The Social Ecosystem

Organizations of all types have struggled to come to grips with terms like Government 2.0, Social Business, Social Media, and a long list of others that are floating around book stores, universities, and blogs.

I have spent a lot of time speaking with businesses and government agencies, exploring what is working, what is failing, and seeking to understand where confusion and hype are preventing these organizations from achieving full value from their efforts.  The Social Ecosystem is the result of these efforts and is meant to reduce confusion and offer guidance for organizations across the world.

Lofty goals?  Perhaps, but the Social Ecosystem is not being defined in a vacuum, it will fully leverage many ideas that are already available and will evolve, as needed, as we continue to learn more.

For this post I will discuss, at a high level, the major components of the Social Ecosystem as well as some key definitions.  Over  time I plan to create a table of contents, a section for terms, and break this down into a book-like format. Please be patient as it will take time and we’ll all work through this together.

Key Components

• The Social Ecosystem.   The Social Ecosystem provides a structure within which all types of organizations live and interact.  This ecosystem is open and inclusive of both public and private organizations and remains independent of geography and language.
• The Social Organization.  Organizations ranging from small and medium businesses to enterprises to local and federal governments (and so on) are all social organizations.
  • I will begin by looking at the key behaviors and requirements from an Ecosystem perspective.
  • As we continue we will explore the internals of the Social Organization. I will add in concepts like Social CRM, Enterprise 2.0, and Government 2.0.  There will be no attempt to replace these concepts, instead, they will be included as they fit very well within this model.
  • In the long-term the Social Organization should be thought of as a standard, including various levels of compliance that address security, training, measurement, level of channel neutrality, and more.
• The Social Unit.  The smallest part of the Ecosystem includes teams and individuals.  We will discuss concepts like social currency, the social value cycle (compliments of Paul Doyle, CEO of Proofspace), leadership and organizational structures.

The Social Ecosystem is channel-neutral (thanks Steve Schildwachter) and does not promote any specific tools or vendors.  It will stay open and independent.

Key Definitions

These are a starting point and we will certainly add to these as we move forward.

• Social CRM.  My definition builds off of Paul Greenberg’s stake in the ground.
  • “Social 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”
• Enterprise 2.0.  For this work I will use Andrew McAfee’s definition from May of 2006.
  • “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.”
• Government 2.0. My chosen definition comes from the Australian Government 2.0 Google Group.
  • “Government 2.0 is not specifically about social networking or technology based approaches to anything. It represents a fundamental shift in the implementation of government – toward an open, collaborative, cooperative arrangement where there is (wherever possible) open consultation, open data, shared knowledge, mutual acknowledgment of expertise, mutual respect for shared values and an understanding of how to agree to disagree. Technology and social tools are an important part of this change but are essentially an enabler in this process.”
• Social Media.  The definition I will use is the one given by Brian Solis.
  • “Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism, one-to-many, to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers.”

That’s all for today, let me know what you think.

John

A shout out to Gov20Radio

One of the most impressive aspects of the Gov2.0 effort are the passionate people who are always open to share their stories, both the successes and the failures, to help those that follow to constantly improve. On most Sunday nights I take a break from my weekend to catch the Gov2.0Radio program to hear the always impressive guests that Adriel, Steve, and Steve, are able to bring on board.

This week’s guest, Carol Spencer, treasurer of the National Association of Government Webmasters, was exceptional.

Keep up the great work and continue to educate. The difference between success and failure with government 2.0 will in large part depend upon the education available at all levels of government. Keep doing a great job in providing this information, it is appreciated.

John

Healthcare: Social Media Marketing in Practice (via The Side Note)

I came across this post on The Side Note discussing the use of Social Media by the Eating Disorder Center in Denver.  It provides a good overview and I wanted to make sure you checked this out.

 Contributed by Vern Singleton, CEO, Eating Disorder Center of Denver Eating Disorder Center of Denver is one of the nation’s foremost centers for the diagnosis and treatment of the full range of eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and diabulimia. Based on an individual’s particular clinical needs, EDC-D … Read More

via The Side Note

Does Twitter make sense for marketing?

While this infographic is 8 months old it provides some good information that you should understand.

Before digging into these statistics too deeply, also consider:

• As of April, 2010, Twitter had about 110 million registered users.
• Based upon research by Nielsen in April of 2010 only 11.4 million of those registered Twitter users used Twitter daily.
• As of June 18th, Twitter sees 750 tweets/second with 65 million tweets taking place on an average day.
• In January of 2010 the average Twitter user had just 27 followers according to research done by RJMetrics.

Okay, what does this mean?  it means that the average Twitter user can reach 729 users for each Tweet that is retweeted (assuming the 27  followers per user).  Now, if 20% of those accounts are truly dead accounts, that brings the reach down to 583 users that might reached with a given tweet if it is retweeted once.  The infographic to our right shows us, however, that only 8% of Tweets are retweetable.

This means the average user must tweet 12.5 times to see one retweet of content. 

The average user only reaches those 27 users in the vast majority of tweets.  In fact, out of every 13 tweets their message only reaches an audience of  907 potential viewers.  Again, however, 20% of these are dead/inactive accounts, bringing our number to 726 viewers (583 unique users).

Of course, this assumes that the all potential viewers are logged in when your tweet is sent and that they are not busy reading other people’s tweets.  It is safe to say that you would be lucky to see 10% of these users actually logged in at any moment, further reducing our audience down to 73 viewers with 58 uniques in that set. 

For the average user it takes 13 tweets to reach 58 unique viewers.

It does not pay to use Twitter for marketing if you are an average user.

Does Twitter make sense for marketing?    The answer that it depends.   Understanding the numbers should help you decide the right answer for your organization.

John

Excellent video explaining augmented reality

Do you understand the concept of augmented reality? If not,check out this great video from Common Craft and, if you can, install the Layar browser to your mobile phone and play.

John

Engage with all of your communities with Postling

I recently read about Postling being used by companies as a dashboard tool to monitor the latest conversations across the major channels the companies are engaged on.  The tool is free and I setup an account to give it a try while simultaneously asking those on my blog’s Facebook page what they thought of the tool.  Sometimes, just sometimes, you receive so much information that it becomes time to turn that feedback into a guest post.  This was one of those times…

Mike Whaling, of 30lines.com, responded with feedback that matched my observations,and with feedback that can only be obtained by using the product for longer than a typical evaluation cycle. Here, in the words of our guest reviewer, are some thoughts on Postling.

“I’ve been using Postling for a while, and I’m mostly pleased with it. It tracks replies to tweets and Facebook page updates well, although it’s not in real-time. The keyword tracking is OK, but this also isn’t quite in real time. I haven’t tried the blogging features yet; I’m primarily using it to post to and monitor social media sites.

It’s easy to add brands and link your accounts. Replies to comments on Facebook and Twitter are a breeze. Being able to monitor reviews on Yelp and CitySearch in the same place is incredibly handy, too. The support from the Postling team has been great, and they’re all easy to find on Twitter.

All that said, there’s plenty of room for improvement. There’s no easy way to search your dashboard or save posts for later action, and you can’t manage followers or lists from within the app. You only see tweet and replies directed at your brand, so it’s much like CoTweet in that respect. (I find a lot of value in monitoring the stream, looking for items to retweet or share to my Facebook pages.) Some of the features aren’t as intuitive as they could be, and I’d like to see it connect with LinkedIn and a few other sites. There’s also not a mobile-optimized version of the site or smartphone app, yet.

All in all, I much prefer Postling to the majority of alternatives, but it still requires a second tool like Tweetdeck or Seesmic for full access to all the social tools I’m looking for at this point.

….

I’m using Postling to monitor my page at http://www.facebook.com/30lines, so feel free to direct your readers there if you want to give them a feel for what the updates look like when posted through the app. I look forward to reading the full review!

….

One point to add that I just realized: there’s no way to manage direct messages on Twitter. Again, this is easy enough to handle through Tweetdeck, but it doesn’t really make sense to have a Twitter monitoring tool that can’t monitor DMs.”

Mike, thanks for being a guest reviewer.

John

What are Facebook fans really worth?

Ah…..   I think I included the wrong image….  Oh well, you get the idea I hope..  I am always looking to understand the value of communities, whether Facebook, Twitter, or any other type of community.  In the past I have seen Facebook fan value defined close to $3.60, but a recent report, based upon the efforts of  a firm named Syncapse, shows fan value as being much higher, especially for organizations that understand social business.  GigaOM did a nice write-up and pointed out the key findings, including:

• An average fan spends $71.84 more on the products they “fan” then non-fans.
• Fans are 28% more likely to continue using a specific brand.
• Fans are 41% more likely to recommend a product they are a fan of to their friends.
• The average fan is worth $136.38 to your organization.

A report from ROI Research Inc. (roiresearch.com),  sponsored by Performics, further explores fan behavior and, to some extent, fan value.  The report surveyed 3000 US social network users and notes:

• 50% of users fan/like a brand
• 32% of the users have recommended a brand  on social networks.
• “Users are not only satisfied, they want more, which is a good sign for marketers,” noted Scott Haiges, president of ROI Research. “Respondents expressed a strong desire to get more printable coupons [49 percent], notifications of sales and special deals [46 percent], and information about new products [35 percent] from companies or products on Facebook, and this rings truer in some industries more than others.”

If you consider the latest Facebook statistics  more than 200 million Facebook users are becoming fans, Liking, brands.  These 200 million users account for $14,368,000,000 (yes, count the zeros)  in additional spend.  I know I could do something with those billions of dollars, could you?

John

Shhh…. Don’t tell anyone…

Don’t tell anyone, please….I am not a fan of social media.  So much noise that can be difficult to filter out to the relevant morsels…  I also do not believe that content is king, or that content is the new currency as I have seen people mention.

Want to know what I believe? Social media, when part of an overall social business strategy, can lead to real organizational value.  Yes, if it is only used tactically it can be noisy and distracting. However, when used strategically real value is created.

Content is not as important as value creation.  The determination of content quality is always subjective.  The creation of value in terms of reduced cost, higher revenue, increased profits, is always clear.

What do you think? Is value creation really what we’re all striving for?

John

p.s. The photo is from Flickr user Patchworkbunny

Workwednesday special, a job candidate’s pitch: Mikhail Gorelkin

I am connected with Mikhail on LinkedIn but have never worked with him directly. However, workwednesday is focused on helping job seekers and the organizations with job openings find one another. Today, Mikhail Gorelkin explains why you should give him a call.

*Here is the best kept secret: the only way to build effective software systems for business is to use advanced software engineering.* I can help you design and program highly sophisticated models and algorithms for many areas such as: adaptive websites, semantic SEO, personal intelligent assistants, personalized searches and recommendations, intelligent social games, distributed computing, agent-based architectures, automatic negotiation, dynamic pricing, adaptive marketing, etc.

I am a mathematician / AI programmer specializing in solving real-world problems, designing and developing intelligent and adaptive algorithms and systems in a variety of computer languages. I use advanced methods from mathematics, statistics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and computer science to formulate difficult problems adequately and to solve them correctly. And then I program these solutions in C++, C#, F#, Python, and Java. I think that with my skills and experience I can make your projects cooler, more intelligent and profitable.

Mikhail Gorelkin
E-mail: gorelkin@hotmail.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gorelkin
Resume: http://www.scguild.com/resume/9195R.html
Blog: http://www.gorelkin.blogspot.com (my web models)

Juniper’s Mobile Community demonstrating great early results

You may recall that I chatted with Juniper Networks back in April to learn more about the new mobile community they had just launched.

Also, if you were at my presentation at Parafest ’10 you may recall that I shared stats similar to those above.  This report, run on the NetMarketShare web site, shows the devices people are using to browse the web.  As you can see,  mobile browsing continues to rise in terms of the overall percentage of web browsing, nearly doubling from October of last year (82% for the math gurus in the room).

How does Juniper compare to the rest of the world over the same period?

Well, mobile traffic to Juniper has climbed from 0.5% of all traffic to 1.5% of all traffic, 300% increase in terms of its part of overall traffic.  Even more impressive, the other major metrics have taken off since they deployed their mobile community.  These comparisons are against last October’s traffic numbers.

• The average mobile visitor now spends 121 seconds, an 86% increase.
• The average mobile visitor views 2.9 pages per visit, an increase of 81%.
• Bounce rate showed a decrease of 22%. 

Juniper’s mobile visitors are clearly finding tremendous value in this new offering.

I am going to stay in touch with Juniper as they continue to measure and tweak their mobile community.  In the mean time, step back and ask yourself if your community can benefit by providing robust mobile solutions to your customers.

John