Since the future begins with local engagement/involvement….

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While large organizations are clearly delivering value to the public and private sector it is important that we do not lose site of the importance of small organizations, local governments, and their ability to drive positive changes.  According to census numbers and numbers published by SBA for the United States alone we know that:  

• There are more than 80,000 local governments in the United States.
• There are more than 27.5 million small businesses in the United States (http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf).

With these numbers in mind I have launched a brand new community, Our Town Talk.  This community will evolve as membership grows, meeting the needs of our members.   

The mission for this community is straightforward and summed up as providing a place for citizens, small business owners, local government employees and politicians to come together and share their thoughts on what is good and what is not so good in their communities.  Over time I would love to see this become a place where citizen 2.0 is standardized and becomes a reality.   

While these goals are worthwhile we will need to be patient and seek to grow this community to the point where a critical mass is achieved.  In the mean-time, note:  

• The community is absolutely FREE.  It is ad-supported and I want to keep it this way to make sure there are no barriers to entry.
• There are three members today.  As I noted, I literally just launched this.
• As new members join I will create areas for the towns they are from.  I expect this to be a very slow growth community and we should be able to keep up.
• If you have  ideas, share them.
• Invite friends and play to see how this can add value to your community.
• I am aggregating job listings  and daily deals from around the web and will continue to add to these to continue to give more value.

If you believe your town needs an easy to use platform stop by and give it a try.  

John  

Who is in The Lab’s spotlight? Brenna Gimler

The Lab’s weekly spotlight poll has once again helped us to find, and now spotlight, someone you should know more about.   Brenna Gimler, this week’s Spotlight poll winner, tells us what, in her own words, she does.

Brenna Gimler is by Trade & Education a seasoned Leadership & Communications expert.  She has spent more than 20 years educating herself and working in the white collar world, 40-60 hours per week to build outstanding reputations for many companies. Her work has been an Odyssey perfecting the customer communication experience at every level, up to and including the Executive level. Her areas of expertise includes: Training and Development, Social Media Marketing, Electronic Customer Communications, Team Development, Team Building, and Executive Coaching. 
Most recently, Brenna worked full time in the IT Sales Industry for a small IT Service & Support Company in her hometown.  Fortunately (yes fortunately) she became one of many victims of the Economy and was laid off.   Why is this fortunate?!  Most people would cringe at the thought of being laid off.  Brenna is the ultimate optimist however.  Feeling the pressure of unemployment increasing for her family of 5, she has created a perfect opportunity to put her effort & energy to work for her own benefit while doing something she loves to do. What is this opportunity?  Brenna has created “In the Loop”, an email marketing service that helps companies obtain, retain & cultivate life-long customers & solid relationships.

Brenna has taken her long time enjoyment of Social Media, Marketing & Technology and has married that with her devotion to creating outstanding customer experiences & relationships.  Through this marriage she is helping companies harness their efforts to make sales, close deals, and build loyal relationships by engaging their customers, helping them differentiate from their competition, helping them to thank their customers and allowing them to always stay in touch by creating what we all know as the “WOW” factor that keeps customers coming back!  By tying this together with her customer’s social sites & website Brenna has created a powerful tool designed to help companies grow their business.
 
The lucky 7 ways to reach Brenna about her services:

1. Visit her website at www.brennagimler.com
2. Reach her at intheloop2010@comcast.net
3. Call her at 774-218-1716 
4. Contact her on Twitter http://twitter.com/IntheLoopTODAY
5. Contact her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Raynham-MA/In-the-Loop/145946638762757?ref=sgm&__a=7&
6. Send her an email via Linked in  http://www.linkedin.com/in/inthelooptoday 
7. Check out her Blog:  http://bdgloop.blogspot.com/
    

Stay focused on your goals

It happened this morning. I woke up, looked around, and realized…. I have no money coming in unless I go out and earn it myself. Cool….

While it easy for any business owner to look at their sales pipeline with a degree of worry this has to be very common for the foolish (er… Inspired) person just getting started. However, as I have always told people, understand your goals, develop your strategies, and execute like mad.

For a new business owner, I think it’s particularly easy to lose focus, chasing every chance for revenue without regard to how it impacts the bigger picture of what you are trying to build… The same is true, of course, for any organization… Remember your goals, stay focused and relaxed. Life is full of ups and downs and your journey, rather it is building a new business, a marketing or product plan, or just getting up in the morning, will reflect this.

Stay focused. Have fun. See you out there.

John

If you need help from The Lab, drop me a note. If you would like to view more case studies and interviews, or just want to read about The Social Ecosystem, click on the links and let me know your thoughts.

Chances to meet in person

I enjoy writing my blog, engaging with people on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere, but nothing is better than connecting face to face.  I wanted to make you aware of a couple of places I will be in the near future, hoping to meet many of you in person.

• ParaFest ’10, in Las Vegas on May 5th.  I will be at the Parature Conference discussing Social Support Communities, Social CRM, and Ideation.
• SharePoint Saturday DC on May 15th.  I will be joining with some true experts in the field and speaking on the topic of SharePoint and CRM integration.  My goal will be to help you understand social, and non-social, aspects of how these great capabilities can help your organization.

If you will be at either of these events and would be interested in chatting just leave me a response to this blog post (I will not publish).

While I also have a couple of near-term webinars on the power of Social Support Communities I wanted to highlight that I will be chatting about this very topic at the Social Business Executive Summit later in May.

If you have an event coming up that you would be interested in having me attend, drop me a note.

John

When did leaders lose track on the importance of their teams?

I live in a small town in Massachusetts (Winthrop), a town like many others across the country, one that is struggling through a rough economy like all others.  Yet, in this small town, the teachers have gone without a contract for two years while the Superintendent receives a huge pay raise, the football team has their uniforms dry-cleaned while the girls basketball team does not have enough shorts.

Okay, you get the point, right?  Things are clearly a bit upside down.  Leaders, instead of focusing on a culture of Me first, lets all step back and remember the importance of our teams (the teachers above) and our customers (the kids on the basketball team).

• Without a solid team no leader can ever be successful.  Before taking that large pay raise and claiming there is no money to go around, think of the people who are making you successful.
• Too many times, especially with regards to teachers, I hear administration, our leaders, blaming the workers for the failures.  In any organization you may have one or two people who do not understand, one or two people who fail.  When an entire company, agency, school system, fails, the fault begins at the top.  Leaders must remember to take ownership for the good and bad within their organizations.  Failure to do so is a failure in leadership.  Enough said.

John

A few random thoughts as we near the end of February

So few thoughts, so much time…  Oh wait, I think I meant so many thoughts, so little time….  Oh well, either way, in no random order, here are a few of the items I have on my mind at the moment:

• Facebook was granted a patent for news feeds…. Dear Patent Office, could you please give me the name of the insightful geniuses that approved this patent.  I have decided to patent the respiration system, having used it for years I feel I deserve a patent for my role in its development.  Dear Citizen’s of planet earth, don’t fear, you can still use yours but you may have to pay me a small fee.
• The White House is working to hire an official Tweeter for the President.  Mr. President, I have a face for Twitter and would appreciate your consideration for this position.  I like this move, honestly, as the majority of senior political twitter accounts are 1-way push communication channels.  If this is an account that will engage in 2-way dialog, good move.
• The open government movement is real and is being taken seriously by those inside and outside the government.  Well known citizens like Craig Newmark and Tim O’Reilly are doing their part but we all must participate.  While there are countless examples, pay attention to:
  • The Federal Agency IdeaScale Dashboard, OpenGovTracker, is continuing to evolve as a platform and, even more importantly, great ideas are being discussed daily across a variety of agencies.  You have to check this out.
  • The Top 10 Government Twitters To Follow is a great place to find some passionate people who are driving this change.  Check it out and, while you’re there, could you give me your three votes?  Well, since you’re there anyway, I thought I would ask…
• Those that doubt the power of Social CRM need to reconsider.  Yesterday, while struggling with my Comcast network access, I was able to get out a tweet to the good people at Comcast.  Within 5 minutes a rep, ComcastBonnie, was on it.  With a communication style fitting Twitter she quickly had the problem resolved.  Thank you.
• I like the moves being made by Lithium on the partnership front.  Their partnership with Sapient is a sign of good things to come, expect more announcements soon.
• I read a great post on how to handle negative comments in social media and blog that I highly recommend you read.
  • The conversation reminded me of the poor behavior of some of my fellow members of the Social CRM community, the anonymous attacks I wrote about recently.  As is often the case, addressing the comments head on (offering to let them respond on a blog post) resulted in them quietly disappearing.  When have negative comments or anonymous attacks, address them in the open.  If there is value in their comments, recognize it.
• Finally, a prediction.  Watch Salesforce in Q2.  My money is on them buying a listening platform, perhaps Radian6.  It would be a great addition to their offering and I like that pairing.

What is on your mind?

John

Apathy and arrogance, a great combination؟

My wife and I were discussing apathy in the workplace as she is experiencing a fair amount of it from co-workers.  She works in a school setting where budget cuts, years without contracts and pay raises, lack of supplies, etc.., have left people burned out and apathetic about far too many aspects of their jobs.

As I asked my twitter community about this situation, one of my friends relayed this “Just had the bigwig come talk to us & basically say keep working hard so my bonus goes up and eventually we will lift the pay freeze”….  Arrogance, when combined with apathy and frustration is a miserable combination.

If you have a job, leave the apathy behind. There are plenty of people who do not have a job and would gladly step into your “miserable” situation.  Bring your A-game everyday and let’s get something done.

This ends our weekly inspirational speech, paid for by the National Committee for Change.  While I just made that up, sounds impressive, eh?

John

I am going to Disney World!

Now that I came in as #1 Top 50 CIO and IT Leaders in the Social Media it seems like a fitting way to celebrate, right?  While I am honored to be included in the list at all, and coming in #1 was very cool, I won’t be heading to Disney.  Your personal/corporate/agency brand building efforts will have plenty of ups and downs and it is important, truly important, that you do not let them impact/change your goals,  your overall strategy.

In the course of the last two weeks I have seen this positive from my efforts and the negative of anonymous attacks from those who disagree with my views.  You will both.  At the end of the day, simply stay true to your core mission. 

Hey, has anyone seen Mickey around here?

John

Social CRM and the Death Eaters? Lord Voldemort lives!

Couldn’t resist the title or the tie-in given the the events of my day. Someone was asking me about the SCRM Summit that is taking place and I noted that I was not invited and knew nothing of the details of the summit. The dialog took place in the warm confines of twitter, where everything you say is kept private, of course.

Not long after I was honored by the arrival of a message from a newly created Twitter account, none other than Tom Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter fame.  The Dark Lord kept the message simple:

“JohnFMoore [not invited to summit] If you spent more time listening, and less time talking, you might not have missed it #scrm”

True… My response:

“TomR_CRM Wow, harsh. Always love it when someone lacks courage to speak for themselves and have to hide behind false identities #scrm”

The lessons for all of us are simple:

• Principles like transparency, open dialog, and relationship building are not always welcome. There ae always those tha only buy into these principles when the discussion matche their viewpoint.
• You will, in your efforts to “go social”, encounter plenty of people who disagree, and yes, dislike, your message.  If you are a company or a government agency you must have a strategy for how you deal with this disagreement.  Some choose to simply ignore, I generally choose to respond to reach a middle ground.

If you blog, tweet, or in any way participate in social communities, understand that there are those that will agree with your message, and those that will not.    Stick to your message and deal with the occasional negative reaction. In the end, the rewards of participation are always higher.  See you out there.

John

Presenting at ParaFest ’10

I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting at ParaFest ’10, chatting about the power of Social Support Communities.  I plan on bringing some great information to you based upon the experiences of Enterprise and SMB customers I have chatted with and hope to see many of you there.

If you know of a company, or are a company, using social support communities, let me know.  My goal for the presentation is simple.  Provide people with great information based upon real world best practices and real world results. 

See you in Vegas this May.  Oh yeah, two other favors to ask from you at this time:

• Let me know how you plan to leverage social media monitoring solutions in 2010.  As always, all data will be shared so that everyone can benefit.
• If you have time please vote for my presentation on Operational Responsiveness that I am trying to bring to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston.  Just leave the referer blank when you sign-up, the field is not required.

John