There is a great deal of hype about new collaboration tools and “collaboration 2.0″ approaches. Indeed more of us are spending more of our time in collaborative efforts with others. But a recent survey of collaboration experiences points out how much of successful collaboration requires some back to basics approaches to team management and proper use of well-established tools.
Complex collaboration is already a significant work activity for many people, and will only grow in importance. Most respondents have multiple collaborative projects underway at any given time. The purpose of these collaboration projects spans virtually the entire spectrum of enterprise needs. Collaboration efforts extend well beyond a group/department to include collaboration with other departments, partners, vendors, and customers. Collaboration is viewed as being essential across the board in the future, significantly more than the reality today. Individuals as well as organizations believe that they need to collaborate substantially more than they do currently.
Successful collaboration requires mostly the good principles of project management applied to dispersed teams. Getting the old-fashioned basics right is critical. Most important advice from the respondents on effective collaboration is to:
Define goals, roles, timelines and deliverables clearly,
Communicate the process and progress frequently and clearly, and
Select team members who bring real knowledge and expertise.
Key challenges to effective collaboration include organizational culture and priorities, and collaboration process and tools.
Keep it simple on the collaboration tools. Email, audio and web-conferencing, and file sharing are rated the most effective tools for collaboration. Wikis, IM, video conferencing and discussion forums rank low on effectiveness for collaboration. Selection of right tools and proper training are identified as potential areas for improvement.
Are you working on collaboration approaches? What challenges are you facing?
With the world’s attention on Vancouver, one thing is certain: people are posting, updating, tweeting, and blogging about it like no other Olympics before. NBC recently launched a pretty interesting way to take a snapshot of that real-time conversation. The Olympic Tracker aggregates tweets about live sporting events and Olympians and then overlays these conversations with images. Click on an image, and tweets clearly targeted by keyword are displayed to share live comments and links. The site even allows users to post directly to Twitter without ever leaving the site.
The tracker is a fun new way to experience the Olympics and NBC has utilized it to set up a hub and spoke approach to their social media strategy. The NBCOlympics.com page serves as a social hub, aggregating tweets from Olympians to provide unique perspectives on the games, using the Tracker to create a fun participatory experience, and linking to a number of blogs to provide in depth information. NBC also maintains a Facebook page, a Twitter handle, and offers widgets and a mobile app, each of which serve as another touch point to tap into the ‘pulse’ of the Olympic games online.
The notion of a social hub has become increasingly important as media broadcasters and marketers look to extend their social media presence beyond the often mundane Facebook fan page. Often it is these unique sites that use open API technology to tap into the social fabric of the web that are truly eye catching and engaging.
Channels like Twitter and Facebook are quickly becoming utilities that are directly integrated into every website experience. The challenge for marketers then is figure out how to utilize multiple communication channels to achieve their marketing objectives. Each social tool should be used to its own strengths, but all touch points must ultimately find continuity. The hub and spoke approach to social media allows the marketer to do just that. By integrating social interaction and popular social network channels into a centralized site, companies or broadcasters can maintain a focus in their communication without spreading themselves too thin. Social hubs also have the potential of creating a community beyond the Facebook fan or Twitter follower. Soon we may see Facebook or Twitter serving as just a gateway to an even more vibrant and close nit online community found within a branded social hub. It may be these more niche online communities that make social media even more impactful than today.
The rapid adoption of the social web, especially around social networks, has given marketers a unique opportunity to build vibrant online communities around a product, service, brand, or organization. The process of turning that community into a self-sustaining and growing business asset remains the key challenge. To meet this challenge, marketers must learn to strike a balance between so-called ‘Engineered’ vs. ‘Organic’ community development. It is essential that a community have a clearly defined purpose and a number of goals to set the tone for the overall content strategy and member discussion. Community managers must also work to enforce rules within the community to ensure that user generated content, discussions, and posts all meet an agreed upon terms of use. The delicate balance exists when a community manager or marketing strategist begins to see the community take on a life of its own. If all goes accordingly, the ‘engineered’ strategy may lead members of the community to interact and contribute as planned, but may only lead to slow and steady adoption. Community managers must then question whether there is a enough ‘organic’ growth within the community to really achieve critical mass. Creating a community that lacks a defined structure and purpose can lead to rapid adoption and growth. This type of community platform has a lot potential (Twitter for example), but if an organization were to try and brand this sort of community, they would surely lose control.
Organizations and brands considering creating an online community need to understand how to orient the tools, content, and purpose of a community to establish both ‘engineered’ and ‘organic’ growth. Most organizations choose to establish communities on easy-to-manage social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace etc. Using these tools, organizations can achieve solid organic growth with already existing user bases, a number of unique features/functionalities, and limited financial commitment. So how does one implement some sort of ‘engineered’ growth mechanism into these already established networks? One way would be to integrate Open ID technology within a branded URL. This allows a brand or an organization to utilize the existing user base of social networks, such as Facebook, while also allowing the business to form the community around a centralized purpose.
As an example I will use an interesting travel site, whereivebeen.com. This is an excellent social travel site giving users the ability to pin-point places they’ve traveled on a map, share those experiences with friends, read reviews of destinations, and much more. The site is completely integrated with Facebook Connect allowing users to share via the existing social network. As the site continues to gain momentum, something interesting has occurred within the community. Much of the user generated content on whereivebeen.com generally serves as a travel log or diary for individuals, citing interesting things that happened to them in a location or with people they met along the way. The site organizes these thoughts as travel reviews, but most of the time the comments do not actually review the location. So why does this disconnect exist between their ‘engineered’ community strategy and the ‘organic’ growth its sustaining?
Users generally consider Facebook as a personal network of friends providing infomation on personal experiences. Clearly this association and integration with Facebook has caused the user base to utilize whereivebeen.com as a part of their very personal social network experience. This is a good example of a community which has really taken on a life of its own. It also serves as an important lesson for marketers considering building a community. Marketers need to consider how people use networks such as Facebook or Twitter in their every day lives. They must also consider the existing user base of networks like Linkedin, MySpace, and Facebook. Building communities that embrace their intended use and audience, will most likely lead to rapid adoption. The ‘If you build it, they will come’ mentality is quickly fading as more online communities continue to take shape and users begin to expect certain features/functionalities. It will be those businesses who understand how to successfully engineer and organically grow their online communities that will be able to deliver on the true value of online community.
While Twitter can’t take all the credit for Avaya’s recent sales story, I’m impressed with its role in making the sale happen. Many kudos to Avaya for listening! (see more on Social Media Listening).
As we rapidly approach 2010, it’s hard not to consider the implications of social media’s banner year: 2009. Brands continue to adopt social media marketing practices just as fast as populations join social networks and utilizes social media sites. It has become fairly clear that the rapid adoption of this technology over the last year will certainly give rise to a number of trends in the coming years. Recently, David Armano wrote a very interesting blog post on the Harvard Business Blog outlining six social media trends for 2010. Here is a quick snapshot of the trends:
Social media begins to looks less social
Corporations look to scale
Social business becomes serious play
Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
Sharing no longer means e-mail
Already we can see many of these trends taking shape from the number of sites incorporating sharing tools into their web pages to the rise of mobile applications. One trend, which I hope will result in more discussion, is the idea of social media becoming less social. David argues that with the advent of Twitter lists, the rise of niche social networks, and the clutter of web communication, people will begin to block out a majority of the social communication on the web. While in some ways this may be true, I believe that the social web will in fact be more personal (and therefore more relevant) rather than less social. For example, Twitter lists function on the same social principle as the platform yet they allow users to break groups of people into lists with a focus on relevant and valuable information. Niche social networks function on the same principle: a strong focus on relevant information for a certain type of contacts. Individuals are now taking on personal branding, and as every digital marketer knows - your customers are now their own publishers, and they have their own personal networks - and they are syndicated.
The important thing to focus on is the personalized nature of each of these components of the social web. People continue to find value in the web as a social communication platform, but users continually looking for a much more personalized experience. The implication of this trend is huge for marketers. In the past traditional marketing methods have generally been based around the one-to-many principle. Marketers worked hard to create a message that would have universal appeal to a mass target audience. This type of marketing worked well when the media was in fact one-to-many i.e. television, outdoor, print etc. Today, individuals use the web as an information source to research and maybe even connect with relevant products and services. Therefore, marketers must keep in mind that the browser is also a very one-to-one medium, capable of delivering a highly personalized experience for the user. Online audiences are already seeking out personalization with customized home-pages, Twitter lists, bookmarked and tagged websites, RSS readers etc. to filter out the clutter of the web. The social web will continue it’s trend to becoming a more open communication platform, but tandem communications will need to become more personalized so that users will continue to see value in leveraging it. I predict in 2010 we will see more groundbreaking approaches with organizations utilizing social media to establish a valuable personalized relationship with the individual - on a mass scale.
Many organizations and their customers are finding more value in branded online communities. As the web continues to become a social communication channel, this relationship-driven marketing strategy is beneficial for both the business and customer when executed properly. Communities can offer a member answers to questions, interesting content, access to like-minded people, and a direct line of communication, while providing a business with a sales and marketing channel and a group of potential brand advocates.
Communities can be built to fit the needs of the organization and utilized to accomplish a number of marketing objectives. Today’s continued use of social networks and community platforms gives marketers a unique opportunity to easily utilize a number of options to create a community. Organically growing that community into a valuable business asset remains the critical challenge. Communities tend to fail when they are unable to stimulate long-term interaction and participation among their own members. Communities can only grow in value when community members contribute, providing more content for users, information for marketers, and creating strong community ties along the way. Businesses are finding unique ways to encourage interaction and strong participation to help their community to flourish:
Member Recognition: Many organizations choose to embrace their online community by recognizing and rewarding individual community members. Recognizing members allows companies to establish a deeper connection with the community, creating a personal experience and a sense of ownership among the community. Recognition also encourages members to contribute better content more often. A few companies have proven to be successful at using member recognition programs to encourage interaction.
Point-based systems: Point-based systems can be used to encourage members of the communities to participate in forums, answer other member’s questions, creating content, replying to a post etc. Points can be accumulated and exchanged for incentives such as waving a community membership fee, gaining exclusive access to portions of the site, or earning prizes and discounts. Microsoft’s Silverlight Developer Community functions on a point based system, allowing users to accumulate different numbers of points for different levels of engagement. The site even features a hall-of-fame listing top contributors and their point levels. The Experts Exchange community depends on it’s point based system to generate the site’s content. Experts Exchange is a knowledge-sharing platform in which community experts are awarded points for answering other member’s questions about technology problems and solutions. In this system, members actually grade the expert’s work and points are awarded based on the number of points the question was worth (may be assigned a value up to 500) and the quality of the expert’s work. Experts are recognized by earning free memberships and special year-end awards.
Peer Recognition: Peer recognition occurs within online communities when members of the community recognize other influential members. MyStarbucksIdea.com is a good example of peer recognition. Members of the site vote on their favorite product improvements and unique ideas in hopes that Starbuck’s may actually implement the suggestion. Members who have ideas implemented are recognized not only by Starbucks but also the community as thought leaders. Others aspire to come up with that next ‘best’ idea and continue to participate with their own ideas.
Member Spotlights: Member spotlights are becoming more common on blogs and member communities. This sort of member recognition can often be as simple as listing top blog contributors and commenters on the community landing page or newsletter. Organizations can also host user generated content contests or challenges. For example, H+M clothing partnered with Sims 2 for a clothing design competition. More than 1,000 aspiring fashion designers and fans of The Sims submitted designs online that were voted on by more than 100,000 people and viewed by more than 500 million people in six weekly fashion shows on Yahoo.com.
As the web continues to become a more social and interactive environment, it is important to remember that individuals seek social capital on the internet just as they would in real life. Building communities with this idea mind and incorporating member recognition programs will create the organic growth necessary to turn a stagnant online community into a valuable business asset.
As augmented reality applications continue to appear, many marketers and technologist ponder the endless implications of this new technology. Currently, developers are using AR to develop applications for a variety of uses such as:
The most practical use for AR comes from apps such as Yelp or Bionic Eye. These AR apps help users identify locations based on informational overlays that may contain distance, pictures, brand images, direction etc. This new form of “search” presents a number of challenges and opportunities for marketers.As consumers begin to adopt this technology, it will become very important that businesses consider how people view their location through these AR applications. When we look at an application like Bionic Eye, we see that it displays digital images over the real-time video. Currently, within Bionic Eye these digital images only identify locations and provide distances and direction. Soon enough, these digital images could act as display advertisements, providing information, special offers, and most importantly reviews.
In the most recent Nielsen Online Global Survey, over 90% of consumers said they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trusted consumer reviews online. These overwhelming numbers make personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online, the most trusted forms of advertising globally. This should come as no surprise as information overload plagues modern society. How else are consumers and businesses supposed to sort through the noise? Most seek out trusted opinions that help them make decisions, whether it be a close circle of friends or a review site on the internet. Amazon was one of first businesses to understand the importance of product reviews. Today, most of their best selling products have positive reviews. There is a clear correlation between good reviews and sales, and products are not the only thing being reviewed online. Reviews exist for a good majority of services industries ranging from restaurants and travel, (UrbanSpoon and Tripadvisor), to automotive and healthcare (JeepReview & Rate-my-doctor).
So what is the implication for augmented reality?
Developers can integrate ratings and reviews into their augmented reality applications.
Consumers trust this information to make decisions, especially around service related businesses such as restaurants.
Businesses should also embrace AR browsers to develop creative ways to market their business through AR.
Retailers might use the digital display to advertise a sale or promotion, or contests could be held to identify clues shown only by AR apps.
The possibilities really are limitless, but one social component that will increase in importance will be ratings and reviews displayed by the AR apps. For example, consumers could use augmented reality to identify products in-store and get real time consumer reviews, or they might search a new city for the highest rated restaurant. AR could potentially place the power of thousands of consumers in an individual’s own pocket.
The technology also may even raise some questions about privacy in the near future. Will this technology be able to recognize and identify people someday? Do we really want to see everyone’s tweets as we walk down the street? Regardless, It will be interesting to see how this technology unfolds.
Social CRM is coming and has potential to completely change the insights and influence you can have on the success of your company, products and brands. Oh, and your personal success as well (assuming it’s tied to the success of your company, products and/or brand).
The best article I’ve read so far on this topic (“Using social software to reinvent the customer relationship”), provides a lot more detail on what the future might look like. I’ll provide you with my opinions, mixed in with some conclusions from the article.
SCRM can be thought of as a better way to manage a community. (Click here to see more on Creating Great Communities). SCRM has the potential to create a deeper and more engaging relationship with your customers. For your customers, it can enable them to:
Be in more control,
Stay in contact with you,
Leverage self-service, collective history and peer to peer relationships.
However, issues remain:
Who decides what the “official” answer is, or if there is one?
Which customers are the right ones to listen to? (see a historical perspective on Dell’s IdeaStorm)
As the web continues to become more open and collaborative, we inch our way towards Web 3.0. One component of the next-era web, has become more prevalent across the Internet over the past year: the so-called media-stream. The popularity of micro-blogging sites like Twitter and the integration of status updates on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, have created a constant stream of content throughout the web. The stream is the Internet in real-time, made up of active conversations, thoughts, and information shared by individuals throughout the social web. The stream has spawned an entirely new way to publish content on the web and many people have taken advantage of this trend.
Thanks to use of open API’s, web developers have creatively integrated streams on their own websites for various purposes. What once was limited to widgets and feed readers, can now be directly integrated into a websites design. Some good examples of this integration can be seen in Crispin, Porter + Bogusky’s innovative social web “fishing net”, Tweetmygaming.com’s tracking of real-time game conversations, Guitar Hero Smash Hit’s Facebook stream, and HP’s use of Twitter during a product revealing.
The adoption of the stream has many implications for marketers, advertisers and even the consumer. Sites like Tweetmygaming.com have created an entirely new way to analyze online conversational trends and have made it important for game developers to find their title as the top trending game. Easy-to-use API’s have allowed for the wide spread adoption of the micro-blogging sites like Twitter and have become commonplace on sites like Facebook, making it almost a necessity of any social network. The dispersion and reach of content via the stream may increase the speed, use, and effectiveness of viral marketing techniques. Even advertisers may find use in the stream by identifying URL’s trending up in the stream and evaluating impressions and media buys through real-time data. As web marketers salivate of the endless opportunities, we must also consider the implications of the stream on us as consumers. As Nova Spivack stated in his excellent blog posting on the stream:
“Human attention is a tremendous bottleneck in the world of the Stream. We can only attend to one thing, or at most a few things, at once. As information comes at us from various sources, we have to jump from one item to the next. We cannot absorb it all at once. This fundamental barrier may be overcome with technology in the future, but for the next decade at least it will still be a key obstacle.”
How as consumers will we adopt the stream? Will real-time streams become as abundant as blogs? Do consumers even pay attention to the stream? How do we make sense of such fleeting information?
I’ve been watching the gaming space go social over the past few years and have been fascinated by how dramatically things are changing and evolving. The gaming industry has taken a hit during the economic downturn – many publishers finding for the first time in many years that they either have a mega-hit or a dog of a title. They are struggling with how to address new audiences that they have not served before – such as seniors or exercise enthusiasts. Gamers are demanding social experiences within games and a new wave of social gaming companies are stepping up to the plate.
I’m an enthusiastic gamer myself - I’ve spent way too many hours on Wii and mobile games - and many MMOG’s. Recently I worked with Crimson Analyst Chris Terschluse on doing research on Gaming and the use of Community and Social Media. Even if you’re not a gamer, I hope you will find the the research as interesting as we do.
Here is a summary of some of the trends we’re seeing:
Gamer Demographics: new game experiences and casual gaming have changed gamer demographics. Families and seniors are now some of the highest growing segments.
New Gaming Experiences: Gamers want experiences that are deeply customizable and interactive.
Multiple revenue modelsare utilized to monetize games. Micro-transactions, pre-paid cards, game services are all creating strong sources of revenue.
Social: Gamers now demand social experiences within games.
Gamers are avid social networkers, sharing UGC such as photos, videos, or blogs.
What will be the next big online gaming platform? Some predict the gaming platforms of the future will be primarily social networks, but what about other platforms - such as Skype?
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