On the floor with Twelpforce

I had the pleasure of interviewing John Bernier, who heads up the Best Buy Twelpforce Program, the other day.  Today’s interview is with Scott Hagemeyer, a Best Buy employee, an in-store Apple Expert, and is a member of the Twelpforce program.  His in-the-trenches viewpoint provides another perspective on this program, a perspective worth understanding.  While Best Buy is still in the early experimental stages, feeling their way for what works, and what doesn’t, I am excited by what I have heard.  Early leaders, like Best Buy, are demonstrating the value of social media.  It’s time for others to start getting on board.

What is your role with Best Buy?

Within Best Buy my official job title is “Apple Expert/Computers Specialist”. I’m one of the go-to people in my department for any questions regarding the product within. My knowledge covers the entire department, with special focus on Apple products, software, and accessories, but I don’t neglect the Windows side of things and am well versed on them as well.

More recently I have taken on another role with the company by joining the Twelpforce. As a part of the Twelpforce, I help meet the needs of customers in a new, and exciting way; via Twitter. One of the most interesting parts of the Twelpforce is that someone doesn’t have to be a Best Buy customer to use it. I respond to questions regardless of who you are or where you shop. While I naturally rely on Best Buy’s resources (BBY Forum, BBY.com product pages, etc), I also link to external sources to make sure I can provide the most complete answer possible.

How does social media fit in with your job?

My role with the Twelpforce meshes my job with social media pretty well. I have yet to meet anyone that I’ve twelped in person, but I think that as more and more people turn to social media the possibility of this is growing. I can eventually see our customers doing some initial research and getting answers via Twitter, then stopping in to the store to visit with me in person before making a final decision. More and more customers are already coming into the store with printed research; emails from friends/family, online reviews from CNET, etc. As a part of the Twelpforce, I can assist those customers with their research in an highly engaging way providing quick, succinct answers to any question they may encounter.

Were you involved with setting of the social policies in place today?

No, I wasn’t involved with setting any of the policies. The policies were already set in place before the Twelpforce was ever introduced.  The guidelines for the Twelpforce are pretty minimal and open-ended. There are some definite no-no’s in there, but for the most part the policies encourage me to be myself and make my experience with the Twelpforce my own. Here’s what they’ve laid out:  http://bbyconnect.appspot.com/participation_guidelines  They definitely want us to be ourselves, and put our own individual personalities into our responses, while still remembering that we are acting on behalf of Best Buy and need to maintain a certain level of professionalism.  What’s great about this is that since this is an experiment of sorts, the rules are able to be changed as the project evolves. My input on how the Twelpforce is going is greatly valued by those who are overseeing it. Since this is a very public experiment, they want a lot of feedback. If I think something could work better, I can suggest it. If I think something isn’t working, I can voice my concern.

Another interesting part of the policies is that the community really regulates itself. If we see another user making questionable comments or posts, we let them know to be careful and to remember the guidelines that are in place.  Those who have been twelping for a while sort of all follow the same set of un-written guidelines for our posts. We try to help out the new members as best we can to make sure the Twelpforce continues to be as successful as it has been.  Currently, John is working with myself as well as a few of the other top twelpers on developing a mentoring program for those who are new to the Twelpforce. Currently, this program is in its extreme infant phase. If it comes to fruition, it will be experimental and a work-in-progress. Through this program, someone who is new to the team would be paired with a veteran of the team. We would provide them with insight as to how the flow of things goes, while encouraging them to get their feet wet and start posting.

How do you decide who to interact with from a social perspective for Best Buy?

Anyone who takes the time to send a tweet, whether it’s a question, a comment, or a concern, deserves to be heard. In that regard, I try to respond to everyone that I can. Luckily for me, the Twelpforce currently sits at about 2,300 employees strong (although it seems like only several dozen tweet on a regular basis) and can get to those that I miss. In my opinion, one of the best parts of the Twelpforce is that it allows for someone to get multiple responses. If asking what type of computer to buy, for example, that person may get 4 – 6 recommendations from different Twelpers. Each one typically lays out their reasoning for why they chose the products they did, but what’s really important is that we allow the customer to take all of that information in and make the best decision for themselves.  So far, I haven’t heard of anyone suffering from information overload by getting too many responses, but this could be a possibility at some point. Luckily, the majority of Twelpforce members look to see who else has responded before adding their input.

How do your customers react to you being social?

So far I would say that customers are reacting very well to it. In the couple of months that I’ve been doing this, I’ve noticed that the number of tweets we receive on a daily/weekly basis has been increasing. Customers definitely like how quickly we are able to respond. One of the promises the Twelpforce makes is “To let you know what we know. As fast as we know it.” While I’m twelping, I can generally respond to questions within 5 to 10 minutes at most. I get a lot of reply tweets from customers who are surprised I got back to them so quickly.  (I wonder if maybe John has some stats for you on exactly what our typical response time is….)

How do customers react as you transition them from social channels to the in-person experience?
As I said earlier, I have yet to actually meet anyone whom I’ve twelped so far, but I think that time is not too far off. In general, customers have been very receptive to the idea of heading into an actual Best Buy store after an exchange of tweets. Even in this digital age, most of our customers are still pretty tactile and still want to physically see and/or use what they plan on buying. Customers are doing more and more of their research through other channels, like the Twelpforce, rather than visiting with a product specialist in a store.

Any great stories from the real world to share?

One of my most memorable Twelping experiences thus far was an exchange that took place between myself and @Viper_Tim on the evening of November 1st, 2009. He was having a problem with the color of his television (too much green and not enough red) after having disassembled his home theater to move his furniture.  He had tried everything he could think of, including most of the things I would suggest, and was at a total loss. Fortunately, I was able to completely resolve his issue via tweet.

The exchange proceeded as follows:
@TWELPFORCE Panasonic TC-P42C1 Plasma / Colors are off and cannot figure out how to adjust…too much green and no red…help?
@Viper_Tim #twelpforce Sounds like it could be an issue with your Tint setting. Manual available here (http://bit.ly/2WoHIx) if you need it.
@ApplExpert50 #twelpforce I have the manual, and have played with the tint (and everything else) for an hour w/o luck…thanks though!
@Viper_Tim In that case, have you tried checking your A/V Mode setting? Most TVs have settings like Std, Game, Movie, PC, and Dynamic.
@ApplExpert50 I had to unhook everything to move my furniture, and when I hooked it back up it was crappy…I’m sure I did it right though.
@Viper_Tim If it was un-hooked for too long, it may have factory reset itself back to Dynamic, which would give it a funny color.
@ApplExpert50 no luck…I’m at a loss
@Viper_Tim Hhhmmm. It sounds simple, but have you tried re-seating all of the cable connections on both TV & device sides?
@ApplExpert50 Thanks a million…I just need someone to help me see the giant “THIS IS THE PROBLEM!” sign in front of me. lol
@Viper_Tim AWESOME! You are very welcome I’m happy to help! Troubleshooting step 1: Is it plugged in? =) Enjoy your TV in it’s proper color!

While I didn’t ever get to know his real name or where he lives, and I will probably never meet him in person, it gave me a great feeling of pride and accomplishment to be able to provide support when he needed it most.

I could fill many, many pages with success stories from my experiences in-store. One of my favorite things about my job is being able to show people how technology can benefit their lives. I grew up with a computer and the Internet, so these things are like second nature to me. However, to most of the customers I deal with on a daily basis technology can be confusing, intimidating, or even scary. Nothing makes me happier than seeing the faces of my customers once they’ve learned that technology can actually benefit their lives. The Twelpforce is just another way for me to extend my love of helping people understand technology.

Social Converation Monitoring and Execution: Twelpforce

I reached out to John Bernier, who is the marketing manager at Best Buy who is leading the Twelpforce efforts, to learn more about the thoughts behind the effort, the processes being used, and the results.  Best Buy is an innovator in this area and I learned a thing or two from John, I hope you do as well.

How does social media fit in at the highest levels of your business?

Our internal culture is inherently social, because we’re made up of humans.  150,000+ of them, in fact.  At the highest levels, our leadership is involved in the medium in large part because they share the common theme that our employees share:  curiosity.  We’re not a company that has ever been afraid to experiment, learn, adapt and change, and social is a good place for us to extend that attitude.

 Why did it make sense for you to “go social”?

Quite simply, our customers expect it from our people, and our brand.  There are thousands of conversations out there that involve our brand, and for a while, we weren’t invited to be a part of those because we hadn’t been invited.  By establishing our presence, creating value and acting like a normal human being instead of how you might traditionally expect a brand to act, we’re finding ourselves invited into the conversation much more frequently.  It’s a great opportunity to truly connect with people on a 1:1 basis.

What processes did you put in place to enable going social?

Like most brands who have had some success in this space, we didn’t just try something and get it right the first time out of the gate. We had been experimenting with the idea of “being social” for a while.  Blue Shirt Nation  allowed our employees to learn to socialize with each other, and Bazzaar Blue Shirt Nation allowed employees to socialize with our vendor partners.   

When Twitter came along and captured our attention, Ben Hedrington (a bestbuy.com site engineer) had the vision to develop a tool called “Spy”) that allowed people inside Best Buy to see what others were saying about Best Buy in the social world. Wow – what an eye opener.  It made us painfully aware of our relative lack of a presence in these conversations….and directly led to the roll out of a connecttweet powered twitter feed (@bestbuy) that was designed to let our employees get their feet wet with twitter.  All these were necessary experiments, and helped us understand how to operate in the space.  Because of these learnings, we felt that we were ready to turn our efforts towards….”the customer”, and we began the journey of developing and building consumer facing initiatives like the Twelpforce platform, our Best Buy Community Forums, and our Facebook presence.   
 

How did you go about tool selection?

Selecting the tools we’d use/build were secondary to creating our objectives (Be Relevant), and identifying the needs of the customer we wanted to address.  Once we had those needs identified, it was a matter of selecting the channel, and building the interface to engage, and measure.  Worth noting, most of the tools we use were designed and built internally by some really smart people I work with…we do have some partners who help us along the way, but are actively cultivating knowledge within Best Buy so we inherently know what we’re doing, and how to recognize opportunity when it presents itself vs waiting for someone to package it and present it to us. 

What social communication policies have you put in place?

You can view them here..  Really, they are bumpers vs a document designed to dictate behavior.  Certainly there are some no-no’s laid out, but the key is that we are giving employees the liberty to try new things, and create their own path that perhaps all of us can learn something from.

How many people do you have monitoring the social channels today?

Hard to say exactly…we have over 2,200 Twelpforce members, numerous Community Forum “Connectors”, and we also have ears to the ground in the form of curious employees who are simply active in the space.  If there’s a “disturbance in the force”, we’re likely to hear about it pretty quickly, whether it be via twitter, Facebook or someplace else. More often than not, we can step in and handle a situation before it gets anywhere near the danger zone.  The key is that we’re able to engage, which seems to calm a situation down pretty quick.

How does the social channel fit within your overall communication and monitoring process and strategy?

Social is another way we can engage consumers.  I wish there was some magic answer I could give you, but we recognize it’s important to keep tabs on what customers are saying, and asking of us.  We’ve got tools in place that help us get directional feedback on how we’re doing, and what we’re being asked to do or change by consumers (Have you seen Best Buy Ideas??)  Reporting on “social” is a regular and important part of the weekly and monthly metrics reporting we filter to leaders in the building and field.

Do you measure ROI today?  If yes, how?  What have been the early results?

ROI is tricky, and I’d be hard pressed to say anyone has it completely figured out.  “Going Social” has required relatively little capital investment, and intuitively, we feel it’s an important place for us to be moving forward.  But, we haven’t come across a tool that measures exactly what we want to look at across all the places we have a social presence, so we’re very busy building out our own metrics using a variety of proprietary measurement tools, as well as publically available tools.  

How do your customers react to you being social?

This is a broad question, and I don’t want to generalize too much, but because we make sure to take our time and look at what a customer wants from us in a particular space, we seem to be getting a positive response in most cases.  Luckily, we’ve avoided any of the “bull in a china shop” mistakes that seem to happen to those that don’t take the time to evaluate the environment they are in to adjust their purpose and presence accordingly.  

How, if at all, do your social media tools fit in with your other backend systems like CRM, ERP, HRIS, etc..?

N/A for the most part.  We’ve incorporated some widgets into our intranet to make accessing social media easier, and employees have terminals that allow them access to these sites.  So, it’s not really about putting links to our back-end in place, it’s about removing barriers to access these places and making sure they are prepared to engage the customer in a smart way through training. 

Your 2010 Social Media Plan, Making 140 Characters Count

Before you read this post I would encourage reviewing the starting point of this series.  If you have already read it you still may want to review again as I added a little more background and the comments for the first post are great.

Twitter may, or may not, be the winner when the dust settles on the micro-blogging space.  However, it is the clear leader now and is a social channel you cannot ignore.   Twitter is a great doorway into the social business space.  Your goal is to keep the door open, listening to the relevant conversations that are going on, stepping out and adding value when you can, inviting people in to engage in richer conversations on broader social platforms where engagement, and therefore relationships, can grow.

While I am writing these posts out-of-order I am assuming you’re following the plan in order.  Hey, do as I say, not as I do.  As a refresher, you should have your first social media employee on board, you are still paying me consulting fees, and we have a plan to execute on.  With regards to Twitter you are supposed to have a Twitter Account for your business and for each of your executives by February.  As a business you will have at least 2000 followers and each executive will have at least 500 followers by the end of the year.  Get rocking.

Before we begin, some basics to keep in mind

Who owns your Twitter thoughts, your Twitter Community?  Let me be clear that this concept is one of those that I find, personally, ridiculous.  If you build relationships with other individuals the idea that you may not “own” those relationships rubs me the wrong way.  However, we’re discussing business here so lets focus on the reality.  Since I have not yet written that section of the plan I wanted to point you to a good post by Jeremiah Owyang that touches on some of the basics.

In short, my guidelines are that accounts that contain clear corporate references, CommunispaceCEO, as an example, should be owned by the employee’s company.   When Diane moves onto her next great adventure thew new CEO should take over the account.  However, personal accounts, like JohnFMoore, that reference individual names, are maintained by the individual and go with them.  Remember, this is not legal advice, I do not even play an attorney on television.

Your social media employee should already be ahead of the game and have locked down the Accepted Use Guidelines with your CIO.  Again, I have not yet written this section but here are some important things to keep in mind, items I will include when I get to that section.

• Follow the common sense guidelines of avoiding discussions of politics, religion, sex.  Sports are okay, I  love my Patriots.
• If you are in a regulated industry, have your legal team sign-off on the work-related topics you can discuss.
• Never discuss customers by name unless the customer has given you permission.
• Yes, there will be much more coming in separate posts on this subject.

Who should have a Twitter account?

The short answer is that every “personality” that you want to expose to the world at large should have a Twitter account.  At a minimum, I want you to set up the following accounts:  A personal Twitter account for each C-level executive in the company; A corporate account for your CEO; A corporate Support account.  I would encourage a thoughtful analysis of all of your key externally focused employees as you should have them setup personal twitter accounts as well.  As you setup these accounts:

• Ensure that each personal account has a real photo of the employee.  The corporate accounts should use your logo.
• Ensure the biographies for each personal account highlights the employees role, the company they work for, their areas of expertise.
• Ensure the corporate bio gives the elevator pitch for the company.  Short, sweet, to the point.
• Never setup the account to protect your updates, you want people seeing what you are talking about, no secrecy.
• Have a professional design the Twitter backgrounds for the corporate accounts.
• Keep the personal account backgrounds a little less professional but ensure that everyone, at the very least, uses one of the standard Twitter Themes.

What should people be doing once they are on Twitter?

While there is no one-sized fits all answer, remember that Twitter is a doorway to richer engagement, it’s not the platform for solving the world’s woes and I do not expect another Pax Romana to occur due to conversations taking place there.

• Find people to follow.  Using a client like Tweetdeck setup some very simple searches based upon your role (#cio, #ceo, #cfo, #cmo), your marketplace (#e20, #crm, #healthcare), your location (Boston, Rome, Tokyo) and so on.  Determine who is discussing topics you find interesting and start following them.
• Tweet, at a minimum, 3 or 4 times a day
• Spend minimal time talking about the company but discuss the market you are in.
• For personal accounts, do not hand off updating to your staff, do it yourself.
Focus on adding value, not on pitching your company or service.  Respond to others, use RTs (retweets), post links to interesting and relevant articles.  Your first two or three months on Twitter should not have anything at all to do with your business.  Focus on becoming a valuable member of the community first .
Remember that people do want to know more about the people in the community.  You should share some personal information.  However, I would not send more than 5 – 10% personal tweets and remember that whatever you write will be on the web forever. 
When you have a phone conversation, a non-confidential meeting, or exchange ideas via e-mail or a social channel with someone who’s twitter name you know, give them a public shout out, thanking them for their time and their insights.  It is always appreciated.
Have your CRM system setup to capture Twitter IDs.  Store these for your staff and for those you interact with.  You will want to leverage this information in 2011.

I know that there is much, much, more to write, but I’ll end here.  I hope you find this useful and please add your comments as we all will benefit.

John

Can your global business be social globally?

What does it really mean to be a social business?  Can you engage socially without regard to the geographies you are, and are not, reaching out to?

• Social Business Design, at least in the fashion that I have defined it (not as the Dachis Group has in its much longer and more thorough documents), is simple…  Social Business Design (SBD) is a framework for incorporating social solutions (the combination of strategies and tools) into your overall business strategy.  SBD is focused on people first, processes second, tools third.  Unfortunately, there are places in the world where people would not show up first from a business perspective….  Are you working with businesses in countries where this is the case?
• Social Support Communities are created by bringing together like-minded individuals to discuss a specific topic, service, product.  They are tools based, yes, but leverage processes and people to make it all happen.  These work if there is a willingness to openly discuss issues, to question products and services, to question authority…  Are you working with businesses in countries where this is the case?
• Social businesses count on the ability to leverage technology solutions, primarily web-based.  Customers must be able to use the internet.  With only 25.6% of the world’s population on the internet, can you reach your customers when you need to, when they need to reach you?

While powerful, never lose sight of the fact that social business design/strategy is but one arm of your overall corporate strategy.  CRM that leverages social channels is not a panacea for your corporate aches and pains.  Leveraging social channels, strategically, will make you better.  Counting on social to change the world might just be more than we can hope for.

John

Your 2010 Social Media Plan, The First 30 Days

Before you read this post I would encourage reviewing the starting point of this series.  If you have already read it you still may want to review again as I added a little more background and the comments for the first post are great.

Hey, you’re back already…. Good, you’re fast.  The last person took a lot longer.  Since you are fast, though, take a moment and make sure you’ve read the last post too as it focused on hiring your first social media employee.

Now, you have your new employee in place, you’ve read all the articles, what do their first thirty days look like?

How do they start out?

Well, hopefully you’ve thought about this already even though I’ve left it out of the series until now…. Who will this new employee work for?  Let me make one thing clear as I write this post.  In the long run I feel you need to have a combined team within which both customer support and marketing functions reside.  We are not there yet, though, so my answer is….. Marketing…

• To be honest with you, I went back and forth on this answer a dozen times, there are great arguments for either function to own it.
• Regardless of the team that this person reports into it, ensure that the person also reports in a dotted-line fashion to the other team.
• In the end I chose marketing because it is important that the person understands how to define and articulate a corporate voice, a corporate identify.
• At the same time this person must avoid the urge to generate leads, they must focus on helping existing customers, and potential new customers, in finding solutions.
• They are a corporate good citizen with a primary purpose of just helping.  Remember that I told you not to focus on ROI in year one?  You will see it but do not focus on it, not now.

Where do they start?

Repeat after me, this is not a sales role.  Repeat after me, this is a sales role.  While this person is not looking to sell externally they had better be good at selling internally.  In three months the CFO is going to be asking for results, the CIO will be trying to make the role more efficient, and the CMO will wonder why they haven’t had one good press release come out of this damn experiment.

Sit down with all teams and understand their needs and concerns.  Nothing in life is black and white, but, as a starting point, understand:

• Your CIO is concerned that you’re going to open up holes, leading to viruses, worms, and other assorted threats.
• Your CFO is onboard with the experiment but it had better not cost much as you are not promising any ROI.
• Your CMO is excited about exploring these new channels and is wondering how long it will take for qualified leads to flow in.
• Your VP of Services and Support is excited but skeptical.  They have heard that this might reduce the team’s workload and make them more responsive to their customers, which is great, but they’re worried it might just be hype.
• Your VP of Sales is trying to determine if they can add some numbers to the forecast.
• …..

Your CIO

The CIO is worried about corporate security and they should be.  Okay, sit down with your CIO or IT team and discuss:

• How does Social fit into the Accepted Use Guidelines?
  • Ultimately you may want every employee on social networks.  However, especially in the beginning, focus on getting your key message carriers on board.  Work with the CIO to get every executive team member, key members of your support and marketing team, and yourself, permission to use corporate computers for “approved” social networking activities.
  • For some companies this is a non-issue, for others it is a major issue. However, even if your company is “wide-open” bring in the CIO and get them on-board with this effort.  You need their support.
• What Corporate Governance and Compliance Guidelines do you need to be aware of?
  • This will vary by industry but you must seek to understand the issues at play.  This is beyond the immediate scope of this post but I’ll come back to it in a later post.
• What are the guidelines around installing software on corporate machines?  You are going to start off with some solid web applications and you are not looking to house sensitive data outside of the corporate walls (in year one).  However, discuss the applications you will be looking to work with initially in your passive listening phase, applications like Google Reader, Gist, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace (?), and others depending on industry.
• Are there bandwidth limitations you should be sensitive too?  Do you want to avoid posting that YouTube video?

Your CFO, Your CMO, and Your VP of Services and Support

Work closely with the CFO to define the metrics you are working with in year one and understand the metrics they want you to track as they look at ROI going into year two.  In year one the size of your twitter community matters…. However, it’s also critical to be able to track things like:

• How many leads were generated from each channel vs. the time spent working in that channel?
• How many calls were deflected by knowledge base articles, community tweets?
• and much more… 

Start to listen, passively at first

After getting buy-in from the CIO, branding input from your CMO, get your accounts setup on the following networks:

• Facebook.  Setup a Fan site.
  • Ask every employee in the company to become a fan of the company.
• Twitter.  Setup a corporate site, and one for each of the people identified above.
  • Use sites like Tweepml and Tweepsearch to identify key journalist, analyst, and other decision makers.  Follow them all.  As a result of this simple action some percentage of them will begin to follow you back.
  • Do not follow back people to game the system and gain followers.  Focus on the quality of the people you follow first.
• Setup a YouTube Account.
• Make sure the Company’s LinkedIn Profile is Right.
• Setup an account on Gist.
• Setup a Google Reader Account.
  • As with Twitter identify the key players in your market including competitors, partners, vendors, customers, thought leaders, etc..  Setup RSS feeds for all of them.
  • Setup RSS feeds for key magazines and blogs.
  • Setup and RSS feed for my blog. 
  • Perform google blog searches, by date, for key words and phrases and copy/paste that URL into your Google reader.  You’ll get updates as new data is added, very powerful.
• Setup an account on SlideShare.
• Setup an account on myBrainshark.

Listen

Alright, sit back, listen to the social chatter that is underway.  While there are great tools that will do the following for you, at a price, I don’t want you to start with the complex tools as I want you to be very hands on early on.  Construct a simple spreadsheet that tracks, on a weekly basis:

• Number of mentions your company receives per week.
• Number of mentions key corporate team members (like your CMO, CEO) receive each week.
• Number of mentions your competition receives per week.
• Number of positive, neutral, and negative stories you find each week.

Engagement

Using a combination of your personal and corporate Twitter account feel free to engage but do not “sell”, just add value.  If someone is looking for statistics related to your market, point them out.  Someone looking for conferences that might be useful?  Point them out.

I could keep writing but, if I do, I’ll never hit that publish button looking at me off to the right side of my screen.  I’ll continue with the rest of the first quarter soon.  Stay tuned, let me know if this was helpful.

John

Social Media Monitoring with Radian6

As you may know I am spending time building out a 2010 Social Media Plan for you to make use of within your company.  As part of this effort I am researching some of today’s Social Media Monitoring (SMM) tools and I wanted to take a few minutes to share my thoughts with you.  I am going to supplement this post in another week with a customer guest post detailing why the customer chose Radian6, stay tuned.

According to one survey of over 1000 professionals using Social Media Monitoring tools, by Business.com, 1.9% companies in the survey group were using Radian6.  While this is a relatively small percentage, their client list is impressive and includes names like Dell, Comcast, Microsoft, Pepsi, and more.

Overview

Radian6 monitors blogs, mainstream online news (like CNN.com), video and photo sharing sites, like Flickr and YouTube Micromedia, Twitter, Friendfeed, and more.  Social conversations are not limited to one channel and it is important that your monitoring tools are not limited to one channel either.

Tools like Radian6 are not for the smaller end of the SMB marketplace as cost is an issue.  Here is some info on pricing:

• The entry price for Radian6 is $500 per month, per topic profile, for up to 10,000 monthly results.  The price increases based upon the number  of monthly results:
  • Up to 25,000 results – $1000/month
  • Up to 50,000 results – $1500/month
• There is a per user cost of  $100 per month for each registered user id.
• I love that they offer a 50% to non-profits, it helps. 

* Note that the monthly result number is net new each month, meaning you do get the historical tracking of past monthly data without having to pay extra to keep this data around.

To be fair, I cannot yet give you good insights into how this pricing compares to other offerings.  I know that it feels like a bargain compared to the $1500/month that CoTweet Enterprise is charging, but far higher than the cost of ViralHeat.  I will keep fleshing this information out for you as I obtain it.

Okay, what are those profiles?

A topic profile is a way of slicing data into chunks that can be more easily analyzed.  For example, I setup a profile called John to monitor traffic about me.  Bloggers are naturally self-centered and it made sense for me to focus on myself first.  Come on, you would have done the same.   To define the data you want returned by the profile you simply define Keywords and Keyword groups.  For example, I am looking for communication streams (blog posts, tweets, etc.) that contain the words JohnFMoore or “John Moore”.  Easy, right?

You can also take these profiles to deeper levels, refining your search with:

• Region Filter (do you only want to find references of your brand in Costa Rica?)
• Media Types Filter (do you want to ignore Forums, Images, or some other data source?).
• Language Filter (do you only want to see French language information?)

What can you do with these profiles?

Start off by looking at the River of News view within Radian6, this is my favorite view as it shows a dialog with all the blogs, tweets, forum entries, interlaced so you can easily dig into the news you deem important.  Some important notes:

• The user interface is excellent.
• As you view the River of News you can click on tweets, blogs, and go a level deeper into the media viewer seeing how the stats for the author have trended over time.  Stats that you can dig into include:
  • The number of Twitter followers and number of Tweets for an author of the Tweet you are looking at.
  • The number of comments, reputation, etc,, for a blog author of the post you are looking at.

Great, you can find information but so what?

You can shift to the workflow view and process all traffic like a standard support ticketing system.

• You can assign tweets, posts, etc.. to other users in your Radian6 system.
• You can follow-up with users and update the ticket with the most up to date information.
• You can assign a sentiment to a post.
• You can assign notes, tags, etc.. to any entry.
• My favorite geek piece is the audit trail.  It seems to capture every change you make ver helpful even for someone like me with minimal web mentions.

You can also setup alerts (IM or E-mail) to run as new information is found for a given topic.  If you do not want to get alerts real-time you can setup nightly mails to allow other users to view the traffic from their e-mail.  The e-mail format is horrible but the data is there.

Need help?

Radian6 has done a nice job of providing videos to help you get up and running with their solution.  In addition, the support team, at least during the evaluation, has been great. 

Integrating with other systems

The data that Radian6 is capturing is great and can help your business be better.  You do not, however, want to have it locked away in your SMM, you want to pull it back into your CRM system.  My understanding is that they do have a relatively new set of APIs and I am hoping they are heading in this direction.  Time will tell.

I cannot honestly give you a verdict on Radian6 as they are the first system I have dug into.  However, I am mostly impressed and I do feel they are worth being part of your evaluation list if you are a large SMB or Enterprise company looking to go social.

John

Your 2010 Social Media Plan, get that person hired

Before you read this post I would encourage reviewing the starting point of this series.  If you have already read it you still may want to review again as I added a little more background and the comments for the first post are great.

Alright, assuming you went back and read the first post….. Well, hang on, if you’re anything like me you didn’t go back and read it, did you?   Alright, assuming you did not follow my advice, some quick thoughts…

Yes, I am going immediately from goal setting to hiring this first employee.  If you haven’t read the first post, you’re probably saying something like “John, you are a technology executive, you should know we need a well-defined ROI, heck, you really didn’t even define a strategy…”  You’re right, of course.  However, you own your overall business strategy, not me.  If you want to pay me to come in we can refine your social business design/strategy as needed, that first check you sent me still has not even cleared. :-)

Now, ROI…. Yes, I always argue for the need to define ROI as well….  Truth is, year one you must ignore the ROI.  Keep your investment to an affordable level but do not expect measurable ROI in year 1, it will come in year 2.  Come see me at the end of 2010 as we define your plan for 2011, we’ll be discussing ROI then.   Alright, now that we’re caught up…

Before we begin…  Some stats…

• According to a recent report on Pew Internet “the median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.”
• According to a recent study by Business.com of  1900 social media professionals:
  • 65% have less than 2 years of experience working with social media.
  •  The companies represented by these professionals are just as new to the ballgame with 71% having less than 2 years of experience with Social Media.
  • In 66% of these companies the marketing department leads the social media efforts.
  • In 23% of these companies the customer service department leads the social media efforts.
• While I was unable to find a perfect match for this position on Salary.com, I selected the Market Research Analyst on Salary.com, for the Boston area, to try and give you an idea of the salary range this position might require.
  • The junior position (less than 2 years experience) of Market Research Analyst 1, at the 75th percentile, calls for an average of approximately $63,000 per year.
  • The next level (2 to 4 years of experience) is Market Research Analyst 2.  Again, at the 75th percentile, Salary.com calls for an average of approximately $73,000 per year.

Great stats, now what?

I feel that, ultimately, you will need to form a joint department with marketing and customer service jointly leading the charge on your social media efforts.  You need your efforts to be customer-centric and these two groups understand that need best.  With that in mind, here are some thoughts on experience, skills, etc.., you should be looking for in this candidate.

• Experience levels
  • This person must understand your company, your culture.  If you have someone in your customer service or marketing team that meets the majority of the other the other requirements, shift them into this new role.
  • If you do not have the right person in-house, remember that I will not be around all the time.  You are paying me a l, I will help, but you should look for someone with 3 – 4 years of experience.  This will put you ahead of most companies and get you off on the right foot. 
• Writing, speaking, grunting, and other modes of communication
  • During the interview ask the candidate to define how your company is helping it’s customers.  Can they talk the talk?
  • During the interview ask the candidate how their own personal brand can benefit your company?  Are they walking the walk?
  • Give them a homework exercise to send you an email, roughly 500 words, that could be used as a blog post to introduce your company and it’s value to existing customers.  When you get this, share it with people in customer service and marketing… How good is it? 
• Social networking experience
  • They must have existing accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Anyone who is not participating on these networks is living in the 1990s and does not understand the importance of social networking.
  • What other social networks do they use?   I would also give them bonus points for any other social networks they are on as long as they can explain the personal or business value of that social network.
  • The candidate should be familiar with the key social networks they will be utilizing in this job.  The following numbers are not absolutes.    However, as you review the numbers make sure you ask them about what makes each of these social communities stand out.  Who do they most interact with?  For Twitter, how did they attract their followers?  How have these communities benefited them, personally or professionally?
    • The candidate should have at least 1000 twitter followers.
    • The candidate should have at least 100 Facebook friends.
  • Ideally the person has a blog, demonstrating an understanding, at least at some level, of how to express their voice.
  • Ask them about their favorite blogs, they need to live this stuff.
• From my community
  • Roy Atkinson, a member of my Twitter community, noted:  ”Must be conversant with contemporary measures and metrics and with transforming data to information to knowledge.”
  • Eric Andersen, another member of my Twitter community, noted the need for “someone who is both tech savvy and biz savvy IMHO…a special breed .”
• Candidate Questions
  • The candidate has hopefully done their homework and is asking you great questions about your business, your marketplace.
  • The candidate should ask you about why you’re investing in social media.  I hope…
  • The candidate should mention me by name, just saying.

The above are just a few examples, you need to determine fit within the company and we all know interviews are not perfect.  Don’t screw it up, though, I will be watching.

John

The Discussion Begins, Facebook is not your next CRM

I exchanged tweets with Clara Shih yesterday and let her know that Facebook, despite opinions to the contrary, is not your next CRM system.  Clara has agreed that we can debate this, as she responded, “Any Time!”.  While I will guide you through my thinking over a few posts, in between helping shape your 2010 Social media plan in more detail, I wanted to start off by giving you a few things to consider.

Social Support Communities

If you have been reading my blog for a while than you know that Social Support Communities (SSC) are a great tool for providing a rich customer support experience where customers and companies work together to jointly support your customer base, to co-create value through knowledge base articles, reputation and authority definition, etc…  Customers are more engaged, your brand is rewarded, support costs are reduced, everyone rejoices.  It is good.

With this in mind, remember that social media may never scale beyond support for most businesses.

Is Social Valuable for your business?

Yes, yes, and yes.  I’m spending time helping to define a 2010 Social Media Plan, which I’ve just started, so that you can have a roadmap to follow.  Facebook is a part of this but is not your next CRM.

Okay, great job of self-promotion John, but why can’t Facebook be your next CRM system?  While the answer will become clearer in time, let me leave you with a few thoughts on what your CRM system must support if you want it to be a successful tool for lead generation, deal management, etc…:

• Your CRM system must be able to secure your data.  Enterprise CIOs are generally looking for a software package that can work on-premise…  Is Salesforce helping to change this?  Yes, but there is still data that will never go off-site.
• Your CRM system needs to be able to build a robust, customizable, picture of a variety of user types matching your business.
• Your CRM system must be able to accept data, in a variety of formats, from systems such as time and billing systems, HRIS systems, and more…  This is related to the last point, clearly, but worth noting.
• Your CRM system must enable you to report upon the activities of your team, of your company.  Could Facebook ultimately provide team-level or Enterprise-level support?  Maybe..  Doubtful…

I will build a stronger case as I go forward, this is just a start.  Weigh in though, let me know if I am at least beginning to make you question Facebook as a CRM choice.

John

Who needs SSC? You do, and time is running out…

In any given week I review various statistics focused on social media usage, trying to better understand how quickly people are adopting these tools into their everyday lives.  The reality is that adoption in the US continues to increase, as it does in many other areas of the world.  Cultural norms, access to technology, and governmental legislative efforts will mean varying degrees of worldwide adoption, so always take those variables into account as you review statistics in an effort to understand how well they represent the markets you are in.

• According to Nielsen, 17 Percent Of Time Spent On The Internet In August Devoted To Social Networking And Blog Sites, Up From 6 Percent A Year Ago
• According to eConsultancy:
  • Customers who experience problems when shopping online are talking about it on social media sites; 13% this year compared with 8% in 2008.
  • 51% of respondents saying that social media has influenced their online transactions. 75% said their choice of retailer was influenced by what they read on social media sites, while 56% avoided a particular company after reading a bad review.

Interesting stats, yes, but why should you care?

• People are spending more time on social networking sites and becoming more comfortable letting their voice be heard, both in regard to positive and negative experiences that they are having in their daily lives.
• The influence of this broader sharing is having an impact on the decision-making of other social users.  I would go far as to say, based upon other studies, it has the strongest impact on other social users, much more impact than any marketing efforts you are deploying.

As I’ve noted in past posts, some companies get it while others are still lost in the woods with the only responses being those damn crickets that I often write about.  What kind of company are you going to be?

John

Hey, shut up and listen… Please

I attended a very good webinar today, led by Amber Naslund at Radian6, on listening and engaging with social media. The conversation was timely in light of the recent statistics I saw, and blogged about, on how CIOs are erecting walls around their businesses.

While Amber covered a lot of ground the one topic I wanted to build on was the simple act of passive listening… Let me remind of you something, I am a geek. I am a CTO and SVP of Engineering and have run Engineering, IT, and Support organizations. I understand security risks and also understand the benefits of being social. Passive listening is a safe starting point that balances the benefits of being social with the risk of drilling holes into those corporate walls.

Passive listening is also relevent to any business in any industry across any geography. The benefits of passive listening is you do not need to be outgoing nor do you have to spend hours analyzing data. Dip your toes into the social waters as little, or as much, as time permits…

Building off of Amber’s points I would recommend that every business invest at least one hour a week passively listening/monitoring for information on your company, the competition, your industry. Plenty of people have given advice on where to start, how to start, so I won’t attempt at compiling a comprehensive list. However, here’s what I do when I have very little time:

• Scan my RSS feeds in Google Reader.
• Monitor what is happening with all of my contacts using Gist.

Yes, there are many other things you can do but the benefit of targeted RSS feeds (in Google Reader) and following up on key companies and people (in Gist) get me the most important data with the least investment. Hey, it works for me, it might even work for you.

What do you think? How do you passively listen today?

John