@spicedawg56 It is! Yet remember email is a social network. @Collectual these folks own social media budgets: LIST http://bit.ly/cgtcJs in reply to spicedawg56 1 day ago

Excited about your new Facebook page but don’t know what’s next?  What does a truly advanced company look like in social business?  They can say yes to seven or more of these ten criteria.

We’ve been interviewing the most sophisticated brands in the world when it comes to social business for our upcoming report on “Enterprise Social Strategists Role”.  We’ve come to learn which companies are advanced and why.  Secondly, I meet a variety of companies who tell me they are “Very advanced, having done this for a few years, and have dozens of Facebook efforts” but when I ask them some specific questions on their sophistication, they often retract their statement.

How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business Maturity.
Corporations that have these and other following elements in place, may truly be sophisticated when it comes to social business:

  1. Clear understanding of their customers socialgraphics. Clear understanding of how their customers use social media by knowing the socialgraphics of your customers.  Granular knowledge of where their customers are, which behaviors they use, who they trust for information, and how they influence their peers in the context of their own products.
    The true test? Your company can adjust budgets of your integrated social strategy based on data –not gut feel.
  2. Your organization is in Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic formation. Social technologies enable all employees that want to talk to customers to do so.  This means a massive change inside of your organization to get ready.  Your company is sophisticated if you’ve organized in the Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic and all employees clearly know their role, process, and contact points.
    The true test? A product crises has emerged on YouTube on a Friday evening before a three day weekend and you can sleep peacefully.
  3. Corporate website integration: Social sign on. When customers come to the corporate site, they can see which one of their friends uses which product, and what they think about it.  Common technologies would include OpenID, Facebook Connect, and other social sign on technologies.
    The true test? You can disable your corporate registration page and use social logins instead.
  4. Personalized corporate website based on social data. When a prospect (someone who’s never logged into you website before) arrives to your corporate website, they receive a customized experience based on their social IDs.  This would be based on Social CRM infrastructure, social sign on technology and a large inventory of personalized content.
    The true test? The voices of the consumers real world friends emerge above that of the brand right on the corporate website, see Levi’s foray.
  5. Thriving advocacy program: customers are actively selling on your behalf. The sophisticated marketing program isn’t really the company talking much at all, instead they’ve a thriving advocacy program and word of mouth program that encourages customers to recruit prospects for them –all unpaid.  Learn how to do this, by reading this piece on Forbes.
    The true test? most leads are coming in through existing customers –not your sales team.
  6. A community of customers supports each other, reducing support center calls. A company that has a thriving branded community where customers are self-supporting each other with little aid from the brand or the support team is a sign of a sophisticated social support program.
    The true test? A majority of customer support issues are resolved by community faster, with greater satisfaction than your dedicated support team.
  7. Anticipation of prospects and customers using Social CRM technology.  Brands can anticipate before a customer has a problem, or grab leads “right out of the air” by using brand monitoring software, intelligent keyword monitoring and responding to be faster than real time using Social CRM strategies.
    The true test? sales and marketing are getting leads before the consideration phase, and the support team reduces inbound calls by triggering the community to resolve a potential issue before it’s escalated.
  8. Innovation of new products with customers using web collaboration.  Companies that use these same tools to glean input from customers (ethnographic data collection) or create private communities, or use collaboration and innovation tools like Ideastorm or Uservoice and build new products and services demonstrate true sophistication.
    The true test? faster time to market on products because consumers have dictated the specifications, and less inventory as the product is built on spec.
  9. Supply chain is influenced by social data in real time. Social media isn’t just about marketing and support, but is very valuable in listening to customer signals then to anticipate which products, services, and teams should be when and where.
    The true test? Your company is sophisticated if you’re using social data to adjust your supply chain in real time based on customer signals from checkins, tweets, and plancasts.
  10. Real time reporting of revenues, costs and efficiency:  I’ve met with some of the most advanced teams, and they have clear reporting and can measure the increased revenues (over the total cost of the program) to tell their executives the true ROI of their business program.
    The true test? Real time dashboard measures the health of all social channels revenues, CSAT, sentiment and overall program costs.

We’ve done research on the roadmap for companies to reach these 10 levels of nirvana, but have found few companies that have done a few, or even a majority of them. If you know of any companies that have achieved five out of ten of these criteria, we’d love to know, please leave a comment.

CMOs must approach social technologies in an integration fashion
Although social technologies have been capturing marketers time for over four+ years in corporate, they’ve often been operated in a silo as experimental, or a separate deployment from traditional marketing. Yet the savvy marketing leader knows that reaching customers is increasingly becoming challenging as their touchpoints continue to fragment.

To reach the fragmented customer, marketers must apply an integrated approach.  As an industry, we should dispel notions that social marketing and it’s subsequent tools should operate in a silo, but instead sit horizontally in the marketing organization as they impact so many different forms of marketing tactics, approaches, and mindsets.  Furthermore, this has considerable impacts as social media organizations are founded and lead as they approach hub and spoke models to serve a variety of internal clients, as well as connect with customers in real time.

CMO Matrix: How Social Technology Must Integrate with Traditional Marketing, a Horizontal Approach

Marketing Tactic Why It’s Important Opportunities of Social Technology
Market Research You can’t effectively reach consumers till you know about them, and market research is a key function for any corporation. For some time, market research was limited to focus groups, consumer testing, and survey based methodology. This includes both traditional marketing research groups as well as competitive intelligence groups. Now, with the advent of social technologies, at least three forms of opportunity have emerged:  1) Using brand monitoring technology to harvest what consumers are already saying in social channels, 2) Harnessing the crowd to find out their real time reactions, see how Communispace and Passenger have done this.  3) Using innovation tools like Salesforce Ideas, UserVoice, GetSatisfaction to build products in real time with consumers.
Corporate Website The corporate website is a source of product factual information, and pro-brand materials.  This is the master repository of a brand, it’s products, and services. Social technologies are being integrated in three phases: 1) Standalone tools like communities are built, but not integrated, 2) Social login systems like FB connect and Open ID are increasing conversion rates 3) Social context is being developed so content is served up on the fly from social data. See my keynote at Gilbane’s CMS conference on social and corporate website integration.
Intranet Marketing must influence internal stakeholders, including sales, field marketing, and product teams.  The intranet is a key internal repository of information, this would also include any associated email communications. Social technologies are being deployed internally like PBWorks, Socialcast, Basecamp, and Yammer without the consent of IT.  The opportunity to use these tools to allow teams to find experts, information regardless of region or time are ripe.
Email Marketing Email, one of the primary forms of digital communication is often a highly trusted source when customers have opt-in.  When you look closely, email is a social network, see how Google wants to do it. In fact, the root information requirement for Twitter and Facebook is a verified email. Email marketing companies are starting to offer ’sharing’ features so recipients are encouraged to quickly share the information with their peers, as well as offering brands SMMS systems to manage this information.  Expect the Facebook inbox and email marketing to quickly merge in coming years,
Search Marketing A mature practice that attracts buyers and prospects during their core information seeking phase, SEM is critical to reaching the information starved through well placed sponsored information and advertisements We’re also seeing an influx of social advertisements appear as the social graph is infused in search results. Example: We’re starting to see the content our friends recommend in search engine results, and Facebook’s foray with social ads.
Search Engine Optimization Fine tuning websites so they are the first choice in organic search results is both a science and art by experienced practitioners. Social media tools, esp blogs and ratings and review sites like Yelp score high in organic search due to many incoming links and freshly updated content.
Advertising Often the bulk of most marketing budgets, advertising is key in many phases of the customer journey, in particular driving awareness and consideration. Like SEM listed above, advertising can become more efficient in the future by tapping into social profile data (who is this person) and their social graph (who do they trust) to serve up relevant content.  As Facebook spreads their features all over the web (analysis), expect a new form of advertising to appear based on social data.  Twitter’s “Sponsored Links” bodes similar experimentation
Sponsorship Marketers drive associative branding and qualified leads through sponsorship opportunities. Social helps in two specific ways:  New influencers have emerged such as ‘Mom and Dad bloggers” creating more niched inventory with deeper engagement to sponsor.  Furthermore, all traditional sponsorship activities can use social marketing for further engagement.
eCommerce While over a decade old, online shopping has continued to be primary low cost driver for the brick and mortar company. The mainstay integration has been consumer ratings and reviews from the aggregation of the crowd, often powered by vendors like Bazzarvoice.  Yet expect new forms of eCommerce to evolve as an individuals social graph is connected to eCommerce tools. See how Levi’s has done it, and attend our conference, the Rise of Social Commerce.
Mobile Marketing While in it’s infancy, marketers may use these tools to connect with consumers as they are on a specific location, during a certain part of the day, with greater context. Now, as consumers indicate their location and time while on the go, marketers may reach them using a variety of contextual information, advertisements, and harnessing what their friends have done before them in the same locations.  See how Starbucks sponsored mayorship in Foursquare to increase both loyalty and WOM.
TV/Radio The pioneering mediums in the electronic communication realm, these mediums provide content in a one way format. Programs (radio hosts, newscasters, and stations) are using social technologies to infuse a two way relationship with listeners by finding new content in social channels (Watching Twitter) as well as integrating the voices of the audience, and empowering communities to build around them.  Perhaps more importantly, this creates new forms of inventory for these mediums to enable brands to sponsor or get involved with.
Print From newspapers, magazines, to flyers, nothing creates an experience like holding physical paper in front of you. Nearly all of these publications have associated social media properties, from Facebook fan pages, to supplementary blogs.  In fact, if paper adoption continues to decrease, these social tools provide a low-cost method of publishing and interacting with their audiences.  Magazines like Dwell have launched thriving online communities and nearly all national and many global newspapers have adopted social media in their online resources.
Field, Persona, Channel, and Regional Marketing Marketing teams are often segmented by regions, or to sit with sales units in the field, or even to target specific consumer types, like moms. This segmented marketing approach is key for deeper context in approaching unique markets. Like in other forms, don’t expect a one-size-fits all approach, each audience type will have a different penchant for social media technologies, which we call socialgraphics. Expect a tailored approach using social technologies to emerge for each of these groups as you reach different audiences.


Executive Recommendations: Shatter the silo and integrate social across all marketing efforts now.
The above matrix demonstrates that social technologies are already being integrated in the overall mix, yet marketing leadership is at a standstill on how to integrate.  Approach the space in a pragmatic method, follow these three steps:

  • Start by organizing your company in a Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Centralized model.  Our research shows that companies are organizing in at least five different models.  Whether you have a centralized team or a hub and spoke, develop a way for an internal team to assemble (often cross-functional) to share and learn, then serve internal stakeholders.  Companies must know the 43+ points to get social business ready, watch our no-cost webinar and slides to learn more.
  • Cascade training and encourage sharing to reduce risk and decrease time to market. Social technologies are still new and come with high degrees of risk as brands continue to have misteps in a new form of marketing.  Yet to reduce risk, empower those that have already experimented to share with others, reward those that quickly fail and get back up, and provide a constant stream of training from external partners.
  • Require marketing plans to consider a social technology integration –not be a last minute addition. Marketers are not in the mindset of combining social technologies in existing events, campaigns, or traditional marketing.  Instead of being reactive and adding this as a last minute consideration, enforce a line item in marketing plans to include social integration up front.

I look forward to your additional comments, perhaps I’ve missed some key integration touchpoints, please leave comments below.

Jeremiah: The following is a cross posting of our Founder’s blog post on the Altimeter’s blog.  I shared her sentiments completely, and am not sure if I could add anything, so I felt it was just best to repost here.  Later, at another time, I’ll discuss the learnings from starting a company from scratch, and how I feel it’s helped me to better service my clients.  I feel that I’m more complete as a professional and analyst after launching a business.  Here’s Charlene:

Charlene Li: One year ago, Altimeter announced the addition of three partnersJeremiah Owyang, Deb Schultz, and Ray Wang - turning what was up to then a one-woman shop into a company. We moved into small offices (affectionately named “The Hangar), made a trek to Ikea to buy furniture, had a rock-and-rolling kick off party, and got down to business.

In those early days, we were filled with optimism even though we were starting in the grips of the deepest recession in memory. That’s because we believed in our mission of helping clients create a strategic approach to emerging technologies — no matter what the economy threw at us, we saw the pain and confusion cause by new technologies and believed in our ability to make sense of these developments for our clients.
But as we worked with clients, we realized we needed more expertise so we added in quick succession four more partners - Alan WebberLora CecereMichael Gartenberg, and Marcia Conner – who represent a wide and diverse background, ranging from government and supply chain to mobile, and enterprise collaboration. And along the way, we’ve also added nine amazing staff members who not only help us create groundbreaking research and serve clients, but also make sure that we operate and execute well. With a total of 17 people and 11 based in San Mateo, we had to move into new offices in March.  I can’t say thank you enough to all my colleagues who believed enough in Altimeter to leave their jobs and join a start-up.

All of this growth wouldn’t have been possible without our clients. In the past year, 109 companies put their trust in our new firm to help them with their toughest strategic and technology problems. We’ve flown all over the country and the world to meet with them, because even in a world transformed by new communication technologies, there’s no substitute for meeting people face to face when they’re dealing with tough, strategic problems. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts for not only the opportunity to work with them, but also because we’ve learned so much from them in the process.

We’ve delivered to our clients with speeches, workshops, advisory projects, and Webinars and we’ve published a slew of original research reports (SCRManalyticsFacebook marketing) through our blogs, giving it away for free instead of putting it behind a syndication pay wall. We launched a bestseller book (“Open Leadership“) with another book by Marcia Conner on the way (“The New Social Learning“). We also announced our first event, the Rise of Social Commerce (taking place Oct. 6th in Silicon Valley – you should come!).

Looking back over the year, my partners and I are grateful that we’ve been able to accomplish so much. And we didn’t do it by ourselves. At our side has always been a broad community of peers and clients, readers and followers, commenters and critics. Throughout the adventure of our inaugural year, you’ve always been there for us, cheering us on, telling us when we could do better, and supporting us when we stumbled. Your time and attention is precious, and we are both grateful and humbled that you choose to spend some of it with us.

So thank you for joining us on this journey, and we hope you’ll continue with us on this adventure.

Related posts:

Both the submissions on this job announcement board, as well as available social media positions at corporations continue to pour in. In fact, this is the second time this month I’m posting this “On The Move” post due to submission volume. Clearly, there is more activity happening in the industry from my perspective, and I expect for this to continue, as we near planning for 2011.

In this continued digest of job changes, I like to salute those that continue to join the industry in roles focused on social media, see the archives, which go back a few years.

potm-banner-2


People on the Move in the Social Business Industry

  • The social media powerhouse Louis Gray now joins My Sixth Sense as the VP of Marketing, congrats.
  • George P. Johnson Experience Marketing Appoints Kenny Lauer Vice President, Digital Experience.  I’ve worked with Kenny on personal projects and now in a professional relationship, and have been consistently impressed with his energy, spirit for new media, and willingness to connect and work with others.
  • David Parmet, who’s been in this industry as long as I can remember, joins Converseon as Director of Communications Managing the agency’s public relations and marketing efforts.
  • Colleen Carrington, joins as the new Online Mktg Mgr/Social Media of Concur Technologies.
  • Dan Huss joins Digitaria, a digital agency as Account Strategist Account Strategists at Digitaria bridge the gap between business vision and tactical delivery. The strategist is dedicated and accountable to the client and remains a consistent layer, providing strategic leadership across multiple initiatives
  • Joakim Nilsson joins Mangas Gaming Group as Head of Social Media Responsible for social media strategy for the Mangas Gaming brands, BetClic, Expekt, Bet-at-home, Everest.
  • Jim Larrison joins Influentials.net General Manager & President Ex-Adify exec has been tapped to build a new business for Cox Media Group focused on the intersection of Brand Marketing and Social Media.
  • Su Amaranayaka joins MYOB Online Community Manager Drive the use of online communities for support and marketing.
  • Josh Pelz Gansevoort Hotel Group Social Media Manager Consumer engagement
  • Mario Arauz joins Pan American Games Guadalajara as 2011 Social Media Strategist Social Media Strategist, Web Strategy, Program Manager
  • Stacy Van Meter joins Deluxe Corporation Talent Community Manager Lead the social, mobile and new media strategy for Talent Acquisition
  • Tom Diederich joins Ninety Five 5 as Community Manager Manage the company’s new 5 Online community and Ninety Five 5’s social media strategy
  • Matt Thomson joins Klout as VP, Platform Define the business model and help with partnerships.
  • Timothy James Dimacali joins GMANews.TV as Online Community Manager Development and management of social media strategies for news gathering and reporting.
  • Myles Kleeger joins Buddy Media as General Manager, Strategic Brand Partnerships to oversee Buddy Media’s biggest and most important brand partnerships with global marketers who are looking to establish and grow their presence on Facebook around the world.
  • Eric Lituchy joins Buddy Media as VP, Digital Marketing to oversee all of Buddy Media’s digital, email, search marketing, as well as demand generation, website strategy and optimization.
  • Joe Ciarallo joins Buddy Media as Director of Communications to lead all media interaction and strategy and oversee company communications.

Submit a new hire

Seeking a job?

  1. See the Web Strategy Job Board, which includes paid submissions from the top brands in the world.
  2. Community Manager jobs by Jake McKee
  3. Social Media Jobs by Chris Heuer
  4. Social Media jobs, filtered by SimplyHired
  5. Social Media Job Network by James Durbin
  6. 25 places to find social media jobs by Deb Ng

Additional Resources

Please congratulate the new hires by leaving a comment below.

Bytemarks Cafe - Aug 11, 2010 by Bytemarks, on Flickr Left: The crew at Hawaii Public Radio, Oahu.  Left to Right: Ryan Ozawa (@hawaii),  David Lau (@synwpn), Kara Imai (@hawaiikara), Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang), and Burt Lum (@bytemarks)

How to hotels, restaurants, attractions, airlines, entertainers and cruise ships use social media to connect with tourists?  Listen in to find out.

Thanks to Burt Lum (Twitter) and Ryan Ozawa (Twitter), the hosts of the long running tech show called “Bytemarks Cafe” on Hawaii Public Radio. At the Hawaii Tourism Conference in Oahu two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting a primary research findings from a project Altimeter was contracted to do (with my colleagues Alan Webber and Christine Tran) on the socialgraphics of Hawaii tourists. I was joined on the call by Kara Imai (Twitter), head of digital and therefore social media at Hawaii Visitors Convention Bureau (HVCB) who hired us for this primary research project.

Listen in to this podcast to hear how social media impacts tourism, especially for marketing destination organizations.  We get past the news and start jumping into this topic at 20 minutes into it.

Click this player (Below) to start the audio

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.


download mp3
(59:00)

Key Takeaways:

  • Finding out how your target customers use social media (Disclosure: Altimeter was hired by HVCB to conduct socialgraphics research), and where they are online is the first step in a social business strategy.   We call this socialgraphics, learn more about it here.
  • Mom and pops, small businesses, and even large hotels can benefit from social media.
  • What happens at the destination (and how people rate their experience, even in real time) is a form of marketing.

True to living social media and travel research, I uploaded pics, which we found in the research is common, if you have questions on the whereabouts leave a question in Flickr and I’ll respond.  Someday, I hope to make Hawaii a second home, yet see my current personal goal called #OperationBluewater.  I’m at 10/30 days this year.

Kit Kat got a lot of flack from the Greenpeace brandjacking, yet, I wanted to point out a marketing campaign where they leveraged popular news mentions. What was interesting is they used a simple email and some doctored photos, on Good Friday in the Netherlands (a country in which 45% are not religious)

A few questions: When consumers find out this was a hoax, does this create distrust? Does tapping into market memes demonstrate being in tune with your market? Would it have only worked in a country where a large portion are not religious?

Whether sacrilegious or brilliant marketing, perhaps it can only work in the Netherlands –it would have never worked in the US, You be the judge, I look forward to hearing your comments. (link via Donald Lim, who shared this at the IMMAP workshop)

Data is important. It helps us to guide our decisions based on facts –not just gut instinct. Lately, this data from eMarketer (thanks Scott Monty) has been floating around the web, and I want to add my own thoughts. Having conducted similar trust research, or seen the data from others, much of this is confirmation to what we already know. I do however want to provide my additional insights to how I interpret the findings.

Trusted Sources (eMarketer)

Further Analysis: Sources of Information Users Trust

  • Tally: People Trust People They Know: When I was at Forrester, similar research was launched, showing that blog posts (often by people you don’t know) weren’t as trusted.  This data shows that blog post (item 1) from people you do know show a higher degree of trust.  Item 2 and 3 also show upticks in trust increasing from people you know.  I added up the positive trust (trust completely and trust somewhat) to aggregate sources of trust, you can see that eMarketer also segmented it the same, here’s my tally:
    • Friend: Blog Posts from those you know = Positive is 64%
    • Friend: Posts by friends in Facebook = Positive is also 64%
    • Friend: Tweets from friends = Positive is 45%
    • Brand: Blog posts by a brand = Positive is 36%
    • Brand:Posts by a brand in Facebook that you follow = Positive is 41%
    • Independent: Fellow community member = Positive is 37%
    • Brand: Brand product in a community = Positive is 32%
    • Brand: Brand Twitter stream = Positive is 26%
    • Independent: Blog by independent blogger (I assume that’s someone you don’t know) = Positive is 25%
    • Independent:Tweets from independent blogger (likely not someone you know) = Positive 21%
  • Tally:  Trust Highest with Friends, followed by Brands then Independents
    • Trust is highest with people you actually know.  I averaged 64, 64, 45 to be 57.66% across the various data sources above.
    • Brands that produce their own content (owned) 36, 41, 32, 26 averaged at 33.75% positive.  Far less than the 57% of people that you know clearly indicate that consumers trust brand far less, but more so from people that they don’t know.  This leads to conclude that while brands may be telling consumers the positive aspects of a product, it’s more likely to be based on facts.
    • Similarly those that are ‘independents’ (or people you may not know) the trust goes down significantly.  37, 25, 21, for an average of 27.66%.  Those that you don’t know are about half as trusted as those you do.  Therefore brands focusing on social media should instead but areas of focus on harnessing the social graph –not just mindless social media from the masses.
  • Recommendations: Focus on Harnessing the Social Graph
    • Brands should focus on social marketing that harnesses the “social graph” which is getting friend to share with their own friends.  By developing advocacy programs and focus on word of mouth marketing, brands can increase marketing and sales margins by getting customers to do the work for them.   See my article on Forbes on advocacy programs, or see how Zuberance encourages WOM, as well as aggregate your customers social graph on your own web proprieties using Gigya, Janrain, Disqus, and Echo.  At the very basic level, encourage sharing tools like Sharethis, Addthis to the mix.
    • Clearly brands should continue to produce their own ‘owned’ content in social media, as there’s still a degree of trust, but balance out this inventory with a greater degree of ‘earned’.  Yet rather than try to sway the masses that your product is the best, publish factual information about products and services, and retweet, repeat, and echo back what customers are saying.
    • Focus less on triggering word of mouth of independents, while it will happen naturally, this data is indicating that inviting people to share with their friends, may yield a greater degree of trust.

I hope you found this helpful, I gave my additional analysis and insight to the eMarketer data, as well as suggestions from brands.  This data is confirmation of data I’ve seen from a variety of other sources.

In this continued digest of job changes, I like to salute those that continue to join the industry in roles focused on social media, see the archives, which go back a few years.

potm-banner-2


People on the Move in the Social Business Industry

  • Vanessa Sain-Dieguez joins Hilton as Worldwide Social Media Strategist. She’ll guide Hilton Worldwide’s portfolio of brands and over 3,000 hotels in the development of social media strategies and best practices.
  • Crowd Factory appoints Sanjay Dholakia as CEO.  Hailing as the former CMO of Lithium Technology, Sanjay is now leading up this SF based Social Marketing platform.
  • Cory Edwards joins Dell as the Senior Social Media Manager Directing the social media team in Dell Corporate Communications.
  • Adam Boalt joins GOSO.com as President Social Media Strategy.
  • Brandon Klein joins Ingenix Consulting (United Health Group) as Director of DesignShops & Collaboration Arming all 1,000+ consultants with the best collaboration techniques (on and offline) while leveraging the latest innovations to improve the health care industry.
  • Sarah Molinari joins The Home Depot Senior Manager, Social Media Spearheading the social media efforts at The Home Depot.
  • Mathew Dryhurst joins Craigslist Foundation Community Manager Build & harness community around programs.
  • RJ Reimers joins 7Summits as Executive Vice President, Operations As EVP-Operations, Reimers will focus on working with clients to develop and execute social media strategies that drive business value, as well as overseeing client service delivery and business operations for 7Summits.
  • Marcia Hansen  joins Intel Corporation as Social Media Manager. Marcia is responsible for managing Intel’s consumer blog scoop.intel.com, and uses her creative talents to craft experiences for corporate and consumer audiences in social media.
  • Glenn Engler joins Digital Influence Group as Chief Executive Officer Glenn will lead Digital Influence Group’s next growth phase. Digital Influence Group is a digital marketing agency that helps companies leverage the power of social media to generate business results: sell products and services, build customer relationships and connect with key stakeholders.
  • Aronado Placencia joins IncSlingers as Creative Strategist Seek out new clients looking for real world application of Social Media.
  • Shauna Causey joins Ant’s Eye View as Senior Social Business Consultant Shauna’s new role as Senior Consultant and Ant Evangelist will have her traveling up and down the West Coast adding her corporate communications and community relations experience to the team. She’ll join the firm officially on August 9 and begin immediately supporting the company’s growing roster of enterprise clients in the Silicon Valley area.
  • Glenn Engler joins Digital Influence Group as CEO Glenn is tasked with taking the agency’s business to the next level of growth.
  • Jonathan Hsu joins RecycleBank as CEO Hsu will work to introduce green rewards programs to eco-conscious brands, and roll out new product offerings for municipalities and partners innovate from a sustainability point of view.
  • James Davidson joins 7Summits Vice President as Digital & Community Strategy As VP Digital and Community Strategy at 7Summits. James will focus on developing and integrating social media strategies into clients’ existing digital initiatives and assets.

Submit a new hire

Seeking a job?

  1. See the Web Strategy Job Board, which includes paid submissions from the top brands in the world.
  2. Community Manager jobs by Jake McKee
  3. Social Media Jobs by Chris Heuer
  4. Social Media jobs, filtered by SimplyHired
  5. Social Media Job Network by James Durbin
  6. 25 places to find social media jobs by Deb Ng

Additional Resources

Please congratulate the new hires by leaving a comment below.

This is followup data from the Altimeter Report: The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing, you should read this first.

Thanks to your help, Altimeter Group’s latest research on Facebook Marketing Best Practices, which now has over 17,000 views, and over 1,900 downloads (see slideshare stats) in less than a week. While we tried to include as much helpful information in the report, it was only the highlights of our findings. There’s far more data, scorecards, and findings that just aren’t able to fit into the report. Below is some additional information from our quantitative and qualitative study about the findings.  Expect us to share more helpful data to marketers over the coming weeks, Altimeter clients can contact us for more details from the specific criteria, data, screenshots and scorecard.


[A fundamental mindset change must occur as brands approach social networks. In addition to interactive marketing (human-to-computer) brands must add social marketing (peer-to-peer) to their playbook.]


In the below graphic, we’ve aggregated the scores of the 30 brands to find out which of the criteria they’re good at –and which ones there are missed opportunities. We’ve then provided additional analysis on why we think brands scored this way, and some recommendations to improve.

Research Graphic: Brands Great at Messaging and Branding –Yet Lack at Setting Expectations, Peer to Peer, and Advovacy

Facebook Page Performance: 30 Brands Against 8 Criteria

Criteria How They Scored Our Take: Why Brands Performed This Way How Brands Can Improve Their Score
Set Community Expectations 2.08 (Immature or”Take off”) Brands failed to be clear why they were doing a Facebook effort, likely due to the fact that they jumped into the the social network bandwagon. Most brands are experimenting, and are unable to articulate their purpose Clearly have a business objective and be sure the site goals cascades these objectives.  By not doing so, sets company up for a potential backlash as unchecked or unsolved customer woes can quickly cascade to their friends, on brands owns pages.
Provide Cohesive Branding 3.90 (Adolescence or “Climbing”) Brands showed some sophistication from over a decade of online interactive marketing has taught them how to cascade their experience to all touch points This is a huge risk. Customer that have product complaints may echo them loudly here, and if the brand doesn’t respond, this public griping could escalate into a full blown groundswell. Continue to reflect the brand in all digital channels, but don’t overwhelm the member experience.
Be Up To Date 5.00 (Exceptional or “Escape Velocity”) Brands have a strong legacy of broadcast marketing, which is also know as message bombardment. Brands demonstrated an incredible ability to propagate messages at a rapid rate, not unusual for other mediums as well. Continue this energy of being interactive with their customers, but in addition to populating the Facebook page with up to date updates, ensure they are engaging in a two-way dialog.
Live Authenticity 2.87 (Immature or”Take off”) Brands suffered at being ’social’ in a social network, and are in many cases afraid to show their human side. Decades of being logo centric has cascaded to social networks and most members may question having conversations with a logo. Behave in the same way the members are behaving: be social. Put the human side first by showing the team photos, giving human replies, and responding with first and last name.
Participate in Dialog 3.10 (Adolescence or “Climbing”) Mixed bag of performance, while some brands may interact, often it was inconsistent. Even after a few years of social marketing blogging, forums, and Twitter, brands are still struggling to have real conversations with their members. Interact with customers by engaging in a two way conversation. To scale, you don’t need to respond to every message, but set expectations on how frequently you’ll respond.
Enable Peer to Peer Interactions 2.03 (Immature or”Take off”) Poor performance from brands here. In many cases, we expect brands hid from these features as they are difficult to moderate, manage, and risk of conversations going awry. Better features are needed by using third party community applications, as well as hiring seasoned, well trained community managers to monitor and moderate.
Foster Advocacy 2.27 (Immature or”Take off”) Brands are barely able to participate in the conversation let alone rely on the advanced features such as sharing or using your own members to share on your behalf. At the bare minimum, encourage members to share content with each other and to cascade the branded experience to friends. As brands gain confidence, create formal advocacy programs.
Solicit a Call to Action 2.45 (Immature or”Take off”) Unsure of even interacting with their members, it’s no surprise they didn’t know how to engage them for next steps or even conversion. Don’t rush this. Until you’re scoring 4 or above on the previous mentioned criteria, I encourage brands to avoid this. Yet, for those that are succeeding in the other criteria, they can help members with conversion.

Summary: Brands Must Learn Social Marketing –Beyond Interactive Marketing
Brands are applying their years of experience of applying interactive marketing and broadcast marketing to the social web and it shows.  With the natural inclination to brand and broadcast, we see these same behaviors in the Facebook Marketing.  Yet, despite these existing strengths, brands are missing the two way aspect or ’social aspect’ of social network marketing.  They must start to leverage peer to peer communications to reduce costs and content publication, show their human side, and quickly set expectations of what’s required –or risk a brand backlash.  While setting community expectations doesn’t guarantee that a customer backlash could occur, it could help funnel them to the right place to be quickly supported.  Yet, as problems are resolved, don’t shove them under the carpet in the call center, be sure to indicate back to the community they’ve been solved.  Above all, brands must change their mindset from interactive marketing (human to computer) to also include social marketing (human to human).

Report Snapshot (full report embedded below)
Altimeter Group conducted research, and gleaned input from 34 vendors, agencies, and experts, to determine success criteria and develop a roadmap for Facebook page best practices. We found Eight Success Criteria for Facebook page marketing, and then tested the maturity of 30 top brands across six industries.

Our heuristic evaluation revealed that brands fell short – nearly half of the brands we reviewed (14 out of 30) did not fully leveraged social features to activate word of mouth, the hallmark behavior of social networks. Within this immature landscape, a few brands were on the right track to successfully harnessing Facebook page marketing. Brands like Pampers, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and AXE increased engagement and activated word of mouth through advocacy and peer-to-peer interactions, or solicited business call to actions that result in transactions.

How should brands approach their Facebook page marketing? We asked the experts.
Research means digging in deeper to find the truth,  and we know our place in the ecosystem is to work with others.  As a result, we had a call for submissions, and we received input from 34 vendors, agencies, brands, and individual experts. We read blog posts, looked at examples, and reviewed case studies.

360i, AKQA, Awareness, The Community Roundtable, Context Optional, Digital Evolution Group, Edelman Digital, Facebook, Gigya, Horn Group, Inside Facebook, Janrain, KickApps, Lithium, LiveWorld, Ogilvy’s 360° Digital Influence, Razorfish, RockYou, SHIFT Communications, Spredfast, StepChange Group, a Powered Company, Vitrue and Wildfire Interactive. We also received input from individual contributors such as: David Armano, David Berkowitz, Bert DuMars, Charlene Li, Dave McClure, Annie Noll, Shiv Singh, Adam Smith, Justin Smith, Jason Sullivan, and Anita Wong.

8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing
After pouring over the data from the ecosystem we’re part of, we found a clear pattern. There was a consistent set of criteria we heard from the industries experts, we found the following 8 criteria:


8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing

Then, we put 30 brands to the test to find out who’s doing it right –and wrong.
We then took that criteria, created a scorecard with quantitative criteria, and measured the world’s top brands on their Facebook efforts to find out who’s doing it right, and who’s not.  In the embedded report, you can download many of the high level findings, as well as see screenshots, comparison by industry and read our recommendations.


Facebook Success Criteria Scoring: By Brand

About the Altimeter research team.
For this report, I’m very thankful to work closely with Altimeter Partner, Alan Webber (bio, Twitter), who served as Editor. Alan is a multi-talented guy who stems from Forrester with a strong background in web user experience, and was able to tighten down the scorecard methodology which we’ll use to help clients. Christine Tran, Researcher (blog, Twitter), lead a detailed and thorough research process, always kept the ball rolling and is a consistent and reliable source of quality work, long hours, and positive energy. I’m very thankful for both of their consistent help!

Our belief in Open Research: It works when you share it
We want to be facilitators of the ecosystem and want to work closely with the marketplace.  We’re publishing our report under Open Research, at no-cost under creative commons licensing, this report was 100% funded by Altimeter Group, we also do our best to disclose our financial relationships.  To make Open Research work, we hope you read it, spread it, and use it to improve.  If you found this research report helpful, please embed it on your blog, email it to your teams, and spread it to others.

Related Links

Update: We’ve posted additional data that wasn’t specifically in the report, read more here.

Earlier this week, we hosted a joint webinar with Barbara French of Tekrati, Jonny Bentwood Edelman AR practice, and Carter Lusher of Sagecicle (Carter and Barbara were able to make it to The Hangar, see pic).  The topic?  To explore how social technologies impact the industry analyst space.

The Impact of Social on the Analyst Industry: A Roundtable w/ Jonny Bentwood, Barbara French, Carter Lusher, and Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group on Vimeo.

We explored definitions, major impacts, disruptions to middle men, impacts to research, influence and personal brands. There’s no doubt that like the media industry, the analyst industry has been impacted by these simple publishing tools, and we’re seeing new business models appear like Open Research, at Altimeter Group, and variations at firms like Focus.com. The trio debated concepts and we tied it up to give final recommendations to analysts and analyst relations professionals.

Specifically for analysts what are the impacts?

  • Analysts can use these tools to listen in and identify research efforts.  They can also use it for primarily qualitative research.
  • Analysts can go direct to the product managers, and in some cases bypassing AR professionals.
  • Can develop personal networks, career brands, that carry with them further than reports under an umbrella brand.
  • Analysts finally realize they are also media in addition to their traditional roles.

Would love to hear your commentary after listening in to the discussion, what are topics that need to be dove into further?

By Industry Analysts, R “Ray” Wang @rwang0 (Enterprise Strategy) and Jeremiah Owyang, @jowyang (Customer Strategy) both founding partners at Altimeter Group

Community Platforms Evolve to Social Business Category
Having tracked the social business category for some years now, and have been watching the category grow, and expand into other niches.  At first, the community platform space (like Jive) was insular, focused on only on enterprise communities, but has now grown into Social CRM, Application Platforms, Social Media Management Systems, Brand Monitoring, corporate email systems and eventually to deliver a customer experience that’s native to the customer. It may be social, it may be mobile, it may take even radical forms in including in store displays.

The Situation – C Round Funding
Jive, who recently raised a $15mm in 2007 has capped off their war chest with a hefty $30mm ‘C round’ for a total of $57.5 million in total.  Why this large amount?  ‘D rounds’ are virtually non-existent out of Sand Hill road, and if they need investment they’ll have to get from a partner corporation.

Altimeter Group SWOT Analysis

Strengths:
Jive has been hailed as a leader in the social software class, (Forrester Wave, and three Gartner Quadrants), and continues to show growth with large clients, claiming sales in the range of “$75,000-$150,000 per customer, closed ten $1 million deals, four of which closed in the last two quarters. While Jive is not yet cash-flow positive, he company has 3,000 customers, 15 million users, and will end the year on a $100 million run-rate” (source).  Their recent acquisition of brand monitoring company FiltrBox demonstrates the pre-cursor of SCRM systems, and have made a variety of strategic partnership including with early-to-market social business consultants Dachis Group.  They’ve recently hired a new CEO, Tony Zingale who is a seasoned leader of Mercury Interactive, where he clinched $1B revenues and lead a $5B acquisition to HP.  Lastly, they’ve shifted HQ from Portland to tech (and VC) centric Palo Alto.

Weaknesses:
They’re undergoing a cultural shift from a hip Portland startup, to becoming a tried and true enterprise player.  With a new CEO (Tony Zingale), and with a new CMO (Kiker has moved on) to take the helm soon, they’ll have to undergo both an internal mindset change as they shift to battle enterprise players.   Also, as Jive takes on larger clients, they risk alienating their small and medium size clients who can’t afford, or can’t scale with Jive’s new value proposition.

Opportunities:
Expect this war chest to be used to bolster the sales and marketing team.  C-rounds often focus on getting the company ready for a “material” event.  Jive will most likely use this time to build out significant partner channels and business development with enterprise clients.  Platform investments should support new partner models that support value added service growth.  Altimeter expects Jive to focus on bookings and immediate recurring revenue in order to maximize value for a “material” event.

Threats:
Key threats come from larger vendors who may suddenly gain a “social” religion, they’re moving from dominating the small pond of community platforms to big and must bolster for a new type of battle in the enterprise application market.  Should an Oracle or SAP decide to enter the market, it may make overtures for an acquisition.  Salesforce.com and RightNow are the biggest CRM threats as they have integrated with key social business constituents and Chatter offers competitive features on an existing footprint of customers. Mainstay social business platform Microsoft Sharepoint can continue to win favor through having a large direct and channel sales force, and new vendors like Broadvision who stem from a traditional eBusiness heritage.  Although they’ve been compared with Lithium in the past, we don’t see them as a direct competitor as both these vendors will develop friction directly with the larger enterprise software players.   Jive’s CEO Tony Zingale has been quoted as diminsihing the incumbents as having Social media “bolt on” features and Jive bloggers are already throwing bombs at CRM vendors.  Yet, expect these incumbents to use their existing enterprise footprints, CIO relationships, and direct and channel sales teams to their advantage.

Altimeter Group’s Take

  • Jive has hit a milestone moment, as this 30mm dowry prepares them to move into a new category, this is an accelerant.  This money will be used for rapid expansion as organic growth will not be enough to achieve velocity that existing enterprise incumbents may already be able to leverage.
  • Jive must partner with more system integrators, enterprise class software vendors, and integration providers to gain a solid foothold with enterprise buyers.  The money is clearly in the enterprise buyer market where existing ERP, CRM budgets can be gleaned.
  • Expect Jive to bolster recurring revenues, and stabilize growth, and prepare for an IPO in 2011 –an achievement we haven’t heard much about here in Silicon Valley for nearly 10 years.

The Bottom Line For Competitors – Don’t Be Last To Play Catchup
Market and solution footprint consolidation will continue around the key components of social business.  Expect market laggards and legacy competitors to work out their build/buy decisions over the next 8 to 12 months.  Most legacy software vendors lack not only the R&D prowess, but also the DNA to successfully launch a social product.  Early consolidators will gain the best deals.  Laggards will be odd man out during the rapid consolidation in the next 18 to 24 months

The Bottom Line For Buyers – Invest In Jive But Keep Them Vested In Your Success
Jive will emerge as one of the winners in providing social business solutions.  The company has the potential to IPO and succeed as an independent provider.   Other competitors will emerge and play catchup over the next 24 months.  However, should an IPO event succeed, the funding will provide Jive with the war chest to go after adjacent competitors and build out its base.  During the journey towards an IPO, customers and prospects must keep the management team focused on investing in successful deployments and outcomes, ensuring they get rapid service and support despite focused on top line growth.


The Altimeter Group is a Research Advisory firm focused on disruptive technologies, located in San Mateo.  We believe in openness, and disclose our clients with their permission, as a result, we hope you’ll trust us more.

After the recent social media brandjackings by Greenpeace of Nestle’s Facebook page, this was an important area that required more research.  Below, you’ll find an exclusive interview with Greenepeace’s team, and interestingly, I believe they are more organized and sophisticated than the average brand -giving them the opportunity to overwhelm their opposition using their strong supporter base.  Below is my Forbes article, which was originally posted the CMO network (or you can read it on Forbes).  This is a great article for brand managers, PR, agencies, and social media professionals.


Greenpeace Vs. Brands: Social Media Attacks To Continue
Citizen activists increasingly use social networks to bash brands.

By Jeremiah Owyang

Most companies are barely prepared to deal with unhappy customers who use social media to air their gripes. Now they must be ready to respond when organized entities, such as Greenpeace, wage massive campaigns against their brands using social media channels.

Greenpeace and other organizations have a long history of demonstrating in real life against corporations in order to influence their agenda. Yet we’re seeing this cascade online as well as the real world.

In March, Greenpeace launched a viral campaign criticizing Nestle’s use of palm oil from companies that are destroying Indonesian rain forests.  The campaign included a video in which an office worker opened a Kit Kat chocolate bar only to find an orangutan’s finger in the red wrapping and a call to Greenpeace’s Twitter followers to “attack” the Swiss company’s Facebook fan page. Thousands of social media users posted comments criticizing the company’s practices and posted altered logos, like one that replaced “Kit Kat” with “Killer.” Nestle, unprepared for the influx of criticism, said it is now committed to using only “Certified Sustainable Palm Oil” by 2015.

In the wake of BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Greenpeace orchestrated another attack. It challenged the public to design a new BP logo that, according to the organization’s website, is “more suitable for their dirty business.” The competition garnered over 2,000 entries, including a design that suggested BP stands for “black planet” to images of oil coated birds and fish. Greenpeace is leaving the winner up to the public, who can vote for the best logo redesign. In addition, Greenpeace recently released a “ScamWow!” infomercial parody of the “ShamWow!” super towel, targeting BP and other oil companies’ that need a quick-fix solution to their ecological disasters.

Greenpeace has scored some social media successes against brands, thanks to its active supporter base. The organization plans to continue these campaigns, according to Laura Kenyon the online marketing and promotions specialist at Greenpeace International.

Owyang: Your efforts against Nestle and now BP appear coordinated, perhaps even more so than some of today’s modern corporation’s marketing efforts.  You had an existing online community, marketing materials (videos, logos) and a clear call to action” for your supporters that was executed quickly and effectively How were you able to pull this off?

Kenyon: Greenpeace’s online campaigns against Nestlé and BP are some parts coordination, some parts opportunity, and most importantly rely on people’s support. Without individuals commenting and sharing the “‘Have a Break?” video on Facebook and their other social profiles it would never have reached over 1.5 million views or caused such an uproar. Coordination is important but as you can never plan for everything online, we found we also needed to be ready to react quickly as things developed. We could not know that Nestlé would request that YouTube block our video within a few hours of it being uploaded, but when that happened we were able to replace it quickly on Vimeo. The blocking of the video went on to drive views on the video and generated interest that we could never have predicted in the planning of the campaign.

Owyang:  Tell me about your internal structure of your social technology team, how many folks do you have working on this?

Kenyon: We have 28 offices worldwide and people working on the social media aspect of communications in most of these offices, most often in addition to another role. The number of people working in each office varies, but together we have a very effective global team.

Owyang:  How do you work with your community to achieve your objectives?

Kenyon: Greenpeace is its supporter base. Without them we would not be here. Their support for our campaigns and the personal actions they take alongside us are vital to our successes. There is no better example of the importance of engaging and empowering our supporters than the Kit Kat campaign. Our online supporters are a source of encouragement, inspiration, and ideas-and we are always trying to draw on that.

Owyang: How are online movements different from real life ones? Is there a difference between online and in-person protests?

Kenyon: The nature of taking action online versus offline is of course different – but the motivations are the same. Our activists who dropped from the ceiling of Nestlé’s shareholder meeting on April 15th were acting on the same motivation as supporters of the campaign who changed their Facebook profile pictures to our KitKat ‘Killer’ logo or sent an e-mail to Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke – they wanted Nestlé to remove products coming from rainforest destruction from their supply chains. They did not want to buy products that come at the cost of
Indonesian rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands.

Owyang:  Are you concerned about any legal ramifications or lawsuits?

Kenyon: We always seek out legal advice and make sure that we understand any potential consequences before launching a campaign like Kit Kat. Our campaigns are not about breaking laws but about creating laws that protect the environment. Just last week the EU finally created a law to ban illegal timber imports after a decade of activism.

Owyang: How do you measure the effectiveness of your efforts?

Kenyon : Ultimately we measure effectiveness by the achievement of campaign goals. In the case of our Kit Kat campaign Nestlé’s eventual commitment to remove products coming from rainforest destruction from its supply chain is a positive step. Another measure is how many people became engaged with the campaign – the video reached over 1.5 million people, over 300,000 of which directly contacted Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke via e-mail, and a countless number of people took up the cause on Facebook providing a steady stream of criticism on Nestlé’s infamous Facebook fan page. Many of these were people who were not previously aware of the role of palm oil production in the destruction of Indonesian rainforests, including key orangutan habitat. The increased awareness of this issue is another victory for our Kit Kat campaign.

Owyang:  So you’re calculating ROI by your objectives. In some ways, you’re already ahead of most brands in the social space. Yet you’ve attempted some other social marketing efforts in the past, but none were as successful as the Nestle effort. Was Nestle a stroke of luck for Greenpeace?

Kenyon: Greenpeace has a history of online campaigning to draw on – as far back as 2000 we ran a successful campaign to get Coca-Cola to
remove harmful chemicals from its refrigeration equipment, which also convinced Unilever and McDonald’s to follow suit. A few years ago we also ran a successful online campaign to convince Apple to remove toxic substances from its products. The crucial element in all of our online campaigning has been the support we’ve found amongst the online population – not only our amazing online supporter base but also from people who might not consider themselves “Greenpeace supporters” per se but who share our concerns and take action with us.

There were a lot of factors that contributed to the success of the Kit Kat campaign, but its success wasn’t isolated from our other online campaigning. The online networks used to push the Kit Kat campaign have grown as a result of previous Greenpeace efforts and the Kit Kat campaign was definitely the beneficiary of earlier online efforts. Add to that an unforgettable video, a few Nestle online blunders, and a lot of amazing efforts from supporters of the campaign. People didn’t lose interest or let the issue rest – for weeks and weeks they told Nestle over and over to stop buying products from rainforest destruction. And it didn’t stop until they listened.

Owyang: Speaking of getting brands to listen, one of the tenants of social media is dialogue. Yet on the surface, it appears that you are not interested in a dialogue with the companies in these channels. To what extent is that true?

Kenyon: In Nestlé’s case it was far past the time for action – Greenpeace had already established a dialogue with Nestlé on the issue of its palm oil suppliers years before the Kit Kat campaign kicked off. But they were not taking action to deal with the problem. When the time came, Greenpeace and Nestlé talked directly in order to reach an agreement. Greenpeace engages with companies and governments at key times in all of its campaigns in order to create change.

Owyang: What should we expect in the social technology arena from Greenpeace in the future? Will you increase your usage in this space and, if so, by how much?

Kenyon: Greenpeace will continue to campaign online. How our presence will grow and change will depend on how the online networks and tools available grow and change. Greenpeace aims to be an agent of change. We are interested in enabling others to demand a better world and online social media helps us do that. As an organization, the last year saw us reach 1 million supporters on Facebook alone. This kind of support empowers us, and our hope is to empower those supporters in return to have civil courage and to amplify their voices when they speak out against injustice or for a better world. As we face the greatest threat to our planet, climate change, civil courage and the
online spaces where it is expressed will be crucial.

Greenpeace will maintain a strong presence in social media, using the latest tools and communication channels where it is effective to challenge those who are involved in environmental destruction. It’s impossible to predict exactly where social media is going next so it’s hard to say exactly what you should expect but we will definitely continue to use creative online campaigning tactics to create change.


Also contributing: Charlene Li and Susan Etlinger from Altimeter Group and Victoria Taylor from Forbes.com.

Jeremiah Owyang, a Web strategist, is partner, customer strategy, at Altimeter Group.  We encourage companies to get ready for social media attacks by getting prepared internally first, watch our webinar to learn how.

It’s only been a week but there’s been quite a few changes, so I wanted to post this before the list became too long. Some big moves, esp Frank at Comcast joining Citi and Dell winning community expert Bill Johnston. I’ve been tracking new hires in this space since 2007, see the archives.

potm-banner-2


People on the Move in the Social Business Industry

  • Comcast’s famed community advocate Frank Eliason moves on from Comcast and joins Citi.  Frank has really given a human face and shown good work at Comcast, increasing the trust in the community and truly being a brand ambassador.  I want to congratulate him on his next move, I’ll be looking forward to his continued success.  You can now track Frank at his new twitter handle.
  • Long time community expert Bill Johnston takes a key role at Dell managing many of their community efforts.  He’s an excellent hire, he’s professional, kind towards others, and extremely knowledgeable.   Yes, Dell is getting a Bill.
  • Jevon MacDonald, leaves Dachis Group and starts a new role as Entrepreneur in Residence at Innovacorp today.
  • Ken Brady moves on and tweets that he’s “I’m now at W+K (@WiedenKennedy) in Portland. Digital Strategy, Community Management, Various Geekery.”
  • Michael Fraietta, one of the Fltrbox team which was acquired by Jive Software has decided to move on and tells his story from his blog, see video.
  • Ignace Blanco  joins We Are Social France as Account Director Help with the development of We Are Social in France
  • Valerie Elston joins Porter Novelli as Digital Strategist where she will evangelize digital strategy throughout the agency and client work, as well as help plan our client’s communication programs and infuse smart, creative, and measurable digital components
  • Amber Porter-Cox joins GolinHarris as VP of Interactive Media.  Amber will lead digital strategy and execution for GolinHarris’ Chicago clients and manage the local GH Dialogue team.
  • Doug Regner joins Wildfire as Interactive Sales Manager of new business development with the world’s largest ad agencies and Fortune 1000 marketing departments
  • Nick Ayres joins IHG as Social Marketing Manager Manage social media programs for international hotel family.
  • Tyler Welch joins Ant’s Eye View as Senior Social Business Consultant. Tyler will work alongside Ant’s Eye View’s practitioner team to guide organizations through the process of transforming customer experience and brand engagement by activating and embedding customer voice in key aspects of their business.
  • Ann Johnson joins Cobalt Group as Sr Manager, PR and Social Media Driving Corporate PR and Social Media Programs for The Cobalt Group.
  • John Nugent joins Syncapse Corp as Managing Director, EMEA. In this new role, John is responsible for corporate development, new business development and client services at Syncapse EMEA. He also has a mandate to expand Syncapse’s team of high performance social technology experts at the company’s London office
  • Congrats to Ben Kiker, Jive’s  CMO who’s moved on, he did a fantastic job, we worked together in a vendor/analyst role since his start. Well done Ben, I look forward to hearing about your next adventure.

Submit a new hire

Seeking a job?

  1. See the Web Strategy Job Board, which includes paid submissions from the top brands in the world.
  2. Community Manager jobs by Jake McKee
  3. Social Media Jobs by Chris Heuer
  4. Social Media jobs, filtered by SimplyHired
  5. Social Media Job Network by James Durbin
  6. 25 places to find social media jobs by Deb Ng

Additional Resources

Please congratulate the new hires by leaving a comment below.

Social media doesn’t scale.  That’s right, social media doesn’t scale.  Consumers will only increase their adoption of social technologies, most social networking data shows this is going ‘up and to the right’.  You can never hire enough community managers to manage your millions of customers that are now using social channels to communicate.  You must have a strategy to scale.

This article, which I originally wrote on my regular column on the Forbes CMO network explains in pragmatic steps what marketing executives must do to develop a scalable program.  I look forward to hearing what you’ve learned below.

How To Create A Customer Advocacy Program
CMOs must tap the voices of their customers.

While marketers traditionally were the direct channel and voice to the customer, creating direct mail, advertising and corporate press releases. CMOs today must develop advocacy programs in order to scale, increase credibility and demonstrate commitment to customers. In doing so, marketers will develop a low-cost trusted unpaid army of customer advocates.

Why an Advocacy Program?
Research by Edelman’s trust barometer indicates that buyers, customers and consumers often will trust each other far more than they’ll trust employees, sales or company. While factual information about product specs, pricing and usage will still be relevant on the corporate website, expect customers to do online research and consider advice from their peers before they make purchasing decisions.

Five Phases of Mature Advocacy Programs
To develop advocacy programs, CMOs must conduct the following five steps:

1.) First, get ready internally. You’ll need to dedicate an internal staff member on a part-time basis to manage this program. Look for folks who have a background in influencer relationships and are savvy about social media–traditional command-and-control techniques need not apply. Develop a plan and educate internal stakeholders. You will need to inform Support, Product, Account Managers, Legal. Next, develop a content plan to constantly fuel the advocates with topics and time with upcoming product releases.

2.) Find the right advocates that will represent your brand. It is important to select the right advocates. First, find them where they already are. Look at top blogs in your industry, the most helpful and knowledgeable community members in the support forums, and those that have dedicated their time to managing Facebook pages, online forums or are active in the ecosystems. Use the following six attributes to gauge if they’ll be successful advocates: 1.) They should have a track record of their contributions and expertise. 2.) They should be respected and have influence in the community. 3.) They must be helpful, passionate, reliable, trustworthy. 4.) They should possess strong communication skills. 5.) They should have existing communication platforms. 6.) They must be committed to the program requirements.

3.) Build a relationship for the long term. Just like courting, in any relationship it is best to start by building trust. Invite your select group of advocates to your headquarters to meet with key product teams, communications and customer-focused executives. Be prepared to listen, and be attentive to their requests. The key is to acknowledge their ideas, without coming across as defensive. After this effort, you’ll have a strong sense of who you’ll want to work with more closely. Wal-Mart  invited top bloggers to its HQ in Bentonville AR, which resulted in an advocacy program called the Elevenmoms. Intel invites its ‘Insiders‘ to social media and digital savvy folks to key events like Intel Developer Forum.

4.) Give them a platform–but do not pay them. The crux of an advocacy program is giving fans a platform for communicating. You’ll want to support their efforts by giving them a publication platform such as a group blog or community, so they can tell their story. Ensure they are properly kept up to date, and that the lines of communications are always open for discussion, even when there is negative content. Enable them with graphical “badges” they can put on their blogs, email signatures, T-shirts, and business cards as they become extended ambassadors to your brand. Microsoft MVP program showcases their advocates, and provides them with a variety of resources to evangelize.

5.) Integrate them into your business and recognize them. It’s key to continue to build on the momentum you’ve established by following the above steps. Next, continue to integrate them into your existing events, product launches and even planning meetings with product teams. Lego invited top advocates for their next-generation mindstorm product, and intertwined customer opinion with the produce team. As a result, a successful product launched, that was quickly sold out. Microsoft ( MSFT – news – people ) has “conference” funds for MVPs who are encouraged to speak at industry related conferences about their passions–further spreading the brand.

These five phases of your program will make you successful. But remember above all, give them recognition and access to special events, review on-brand products, access to important people and information–and do not pay them, or you risk making the relationship a thin transaction. Instead, focus on building a long-term relationship with customer advocates who are an extension of your authentic brand.

That’s my take, after taking briefings and meeting with the folks that have run these programs. Just wanted to share my research over the years in a consolidated pragmatic step-by-step. Please leave your suggestions below, thanks!

More job changes continue to sprout forward, more folks are being hired into senior positions and there are few high profile moves like Tony Zingale as the new CEO of Jive. I’ve been tracking new hires in this space since 2007, see the archives.

potm-banner-2


People on the Move in the Social Business Industry

  • Ben Smith launches his own business out on his own.  I’ve known Ben since keynoting his conference in Kansas and can see he’s one of the lights of the community.  Wishing him success in his new venture, as he hangs out his own shingle.
  • Samir Balwani joins PMK BNC Digital as a Marketing Strategist and will Continue to grow digital communication strategies across all accounts
  • Stephen Monaco joins NextGen Marketing Group as Managing Director – Social Media Marketing.  He’ll Practice Overseeing Principals an Consultants at NextGen Marketing Group to help medium-sized businesses develop best practices in social media marketing.
  • Jim Milton joins SelectMinds as Regional Sales Director Jim will focus on expanding the footprint of SelectMinds’ industry-leading corporate networking and referral products.
  • Suzanne O’Neill joins SelectMinds as Regional Sales Director With the recent launch of SelectMinds’ TalentVine Referral Recruiting Solution, Suzanne will be introducing this new product to customers and the marketplace at large.
  • Cecilia Dominici joins FreshNetworks as Community Manager Seeding, growing and managing online communities for a variety of external clients.
  • Michael Lowe joins The Golf Channel as Senior Director Business & Strategy Oversee strategy and operations of golfchannel.com. Coordinate with editorial, marketing and sales teams to develop and promote content & applications that drive traffic, build community, and deliver revenue.
  • Silicon valley executive Tony Zingale joins Jive Software as the CEO, he’s an extensive track record, read more on the official blog.
  • Valeria Maltoni joins the team at Powered and is now part of the strategy team.
  • Edelman today announces that Robin Hamman joins the agency today as a Director in the agency’s Digital practice, thank you David Armano for the submission.
  • Chris Boudreaux has joined Converseon as an SVP leading the Social Media Management Practice.

Submit a new hire

Seeking a job?

  1. See the Web Strategy Job Board, which includes paid submissions from the top brands in the world.
  2. Community Manager jobs by Jake McKee
  3. Social Media Jobs by Chris Heuer
  4. Social Media jobs, filtered by SimplyHired
  5. Social Media Job Network by James Durbin
  6. 25 places to find social media jobs by Deb Ng

Additional Resources

Please congratulate the new hires by leaving a comment below.

We’re embarking on yet another research report to identify how some top brands are using the Facebook platform well.

While no longer a one-off effort, many brands are already using Facebook for customer communities, word of mouth marketing, and are starting to integrate it with their own corporate website.  At the end of July, I’ll be publishing our findings, as well as grading some of the world’s top brands on their Facebook efforts.  We’ll be conducting a heuristic evaluation (acting like actual customers) and rate and rank these efforts with a variety of diagnostics.

After we publish this independent Altimeter research study in late July, I’ll be sharing the findings on a webinar sponsored by LiveWorld, where I’ll discuss what we found in the study. Sign up for the webinar to learn more about the success criteria, the research findings, and to join in on the discussion.

Now back to you, what criteria to you deem as key for brands to use in Facebook?  I’ll kick off with a few:  1) Enable social features.  Some brands have disabled the ability to have discussions or post information.  2) Encourage efforts that spread the experience to friends. Many brands are just talking directly to their members, but don’t explicitly enable the community to pass it on to others.  3) Engage in a dialog.  The social web is about behaving in a way that consumers already are, and this means brands should also participate in the existing conversation.  4) While we have a list of over 10, we’d love to hear from you.


Update: The submissions are pouring in, to date, we’ve included, Vendor Contributors such as:

360i, AKQA, Awareness Networks, The Community RoundTable, Context Optional, Digital Evolution Group, Edelman Digital, Facebook, Horn Group, Janrain, Inside Facebook, Kickapps, Gigya, Lithium, LiveWorld, Ogilvy’s 360° Digital Influence, Razorfish, RockYou, SHIFT Communications, Spredfast, StepChange a Powered Company, Vitrue and Wildfire Interactive.

While the opportunities for social technologies to change the world, business, and our individual lives continue to unveil, it’s also key to focus in on the challenges that impact the industry.  For many folks who have decided to invest in social technologies to improve their careers and business, it’s even more important to pay attention to these challenges.

First of all, have the right mindset. The savvy person will realize this isn’t a list of gripes, but instead an opportunity list.  Leaders at vendors, agencies, or brands will see these list of challenges of problems to fix and monetize.   If you’re in this space, you’ll want to send this list to your product teams, or strategy teams so they can think about how to solve many of these issues –or at a minimum, be prepared for it.


Matrix: Challenges of the Social Technology Industry, July 2010 Edition

Challenge Description Why it’s Painful How it will be Resolved
1. Noise overwhelms signal With over 50mm tweets each day (more stats here), and more coming, there’s an excess of noise. Expect this to increase as the ‘Internet of things’ and inanimate objectives emit signals. A compounding problem. Finding the needle is an incredible challenge as the haystack continues to grow.  As a result, individuals and companies will rely on analytics tools to derive what’s important, meaning they have less time digging in deeper as their viewpoint becomes larger. Expect social inbox aggregators to filter signal like Facebook, Google, Bing, Salesforce, and eventually social analytics and then social insights vendors, We’ve mapped our a roadmap in our Social CRM report, but expect companies like Crimson Hexagon, Crowd Factory, to be the filter and conduit for advanced listening and analytics.  On the consumer side we can already see the Facebook news feed pruning the most relevant information from our average of 150 contacts.
2. Amateurism threatens expertise The social web is like a vuvuzela, everyone has one, blows it, resulting in a pure buzzing sound. Now, this means that non-experts are commenting and asserting influence in areas where only experts had voices.  Andrew Keen has explored this topic at great detail. Media, journalists, photographers, videographers, and all other IP or media based industries are impacted as everyone is on the game.  The challenge is, with amateurs and prosumers in, it’s created challenges.  For example see keynote panel at SXSW debating crowdsourced graphic design vs the elite professionals New markets are being developed that meets the needs of both the expert elite class as well as those of the masses.  We’re seeing experts adopt these same tools of the masses, for example, nearly every online newspaper has integrated social technologies.
3. Power shift to participants Those who use social technologies like ratings and reviews are sapping power from those that don’t.  Furthermore, voices from those with simple tools like blogs, score well in search engine results pages, a common starting place for information seeking. Research on trust, such as Edelman’s trust barometer indicates that people trust others like them, in almost every situation.  As a result, institutions and organizations are being cut out as an unneeded middleman. In order to get back trust, these institutions have to use the same tools as the commons.  The challenge is developing a significant shift in mindset and deployment.
4. Fast moving industry creates confusion There are few other industries that move as quickly as the social space. A combination of low barriers to entry of commodity technologies fused with injections from venture money there’s constant innovation. The technology is innovating faster than companies and institutions can’t keep up.  Furthermore, the list of choices is staggering, such as the 145 brand monitoring vendors and 125 community platforms. In the end, consumers will define which technologies are adopted and at what rate.  To keep track of these trends, a combination of research from analyst firms and vertical specific media sites like AdAge and News blogs like Techcrunch, Mashable, RWW will provide illumination.
5. Risk of overhype Fast growth, consumer adoption and celebrity adoption of these tools has lead to a media frenzy.  Yet this space can quickly get overhyped as small changes in Facebook features yields huge news coverage. Perspective is lost when we’ve over focus on the disruptions from such simple technologies.  If there’s excess hype, then there will be a continued flood of investor money spurring more cloned companies –exasperating the situation. Decision makers should focus on business needs and business goals before succumbing to the latest headlines about Facebook changes and look at the long term aggregate view. Use data to construct a long term view.
6. Lack of qualified talent Finding the right talent is a challenge. For example, within the corporate space, companies have only been adopting these tools with great fanfare for a few years (Scoble, being one of the starting block at Microsoft in 2006-2007) Companies are ill-equipped to take advantage of this fast moving pace.  As a result, while those with experience and talent will quickly find an increase in salary, the demand for recruitment will result in a lot of job hopping. Time will slowly give experience to this budding industry, it’s not something that can be rushed.  Yet professionals should continue to tap into education, blogs, books and conferences to stay abreast.  This is an opportunity for publishers, educators, conference creators, and existing experts.  See this list of those in these roles in corporate now.
7. Measurement elusive While engagement (the interaction) of these tools and technologies is high, it’s not an effective form of measurement.  Secondly, while the interaction is high, it’s been difficult to tie back to commerce. While it’s easy to measure pokes, RTs and likes, they don’t tie back to true business measurements or KPIs.  Companies want more fans for their Facebook page but aren’t sure why.  As a result, efforts will spin focused on less meaningful metrics without a clear impact to business. All companies and professionals should measure their efforts based on business objectives.  In our latest report on social analytics, we’ve categorized this into 4 major areas: learning, dialog, supporting, and innovation.   Then, you can work with brand monitoring vendors, insight vendors, and eventually business intelligence software vendors.  Lastly, we’re hosting a conference on social commerce to tackle many of these issues head on.
8. Disparate Data and Irregular Standards. There are many vendors that are constructing their own systems.  Each social network has their own API, and despite efforts to bring standards, the fast moving landscape makes it difficult While the cultural impacts have been severe for many companies, gluing together ever-changing data sources creates confusion.  As a result, data will end up in silos that the CTO will have to glue together later, as well as the ever constant management of data formats. Although foundations have been setup to lead OpenSocial, there are other vendors like Gigya and Janrain are starting to provide technology that can manage the multiple identity systems.  Expect new tools like Social Inbox Aggregators to start to fuse information into one place, and eventually passing to Business Intelligence systems.
9. Culture shift creates an internal rift inside institutions. For nearly every institution, this has caused an internal cultures shift.  A few reasons: Power has shifted to the participants and companies realize they must now participate.  The ‘always-on’ mode means that business doesn’t stop at office hours, and now employees can choose the technologies to be used over the CTO. As a result, companies are struggling to get organized internally, and formerly silo’d groups (like Marketing and Support) must come together to support the same customer.  Furthermore companies who stem from command and control must give way to anarchist Cluetrain talk in order to stay relevant. The biggest opportunity is for internal evangelists and change management teams to lead the charge.  However they won’t do it alone as analyst firms will provide education and guidance and an emergence of new types of consulting agencies like Dachis Group, Ant’s Eye View,  will enter the fray along with traditional agencies like Organic, Razorfish, Ogilvy, and Edelman.  They won’t be alone as consulting firms like Deloitte and McKinsey will quickly come on board.
10. Privacy Woes scare companies and consumers. As more individuals share information the greater the risk that this content can cause harm by malicious parties.  Furthermore the more brands use this data to do accurate marketing, the fear of ‘big brother’ will increase. Facebook is the most telling example, as information that was first promised to be ‘just for your friends’ continues to be more open. As they slowly shift towards a more open model, you can see the reactions from consumer, press and media. Over time, society will start to normalize (look at Generation Y’s openness) and sharing will often be a default norm.  Expect services to emerge that will remove and hide information from the internet in order to keep consumers safely tucked away.

How to Overcome These Challenges
Taking on issues head on is a powerful way to take control over your own destiny. Use this list and develop strategies to hurdle over them.  Send this list to your leads at your company who focus on the future direction. If you work at a social technology startup or agency, send this to your executives now.  Secondly, print out this list and identify which challenges you’ve already taken on, and which ones that haven’t.  The savvy corporate social strategist or the smart entrepreneur will recognize the many business opportunities and models this list offers.  The truly smart folks will figure out how to improve their careers, add more value, and even profit by taking these challenges on directly.

This is just a partial list, and you can feel free to leave a comment with what you see as the biggest challenges in this space, I’ve kicked off a discussion in Twitter, and you can see more folks add to the list of challenges, see the tag #SocialChallenge.  Disclosure, some of the companies listed above are Altimeter clients.

Video: State of Social CRM

Categories: Social CRM, VideoPosted on July 3rd, 2010

I find that Paul Greenberg (follow him on Twitter @pgreenbe), one of the early adopter who mapped out the CRM space gives a succinct overview of what’s happening in the Social CRM space. He points out the two converging forces ’social’ and ‘CRM’ spaces that are coming together, yet the third force, ‘companies’ themselves aren’t yet ready for the internal changes that are coming.

He raises a good point that social media empowers everyone in the organization to now have a customer touchpoint in this flattening tools. Yet this means that customers will need a consistent experience regardless of who they talk to in sales, marketing, support, or in-person. As a result, this is creating some unique cultural changes inside of companies, companies with many silos will start to have to come together to provide those consistent experiences. Do check out Charlene’s book Open Leadership which can help leaders make sense of how to approach this cultural change.

Social CRM Needed To Make Sense of Consumer Data.
Social data is overwhelming.   More customers, buyers, and consumers are creating content everywhere they go.  Companies cannot scale to match this in a 1:1 basis, and most companies are in early phases of the 8 Stages of Listening.   Earlier this year, I made clear investments in researching the Social CRM space and Mobile+Social space (report forthcoming), it’s clear that Social CRM is starting to get wind under it’s wings, and mobile/social is certainly happening at consumer level.  So what do I see happening next?  Two trends, social analytics intelligence, and social business value networks, which I’ll discuss at a later time.

Social CRM Use Cases: Overlay of Insights Use Cases (Orange) which yield to predictive experience use cases (Green)
The above graphic lists the Social CRM Use Cases (read the full report). I’ve highlighted the insights use cases (orange) which will yield predictive customer experiences (green).

Social Analytics and Social Insights are Components of the Social CRM Suite.
You can see how we indicated in the toolset there are use cases in Social Marketing Insights, Social Sales Insights, Social Support Insights, Innovations Insights, Collaboration Insights.  If you can successfully derive insights from these 5 use cases, you’ll be able to complete the far right use cases and provide a VIP experience to customers –before they’ve ever entered your store or registered to your website.

Matrix: Brand Monitoring, Social Analytics, Social Insights

Category Description and Example Current State What no one tells you
Brand Monitoring Aware. Simple aggregation and reporting –without any real intelligence. These technologies scrape and aggregate what’s being discussed by a topic, channel, or group and derive alerts and workflows. Commodity technology.  I started a list in 2006, yet now there are over 145 indexed by E&Y employees.  These technologies do not provide intelligence, or predictive behavior modeling. The smart brand monitoring companies have already started their integration plans.  They don’t want to end up being trilobites and have become part of a larger system:  Recent acquisitions include Scoutlabs+Lithium(community), Filtrbox+Jive(Community), Techrigy+Alterian(WCM) and others.
Social Analytics Intelligent. Derive meaning what social data means.  These companies provide intelligence and answer “Why are 500 people a week tweeting about goat milk?” Companies who derive intelligence from social data like Crowd Factory, Crimson Hexagon. Emerging features are coming around.  These tools help true data analysts derive meaning from patterns, and how it influences large scale commerce. This space is still evolving, and expect that the business intelligence software vendors like IBM Cognos, SAS, Qlikview, Oracle, and beyond to start acquiring data streams in the social space and coupling with their engines within the next 12-18 months. Even analyst Esteban Kolsky agrees
Social Insights Predictive. These companies can predict what consumers will do based upon social data.  I’ve seen early examples from community platform Lithium who’s able to predict within 45 minutes if a community will be successful based on comparing to historical data, but for the most part, that’s limited to community data –not the whole social web. Not here, yet.  Right now, systems are just aggregating content to make meaning out of it, yet there’s no clear set of companies that are able to truly provide predictive recommendations. Look for companies who have data across a value network.  What’s that?  Data in multiple companies from manufactured, supplier, retailer, to consumer. Expect companies like Bazaarvoice to be able to yield insights as they collect data from multiple manufactures like HP, Dell and are used on retailer sites like BestBuy

Corporate Social Strategists Should Evolve Buying Criteria Now.
The social media landscape is noisy, and brand monitoring features aren’t sufficient for brands to be actionable –only reactive.  As a result expect:

  • Brand monitoring companies who don’t evolve are on the path to becoming trilobites.
  • Instead, look  for companies that will help derive intelligence from the excessive data source of social –not just provide monitoring and reporting.
  • Ask them to expose their product roadmaps before buying, look at their partnerships, and ask how they will derive meaning –not just extend alerting.
  • Expect social analytics and social insights, to emerge within the next year and a half, and many brand monitoring companies to evolve or perish as the BI incumbents move in.

Love to hear your perspective as companies seek to derive meaning –then predict customer behavior using social data.

site design by studionashvegas proudly powered by WordPress