@jowyang is to social, as @gartenberg is to mobile. Follow @gartenberg now to get ahead. #altimeter 3 hrs ago

18 Use Cases That Show Business How To Finally Put Customers First

Social and CRM: How Companies Will Manage Their Social Relationships
Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known in the CRM space as an expert.  Coupled with my focus on social technologies we did a deep dive on how our worlds are colliding into the trend to Social CRM.  In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear we’re looking at the holistic business, across multiple business departments –not silos or roles.

Companies are unable to scale to keep up with the social phenomenon
We know that customers are using these social technologies to share their voices, and companies are having a very difficult time to keep up.

  • For companies, real time is not fast enough. Companies need to be able to anticipate what customers are doing to say and do, in order to keep up. Although Motrin responded to angry mom’s within 24 hours –it was too slow.
  • Companies are unable to scale to meet the needs of social. No matter how many community managers Dell and ComcastCares hires to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of customers happening.  They need tools, and they need them now.
  • Customers don’t care what department you’re in they just want their problem fixed. Dooce’s support problem with Maytag quickly became a PR nightmare –had the support group known she was an influencer (and what it means), they could have serviced her better.

Framework:  The 18 Use Case of Social CRM
Above: Framework of the 18 Use Cases of Social CRM

How To Use This Report: A Pragmatic Roadmap
Regardless if you’re in IT or in a business unit, we wrote this to meet the needs of both groups.  This architecture lays out all the possibilities (18 use cases) defines the problem and goal for each, and suggests some vendors who to watch.  It’s also pragmatic, as it lays out a process on how to get started, baseline needs (listening) and what to do next.

Action Items

  1. Sign up for the webinar series. This is a deep topic, and the report is only the tip of the iceberg.  As we’ve done in the past, we’re going to offer a series of free webinars on this topic to explore each of the use cases in gritty details.  Sign up for the webinar now, as we can only have 1000 attendees per webinar, as our last webinar had over 1100 registrants.
  2. Read then spread this report. Like open source, the Altimeter Group believes in open research, we want our ideas to grow, and others to take advantage of it.  So if you found the report helpful, please forward the report to internal constituents, partners, vendors, clients, and blog it.  Use it in your presentations, business plans, and roadmaps.  I’ve embedded it below, and there are download features for your own use.
  3. Have an internal discussion. Evaluate your current situation at your company, then draw up which business needs need to be tackled first, use the use cases as a roadmap by mapping out which phase comes first, and which phase comes second.
  4. Learn more and join the community of pioneers. This is new territory, we don’t have all the answers, so we’ve created at group in which pioneers can learn from each other.  It’s free, and the conversation has started already, jump into the group, and learn together.

The Altimeter Approach
Standing behind our belief in open research, the Altimeter Group wants to be part of the community, we:

Involve the expert community in the research process
Altimeter is unique as our partners can tightly co mingle our topic areas and see how they converge, we highlighted our vision when we joined. We seek to be stewards of community and during our six months of research we talked to way over 40 thought leaders, vendors, and companies that are approaching this space. We blogged ideas, engaged in conversations with the #scrm hash tag, and had working sessions with thought leaders like Paul Greenberg and Esteban Kolsky.   We approached research in an open way, and allowed for vendors to review the report and submit back their ideas, some of which we incorporated. This effort was a group effort and included a lot of heavy lifting from Christine Tran, operations who helped to schedule countless meetings, and guidance from Charlene Li, our founder.

Provide a holistic view through deep collaboration
We see that worlds are converging, and we model our research the same way, through really analyzing the mixtures of our different topic areas. For example, what was interesting is that my ‘marketing-speak’ and Ray’s ‘IT Speak’ often resulted in the tower of babel. Although we were talking about the same topic, he had to translate IT and marketing speak both ways.  After many puzzled looks, we embracing this, and realized that this isn’t unique to us but a sign of companies converging as a result of mass adoption of easy to share social tools.  Thus, we realized this framework that could meet the needs of the various camps would be helpful, companies need to move quickly, as customers have adopted social in rapid fashion.

Use open research to grow ideas
We want ideas to spread, and have made the entire report available at no cost on slideshare, and put up images on flickr, we hope you use them, under creative commons licensing of Attribution -Noncommercial – Share Alike Status, we believe in open –not closed research.  We’re trying a different business model, we want to involve the community of experts and publish our findings out there for everyone to benefit from, please support us by sharing it as much as possible, while we trial a new way of doing research.

Update: I forgot to mention, this report was entirely funded by the Altimeter Group there were no sponsors. Also, we are open about disclosing who are clients are (providing they approve), as a result, we hope you’ll trust as more.

Related links: I’ll roundup interesting links that discuss this report

Finally, your corporate website can be relevant again
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been conducting research to measure how different social networks allow for integration with corporate websites and their assets. Over 3 years ago, I wrote a piece on how corporate websites are becoming irrelevant, due to trusted decisions between prospects and customers taking place off the corporate site. This piece, which still gets traffic has been translated into over a dozen languages –the market recognizes that corporate sites can no longer operate as silos when customers have left.

[Companies must integrate customers behavior on social networks to their corporate website to increase relevancy, word of mouth, and trust]

A plethora of options creates confusion in the market
Fast forward to 2010, and there too many options for brands to integrate these social features.  While many have used community platforms to allow customers to connect to each other on branded domains, this strategy works for loyal customers and often may not reach prospects.  Social networks, which have your customers and prospects, have taken note, and have launched a variety of products that allows their thriving communities of buyers and prospects to connect with static corporate sites.  The challenge?  There are so many features available, it’s confusing to figure out what to do.

Use this data as a roadmap and guide
Companies and organizations are confused by the wide variety of choices that social networks offer to help them connect to their customers, so I’ve created this menu to help them in understanding.

Matrix: Feature Attribute Benefits of Social Integration

Feature What it does Benefits Downsides What no one tells you
Sharing Features Allows users to share content from corporate websites to social networks Free to deploy, as social newtorks offer features or Sharethis or Addthis Beyond sharing and simple analytics, there’s limited functionality It’s scary to send traffic away –but it cause viral effects you didn’t expect
Embeds and Widgets Embed features on social networks (like Facebook Fan Reactions) on your corporate website Breathes real social interaction to static corporate sites, showing real world customer interaction Control over what’s being said is limited. If you don’t integrate this with your look and feel and use default features your site will look amateur
Authentication Login to a website using a social networking login, often through two clicks like Twitter connect. Increase chances of interaction. Users hate filling out registration pages, so this allows them to ‘login’ faster using their own login. You have less ability to glean their email address, as they’ve logged in another route. In the long run, you’ll have disparate data. Social networks are really an identity play, by using this, they gain more control.
Cross Publishing from my site to social networks “Pollination” Users can share information to specific friends in their social networks Rapid sharing of content, and sometimes the ability for users to specifically select who they’ll share to –this is beyond simple sharing features as activities and actions can quickly spread Spreading information means more disparate instances of data, making it hard for brands to maintain control. Careful.  Don’t allow for users to simply spam their friends with content, be selective.
Real time updates Update websites in real time with social content on corporate sites. Enable your corporate site to really be real time through updates in social networks in real time, and vice versa. Not all content will be relevant, and excessive updates will become white noise. Use this for key events, or important customer transactions, not the mundane activity.
Social Personalisation Serve up content based on users profile information and previous behavior, see VW’s early experiments Rather than subject customers to a generic user experience on your corporate website, customize the experience based on their social networking profile, increasing relevancy. Create a series of specific content types is costly, as well as the engine to develop this. Don’t assume what a customer does in Twitter is relevant to your own product, one size does not fit all.
Social Context Present real time information based on their friends behavior, see HuffPo. Allow your users friends to increase relevancy by suggesting content and products to each other –increasing rate of action. This is very complicated system to create, and requires a mindset to let go to gain more as users may say and recommend things you don’t like. Every company is a media company, and the smartest companies realize they are a marketplace.
Application Platform A platform that offers third parties to create web based applications using the social networks APIs, access to data Companies want to extend unique features onto social networks (like the most popular content on a corporate site) to increase interaction Costs to developing these applications are high, you need specific developers that understand the ever changing nuances of these platforms You’ll need long term resources or budget to do this and your existing team may not have the skill set.

Now that we’ve established a clear sense of the benefits and risks, let’s dive in and understand who offers what.  I’ve created the following matrix that I will keep up to date, that will fast forward research activities.

Who Offers What: Social Networking Integration Features

Facebook Google LinkedIn MySpace Twitter
Sharing Features Yes Yes Yes Yes, Share on MySpace Yes
Embeds and Widgets Yes, Fan Box Yes, third parties Yes, 3rd parties Yes, every page offers embed code Yes, see Twitter Widgets
Authentication
without password
Yes, FB
Connect
OAuth Yes, OAuth OpenID, OAuth, and MySpaceID Yes
OAuth
Cross Publishing
(Pollination)
Yes Yes (Buzz) Yes (via REST APIs) Yes, Share on MySpace Yes, + with 3rd party tools
Real time
updates
between sites
Yes (PubSubHubbub) Yes (via REST APIs) Yes, Real Time Stream Yes
Social Personalization Yes Yes Yes (via REST APIs) Yes, this can be done through MySpace’s REST APIs. Yes. Access all twitter profile info and some behavioral data.
Social Context Yes. see
Examples
Yes, with Google Friend Connect Yes (Most content on the site) Yes. MySpace Real Time Stream to get songs from friends, could also use data to suggest artists to others. Yes. One could show articles from the people you follow have shared or tweeted about. Example: Feedera digest.
Application Platform Yes Yes Offers
an OpensSocial platform

to select partners
Yes, OpenSocial. Yes. See wiki and getting started guide.

Update:  Duzins, from Yahoo has left a comment below showing all of the capabilities that Yahoo has to offer, go into the comments to learn more.

Recommendations: Develop a Pragmatic Strategy

  • First, understand your customers. It’s unrealistic for you to deploy all of the features above, in fact that would only confuse your customers. Instead do research and find out where your customers are.  Then, you’ll know which social network to focus on, and data showing their existing behaviors will tell you which features to focus on.
  • Integrate this with your website roadmap. Start simple then evolve. Don’t try to boil the ocean, start small with simple sharing features, then follow the stack as I laid out in the second matrix.  This is a roadmap that you should use to across the next few years as your corporate website evolves, fusing in social features.
  • Find partners and agencies that will guide you. Don’t go this alone, find agency partners, or technology providers that know this space and have experiences to reduce your risk.  For example, managing all the social connections is more than a brand can take on, for example Gigya, (an Altimeter client) manages all those connections for brands.  Forward this post to agency partners and ask them where they are on this roadmap and who they’ve partnered with to do this.

Other Resources

Research Sources
I did my own research to fill in the matrix as much as possible, then went directly to folks that work at those social networks to verify. Thanks to the helpful and knowledgeable Josh ElmanChris MessinaAdam Nash, (LinkedIn), Amy Walgenbach (MySpace).

Translations From The Community

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Numbers are powerful, but only if they provide context to the changes in our life. This above embedded video (if you don’t see it, click here to the blog post) has been created by agency Jess3 and was embedded on Technorati’s blog. They give a comparison of the sheer volume of content created on email systems and social networks, which I’ve stated in the past are going to end up being intertwined.

For the most part these stats are accurate, but being one who tracks them carefully, I know that the FB stats are already out of date, the space is moving too quick for anyone to really track. Link via Christine Tran, researcher at Altimeter who has an uncanny knack for finding just about anything on the internet she needs to.

While the numbers help us track adoption now, the future of all these numbers is moot. In the long run, social networks as destinations will fade into the background (like air) and we’ll just be able to access or be guided by our friends wherever we are in life at any given time we want.

Yesterday, we had the second in a three part webinar series about social strategy. The first, which you should listen to, focuses on understanding customers though socialgraphics. The following slides and recorded webinar (a bit faint, so be sure turn it up) are intended to be the foundation for companies of all sizes to develop a strategy based on business objectives –not the latest technology.

We believe in Open Research and encourage our knowledge to become the foundation for growth of ideas, and encourage you to learn, share on your blog, and put into educational materials. Those that offer social services or technologies, should consider embedding this on their site, and using to quickly educate prospects and clients –furthering the industry forward.

The Social Strategy Trilogy: Webinars and Slides

Part 1: Socialgraphics help you to understand your customers
Part 2: Developing a Social Strategy (you’re here now)
Part 3: Getting your company ready (sign up)

Attend the Final Third Webinar: Getting Your Company Ready
To attend the third no cost webinar, we’re accepting registrations (we had over 1100 this second one) so please sign up.


Above, Listen in to recording, it takes a few minutes to get started.

If you write a review I’ll be happy to provide a link so we can hear the perspectives of those that watched, if you found the presentation helpful, please pass it on, and encourage it to spread

  • Sharon gleaned five key points
  • Airfoil PR highlights 7 key learnings
  • Alyce gives her wrap up thoughts
  • Charlene cross posted from the Altimeter blog
  • The file is also on Dropio
  • The tag from the event was #socialstrategy, see the Twitter discussion
  • The next webinar, “Social Strategy: Getting Your Company Ready” will be taking place on Wednesday, April 14 from 11 am -12 pm. You can register at this link: http://bit.ly/gettingready

    potm-banner-2

    Lots of changes, in particular, many of my former colleagues from the Forrester Research interactive marketing and marketing leadership teams that I used to work closely with have moved on. Forrester hires top minds, so when I run across an alum, it’s like a reunion of graduating class at a university. There’s a strong camaraderie stemming from common way of thinking, writing, and approaching tough problems.   Forrester attracts and breeds excellent thinkers, and I wish my former colleagues best of luck as they return to the field.

    In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series (see archives) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

    Also, my submission form has changed to a new URL, the former Google form was giving me problems, so please use this one going forward.

    • Cynthia Pflaum leaves Forrester Research (we were on the same team) and joins Dachis Group as a consultant, she is fabulous and was our “Data Queen” for the Groundswell work. I wish her the best, and know she’ll rock at whatever she does! Best wishes.
    • Tom Cummings, leaves Forrester Research and joins Dachis as a Consultant Tom I also worked closely with Tom, his research was always helpful. I’m sure great work will come out of Dachis group with this top talent hire.
    • Lisa Bradner leaves Forrester Research (we did some projects together) as an analyst as the President of Geomentum.
    • Julie Katz, also a former marketing analyst at Forrester leaves to join the insights team at Lego, she was always a joy to work with, and we shared many interesting conversations.
    • Caroline Dangson, leaves IDC as analyst and joines Dachis Group as a Consultant, I’ve met her in SF, and admire her work, congrats.
    • Esteban Contreras, Social Media Manager is hired a Samsung Electronics (Amdocs Consulting Division), he wrote meI interviewed Samsung’s Social Media Strategists on my podcast “The Social Nerdia Show!” and sent them my resume the next day. Two months later I was moving from Dallas TX to New Jersey. I sold my house, sold one car, and said bye to family and friends in the middle of winter. Now I’m living near NYC and working hard” awesome story. Added him to list of strategists.
    • Mark Drapeau’s New Job: Corporate Public Diplomacy via Innovative Social Engagement, at Microsoft, read his story on Brian Solis’s blog.
    • Don Dodge joined Google a few months ago, as Developer Evangelism. I was a bit slow on this, but congratulations to him
    • Brian Kling has been promoted Autodesk as a Social Media Manager, added to list of strategists too.
    • Craig Hepburn is now Director of Social Media Strategy at Open Text focusing mainly on how some of the worlds largest companies are adopting social media strategies for their business both internally for collaboration but also externally facing for their partners and customers.
    • Christopher Fleener has been promoted to Digital Marketing Manager at The New School, a leading research university in New York City. In his new role, Chris will focus on expanding the university’s social media and mobile marketing initiatives.
    • Colin Browning is now Developing Digital and Social media programs for leading technology companies. at IDG SMS
    • Christopher Wilkes has joined Ripple6 as Senior Director of Business Development, Social Insights, where he will be responsible for further developing Ripple6’s Social Insights products and solutions and educating prospective clients on the value of social insights.

    How to connect with others (or get a job):
    Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how you can too:

    Submit an announcement
    If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, submit to this form

    Seeking Social Media Professionals?
    If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

    This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

    Job Resources in the Social Media and Web Industry

  • Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, these affiliate fees pay for my hosting)
  • Read Write Web keeps announcements flowing at Jobwire, although is broader than just social media jobs
  • Facebook group for community manager group in Facebook
  • Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs
  • Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs
  • SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed
  • ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community
  • Teresa has a few jobs, some around community
  • New Media hire has an extensive job database
  • Social Media Headhunter
  • Social media jobs
  • Jobs in social media
  • Altimeter Group’s list of social media consultants and agencies
  • Social Media Strategists and Community Managers for 2010
  • Hiring? Leave a comment
    If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, please)


    What happens when the social web and mobile devices become synonymous? Customers will be able to access their friends opinions in real time, make decisions on the fly, and will never have an excuse to make a poor buying decision.

    [As mobile and the social web become one --customers are empowered to make confident buying decisions, wherever they go]

    Earlier this year, I was deliberate in my mentioning of investing in two key areas, Social CRM, and Mobile Social Networks. While Ray and I are nearly ready to publish our report on SCRM, I’m pleased to announce we’ve a new partner here at the Altimeteter Group focused on devices, mobile, and the intersection of social technologies.

    Michael Gartenberg, who stems from Jupiter and Gartner Research joins us as a partner with a focus on how customers are accessing each other in context of locations, activities, and their day to day life. In particular, I’ve been impressed with Michael for sometime, we’ve been interacting online for years, and I’ve respected his insight, and deep knowledge of the space.

    If you’re not familiar with the mobile space, Michael is an influencer, his insight is sought after and he’s a regular contributor at Engadget, Computerworld and SlashGear, and has published hundreds of reports, blogs, and is one of the top analysts on Twitter. We’re pleased to announce Michael as part of the Altimeter founders.

    On a related note, we’re growing quickly, and have expanded to a new office, nearly three time the size of our previous office. While it feels empty now, but we’re anticipating growth as more clients continue come on board.  I’ve posted some photos from Twitpic and also on Flickr.

    Related Posts

    I’m here in Phoenix Arizona as a keynote speaker to the Council of Alumni Associations Executives, these are the fine folks that manage alumni orginizations where you may have gone to college.  The reason I’ve been invited to speak as a professional speaker is their world, like many other industries, is being severely impacted by the social web.

    All middlemen and aggregators are being impacted by social. Take for example, brokers, associations, sales people, classified listings, journalists, music labels, encyclopedias, and even analysts are feeling the threats of these simple –yet interruptive technologies.

    Now, college grads may use social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with each other –without being part of fee based alumni organizations. Connecting directly to each other using a few mouse clicks, they can fuse lifelong bonds, help each other personally and professionally in near real time.

    Yet, many savvy orgs have realized the opportunity. Altimeter Researcher, Christine Tran did research for my presentation and we found that some Alumni orgs like Stanford, Cal, Auburn, Purdue, and Brown are participating in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn with varying degrees of success.

    I want to extend the conversation here online, and realized that a useful matrix would be very helpful in understanding the risks and opportunities that are abound in at least five different use cases, they are:

    Impacts to Alumni Organizations In A World of Social Networks: Five Use Cases

    Use Case Opportunities Risk Resources Needed
    Do Nothing Ignorance is bliss, at least for the short term. Bypassed as alumns self connect rendering the org irrelevant. An updated resume.
    Use tools to talk to them Try to lead the discussion, by using the same tools.  See how Caltech alumni and Rhode Island School of Design John Maeda on Twitter does Not saying anything of value to alumni members. Part time staff and committed resources in a budget-stricken environment
    Advocacy Program Get existing alumni members to tell other non-members they should join through social tools, low cost marketing.  Read my checklist. Some may not want to evangelize, limited control of message A formalized program, and a way to encourage behavior
    Aggregation of members voices Inexpensive way to create ongoing content and uplift existing members.  See how Stanford does it Limited message control, content may not all be signal Aggregation tools either manually on blogs, or an automated one that requires dollar investment
    Organize online and real world events Facilitate an event that’s difficult for members to self-organize on own. Members may seek to self-organize if costs are excessive. Utilize existing social tools that offer events management: Facebook events


    For Alumni Organizations, Social Technologies Is Akin To Harnessing Fire

    In the long run, it’s never a zero sum game. It’s rare we see industries completely collapse from disruptive technologies, as the savvy will adopt and create new business models increasing value. The opportunities are great for college alumni organizations, these same tools that threaten their existence can be used to increase membership through advocacy and word of mouth, reduce costs in organization, and a wealth of content being created by their own members.

    Oh yeah, I’m pleased that I was recently featured by my alma mater, SFSU, go ‘Gaters.

    If you’re a graduate from a college (or high school) and can think of opportunities how the Alumni organizations can benefit from social technologies –or you’ve already displaced them by connecting directly with your peers, please leave a comment below.  Update: I met CalTech’s Andy Shaindlin, he writes a smart blog on this topic, also read Alumni Futures.

    Low Cost Innovation Confuses Buyers With Excess Choices
    As a Web Strategist, you seek to balance the three spheres of business, technology and community.  Perhaps a challenging one is the ‘technology’ sphere as you’re faced with the decision of build vs buy, specialized vs broad, cheap vs expensive.  The choices are staggering –there are over 100 community platform vendors, thousands of Facebook developers, iPhone apps, and Twitter apps being created each year.  Despite the proliferation of innovation, one thing remains constant: the economics and strategy of buying doesn’t change.  As a result, the web strategist must first understand their strategy, develop the right parameters for buying and recognize the strengths –and weakness of each type of partner.

    First, Buyers Must Understand Their Level of Sophistication
    Companies that purchase technology and services must first recognize where they are in the sophistication curve.   Those who are new to social technologies should seek out strategy and education first, and rely on external experience and expertise to deter risk.  Those that are in mid level should focus in on specific needs –forgoing unneeded services and features.  Expert level companies are thinking of a holistic experience for customers and are focused on scalability, interoperability, and integration.  In many cases, these expert level companies may be focused on building their own tools and resources –rather than relying completely on third parties.

    For Growth, Focused Vendors Go Broad
    Interestingly enough, some companies with rich histories in a particular vertical are also expanding to larger markets by rebranding efforts.  Take for example 10 year old Neighborhood America, a community platform with strong background in government, local, and federal agencies as a vertical as recently rebranded as INgage networks –giving them a broader reach to the enterprise space and international space --read their FAQ and watch their video to learn more.

    As Market Matures, Vendors Become Specialized
    Radian 6, Visible Technologies, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, and TNS Cymfony have all broad reach across multiple industries by being fairly agnostic to any particular vertical. Of course, they each have experiences in particular verticals and likely have a majority of clients in one industry over another, but that’s a contrary position to Revinate, a company I recently met with that focuses in on deep integration with the hospitality industry.  Their listening platform, while it doesn’t go as wide to cover the ‘brand scope’ comes pre-rigged with connections to travel rating sites like Tripadvisor, Yelp, and other consumer rating sites.

    Note that no vendor is perfect, and if they can do it all, you won’t need all their offerings, and their price point will be high, as a result, understand the strengths –and weaknesses of all.

    Social Technology Buyers Matrix: Broad vs Specialized vs Do It Yourself

    What it is Examples Benefits Downsides
    Broad Technology or service vendors that serve a variety of industries without a specific focus, Buzzmetrics, Radian 6, Visible Technologies, Cymfony offer a range of services that can be use with any variety of industries. On the community platform side, Jive, Telligent, Mzinga, Awareness, Liveworld* Lithium* (update) can meet the needs of many enterprises. Wide deployment ensures that the scope can spread to a large set of sites to crawl. In most cases, these companies can scale, and have a broad base of clients to learn from. Configuration and specialization for your particular market may require setup costs and configuration efforts. While features may go wide –not all will be needed for your specific customer socialgraphic behaviors and industry usage.
    Specialized Technology or service vendors that offer vertical (or industry) specific skills, honed in on a unique market need. In the brand monitoring space, Revinate offers specific brand monitoring for the hospitality industry, and Kickapps*, Pluck, and Cisco EOS*, offer solutions for the media vertical and recently rebranded INgage networks has long history of serving Government –although they are moving to the broad category. Faster deployment and features and deployments are pre-customized for deployment.  Experienced teams that truly get the nuances of your particular industry. Vendors may not be able to go broader, feature set may become limited when it comes to scaling. Sometimes specialization increases costs of goods and services.
    Do It Yourself (DIY) Rather than rely on vendors, many companies prefer to build their own social media tools and processes and integrate with legacy CMS and WMS systems. A variety of brands have bolted on social features to their corporate website using BBS systems, Wordpress, or Drupal like platforms with extensive customization.  Or, developers that build custom installations on .net, jsp, php, and other software languages and frameworks. Reduced up front cost and custom tailored integration with existing systems. A controlled environment not dependent on the product roadmaps of other SaaS companies and increased security measures. Constant rejiggering of features as the outside technology space innovates quickly. Often the soft costs and internal maintaince isn’t always accounted for up front, and innovating new features are often not native to corporations.

    * The Altimeter Group takes pride in transparency and openness in research and analysis, as a result, the starred companies are currently clients, read our disclosure page.

    Web Strategists Must Plan For the Long Term
    Regardless of which path you choose from Broad, Specialized or DIY, there are a few baseline considerations the web strategist must factor into their long term planning, they include:

    • Deploy systems that are designed to scale. Buyers must demand access to the product roadmap and understand where the company is headed at least in their 2 year plan.  The benefits of a SaaS technology vendor is that you can quickly scale your deployment on a turn key basis, while on premise has it’s upsides for conservative industries –scaling can quickly become an issue and out-the-door fast deployment.
    • Deploy systems that can integrate. Only buy systems that have protocols that can allow data to be accessed by other parties, and put into terms of service your data can be accessed at any given time, no questions asked.
    • Analyze their partnership and alliance relationships. Selecting a company that has a healthy set of partnerships and alliances will ensure that they your company will fit within the heterogenous ecosystem of the social web.  Yet, probe deeper, during initial sales calls, vendors will flash ‘Nascar slides’ with dozens of logos of partnerships, find out how many relationships are truly deep integration and aligned product roadmaps –not just former one-off projects.

    Although this post is buyer focused, technology vendors with a broad focus should start kindling relationships with channel partners that can resell and focus in on specific marketers.  For example, Radian 6 is known for offering its service to PR and digital agencies who can then focus in on specific markets.

    Above: Roderick, a designer, has created this handy print out after I posted, thanks.

    Friday afternoon commute

    It’s been a long time since I’ve done this series “Silicon Valley Sightings” as well, quite frankly, I’ve been doing a lot of travel in my role as an analyst.  Yet, despite the lull in posting this series (I’m sure local food blogger Brian Stephens will be happy) I was inspired to post, as of yesterday.

    Thanks to bud Kenny Lauer, who was able to get us two tickets, on Airship Ventures, the only zeppelin in the United States.  We were able to partake in the ‘taster’ tour, a 30 minute effortless and quient jaunt over Silicon Valley.   Boarding this ribbed airship (blimps have no internal skeleton), we had to stagger our boarding, so the ship would be properly balanced.  There were already 12 passengers, and 2 crew on board, so we had board two at a time, then two would leave –so the proper weight was kept.

    Departing from Moffett Field, I was live tweeting photos, since we were only 1000 feet up, the cell reception worked well.  People responded to me on Twitter and said they saw me like, Tatayana, Cynthia, Waili on Facebook, and even NASA Ames responded to us on Twitter!  In the below pictures, you’ll see overhead views of Google (notice the solar panels), a circular neighborhood in Sunnyvale, Stanford, Facebook, HP, and Portola Valley (look for the pirate ship).


    Googleplex: Notice all the solar panels The Loo with a ViewIMG_1370 Kenny is daring C130 Pirate Ship in backyard
    These propellers are directional Pilot Moffett Stanford Facebook and HP In the gondola cabin: 12 passengers, and 2 crew, plus bathroom and viewing bench


    (Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives. All photos by Jeremiah Owyang)

    Web Strategy Summary
    Facebook to now offer Paypal as an additional way to buy advertisements and virtual currency for social games (press release).   This paves a way for Facebook to reach global advertisers who prefer PayPal vs traditional credit cards. Although this partnership is limited in parameters to those two specific use cases of ads and virtual currency, this is yet another testing ground for developing Facebook into an eCommerce platform with over 400 million global users.

    Update: Facebook contacted me after this post went up, and made it clear, this is announcement is not intended towards eCommerce, and is really just limited to the two use cases. While I understand and agree with the scope of today’s announcement, as brands interject more money into Facebook via advertisements, and on the flip side, users are more comfortable purchasing goods (albeit virtual) this continues to be an opportunity for brands and their members to get comfortable with monetary exchanges. As such, I’ve removed from the title of this post “Testing ground for eCommerce”, although the rest of the post stands.

    Background
    Facebook has been testing the ability for users to purchase virtual Facebook credits for over a year, allowing users to send virtual goods to each other, as well as purchase additional features in third party social games. Over a dozen of these third party games already exist extending created by playfish, Zynga, CrowdStar, and others.

    Industry Impacts:

    • Increased revenues for Facebook –and PayPal. For Facebook, and their new partner PayPal, this deal makes sense, as they can continue to grow scalable, low-touch revenues streams by cultivating international advertising dollars, where there is clear global growth. This spurs international brands to continue to deploy Facebook ads, likely in the SMB space as international companies that are enterprise class would delegate ad buying to their digital agency. Although Facebook touts their advertising program, no official case studies or data has been released by them or third party researchers to my knowledge.
    • Additional channels to monetize heavy game players. For the game heavy , perhaps the 43 year old middle age women with disposable incomes, this gives them new opportunities to play games with increased functionality.
    • More use cases for game creators to test virtual goods, with brand sponsors. Game creators should allow for virtual items to be introduced into their games, and be sure to have a business development opportunity for large brands to participate –and offer branded virtual items in context of a social game.

    The big opportunity? Testing ground for ecommerce within Facebook.
    Facebook should roll this out to the application developer community to allow ecommerce functionality to the platform, starting with an application from eBay, the owner of PayPal.  Brands should carefully watch how these early test by Facebook occur –and expect by end of year that Facebook will start to experiment with allowing ecommerce happen directly on Facebook Fan Pages. This is, of course, extremely exciting –but could be very terrifying to normal users.

    Additional Industry Resources

    Agency Partners Are Critical To The Success Of A Brand
    Your strategic agency partners are key to your success.  They bring with them domain expertise, years of experience deploying, and a fresh injection of thinking that most brands can’t foster internally.  As a result, relying on these agile partners outside of corporate walls if often key to responding to new technologies.  Yet, as the technology landscape changes at an even faster pace than ever before, brands must have criteria in selecting the right agencies.

    Yet, Beware of Those That Fondle The Hammer
    Caution. Agency partners that are focused on technologies –not business needs, can destroy your brand. Although new technologies are emerging at an ever-increasing speed, creating a strategy based on tools will leave you in a churn of change, without anyway to escape.  Agency partners that jump from one shiny tool to the next (hammer fondlers) risk poor implementation, not tying efforts to business goals and worst of all confusing your customers as you over-deploy.

    Don’t Let Your Brand Fumble In The Tool Chest — Focus On Building Your House
    Stop,  breathe, think.  Business hasn’t changed, just the mediums in which consumers are now using.  Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater just because new channels have emerged.  Instead, focus on your business objectives and how they’ll meet your consumers existing behaviors, rather than yet another “Twitter strategy”.   Rather than developing a strategy based on the latest tool –focus on the end goal of building a place for your customers to come interact with each other, and your brand.  Look for agency partners that focus on customer behaviors, and business goals as the over-arching goal.

    Put Them Accountable:  Score Your Agency Partners Now
    Use this review scorecard to see how your agency partners stack up now.  Also use this as key criteria in finding new agency partners that focus on emerging technologies.  Print it out, score them, and discuss plans to improve –be wary of those that aren’t ready to adapt.

    Scorecard: Does Your Agency Fondle Their Hammer?

    Criteria: Why It’s Important Scoring Criteria Points
    Strategy: Agencies are trusted partners in defining the direction a brand will head.  Your trust in their experience to understand customers, your needs, and technologies is key.  They must be experts at balancing all three spheres of the Web Strategy Spheres. 5) In addition to the below, develops a strategy based on your customers social behaviors see socialgraphics.

    3) Develops a strategy based on your business objectives first.

    1) Develops a strategy based on whichever technology emerges.  ”You need a blog strategy” vs “You need a two-way communications strategy”.

    0) Has no strategy.

    Vision & Roadmap. Agencies often come in two flavors: able to see long term based on experience, or unexperienced with only short term tactics.   Your agency should have a track record in adopting new mediums –without throwing strategy out the window.  Look for agencies that can see the long term –in the midst of many fast moving technologies. 5) In addition to number 3 be;pw, allows for flexibility as new tactics must emerge.

    3) Long term Vision: Has an over-arching strategy that spans quarters, if not years –not weeks, based upon customer goals.

    1) Reactive: Have a different set of suggestions and recommendations based on whatever new technology appears.  Last month, it was a Twitter strategy, this month it’s a Gowalla strategy.

    0) Wait for you to tell them what to do.

    Partnerships: An Agency’s ecosystems is critical to their ability to implement –especially in a fast moving environment.  Look for agency partners that can work well within your existing ecosystem of partners and technical teams, as well as bring their own set of strategic alliances to the table.  The trick is, ensure your business goals are considered first –not the tools they have on hand. 5) Have a broad set of technology partners.

    3) Only have a few technology partners, and coincidently are the same recommendations they present.

    1) Has pre-built technologies –but not an agnostic mindset, recommends their technology over and over.

    0) Has no alliances or ability to implement recommendations

    Proposals: What an agency brings to the table is going to help you determine how strategic your partner is.  Look for agencies that are creative, can offer suggestions that haven’t been done before, or can defend why repeating an existing effort makes sense.  Be sure to look for a pattern of proposals that first meet your customer needs and business needs –not just what they’ve done in the past. 5) When appropriate, willing to recommend other agencies to work with as that’s best for the client.

    3) Provides recommendations that are agnostic of their existing tools or experiences.

    1) Come to the table with case examples they’ve used for other clients –recommending you do the same.

    0)Have no recommendations at all.

    Results: The ultimate measurement is the final ROI they provide to their clients.  The proof lies within here.  Don’t put success in fate’s hand, look for agency partners that set goals and benchmarks to achieve, and track their success over time. 5) Exceeds expectations of a positive ROI based on customer and business objectives.

    3) Has shown success, but isn’t quite able to justify how it happened –they got lucky.

    1) Was not able to demonstrate success –a weak set of customer engagements for a short period of time.

    0) Was unable to demonstrate any capabilities at all.

    Total: Tally up their score

    Scoring and Rating Your Agency Partners
    Now that you have scored your agency partners, tally up the sum, then find out where they fall in the following ratings and rankings:

    • 21-25 points: A strategic partner that has your brands best interest in mind and that of your customers.
    • 16-20 points: A strategic partner that has your best interest in mind, but may be cutting corners when it comes to making recommendations for the long term, or truly understanding your customers.
    • 11-15 points: Questionable partnership.  This agency may have their own interests in mind before yours, as a result are certainly cutting corners by making recommendations of recycles campaigns, not thinking long term, or not investing enough resources in thinking long term.
    • 0-10 points:  Doh! Your agency fondles the hammer.  You are at risk. Demand improvements or find someone that can meet your business needs now.

    Summary:  Rather than Fondle the Hammer –Develop a Customer Strategy
    This scorecard, while will vary from industry to industry is a guideline for your success, having the right agency partners are key to you standing out in front of your customers –or just spinning your resources to no strategic end.  Brands should use this scorecard in their discussions with account teams at their agency, and executive and account teams should hold themselves accountable to their own clients.  With customers moving even faster to mobile, augmented reality, and location based social networks the rate of change is happening even faster. As a result, agencies must be strategic in their approach, or risk damaging the brand of their clients –or worse yet, losing the account all together.

    It would be great to hear from brands (buyer) and agency partners on how well they think they would score and why. Looking forward to the discussion.

    Download the Scorecard

    Above: Roderick Chow, a designer himself, (Twitter) has created this downloadable version of the scorecard, thanks for being a community advocate.

    Lack Of Signal In A Sea of Noise
    There’s an incredible amount of media and blogger noise about social networks, yet most focus on “killer app” hype without an objective point of view.   My career mission?  To cut out the hype and help companies make sense of what to do. For those fraught with information overload, this definitive matrix distills what matters.

    Situation:  New Contender Shakes Up Industry
    Google has entered the social networking play with “Buzz”, and by the look of it, this time it’s for real.  There’s a lot of market confusion on how they could stack up, so here’s my take.  Let’s cut the noise and get to the heart of it with a comparison matrix based upon my insights talking to these companies in formal briefings, observations, as a user, my former research and dealing with the brands trying to reach them.

    Executive Summary:  Brands Must Stay Focused On Where Customers Already Are
    Google’s entrance causes media havoc but web strategists should stay focused.  Find out where customers already are through developing data around consumer behavior called socialgraphics.  Facebook continues to demonstrate a sophisticated marketplace for consumers and brands to mix about, however don’t discount MySpace’s active consumer base –but only if your customers are already there.  Continue to monitor Twitter and respond if customers are tweeting –but they’ve yet to indicate sophistication to help marketers, instead rely on third party tools and agencies to respond.  The feature set of newly spawned Google Buzz isn’t important, what matters is their ability to aggregate social content which will impact search strategy for businesses trying to reach consumers, read my first take analysis.

    This scorecard has a limited shelf life, so I’ll likely create a new scorecard after future announcements from these players.

    Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter (Feb 2010)

    Google Buzz Facebook MySpace Twitter
    One-Liner A dark horse that has big backing and access to existing platforms. A mainstay platform that needs to grow out of its shell. The MTV of this generation is at risk during an ugly transformation. Has opportunity to become utility-like infrastructure, but not a destination.
    Vitals (see more stats) Estimated to sit on a user based of over 100mm active gmail users, they have access to the most popular webpage in the world, google.com.  Has access to mainstream users on Google.com and advanced email users on Gmail. Boasting over 400mm users in just a few short years, they’ve saturated Gen Y in US, and show global expansion at record rates. Recently reported at 57mm US unique users most of which are heavily engaged with site.  Has saturation of coveted youth, working class and small businesses within US. Although difficult to track, estimates indicate 75mm active users, but doubts are emerging about reduced rate of growth.  Usage by tech savvy, media, and celebs.
    Strengths A large talent pool of engineers to pull from, Buzz stands on top of existing Gmail, mobile devices, and dominant search portal.  As Buzz grows, they can integrate with all Google apps –and aggregate the entire internet. Rapid US and international growth over last few years bodes well as quickly evolved feature set of platform and and FB Connect gain traction.  Attracts top talent from Google –which are quickly defecting. Big backing by a media giant, a super engaged audience, and rich history of reaching media starved young consumers. Has clinched adoption over media elite, celebrities, and tech influencers. Incredible media buzz, and easy-to-use features.
    Weaknesses Late to the party, Google has had a series of social networking misfires from Wave, Dodgeball, Orkut their culture shows signs of becoming corporate –like Microsoft. Struggles with the conundrum of having promised users a ‘closed’ experience where to be successful requires them to be ‘open’. Historically poor track record in meeting privacy expectations of customers, and overall complex interface. Complacent: they really let themselves go. In the eyes of the tech world, they are becoming irrelevant or even worse, a niched media play –not even a lifestyle network.  This leaderless ship without a captain is undergoing radical internal turmoil and innovation has stalled. Although features are dead simple, they are now a commodity –status update features are ubiquitous. Mainstream users confused by how to get started. Overhyped, the infrastructure has shown strain.  Brands generally confused on how to interact.
    Opportunity The more information users share, tag, or create, the more data is created on Google’s platform to organize, giving them opportunity to monetize. By integrating Facebook Connect everywhere, the service becomes ubiquitous, and therefore the default identity and default address book for consumer behavior. A few hours ago, the CEO Van Natta was let go. Now a new chief can step up, and lead the recently formed executive team, fostering innovation and solidarity. Must develop more features to increase the overall value of this utility of the this simple status messaging tool.
    Threats Mainstay email companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL have already shown social features ‘bolted’ onto their email systems, and could pose threat, although success hasn’t been proven by any. Secondly, Facebook has made notions to develop an email web client “Project Titan” that will threaten tech savvy users competing for Gmail’s attention. Facebook is a conundrum as they must make experience open –yet this provides Google the opportunity to monetize as an intermediary. Social networks come and go, before MySpace was Friendster, they run the risk of becoming complacent, losing talent to Twitter and failing to innovate over the next few years. Self-implosion from internal instability causes stalls, forcing media brands to develop their own social networking on their own sites, rendering MySpace a duplicate. Worse yet? Cool kids jump ship, and establish a colony elsewhere, leaving MySpace a wasteland of clueless advertisers. Overhype from media leaves Twitter at risk for burn-out-syndrome like a Hollywood child star turned skid row.  Secondly, the more successful they are, the more strain it put on the already questionable infrastructure.
    Marketing Platform Although not fully developed, expect advertising options to appear for brands who want to promote relevant ads wherever Buzz is located, especially on SERP pages Confusing and overly complicated, there are too many marketing options perplexing brands.  It’s not clear if brands should advertise, interact in pages, create widgets or do a combination of all. Strong and straight forward. Established team has cut deals with many media companies and has legacy culture of understanding media. Nascent. Although promises have been made for branded experiences, analytics, and other premium features, for most marketers it’s being treated like a chat room –not a marketing platform.
    Future State Buzz will aggregate the voices of their users –and those of other social networks, aggregate and serve up monetization options. A communications platform for consumers and brands.  Expect Facebook experience to be in many public experiences and mobile devices. There are two paths: Integrate MySpace into TV and mobile devices or fade into pit of irrelevance like Friendster. Like gas, water, or power, Twitter is likely to fade into the background and become a utility that’s integrated into everything –someday, even your fridge will Tweet.
    What They Don’t Want You To Know The collective already owns you –you just don’t know it yet. They’re trying so hard to shift from closed to open, and like a nasty divorce, it’s tearing them apart from users. Like an internal disease, the insiders are hurting, morale sunk, teams in disarray, yet they don’t want the public to know. Not sure what they want to be when they grow up.
    What They Should Do Demonstrate success with Buzz, then quickly integrate into other tools like Search and Chrome. Kill off the confusing Wave, and consolidate teams and efforts.  Aggregate public content from Twitter and Facebook, intermediate them and monetize their own content. Get open now. Build a browser to quickly go transcend the web. Reward users to share more information in public like restaurant or media reviews in exchange for other values. Double down efforts on Project Titan email feature. Quickly establish a chain of command and execute based upon a single vision. Have regular talent turnover to avoid complacency. Develop a white label product that can compete with Cisco EOS, Kyte, Pluck, or Kickapps (Altimeter client). Develop a vision to become the dominant protocol over SMS, where teens and international cultures are already heavily texting. Continue to build out platform for developers to build on top of, becoming a data play, like a utility.

    Everyone has a morning ritual, for me, I invest up to two hours reading, thinking, and blogging each morning. I hope this helps you cut through the noise –if it was helpful, please pass it on, email to colleagues, tweet it, and blog about it.

    Good For BusinessLeft: Pepsi launched a bold social marketing play, find out what went well –and what opportunities were missed.

    Greetings, fellow strategists, In my latest column for the Forbes CMO Network (you can read all my Forbes pieces) I analyzed Pepsi’s big push into social. Also, you should see my detailed field notes, (I did my research before, during, and after the game, thanks to Trendrr folks) to measure any specific changes, before coming up with my findings. I did contact Pepsi pre article to get comments, although they sent me an email after the Forbes piece was up, see bottom response.


    Super Bowl: A Missed Opportunity For Pepsi

    Cola maker should promote its social cause on TV.

    PepsiCo ditched the Super Bowl this year to make a major social media play. Instead of spending money for ad time on the Super Bowl, it’s relying primarily on digital initiatives to spread the word about its Internet-based Refresh Project contest and charity campaign.

    The cause-marketing effort is a good one. Word is spreading through traditional media, online networks, social media and celebrity chatter. But I believe Pepsi made a big mistake in giving up its long-held Super Bowl ad real estate. A more integrated media approach–one that included the Super Bowl–would be a savvy play for Pepsi. And such integration is something top marketing executives need to keep in mind in their rush to embrace digital initiatives.

    Let’s take a look at Pepsi’s campaign playbook.

    The Big Gamble: Social Over Traditional Advertising
    Pepsi, as a major ad player, knows that brand association is key to its marketing strategy. Company executives also know that there’s a shift in consumer adoption toward social technologies and that marketers can’t count on reaching the consumers they want to engage through TV. In response to this, Pepsi execs decided to spend the money the company typically plows into buying and creating Super Bowl spots–$20 million or so–to promote and fund a campaign that will identify causes that are worthy of supporting. At refresheverything.com Pepsi encourages consumers to submit ideas to improve community or causes then activate their personal networks to vote for the ideas. To date, the number of submissions possible for the first round of awards has been maxed. It also enjoys a continuous buzz on Twitter with the hashtag #PepsiRefresh.

    Playing to its Strengths: Budgets, Celebrities and First Mover
    Pepsi has a lot of things going for it. It has the deep pockets to keep a campaign going long-term. It has benefited from notable press buzz from being the first mover of a radical approach. Additionally, the company is using traditional media outlets to glean endorsements from celebrities, including New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on NFL.com. His charity of choice: the American Cancer Society.

    Missed Opportunity: In-Game Tie-In
    Pepsi made a misstep in this bold media shift: The company alienated a key channel and missed out on tying Pepsi Refresh to the most-watched TV event in Western media (correction to “U.S. Media” see comments below for details). By not having any in-game discussion on the advertisements, it was unable to use the Super Bowl or its advertisements as a catapult to launch the campaign into the social sphere. In fact, after the game, overall mentions of Pepsi and the Pepsi Refresh campaign remained relatively on the same trajectory as before. To look at a detailed set of my field notes and data, I’m tracking mentions using Trendrr of blog posts, Tweets and news articles on my field notes page.

    Campaign Analysis: Advantages
    Pepsi’s novel approach to social cause marketing is headed in the right direction. Pepsi benefits from:

    • First-mover advantage. By announcing a radical approach Pepsi took advantage of pre-event press coverage (including a story in Forbes).
    • Using celebrities to spur campaign. Pepsi invested in influential relationships by the utilization of celebrity endorsements.
    • Shifting to “we” over “me.” Pepsi has shifted traditional brand advertising efforts to now being more community-focused, enabling those who won the monies to spread the Pepsi brand on their behalf.
    • Planning for the long haul. Pepsi is making its marketing dollars go to work by extending the program over months, rather than a short flight of Super Bowl ads.

    Campaign Analysis: Risks
    While innovative, Pepsi has some clear challenges–and missed opportunities:

    • Pepsi has yet to show the world it gets social marketing. Its recent entry into the space with the edgy–but sexist–”Amp” iPhone applications resulted in severe backlash, and is now a case study on the infamous punk’d list.
    • Cultural mismatch. Pepsi’s history of mass marketing means it will need to change its internal culture to embrace social marketing, where success lies in letting go of control.
    • Missed opportunity to integrate Super Bowl TV ads with campaign. Pepsi’s biggest misstep is putting all its eggs in one basket–and not benefiting from synergies of multiple channels.

    Takeaway: An Integrated Approach to Media is Best
    By shifting so much of its annual ad budget from one channel to another, Pepsi missed an opportunity to spur word-of-mouth chatter about its Refresh initiative. Instead Pepsi should have relegated an appropriate amount of TV advertising budget to Pepsi Refresh, encouraging submitting ideas, voting and sharing in the context of the game. It would also introduce Pepsi as a socially conscious marketer to a larger group of people.

    CMOs experimenting with digital and social technologies should not invest in them as a silo. They should instead be part of an overall integrated marketing effort.


    JKO: Below is Bonin Bough, Pepsi’s Social Marketing strategist response via email. He’s given me permission to publish the following, and I appreciate the time he took to respond in an active dialog.

    Bonin: I enjoyed reading your initial analysis of our Pepsi Refresh Project.

    Let’s me start by saying on your key takeaway, we are on the same page: An Integrated Approach to Media is Best.

    And that’s the approach we’re taking with the Pepsi Refresh Project. Throughout the course of the year-long initiative, we’re absolutely using traditional channels — television included — to support it. Our decision not to announce the program on the Super Bowl was not because we don’t believe in the power of television. We do. Or that we don’t believe in the Super Bowl, specifically. We do. (As you know, we chose to advertise other PepsiCo brands during the game.) The decision was based on the opinion that it wasn’t the most contextually relevant way to tell the story. Arguable? Perhaps. But the conversation around the program — the amount of it and the overall tenor of it — thus far suggests that it may well have been the right approach.

    But we’re going to continue to engage in, enable, listen to and evaluate the conversation. And if it seems that we need to course correct we will. A sign, I think, of an internal culture and a senior management that is embracing social marketing.

    Of course, the Pepsi Refresh Project is about more than marketing. It’s about engagement … about building affinity and building advocacy by making a real and measureable difference in people’s lives. And that’s why we take very seriously your point about impact. We’ve aligned with top-notch partners including GOOD, Global Giving and Do Something in building the Pepsi Refresh Project. A leading academic and research group will be assisting with project follow-up and measuring community impact. We’re optimistic about the very great potential.

    We’ll be watching and sharing as the ideas build, the stories unfold and impact becomes evident. I look forward to watching your analysis and continuing the dialogue throughout the course of the program and the course of the year.

    JKO: Thanks Bonin, we’ll continue to watch the interesting moves Pepsi is taking in the space of disruptive technologies. We agree, Pepsi’s core program is strong –but it can be refined by keeping all engines on –not putting all eggs in one basket. I appreciate the time you took to give me feedback. I’ll see you at SXSW again this year.

    Good For BusinessLeft: Inline with the Google style guide of primary colors, Google launches a new logo for Google Buzz, using familiar “chat bubble” iconology.

    Google launches status update features
    Google launches Buzz, which many will find similar to Friendfeed now part of the Facebook family.  Google Buzz will enable content to be aggregated, and then prioritized based upon the people you already email with, which Harry McCracken and I call this a social graph based on history, “Historical social graph” or HSG. Secondly, this Google Buzz feature will rate and rank content based on activity and interaction within your social group. Users can choose to publish the Buzz in public, which will display on the Google Profile page. They also announced the ability to input this data from mobile devices and showed a voice to text scenario. They plan to make more announcements based on enterprise versions –and more at their IO developer conference.

    Enough about news, I’m sure you’ll find more on Techmeme, here are my insights.

    Analysis: Impacts To Industry

    • Google continues its prime directive. At the high level, this is a strong move for Google, they continue to aggregate other people’s social content, and become the intermediatry. This helps them to suck in Twitter, Flickr, and any-other-data type as the APIs open up, giving them more to ‘organize’. This is Google acting on it’s mission to the world.
    • Privacy woes will scare consumers –yet adoption will continues upward. For consumers, the risk of privacy will continue to be at top of mind. Although the features allow for sharing only with friends or in public. expect more consumer groups to express concern. Overtime, this will become moot as the next generation of consumers continues to share in public.
    • Buzz could have faster adoption rate than Twitter. For consumers, this could potentially have more adoption than Twitter as Gmail has a large footprint Google told me it’s tens of millions (active monthly unique). Of course, most Gmail users likely aren’t Twitter users, but there could be a large platform to draw from.
    • Physical businesses lose more control over search strategy. For small busineses and retailers, this will impact their search engine results pages, as a single top ‘buzzer’ could cause their content to be very relevant, if that person was relevant, then their influential content could show at top of SERP pages. Expect Google to continue to offer advertising options now around buzz content –fueling their revenues.
    • A direct blow to Facebook, they must accelerate go to market. To Facebook, this is a direct threat, these features emulate Friendfeed and the recently designed Facebook newsfeed. Expect Google to incorporporate Facebook connect, commoditizing Facebook data as it gets sucked into Google and displayed on Google SERP.
    • Great for Twitter now –yet painful in the long term. This is good for Twitter in the short term, as it’ll amplify tweets, and suck them into a new system and give additional reach. Yet over time, status features will become a commodity, and Twitter as a destination will fade into the background.

    Back in July 2009, I took a bold statement to say that Email and Social Networks are the same, I distinctly recall a lot of people disagreeing with this notion, but I think it became true today.   Posted from the Googleplex at the live briefing, I also spoke to NYT, SF ChronicleSJ Mercury, NYT (second time), UPI, and Financial Times.  Also, I polished some of the writing up in the afternoon, as the first pass was quick and dirty.

    Below: Pictures from the event, including Sergey, Google Founder
    Buzz Team, and Google Founder photo photo Screen shot 2010-02-12 at 6.44.24 PM

    Good For BusinessLeft: There are four main categories of social strategy, yet with over 20 subset objectives, which we’ll discuss at a high level.

    Organizations that focus on social technologies suffer from the symptom of ‘Fondling The Hammer‘ .  True social strategy stems from business objectives –not the latest technologies.

    So often, companies develop social tactics based on the latest tool that’s sprung forth.  Yet, so far and few in between to organizations develop an actionable plan based on business goals.

    This second in our no-cost webinar series is coming up on the topic of social strategy.  In the spirit of open research, we’re leading a discussion in public, and encourage you to join, learn, and share with others. Co-hosting with Charlene Li, we’ll be hosting a no-cost webinar to discussin how companies can develop a social marketing effort that meet business goals.

    Although not a requirement, our sessions build off each other, read, watch, and listen to our previously recorded session, we discussed how companies should really understand their customers before entering the social space.

    Register: Developing a Social Strategy by Objectives, Hosted by Altimeter Group
    Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
    Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST
    (Status: 858 out of 1000 maximum have registered, as of Feb 11th)

    Please sign up, we’re only limited to 1000 attendees and last time we have over 800 signups. If you are unable to make the live webcast, we’ll post the full set of slides and recording on this blog and the Altimeter blog, so please subscribe.  The hashtag for this event is #AltimeterWebinar, and if you’ve questions you want to pose in advance on Twitter, I’m listening and will factor in the top questions, or leave a comment below.

    Time to put the hammer down, and start focusing on building that house.

    potm-banner-2

    The submissions are defintly picking up, I’m seeing more submissions than before. Why? I attribute this to the start of the new year when many folks change up jobs, and the slight uptick we’re starting to see in the economy.

    In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series (see archives) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:


    How to connect with others (or get a job):
    Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how you can too:

    Submit an announcement
    If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, fill out this form.

    Seeking Social Media Professionals?
    If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

    This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

    Job Resources in the Social Media and Web Industry

  • Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, these affiliate fees pay for my hosting)
  • Read Write Web keeps announcements flowing at Jobwire, although is broader than just social media jobs
  • Facebook group for community manager group in Facebook
  • Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs
  • Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs
  • SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed
  • ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community
  • Teresa has a few jobs, some around community
  • New Media hire has an extensive job database
  • Social Media Headhunter
  • Social media jobs
  • Jobs in social media
  • Altimeter Group’s list of social media consultants and agencies
  • See this list of Corporate Social Media Strategists and Community Managers that I keep up to date
  • Hiring? Leave a comment
    If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, please)


    Case Study: An Influential Mom Blogger Caused Mainstream Crises
    Popular blogger, Heather Armstrong (@dooce) was dissatisfied with her non-working Maytag appliance.  Following protocol, she called their support number, yet her issue was not solved.  Stonewalled, she argued/warned the support staff that she was on Twitter, yet didn’t receive special assistance.  Escalating further, she then flexed a muscle and told them she had over 1,000,000 Twitter followers –yet the support rep did not budge.  Finally, she blogged and Tweeted against Maytag, initiating a boycott by her followers, “DO NOT BUY MAYTAG” and continues to chronicle her experience on her blog.  While critics suggest she wielded her power with irresponsibility, the point is moot, what matters is her social influence was not factored into the support triage decision making process –making a minor support issue a PR issue now on Forbes.

    Just as companies factor in value of a customers celebrity status, buying power or customer loyalty –companies must factor in social influence or put themselves at risk. That’s right, customers with more Twitter followers are more likely to get better service and support than those that don’t.

    Trend: Consumers Becoming Influential Using Social Technologies

    • Companies Already Give Preferential Treatment To Famous and Wealthy Customers. Companies have given high influence customers preference for years.  Take for example, shopping malls in the Los Angeles area have private entry ways for celebrities to enter the mall and receive priorty treatment.  Or, how B2B companies cater to their top customers with special event days, golf outings, or other clients with deep pockets.  Companies know that not all customers are valued the same, and as a result, treat them differently.
    • With More Consumers Adoption Social Technologies, the Problem Will Get Worse. The tide is rising, in fact with more consumers adopting social technologies, the amount of voices that companies will need to deal with will increase in volume.  Treating each customer with the best possible service and support (Like Zappos unique culture) is ideal –but not realistic.  Companies are ill-equipped to support millions of customers in real time on the social web.  They must have prioritization programs in place to handle the high risk/opportunity accounts quickly.
    • Companies Who Don’t Factor In Influence Put Themselves at Risk. Companies can choose to not factor in the social influence of customers, but will be putting themselves at risk.  It’s just a matter of time before a company has a social blowup, and by not trying to handle priority customers could cause a small issue to quickly escalate into a larger one.  Also, savvy competitors who factor in social influence can swoop and acquire high influence customers from companies that don’t. Your goal, is to stay off this list.

    Matrix: The Four Phases How Companies Factor Social Influence

    Description Benefit Risk/Costs
    Do not factor in social influence Companies treat all customers the same, regardless of number of readers, followers or social influence. It’s cheap, companies don’t have to spend resources to understand if a single customer can influence others. Run the risk of not prioritzing a customer that could influence others, resulting in missed opportunity or greater PR risk.
    Ad Hoc: Companies factor in social influence as it surfaces, such as a customer explicitly staying their influence, or a service member proactively having to find it. Companies don’t have to invest in a program or system that tries to calculate this influence. May miss opportunities of serviing a high influence customer, or may not realize a potential social crises till it’s too late.
    Absolute Influence: Companies factor in total number of Facebook book friends and activity, number of Twitter followers and assign a raw number. Easy to calculate, and expect future Social CRM tools to do this with ease in the future. Data may not be accurate: Numbers can be manipulated and gamed, resulting in companies misallocate resources. Risk of alienating consumers without social influence.
    Relative Influence: Companies factor in the true influence a customer has over their actual market –ignoring factors that may not be relevant. Finally, companies can focus on those customer with social influence that impact other prospects and buyers in their specific market Such a program is hard to setup and costly, and will require constant inputs and tuning.  Risk of alienating consumers without social influence.

    Companies Must Factor In Social Influence

    • Recalculate The Customer Lifetime Value Quotient. For years, companies have factored in the total value of customers over their entire lifetime, Stanford has methods to calculate this called the Customer Lifetime Value formula.  These formulas factored in ability to be a repeat buyer, income level, and size of purchases over time.  Just as companies spend more time with customers with deeper pockets, they should also spend the appropriate type of attention with followers that don’t.
    • Yet Recognize, that Not All Social Influence Is the Same. To be efficient, companies shouldn’t reward those with spammy followers they got from an overnight follow script, but recognize that influence isn’t always about quantity, recognize there are at least two types of social influence:  The first, absolute influence is the total size of the individuals influence. Take Scoble for example, who has over a 100,000 Twitter followers and probally 100k subscribed to his blog is influential in a broad market.   However, his relative influence within the high-end fashion market is low. D&G must factor in both types of influence in understanding how to deal with customers, therefore while Scoble’s absolute influence is high, his relative influence to the fashion market is low.
    • Expect New Technologies To Address This Problem. We’re seeing a whole group of companies emerge in the Social CRM space that are trying to address parts of these problems.  Eventually, we should expect CRM systems to automatically indicate to customer facing employees the level of influence customers have.  In the most radical future, customers may choose to broadcast their preferences to retail stores before the walk in based on preferences and past purchases in order to receive a better experience. If this happens, companies can match with their social influence, and treat them accordingly.

    I look forward to hear from you: have companies treated you differently because of your social influence?  What companies are doing this now?  What are the risks of doing it or not factoring in social influence?

    As an industry watcher, I look at trends, data, spending, technologies, yet what’s really important is watching the trend of professionals as they grow into these roles managing disruptive technologies.  Update: Brian Hayashi has created a spreadsheet of this with additional info –like Twitter handles. We’re staying coordinated so the data is matched, follow Brian on Twitter.

    [Connecting with customers using social technologies is deceptively challenging, as most outsiders don't recognize the leadership to change internal cultural. Now, in public, let's recognize those who are paving the way]

    Methodology: About this List
    This 2010 list is an update from the original I started in 2008, it was woefully out of date as people moved around.  This list is updated, as I’ve separated the large technology section in HW vs SW and am only linking to LinkedIn accounts.

    A majority of this data is based off submissions in the 2008 post, which most which are self-submissions or from their fellow colleagues and we only link to their already public profile in LinkedIn for verification.  We’ve spend days compiling this data, but due to the content ever changing, we expect there to be some inaccuracies, leave a comment if you see something that needs fixing. Thanks to Sonal Mehta a student at American University who I’ve hired helped me in this research.

    Read Carefully: How to get on this List
    In a world of noise, curation becomes very valuable, as a result, there are very specific requirements for this list, which include:  1) You must have a public LinkedIn profile page, as this is one of the best way to verify employment. 2) The profile indicates that social media is part of your full time employee role at the corporation–not just for personal or casual use.  3) You must work at an enterprise class corporation with more than 1000 employees, 4) Must be on brand side  5) You’ll kindly leave a comment below with the submission for review.   Due to excess volume, submissions by Twitter and emails or other channels will not be included, kindly leave a comment in this centralized area below.

    In an effort to keep information in a tight scope, I’m not able to include folks who are doing great work in other sectors.  However, if you decide to create a list for other sectors, I’ll prominently link to it from this post.  Update: Here’s a growing list for non-profits.

    Sign Up For Upcoming Free Report: Skillset of the Social Media Strategist
    The Altimeter Group is developing a free research report, on “Skillsets of Social Media Strategists” and will identify the attributes, backgrounds, experience of this emerging role, if you’re interested in receiving a copy, please register on this form.  We will use portions of the data found in this post for the research report, so thanks for helping to update it.


    Social Media Strategists at Corporations
    The strategist is a program manager, who mainly focuses internally rather than being the external public face like the community manager. They are primarily responsible for resources, processes, teams, they are usually internally focused and ultimately, return on investment.

    Airline

    Automotive

    Business Services

    Consumer Product Goods

    Electronics, Devices, Mobile

    Financial Services

    Health and Life Sciences

    Hospitality, Food Service

    Government, Armed Services, Education

    Media and Entertainment

    Retail

    Technology, Hardware, Networking, Component, Computer

    Technology, Software, Internet


    Community Managers at Corporations
    The  community manager is primarily externally facing, and interacts with customers as the public face of the company.  They are primarily customer advocates, evangelists, bloggers, community moderators,  and experts at using social technologies to communicate.  We honor them every fourth Monday of January on Community Manager Appreciation Day.  To keep the focus tight, this list is only of corporate community managers, and not those on contract at community platform vendors or service companies on contract.

    Automotive

    Business Services

    Governement, Armed Services, Education

    Hospitality and Travel

    Electronics, Devices, Mobile

    Financial Services

    Technology, Hardware, Networking, Component, Computer

    Technology, Software, Internet

    Social Media Researchers and Social Media Product Managers at Corporations
    When I started this list in 2008, I didn’t have a specific slot for researchers and product managers who are creating these products. These roles are not folks who are using the technologies for marketing, support, or other business use cases (end users) but instead are researching and creating the products that the above professionals will use in their jobs.

    I’m passionate about what these folks do, as I, myself, was a strategist/community manager at an enterprise corporation a few years ago.


    A few weeks ago, I was invited to join a discussion with Joshua-Michéle Ross (O’Reilly ), Stowe Boyd, thought leader, and Peter Kim (former colleague at Forrester, now at Dachis Group) on the topic of social business.  Listen in, as there’s not really a lot of content on the slides to focus on, while you go about your work, driving, or workout.

    Companies With Support Communities Not Ready For Changes To Come
    For over a decade, with simple BBS systems to community platforms, support communities haven’t undergone much innovation.  Often a silo and tucked away in a website, these communities are going to take center stage.  With social technologies appearing on every webpage, and more existing systems starting to connect, expect to see interesting use cases evolve.   Support focused communities will evolve to touch marketing, sales, channel partners,  CRM systems, and even become a thriving platform in the next few years.  Let’s explore the rapid changes coming together.

    A Support Community, Defined.
    Take a look at Microsoft’s media centric Channel 9, VMware communities, or even AAA’s travel tips. These branded communities are offered by companies and encourage members to self-support each other, or the company will support them directly. The members are often customers, developers, or implementation partners. It’s not limited to them alone, prospects of a company may peer in to see how vibrant –or angry–the community is. There are over 100 technology vendors offer these commodity features.

    The Opportunity: The Support Community No Longer A Cost Center
    New forms of monetization for the brand are going to emerge. Support communities won’t just be a cost-center, we should expect to see new forms of value that meet the needs of the community members themselves, the brand, and the partners. To kick start the discussion here’s a few ideas of where I think the support community could evolve to:

    1. Become a thriving marketplace of buyers and sellers. Not just through discussions, but through automated matching of buyers and sellers using reputation systems, and needs analysis tools.  See how the concept of VRM is slowly taking hold.
    2. New forms of value from third parties will spur innovation. System integrators, consultants, and other vendors who have services to offer community members will want to offer training, webinars, or other campaigns.  Branded communities can monetize this as an intermediary.
    3. Formalized advocacy programs will take hold beyond the organic evangelist. Some communities will offer features and programs that encourage members to join an unpaid army and reach out to prospects –and ready them to arms when the brand is under attack.
    4. Communities members will ideate and start build new products with R&D. In some cases, they may help the brand define new products and be very involved in the R&D process.
    5. Developer platform will let community create their own experience. Taking a nod from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, someday, support communities will offer platforms that will enable the members to create new applications, tools, and even products within the context of the community.
    6. Connecting to CRM systems to offer better service. Community platforms will connect to CRM systems identify upsell, crosssell, and underserved accounts, increasing the efficiency of support.
    7. Connections to other systems yield new experiences. Support communities will no longer be a silo but will connect to brand monitoring tools. ERP systems, business intelligence systems, web analytics, and social analytics tools.
    8. The walls of support communities crumble as they connect to the public web. There are support communities in existence all around the web (see Get Satisfaction, UserVoice or even a customer created community). Expect to see branded communities tie to these off-domain systems.
    9. Leave a comment below with your idea.  The opportunities are abound.

    A Key Constraint: Members first, Company Second
    Despite the many opportunities for innovation of communities, first and foremost, the sanctity of the community members must not be broken.  Companies have learned, often the hard way, that the members are in charge, so this needs to be a win for them first, the company second.

    Join The Discussion and Upcoming Roundtable
    I plan to hold a no-fee “Community Innovation” roundtable in Q1, to ideate the evolution of the branded community beyond support. Should you be interested in attending, I look forward to hearing from you in the following web form. I’ll be extending an invite to some key thought leaders in this space, to really spur the thinking from the top minds.

    site design by studionashvegas proudly powered by WordPress