Business

A look at the various ways online technology is affecting the conduct of business

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Social media grows small businesses, study shows

I recently heard a well-known online figure denounce the use of social media as a business strategy, insisting instead that social media will kill your brand. All you need for a successful business, he said, is a good product, solid customer service and a domain.

There are so many problems with this it’s hard to know where to begin. I could start with the plummeting visits to company destination websites. Or, I could start with the fact that many competing companies offer comparable products, making it difficult to stand out in the marketplace. As business ethicist and author Dov Seidman suggests, when it is so easy for your comeptitors to duplicate your offering, it’s no longer what you do that differentiates you in the marketplace, it’s how you do it.

But I’m not here to list the problems with “good product/good service” as the sole foundation for business success. The videographer is right as far as he goes: Without a good product and good customer support to back it up, you’re hosed. But these are merely the price of admission. How do you stand out form the rest of the pack once your excellent products and service are on store shelves?

If you’re a small business, social media is an answer. It’s not, as aforementioned individual suggests, “stupid” and if you use it, you’re not an “idiot.” That’s not my opinion. That’s the proof released in a study from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business demonstrating that the intelligent adoption of social media can yield new customers for small businesses.

That’s a good thing, since attracting new customers is the main reason small businesses get into social media. Only 6% of the businesses surveyed believed social media did their brands and businesses more harm than good, according to the study.

Most of those businesses that have engaged in social media have seen their businesses grow as a result. The study cites an example in Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and founder of a vision care center:

In order to meet the growing challenges of a tough market last year, I was forced to consider alternative options to keep my business visible. With a very small investment in social media marketing, I was able to generate new business opportunities. Our Google ranking is consistently number one for many of the phrases people use to search for eye doctors in and around my city and we have received a “bump” in terms of new visitors to the site.

On top of that, Glazier’s presence in social channels—notably his blog—has led to media interviews, positioning him as a thought leader in his field.

About half of the survey respondents expect social media will generate further profit in the next 12 months. But small businesses have produced more than just profit from their engagement. The study—sponsored by Network Solutions—also found that 77% of businesses have found ways to improve their operational efficiencies through social media and 47% have identified new products and services that lead to still more business and sales.

But wait. There’s more. Social media has provided small businesses with a highly effective channel for answering customer questions and ensuring customer satisfaction, leading to repeat business, according to the study.

Janet Wagner, director of the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, sums up the measurable, proven benefits: “Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service. Time spent on Twitter, Facebook and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.”

So what about the video talking head’s insistence that people don’t want to be friends with companies? What of his concern that money invested in a social media site could evaporate should that site goes under?

First, as the study confirms, engagement in social media isn’t about becoming friends. It’s about providing access to customers where they’re spending their time and resolving customer service issues where they arise.

As the volume of visits to company-domain websites continues to plummet, companies simply need to be where their customers and prospects are. That’s how Dr. Glazier and the other respondents to the study found new customers—not by becoming friends, but by being visible, responding to questions and building their reputations and brands so they are viewed as knowledgable and professional.

None of these companies are putting their eggs in a single basket. It’s easy to move wherever the audience goes. And Dr. Glazier, who gained greater exposure and more customers, also reduced his marketing budget by 80%.

You can opt to listen to the cynics who denounce social media as “stupid” and employed by “idiots,” or you can pay attention to the evidence and grow your business.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Personal vs. logo Twitter accounts: Must they be mutually exclusive?

A debate several years ago, during blogging’s heyday, centered on the wisdom of introducing “character blogs.” These aren’t fake blogs. They’re very transparent in their use of a fictional character as the blogger. Some experts defended the practice while others insisted that it could never be a good idea. I fell somewhere in the middle, advising against them in nearly all instances but acknowledging there might be a time when they could work.

An example would be Dwight Schrute’s blog. Schrute is the character played by Rainn Wilson on “The Office” (a show I don’t watch, by the way). Posts are written in character. None of the readers of the blog actually believe a ficitious character is actually writing it. (At least, that’s my fervent hope.)

The argument against the character blog is simple: Wouldn’t it be better if Rainn Wilson blogged?

The fact is, he does. He has Posterous blog and a Twitter account (with nearly 2 million followers). If it’s authenticity, you’re after, Wilson makes plenty of it available.

Why do these concepts need to be mutually exclusive? People don’t read Schrute’s blog (originally penned by Wilson himself but now in the hands of ghost writers) to interact with the actor. They seek a means of staying connected with a favorite TV show in between episodes. And it works.

I have frequently noted that I’d become a loyal reader of any blog under Eric Cartman’s by-line. I got the same argument in response: Wouldn’t it be better if “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone blogged? It would be good, yes, and I’d probably read it. But I’d still expect to laugh my ass off reading a Cartman blog.

The debate seems to have shifted from blogs to Twitter. A number of experts dismiss what they call “logo accounts,” tweets sent under the brand name and not associated with a specific individual. Twitter, they argue, is best when it’s personal.

My answer shouldn’t surprise you: It depends.

The vast majority of the Twitter accounts I follow are individuals because, it’s true, I’d rather hear from people than brands. But I do follow a handful of logo accounts. With those accounts, I honestly don’t give a damn who’s writing it. My motivation for following in the first place was the timely receipt of information.

CNN is one example. I follow the account because I want to get headlines fast. I’m a news junkie, always have been, and getting a tweet that notifies me of the latest events satisfies my craving. I have no interest in what reporter wrote the story or what he thinks of it. I want the 140-character news hook.

Nearly 1 million people are happy to get the tweets from CNN without that personal touch.

The Dell Outlet is another example, with nearly 1.6 million followers who want only the latest deal they can get. There is a name attached to the account—@StephanieAtDell can be reached with questions or problems. But the account itself serves just one purpose: notification of special offers on “refurbished, scratch-and-dent and previously ordered new Dell product.” Would it be a better account if it were named @StephanieDellOutlet?

I don’t think so. First, who cares? The personality just isn’t an issue if my goal is simple notification. Second, what happens when Stephanie leaves? Yes, I know the account can be renamed while maintaining its followers, but some degree of confusion would surely follow.

At Intel, two employees are identified in the profile as the handlers of the account. If those responsibilities change, the account stays the same while the profile gets updated. Why not just give each Intel tweeter their own account? In fact, several Intel employees do tweet. In fact, both of the employees currently listed on the @Intel account are identified by their Twitter handles, and the company actively encourages employees to connect with each other via their Twitter accounts. But @Intel is the official, authoritative account that serves as the corporation’s statement of record. That’s an important distinction.

And there’s no reason—none at all—that Intel can’t benefit from adopting both approaches.

When discussing Dell, the example of the dozens of employees with NameAtDell accounts is usually presented. I agree that there is huge opportunity in having real people like my friends Lionel Menchaca (@LionelAtDell) and Richard Binhammer (@RichardAtDell) building relationships and personifying the Dell brand.

But there’s no denying the power of 1.6 million people anxiously awaiting the next notice of a special deal compared to the fewer than 2,000 to 10,000 people following the average Dell employee.

One of Twitter’s strengths is its flexibility. It can be used for just about anything you can dream up for it. In mosti instances, I agree that the authentic human touch is important. But to suggest that it’s a requirement, that every branded logo account would be better if it contained a real person’s name and avatar, is a mistake. It locks organizations into an approach that may honestly not be the best way to achieve their particular goal.

And what about all the people following brand accounts? Are we to assume they just don’t get it? That every time someone reads a tweet form @Starbucks they’re thinking, “This would lock me into the brand more if I could see the face and read the name of the person behind it?” Somehow I doubt it.

Besides, a logo account is often the means by which companies take their first tentative steps into Twitter. Nervous, they set up an account to which a number of authorized employees can post. When the sky doesn’t fall on them, they screw up their courage and let a few employees open personal/business accounts.

So don’t be too fast to dismiss logo accounts on Twitter. If they serve the purpose for which they were created, there’s no reason to fall victim to the punditry that suggests they’re some kind of misguided, clueless mistake.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Easy come, easy go: Sprout “sunsets” its consumer widget service

I am seriously conflicted about how to feel about Sprout‘s decision to “sunset” its consumer widget-building software-as-a-service tool, Sprout Builder.

By “sunset,” of course, Sprout means “kill.” For a startup, they’ve certainly learned the corporate art of doubletalk.

I’ve been raving about Sprout Builder since its debut. Before Sprout Builder, dynamic, multimedia widgets were a costly undertaking requiring programming expertise. Sprout Builder made it drop-dead easy for anybody to create one and deploy it. I got myself a free account and created two for my podcast, For Immediate Release. Fans of the show were able to copy the embed code and add the widget to their own sites where any visitor could click the “play” button and hear the latest episode. All I ever had to do was log in after posting each episode and update the link to the podcast MP3 file.

Creating the widget was a simple drag-and-drop exercise, thanks to the AJAX-enabled website. The process went like this:

• Create a box to contain the widget, setting the size I wanted.
• Upload the graphics I want to use, pretty much the same way you upload a video to YouTube.
• Drag the graphics into the box.
• Drag an audio player from among the various assets Sprout Builder provides into the box.
• Link the audio player to the online location of the podcast MP3 file.
• Save.
• Publish.
• Copy the embed code and put it on the FIR site and my own blog so others can get the code for their own sites.
• (The service also let you create multiple tabs for a widget, link to video and do all manner of other very cool things.)

One version of the FIR widget was for websites. It’s a bit wider than the one I created specifically as an app for Facebook. I’ve also recommended the service to more than a few people and suggested to Dominic Jones that it would make it simple for companies to provide updated investor information.

I whined a bit when Sprout decided to start charging for the service, but opted to pay the lowest fee since these were the only two widgets I planned to create. (The fee ratchted up based on the number of widgets you wanted to maintain.) I felt I had little choice since the widgets already existed on other people’s sites.

I don’t have any idea how many people have added the widget to their sites, but I’ve seen it in at least a couple dozen places.

Then came word a few days ago that Sprout was abandoning—er, sunsetting—the service, opting to focus solely on its enterprise solution, which runs $2,999 per year. The email from Sprout CEO Carnet Williams begins:

One of the toughest decisions that a start-up faces is where to focus its efforts and resources. Sprout Builder was our first product and has always been near and dear to our hearts. More importantly, we value the customers who have gotten us to where we are today. However, we have made the hard decision to shut down the Sprout Builder subscription service to focus on our enterprise product lines.

So, on March 14, all those widgets fans and friends of FIR have put on their websites will vanish.

I said I was conflicted by Sprout’s move. On the one hand, I’m sympathetic to the fact that businesses need to make business decisions. And I certainly understand that the same outcome would have occurred had the company run out of money or if it had been acquired by another organization that wanted Sprout’s assets and talent, but not its service.

On the other hand, the company sought customers who built widgets that have been deployed to many other sites. All of us are left high and dry. Depending on what shows up where the widget is supposed to appear on those sites, we could all wind up being the target of some anger (or, at least, some eye rolling). More to the point, if I offer something like this in the future, who’s going to trust me? My credibility will suffer because Sprout didn’t keep its implicit promise to its customers.

Sprout also seems not to have opted for any actions to minimize the impact. They haven’t offerd to open-source the code for Sprout Builder. They haven’t pointed customers to an alternative. And if they tried to sell the service to somebody else, they haven’t said so.

I’ve tried finding a comparable service. Whoever staffs Widgetbox’s Twitter account provided half an answer to a question I posed, but never answered my follow-up question, even when I sent the query a second time.

Ultimately, then, I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated by the situation, the inability to find an alternative, the requirement to put the word out to bloggers and site managers who are hosting the widget, and the fact that I’m aggravated even as I recognize Sprout’s right to manage its business.

Is my aggravation justified? And if you ran Sprout, how would you have handled a decision like this?

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Undercover Boss makes for good television—and bad management

Once the Super Bowl—the most-viewed television program of all time—ended, 38.6 million people (about 36% of the Super Bowl audience) stuck around for the premiere of CBS’s new “reality” show, “Undercover Boss.”

In case you’ve just emerged from a coma and aren’t aware of the show, the premise is simple: Company leaders go undercover on the front lines of their companies to discover what it’s really like to do the heavy lifting. Surprised at what they see—from abuses to the horrific consequences of their own policies—their humanity bubbles to the surface and they initiate changes to improve the lives of front-line workers.

(As of right now, you can watch the full episode on the CBS website.

The concept isn’t particularly revolutionary. Hertz used to require its senior staff to spend time working rental counters in order to stay in touch with the customer and remind themselves of the challenges faced by employees who are the human face of the company. JetBlue’s former chairman Dave Neeleman used to work as a flight attendant from time to time for pretty much the same reason.

The wrinkle in “Undercover Boss” is that the employees with whom the executives work are in the dark as to their new colleagues’ identity.

It makes for entertaining television, and the number of tweets I saw from communicators I follow on Twitter proclaiming “Undercover Boss” their new favorite indicates that the show resonated with people who work for a living.

Of course, it “Undercover Boss” is a network reality program, which means it’s superficial and contrived. The footage CBS requires for an hourlong show isn’t going to result in a comprehensive overview of the company’s operations and it won’t reveal most of the significant issues affecting the organization’s performance. But that’s okay. It’s just entertainment. If the executive hitting the road with a camera crew really wanted to uncover the conditions that are holding the company back, this isn’t the approach he’d take.

Ultimately, though, the program could do the company more harm than good.

Organizations need committed, engaged employees. Unlike loyalty, we know a lot about what leads employees to be committed and engaged. One driver of commitment, according to research, is the certainty that pay and benefits are handled fairly and equitably throughout the organization. This belief in fairness and equity is far more important to employees than the actual size of their own paycheck when it comes to inspiring employees to deliver their best work and to put in discretionary effort on behalf of their employer.

I once worked for an organization facing a dilemma. One of their rising stars, already a member of the management team, was pregnant and had decided to resign so she could be a full-time mom. To convince her to stay, the company made arrangements to make room for a crib and a rocking chair in her office and told her she could bring her baby to work and take all the time she needed to care for the child. The executives who concoted this scheme were proud of what they viewed as their forward-thinking solution.

Of course, the news got out to hundreds and hundreds of women at lower levels who struggled with child care but didn’t have the resources that would have allowed them to quit. Their thoroughly understandable reaction: Pay and benefits at this company is unfair. We who work our asses off get no help while the company pulls out all the stops for a highly compensated director-level executive. Morale plummeted.

Waste Management, the company featured in the premiere episode of “Undercover Boss,” could suffer the same backlash. One employee, Jaclyn, is supporting an extended family in the home she’s about to lose while she does the work of three or four people at the landfill where she works. The undercover boss, Waste Management President and COO Larry O’Donnell, risks breaking cover to tell Jaclyn’s boss that something needs to be done to help. At the end of the show, when O’Donnell reveals his true identity, he sees to it that Jaclyn gets promoted from an hourly to a salaried position that pays better; the company also hires a couple people to fill the vacant positions to relieve Jaclyn’s workload.

Then there’s Walter, O’Donnell’s supervisor at a landfill. Walter has been on dialysis for years but still works hard and has a positive attitude. At the show’s conclusion, we learn that O’Donnell has made Walter a health mentor for the company.

Yes, it’s emotional and satisfying television. But Waste Management employs tens of thousands of people. Jaclyn and Walter are not the only employees struggling to pay the bills, coping with a “do more with less” mentality, or overcoming health issues just to be able to get a paycheck. But they are the only ones O’Donnell spent time with on camera and they are the only ones whose issues were addressed by the company.

And make no mistake: There are very few Waste Management employees who didn’t watch “Undercover Boss.” Every admin doing the work of three people, every employee who isn’t making enough to save their house from the current mortgage meltdown, every employee with health issues who still needs to work or lose their health insurance watched the show and wondered, “What the hell? What about me?”

And their levels of commitment and engagement went right down the portable toilets Waste Management manages at outdoor events.

Even the resolution of a time-clock issue at a recycling facility could cause bad feelings if the problem (or similar problems) aren’t addressed at other company locations.

I’m hardly alone in recognizing the problem. Time magazine’s review notes:

Sure, he handed out promotions and raises to the few people whose stories we saw. It was moving to see a woman with overwhelming family and job responsibilities get a bump up that kept her from losing her house. But is there anything reason to believe anything is better company-wide?

The time review also notes that the policies that led to some of the situations O’Donnell encountered were the result of shareholder demands for higher ROI. Should O’Donnell alter those policies to the extent that ROI suffers, it wouldn’t be the first time a company found itself a new president. (Just ask shareholders at SAP.)

I have to admit, I’m not a fan of reality shows. I’ve never watched a single episode of Survivor or American Idol. There is one reality show I do watch: chef Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares.” One of this show’s regular features is an update. The crew revisits a restaurant where Ramsay worked his magic to see if the initial success wrought by the changes stuck. It would be nice if “Undercover Boss” went back to Waste Management in a year to see if anything changed company-wide.

But don’t hold your breath. It wouldn’t be good television to show a company with lower morale as a result of the undercover experience.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Are we overvaluing real-time feedback?

Warning: Lost post follows

Back in 1995, “Snow Crash” author Neal Stephenson teamed up with his uncle George Jewsbury under the pseudonym Stephen Bury to produce a potboiler titled “Interface.” The premise: A presidential candidate suffers a stroke and has a chip implanted in his brain. The chip features a wireless connection to feedback from thousands of watch-like devices distributed to a representative sample of Americans. These devices gauge the wearer’s reaction to political speeches, allowing the candidate to make mid-course adjustments and bolster public reaction to his candidacy.

To me, this bit of speculative fiction defines the notion of a real-time feedback loop.

As the Web proceeds along its evolution into a more real-time network, a idea of a real-time feedback loop is becoming a popular topic of discussion. I attended a panel discussion on Thursday night, part of Social Media Week here in San Francisco, that focused on these loops, defining them as “a method for capturing ideas as they arise and bringing them back into the group for examination through the use of social media.” Promotional copy for the event asserted:

When an idea’s expression generates a creatively relevant or insightful response, a well-organized listening/engagement practitioner captures that flash of brilliance, and feeds it back to the originator as an enriched question, thus creating a real-time feedback loop.  In this transformational moment, a thought-leader may have a second opportunity to be heard and have their expression innovatively re-cast. 

With social media we facilitate this process ever more effectively. It is like cold fusion—when used properly, it creates more value than it consumes, lowering the carbon footprint of innovation.

The idea of real-time feedback loops have been rattling around in my brain since Thursday night’s discussion. Then it occurred to me: What better place to organize my thoughts than my blog?

Where do real-time feedback loops begin?

The Internet didn’t invent real-time feedback loops. The thunderous applause of an audience that leads to a multiple curtain calls is a real-time feedback loop; so is tepid applause followed by a rush for the exits. The Grateful Dead’s symbiotic relationship with its audience influenced the band’s live improvisational music. The crowd’s response almost always affects a standup comic’s routine.

The Net, however, has added two dimensions to real-time feedback loops: specificity and reach.

Specificity—The aggregate response of the crowd is pretty simple. They love it, they’re into it, they disagree, they don’t think it’s funny, they hate it. The Net has provided individuals a voice that allow the performer or communicator to analyze why the crowd is reacting the way it is and respond to specific observations or alter behaviors in order to influence opinions. This is nothing new: For at least a decade, probably longer, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) has provided the infrastructure for backchannels, on which conference attendees discuss presentations with one another in real time. In some instances, these backchannels have been projected on a screen where a speaker can see and react to it. Now, Twitter’s hashtag convention—along with some other tools—have made backchannels available to more people than just the geek crowd who knew how to tap into IRC.

Reach—Streaming media and Twitter have expanded the reach of events—from keynotes and panel discussions to product launches and press conferences—to people who can’t be there in person. Again, this is nothing new. The presidential State of the Union address is one example of a speech that is available to larger audiences than just those who can squeeze into the chamber of the House of Representatives. The Net’s streaming capabilities, though, have made it possible to extend this ability to speakers and events that don’t warrant mainstream television network coverage. The most recent LeWeb, for example, was streamed to an audience hungry for presentations they couldn’t see in person due to the event’s cost (expensive) and location (Paris).

Combine these factors and the significance of real-time feedback loops becomes clear. Not only can an executive speaking at a product launch hear specific feedback in real time, but the audience is now expanded to customers or stakeholders from anywhere in the world.

Generally, this feedback comes in two forms: the general chatter of individuals expressing their opinions or talking with one another and targeted questions from individuals to the speaker. Both were in play last Thursday night as people watching a live stream of the presentation (courtesy of Justin.tv) talked among themselves and posed questions for panelists that were relayed by an in-person moderator.

All eyes on real-time

It’s clear that the Net has altered and expanded realt-time feedback loops. Google has incorporated real-time results into its search results. A new category of real-time search engines has emerged sporting names such as Collecta, Topsy and Scoopler.

Prominent people are writing about the real-time web, including the authors of influential outlets like ReadWrite Web, GigaOn, Mashable and TechCrunch. Jeff Pulver, Stowe Boyd and Jeremiah Owyang have written about it. It found its way onto many 2010 prediction lists.

Protocols are being developed to support it. RealTime RSS—from RSS godfather Dave Winer—sends updates when they’re added to a site rather than waiting for an RSS reader or other utility to poll feeds to find what’s new. Google’s PubSubHubbub is similar although not necewssarily a competing standard; the two can work together. Chris Messina described PubSubHubbub’s function this way: “Let’s say (you write) a new blog post; the blogging software then pings any number of hubs with a message: ‘Hey, new content here.’ The hub says, ‘Great thanks,’ grabs the content, and then pushes the content to everyone on its ‘subscriber” list.’

These two protocols expand the opportunity for anyone to get real-time feedback. A marketing executive introducing a new product to a live audience and a virtual one watching the stream can hear back instantly from those engaged over conversational channels (Twitter and IRC, for example) as well as those writing for online news outlets and blogs.

As a result, the focus on real-time feedback has become intense. Some have proclaimed the ability to assess sentiment through real-time search a replacement for costly polling that has been the province of organizations like Harris and Gallup.

But how important is all this real-time feedback?

Is it accurate?

What you think at the instant you hear something may not be what you think after you’ve had time to digest it. Consequently, your immediate feedback may not reflect your long-term view.

This is one of the issues many speakers have with members of the audience live-tweeting their talks or with journalists live-tweeting events.

Much of the tweeting of live events is objective, though, rather than subjective. It’s more like note-taking than analysis. And even the opinions tweeted in real time have value. After all, you’re presenting in real time and people are reacting. Before, you could only see them shifting uncomfortably in their seats, or maybe actively booing or walking out. Now you can assess exactly why they’re reacting the way they are.

But in some respects, the critics have a point. Consider the widely-covered Apple iPad announcement. Information from Steve Jobs’ presentation was made available in real time through a number of channels and a lot (though certainly not all) of the real-time feedback suggested Apple had another sure-fire hit on its hands. But then came the analysis. Tech journalists, bloggers and others began producing the more thoughtful, detailed reviews after they had a chance to internalize the information, consider it, chew on it. FOr many members of the audience, digesting these views, then sharing them and discussing them with each other, led to a shift in their opinions. In the end, their early tweets didn’t reflect their ultimate views.

Is it representative?

During Thursday night’s panel, the point was made repeatedly that only about 10 percent of your audience will offer real-time feedback. And your larger audience—the customers for the product you’re launching, for instance—won’t even watch the event.

Reacting to real-time feedback, then, could mean that you’re taking action on information that isn’t representative of your customer base. In fact, those who pay attention to the live stream or real-time tweets of your message could be as far from a statistically valid sample of your population as you can get.

Is it contextual?

As I sat in the room where the panel was presented on Thursday, I was able to take in everything at once. There was the reaction of other panelists to what one panelist was saying, panel moderator Jennifer Lindsay‘s reaction, the panel’s reaction to Lindsay’s questions and the reaqction of the audience.

Those watching the stream, on the other hand, saw only what the camera allowed, and the camera was almost always focused on whoever was speaking. Those watching the stream got only a sliver of the experience had by those in attendance. IT’s even worse with those who see only the 140 characters broadcast by those who are live-tweeting the event. The reactions of those receiving these messages, then, could be based on incomplete or out-of-context information. It could conflict with the opinions of the people whose opinions you’re really trying to understand.

Because of these realities, the rush to embrace the real-time web can easily lead us to overvalue real-time feedback and make inappropriate decisions based on it.

When real-time feedback matters

Of course, recognizing the limits of real-time feedback doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paying attention to it, only that you should be cirumspect in terms of what you do with it.

In a crisis, for example, you’d be foolish to ignore commentary emerging in real time. By monitoring public sentiment, you can determine the depth of reaction to the situation and quickly develop a response strategy. Real-time feedback in response to change initiatives is equally important. People resist change for a variety of reasons and listening to feedback can help you shape your efforts to overcome that resistance.

As for other feedback—to speeches, to announcements, to events—organizations will have to develop processes to determine which feedback requires immediate internalization and action and which becomes just additional information to factor into longer-term thinking. After all, how much can you really do with real-time feedback? We have no brain-implantable chips to help us adjust our comments in real time based on listener feedback. We can’t alter the presentation in mid-course when CNN’s cameras are on you. You can’t redesign the product if it’s already on trucks heading to retail stores. In most instances, real-time feedback won’t be more important than other forms of input, including the articles, reviews, blog posts, tweets and other consumer-generated content that will trickle out over days, weeks and months in response to your company’s message. Your best bet will be to add it to the mix in order to figure out your next steps, whether it’s a version 2.0 of your product, an enhancement to a program or a response to a query or criticism.

None of which means that engaging people through social channels is less important than it was before the real-time web became a hot topic. Engaging individuals through social channels isn’t necessarily the same as participating in a real-time feedback loop. Engaging in conversations, responding to questions and participating in communities is all part of an effort to establish strong relationships that will pay off over the long term.

Nor does this suggest that the real-time web isn’t important. The instant delivery of news means organizations have less time to prepare and more information through which to sift.

But when it comes to taking immediate action on the instant feedback to your message, tread with care. You could be solving a problem that doesn’t really exist.

Related post from Tom Foremski, who was on the panel (and is in the photo above): The Real-Time Web Turns ‘Conversational’ Media Into Noise

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Post-webinar Q&A on the state and future of the communications profession

Last Tuesday, I led a Ragan Communications webinar on the state of the communications profession and where the business is headed. There wasn’t enough time to answer everyone’s question in the time allotted, so I invited questions by email and promised to post them, along with my answers, here so they’d be available to everyone who attended. Here’s what I got and how I answered (and I’d love comments that offer your own thoughts or opinions on these questions):

You suggested having SEO as a core competency.  Which books or blogs would you suggest for a more in-depth look at this subject?

A lot of blogs address search and SEO. The ones I read include…

SearchEngineLand
SearchEngineWatch
Lee Odden’s TopRank blog
Matt Cutts
Best SEO blog

I’ve only read one SEO book—SEO for Dummies (by Peter Kent),
believe it or not, but these come highly recommended:

Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day
The Art of SEO
SEO Warrior
The Truth About Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing

I’m curious why when you talked about the future roles of PR professionals you never talked about the fact we’ve really evolved into strategic advisors? We’ve worked so hard to have seats at the head of the table, instead of being an afterthought, that I was hoping to hear a greater emphasis on communicators as strategic advisors.

I certainly don’t disagree with you, but I think we achieved that status about 10 years ago, so I didn’t see any point in raising it.

Given that all of the technologies we’ve discussed are based on “pulling” content we value as individual or community, how will a technology such as realtime rss feeds be able to maintain our interests and relevance?

There are a couple things to keep in mind. First, the real-time dimension of the web will augment, not replace, the static web. What will change is the speed with which you are notified of alterations and additions to pages, along with the delivery of news.

Right now I subscribe to a few hundred RSS feeds. Once an hour, my reader polls these feeds to see if something has changed and I see a scrolling window of updates. With the real-time web, those blogs and news sites that have new content will push them out to me almost the instant they occur, so I’ll have access to the news when it’s fresh, not potentially 59 minutes old.

Remember, the only content that will be pushed to me is the SAME content I would have received through the time-delayed pull. I’ll just be getting it faster, so the relevance isn’t affected…only the speed with which I get the stuff that’s relevant to me.

Here are some good resources to help further understand the real-time web:

ReadWrite Web’s “Introduction to the Real-Time Web”
“4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web” from Mashable
ReadWrite Web’s “Ten Useful Examples of the Real-Time Web in Action”

One more great example, this from Dave Winer, the programmer behind RealTime RSS ():

What is the Real-Time Web?
Four words: It Happens Without Waiting.
Narrative: Today I wrote a piece about the Berkeley Public Library on InBerkeley.Com. I wanted to find a pointer to the library website, so I switched over to Google. Looked up Berkeley Public Library. My piece, published less than a minute earlier. was the first item. Real-time web. (True story.)

I represent a school district with a superintendent who is a lightning rod for criticism because of bold choices and decisions she is making.  I know I need to “brand” her and we are using our destination website to try to market her in a positive way.  She answers scores of critical emails a day.  What would be a way for her to communicate with our mass without having to address each email?  Our technology is very traditional.  Where should we begin to move technological as a district to get our messages out?

With email, generally speaking, there is an expectation that when I send you one, you’ll reply. There is no such expectation in social media, particularly in blogs and Twitter. With a blog, the superintendent could articulate a position, allowing interested parties to comment. They would not expect each comment to receive a reply, but she could selectively add her own thoughts to the comment thread or (as GM Vice Chair Bob Lutz does on his blog) respond to a number of comments with a follow-up post.

Some people will comment on Twitter rather than the blog itself, so it would be important to monitor those responses (not a difficult task) and incorporate them into a response strategy. She can also use Twitter to notify her audience of a new post.

This approach is one that would require the superintendent to write her own posts (or for her to disclose that her staff is working with her on the blog), but it would engender a conversation rather than a one-way push of information. Obviously, listening becomes an important part of the process.

She wouldn’t be the first school superintendent to blog. Here are just a few examples:

http://www.bryanisd.org/default.asp?pageID=199
http://blogs.tampabay.com/classroom/
http://npssuperintendent.blogspot.com/
http://superintendentsblog.blogspot.com/
http://barrysblog.jordandistrict.org/
http://www.cchs.k12.pa.us/district/blog/

Monday, January 25, 2010

Social media policies needn’t be draconian. But you do need one.

Despite a flood of recommendations to create one, there are still a lot of companies without policies that let employees know their obligations when engaging in social media. One survey from last August found that one in three lacked policies. A Deloitte survey from just a few months earlier pegged the number at half. And just this month, according to a study from Cisco Systems, only one in 5 companies have formal policies.

It doesn’t matter whose numbers are most accurate. Any way you look at it, a lot of companies are without policies.

The reasons to have a policy are just common sense. Employees shouldn’t be surprised when they find themselves in trouble for saying something that they shouldn’t have said, so it just makes sense to lay it out for them. Of course, you can leave it to a lawyer to be more explicit in explaining the rationale. That’s what Eric B. Meyer, Associate in the Labor and Employment Group of Dilworth Paxson LLP, did in an April 2009 Mashable post by HR consultant Sharlyn Lauby:

1. Employers need to be upfront with employees that they have no right to privacy with respect to social networking. “Employers reserve the right to monitor employee use of social media regardless of location (i.e. at work on a company computer or on personal time with a home computer).”
   
   
2. Employees “should be made aware that company policies on anti-harassment, ethics and company loyalty extend to all forms of communication (including social media) both inside and outside the workplace.” People need to remember that bashing your organization/boss/co-workers online can lead to consequences at work.

So I was surprised—stunned is more like it—to see Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt post an item to his blog recently that argued against social media policies.

I was stunned because Hyatt got a lot of attention in the early days of social media when he published a proposed set of employee guidelines he had drafted for Thomas Nelson, seeking comment from the blogosphere. He later posted his final policy, the one he implemented for employees.

In his post, Hyatt explains that he didn’t originally want the policy. It was a concession to attorneys who were nervous about the idea of employees participating in the blogosphere. After six years, Hyatt says he’s never had a single problem arise from his employees blogging. “I don’t think this had anything to do with the guidelines,” he writes. “I believe we would have had the exact same result without the guidelines.” Hyatt declares the outcry for companies to develop policies “a solution in search of a problem.”

Hyatt outlines five reasons you don’t need a social media policy:

• Your people can be trusted.
• Social media are just one more way to communicate.
• More rules only make your company more bureaucratic.
• Formal policies only discourage people from participating.
• You probably already have policies that govern inappropriate behavior.

I like what Michael’s saying. It was no surprise to read comments to the post in which people expressed how much they’d like to work in a company like Hyatt’s. And I’m sympathetic to all the comments that enthusiastically supported Hyatt’s point of view.

But I still think policies are required. You only have to look at the legion of tales of people losing their jobs over something they posted to know that it doesn’t hurt to your workers that they do have responsibilities when talking about the company online. Nearly 10% of companies have fired someone for misusing social media, according to a study from Proofpoint. You have to wonder how many of those employees didn’t know they were violating any rules because the company didn’t tell them what the rules were.

I have no problem calling them guidelines. I remember working on an intranet project back in 1994 when the developer we hired, Matisse Enzer, said he preferred “Tools, not rules.” Guidelines help people know what’s expected of them without the oppressive weight of rules.

I agree with Hyatt that most companies already have policies that govern inappropriate behavior. But most employees at home on Facebook aren’t thinking about the rules that they equate with the workplace. Even if your policy (or guideline) just says, “All company policies that address inapporpriate behavior apply to your conduct online.”

I don’t believe having policies indicates distrust of employees. If you trust employees to do the right thing, sometimes it’s important to let them know how the organization defines “the right thing.” There’s a difference between trust employees and positioning them to fail by not providing adequate information. (Remember the whole “empowerment” business mantra?)

Hot on the heels of Hyatt’s post (which is definitely worth reading, along with the comments) comes an article from Inc. magazine, “Do you need a social media policy? According to the article:

When it comes to your social media policies, every company is going to differ on what type of engagement is acceptable…Any company that has a social media presence these days can benefit from having some type of policy in place, but…it need only include what is necessary to protect the company legally and financially.

The fact that every company will differ on what’s accepteable is the perfect reason to articulate what that is. Call it a policy. Call it a guideline. Call it effective communication about social media with employees.

Whatever you call it, don’t leave employees wondering. That could be more of a discouragement than letting them know what’s what.