Image via Wikipedia
I came across this post today and it reminded me of past discussions. I am a bit nostalgic today, perhaps, so I decided to dig back a few months. I argued last April that you MUST develop for the mobile web first, applications second. While mobile statistics have changed a great deal in the last 17 months the arguments still make sense. Give that post a read, if you have time, and check out this one from today too.
via Jon’s PR 1.5
As I write about The Social Ecosystem I regularly remind people that 80% of organizational challenges are common across industries, sectors, geographies. In other words, while this article is focused on government it applies equally well to small and medium businesses, enterprises, etc…
“Government 2.0 is a citizen-centric philosophy/strategy where results are often driven by partnerships between citizens and government. It is focused entirely on achieving goals through increased efficiency, better management, information transparency, and citizen engagement and most often leverages newer technologies to achieve the desired outcomes.”
Learn more about Government 2.0 by reading any of these great books (affiliate links):
SummaryThe Lab asked this simple question to a people across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and in e-mail. The survey, which was built using SurveyMonkey, received a total of 121 responses. While not a large number the sentiment expressed, and the detailed responses, provide good insights.
The respondents were 68.1% male, 31.9% female. The majority of respondents self-reported being between the ages of 26 – 50 (61.2), 21.5% were over 50, and 17.3% were 25 and under.
The respondents were from 9 countries but the majority are from the United States ( 55.4%) and Canada ( 21.5%).
We asked about people’s perceptions about how well their Federal and Local governments are doing with traditional web sites and with social media to provide citizens with timely and relevant information. Responses were given a numeric rating ranging from 1 to 4 with 1 being the most negative perception and 4 being the most positive perception.
We also asked for their thoughts on how the government could do a better job using technology to aid citizens. These responses were interesting and very informative.
The exact questions asked were:
Our respondents were slightly negative about how well their governments are doing with providing them with timely and relevant information, with a more negative perception at the local level vs. the federal level and a more negative perception of the use of social media tools vs. more traditional web sites. Keeping in mind that we asked “How do you feel about this statement?” and a score of 1 is means Strongly Disagree, 2 means Disagree, and 3 means Agree, here is the summary:
There are great efforts underway and many, many, passionate people working in, and with, government to do a better job share information with citizens. I look at this survey as a baseline and I will be running this same survey every 3 to 6 months to learn how this perception is changing.
I will be sharing this information with all subscribers next week. If you are not already on our mailing list, sign up today to ensure you get the detailed results as soon as they are available next week. These will be attached, in PDF format, to our regular mailings.
John
Ric Cantrell is the Chief Deputy of the Senate in Utah. Utah State Senators are part-time with a six-week working session and a monthly committment of two days. The twenty nine Senators are supported by a staff of five where everyone, including Ric, wear multiple hats. The Utah State senate can be best compared to a start-up where the ability to get the right information in/out quickly and accurately is critical.
This small team is always looking for efficiencies and the press release was one of the first areas they were able to save time and money while improving the quality and quantity of the information they delivered. Instead of spending four+ hours on the press release process they now follow a multi-step process (see the picture to the left) that only takes them thirty minutes (16% of the original time).
While press releases are still needed sometimes, they have been replaced by more personal and direct means for most updates. The new process, written in marker on a board in Ric’s office, is flexible, easily modified (have an eraser?), and balances traditional and new media channels. While this exact process may not match your needs the approach, and the thinking that went into it, should.
Again, this process is stream-lined for political press announcements but the concepts, and the approach, should benefit any Social Organization. The approach followed in Utah has a few benefits:
How can you apply these ideas to your organization?
John
The biggest barrier to organizations being successful within The Social Ecosystem is simply the need for education. The lack of awareness, the lack of knowledge, is holding back many organizations. In chatting with organizations across the public and private sector I am constantly encountering confusion. People know the problems they are encountering. These are real, these are personal, and people struggle with them daily. However:
Alright, what are some good ways to educate people on the benefits of using social business strategies?
Understand, however, that there are some people that will not be convinced, regardless of the strength of your case. When this does happen you have a couple of choices. You can either accept that things will not change or you can move onto something new. Either way, if you try to make the case, providing the education, you have made a great start.
John
How many of us still think of IBM as that group of old-school business types that just don’t know how to keep up with the pace of business? I mean, come on, they still talk about things like mainframes, how much can they really understand?
IBM invited me in for a briefing last week to learn more about their offerings in the social software space and I was pleased with both what I saw and what I heard. While IBM suffers from an inability to build buzz around their solutions they have a good solution and are making some solid sales.
One of the first questions I asked Jeff Schick, Vice President of the Social Software division, had to do with why they were not even mentioned by Gartner in the Social CRM space. Truth is, the Social CRM space is important but it is only a part of what they offer. I agree with Jeff. Social CRM is but a piece of what they offer, IBM is creating solutions for the entire Social Ecosystem and Social CRM is but a slice of that universe.
From a Research perspective IBM began working on social software solutions in middle of the decade. They were focused on Enterprise 2.0 solutions, learning a lot from how their thousands of IBM employees used the systems. This learning, which is an ongoing process, was first visible in 2007 when they released their first version of Lotus Connections. The solution baked in Facebook-like Walls, Twitter-like microblogging, as well as other social software norms that we expect to see today.
Capabilities?
As noted, Connections has been around since 2007 and the concepts have been used internal to IBM for nearly a decade. This is not Version 1.0 software, which is why they have had success selling it to both their very large, and very small, customers. I mentioned microblogging and walls, here are a few other key capabilities worth noting:
Connections has a REST-based APIs which is being used to integrate with several other products (including Cognos in the near future). These integrations are critical for building a marketplace for their customers.
Connections is not the final answer to all of your problems and there are plenty of capabilities I was disappointed not to see in the solution. However, it is a very good offering worth checking out along with Jive, Lithium, and others.
For those of you that are wondering, IBM is not currently a client, partner, or any other relationship with me or with The Lab.
John
Last November I built a short series to help organizations with their 2010 Social Media Plan. The series was well received and I think we all learned a lot in the process of writing and commenting back and forth.
Sometimes, however, it really helps to boil things down to a simple checklist, keeping it simple to execute and simple to understand. I was really excited when I saw Andrew Wilson, Web and New Media at Federal Government – HHS – SAMHSA, post a really good checklist for getting started with Social Media. I immediately reached out to Andrew to see if I could build off of his checklist to give something to help people within The Social Ecosystem and he was nice enough to agree (Thanks Andrew).
Before we construct the checklist it is important to keep in mind that you must always define your goals up front. No checklist is perfect on its own. While it is a great guideline, it is only that, it needs to be modified to meet the goals you have set forth.
The target audience for this checklist is individuals, groups, or organizations that have no real social media presence and who are seeking to get started. This is a great starting point for this audience because it focuses on no cost tools and minimal time investment while seeking to maximize your return. Now, it is true that you get what you pay for and that, as you progress within The Social Ecosystem you will outgrow this checklist and the tools we discuss. However, since we are including measurement and goal setting you will be able to decide when you are growing out of this framework and need to move into the Advanced Checklist
Goal Setting
Setup
To minimize daily execution time you want your social media channels and monitoring setup at the beginning. I urge you to set up the following channels and, if possible, use the same account name, logos, and profile descriptions throughout. Each channel is simply a way for you to interact with your audience, your customers, your citizens, and they expect a consistent experience.
Andrew nails it when he discusses setting up free monitoring solutions. Simply copying what he has already proposed for completeness:
Personally, I still rely on Google Reader as I have set up feeds for dozens of my favorite blogs and scan this at least twice daily.
Execution
Minimize execution time, that is part of the focus of this checklist. Andrew proposed a 20 minute daily process which is perfect for starting out. As you begin to see results you will want to double this, spending 20 minutes just before, or just after, lunch and 20 minutes at the end of the day.
Measurement
At the beginning of this process we discussed the need to define your goals, define what success and failure looks like. Every month, take 30 minutes to review:
Every three months step back and have a longer review session and ask yourself:
Some will never need to go beyond this level of investment. However, through goal setting and measurement/review you will be able to make an informed decision if, and when, it is time to take this to another level.
John
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.
The Social Ecosystem is channel-neutral (thanks Steve Schildwachter) and does not promote any specific tools or vendors. It will stay open and independent.
These are a starting point and we will certainly add to these as we move forward.
That’s all for today, let me know what you think.
John
At the closing session of the Parafest conference that I attended, and at which I spoke about Social Media and Collaborative solutions, the product management of Parature shared this slide. The slide represents the results of polling customer, throughout the conference, about their concerns, their questions, about adding social channels to their customer service efforts. I know the slide is a little fuzzy but I am hoping to make it just a bit clearer through this post.
Can I add Social Media Channels with my current staff?
To fully answer this question without knowing your business, your agency, is impossible. However, understand that interacting with customers on social channels will initially add more work and more cost. The reasons, simple:
- In order to be successful in the long run you must define a business plan and understand how social media will weave into your existing strategy.
- You need to set up Social Media Usage guidelines and make these part of your HR policies, IT policies, and train current staff as well as all new hires.
- You need to find tools to use. Fortunately, you can start with free tools for monitoring and for engaging in the conversation.
- You must track your activities and tie the conversations into your workflow.
And that, is just a small set of the things you must get in place. Done well, you will achieve real cost savings, more positive relationships, and increased customer satisfaction survey. However, this requires you putting the time and effort into truly engaging and tying these systems and channels into your overall workflow. If you simply create a Facebook page and Twitter account and do nothing with them you have simply wasted your time.
Which of our customers are on Facebook (or any other Social network)?
This is always a tough question to answer. However, keep a few of these statistics in mind:
You must take the information above, marry it to your knowledge of your customers (current and potential) and decide if they are on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Plurk, Flickr, or any of the other sites that matter to you. Also, use Google searches to look for conversations taking place about your market, your company, your key people. If they are taking place on these platforms you may want to participate.
Will Social Media Support be added volume?
Absolutely. You will be engaging with more people, having more conversations, and having to decide how these conversations fit with your overall communication plan. The good news is if you do it right, and take these conversations and convert them into meaningful knowledge base articles you will ultimately create a richer customer experience and deflect many customer questions later.
Also, by engaging with these customers on the channels where they live, you are building a relationship that could lead to stronger brand advocates, more leads, higher customer retention rates.
Who manages Social Media? Marketing or Customer Service?
Typically, management of social media begins in marketing. In my view the most important thing is that marketing and customer service jointly own, jointly take part, in the customer communication. These two organizations, which should become part of one newer organization that works to deliver a consistent message to existing and potential customers, must work together to communicate consistently with the market.
What types of conversations are happening?
Customers and potential customers are sharing stories, experiences. They are complaining, as well as celebrating, daily about your company and others. It is your job to amplify the positive, learn from and address the negative.
How will we benefit from Social Media as a support channel?
Meeting customers and potential customers where they are is never a bad thing, obviously. However, the benefits depend entirely upon your goals, the strategies you use, and your tactics, tools, and people. Social media should always focus on delivering real business value. Relationships are critical, of course, but they do not pay your bills. The benefits you should be looking for include:
How do we measure satisfaction with Social Media?
Let me ask you this…. How do you measure satisfaction today? Social media is just another channel to interact on, right?
What other questions do you have? Do you have alternate viewpoints to my thoughts above?
John
