A call to address the need for Social Media / Online Literacy

Are you a parent? Would you let your son / daughter figure out how to cross a busy intersection on their own in their very first try? Or would you instead spend years holding them by the hand and pointing to them the all they have to watch for before crossing?

However it seems that when it comes to online behavior, and in particular Social Media, we are ready to let people figure it out on their own…

I am not advocating for you to live a life of “online abstinence”, but when online activity affects your chances to get a dream job, the amount of credit you may obtain or your safety I think it is important and fair for all of us to be in a position to make educated choices.

Do you understand the implications of searching, information you share through social networks, and browsing sites for products? Are you aware of the information you are leaving behind and how it is being used? The detail and richness of this data, as well as the focus and attention companies place on capturing, analyzing and deriving insights from it will only grow with time.

How do you think we should address this need? Not every household has someone capable of educating others; and even those that do may be challenged keeping up with the ever changing landscape.. Should it be handled in the schools? Is this even feasible in times when things as important and basic as Art and Music are going out the window due to budgetary limitations?

I propose that those industries that benefit from the data have in their best interest to help the public with this education need; I am one of them and I truly believe addressing this proactively and transparently can only benefit us.. Let’s not wait to be regulated

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

In this I believe (repost)

Today I stumbled into one of my old posts (April 2008); it remains relevant and true and I think is worth surfacing it again:

• Social Media (Social CRM?) will change the way we do business, because of the new level of understanding of the relations with customers and among customers, and the opportunity for collaboration with customers and among them.

• After some time, those that really believe and execute in Social Media as a long term and strategic Customer Relationship medium will be easily distinguished from those that are jumping on the wagon because it is the latest buzzword and they need to tick the checklist.

• Frank, unvarnished and prompt engagement will be preferred by all of us customers; and that all those companies that choose to not go this route will find themselves talking to the echo chamber.

• Employees that have the opportunity to engage with customers through Social Media will find a mission; and they will be so ignited and energized by this mission that any competitor that does not provide this opportunity will stand no chance.

What do you believe in? (Or think about the above?)

Filiberto Selvas

Filiberto.Selvas@Gmail.Com

Highlighting a few golden nuggets out of the "Why Influence Mining is the Next Gold Rush" post

Disclaimer: the points below are mostly curation and very little original content, for the original post please go here:

Why Influence Mining is the Next Gold Rush

By Jay Baer (http://twitter.com/jaybaer)

The article has quite a few golden nuggets; I want to surface a couple of those below (paraphrasing)

• Audience and Influence are two different things.
• As in many other things influence is not new; what is new is the virtual elimination of friction: tons of data about millions and millions of people influencing and being influenced by each other is readily available (or becoming readily available) for business to use / apply.
• The richness of the data set that can potentially be used to "calculate influence" is increasing all the time: channels (i..e Facebook, Twitter, etc.), frequency, recency, domain area, what kind of reaction it generated, tone/feeling, how quick and how long, Context, Call to Action Impact, etc.
• Just like in the past tools were developed to leverage "Life Time Value" scores to provide differentiated service levels today we have (and is an ongoing process) tools being developed to leverage "Network Value" at different customer interaction points: service calls, audience selection for campaigns, etc.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Filiberto.Selvas@Gmail.Com

Thoughts on influence..

--Influence-- Ample term; loaded term and very important one for the Social Media space…

The influence we have on others and others have on us is (just like many other aspects of Social) a consequence of old instincts embedded in the human nature..

• If you don’t know the restaurants on this street, but you can see one of them is almost empty and the other almost full; which one would you choose? (Assuming all other things are equal)..
• You arrive at an intersection and the traffic light is not working; there is a man in the middle of it with dark clothes and a yellow vest; would you follow his direction and stop/go as instructed?
• Your neighbor helped you jump start your car a few weeks ago; have you been attentive to his needs? Would you be more likely to help him given the help he gave you before?
• The car geek fanatic that you have known since high school makes a public statement about the virtues of a new car; unbeknownst to him you are looking for a new vehicle and you were hesitant between this model and another one.. is this person’s opinion going to influence your choice?

We have evolved with a set of embedded social behaviors that have helped us achieve wonderful things as a society: in unknown circumstances we watch what others are doing and tend to fall in line, we pay attention and respect authority, we help those that have helped us (or may be in the position to help us in the future), we understand relevancy of expertise and filter input accordingly.

What has been happening lately is that technology is eliminating friction… we can quickly see what many others are doing (i.e. Oldspice) and if we have the slightest inclination (need) for the product/service we will likely follow, it is now very easy to give/receive from others and return in kind (i.e. Farmville or other virtual gifts that you likely received in Facebook), Retailers create and apply authority schemes to help drive participation and sales (i.e. Amazon), Manufacturers make sure you know what others (and maybe others like you) think about their products (i.e. Intuit)

When the print with movable type was invented the profession of scribes died but many new ones were born or simply exploded up (i.e. teachers, librarians, etc.); I wonder what is the equivalent n the advent of an era where the influence we all have on each other will be quantifiable (domain, speed, volume, etc.) and likely publicly available (based on digital breadcrumbs we all create daily).

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Filiberto.Selvas@Gmail.Com

What would happen if you compensated your Support org the same way as your Marketing org?

In recent conversations I have had to explore how social media is affecting (has affected) the role and operations of the customer service / customer support organizations. in a recent exchange a friend asked me what do I think the objectives of a support organizations should be; I enumerated these (by no means claiming this is a comprehensive list).

• To be (and to be perceived as) aware of, interested in and responsive to the customer needs
• Deepen the end user understanding in order to offer better support: what are the scenarios / situations in which she uses the product? What is cumbersome / confusing / challenging? What interdependency exist with other products & services? How are the competitors perceived? What are their challenges & strengths?
• Enable the end user with the tools, information, education, services for her to take better advantage (and obtain higher satisfaction) from the product.
• Capture, analyze and funnel collective intelligence: what do customers want? what do they jointly complain about? what do they seem to like as a group? what do they rally / vent around?
• Identify and establish a programmatic relationship (with clear business objectives) with the outstanding individuals among the end user audience; those that really seem to know your product and have the knack to communicate with others, those that seem to ask all thee right questions, those that seem to discover new ways of doing things..

As I finished writing these I thought: how is this different that the objectives of a marketing organization? why are these orgs so far away from each other in most companies today? I think the key to the answer is in how the compensation for those different groups has been structured in the past.. while the Marketing org is traditionally rewarded for increasing satisfaction, market share and life time value the Support organization has been traditionally encouraged for minimizing costs, expediting exchanges with customers (making them transactional)

What would happen if you rewarded your support organization in a different way? (would it even make sense to think about it separately from your marketing organization?)

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Filiberto.Selvas@Gmail.Com

Components of a Social CRM platform

Looking into the capabilities provided by various vendors (by themselves or as a result of partnerships) I have been asking myself: “is that Social CRM”? What are the components required to qualify as a full fledge Social CRM Platform?

While I believe there are great efforts in progress by many companies advancing towards providing a full fledge Social CRM platform I don’t think any particular provider is quite there yet; but many are making great strides…

What are the components that constitute a Social CRM platform? At a high level I believe we need:

“Input” or “Data In” Component:

Data is generated through action and interactions of people at various locations; major social networks (i.e. Facebook, Twitter) at niche / brand sponsored communities (i.e. Viewpoints). A key component of a Social CRM platform is the capability to find / track and capture this data; this can take the form of Social Media Monitoring or tracking of direct & specific Engagements among end users or between brands and end users (i.e. track the result of addressing a complain through Twitter).

Master Repository / System of Record

Social contributes and complements traditional CRM; as so the Master Repository should be able to manage data for Social in addition and side by side with data coming from other sources such as support systems, reward program systems, credit score systems, etc.

Analytics

Using the data captured and aggregated from various sources to drive automated workflows & decisions (i.e. escalation when we realize a decision maker or an influential individual has issued a public complain); or feed into human driven decisions (i.e. presenting data through dashboards and reports)

Business Process Logic / Workflows

Ability to trigger events, route data (to humans or processes), inform, flag, etc. based on flexible rules that can be programmed into the system.

Actions / Data Out

Facilitate the action: enable responses directly to end users at the communication channel of their preference (i.e. responding to complaints through Twitter), feed & inform other systems and processes.

Clearly it is a tall order to expect any particular vendor to deliver on all of the above; most likely this will be achieved through partnerships (though the big CRM providers are definitely in the position to deliver a single vendor solution).

What do you think? What components did I miss?

Filiberto Selvas

Filiberto.Selvas@Gmail.Com

FB privacy: "out of context"

Is context that important? I do think so; context defines if someone slicing somebody else’s throat open with a knife is committing a hideous crime or saving a life through an emergency tracheotomy; context makes a big difference when my silly behavior happens in the privacy of my home and company of my child versus in a company holiday party after consuming one wine glass too many, context defines if sharing my social security number is a necessary step (i.e. to obtain the credit necessary to buy the house of my dreams) or a silly move (i.e. to help that gentle Nigerian prince that keeps emailing me)…

Danah Boyd expressed it perfectly (and eloquently) at SXSW; here the transcript of her talk: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html (I encourage you to read this; you will get more from it that from this post)

Paraphrasing a small subset of Danah’s points:

· Privacy and Context are deeply interrelated; privacy is not a binary concept.. is about what is the right context in which an specific set of data can flow.

· In our daily lives we all make calculated judgments evaluating the context and adjusting our behavior accordingly.

· The problem arises when those judgments fail, or when someone (i.e Facebook) changes the rules on us; and suddenly the “data” (behavior, information, etc.) we are sharing happens to be “inappropriate” because the context has changed (or was incorrectly estimated).

I have seen plenty of information in my Facebook newsfeed I wish I hadn't that I am certain is proper and justified... in the right context.. the two key issues with Facebook are: 1) They have not made it easy to define and operate within clearly delimited “Contexts” and 2) They keep changing the rules on us, making it way to easy to eliminate the boundaries (if any) that we have set among our "Contexts".

The interesting thing is that it is in Facebook’s best interest to address this; they should not risk us all stopping our sharing (or watering it down) due to our lack of certainty that we will be able to EASILY and CONSISTENTLY control the Context in which we share, and with that who gets to see what of the data we share at any point in time.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Filiberto.Selvas@Gmail.Com