ing mw with a thin client – latency would be my Q @ElliotRoss
•  I like to pray to the gods of live demo’s before I go in front a live client, always looking for good demo Karma @NFortlage
• Get an iPhone, have laptop on the stand for the demo & stay tuned!!!! backchat is fatal! @Tracy_Falke
• focus on their needs not how great you are @JohnEstrella
• have a backup ready. Best is a screen recording on which you can then do a live voice-over @Arvid
• ideally, you should be able to talk to your demo/slides without reading anything on the screen. HTH @Ozziemedes

John

Can I get some social strategy with that Big Mac?

When I think back to childhood memories, McDonald’s always brings back a smile.  As a young kid I remember the “You deserve a break today” jingle, the entire meal for a dollar, and yes, the day I was old enough to get my first Big Mac.  As a child, going to McDonald’s was something special.

I was excited to chat with Heather Oldani who is the Director of PR for the US at McDonald’s.  While we did not discuss Happy Meals, Ronald McDonald, or even the Hamburgler, we covered a lot of ground regarding their approach to social media.  The approach is slow and methodical, but it is an approach that I feel will really pay off for the company over the course of the next few months.

 McDonald’s began working in the social media space about 2 years ago, viewing it as a great platform to engage with their customers.  As they ran campaigns around new food and other topics, they would always step back and debrief.  The goal, simple.  Identify what was not working and fix it or throw it out.  Identify what was working and keep doing more of it.  Identify new things to try, new paths to explore.  The goal for the efforts were clear, increase engagement.  The measures they used, while manually gathered, focused purely on this outcome.

In late 2008 McDonald’s decided it was time to step back, to focus on how to do a better job strategically.  While their efforts, and the regular debrief, led to solid execution, they recognized that social media needed a strategic role in the organization.   Heather formed a partnership with her counterpart in marketing and they began leading a cross-functional team focused on how to “do social right”.  As part of this initiative McDonald’s all local social media efforts were temporarily shut down, giving them time to understand how best to leverage social strategies and the social tools they use.  This was a brave move in my opinion, one I am not sure I would have taken.  However, I am impressed with their thinking at this point, time well spent.  As McDonald’s views the social world, here are the three stages towards social business enlightenment:

• Listening.  Tuning in, learning what people want, how the major channels work, etc..
• Participating.  Engaging with customers, blogger outreach efforts.  2 way engagement.  McDonald’s is in this phase now.
• Leading.  Becoming a recognized leader in the social business space, a company others want to emulate, defining a measurable ROI.

 In October of 2009 McDonald’s officially launched their Twitter and Facebook pages, entering the Participating stage of their social strategy plan. They have done a solid job on the Twitter front, promoting their people and actively engaging.

• The customer satisfaction team at McDonald’s now has two people using Twitter (via CoTweet) full-time and they are expecting to add more people as the year progresses.
• They have been actively listening with Radian6 and are adding Cymfony to their listening tool mix.  As they scale listening efforts to the Enterprise level  they will be rolling out more robust dashboards and metrics, enabling deeper learning at ever stage.
• While they are not yet feeding data from their social interactions back into a CRM system they are manually reporting, evaluating, and modifying their efforts as they go.  This is a great first step, CRM integration can come later in the year.

What are some of the challenges that McDonald’s, and you, will have?  How do you define a positive interaction?  Wow, tough question…. The answer will vary from company to company, from marketplace to marketplace, and yes, even time will change the answer to that question.  For McDonald’s, at this place and time, the answer focuses on deepening engagement with users.  If they can turn around a negative response to a positive then that is a positive engagement.  Sometimes the simple act of responding, listening to a users and responding to that user, is all that it takes.
 
So…. What’s next for McDonald’s?  Think local value.  From their Facebook page you will be able to enter your zip code and get great local information, local offers, local coupons.  Local stores, or regions, will be setting up their own Twitter accounts and Facebook pages.  Yes, they will all drive a single brand image.  However, they will do so with a distinctly  flair.

I’ll keep watching what they’re up to and keep you in the loop.  Oh, yes…. I will have fries with that Big Mac.

John

A brief look at open government, UK style

I recently exchanged thoughts with Tom Stannard, the Director of Policy and Communications for the Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council.  While the US is clearly pushing forward with its version of Open Government, leveraging social media, the UK is as well.  What follows is my e-mail based conversation with Tom.

Q. Thank you for the interview Tom.  What is your current role in the government in Blackburn and what does it entail?

A. I am the director for policy and communications at the borough council.  This includes all aspects of policy/strategy development across all our services, and all aspects of marketing and communications.  I am also responsible for community cohesion (eg social/race relations and equalities).  We are a unitary local authority, or in normalspeak, we run all the main services an English Council is able to such as education, social care for the vulnerable, housing, environmental services and economic regeneration.

 

Q. In the US the Open Government Directive (OGD)  has given agencies and politicians a mandate to become more open, more transparent.  How is OGD viewed in the UK?

 A. I think the reception was mixed.  Freedom of Information provided a sound basis for some of these changes in the UK and many agencies particularly mine at a local level have been practicing open government for many years.  The question as ever is what the directive adds to the business of government.  What has been useful in particular is OGD in the US has been symbolically important and those of us who are strong advocates of this approach in the UK are able to cite the stronger government push on this in the US as a further support to what we have been trying to do for some time in the UK.

Q. In the UK, are there similar mandates as OGD in the US?

A. The main mandate is via Freedom of Information under which the public may request detailed information from government and local agencies and we are required to publish information schemes demonstrating what we will publish and how local people can access it.  It can be demanding responding to these “FOI” requests but they represent an important principle of openness and transparency in UK government.

Q. Are there social media usage policies that you follow?

A. Yes – this is at the discretion of each council in the UK and not subject to national government directives in any way.  In Blackburn we developed a brand new communications strategy with a substantial social media component last year.  We have deliberately promoted an open access approach to social media with a strong business case to support it, unlike a lot of UK councils who ban staff from using social media channels.  I think it requires bravery on the part of agencies to trust their staff to exploit the benefits of these channels for the business and this is precisely the approach we have taken in Blackburn.

Q. In your opinion, what government agencies or officials are leading the charge in this area?

A. I would say this – but I think my Council is a leading agency in this area because of our strategy shown above.

There are more and more councils and agencies using these channels today but many are not using them as a means of 2 way dialogue and openness with citizens as we are.  What annoys me as a comms professional is when councils in the UK say “yes we are on twitter” etc but all they do is use them as an extra feed for press releases and make no attempt to promote or develop them as engagement channels.

Q. How has the use of social media benefited the citizens that you represent?

A. It benefits on a number of levels.  Firstly it is symbolically important as it signals my organisation is open and transparent and not just prepared to engage when asked, but actively seeking a  2 way dialogue with local citizens.  IN addition it helps us in practical ways – for example in the recent terrible winter weather in the UK we “discovered” citizens in Blackburn via Twitter who were either stuck in the snow or who had not had their rubbish collected by our trucks.  Some of these people contacted me direct to complain or to highlight a problem.  By engaging in this case on twitter we were able to rapidly target our response and improved satisfaction by engaging directly and personally over these channels, showing we cared about people with these problems, and doing something about them.

Q. Are you unique in the UK Government or do other officials leverage social tools in the same manner?

A. See my response on leading edge etc.  We are not unique, but practice is mixed.  Many organisations for instance  will only have a corporate account and will just use a feed rather like RSS which in my view defeats the object.  Our Twitter strategy as a case in point combines corporate presence with in my case a personal profile of directors of the council – we think this is critical to online transparency but also to authenticity as citizens can engage with individuals not just an abstract corporate entity.  This is proving to be one of the most interesting and exciting development areas in the online behaviours of UK government agencies at the present time.

Q. From a high-level perspective, what are the reasons that you make use of social media tools like Twitter?

A. All of the above – new platforms for 2 way engagement with citizens and interest groups is the most important, but also transparency, openness and authentic voice for the organisation.  The human face is often what is lacking in corporate behaviour and it is key to try and bring this to bear on our business.

Q. Do you have any success stories, based upon the use of social media, that you could share?

A. We have improved electoral turnout via social media projects (a voter turnout video on our YouTube channel), better citizen responsiveness in the severe weather, and we also use social media as an automatic “right of reply” to correct messages or when journalists choose not to consult us.  Again they are direct and positive channels for all of the above.

Microsoft continues to make great strides in the public sector

Amir Capriles is the CRM/ERP Strategic Alliances Manager for Microsoft, focusing on the US Public Sector.  Amir has been around the public sector for years, nearly 10 years at KPMG and a few years on his own prior to joining Microsoft just over four years ago.  Amir is the type of person you need, if you’re Microsoft, helping guide the way in an environment as complicated as the Federal Government.

I chatted with Amir last week to learn more about Microsoft’s efforts in the public sector.  While we will talk more in the near future about focus areas, I wanted to share with you some of the key points from our conversation. 

• Microsoft is making great strides in terms of revenue generation from the public sector.  In fact, worldwide revenue exceeded $7 Billion with revenue from the US in excess of $3 Billion.  This is far beyond ahead of where Microsoft has been in the past, they are truly gaining traction in this market.
• While the leading democracies, from a revenue perspective, are clearly the english speaking countries of the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, there are real opportunities opening up across the globe. 
• Some of the major focus areas in the US (and to some degree across the globe), are:
  • “The cloud”.  While not everyone understands what “the cloud” is, they often know they want it.  There is a belief that going to the cloud will result in cost reductions and architectural simplifications.  In my opinion the cloud will remain a focus in the public and private sector for the foreseeable future, at least until the next paradigm shift occurs (think biological data stores).
  • The consumerization of government.  I continue to say that the public sector is not very different from the enterprise.  The same shifts we see in the enterprise space are taking place in the public sector.  The wish to use social networking tools, to leverage non-standard mobile devices, to tie the home/consumer world to the public/work world has permanently changed how all of us work.
  • The Open Government Directive.  While I congratulate the President and his team for putting this directive forth, it is, as is often the case with directives, lacking in detail.  Agencies know they have a mandate to change, and timelines within which to do so, but there is little in the way of detailed guidance.  The agencies must learn on their own.  Microsoft has done a good job of providing guidance in this area, expect to see much more of this in 2010 and beyond.  Check out their Gov2.0 site for great information.

That’s it for now.  I’ll keep you in the loop on this front as I talk with Microsoft and others. Stay tuned.

Shhh…. Who is my favorite Social Media Expert?

You are