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Why IP Firms Need To Harness Employee Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:21:00 +0000

It has been interesting watching the social-media frenzy over the past few days since rumor broke over the weekend that Forrester Research was changing its policy with regard to analyst blogs. Reactions have gone from one extreme to the other which I suppose is a good thing – people care passionately about being able to keep getting content from Forrester analysts through blogs.

Forrester colleagues Augie Ray and Groundswell author Josh Bernoff put it very well in their blogs over the weekend. And Cliff Condon gave the official version of what’s happening in his recent post.

Contrary to rumor, Forrester is not asking analysts to stop blogging. Quite the opposite. Forrester is asking more analysts to blog. What Forrester is asking analysts to do is to not blog under their own brand – if analysts have a private blog that has content related to their analyst role, Forrester is asking analysts to move that content under the Forrester brand, but still as a personal blog.

Since I’ve been creating content online since 2000 either as a personal website (pre-blogging) or as blog content, I can tell you that my initial reaction to this idea was: whoa, you can’t do that – free speech, liberty and all that. I may even have become quite animated. However, after an appropriate period of digestion, I came to realize that this makes perfect sense and, if Forrester were as a client I had to advise on a blogging policy, this is exactly what I would recommend.

Companies like Forrester that rely upon the knowledge of their employees to create tangible client value and associated revenue (this could include consulting firms, newspapers and publishers) must protect their intellectual property. Without doing so, the business model would cease to function - clients would have no reason to pay for the expertise of analysts. So how we blog, and how much we blog, requires a fine balance between using social media to stimulate interest in our expertise, while still leaving readers wanting more. Stimulating demand for our services by delivering client value is at the heart of our business.

You might wonder why wouldn’t analysts be allowed to blog under both the Forrester banner and their own branded blogs simultaneously. At first glance this may seem reasonable. However, where people see the content is important because analysts ultimately want to drive traffic back to the mother ship. Simply put, the best way to do this is for analysts to blog under the Forrester banner. It’s cleaner for clients and simpler for analysts.

What the analyst loses with this change is the ability to build a brand outside of Forrester through a personal blog. On the flip side, as Augie pointed out, Forrester invests in building the brand of each of its analysts. This evolution of Forrester's blogging platform is further demonstration of that. Analyst followers will still have access to all their great blog content except that it will soon only be available in personal analyst blogs on the Forrester Blog site. If you follow an analyst’s blog right now, you will still be able to follow their blog content from the new blog site.

Forrester is a leading proponent of the value of social media. I see this as a company leading by example.

Nigel

(originally posted on the Forrester Blog For CIO's)

Can Social Media Penetrate The C-Suite?

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:32:00 +0000

Can Social Media Penetrate The Exec Suite?

Almost every day I hear people suggest that social media is at best only valuable as a marketing tool. There are people who believe that social media has no reach beyond a few "geeks" sitting at their computers all day. What these naysayers focus on is the technology and not the people connections. I believe it is the people connections that drive social media and it is the value of these connections that will continue to change the way we work and communicate.

With your help, I'm looking to measure the potential social media to connect people worldwide, even those senior executives and naysayers who are not already using social media. Here's how:

Three Simple Steps

We've built a very short survey on social media's value in business – nothing new here – but here's the twist: We're using social media as the vehicle, and social media evangelists (you) as the fuel, to get the survey into the hands of as many people as possible who are not yet using social media.

Here are three easy and quick steps to becoming a social media evangelist for this research:

Go to http://forrester.com/2010socialsurvey and fill out the survey (all responses welcome) – it takes approximately 5 minutes;
Refer two friends to the survey:
1. Email a link to the survey
2. OR tweet about it
3. OR blog about it
4. OR post a link in your online community
(if you really want to evangelize you can of course do more than one of these things).

When you participate, you can request you own summary of the results when they are published, and by sharing the survey, you can also take a share of the credit in demonstrating the power of social media to connect people.

What Does The Survey Measure?

The survey will provide insight into the following:

The reach of social media through social connections;
The awareness of social media policies in the workplace
The level of usage of social media in the workplace
The perception of social media's value in business

How Are We Defining Social Media?

For the purposes of the survey we are defining social media as all web-based one-to-many social connections such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Discussion Boards, Digg, Delicious, YouTube etc, but excluding email and SMS.

When Will The Result Be Published?

I'll be tweeting about the progress and hope to have sufficient responses by early Jan to be able to release the results early in the New Year. How fast we can publish depends in part on how well we all do in getting the survey into the hands of multiple people. I'll be posting details from the survey in my Forrester blog for CIO's.
If you would like to follow tweets on this survey I'll be using the following Twitter tag: #socialsurvey

Putting Your Ideas Into Action

One of the best things about social media is that so many people are willing to share ideas. As part of this project, if you have an idea on how we can spread the word simply post your comments here. We'll action as many ideas as we can.

To Learn More About Social Media

There are many useful blogs on the Internet to help you learn more about social media; here are just a few:

http://blogs.forrester.com/: a range of blogs including Groundswell
http://mashable.com/: one of the best resources on the Internet to help you understand social media
http://www.experiencetheblog.com/ Augie Ray's perspectives on social media's impact on brands
The Social Media Marketing Blog: perspectives from the head of social media at Ford
http://britopian.com/: insights from a social media practitioner
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ Jeremiah Owyang's perspectives on social

Thanks,
Nigel

IKEA goes viral with innovative Facebook campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:19:00 +0000

CNet and Mashable recently highlighted an innovative social media campaign by agency Forsman and Bodenfors for IKEA. The post shows how social media can be used by retailers to drive awareness of things like store openings or promotional campaigns.

In short, IKEA leveraged photo tagging in Facebook to allow consumers to tag themselves to pieces of furniture and claim that piece as a prize.

While many people have commented to suggest this style of campaign may breach Facebook's new advertising and promotion T&C's, it's hard not to admire the sheer simplicity and creativity that went into this campaign.

To determine the success of the campaign perhaps we need to figure out what the objective was. Was it to:

Build awareness of the store opening?
Promote the IKEA brand worldwide through viral marketing?

The real power of a campaign like this is perhaps not so much in driving people into the new store, which no doubt this did, but in the brand marketing.

By embracing social media in its store opening campaign IKEA is succeeding in getting its brand message out to the exact audience it is targeting for its stores. The real success here is about how widely the IKEA brand has been virally promoted worldwide by social media advocates.

That's a winning campaign in my book!

The CIO and Social Media: Social Police?

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:18:00 +0000

In my recent post on the Forrester Research CIO Blog I asked the question: What is the CIO's role in driving social media into organizations?

IT departments frequently seem to be in the role of Social Police. CIO's get asked by legal to block any and all social media applications. While in some cases security concerns drive the decision, in others it's deemed a compliance issue. There are also those who believe blocking social media improves productivity.

The trouble with this approach is that it assumes social media can and should be stopped with technology. The fact is many people are already using web-enabled social applications in the workplace on their own personal smartphones.

Perhaps the problem is we are thinking of social media interaction in the same way we think of all other digital communications. What if we were to think of social interactions on applications such as Twitter or Facebook in the same way we think of conversations; both are transient in nature.

I personally agree with the suggestion of at least one CIO I heard recently: we should be trying to police social applications through policy and training rather than using technology. Just because we have the ability to record every phone conversation doesn't mean we should. Shouldn't we take the same approach with social? By setting clear policy on the use of social media and training employees are we not likely to have an equally effective approach to blocking breaches? At the same time it would allow our organizations to benefit from social media.

There is also the risk that by blocking it we are giving a huge advantage to our competitors who figure out how to embrace it. Like many others, I believe social media is going to have as big an impact on society and business in the next decade as the Internet did in the 90's. Remember all the IT people in the 90's who said there was no role for the Internet in business? What about all those people in IT in the 80's who said there was no role for the PC in business? These waves of technology transformation have a way of becoming inevitable no matter what IT does to try and block them.

The thing is, social media is too big to block. Sure, IT can put in place technology to plug a leak in one place, but it's likely our creative colleagues will simply find another way to access social technology covertly.

So what role should the CIO play in deploying Social Media in an organization?

One important role of the CIO is to help peers in the business to better understand just how transformational social media can be to helping increase growth and/or drive productivity to improve the bottom line.

CIOs can pro-actively support innovation through trials; facilitate experimentation and provide the IT services support to the business units willing to tap into Social. Partner with the CMO and get going - don't wait for the business case (heresy I hear you say) - but that would be like asking for the business case for email or for the phone; you could probably do it but why bother - this is table stakes in 2010. When was the last business case you saw for buying a PC?

The fact is, until you get in the game you really won't understand the potential. The closest thing in recent times would be the evolution of corporate websites - in the early days some companies saw the power of the Internet and embraced it - some even changed business models using it (Amazon, eBay), while others couldn't see the business benefit and waited till having a website was no longer an option. (If you want to read about justifying social media from a marketing perspective Michael Green published research on this in Feb).

I'm not advocating CIO’s should ignore basic principles such as aligning the goals of the project to positive business outcomes and measuring results - that's essential for success - but the fact is any benefit numbers IT and its business partners come up with in terms of a business case are more than likely a wild guess at best - you need to get some experience first.

If you still have doubts on the value of Social Media to impact the bottom line, on this I have two suggestions for you:

1. Read Groundswell to see real case studies on how companies are winning with social media – it’s a great book and a really easy to read, packed full of examples

2. If you don’t have time to read a book, take a look at Josh Bernoff's recent blog post on the winners of this year's Groundswell awards.

In Josh's post you will see concrete examples of what companies are doing with social media and real, tangible business benefits such as how NASCAR reduced it's research costs by 80%; how Lion Brand Yarn showed people using it's social media site were 41% more likely to buy yarn at the website; how FICO dramatically decreased it's support costs and increased revenue; how UPS attracted 345,000 job applications at 75% lower cost than traditional newspaper advertising; how MetricStream created a portal with 500,000 users that generates 30% of the company's sales leads.

Follow me on Twitter @NigelFenwick

Now Posting more frequently through Forrester Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:53:00 +0000

Given my new role as an analyst at Forrester Research I'm beginning to post more frequently at the Forrester Blog: http://blogs.forrester.com/cio and I'll also continue to post here.

Profit through Social Media: Creating an S-Business

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:58:00 +0000

Even though there's plenty of hype about how social media there are still plenty of companies rigidly refusing to engage in any kind of social media strategy. It reminds me of the early days of the Internet: there were those companies looking to embrace it and grow a new "e-business" and there were plenty of companies refusing to consider how the Internet would transform their business. Perhaps we are witnessing the dawn of new s-businesses (S-Business = companies transformed by social media).

There are already some groups are doing really great things with social (for examples check out the entrants to the Forrester Research Groundswell Awards). Yet for all the hype about social media, have we really scratched the surface of the potential for social media to transform business?

Companies are looking to bolt a "social media strategy" onto their existing business models by hiring social-media experts to add a social component in much the same way companies bolted a website to their business years ago.

What if we can completely redesign company strategy and execution using social media to create a social-enabled business; one in which all processes are transformed by social-technology to deliver huge returns to shareholders?

Over the past ten years companies have reengineered their business processes to leverage the power of the Internet in ways we couldn't dream of when we started down the Internet road. Social Media has the same transformational power.

The challenge is to re-think entire business processes around a socially-enabled world. The true power of social media is not in the technology but in the ability of organizations to utilize the underlying technologies to change the nature of the relationships with investors, customers, suppliers, employees, politicians and government administrations.

Once we begin rethinking business processes around a social-enabled model we open up new ways to tackle old problems. Many of our existing business processes are engineered to deliver optimum performance based upon the capabilities of the underlying technology to achieve the business goals. In today's organizational design, the Internet is central to delivering productivity and profitability. In tomorrow's organizational design, social media will be central to delivering profitability.

Just as in the early days of the Internet, there is first-mover advantage to be had. The early-adopters have the potential to become tomorrow's S-business. Companies who are actively reviewing how social media can transform their business model will have a significant competitive advantage in rethinking their business over those that chose to wait out the passing of what they perceive to be a fad.

As Einstein's said, "the significant challenges we face cannot be resolved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

Twitter is open for business: an introduction for CEO’s

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:26:00 +0000

For the longest time I was that guy - you know, the one that said "why do people waste their time on Twitter? Who needs to read what everyone ate for breakfast or what the latest reality TV show is Gossip? This seems like a colossal waste of time and it can not have value for business. "You know - that guy. You may not be that guy / gal too - that's ok - it's ok to be skeptical.

In fact when I first wrote this blog I had only just started using Twitter so I was still learning the ropes (no doubt I was upsetting all the Twitter "whales" out there. [A Whale = tweeter with more then 10,000 followers]).

Twitter was already featured on Time magazine's cover: it's big and getting bigger. So after a few short weeks in my early days of Tweeting I became firmly of the opinion that If you are a CEO and are not on Twitter yet then you need to be - period. Twitter is absolutely the fastest way to listen and to reach your customers.

Twitter Allows anyone to post a public note short (under 140 characters) about anything. People use Twitter to share with friends what they are up to, what they are listening to, what great movie they just watched, Whether David Ortiz will get his game together, tips on getting the best from the internet, the latest headline news, breaking news as it happens, gripes / praise companies for products and services, and much, much more. And people are Tweeting about your company and its products and services.

Twitter is a world-wide real-time conversation that happens in the moment - it is dynamic: Like any conversation, it is transient Because if you are not watching you will probably miss it, but it is also immediate. And Twitter hosts millions of concurrent conversations. Comic-book superhero Superman could listen into people all over the world; Twitter gives us the power to do the same. Just like the photo-mosaics that use many small photographs to form the image of a much larger photograph, following multiple conversations from a range of people Allows us to build an impression of a bigger picture - one with a very powerful voice. We all need to tap into Superman's powers for our businesses.

Beyond this, as you begin to use Twitter you may be surprised, like I was, to find yourself making new connections with interesting people from all over the world who share similar interests to you.

With a few simple steps you will soon begin to see the potential for what Twitter can do for you and your company - and more importantly, what you can do to help others.

If you would like to learn more about Twitter @StevenBJohnsonwrote a great cover story for Time Magazine's June 15th edition in 2009 called " How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live ". You can alsosearch the Twitter discussion here #timetwitter.
For quick tips to get started see my blog post "Getting started on Twitter in just a few minutes".

Nigel (@NigelFenwick)

Getting started on Twitter in just a few minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:00:00 +0000

18 Twitter Essentials

Get a Twitter name: When you sign up for your Twitter account you will need to pick a profile name (as a CEO you may want to use your own name if you plan on tweeting about your company). TIP: setup your profile to not receive email alerts or SMS message alerts – you already receive enough email!

Get listening: Unlike the millions of normal conversations happening ever second, on Twitter you can filter out everything else and home into your preferred topic by searching. So as a business executive, the very first thing you should do after you have signed up for your Twitter account is to do a search on your brand or products and see what people are saying about them. You will be surprised. So the first thing you can use Twitter for is listening to your customers and employees. Tip: You can search for a term with and without a # prefix – adding a # prefix limits to tweets intended to be in a discussion on the topic and news on the topic (see below).

Download some good easy-to-use tools: Like any series of conversations, some of them are of no value to you (but they are often interesting nonetheless). To make things easy for yourself you should load up a simple tool to help you read through Twitter feeds. TweetDeck is the one I prefer at the moment but there are many others. Using a tool like this will make it easier to follow what’s happening in the moment. If you have a BlackBerry you can load up TwitterBerry, UberTwitter or my preferred tool, Twibble. There are also loads of Twitter aps for iPhones but since Apple hasn’t given me one yet (hint J) I don’t know these. Tip: In TweetDeck use the search function to open a column showing a stream of tweets on your brand.

Follow 20 people you know: With Twitter you can search for people by name – start with the people you most admire and would be most interested in learning what they are thinking/doing. Think about authors you’ve read recently, business execs you’ve met, how about The President of the United States. People usually write a short bio about themselves on their profile – follow people that look interesting. For some lists of people you may be interested in following, check out Mashable.com’s lists. (They also have great guides to using Twitter). While you’re at it, try following your newspaper or favorite news programs – chances are they all have Twitter feeds.
Examples of people you might consider following:
· @GuyKawasaki
· @StephenFry
· @NPR
· @cnnbrk
· @TheOnion
· @jack_welch
· @BarackObama
· @stevenbjohnson
· @mashable

TIP: you can follow anyone simply by typing “follow insertnamehere” into a Tweet. E.g. to Follow me all you would need to Tweet is “follow nigelfenwick” – you can “unfollow” in the same way.

Follow 20 people you don’t know: As you read through the Twitter stream you will see some interesting comments. Click on the name of the author to see their profile. If you like what you see follow them! I’ve suggested giving yourself a goal of 20:20 to begin with, in time you can easily add to the people you want to follow. (You may also want to follow some of the people who are following you). Tip: You can see who people you know are following by clicking on their name to see their profile and clicking the link under their bio to see who they are following.

Join the conversation: You join the conversation by Tweeting – posting a short message of 140 characters or less. You may want to Tweet about the things you are most passionate about, or about your firm and its products. The point is you can Tweet about anything. To Tweet into a conversation based upon a topic you have searched look at the existing Tweets and see if they have you keyword preceded by a “#” – it’s known as a hashtag. Think of hashtags as subject indices. E.g. #Nike is a conversation about Nike – simple really. If you include a hastag in your Tweet then your Tweet is automatically included in the conversation for anyone who is following the hashtag at that time. Tip: you can include more than one hashtag in a tweet but doing so may be considered spamming.

Give to get: Don’t worry over how many people you are following or how many are following you. As you continue to Tweet people will start to follow you (you will see the number of people following you on your Twitter homepage). The people who follow you will generally be interested in what you are Tweeting about. They key is to try and add value to the conversation much the same way as you may at a dinner party. You don’t want to be the bore who everybody wants to avoid. If you see a spammer following you just block them.

Use Links: You will notice many Tweets contain links to web pages. Because Twitter only allows 40 characters adding a full address takes up too much space. Tweetdeck allows you to shorten a URL (the web address shown in the browser bar) by copying it into the “shorten URL” field below the “What are you doing?” field. You can also use services like Bit.ly and tinyurl to do the same thing. Tip: Adding links into your Tweet allows you to point the reader to a web page or blog with more content related to your tweet.

ReTweet often: If you see a good tweet from someone you should Retweet it to your followers (copy it and prefix it with “RT @authorname” where authorname is replaced with the Twitter ID of the author. Fortunately Twetdeck makes this easy – just hover your mouse over the picture of the author and you will see an option to Retweet – Twibble does the same when you select the option menu. Tip: if you want your Tweet to be retweeted leave your Tweet about 20 characters short of the 140 max.

@Reply: If you see a message you would like to respond to, type @authorname (replace with actual name) in you Tweet and it will go to the person you intend. People responding to your tweets will show up in your responses column – try to respond to as many people as you can to build your connections – ignore spammers (or block them). Tip: If you are using TweetDeck just hover your mouse over the picture of the author and click on the reply option. If you want to see both sides of someone else’s reply search on the author’s name.

Be courteous: Tweet people they way you would expected to be Tweeted. If someone RT’s your Tweet then reply to them (@name) with a note of thanks.

Respond to DM’s: DM’s (or Direct Messages) can only be seen by the author and you. You will soon begin to get DM’s from people you are following. You don’t need to respond to the DM’s you get in response to your follow requests (many people have tools setup to automatically send a DM to anyone who follows them. Try to respond to all other DM’s. You can send a DM by prefixing your Tweet with “DM @name”.

Send DM’s: If you would like to send a private message to one of the people you are following you may be able to – click on “following” on your Twitter homepage – for each person you are following who is also following you, you have the option of sending them a Direct Message.

Don’t obsess: it’s easy to get sucked in. YOU DON’T NEED TO FOLLOW EVERY CONVERSATION. In fact that would be impossible. Set aside 15 minutes at the beginning and end of the day to see what people are saying about your company and try to respond to as many Tweets as possible.

Delegate most brand listening & be quick to respond: Delegate much of the listening about your company to someone in your company – have one or more people in marketing or PR constantly looking at what’s being said about your brand and products. Tip: As a company, be very quick to respond to Tweets that put your brand in a negative position.

Don’t delegate your tweets: Tweeting is very personal; it should reflect you, not some flunky. You should no more delegate Tweets than you would delegate your own conversation at a party. Remember, you don’t need to be tweeting all the time, just some of the time and not every tweet needs to be a gem.

Avoid being labeled as a spammer: be sure to avoid just promoting your products on twitter and not adding value to the community.

Give it time: Don’t expect to understand straight away. You just joined the party in mid-conversation so don’t expect to pick up the thread right away. Give it 14 days with some activity every day and you will begin to understand the value of Twitter.

Putting Technology Into Strategy: The Right CIO

noreply@blogger.com (Nigel Fenwick) — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:45:00 +0000

We have been hearing about the need for IT and business alignment for at least 30 years - so why is this a perennial challenge? I'm going to be a little provocative and say it's because it all depends upon the two people at the top - the CEO and the CIO - and how well these two are in sync.

CIO's often lament about not "having a seat at the table" but just as often CEO's lament at not having a CIO that's worthy of a seat at the table, instead preferring to relegate the role to reporting to the COO or CFO.

No CEO wants an overly technical CIO who does not talk in business terms. Many CIO's now understand this (and those that don't are being weeded out) and they now are often indistinguishable from other senior business executives - which is the way it should be. Many CIO's are coming to the role with an MBA in their background and plenty of business experience outside of IT. While IT execs are still one of the few roles with a complete view of the business, IT leaders are more frequently spending time running parts of the business outside of IT before stepping into the CIO role.

But have all the CEO's got the message? Do CEO's understand how important it is to have a member of the executive board who not only has responsibility for technology but also with a broad understanding of how technologies might be deployed to support and enable strategic options?

In companies where CEO's understand the potential for IT to unlock business strategy the CIO has a position as a peer on the executive leadership team. Dave Barnes, CIO at UPS, is a great example of a CIO who understands how important it is for technology decisions to be fused with business decisions and who ensures, through his leadership, that technology is part of the secret sauce that enables success at UPS.

CIO's can earn a seat at the table for sure, but it may be simpler for the CIO to move to a company where the CEO understands how important technology can be as a strategy enabler. Along the same lines CEO's might consider developing a CIO to get more business savvy but it may be far more effective to hire a new CIO who can bring the right level of strategic thinking to the role.

So the age-old question of IT and Business alignment really comes down to a question of CEO and CIO alignment - is your CIO up to the challenge?