Conversation Agent

21 Secrets Your Customer Service Reps Would Never Share (until now)

2009-11-09T07:00:00-05:00

Being constantly in contact with people who call or write because they have a problem can be a stressful job. When I gave customer service reps the chance to speak up about their experiences, they talked without inhibitions. Customer conversations can highlight funny moments - and embarrassing ones.

Here’s the skinny:

1. We are very impatient and often expect a resolution before we’ve given them a chance to find out what the problem is. Pity they don’t read minds.

2. We don’t listen very well. Repeating the same stuff a couple of times does not seem to work either.

3. We expect that all will be solved in a nanosecond, even when the problem is complex and beyond our comprehension.

4. Despite all this talk about conversation, we’re still pretty much tuned into one channel: ours.

5. We can be very inappropriate about the details we share on ourselves. Need to know is a beautiful thing.

6. The most discouraging thing is when we don’t believe them or trust them.

7. We sometimes call for really trivial things that we could deal with easily if we took the time. Still, we don’t want to.

8. A forum or online support site often contains more information than any one rep can give us. We call anyway.

9. We don’t let them diagnose the problem. That makes the solution a mismatch if we were wrong.

10. It is sometimes easier to give us advice and point us in a direction than it is to explain that all is well, there is no problem.

11. We have unrealistic expectations of what customer service reps can do for us besides helping with the problem that was the reason for our call.

12. The potential for a shouting match or a rude line is always looming in the background. That makes for an uneasy conversation. They know it, you know it.

13. We all think that all customer service reps know everything there is to know about our use of their services. Depending on the company’s diagnostic tools in place, they may not.

14. The best customer service reps are those who are not afraid to say “I don’t know” and set out to find out. We don’t think so.

15. At least one third of all answers we get are coaxed out from sheer insistence. If we were more patient, we’d get better information.

16. Although they do not cry on the phone with you, they can have some pretty depressing days because of you.

17. We are often already biased towards them because of a past experience with the company they work for.

18. We sometimes expect they solve problems that relate to the products or services offered by other companies.

19. We hang up a lot.

20. They rely on management to make the changes required. We often put them between a rock and a hard place.

21. They know that we will make the time to take customer satisfaction surveys to say how bad the service was, but not take the time to explain how good it was.

On the other hand, we could easily modify this list to make it about them. What does that say about us?

[reposted from a post I authored for FastCompany.com]

[image by Caro's Lines]

Are Twitter Lists a New MSM-Type Content Channel?

2009-11-08T07:00:00-05:00

Twitter is evolving from simple chatter to themed content distribution. The jump was made with the roll out of a new feature - Twitter lists. News media organizations have been fairly fast to utilize this feature. Most notably, the New York Times dedicates a screen on thier site to lists [hat tip Zee]:

The power of Twitter is in the people you follow. Let @nytimes lead you to the best of Twitter: follow our lists or build your own. Suggestions? twitterlists@nytimes.com

The Huffington Post seems pretty well on top of the content it covers with its lists. Other news businesses have started their own lists as well. Among them:

CNN - not as comprehensive as I would have thought, but they have many Twitter streams
NBC news - it's a bit meager, with only two lists
Wall Street Journal - validates its paid premium content brand
The Economist - plenty of room for content with international flavor
Time magazine - a good start and an opportunity to truly provide a curated media experience
BBC - it's very intriguing that they would begin with just BBC channels
npr news - a bit broader than just npr people
Newsweek - not impressive given the magnitude of their follower count
USAToday - they use lists to group resources of important conversations happening right now
The Washington Post - one list
The LA Times - excellent example of making useful lists and following user lists, highest so far
Financial Times - plenty of room for a mor creative use of financial content curation
The San Francisco Chronicle - demonstrates what's important to readers
Slate - focused on its own staff
Wired - ditto, about the magazine and staff
Fast Company - I was expecting a little better from this magazine, but lists are still so new
Inc. magazine - ditto, seems to be about itself
Atlantic Online - good use of thematic content
Mashable - not surpising that they would display a nice variety
TechCrunch - signal what's hot so far
Ars Technica - one so far

There's plenty of opportunity for two publications I track, Business Week and the Philadelphia Inquirer, to create lists, yet. Check out your favorite magazine, local newspaper or news company and see what lists they track, if any. That could be a good indication of direction - and brand.

I do believe in the link economy and, with lists, Twitter has inaugurated a whole new way for all of us, not just news organizations, to create thematic content channels. I'm with Andy Carvin, lists are worth exploring more. Plus, you can use a handy List Widget to make the content portable. Did you make any lists, yet? Have they been useful to you?

You can find my lists here.

Is Your Conversation About Scarcity or Abundance?

2009-11-06T07:00:00-05:00

You need to decide now, because your results depend on the answer.

I have a problem with scarcity mindset - it's myopic, unnecessarily restrictive, and in fact destructive for you and your organization. Scarcity presupposes that you're the center of the universe, that the work box is the only box available for packing a life, and it doesn't have a good ending. It's a very lonely ending.

Yesterday we talked about the difference between getting recognition for its own sake and getting the idea done. The latter is in the abundance camp. Which incidentally is the same place or context where weak ties become awesome connections that carry a message across the ripples of resonance and feedback.

Dave Winer wrote a lovely post two days ago about letting the world change you. In the lost art of letter writing, we reviewed why the words you use are so important.

Language is one of the most sophisticated cognitive skills we possess as humans. It expresses and shapes thought. It contains an implicit classification of experience and is designed to change the neural pathways to the brain, thus changing minds. The changing patterns occur through the use of sounds and symbols. Think about metaphors. A metaphor finds connections between things in the mind and new connections enable the mind to see the world differently.

Thus communication may seem like a miracle. And believe me, many times I have marveled at that. Two or more beings engaged in changing each other's brains. It would be nice if we entered conversations open to changing our mind.

There are many neurolinguistics studies conducted on how the mind creates language. Few follow the opposite direction - figuring out how language changes minds. By language I intend the deliberate and considerate use of terminology and phraseology to communicate intent, share vision, engage in thought, and inspire action.

Think how important this is. Let's deconstruct in favor of abundance:

communicate intent
share vision
engage in thought
inspire action

Do you think you can do that without falling into the scarcity trap?

Participation and Getting Ideas Done

2009-11-05T07:00:00-05:00

[Maestro Salieri and the priest, from Amadeus, 2:35]

This week, so far, we talked about setting up listening posts to serve customers better as first line of response and to be proactive, building a framework to develop valuable content to deliver as a service, and measurement. Today we focus on participation. That mix of attention, time, interaction, with a sprinkle of human thrown into it that makes relationships start and grow.

What did you see in the movie clip above? [hat tip Rohit Barghava for leading me to Amadeus]

Antonio Salieri was the most famous composer in Europe. He wrote 40 Operas alone. In an intimate conversation with a Priest we find out that the only music the cleric can recall having heard is not his. The Priest can recall a simple, playful tune, one composed by Mozart (Amadeus), Salieri's nemesis. How could that be?

Mozart didn't choose to be a genius and in fact he didn't even look the part. In the movie he's depicted as an irresponsible, fun loving, spontaneous... human. Salieri, on the other hand, is all perfection, expects the best because he followed all the rules. There's something else.

It's the interaction with people - and in the movie wine, it seems - that makes the music inspired, and popular. If Salieri was able to listen to real music, and to distinguish inspired notes and passages, Mozart could make it work so it would not just communicate, but connect. Every fiber of his being participated to getting what was in his head - the idea - done.

The work wasn't any easier, it was just distributed differently and coming from a different place. Compare in the movie - Salieri wanting to become the best for himself, to get recognition; Mozart wanting to get his music and story out, told, shared with the public.

Some are musing today that social media should be its own department. While I agree that resources and time should be allocated to exploring your level of participation, I disagree that it should have its own label and silo.We shouldn't be creating a separate practice. We should enroll and practice across the organization.

In fact, I disagree with the current silos in marketing departments overall. Why? Because marketing is changing, and skills/experience now need to go across relationship building and positioning, online and off line.

As IBM and other companies do for PR and advertising, it's time to merge the strategy of all the communications and conversations functions in an organization so they build value for customers around market insights, agile development, testing, and measurement.

Separate line items in a tactical project management sheet and turfs with little or no collaboration will hold a company much further back in this environment. This begs the question of how the organization will restructure how people get credit for meeting goals, perhaps a topic for another post.

Marketing today is adaptive. How well are you trained in following all the rules of marketing?

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Interesting anniversary: this is my 1,001 post.

Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0

2009-11-04T07:00:00-05:00

“In God we trust, all others bring data.” — Framed plaque from the ‘60s at NASA’s Johnson Space Center

When it comes to deep smarts, curiosity, with practical advice and sprinkled with a healthy dose of good humor, I cannot think of anyone more qualified than Avinash Kaushik. He's not only a real dynamo in all matters analytics, he's also a genuinely passionate, interesting, and kind person. Think that he wrote the answers to our conversation while his hand was healing from an injury because he had made a promise.

Every single one of his posts - and now I can say the same for the books - is packed with step by step actionable insights that will make you think about online accountability as an art. I don't know about you, but he's changed the game of analytics for me - I now have a totally fresh appreciation for what you can do with data.

As he describes on his site, he is the Analytics Evangelist for Google (Data driven decision making uncomplexified), the Co-Founder and Chief Education Officer for Market Motive (Online marketing education, on demand, high quality, fresh, every day!), and the author of the recently published book Web Analytics 2.0 and the best selling book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day (100% of the proceeds from both books are donated to The Smile Train, Doctors Without Borders and Ekal Vidyalaya.)

He also sits on several Boards of Advisers and has an overall amazing attitude and approach to life. I'm very pleased that he would agree to share more of himself with us here.

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I just received your latest book, thank you for sending it. The subtitle of Analytics 2.0 is the art of online accountability and science of customer centricity - the switch in how people would logically see the two was not lost on me. Tell me more about how you got there?

Avinash: The subtle message there is that one should be open to being surprised. I am astonished at how much confidence people put into quantitative data (clicks, page views, conversions etc). After spending so much time in this world I have found it more art and fragile interpretation to find insights that can be actioned.

And at the same time I am supremely impressed with how quantitative the world UCD/HCI is. Surveys, follow me homes, usability testing, experimentation.... all things we think of as qualitative, and hence 'soft and fuzzy", analysis.

I am hoping to make you (readers) question their fundamental beliefs, starting with the book's cover. : )

From reading your blog I've learned that data-driven doesn't need to be boring, it can indeed be beautiful. And it doesn't need to be complicated, either. Why then so many neglect to implement analytics?

Avinash: OMG! Data boring! NO!!

It's sexy and kick butt (cue in visual of Angelina Jolie! :)).

As to the last part... I think there is a profound under-appreciation of the impact of the web on our businesses. Hence my deep stress on Multiple Outcomes Analysis (see pic).

I spend a lot of time in the book covering measurement of outcomes and computing not just "conversion rate" and revenue but rather Economic Value. For lead gen sites, for non profit sites, for content only sites, for.... all kinds of sites.

Once you do economic value you will get more love from your management than you could handle for analytics. : )

Isn't niche and focused communication the best way to go with social media overall? What applications are possible at this point and what would you put on the wish for list?

Avinash: For the longest time it was really hard to find your audience, large or small, and harder still to engage with them at scale. So we used silly things like simple generic demographic profiling and segmentation.

The web in 2009 changes that. You can actually, quite easily, find audiences most relevant for you and me and our products and services and interests. What this means is that you can finally participate in authentic conversations. By being remarkable there you have massively more influence then you ever could through "shout channels" (tv, radio, magazines etc).

That's my answer to how to think of and go about executing one's social media strategy. Go where your audience is, be it in forums or blogs or twitter or just plain old web sites, and then be unselfish and remarkable (worth remarking about - credit for that to Seth Godin).

I know that many who are making a difference today are there because they want to change the world. In a way, the tools have made it easier to spread the word, but it is really about intent. When did you first realize you were going to step forward to help transform business through analytics? Was there a specific event or conversation that inspired you?

Avinash: Let me do the last part first....

Andy Beal saw me speak at a conference in early 2006 and came up to me and said something like "wow that was a great talk, you are so passionate about it, you should start a blog". He had a instrumental role in pushing me into blogging, for which I'll be forever grateful.

Once I decided to start a blog I immersed myself in the ecosystem and read a ton of blogs for a couple months to figure out what I should do (if at all) and how to do it. One piece of guidance from Guy Kawasaki became central to my strategy:

"Eat like a bird, and poop like an elephant.” – Japanese Quote.

Of course my blog's name Occam's Razor and that principle is a reflection of my mental model, approach, philosophy.

So that's the inspiration part.

I got 3 or 4 comments on my first couple posts, astonishing me. Since the average comments per post is zero I think I realized the power of the medium and the value of sharing. The average comments per post is now something like 40, because I have spent and inordinate amount trying to engage people and developing a certain writing style etc etc. I am magnificently grateful for the engagement I am privileged to have.

But the power of the platform and these tools is best exemplified by my books. I did not want to make money on my blog so my first book, written when I was at my last job, came along my wife and I decided to donate all our proceeds to charity. In 2 yrs of sales this small book about a niche topic called web analytics has raised $70,000 ($35k each to Doctors Without Borders and The Smile Train). To me that is the power of the platform.

Who do you consider part of your team? If you were to share one word of advice with them, what would it be?

Avinash: A couple different groups, as I wear so many hats.

The engineers I am lucky enough to work with at Google and a couple other companies where I am on the Advisory Board. They provide me with an incredible channel to share all these "wild and crazy" things that will make the data world better. They bring some of it to millions of people. I love them!

My blog's audience. I have written 423k words on my blog, they have written 600k! They are all a key part of my team (and my motivation).

My beloved wife Jennie is perhaps the supreme member to my team. She manages my career, life, kids, and all that I hold dear.

If I share just one bit of advice will all three of my team members?

Simplify complexity.

***

Buy the book, actually buy both. Give copies to your team.

Disclosures: I truly do like Avinash and yes, he did send me a complimentary copy of Web Analytics 2.0.

Developing a B2B Content Strategy: Start with Who

2009-11-03T07:00:00-05:00

Businesses that want to create long-term sustainable growth will be increasingly moving towards connected company status. That is the place where being social benefits the business by providing insights, strengthening relationships with partners and customers, and building and connecting a community with common grounds and needs.

In many organizations, the listening post resides within the marketing group. As we discussed yesterday here and on Twitter, customer service should co-own the space and collaborate to develop big ears during customer conversations and interactions. In many B2B organizations, the customer support role is much expanded and works hand in hand with operations.

Why are there so few B2B social media case studies?

Because for B2B companies to succeed in becoming social and gaining benefits from doing so, it is imperative for the whole business to join in. It's not about selling more widgets, it's about making an organizations that delivers services the customer wants and needs. Product development, alongside operations - how a solution is born and how it's delivered - and what we learn in between need to be part of it.

In today's competitive environment, the best way to stay ahead is to adapt and evolve, using your experience and processes to serve customers better, more efficiently, and where it fits them like a glove.

If your audience is made of engineers who grew up building systems for the Army, your content needs to match their needs. The only way to do that is for engineers and development professionals to author and socialize it. B2B organizations also have a longer sales cycle and usually a bigger decision-making team. You'll be well served by involving their peers in your company.

Thus, in addition to knowing why, which we touched upon, your B2B content strategy starts with who.

What's the role of marketing?

As a B2B marketer you get to focus on what makes sense for your brand, the context that you should be looking to build, find, and curate for the organization. In thinking again about new media equity only two days ago, I cannot help but agree with what Ben Malbon puts forth in his post on adaptive brand marketing.

put customer intelligence at the center - this needs to be holistic learning, not just quantitative research. That's the beauty of interaction.

be the catalyst for change in the organization - this is where marketing understands what creates demand from community building, and what engagement results from editorial impact to have the right calls to action - internally and externally. We'll expand on this concept in another post.

become a connected company - it's not just a difference in semantics, Malbon/Andersen call it networked, Forrester in its new report cited calls it federated. To me it's about being connected. Maybe this is a place where HR wants to join the conversation. Connected is at all levels, in different ways. We'll take a look at what that means internally in another post.

think of brand leaders as creators, facilitators, and curators - call me biased, or maybe I just love my work so much that I see the role as expanded. Planning, integrating and building upon participation are also content. The key here will be sustaining the online presence over time. By online I mean active on whichever platform evolves.

reframe investment time lines - I like this thought a lot. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes given the fluidity of business and the fact that not all opportunities have equal weight. If brand is the infrastructure upon which you build applications like sales and product development, then conversations around a specific solution can be investment in one stock. Think with me about agile measurement with Tim Malbon.

learn by doing and fail fast - practical person that I am, I crack a book open and I'm already looking at how the idea tests in my work. This point will make many perfectionists bristle. Engineers will not like it one bit. That's why it's the privilege of the marketing team to experience it first hand. Personally, I think we can learn more from failure than from success.

This means that in order to develop a B2B content strategy, the marketer also becomes coach and counselor within the business.

There are plenty of reason why this won't work for a long time - hence the lack of B2B (real) social case studies. Edward Boches nails the obvious ones and I'll let the agency side make the comment for me - politics, budgets, questions about who gets credit abound, he writes. As he continues, he lists a few thoughts that make a lot of sense to me, so much so that I inserted why:

1. Bake the brand story into the product - we buy on the basis of emotional connection. Yes, even in B2B and with large budgets. We rationalize later with fact. The decision is from connection.

2. Embrace the consumer’s desire to participate and allow them to co-create - this can be very simple, listen for the second answer. If you're working on a testimonial or case history, find their story and tell it so they can share it with their teams and peers.

3. Forget about one size fits all: watch Gladwell on Ted.com re spaghetti sauce and realize that customization and versions are the way to go - service is all about custom attention. You're not redoing stuff, you're doing it so it wires with the person/company.

4. Understand that one of your most important products is your content that lives in the social media space - real engagement in fact often begins when you're gone, when you let it go.

5. Build more UX into everything, not just websites, but every encounter with the brand - not just Company online properties, or even sites for that matter, but every single intraction with someone or something representing your brand.

6. Understand your consumer’s relationship not only with you and your category but with media and content and let that inform how you engage - context is very important to understand when thinking about the value your deliver.

There's a role for the Conversation Agent in all this. Agencies will also need to come to the table as marketing partners when they've learned to understand the client's business. Partners and not proxies. The connected company is involved and evolved with the marketplace directly - it intends to create with it.

Are you developing a B2B content strategy? What's working and what can use a tune up? How are you going about identifying and enrolling a cross functional team?

[image by Pieter Musterd]

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Additional resources:

Writing Content for the Buyer's Decision Journey

Top Ten Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Fails

How Big Brands can Start Testing Social Media

Twitter, Customer Service, and Good Brand Management

2009-11-02T07:00:00-05:00

If monitoring conversations and knowing what you're listening for is the first ingredient in good online best practices, knowing when and how to respond is much more than good etiquette. It's become an integral aspect of brand management and can mean the difference between a flop - or worse, a crisis - and a deposit in your company's reputation bank.

It's easy to dismiss Twitter's usefulness as a tool.

That is until you figure out that on Twitter you can find mentions of your brand and you can actually connect with customers directly and provide a first line of response. Chances are, that in 140 characters, you won't be able to do much more. But don't underestimate the importance of that public gesture.

How to use Twitter for customer service

Many companies started integrating customer service on Twitter. This list I created is purely for customer service, but there is another important aspect of customer support, which is why in many companies there is a community evangelist role carved out.

There are also individuals who opted into community builder roles - some in official capacity for an organization, some because that's who they are. Go ahead and promote your many customer support people on Twitter by creating a list.

Ben Parr at Mashable wrote a handy post about using Twitter for customer service. As he says, it's ideal because:

You can respond to a customer question or complaint immediately after seeing it without needing to have all the facts - take the problem solving part off line. Monitoring and responding is lightening fast, and right now it will cast you in a good light, especially if your normal customer service channels are in need of repair.

You can be proactive and let your customers know where to find you - I started a list linked above, let me know if you'd like me to add your company's team to it. This will ease some anxiety over which number to call or being on hold. Provided you don't take two days to get back to them as I described here.

You provide the added bonus of good service/product stewardship, which in turns creates a nice halo for your company and brands. Let's face it, Twitter is the most social of social networks. People have the opportunity to humanize the brand experience over time by being helpful and personal. I do wonder if companies are developing Twitter scripts?

How do you track tweets?

There are many tools you can use to track customer conversations on Twitter. For free, you could:

Search for key terms or your company name with Twitter Search
Build a Yahoo! Pipe (watch the how to video here) - here's an example of how Salesforce.com uses the tool
Get email Twitter alerts with TweetBeep
Use TweetScan to search for key words combined with a user
Test drive monitoring up to three key words in real time with Monitter
Distinguish positive from negative tweets with Twitrrater
Look up who's following you in TwitterKarma
Try Twittervision to see the global nature of this tool
Look up daily top influencers on Twitterholic - expect to see more tools on influence
Find and filter content by influence with PostRank
Find out how many times a term was mentioned with TweetVolume
Set up Google Alerts for the terms you want to monitor - you can route them to your email, or your RSS reader
Use Social Mention for alerts on social media sites
Track and rank the URLs people are talking about on with Twitturl
Use Hashtags to learn what's happening right now
Find a list of regular chats on Twitter

As it's the case with tools, your objectives will determine which ones are most useful to you.

Online monitoring is broader than Twitter. WebWorkerDaily pulled together some advice on how to make a monitoring dashboard to track online conversations. As Dawn explains, the real magic is in the content you're monitoring - your strategy and goals should come first.

For a fee, and for more than just monitoring in many instances, you can utilize:

Radian6 - which allows you to set up a dashboard to monitor mentions across sites and tools and shows you brand sentiment, along with location, and integrating with WebTrends and SalesForce.com
RapLeaf - helps you understand your customers better, simplify online media planning, enhance customer databases, and manage fraud risk
BrandsEye - for monitoring online reputation and tracking negative sentiment
ScoutLabs - web-based application that tracks social media and provides you with data on sentiment, trend spotting, buzz trend, share of voice, email alerts, customer rants and raves, as well as a platform to coordinate your response, assign tasks, add comments, and share product and marketing ideas
Cymfony - collects all forms of content, organizes and categorizes it, and provides a powerful but easy-to-use interface with data visualization and discovery features that allow you to gain valuable insights from selected discussion most relevant to your brand
BuzzLogic - technology platform identifies and organizes the conversation universe, combining both conversation-topic and audience to help brands reach more than 44 million users who are passionate on everything from the latest tech craze and cloud computing to parenthood and politics
Spiral16 - for monitoring, collecting, and measuring the social media conversations, semantic analysis, conversation sentiment, and visualizing data in a 3D mapping so you can better understand the hubs of influencers (based on linkages) and how a message is potentially being spread

Customer service = brand management in social media

More and more companies are discovering the power of being first line responders on Twitter for customer issues. Microsoft just announced that it is joining Twitter with their own support channel. There are many examples of great brand management through customer service. Matt has aggregated a few.

And if you think that one customer with two followers may not be all that important, think again. Analysts and journalists are increasingly participating actively and may pick up on a random conversation - all of a sudden, you could have what we've come to call the Streisand Effect.

So don't jump to rash conclusion. Instead, jump on Twitter and join the customer conversation. Even if your customers are not there yet, chances are that those who talk about your company and brand on Twitter will come up in search - as in search engine search [hat tip Louis Gray].

Plus, you could start from a less than ideal position and turn things around to the point that your company develops a well though-out Twitter strategy, complete with customer segmented offers like Dell did.

[image by Neuro Productions Twitter Browser]

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You're on Twitter, now What?

Twitter: Macro Insights from Micro Interactions

Business Uses for Twitter

More Thoughts on Your New Media Equity

2009-11-01T07:00:00-05:00

As I wrote in a post here back in May, the sphere of control you have over your digital assets (on the left) is impacted by the degrees of interaction you and your content are likely to have in social networks and as the content is exposed to social consumption (on the right). When I was talking about the value of social conversation and interest for news companies I was focusing on your story.

Looking at the diagram I drew back then, I can see how the statement is valid for news organizations as well. New media companies are borrowing a page out of the social activation concept. The Huffington Post integrated Google Connect on the site recently. Look for the blue tab with the bubble that says "connect to social news".

One only needs to take a look at the sentiment captured on Twitter after the redesign of CNN.com to notice that the lack of a comments or participation option is the most common reason why people don't like it. Contrast - CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News with Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post - who's more focused?

Or contrast CNN.com redesign with Smashing Magazine redesign - Smashing Magazine may look a bit different at first glance, but keeping the general structure intact was very important to us. After all, we don’t want to confuse our readers; rather, we want their experience to improve. What's included with the redesign? A social network.

More and more online publications are also giving you the opportunity to customize your experience.

Social Activation

Publishing tools, syndication and search are the key enablers and the nodes for new media equity.

One option, as we discussed a few months back, is to publish content and news yourself and exposing it directly to partners, customers, and the press alike. As your community of employees, peers, and customers interacts with it, they may share and build upon it - while you facilitate, listen, and participate to the conversation.

Social activation builds your new media equity. It looks like news media organizations are catching up on that and building or integrating ways to achieve social activation and build new media equity connecting news with people.

The ultimate community of course, is the group who can stay on top of great and well written news of interest it cannot find anywhere else. It will do that for a fee. I'm talking about the readers of the Wall Street Journal online. The WSJ.com is the only media publication that made the Digital Hot List 2009. From behind the paid wall, its audience spiked by nearly 45 percent (ComScore) - and the newspaper's circulation is now the biggest in the country.

Content within context - in this case financial news - trumps direct social activation in revenue. Note that in the case of the WSJ, the paper never wavered on its business model and clearly continues to deliver value for readers continue to pay for the privilege. Do people talk about the WSJ? They do, and the Journal even hosts a community site. Value comes first in building equity.

Is social activation the only hope for other news organization that want to build new media equity? Social activation engages after you buid value - this is what many news organizations will need to figure out to build new media equity.

What about your new media equity? Are you allocating time and thinking towards building value in your product or service?

What the Connected Company Looks Like

2009-10-30T07:00:00-04:00

The Internet has changed the scale at which we can observe and participate in activities that express or pay off our own human nature - that of being social. As technologies get cheaper and more ubiquitous, more people can join in, independently of social status, geography, age, etc. Before the Internet, businesses were the center of our active social lives - especially in the last ten years, and for most, not all, of us.

Businesses replaced the local community as the center of our attention - and time spent - but often only for that. Businesses, as represented by companies, have become the most efficient possible without the injection or re-insertion of the human voice in them. Many business have done such a good job of exploiting the resources at their disposal - human or otherwise - that they have, in fact, become useless.

According to Umair Haque, socially useless business is the status quo — and the status quo says: "You don't matter. Our bottom line is the only thing that matters." The construct of business, the very fabric of value in the context of business, needs a radical tune up. Tom Peters has been saying this for a long time - it's not old until it's done.

The connected company is not merely the company that lets its employees get on social media sites, although that might be part of what the change needs. The connected company is one that understand the importance and value of enabling its employees and customers - the people in its community - to be all they can/want to be, to paraphrase an old ad line.

It's true, connecting ideas and people is where it's at. There may be only 150, well, yes, for some of us even up to 400 connections, we can manage to pay attention to, nurture, and care for closely. For the rest, we scale by team and networks.

Many friends and colleagues have been crystallizing their thoughts towards this very same point in our collective journey and work. There have been many conversations over the years about what that connected company looks like. When I started reading Olivier Blanchard's post earlier today, I knew that my take or part of the conversation warranted a post of its own. Building on his points and those of others.

The Character and Make of the Connected Company

(1.) Joining a connected company happens by network, attraction, and invitation.

This is valid at all levels. Value creation needs to be something everyone understands. Umair Haque talks about thick value, Auren Hoffman describes it as A-player behavior. Kathy Sierra talks about helping people kick ass. In addition to respect and trust, I add love. Love is greater than passion - it includes empathy, a rare quality that is missing in many with poor emotional intelligence. It's time to get past the ivy league culture of scarcity and exclusion and join the age of abundance in inclusion.

(2.) Working in a connected company means learning, growing, and giving growth to others.

It happens by design, by example, and by practice. It doesn't matter which department or job function you're in, it's about education, training, engagement and interaction (mix of thinking and doing). Walk into any office of any company today and what do you see? Dis-connected people trying to keep up with email - or staring at a screen rather that looking you in the eye. Why? People do not feel they can contribute and make a difference.

(3.) Collaborating in a connected company means using the best tools for the best results. Period.

A connected company hires trusted people and respects them. There is no need to block social media, lock down phones, or expect people to show up physically in a specific place at a specific time. There's room for connected (or creative) cities, but that is beyond the scope of this post. Places are important, but as part of the journey and not the destination. One of the best tools for collaboration is conversation. Choose face to face time over face time. Get over that.

(4.) Implementing in a connected company means creating, enabling, and engaging.

Two words - kick ass, not ass hole. Pardon the French, but there is no room for ass holes in the connected company. You know them, we don't need to go into painful detail about them - it's about them everywhere but in this post. This post is about you. Attitude and approach take us to delighting in helping others succeed. I like the idea of the IT department becoming the TE (technology enablement) department, as Olivier puts it.

(5.) Facilitating conversations inside and outside the connected company means designing business through interactions.

Which means these professional business designers don't need no stinking analyst to tell them what to do. They are personally connected with the people they serve and those they collaborate with in designing, prototyping, testing, and evaluating value. They focus on creating and expanding, rather than extracting, leveraging, or allocating. Process being more important than outcome here. As Olivier writes, these folks are highly connected, well traveled, intellectually curious, passionate leaders.

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There is much more to say on the topic. This is as much about stopping the insanity on the never ending bureaucracies and belly gazing activities organizations procrastinate with, as it is about agreeing to roll up the collective sleeves on the stuff that matters (hint, it's not the PowerPoint slides).

Things like partnering with like-minds, integrating external collaborators, building teams of practice - all in service to value expressed as the business of the connected company. I've been saying this for a long time - people are looking for a company that will join them. This is the connected company.

Character is what you can control. It's what determines your internal thermometer and calibration. It's not about alignment, it's about connection. You can control character. Character is what gives you reputation. Reputation builds trust and credibility through value exchanges.

Connected doesn't mean number of fans, friends, and followers. It's not a quantity thing. It's a depth thing. Many organizations take the heart out of you. The people who want a connected company put it back. They care. Do you? We're talking about the future - our future.

[images: the Internet Splat Map, with Ann Handley, DJ Waldow, detail with Dave Alston, Marcel LeBrun]