The State Departments Social Media Usage Policy

Need something interesting to read?  The United States Department of State publicly released its Social Media Usage policy today and it is worth taking time to check out as it will provide insights for other organizations looking to understand what needs to be in their policies.

While there are dozens of great details in the document here are a few highlights:

• The document speaks to the fact that these guidelines apply to both internal and external social media usage.  Understanding and then addressing this fact is important as these tools offer real value across the entire organization.
• Up front the document makes it clear that other policies are still in effect.  For example, your usage policies should note that items covered in employee handbooks still apply.
• Definitions and terms are defined at the beginning of the document.  Make this clear up front so that there is no room for confusion.
• The document does an excellent job noting the different guidelines for internal and external networks, for personal and professional accounts.  Great job including items like this:  “Department personnel may access and post entries to public, Internet-based social media sites, from OpenNet using their personal profile registered with a personal email address…” 

The document also covers important topics such as monitoring, archiving, and when you need to get approval to post.  While I will create a template as part of The Social Ecosystem effort this comprehensive document would make a great starting point.

John

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

Response to Data Quality Post in CIO Magazine

I read an article today called “What Price CRM Data Quality?” and had to disagree with it for several reasons.  It is a good magazine but even the best of us occasionally get it wrong (I know I do).  I left this as a comment on the post, but also wanted to post here since comments are not easy to find on the site.

I would suggest different phrasing for the beginning of this process, although I feel we were probably both saying the same thing.  “Clarify the business requirements for your CRM system and ensure that data required to support the key business processes and reports is clean.”

Once you have clarified requirements you can more easily determine which bucket the data goes into.  In my experience you should only bother gathering data that you truly care about and you should be going for 100% clean data.

Some customers understand this and do a great job of understanding their business needs up front.  By doing so they capture the minimum information required and only add to it, or remove from it, as the business needs evolve. 

Many fail to do so and try to capture all the data possible, even data that the business has no need to capture.  In this case I would urge companies to purge the data instead of leaving partially accurate data in place.  Partially accurate information leads to poor decision making  as you are unable to determine what is valid and what is not valid.

If you are unwilling to invest in clean data, don’t invest in a CRM system at all.

John

Mistakes made by US-based SAAS applications?

If you’re from outside of the United States, do you have stories of foolish mistakes that you have seen in US-based SAAS products? Share with the group or drop me an e-mail.  I’d like to see if we can get some of these out in the open and try to improve upon past mistakes.

-John