Logic+Emotion

Launching a Social Command Center (Without The Center)

"Social command centers" are all the rage today and it's not without some merit. Many organizations now find themselves in a real-time business environment where news travels faster than sound, and information is set free. As a result, some forward thinking companies have put "monitoring" in place either in-house or in combination with partners. This isn't enough. And to make matters worse, I've seen companies make the classic mistake of buying a tool BEFORE putting any thought into the design that goes into effective monitoring and response, forgetting the 3P's (People, Process, Platforms). Tech platforms are only one third of the problem.

The media hasn't helped. "Social Command Centers" as physical spaces ripped from the playbook of NASA have been documented via Dell, Gatorade and most recently, the Super Bowl. Now, to be clear—a physical space can make listening, engaging and responding in real time effective—but it's not a requirement. In fact, for the organization who wishes to be able to function in real time for the long haul, it's the wrong place to focus on. So, how does any organization who wishes to be better equipped for real-time business move forward? Based on some of the work I've been doing with our analytics teams at Edelman Digital—below are some high level recommendations for setting up your social command center, without the center.

 

1: Set Up The Infrastructure
If your organization is not currently equipped to take in large amounts of social signals and process that data in real time—it's imperative to start with the three P's:

People
Most organizations forget that any initiative is dependent on people no matter how effective the tool and they forget to start here. Don't make that mistake. First, decide how much your organization can invest in terms of training people to both use the tools and have "listening" become either part of their job or the job itself. Go to the organizational design drawing board and begin to map it out. See who has done it before and if you don't know who has—find help here. Many organizations will find out that they need assistance in the form of professional service providers. Even here, work on the org design to determine how resources, both internal and "outsourced" work together for maximum integration.

Process
Another area where many "command center" initiatives fail is that they gather the signals, but don't have the internal process in place to share the insights and intelligence. If your organization has spent money on tools or even people but haven't figured out how to effectively communicate (internally) what you're hearing, it's wasted investment. A process must be designed which connects multiple stakeholders together who can quickly get information and perhaps more importantly be able to connect with others on intepreting what it means. Internal social networks which act as collaboration hubs, can play a role here—but again, without a process (and the right culture) in place, the tools won't matter. A system must be designed here which can quickly get information out to key stakeholders across multiple silos, but those groups must commit resources and leadership to support the process.

Platforms
Not all tools are created equal and some perform better functions than others. There's no shortage of tools which started as listening and are moving into the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) space, or social publishing platforms that are extending into the monitoring and response category. There are tools which will work with existing enterprise platforms and those which claim to be end to end. There are also technology platforms who will offer services around their tools and those who don't. The golden rule when choosing a platform is to remember that a technology company at the end of the day always views their technology as the best solution. We typically recommend comprehensive audits here—as well as bringing together both internal decision makers and key partners together before pulling the trigger on a technology solution. It's also recommended that SOME thought be put into both people and process before making a decision on tools. The most common scenario I've seen is the reverse—which leads to more cost and less efficiency, retrofitting people and process to work with a tool which may have not been the best pick in the first place.

2: Analyze For Meaning
Data. It means nothing without analysis. In order to even get to any kind of meaningful analysis, you mist first set up the right filters and taxonomies. Your company for example may have a product name which also comes up in other industry conversations in total unrelated context. Once the right taxonomies and filters are in place, it requires brains to detect patterns and extract any kind of meaningful insight from the data. These brains are not just the data analysts but also people across your organization who should be pulled into the "command center" and tapped for their area of expertise. Individuals from R&D, customer care and even HR can be relevant here.

3: Optimize Content & Engagement Tactics
There are really only two immediate actions any organization can take from having a command center infrastructure in place. The first is to optimize any form of communication asset which goes out. The second is to optimize any form of engagement (example, talking to anyone in a forum, social network, or commenting on a publication). Both content and engagement tactics are informed by the social intelligence captured, disseminated and digested by the designated individuals who are part of the command center ecosystem. Content and engagement tactics can happen across a number of digital and real world properties. Traditional media, (mainstream), Hybrid (blogoshphere), Social, (networks and forums) and Owned (apps and corporate sites).

4: Monitor & Measure New Signals
If you're going to invest in a social command center (without the center), you'll need to be able to measure and report progress, not only intelligence. Every piece of content and every interaction should be designed to create a ripple effect or reverberate a signal which your command center should be able to pick up and track back to the source. The source should be connected to your efforts whether ranging from correcting inaccurate information, to levering social channels to rectify a bad customer experience. Everything we do in the digital space sends a signal. Some are faint and some get picked up. As part of a command center construct, an organization should design it so it can not only trace signals back to their origin, but connect them to business objectives.

It's worth noting that as with everything else attached to the word "social"—a command center construct is not a magic bullet nor a solution for your business problems. However, it can be an effective move your organization makes in calibrating it for real-time scenarios which is becoming all too frequent as a result of social technologies and the behavior it influences. Today, your customers, employees and competitors can send signals in real time. My hypothesis here is that within the next 5-10 years, nearly every organization will have some kind of system like this in place which works to their benefit.

Trust Shifts From Institutions To Individuals

 

Today I had the opportunity to present to academics and industry experts from the international poultry industry (you can listen to a re-cap via a short podcast from "Agwired" here). During the presentation I was able to share some results from the recently released 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, in which the overarching theme is a general skepticism toward institutions such as government and big business with signs of hope when it comes to empowered individuals.

A Person Like Yourself
In last year's study, it was the expert and even the analyst who enjoyed some degree of trust from the public according to the survey, but this year it is "a person like yourself" who sees the most gain. What I stressed to the group of experts at the event was that this is an opportunity for them to share the stage with "regular" people who have a voice via a variety of social channels and also a responsibility to be "in tune" with the topics and issues they care about and discuss. Last year I speculated that the decline in attention given toward people like ourselves—our friends and peers may have been related to social media fatigue. This year, it's possible that many of us who make social networking part of our digital routines have gotten a bit better at filtering the signal from noise, thereby being both more generous but focused with our finite attention spans.

Regular Employees
In this year's survey, CEO's took a nose dive compared to last year reflecting a somber and skeptical mood which likely connects CEO's with the institutions they work for. Only government officials fared worse. But it is the individual "regular" employee who moved from the bottom tier to the fourth most credible and trusted resource. This signals a significant opportunity for organizations who have cultures in place where employees themselves are trusted to behave responsibly and are active in public spaces.

 

Fragmented Media Consumption (And Production)
A recent Mashable article reported that digital ad spending had surpassed that of print—bringing an era to a close and emphasizing the new reality of media fragmentation. The increase in social media (illustrated above) is partially fueling the shift—with social networks driving much of the traffic through sites replacing e-mail shares with buttons that blast out content across your networks amplified by others. Nobody knows this more than the traditional news media outlets who are scrambling to ensure that content is designed for social sharing.

Trust In The Digital Age of Empowerment
With trust in government, big business and at a broader level institutions down—there remains experts and individuals both who are in a prime position to take their platforms into digital spaces and elevate their position. For institutions, there's an opportunity to improve sense making out of what's being said not only by the mainstream but also talked about via networks, message boards and anywhere a comment button can be pressed. For CEO's, a chance to take a second look at their workforce—instead of seeing worker bees, the connected CEO may see employee ambassadors who when motivated can be the most effective spokespeople for their company.

For the complete findings on this year's Trust Barometer—the data can be viewed and downloaded via Slideshare (below).

2012 Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Deck

View more presentations from Edelman Insights

What's A Picture Worth?

Just updated my "Visual Thinking Archive" on Flickr. It provides a variety of frameworks, visual thoughts and non text based strategic thinking would could apply to a variety of business cases. What's a picture worth? It's up to you to determine the worth. For me, it helps the thinking process.

The Year of the Change Agent

We've always lived and worked in a state of flux but one can make the argument that recent developments in technology, society and business seem to have accelerated the pace of change we have to contend with. Our mobile devices would have been considered fairly high powered computers not that long ago. We live in a hyper-connected state of existence, constantly sending out signals to friends, family, work associates, peers , etc. If this year belongs to anyone, it is the change agent. 

You may be thinking—"that's exactly what I am," but chances are, if you aren't frustrated or feeling like you are constantly hitting wall after wall, you may not be the change agent you think you are. It's a thankless job, but a necessary one, now more than ever. Change agents aren't sprinters, they run marathons—and this will be their year whether they know it or not. But in order to do the job (and really, it's everyone's job if you're interested in innovation) there are a few key areas where the seeds of change will need to take root.

Thoughts 
Change cannot happen without first influencing the thought process—the way we think about ourselves, our jobs our business and most importantly our missions. Change starts with the core of how we think about everything before we ever take action. It is thoughts which drives strategy and strategy which drives execution (when done right). Change can begin with a whisper—often times as a thought formed in our minds. 

Behaviors
If thought is the seed then the living organism which springs from it is the behaviors which take root upon them. Without action, thoughts and ideas serve little purpose other than to inspire—which can ignite change, but not sustain it. A change in behavior can range from a shift in daily ritual, to the adoption of new technologies to reacting to environments in new and unexpected ways. When what we do is aligned with what we think, anything is possible. 

Perception
When we realize that we are more in control of the way we are perceived than we think—change is possible. Sometimes altering the perception of ourselves whether we be individual or organization acts as a catalyst to influence thoughts and behaviors and other times it is a result—but either way we change when they way we are perceived is altered. 

Outcome
Without a meaningful outcome which indicates the measure of change that has either occurred (or not) there cannot be change. An outcome can be an attitude—or it can be financial, but it's tangible. Not so long ago, the world thought Apple computer was dead. Having owned my share of overpriced and underperforming beige machines—I lived through that sentiment. Then change took root—thoughts, behaviors and perception of the company shifted and one of the indisputable outcomes is reflected in valuation of the company. Ask Apple's shareholders what they think of change. 

2012 belongs to the change agents. But real change takes a complex formula of vision, perseverance and stubbornness to pull off.

Here's to all of the above.  

Holidays

Ended the year with a flurry of activity. We went public with our newly elevated offering around social business—have delivered significant milestones with several clients and wrapped up my frequent air travel for the year. The next couple of weeks will be spent catching up with family, friends and even some snowboarding. Here's to you and yours in 2012.

Demystifying Social Business

Originally published on Edelman Digital

If you Google the phrase “social business” you’ll get a variety of results returned. One of the first and perhaps oldest is a Wikipedia entry, which describes “social business” as “a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within the highly regulated marketplace of today.”

The Wikipedia entry states the following: This article is about a business with a social objective. For organization designed around social tools, social media, and social networks, see Social media. The number one position (at least on my search) serves up a web page from IBM, which describes social business by saying, “People don’t do business with companies. People do business with people. Here is why―and how—to become a Social Business.”

While both are correct, the definition that IBM outlines not just the idea, the theory of social business, but the practical application that we are seeing in the industry today.  What Yunus envisioned, IBM has put a structure and focus around and broadened to include doing business in a connected age. In light of this, here are a few considerations for how “social business” might break down for you and why it’s related to social media, but not the same.

1. Social Brand + Social Enterprise = Social Business

Remember this simple formula. A social brand is what your customer feels (perhaps being engaged on social platforms as part of the customer experience), while a social enterprise internalizes social as part of the way employees collaborate and how the business interacts with partners. The two, add up to doing business in a social and connected way. It means being plugged in from the start and incorporating feedback loops. In this regard, many businesses that run forums where they listen and engage with their most active customers already understand the foundation of social business.

2. Believe In Life After Likes

Social business is bigger than Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and (insert social network here) combined. It’s about applying a social layer across the entire organization—connecting a company to all of its stakeholders (customers, employees, business partners, shareholders, etc). What we’ve seen in the past few years was an explosion of social across mostly marketing and communications departments, but what’s coming in the next several years is social integration at the enterprise level. A great starting point to assess if your company is moving in the right direction is to count the heads of the people working on social integration initiatives full time. If you don’t get past counting to one, you’re in trouble.

3. Think Beyond Media

There are opportunities to leverage social media as a new way to spread a message, be heard, tell a story or get a story amplified. The media industry has, notably, been disrupted by social media as blogs and real-time communications have gained traction among audiences and eaten away at attention newspapers, radio and television news properties once exclusively served. In response, media companies were forced to integrate social media into their operations, empowering journalists early on to create their own blogs, and over time to become deeply integrated into social networking platforms.  This was not a mere media tactic, but a shift in how media companies functioned and conducted business.  Born out of necessity or not, the media industry showed how to become a more social business.

4. Get Social By Design

Social media projects are typically constructed of experiments, skunk works and unsanctioned projects, which launch and take shape before most people across a company even realize they are happening. Some of these experiments are successful; many are not—but organizations find out after the fact that there is something powerful happening within their audience. Social business benefits from a more thoughtful and disciplined approach.  Social business requires planning—taking stock of every social-digital embassy, property and initiative (both internal and external) and assessing what should stay, what needs formal investments and what goes to the chopping block. The entire business strategy for an organization must be considered through this lens of social business. This “design” process—an intentional and purposeful approach—allows for social media, and truly social thinking, to be integrated and scaled.

5. Learn To Become A Matchmaker

Nobody owns “social business” — – but everyone feels its influence.  Social business planning must be championed by leadership, built into the efforts to flatten management structures and bridge the gaps between organizational silos. The CMO and CIO must join forces, and invite the heads of HR, R&D and customer service to be a part of the same conversation. Social business change agents must also become matchmakers, because getting a video to go viral will seem easy in comparison to getting people in different departments to come together around social.

Remember that Google search result I mentioned a few paragraphs back?  The number three result for social business links to an article from Fast Company titled “Move Over Social Media, Here Comes Social Business”. Its prime search rank is proof that social extends beyond marketing and media.  When Microsoft decided to open their SDK (Software Developer Kit) for Kinect to developer communities, they made a calculated decision that value would flow back to the company as it simultaneously benefits developers. Even organizations such as NASA have reaped rewards from the decision to be a social business. This is a sign that in being a social or connected business—the end goal is value for multiple stakeholders, and for both business (and society) that’s a good thing.

*Microsoft is an Edelman client

Six Social Media Trends for 2012

Originally posted on Harvard Business Review

Each year at this time, I look forward and predict trends in social media for the coming year. But first, I look back at my predictions from last year. How'd I do? Not bad.

Social media continues to move forward toward business integration, a trend that I identified last year. In a joint study from Booz & Company and social platform developer Buddy Media, 57 percent of businesses surveyed plan to increase social media spending, while 38 percent of CEO's label social as a high priority.

I was also partially accurate in predicting that Google would "strike back" in 2011. They did, with Google Plus, a formidable initiative that acts as Google's "social layer" to the Web. Part social network and part social search, Google Plus has industry observers scratching their heads, wondering if Facebook will be given a run for their money or if the service evolves into something complimentary in a highly social Web.

I had one big swing-and-miss on Facebook's intrusion in the location-based services war. While Facebook still supports location tracking in a number of ways, it has not put Foursquare out of business. Foursquare still enjoys a niche audience of highly active participants who enjoy telling the world where they are and post pictures to prove it. It is however worth noting that Facebook recently acquired location based network Gowalla, so continue to watch this space.

So what can we expect in 2012 in a world that seems to grow ever connected by the hour? Here are six predictions to ponder, in no particular order:

Convergence Emergence. For a glimpse into how social will further integrate with "real life," we can look at what Coca Cola experimented with all the way back in 2010. Coke created an amusement park where participants could "swipe" their RFID-equipped wristbands at kiosks, which posted to their Facebook account what they were doing and where. Also, as part of a marketing campaign, Domino's Pizza posted feedback — unfiltered feedback — on a large billboard in Times Square, bringing together real opinions from real people pulled from a digital source and displayed in the real world. These types of "trans-media" experiences are likely to define "social" in the year to come.

The Cult of Influence. In much the same way that Google has defined a system that rewards those who produce findable content, there is a race on to develop a system that will reward those who wield the most social influence. One particular player has emerged, Klout, determined to establish their platform as the authority of digital influence. Klout's attempt to convert digital influence into business value underscores a much bigger movement which we'll continue to see play out in the next year. To some degree everyone now has some digital influence (not just celebrities, academics, policy makers or those who sway public opinion). But for the next year, the cult of influence becomes less about consumer plays like Klout and more about the tools and techniques professionals use to "score" digital influence and actually harness, scale and measure the results of it.

Gamification Nation. No we're not taking about video games. Rather, game-like qualities are emerging within a number of social apps in your browser or mobile device. From levels, to leaderboards, to badges or points, rewards for participation abound. It's likely that the trend will have to evolve given how competition for our time and attention this gaming creates. Primarily, gamification has been used in consumer settings, but look for it in other areas from HR, to government, healthcare and even business management. Perhaps negotiating your next raise will be tied to your position on the company's digital leaderboard.

Social Sharing. Ideas, opinions, media, status updates are all part of what makes social media a powerful and often disruptive force. The media industry was one of the first to understand this, adding sharing options to content, which led to more page views and better status in search results. What comes next in social sharing is more closely aligned with e-commerce or web transactions. For example, Sears allows a user to share a product or review with their networks directly from the site. Sharing that vacation you just booked, or recommending a product, or service from any site to a social network is where sharing goes next. We probably don't know what we are willing to share until we see the option to do it.

Social Television. For many of us, watching television is already a social act, whether it's talking to the person next to you, or texting, tweeting, and calling friends about what you're watching. But television is about to become a social experience in a bigger and broader sense. The X Factor now allows voting via Twitter and highlights other social promotions, which encourages viewers to tap social networks while they watch. Another way media consumption is becoming social comes from a network called Get Glue which acts as something of a Foursquare for media. Participants can "check-in" to their favorite shows (or other forms of media) and collect stickers to tell the world what programs they love. Watch for more of this this year as ratings rise for socially integrated shows.

The Micro Economy. Lastly as we roll into 2012, watch for a more social approach to solving business problems through a sort of micro-economy. Kickstarter gives anyone with a project, the opportunity to get that initiative funded by those who choose to (and patrons receive something in return). A crowdsourcing platform for would be inventors called Quirky lets the best product ideas rise to the top and then helps them get produced and sold while the "inventor" takes a cut. Air BnB turns homes into hotels and travelers into guests, providing both parties with an opportunity to make and save money. These examples may point to a new future reality where economic value is directly negotiated and exchanged between individuals over institutions.

These are a few emerging trends which come to mind. As with anything, looking to the past often gives us clues for what may come in the future. Please weigh in with your thoughts: where do you see "social" going in 2012?

Social Business Planning in 2012

Originally posted on Edelman Digital

Today marks my two-year anniversary at Edelman, or what we affectionately like to refer to as an “Edelversary”. So much has changed in the industry since joining the team here—we are truly working in a real-time business environment. We’ve seen “social” move from an item to be checked off the list from major brands to something they are genuinely grappling with in terms of integrating at scale across the enterprise. At Edelman Digital, we’ve always approached social a bit differently from others—focusing on the fact that much if it revolves around human-to-human interactions (we now call this community management), but if social is to scale—it must begin to spill out of the marketing silo and truly influence how we do business. We believe a connected business is better positioned for the future than a business, which remains disconnected and non adaptive.

Today, we’re announcing a partnership with Edelman Consulting led by Mike Kuczowski, in which we are actively elevating our services around social business to meet what we believe will be the opportunity in the years to come. In order for a business to truly extract value from social initiatives, we must consider not only marketing but how it impacts research and development, human resources, innovation, business intelligence and other facets of an organization which help drive a business forward. Michael’s team has deep experience solving complex business challenges while our digital team possesses incredible savvy and a global perspective for how social-digital operates at scale (folks like Michael Brito, Zena Weist, Robin Hamman, Dave Fleet, & Chuck Hemann to name a few).

Social Business Planning

View more presentations from Edelman Insights

Together, we’re looking forward to elevating the game for companies who truly wish to push their social initiatives beyond acquiring fans and followers. As an initial gesture, we are openly putting our approach out on the social web, which outlines not only our joint philosophy on social business planning but also, the methodology we use when working with clients. We believe that over the next ten years, most businesses will move past the ROI question of social—and get to work on doing business in a connected age. This will require gradual if not steady change and a commitment to evolving business practices.  We’re looking forward to partnering with likeminded organizations and individuals who see the world in a similar fashion.

You can read more information on this initiative here.  We’re excited to play our part in moving the discussion of social business from philosophy to action.

Forrester's "Three Social Thunderstorms" At LeWeb

I didn't attend LeWeb this year, but judging by the chatter, one of the more discussed talks was given by Forrester's CEO, George Colony who outlined three "thunderstorms" approaching the tech & business world. I just finished watching his talk, and thought it would be interesting to outline portions of his talk with my take layered on it:

Thunderstorm 1:  The Death of The Web
You'll have to watch the video (above) to grasp the full intricacies of what George is putting forth, but essentially he's making a call that app economies which have the potential to tap both processing power and the cloud, will change the Web and move it away from a network/browser model to something which leverages devices, apps and the cloud in a more powerful way.

My Take: Scale & Sustainability vs. Experience
I get what George is saying and claiming the death of anything gets headlines, but really what this will likely come down to is user experience vs. sustainability and scale. Apps already show promise of providing better experiences than browser/network, but a question remains how scalable it is for enterprises vs. consumers. While HTML 5 is already working on a more stable browser experience, apps are often dependent on OS systems. What's more probable is that the Web as we know it doesn't die—but loses dominance in the consumer area specifically. For businesses specifically, the demand will be formed around what model scales and can be sustained globally over time. 

Thunderstorm 2:  Social Saturation
Social is running out of hours and people meaning there is finite demand to meet the current glut of social start-ups and networks competing for our attention, usage and loyalty. As a result, we are moving into a "post social" world in which we see the demise of platforms like Foursquare which don't offer enough value to survive. The post social web will see new or evolved players who offer efficiency and value.

My Take: Value Is In The Eye of The Beholder
I think George is right on the bubble assessment but claiming that social platforms will move away from the Foursquare's of the world to platforms which offer concrete effiiencies and value is debatable. Both Twitter and Facebook emerged and evolved as different tools from which they started. Essentially the free market will demand what happens here, but it is likely that the ones who succeed will look more like a Kickstarter over yet another photo/location sharing network.

Thunderstorm 3: The Enterprise
George cited that 72 percent of enterprises are either interested in or already implementing social technologies as part of how their business operates. He cited a number of players in the enterprise space such as Salesforce, IBM and Microsoft and hinted that these could evolve and new players could emerge as well. He also noted that one of the core reasons enterprises are interested in social has a lot to do with their customers (the primary focus of enterprise social as he puts it).

My Take: Social Business
George isn't just talking about the internal social enterprise, he's talking about extracting business value from social, like more efficient employees, better business decisions made from data and data analysis, and improved products and services informed by customers to give a few examples. Most organizations are in their infancy of figuring out how to get real value from a newly connected environment and I agree that it's going to take a changing of the guard over time but there are massive opportunities. He's essentially describing social business, which over the next 10 years will need to be executed upon.

Great talk overall, highly recommend viewing it.

What's On The Horizon For Social Business?

I was recently invited to our Toronto office to talk about social business—both what it is and what's in store for organizations who seek to integrate social as part of how they do business. This is probably the best way to define social business vs. media. While many organizations seek to leverage social media as part of communications, (such as marketing) social business seeks to extract value from doing business in a more social way. When we talk about social business planning, our focus shifts from merely thinking about the media universe to adding purpose and intent behind how we harness "social" for business purposes. And all of this is still the tip of the Iceburg. We'll be talking more about social business planning in depth in the months to come.

Making Business Decisions Through Data

Co-produced with Chuck Hemann on Edelman Digital

What’s the next big thing after “listening”? It has something to do with data—but more importantly the decisions a business makes after sifting through the data and understanding what impact it can have. The social-digital sphere as it turns out is full of data. Some of it is conversational data, some of it is search related, but all of it leaves a digital trail of clues for us to follow, only it’s up to us to decipher those clues. (hint, Facebook loves your data.)

As social media has made its way into almost every communications program, we have also seen the need for more advanced approaches to monitoring intensify. In fact, monitoring as a discipline is being replaced by listening. What’s the difference? The term monitoring implies a passive action. If we’re monitoring, we watch for mentions of our brand for the purposes of acting in case our reputation is threatened. If we’re listening, we’re using that data for more aggressive action either in terms of real-time content development or the eventual use in the communications planning process.

Lets explore both of those models for a second…

Listening for Program Planning

The most common model for listening is using the data for program planning. It’s a very linear process, and typically takes several weeks to fully execute. With this model we gather data on our brand, competitors and category, and develop insights that inform a strategy and tactics. It’s important to keep in mind that insights derived from social conversations have application well beyond social. Those key learnings can be applied to hybrid media, owned media and traditional media properties. After we’ve used the data for program planning we execute and then measure.

Listening for Real-Time Content Development

With this model, our goal is to use information we’re gathering from social media conversations about our brand, competitors and category to inform the development of content in real-time. The additional layer with this model is that we’re listening to social conversations with the intention of spreading the insights we’ve gleaned to other parts of the organization. It’s our belief that social conversation data has application across several different parts of the organization, including product planning, CRM, strategic planning and human resources. After we’ve determined where the information should be sent within the organization, we determine where and how we communicate. When that piece of communication has been issued, a new signal has also been created for us to analyze and measure. This cycle is much more condensed than the previous model – typically spanning days instead of weeks to months.

Which of these models is best for you? The answer is you probably need a combination of both, especially if you’re engaging your community in real-time. The key to both is insights that help the entire organization. If we’re mining consumer conversation data, we need to be thinking about the organization more holistically. If we see a conversation that our product planning team could benefit from, we need to be looping them into the data mining process.

While we are focusing on looking at and deciphering data (signals) in the communications space, It’s our view that listening is going to continue to evolve and that we’re already starting to see the beginnings of true social intelligence systems within larger companies. That means we’re listening to conversations in real-time, and making business decisions based on the insights we can glean from the data. Walmart Labs for example is experimenting with analyzing conversations and trends on Twitter to impact how they stock their shelves. This experiment gives us a glimpse into the future of integrating social data into business intelligence.

Are you leveraging either of the above models? Do you think social data has a role both within and outside of the communications realm? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

*Walmart is an Edelman client.

How To Think And Communicate Visually

Originally posted on Edelman Digital

Visual storytelling is nothing new. We only need to look to the earliest signs of humanity for proof—simple paintings on the walls of caves tell the story that people are a visual tribe. Today, it seems, communications must be visual in order to be compelling, as well as to compete with the massive amount of information available to us at any given moment (even Google acknowledged this in 2001 by introducing image search). Whether it’s a web video, infographic, or illustration, visual assets can communicate a wealth of information rapidly, and in ways that our brains process differently than other, more traditional mediums.

The secret to producing these compelling, yet bite-sized morsels of information is having “visual literacy,” or being able to think in pictures. Don’t confuse this with being an artist or designer. Anyone can think visually—or learn to look at the world through this type of lens—and then work with a visual communicator (a designer or producer) to craft a digestible visual deliverable, which earns our time, attention and encourages us to take action.

As someone who thinks visually, I want to share five tips that I believe will work for anyone who is looking to communicate and influence through a medium that transcends the written word:

1. Empathize: See the world as a child

Most of us drew pictures before we began writing. But now that words dominate our communications, it’s possible we have to do some neurological re-wiring to take our brains back to that point where simple, elegant pictures help us tell stories. I recommend three steps: 1) Observe everything, especially the minute details. 2) Ask questions; especially the ones that make you feel unenlightened. 3) Resurrect your sense of exploration; in other words, re-ignite the curious portion of your brain. Children have a way of noticing the little things we take for granted. They are immensely curious and never lack for questions. Putting yourself in a more “child-like” mindset will set the stage for all kinds of thinking, including visual.

2. Memorize: Commit thoughts to memory

Words can be fleeting—they can at times be like the wind, but images often sear into our memory. To start the visual thinking process, it’s helpful to capture thoughts not just in words but also by simple pictures. Stick people and basic shapes are your biggest allies in this stage of transforming yourself to become a more visual communicator and we should never allow our fear of “drawing” get in the way. My friend, Dave Gray, a great visual thinker, draws better than I do, but I still scrawl down messy shapes when I do my most strategic thinking. What’s important is capturing a visual thought in the moment, not the artistic quality of what you are documenting visually.

3. Analyze: Take a step back

The first two steps are meant to open your mind and get you capturing visual thoughts while getting some creative juices flowing. If you’ve done this right, you’re going to be attached to your visual subject. This is where you need to take a step back. Look at the visual story you’re developing objectively. Are you focusing on form over function —is it compelling and worth sharing, is it objective or opinionated enough? Take a step back and think of yourself as the end audience–get feedback from others, but analyze that objectively as well.

4. Synthesize: Filter signal from noise

If you’re a word person, you might relate to this process as “editing,” but for really effective visual thinking I think a better word would be “synthesis.” Good synthesis involves taking a lot of information and distilling it down to a core set of thoughts fueled by an insight into what will connect with your viewer. This is where the “art”—for lack of a better word—comes into play. A word of warning: this takes practice. Being able to synthesize complex thoughts and boil them down to an essence means finding that “nugget” which will resonate. The only advice I can give here is that you’ll know it when you see it, and sometimes it’s more obvious than you think.

5. Visualize: See it, then do it

The final step is to think of the right visual model to help tell your story—and to execute it well. Focus on visual metaphors to tell your story. See the idea in your mind and then direct it so that that it comes to life. If you need help, hire a creative team and work with them to improve your visual thinking.

When I created the “agency ecosystem” (above) several years ago, the visual thinking started as circles in a four way Venn diagram. I thought that the circles looked like leaves, so I used the metaphor of a plant, which made the story even better because the roots served as a powerful metaphor to communicate foundational needs.

Final Thoughts

By now, the little voice in your head might be saying, “That’s great, but I’m not creative, I don’t think that way.” Ignore that voice. You may be on a path in life that has rewarded other parts of your brain, but we are all born with the ability to create. If you want to communicate visually, you have to think visually. You don’t need to be able to execute those ideas yourself, but you can practice the above steps to start the visual thinking process. I am not going to recommend you read any books to get you started—the reading may distract you from actually doing. My suggestion is to start by “drawing” out the things that you see as obstacles to thinking creatively (i.e., think clock if you don’t have the time), then develop a strategy for overcoming them.

Who Influenced Blogworld?

Last week I spoke at Blogworld in LA and today came across this post done by Radian 6 who leverged their platform to provide some analysis of the conversations generated by the event. The graph above reflects the following accoring to Radian 6:

"The top influencers driving conversations Saturday are shown in the graph below. With the exception of the BlogWorld handles, these were conversations that were driven by reactions to the presenters and their panels."

Now, I'm flattered that I somehow ended in good standing here, but it's worth noting that what we're looking at is volume of digital conversation and not digital influence, though one could say that volume of conversation is an indicator of digital influence when it comes to measurement. Metrics aside, I thought I'd offer some insights as to what put me in this spot since I was involved.

Attendees Were Hyper Connected & Hyper Engaged
I didn't have the largest session at the event, but looking at the crowd who attended—I noticed that many of them were practitioners in the industry with high quality followings even if they were not the size of a Robert Scoble or Chris Brogan type network. Also, the attendees of my session were hyper-engaged and they displayed this by tweeting up a storm.

Soundbites & Mental Models Stick
My presentation was full of short, sticky phrases and frameworks—designed for tweets and social note taking. This is no accident—I would not be worth my weight as a communicator if I were not able to break down communications into memorable bits worth sharing.

Style & Substance = Conversation
Being the event was a blogger heavy conference, I felt that I had to entertain a bit in addition to providing enough detail and meat to make it worth the time, attention and digital conversation of the attendees. I started off the presentation with a few provoking and even humorous slides, played a mini inflatable guitar and then dove into a series of detailed concepts followed by examples and case studies.

For whatever reason, I had the right mix of content, audience, timing and most importantly—people who were more than willing to talk about whatever it was that I was talking about. It's worth noting that as much as I would have liked to leverage my own social networks of 70+ thousand friends and followers that I couldn't because I was up there talking. In short, driving conversation online takes two things: something worth talking about and a distribution network. In an event crammed with many great speakers, I was fortunate to have both that day.

Social by Design: Design Thinking & Business

Social by Design: Design Thinking & Business

View more presentations from David Armano

From a recent Keynote I delivered at the Constellation Connected Enterprise. "Design" is more important than ever, but greatly misunderstood as a business tool. In addition to the numerous business process design models in the deck—I used Facebook's browser experience as an example of a design problem. Facebook is in the "feature-itis" stage of their ecosystem design and I suspect they know this and will work to fix it before the experience becomes too complex for participants to tolerate.  Enjoy the slides—a collection of work and other examples to illustrate how design and business strategy work together.

We Are Indivisible: Can Starbucks Ignite a Movement?

I've just gotten off three business related conference calls and am writing this from a hotel room in Los Angeles as I'm about to head out to Blogworld (speaking here tomorrow). Blogging on the fly is probably the last thing I should be doing. But yesterday I noticed several tweets and I've also had a number of e-mail exchanges with people who are motivated by the "Indivisible" wrist band which is part of a Starbucks initiative I wrote about recently.

Again, while Starbucks is an Edelman client, I have no affiliation with this initiative whatsoever other than as a citizen. Here's why: while walking through some of the Occupy Wallstreet protests in Manhattan and also seeing them in other cities and on the news—I couldn't help but feeling somewhat alienated. While sympathizing with the reasons why people are hitting the streets, I just don't relate to the tactics. Seeing someone carry a sign asking the government to pay for their college education doesn't resonate with me.

But Indivisible does. It's how I was brought up. I lived in a neighborhood where people helped each other when others were down. It's the same reason we took action to raise nearly 17 thousand dollars when we encountered a family in need. Indivisible to me means that we can do anything when we stand together.

So. If any of this stirs you as it has me. I'm asking you to do four things.

1. Get the wristband.
2. Tweet about what "indivisble" means to you—and use the #indivisible hash tag (it's not official).
3. Use any social network, e-mail, face to face...tell others how you feel.
4. Post pictures here (or anywhere).

Can a brand start a movement? Only people can, but people are everywhere—behind brands, companies and out in public. Again. This is a personal pet project of mine. Because I care about what's going on too. And I believe we can do anything.

Starbucks Reminds Us What We're Made Of

Over forty years ago my parents came to the United States without much to their names to describe it generously. They struggled, started a family without secure or decent jobs and ultimately started a small business which was enough to sustain their family and see three children through college and even grad school.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was skimming my feed on Twitter and came across a Tweet from Umair Haque, a well known voice and contributor to the Harvard Business Review who had some less than complimentary tweets, some related specifically to the Create Jobs For USA initiative launched by Starbucks (be sure to watch this video interview with Howard Schultz on CNN). It was Umair's tweet and his take on the initiative which led me to check it out—but shortly after I was interrupted by one of our boys who had gotten sick and I had forgotten about it.

Earlier this morning, I saw another Tweet which linked to the story on CNN and for whatever reason, felt prompted to take the elevator down to our building lobby to see if they had the five dollar wristbands affiliated with the program (the word indivisible is inscribed on it). I bought one immediately. You can look up the details of the initiative yourself but for me, there's something about this that strikes a chord and I want to be a part of it. My parents were entrepreneurs, I have a job I love with a great company because of an entrepreneur, and if we're going to make a comeback, it will be because of entrepreneurs—people who invent and reinvent themselves.

In the spirit of full transparency, Starbucks is a client of the company I work for (Edelman). But that has nothing to do with this post or the reason I bought the bracelet and the reason I'm going to buy more. The first two will go to my parents and I'll tell them why I got it for them. The others... I'm not sure. I'll figure it out as I go along and if I donate that will be my business. But sometimes hope comes in unexpected places and we need to be reminded of the resilience which makes us who we are.

Google+ Ripples Visualizes Social Sharing

Back in 2006, I attempted to visualize how digital influence spread through the blogoshpere using a metaphor of "ripples". Fast forward 5 years and there's a really cool new feature you can play with on Google Plus called "Ripples". See below:


I really love what Google is doing with this visualization. Here's how it works as best I can tell. In this visualization you can see the source of the share indicated by large type. In this case, Jeanette Halgreen was the first in this particular digital influence ecosystem to start the sharing. You can follow the ripples which spill out in multiple directions. Ripples shows larger spheres where there is a lot of sharing happening and it shows you who is sharing from who and displays direct shares and total number of re-shares.

You can even play back Ripples to watch the spread of a particular post which tracks the movement of the media over a timeframe and visualizes it allowing you to see who, and where reverberation was generated.

So what's in it for business? For starters it gives media professionals a test area to see how media spreads, who is spreading it—what makes something sharable and how connections work. Of course it's only a small sample (Google Plus) but it's a nice little tool to use if you're interested in media and network effects. Nice work Google.

The Science Behind Making Your Posts Shareable

This blog post was written by Marcus Taylor, co-author of the book Get Noticed and head of social media at SEOptimise. You can follow Marcus on Twitter here.

I’ve always been fascinated watching what content gets shared by the masses and what doesn’t. I don’t believe in the myth that ‘content is king’, I also don’t believe that it’s the timing of a post, or the credibility of the author that makes or breaks a blog post’s ability to spread like wildfire. In reality, it’s the combination of these factors that intensify a blog post’s likelihood of being amplified in the blogosphere.

If content were king, then great posts wouldn’t go undiscovered every single day. If author credibility was the be all and end all, Chris Brogan would be able to post the lyrics to a Justin Bieber song on his blog and we’d all share it (Chris, please don’t test this…).

Highly shareable blog posts tend to create a compounding effect of sharing, whereby the initial people who read the post share it with their audiences, who then share it with their audiences, and so on. With this in mind, there are just two ways in that we can improve the odds of increasing a post’s ability to be shared:

1. Increase the rate of readers who share the post
2. Increase the initial number of readers

These two methods are obviously very broad and each contains a large number of sub-factors that can improve a blog post’s ability to be shared. Before we talk in more detail about what these sub-factors are, lets look at a very simple example:

Blog post A is shared by 1/100 readers

Blog post B is shared by 1/500 readers

In either case, you could increase the initial number of readers, which theoretically could create a compound sharing pattern. However, Blog post A will be five times more shareable than blog post B because there is a higher rate of sharing. Now lets look into how you can increase that rate.

A blog post’s ‘rate of sharing’ has a lot to do with the emotional reaction that is triggered in a reader that makes them want to pass the post along to friends. This ‘need to share’ emotion kicks in when a person feels a noticeable change in thought process or emotion.

What Impact’s a Blog Post’s Emotional Impact?

• The uniqueness of the post
• The timing of the post
• The relevance of the post to the reader
• The tone / style of the post
• The angle & idea of the post
• The intrigue created by the post’s headline
• The level of trust and credibility of the post (blog design, author reputation, accuracy of statements, quality of writing).

In almost all cases, any blog post can be made more likely to be shared by making it more unique, better timed, more relevant to the probable audience, more trustworthy, more intriguing and better written.

However, a blog post can also be made more likely to be shared by increasing the scale of people initially reached.

What Impacts the Scale of Initial Exposure?

• The connections & network the author / blog has established
• The accessibility and ease of sharing the post
• The budget available to reach a large audience through advertising

In other words, the larger the network of the author, the easier to share the post is, and the more money that is available to advertise the post to a large audience, the more likely a post is to be shared.

 

Measuring How Shareable Your Blog Post is:

There really is no way to do this accurately as ultimately it would require applying numbers to intensities of emotional reactions, but just for fun I decided to grade this post on each of the factors listed above:

Factor	Out of 10	Reason
Uniqueness	6	It’s a new methodology, but people have been talking about how to make a post more likely to go shareable for years.
Timing	5	There are a lot of bloggers looking to write shareable content at the moment so the timing is good, however, it would have been much more powerfully two or three years ago.
Relevance	9	This is a website read by bloggers looking to promote blog posts and learn blogging tips.
Tone	5	This is quite hard to self analyze, but I think the tone of the post is probably somewhere in-between good and bad J
Idea / Angle	6	I think the idea of analysing what makes things go shareable is always a good one!
Intrigue	4	The title of the post has some level of intrigue to it  but it could be improved.
Trust	5	This is a well-trusted website
Network of Author	5	My network is not huge, but with a little bit of help it should be enough to get the ball rolling.
Ease of Sharing	8	This website is really well designed making it very easy to share content.
Budget Available	0	I do not intend to pay to advertise this post.
Total	51/100

A few things worth noting about this table: first of all, there is no weighting. Everything is scored out of 10 suggesting that every aspect has equal impact, which is not true. Also, the value of doing this table is not to find out exactly what number you end up with, but to spot the areas that you personally feel could do with improvement.

In this case, I felt that the headline of the post was the weakest aspect that would limit the blog post’s likelihood to be shared.

Try it. Write a blog post, grade it on how shareable it is and then see if you can add 25% or 50% extra ‘shareability’ to it using this grading technique.

 Image Credit: furiousgeorge81

"Share-ability" By Design

Can you design things to be shared? Of course you can. While "sharing" is ultimately up to the end participant, it's up to the "designer" of the "thing" (this could be content, a platform, a product) to build the option and ability for sharing to occur. The media industry had no choice but to innovate in this space as my colleague Steve Rubel likes to refer to as "the war for page views". As, I've written recently—there are still untapped opportunities to enable and even kick-start social sharing behaviors.

Digital Influence: We're All Somebody

Photo by Ric Dragon

Recently I had the privilege of hosting a stimulating panel at Pivot 2011 with Joe Fernandez, founder of Klout, Larry Levy, co-founder of Appinions and Elisa Camahort, co-founder of BlogHer. The idea of digital influence or how influence works within the social-digital space is on the mind of not only marketers, but policy makers and anyone in the business of communications and or influencing stakeholders to achieve desirable outcomes. While measuring digital influence and doing something with it is still in its infancy, I believe strongly that there is a large opportunity in understanding the dynamics of networks and how ideas, opinions, stories and narratives spread. For an example of this, take a look at the NYT cascade pilot which visualizes how a story spreads on Twitter. 

Visualizations aside, our panel covered some interesting ground. Here are a few highlights:

Digital Influence & Real-World Influence, Related But Not The Same
I asked Joe Fernadez of Klout if he thought there was a difference between digital influence and real-world influence and he mentioned something he called "the Warren Buffet problem" referring to an individual who is clearly influential (and whose influence extends into the digital world) though is not personally active when it comes to their own "social graph'. From my perspective we can measure Warren's influence online via mentions, sentiment, coverage, volume of conversation etc. But where we have to get better at is understanding the "nobodies" who help spread Warren's message. These are individuals (and there are a lot of them) who nobody ever heard of but are critical in spreading ideas. To use Edelman's language—Warren Buffet is an idea starter and there are thousands of individuals, properties and media outlets on the social web who act as his amplifiers. Some of them have more digital influence than others—but it all adds up.

Topical, Temporal & Identity Based Influence: Find Your A-list At That Moment
Larry Levy of Appinions chimed in to state that they are working hard on the Warren Buffet problem by looking at the data. Topical influence means you start analyzing networks for influential data based on WHAT and not WHO (you can eventually end up with several WHO's and not just individuals. Temporal influence can indicate what person or digital property is influential in either a topic or related topic at that moment in time. These kinds of data sets through a wrench in the thinking that influencers can simply be "listed" and ranked. Elisa of BlogHer threw in a third consideration which is influence based on "identity" meaning if you can identify with the values and lifestyle of the person or media outlet you are exposed to that you are more likely to be influenced by what they tell you. An "A-list" of those who wield influence may be for a period of time or associated with specific topics and conversations—it may not always be the usual suspects.



Automation Desirable But Not Fully Realistic Yet
As Larry noted, sentiment and things like language differences can be addressed by software and extracting data, but it takes people to look at the data and extract insights from it. And this is where I think the digital influence game is heading. Understanding what influences individuals or activates certain "nodes" on networks is really what this business will be about. It will also be about data. Accessible databases of not only who, but what and where (for example, being able to store and serve up high quality conversational data in a dashboard). Understanding who has influence when and how they use it will be critical to tapping a virtual army of advocates or on the flip-side having deep knowledge of "badvocates" or those who mobilize against you. Right now, no tool does this with great precision—but platforms such as Appinions, Sysomos, Radian 6, Peer Index, and many others are all vying to produce the most actionable data when it comes to understanding and acting upon digital influence. (Edelman also has Tweetlevel and Bloglevel tools which play in this space).

With platforms like Klout evolving their Perks program, digital influence will only rise in popularity due to the fact that social is shaping up to be the other side of the coin of search—and the two will influence each other. Since Google's Panda changes to the algorithm—it's not only number of outbound links that matter but the quality of those link sources. Influential entities often drive high quality links as well as volume, and this is why we're all going to be so focused on who is influencing digital conversations, when, where, how and why. On the social Web, active participants are all "somebodies" with some degree of influence—but understanding how to harness the right data and act upon it will likely take some time.

(Disclaimers: BlackBerry is an Edelman Digital client. I've recently joined advisory board of Appinions)