Social Media Tools

Improving customer services with social networking software.

jim wilde — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:05:22 +0000

Customer facing employees using social networking software are improving customer services.

Employees are able to collaborate and share what they know with other employees and learn what they don't know about customers. To go further, these social applications can be opened up so parts of the them (idea management) can help customers provide feedback, make reviews, or share ideas on how to improve products and services. This works. Take a look at Amazon.

Social networking, social applications, web 2.0, collaboration tools have become powerful influencers on and off the web. People are sharing information (text, images, videos) about everything - including your products and services.

"Don't be scared or rattled by this development. Survey after survey has established that buyers trust each other more than any other source in helping them make informed buying decisions. MediaPost noted that in 1977, 67 percent of people polled in a research study said they were moved to take some sort of action by word-of-mouth influence. In 2003, that number had risen to 92 percent. Pollsters and magazines like Consumer Reports have for many years taken on the dirty work of telling us what customers think. The social internet has simply stripped out the
middleman, making it possible for people to converse directly with each other quickly and in their own words." From My Custome, "Customers control your message (and why that's a good thing)", by Phil Gillin.

Businesses and corporations are using these new technologies to improve customer services, work flow, idea management, information sharing, information flow, project management, education, and training.

So, stop reading about social software applications and collaboration tools. Unleash your imagination and start experimenting with them. The real value and power of social software can only be appreciated with hands-on experience. Try this, a short-term, pilot project to discover and evaluate solutions based on results.

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Social Media:

collaborative software

rich learning environments

Keeping up with rapidly changing times.

jim wilde — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:07:34 +0000

Applying open source ideas to business.

The open-source software movement developed because people had an "itch to scratch". One that "off-the-shelf" software did not support or was too costly to use. In the open source community people want to contribute, learn and share their knowledge and experience. They want to participate in a rich learning environment. They want to be able to get their work done and make a difference. We know from experience that these ideas work in a business environment.

With many open-source communities having thousands of developers and users - it is a mistake to believe that these ideas would not apply in business.

"Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age" video by Karl Fisch.

Here are several more ideas that fit any size project. They are centered around using social software and virtual communities to help employees, stakeholders, partners, deal with rapidly changing times.

internal communications, how people work together - collaborate,
amplify talent development through rich learning environments,
social web and rich internet and intranet applications to meet ever changing market demands,
innovation around networks of people,
idea and resource exchanges across the organization,

"Ketchum report: Media Myths and realities and Gary Hamel" by Alan Moore on Communities Dominate Brands.

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open source

business

internal communications

contributing

filtering ideas

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social informatin management

How Social Media and Web 2.0 Work In Business

jim wilde — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:35:38 +0000

Web 2.0, social software has to be used to be fully appreciated.

The following three posts have a wealth of information, ideas and tips for business managers and CIO's about social media, web 2.0, social networking, and online communities. The fact is, this stuff, social software has to be used to be fully appreciated. It takes time to grasp its power and usefulness. Workplace social software and communities need to be understood from both, a regular user view point and from an administrator (control) view point. You bet, this is work. There are no hurry-up or easy solutions in a workplace or community environment but the benefits are gigantic.

From BusinessWeek, "Social Media Will Change Your Business. Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch upâ€¦or catch you later."

From Wired, "The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits to You. You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents, where it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web.

From CIO Insight, by Edward Cone, "Try It, You`ll Like It.

Web 2.0 applications must be experienced hands-on to be appreciated, but most CIOs don't take the opportunity.

If you are not on Facebook, if you have never created and maintained a blog, then maybe you aren't putting enough thought into your job.

...understanding Web 2.0 applications is important to your business, and you need to spend some quality time using them to really get what they're all about. The power of user-driven tools lies in the using. Just reading about them, or spending an hour or two playing with them, doesn't do them justice; you've got to go hands-on to appreciate their power."

Assigning order to a chaotic process. People in businesses are using social software and virtual communities to relate ideas, stories and information to each other in, say, a gigantic learning and development environment. It helps them spot new business opportunities before the competition does, create a meeting place, be open to radical opportunities, break down silos, support experimentation, enable managers to represent the customer vis-Ã -vis their own organizations, and help everyone move forward.

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Mobile Social Networking and Communities Growing

jim wilde — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:59:48 +0000

Think foursquares.

Wow - Check out this article, "Mobile Social Networking Revenues Could Reach Us$52 Billion by 2012", from Cellular News.

"Mobile Social Networking is already an established service in some regions, but in 2008 and beyond new features are attracting larger numbers of users and permitting new business opportunities. Mobile Social Networking is now a global phenomenon with expansion in all directions.

Over the next 24 months communities which foster friendships will continue strong growth in users and revenues. Entertainment community segment revenues will overtake in some regions in 2010. Other community segments focusing on productivity, fame and social shopping are beginning to emerge on mobile platforms, diversifying the offers and attracting people of different socioeconomic and demographic profiles to Mobile Social Networking services."

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business opportunities

productivity

mobile social networking

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Social Applications Will Thrive In A Recession

jim wilde — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:26:51 +0000

"...social applications are about consideration, not awareness. Blogs, word of mouth, social networks... they're about people connecting with other people."

I pulled this post from Conversation starter, "Why Social Applications Will Thrive In A Recession". It was posted by Josh Bernoff .

"...social applications are about consideration, not awareness. Blogs, word of mouth, social networks... they're about people connecting with other people. You may resist advertising if your finances are tight, but if your bud tells you that new movie is really worth seeing or that the Gap has the cutest new tops, that's more persuasive than advertising. Basically, in a recession, the consideration phase is more important than awareness -- and that's where advertising flops and social applications succeed.

* It's cheap. Social applications can be nearly free (think blogs, Ning.com, facebook pages) and even more sophisticated communities are typically $30K to $200K -- a lot cheaper than a significant sized ad campaign. After our last post, all the responses were positive. One interactive marketer from a highly cyclical company told us this:

"Budgets are tight in light of the economic conditions as you surmise, but [the budget for social applications] has not been impacted. We are still keen to move forward with our trial and have supportâ€¦.at this point anyway. Interactive in general has been more protected than other comms areas and saw an increase."

* It's measurable. If your social application doesn't have a measurable output, you'd better get one. But if it does -- if it generates leads, or conversions, or buzz, or something useful -- then you can prove it's working. beinggirl.com is four times as effective as TV ads, Procter & Gamble told us. That won't get cut in a recession."

Josh Bernoff is a vice president at Forrester Research and the author, with Charlene Li, of the forthcoming book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

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Is Your Corporate IT Age Showing?

jim wilde — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:35:51 +0000

How innovations like social networks, RSS, microblogs, wikis and mashups will translate into enterprise profits.

From CW, "Are You Obsolete? How to stay relevant in the world of Web 2.0, Wii and other wonders. According to a growing chorus of IT leaders, consultants and bloggers, IT needs to shift into a new role. It should continue its traditional responsibilities, such as governance, security and control of costs and return on investment. But it should loosen control over parts of the business intent on improving productivity through the use of downloadable rich Internet applications, social networking, collaboration tools and other Web 2.0 technologies.

There's still a question of how innovations like social networks, RSS, microblogs, wikis and mashups will translate into enterprise profits, but few doubt that they need to be explored, and not just by IT."

Even though we've implemented many web 2.0 - social technologies in business organizations, we still haven't hit on any one metric that can be tied to profits. How do you place value on collaboration, innovation, finding or retaining an employee? These tools are one piece of the puzzle. In most organizations, they will develop their own metrics for measuring ROI.

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social network technology

What is "social networking technology"?

jim wilde — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:57:28 +0000

Defining social networking technology.

Danah Boyd, apophenia, has taken up the discussion on defining social networking technology. Be sure to check out the comments.

"let's define our terms: what is a "social networking technology"?" by danah boyd.

"In writing Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship,Nicole Ellison and I wrote many iterations of the definition of the term "social network sites" and why we chose to use this instead of "social networking sites." For a good 20 versions, we had included this statement:

"Because the term 'networking' emphasizes relationship initiation, often with strangers, it can and has been expanded to refer to any site that allows people to communicate with people that they do not know, including dating sites, chatrooms, community sites, and bulletin boards."

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community

relationships

definition

strangers

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Harnessing Innovation Using "The Global Brain".

jim wilde — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:38:59 +0000

Companies are reaching beyond their R&D labs to tap individuals and organizations outside their corporate boundaries.

Here's a how-to book on using the wisdom of crowds or "the global brain" to harness creativity and innovation. I haven't read it but the amount of academic research has florished the last two yeas so this new book probably has some new ideas for business development managers.

"Want to Create Innovative Products? Tap into the 'Global Brain'" [reg req]

Published: November 29, 2007 in India Knowledge@Wharton

In their quest to harness new sources of creativity, companies are reaching beyond their R&D labs to tap individuals and organizations outside their corporate boundaries. In their book titled, The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World (Wharton School Publishing, 2007), Satish Nambisan, a professor of technology management and strategy at the Lally School of Management at the Rensselaer Institute of Technology, and Mohanbir Sawhney, a professor of technology at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, explore the rise and implications of this network-centric approach to managing innovation. Nambisan spoke with India Knowledge@Wharton recently about how companies can work with outsiders to enhance their own efforts to create new products and services."

India Knowledge@Wharton: What do you mean by the "global brain?"

Nambisan: The "global brain" refers to the creative potential that lies outside corporate boundaries, including networks of independent inventors, scientists, academic researchers and different types of intermediaries who facilitate those transactions between inventors and companies and scientists and companies. This pool of talent is what we broadly refer to as the global brain. This is in contrast to, for example, your internal R&D and other in-house innovation capabilities. You could call that "the local brain."

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator.

Give us a call, 973.433.4007, to learn how the wisdom of crowds can help your business become more profitable.

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wisdom of crowds

imagination

talent

orchestrating resources

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corporate social network solutions

Social Networking for Business

jim wilde — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:32:58 +0000

There are clear signs that momentum is building for an enterprise implementation of social networks as tools to improve internal communication and to deepen customer relationships. Managers might consider Drupal for the job.

"The growing number of companies offering private-label social network solutions, as well as IBM's recent entry into the field with its Lotus Connections social software platform for business, is a sure sign of increased demand. Other companies, like LinkedIn and Ryze, have social networking at the core of product offerings that generate revenue by bringing offline business networking practices into the online world. And corporations are continuing to incorporate advertising on affinity networks in their campaigns to reach highly targeted audiences with measurable response rates. Social commerce is also catching on - think about Amazon. We can all learns from them on improving sales.

Head up - we use Drupal, an open source web application framework to make all kids of social apps.

Erica Driver, principal analyst at Forrester Research, agrees that enterprises are taking collaborative networking tools more seriously, particularly for purposes of internal communication. "Right now, social networking is being used primarily for knowledge management and expertise location within companies," she notes. "It can be an extension of the enterprise directory." A basic directory may have an employee's name, location, and job title, but an extended profile format that is the kernel of a social networking platform can allow employees to add details about competencies, project experience and past positions, and to blog and share bookmarks. This added detail can make harnessing the enterprise's internal knowledgebase easier and, with proper access controls, can be useful information for customers as well. Driver cautions, "You have to show the information in context, and selectively," depending on who is viewing the profile, but she adds that most of these tools have such access control embedded."

Networking Opportunities: Social Networking for Business - by Nancy Davis Kho, ITtoolbox

We work with business development managers setting upcorpoarte social networking systems and community software (demo) that incorporates many of the above ideas. Go try it out.

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collaboration

knowledge management

internal communications

productivity

expertise locator

staff finder

social commerce

Social Media:

social networking solutions

Corporate Blogging

jim wilde — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:50:39 +0000

Blogs - Drupal social networking applications and community software solutions - are moving from the social realm to the corporate world.

But companies aren't replicating the free-flowing exchange that has been a hallmark of the broader blogosphere. Rather, companies are trying to harness that freedom and conform it to business needs, with forward-thinking companies using strategic planning and formal policies to shape the use of blogs and other Web 2.0 tools to drive more communication and collaboration among workers.

Bringing on the blogs

Companies are using internal blogs for several purposes, according to a June 2007 survey of IT decision-makers at U.S. companies with 500 or more employees that are piloting or have implemented blogs. According to the survey by Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., 63% are using blogs for internal communications, 50% for internal knowledge and communication, and 47% to position the company and its team as thought-leaders in their field.

Corporate blogging: Does it really work? from Computer World.

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blogging

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exclusive social networks

Exclusive social networks

jim wilde — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:29:58 +0000

There's less to Facebook and other social networks than meets the eye.

"A NEW fad is sweeping across Silicon Valley, causing excitement, confusion and hyperbole not seen since the dotcom bubble. It began in May, when Mark Zuckerberg, ten days after turning 23, took the stage in a San Francisco warehouse and announced that he was opening up Facebook to outside programmers. Anyone can now build little programs, or - widgets, into the network. To illustrate his idea, Mr Zuckerberg projected onto the wall behind him a social graphic pattern of nodes representing Facebook users and the links among them.

Since then Facebook and the idea of the social graph have become the favourite...

But unlike other networks, social networks lose value once they go beyond a certain size. The value of a social network is defined not only by who's on it, but by who's excluded, says Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster. Despite their name, therefore, they do not benefit from the network effect. Already, social networks such as "SmallWorld", an exclusive site for the rich and famous, are proliferating. Such networks recognise that people want to hobnob with a chosen few, not to be spammed by random friend-requests.

...the future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist offline. No single company, therefore, can capture the social graph."

"Social graph-iti", From The Economist

We've been helping organizations use Drupal, an open-source web application framework. They've using it to leverage information in new ways and to discover new ways of doing business.

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privacy

facebook

private social networks

firewall

abuse

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corporate social networks

Internal email spam and abuse

jim wilde — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:30:17 +0000

...misuse of e-mail is rampant, particularly via ass-cover and distrust-generating cc and bc functions.

Nice, this is one of the reasons, internal email spam, why organizations are starting to use social software applications. "e-mail of the species deadlier than the mail?" - from confused in calcutta.

...misuse of e-mail is rampant, particularly via ass-cover and distrust-generating cc and bc functions; that internal official spam exceeds external spam, made far worse by our willingness to attach large presentations and spreadsheets willy-nilly; that all this will get worse, as more and more devices get connected, and then create more and more alerts. It's only a matter of time before someone decides to impose an - advertising model on enterprise mail and thereby fossilise the avalanche.

I still remember being seated next to Stowe Boyd, on a panel at Supernova many years ago, when he first called the death of e-mail, and how it looked as if some members of the audience would actually do him physical injury for his utterance. I wonder what Stowe would make of this article:

Headlined Office Staff Hit Delete in War on E-Mail Monster, the article describes someone who does a Chapter 14 on her mailbox, deleting her 30,000 unreads, only to find that they came back at the rate of 1,000 a day. It goes on to report on companies that have Zero E-Mail days, companies that included stalwarts of the Net like Intel. It talks about rebels being fined, about Wanted posters for e-mail miscreants, even about wearing the Scarlet Letter E.

Corporate social networking software pretty much gets rid of these internal email spam problems. They also help capture informal but important information that usually gets lost in email.

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employees

communications

knowledge

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Social networking and open platforms

jim wilde — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:12:00 +0000

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator. We use Drupal to make web apps that connect people.

From eweek, "Google, MySpace Must Open Platforms for Social Network Growth"

"Allowing third-party programmers to build applications on top of social networking platforms is increasingly becoming table stakes for businesses that want to sustain themselves in a burgeoning market, according to experts who follow the space.

When Facebook opened its platform for outside development in May, it triggered speculation that other Internet companies would follow suit to reach broader audiences and increase site stickiness.

That speculation has reached a boil of late, with reports in the blogosphere that Google, MySpace and LinkedIn are considering opening up their platforms to allow developers to write free software programs that consumers can play with and share with others in their social networks."

These open social network platforms are great news. They give any business or organization new opportunities to reach out as well as pull in ideas, data, and information

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator.

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