I hope you find this video chat useful. I continue my conversation with Michael Wu, Lithium’s Principal Scientist, on how Lithium is working to model the complexity of network behavior. As companies seek out the all-important super-user these self-adjusting models will play an ever important role.
John
I had the pleasure of asking questions of Congressman Mike Honda, via his Legislative Correspondent/Online Communications Coordinator, Ahmed R. Bhadelia. While a more direct communication is always preferable I appreciate the Congressman, and his Staff, taking time out of a very busy schedule to respond.
Q. What are your views on the open government directive and what value do you see it providing to citizen’s and public employees?
A. As a former educator, I have always believed that involving stakeholders in decision-making yields greater results than if one were to go it alone. This method works in the classroom, but also works when governing. The American people are our nation’s greatest resource. Empowering the public with information can lead to better public policy. Representing the interests of constituents becomes easier when technology enables elected officials to more easily tap into the knowledge and expertise of the public. I have spent my career in Congress pushing this belief, and I recognize that the technologies developed in my Silicon Valley district can be implemented by Congress to allow citizens to have better access to their representatives.
In this regard, I have been successful in implementing several projects. For example, I included language in the Fiscal Year 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act to directing Congress, the Library of Congress, and the Government Printing Office to research the feasibility of giving the American public advanced search and sort capabilities for legislative and public information. I also undertook a pioneering project to improve civic engagement in Congress using a technique called crowd-sourcing. Hundreds of designers and thousands of my constituents participated in submitting and rating designs to build the first federal government website created by the people for the people. The purpose of the website redesign was to move America closer to Government 2.0, when the public’s ability to access and provide advice to Members of Congress is enhanced by new technology and new online participation.
All this said, I still believe we have a long way to go. We’ve jumped over some major hurdles, but we’re not all the way there yet.
Q. Why do you use social media? What are you looking to do? How does it fit into your overall communication strategy? + What results are you seeing? Have you seen results from social media that you could not have replicated using other communication channels?
A. I use social media because it allows me to get my opinions out to the public and get my constituents opinions to me without any filter or middleperson, be it advocacy agencies, news media or other third parties. There is no bias, there are no misquotes when you use social media.
There are definitely challenges to using Social Media. Keeping messages short and concise is a big challenge. Making sure the entire interaction is dynamic is another challenge. There can be a temptation to just repost articles and reuse content from other places. I believe people sense when you are putting in a real effort into using social media versus just going with the trend. Another major feature of social media is that I can talk about what I want, when I want. Often issues that are not as popular and may not get covered by the mainstream media can be discussed using social media. Governance requires that you be able to multi-task and social media allows me to participate in conversations on a multitude of topics.
I think being from Silicon Valley and a 5-time CMF Mouse award winner allows me to lead while also moving to cutting edge arenas. This lets me set best practices through experience. In this regard, I’ve seen an exponential increase in the use social media as policy education tool over the last year. The health care debate is a perfect example of this.
Q. What social media usage policies/guidelines do you have in place for employees?
A. I know that my staff has a passion and an interest in their work. Social media is one way to express this passion. Many offices place stringent rules on the usage of social media. I, however, have always believed that when you deny people the opportunity to express themselves, you deny people part of their character. Rather than putting rigid rules in place, I tell my staff to be smart about what they are posting, who they are posting it to and how they are posting it. I trust my staff because they were hired for having good judgment and an ability to handle responsibility.
I do, of course, place some limits on social media. Confidentiality is essential to the political process. People who meet with me should feel comfortable that there is a certain privilege in our conversations. My staff knows and respects that.
Q. Do you also use a CRM application?
A. Most Congressional Offices use Constituent Management Systems of some sort. There are a few popular ones out there. We currently use Internet Quorum by Lockheed Martin.
Q. Do you have any success stories, based upon the use of social media that you could share?
A. I believe social media in government as a whole is a success story. Five years ago, who could have imagined unfiltered communication between elected officials and their constituents?
In my office, we’ve had some great examples of social media transforming our website design into an innovative, creative, and communicative process. I mentioned crowd-sourcing my website earlier. I also held a challenge on Facebook for tickets to the inauguration of President Obama. Two programs were created for constituents to request tickets. One asked people to post to my Facebook Page about why they want to attend Obama’s inauguration. The other asked my constituents to propose ideas for how to reduce educational inequity and reform America’s education system. In addition to reflecting on the historic meaning of the inauguration, I also wanted to get people to think about a specific area in dire need of change. The response was substantial and cemented the role of social media in our society in my mind.
Craig Newmark is generous to a fault and he was kind enough to share his thoughts on a couple of quick questions I sent his way. Craig, the founder of Craigslist, is also someone who has taken the time to become deeply involved with efforts to bring transparency to government by leveraging social tools, open data sets, and open source software.
While brief, I hope you find this useful. I know it has left me with more to consider.
Q. What prompted your interest in government 2.0 initiatives?
A. We’re living in times when people use tech to change everything about the way people work together for mutual benefit, and that includes governance. Even though I’m most naturally a couch potato, I feel I gotta stand up and do my bit. As an engineer, I like things to work well, and that applies to government also.
Q. In your opinion, what areas are ripe for reaping the benefits of these open initiatives but is also yet to be tapped into..
A. We’re starting to get results in broad areas:
Q. While there are pockets of success within many of the democratic governments in the world, what is needed to reach a tipping point that will eliminate middle management obstacles in deploying government 2.0 broadly?
A. Even a lot of middle management gets it, we need to get results and broadcast that, to build unstoppable momentum.
Q. In my opinion, ROI of government 2.0 initiatives are often measured in terms of political capital won/loss. Do you agree or disagree?
A. I’d disagree, I think the ultimate return will be seeing that government with honest leadership is trustworthy.
Q. What has surprised you the most as you have gone deeper with your efforts in this space?
A. How much passion I’ve seen among rank and file government workers to give taxpayers what they’ve paid for.
Want to hear more of what Craig has to say on Government 2.0 initiatives? Check out his website or follow him on Twitter.
Jon Hussey is helping to make American University more collaborative, more social, both internal and external to the University itself. Jon and I had a great e-mail exchange, I hope you are as impressed as I am.
Q. Thanks for taking the time to chat Jon. What is your role at American University?
A. I am the Manager of Web Communications for the university. I have been serving in that role since June 15, 2009, when I made the switch over from the Media Relations department at AU. In that role, I promoted AU experts and events for the School of Public Affairs and the School of International Service and I ran the Media Relations Web site. In my current role, I manage the American University home page and oversee all news produced across the university. I also work with webmasters or CPLs (Content Publishing Leads) in each of the schools, colleges, and units to ensure that their web content is migrated from the old AU site to the new site and that the Web site as a whole meets design, content, and SEO standards.
Q. I have not seen a large number of Universities fully embrace social media. How does social media fit into the overall communication plan of the University?
A. Higher education has been relatively slow in embracing social media. I have heard from colleagues—in higher ed and in other fields—that the lack of control over the conversation dissuades many companies from joining. However, over the last year I have met many social media enthusiasts in universities throughout the country. It is a relatively small group (a couple hundred), but we are well connected through Twitter and a higher ed web developers Ning network. The time of fearing social media seems to have passed and now everyone is jumping on board. Already there are some shining examples of social media use in higher education. One of the nicest I’ve seen is NC State’s Twitter aggregator—http://twitter.ncsu.edu/—for which they offer the source code.
For American University, social media is a complement to all of our traditional media methods. Like most of the public relations and communications world, we have recognized that social media is not a panacea. But when social media used effectively with press releases, advertising, etc., it will reach the largest audience. Social media also provides instant feedback and conversation that isn’t available through traditional methods.
Q. What is the University’s social media strategy?
A. An overall social media strategy for the university is a living, evolving document. Last year, myself and the Chief Web Strategist, Michael Heasley, thoroughly researched the demographics and ROI of many of the social networks and made a determination as to which sites we would dedicate our time and creativity. We have been very successful in our use of Facebook and Twitter, the top two sites on that list. We are just beginning to develop our use of Flickr and YouTube.
Q. How did you get started with social media? Did it begin as a grassroots effort or did the decision come from the top?
A. This was an entirely grassroots effort. While working as a Public Information Officer in the media relations office, I started seeing more and more blog posts and articles about Twitter. In January of 2009, I watched as the Iran elections played out on Twitter and journalists began to see just how powerful a tool it can be. That convinced me that there were opportunities to build relationships through social media that were far more difficult through regular pitching and lunches with media members. So I created the @aumedia Twitter account in February of 2009. As I followed journalists, saw what they were interested in, and developed relationships with them, I found that a growing number of students, alumni, staff, and faculty were following the account.
In April, my boss created the American University Facebook account and began posting news and events to the page. He also created the @AmericanU Twitter account, but did not begin using it. Since Facebook was created this past April, we have gained 100+ fans a week and currently have nearly 8,000 fans and great levels of interaction on our wall. In September, we developed a plan for the @AmericanU Twitter account and I have been managing that since. I am still learning as to what the AU community wants from the feed, but I regularly solicit advice. Below is a little more detail on the strategy and process that’s already in place for the account.
Q. What processes did you put in place to enable going social?
A. Our content management system has been built to allow schools, colleges, and units across the university to develop their own news. That news is then filtered based on taxonomy into different subsites throughout our AU web site. I use the RSS feeds built into our Web site to follow all news and events across the entire university. This gives me a wealth of content to push out through social media.
I’m not sure that speaks to what you were asking, but that’s a process that I put in place that allows me to find the news and events at AU that are often not publicized. Our university has so many events and so many things going on, that before our Web site was built with this taxonomy and the RSS feeds, much of this was not shared with the public or even the AU community.
Q. How did you go about tool selection? What tools are you using? For example, I know you run the AmericanU Twitter account, do you use the Twitter client or a third party client like CoTweet?
A. I am currently running the @AmericanU account, my personal/professional account @auwebmanager, and I assist with the @aumedia account. In order to run all of those accounts—and follow any mentions of American University—I find that TweetDeck is the most user-friendly. I have nicely organized Twitter lists and columns that allow me to follow all AU students, faculty, staff and alumni in one column, all AU schools, colleges, and offices in another, higher ed colleagues in another, etc. etc. Right now, I probably have 15 columns open in my TweetDeck, but I never feel overwhelmed. I keep my TweetDeck open all day at work and I find 5 minutes in between projects throughout the day to read posts, re-tweet, or push out content.
Q. What social communication policies have you put in place?
A. We have not put any “policies” in place. We regularly share best practices and I talk frequently with people across campus about what I’ve found to be the most successful tactics in social media. Over the last year, Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created by AU offices and groups at an incredible rate. Some have asked me and my boss for advice, others have found their voice on their own. As of my last count, we have 31 Twitter accounts and more than 50 Facebook groups or fan pages.
Just recently I created a AU Social Media (closed) Facebook group for staff and administration involved in social media to share their successes and inspiration. I believe that with collaboration of this sort, we can develop a more refined and unified social media strategy.
Q. What level of participation do you have from students? From Faculty? From the Administration?
A. I have found an incredible level of participation from students, alumni, faculty, staff and administration. While Twitter is still a relatively small community, the participation there has changed the way staff and administration interact with students and alumni. It’s as simple as the “What are you doing now?” question. Before, a small number of communications people around the university had to seek out stories and info about what students, faculty, and alumni were up to. Now, they see it in real time on Twitter, can re-tweet it from their own account, or follow their work and write a longer story on it.
If you look at the @AmericanU Twitter account, I have just begun to build lists of students, faculty, alumni, staff, and offices. That Twitter account has grown from 200 followers in October to 1,200 today.
On Facebook the participation has been consistent since we started. As I mentioned, we have seen incredible growth in just a year. I set an ambitious goal in September: to reach 10,000 fans by the end of May. We are currently slightly behind that pace, but with the enthusiasm of the entire community on Facebook, I think there’s a chance we can reach that goal. I continue to be amazed at the community spirit on Facebook, particularly the students and alumni rallying around the achievements of our current students and faculty. That to me is at the heart of social media.
Q. Do you measure ROI today? If yes, how? What have been the early results?
A. I have just begun to measure ROI extensively. I use a Bit.ly account for all posts to Facebook and Twitter. This allows me to see how many clickthroughs I get on all of that content. I have also embedded Google Analytics on the AU Facebook page (a little trick I learned here –
http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/
) That, coupled with Bit.ly and Facebook’s “Insights” gives me a great deal of ROI information and has helped me mold more successful posts.
Q. How, if at all, do your social media tools fit in with your other back-end systems like CRM, ERP, HRIS, etc..?
A. I can’t speak to back-end systems like ERP, HRIS, but as for CRM, Twitter is king. Twitter is all about building relationships. Two offices in particular are doing a great job of this—@AUAdmission and @AUCareerCenter. The Admissions office has done a great job of following mentions of “American University” on Twitter and interacting with prospective students who have recently applied, are considering applying, or who have taken a tour of AU. It’s amazing how many of those students tweet about it. It’s also amazing to see how impressed they are when they get a quick response from our admissions people. The Career Center is similarly doing a great job of connecting our students with local businesses and sharing the successes of students currently placed in internships.
Q. Any great stories from the real world to share?
A. One example that really resonated with me was a run-in I had with a very pessimistic student a few months ago. We currently have our own social network built into our Web site called, AUpedia
http://www.american.edu/aupedia
. It is a wiki-like application where students, faculty, and staff can share insider information about American University. Others can then edit the entry, comment on it, or provide links. It’s a great, user-generated feature that offers information that can’t be found anywhere else on the site.
A few months ago, I contacted a couple of students who were early adopters and had written great posts on AUpedia. I asked these students if they would be willing to come in for a photo shoot because we wanted to create posters using their entries to promote AUpedia around the campus. One student emailed back with a snarky response. He said that he would be willing to come in, but that he would like some assurances that AUpedia was truly user-generated and that content wouldn’t be edited by staff.
I told him that I would speak with him before the photo shoot about the vision of AUpedia. After explaining that it is a great opportunity for students and faculty to share their AU experience in their own words, he said, “Did you watch Conan O’Brien’s last show?” I said, yes, I did. He said, “When Conan said, ‘I hate cynicism—it’s my least favorite quality,’ I decided not to send you an email saying F-you and to give this a chance.”
I was struck by how often students look at staff and administration with that cynicism, but through social media—and the relationship building it affords—they are beginning to trust.
I am cross posting from the Lithium blog (with permission, of course) where I would urge you to check out the original along with follow-up information. The first part of our chat focuses on the introductions and provides an overview of Michael’s background and the credentials he brings to Lithium in their pursuit to mine social media to drive real results.
John
Providing great services and products is difficult for businesses, government agencies, everyone. It is easy to blame the customers, or the citizens, for not understanding the complexity of issues ranging from how to install your product to the need for building permits. While, to be honest, there a likely a couple of knowledge-challenged people among those groups, if you have a large number of customers, or potential customers, that do not understand your products/services the real problem is in your mirror looking back at you.
According to the register, MSI, a hardware manufacturing company, MSI sent an e-mail to 97,000 customers informing them to ’Read The F***ing Manual’. The e-mail went so far as to state “The MSI-forum and MSI-support team are fed-up with explaining you what can be found in the manual”…. Wow! If I was MSI’s competitors I would reach out to the MSI customer base immediately.
Here is my advice to MSI and to any other company or public sector agency that might be thinking their customers, their citizens, are just too stupid to get it.
What other advice would you have for MSI?
John
This is a point of constant discussion and much debate. While everyone argues that the strategy is the key part of a social strategy, or social CRM as it is known in some circles, the reality is we often fail to define social strategies that do not count on social media tools to get the job done.
If you review my definition of Social CRM you will find:
“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation to give mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s joint ownership of the conversation”
I too believe it is strategy first. So…. Can you deliver value on a social strategy that does not leverage social media tools? The real answer is that it depends upon your business. Many small, local community, stores have done exactly that for years. So too have local governments. Medium and Enterprise businesses, Federal Agencies might be able to do so as well, but the inefficiencies make it less practical, not scalable.
Small, Local business already understand the value of mutually beneficial relationships, of that joint ownership of the conversation. When a customer stops in to buy products that are not available, the store owner and the customer discuss the need and find a solution that works for both. That solution may be for the store owner to stock the product or it may be a recommendation to buy elsewhere. An exchange of need, possible solutions, and eventual resolution keep customer and owner in a position where both achieve value.
These one on one conversations are not scalable, however. Human beings do not scale without the help of processes and technologies. If no one yet owns that one, lets call that “John Moore’s 5th Law of Social Strategy”, has a ring to it. Anyway, that is why we so often shift the broader conversations to these processes and technologies. However, here are a few solutions for you to consider, as small business owner, to scale your social strategies with little to no technology:
These types of ideas work, at least for a couple of small businesses I am familiar with. They are either low or no technology and give mutual value to customers and businesses. What is holding you back, if anything, from ramping up your social strategies today?
John
I reached out to the AT&T Customer Service team to chat about their approach to tying collaborative social strategies and tools into their overall business, focusing primarily on their approach to customer service. I spoke with the leaders of their social support and their corporate communication teams about how a company as large as AT&T started down this road. The lessons learned from their approach apply equally well to small businesses, the enterprise, and the public sector. The approach focuses on delivering the right social solutions as part of an overall strategy, not as a silo’d response by one business unit or function.
How did it start?
AT&T feels that social strategies are only useful if they are part of the overall corporate strategy and weaved throughout the business units and job functions. The entire company must understand the customer. However, as you shift to implementation, taking an iterative approach within a single function or unit simplifies the effort and improves the chances for success. For AT&T, social strategies started in the Corporate Communications through the build out of a Facebook fan page.
Do you remember the uproar from customers when AT&T changed iPhone pricing last year? Well, lets just say customers found a way to vent anywhere and everywhere they could. One of those places was the Facebook fan page. Molly DeMaagd, ATTCustomerCare on Twitter, was pulled into the fray, learning a lot about how to manage support on social channels.
AT&T recognized the need to provide customer service through social media channels. Molly brought in Shawn McPike who began to strategically plan the rollout of customer service on Twitter. His goal was to focus on how to deliver the function in a way that supported growth, focusing doing it right versus doing it quickly. In fact, before they started tweeting, they:
I asked AT&T how they knew the right team size to start wth…. The answer…. Educated guess. The reality is you are unlikely to accurately gauge the volume until you start. AT&T started with 4 members in their social support organization and quickly scaled to13. The key was knowing that the need to rapidly scale might be there and being ready in advance to do so.
Now.. How is AT&T handling support issues on Twitter?
Their team of social support, social media managers, monitor the twitterverse for users encountering problems with their products and services. On an average day, members of this team reach out to more than one hundred people about their problems and work with the traditional support teams to try to resolve customer problems.
What tools do they use? I am glad you asked..
What about ROI?
The team at AT&T struggled with this answer, in part because they are not called on to answer this, in part because they have not found a great way of measuring this. If the folks at AT&T want my advice, let me know as you will want to answer this question soon, for the executive team, the shareholders, and the customers.
What else?
I could probably write another post or three from my conversation, but I’ll condense it down to a couple of extra points:
AT&T has done a great job ramping up their social support efforts. While there is clearly room for improvement they have taken a thoughtful, holistic approach and it will pay off for them in the long run. Good job.
John
David Carr of the Wall Street Journal wrote a good article on geo-social services a couple of days ago. In this article he highlights a point I have tried to make for some time now:
‘“The check-in is bigger than location,” said Yancey Strickler of Kickstarter, a Web site that helps with fund-raising for media products’
Location matters, yes. However, it is the influence you have within your communities to draw attention to certain locations, physical or virtual, where the real potential of these solutions lie. While not everyone understands this point, I do believe Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare, is at least beginning to think in this way based upon our exchange from a couple of months ago on this and other topics where he noted:
“Truth is, we need better tools for public and private venues. If you want to add your home, car, apt, blog, pool to foursquare that’s great… but we need to do it in a way so that other people don’t see those listings.”
The great news is Foursquare will be helping us get there, at least in some fashion. For now, stop by my blog on Foursquare and check-in. While I can’t offer you any cookies or coupons, I promise, I have some ideas for rewarding future mayors…. Someday.
Regardless of your views, for or against, the health care reform act you must admit that its passage was historic. The long battle to reach this point could be, however, all for naught if not properly managed. The good news is the strategy and tools are available, will they be used?
First, to make sure we are all on the same page, let me quickly share my key definitions. I am certain that portions have been inadvertently stolen (er… borrowed) from others, I apologize to those people in advance.
Alright, now that we are at least somewhat on the same page, here are my top three ideas that should be implemented to make sure that healthcare reform is more than a single historic night, that it will be a successful undertaking for all citizens.
While there are clearly dozens of other ideas, these are my top three. What ideas do you have to share?
John
