A social presidency?

Check out this article in the Financial Times. One of the consequences of what could be termed the world's first ever socially-wired election campaign is an expectation by the huge Obama network that they can continue to be involved. Um, that means actually have a say in how they are governed.

That's a fairly radical concept. Not since the Thing of the Norse cultures has there been such an idea (discounting small egalitarian communities and communes). If you think I'm kidding, check out Fix this, Barack or White House 2. Amazing! All with a sense of collegiality and a remarkable goodness-of-fit with Obama's own priorities.

Of course, the challenge for the BO White House is to figure out how to keep the magnificent constituency developed by the campaign connected and committed, in the raw light of day on Capitol Hill. The crushing immediacy of the issues faced by the incoming President will no doubt play havoc with his iPhone and Twitter teams. Analysing 5 days of public feedback received through the White House website is going to take some real heft. But what an opportunity to take back government!

Things (pun intended) are never going to be the same. Oh..., and some-one tell K. Rudd to get a look at this phenomenon - and change that crappy feedback page into something useful!

Thought for the Day: Social media offer the opportunity for people to seize back a say in government policies and priorities. Maybe it's time for politicians to listen.

Occasional Series I - Objectives

The story so far: our company, WSG bank, is looking for a social media proposal around a segment we've identified as "Builders". We've built some personas. Now we're starting to look at objectives as the second step in the POST methodology.

Jeremiah Owyang maps objectives to functional units in the business. I find this useful, because it immediately highlights the right sort of aspirations and metrics that we should be thinking about.

Regardless of industry or maturity, there are 4 things that all companies should be focused on: customer acquisition, customer activation (generating an initial purchase action from a customer who has registered), customer productivity (better thought of as a component of LTV), and customer retention. Anything else can be described as a function of one of these. In our example, let's start with the first one - customer acquisition. Perhaps we'll return to the others down the road, but this is a good place to begin.

So our goal is straightfoward - attract x new customers to our bank from the Builder segment, which we'll measure by a simple count of new accounts via the social media execution. We can model the data we get from our clickstream to get a proxy for total new accounts over all channels (HINT: our demographics and technographics will help us build this algorithm). Which of the Groundswell objectives is going to be useful?

Most people lunge immediately for the "talking" objective - or marketing in the functional lexicon. Trouble is, our Builders are pretty cynical about banks - so in my book, it's odds-on that they're not going to click over to a blatant marketing site. In my view, this is an occasion to reach for "listening". After all, it's the first step in the relationship build phase.

Because this is an fictional case, I'm going to propose we build a "scratching post" for people to tell us what they think about banks. Let's call it allbanksarebastards.com - at least the headline is going to resonate with our target segment. Our goal is to generate a robust discussion around what we're doing that gets under peoples' skin. We're going to ask a simple question - what could we do better? Longer-term, we're going to leverage this by acting on some of the comments and suggestions.

In the next post, I'll get more granular around this idea and start to lay out some of our "strategies" in the POST methodology.

Making the case for Social Media

With considerable apologies to this Champion at Digital Ministry

Most social media people get deeply disappointed when their brilliant proposals don't get funded in the budget process. They're convinced that SM represents the chance to reach out to customers, give them a voice, and let loose the dogs of advocacy. But the CFO and other top team members rarely buy it. Why?

• Language:

Geeks love using jargon because it signifies membership of an elite group of those with the "knowledge", like London taxi drivers or members of some arcane gnostic sect. And social marketers are most often geeks (not technology geeks, but marketing geeks). The words "social media" are a challenge for most people, let alone "blog", "Twitter", "wiki", and "community".

Find other ways to explain yourself - and make maximum effort to do a Dr Dolittle by speaking in languages CEOs, COOs, and CFOs understand. Blogs are a "set of discussions and opinions" that allow customers to respond and present their point of view. A wiki lets "experts contribute information" that is available to all.

A little bit of effort goes a long way - I once explained to a CFO who was an enthusiastic DIY man that "information architecture is a bit like the peg board above your work bench with stencilled places for all your tools". He got it immediately.

• Extending existing functions:

Many people make the mistake of positioning SM as the latest and brightest toy. For decision-makers that's scary because they think that as a "new initiative" it will require steep learning curves and will be littered with mistakes. In reality, all SM does (for companies) is extend your current functional departments' capabilities. You need to position the idea in terms of how it will deliver efficiency [in, say, customer service]; effectiveness [in, say, brand awareness]; and engagement [via, say, purchase intention].

• Surveillance:

Armies and law enforcement agencies spend lots of time gathering intelligence. It is vitally important that you do the same. Use Google Alerts and Twitter Search over a month or so to map the buzz around your company, competitors, and industry. Lay out the results in an idiot-proof manner with both quant and qual metrics. For blogs, I use the terms "volume" (number of mentions), "tone" (positive, negative, neutral) and "noise" (competitor mentions). These terms make sense to anyone who has a home stereo system, and you can position your proposal with familiar metaphors.

• Objectives:

You will need to clearly lay out your goals and some metrics. Look at Jeremiah Owyang's objective mapping - he relates objectives to well-known functions in companies like this:

Listening = Research,

Talking = Marketing,

Energizing = Sales,

Supporting = Customer Support, and

Embracing = R&D (New product development)

If you're thinking the words in bold italics, then this secret decoder key tells you to use the functional descriptors. And once you start using familiar language, the metrics should be self-apparent. So use them.

• Recognize you're changing the culture:

SM requires companies to embrace two-way conversation instead of one-way messaging. That's a huge challenge for most firms, and runs against most corporate cultures. Understand this, and find ways to re-define the change in terms of the words above. You're not going to get full transparency first time around, so get over it.

• Point to Success:

There are long lists of who's doing what in the SM space, and plenty of big companies. Someone told me about Peter Kim's list - it's a great start. Search around for some case studies and press releases about some of these initiatives, and point out a few in your proposal. It's even better if you can find some stuff that your competitors are doing.

Thought for the Day: Your proposal won't get funded unless you figure out how to explain it to decision-makers. Think about that in as much depth as your brilliant idea.

The C-Suite starts to get it

Here's an interesting post from The Economist Intelligence Unit. Apparently, nearly 80% of companies see social media and user-generated content as an important part of their businesses going forward. Many companies have started experimenting with communities, and blogs and wikis are part of the vocabulary. It seems people think SM can help grow the topline and reduce costs. Yep, shows they read the newspapers.

CFO's are more dubious, and middle management are not as sure. No surprises there either! CFO's are part of the show-me-the-money crowd - and there is little doubt that the metrics side of the social media revolution has been a little slower out of the gate than the enthusiasts. Provided the bean counters focus on the bottom line, I have no problem at all with their approach. That can only provide rigour, meaning better job security for the SM guys and girls.

Middle management - of course they're doubters. Most of us forget that middle managers are hired to ... wait for it ... manage! Manage means maintain the status quo. If these people started to innovate on a serial basis, business would get out of control in a minute.

The surprise for me is the very low knowledge base from where C-suiters are starting. The recent US election showed us one thing very clearly - brands (and Obama is as much a brand as he was a candidate) need to empower people to get involved. It's not only about having customers come up with new product ideas, or about reducing the cost of advertising. It's about thinking about two-way conversations, and about mutual benefits. The executives in the survey are acting as if they are still in sole control of their brands.

I only have bad news for these people - it ain't so, and you better figure out a way to let go. Otherwise, you'll find you're on the express ride to oblivion.

On the positive side, most companies expect SM and UGC to be the biggest factors changing the ways they interacts with customers or employees. They see it "as an opportunity, not a threat". Phew! Now, if we all could only see them as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Thought for the Day: Forget about the CFOs and middle management. Concentrate on the customer experience, let your advocates speak for you, and never forget where you came from.

A question about Wikis

My good friend Carlos asked me a question about wikis - he has a problem because there was some inaccurate information in a third-party article about his company, and he was looking for advice. Warning: If you haven't checked out your company or products and services in Wikipedia, do it immediately! Until challenged, whatever is written there stands as fact.

You should understand the Wikipedia contribution policy: "Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge [...] Most of the articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet [...]Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references or citations, as long as they do so within Wikipedia's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. Substandard or disputed information is subject to removal." [Emphasis added]

Huh!? This means anyone can contribute content, and that Wikipedia does not check for veracity. That's up to the users. Wikipedia's editors will sometimes act to remove disputed facts or errors-in-fact when they are notified.

So my first recommendation is to have some-one go into Wikipedia and correct any inaccurate information via the editing tool. It is important to only correct factual errors - otherwise you will attract attention and negative comment.

Second - you should consider creating an alternative entry if there is a reasonable case for doing so. Again, be careful to report facts ("only the facts, Ma'am..."). When people search Wikipedia, they will then see both entries.

Next, invite your advocates to contribute to your wiki entry. The point of social information resources like Wikipedia - after the obvious information resource use - is to have fact-driven conversations where a variety of users can explore a variety of avenues about the topic at hand. If you have a reasonably complex offering, consider posting your FAQs as part of the content. On the other hand, you might want to use the collaborative nature of this tool to have customers help one another get best use from the item.

Finally, consider setting up another wiki of your own: for employees and your downstream sales force. This wiki should focus on capturing the "unwritten" knowledge all throughout your company - and listening to this conversation may just provide a few tips on where to take your products or services next!

That's all you get for free! Contact me if you have similar questions to Carlos, and I'll try to help you get maximum leverage from the social media jungle.