Axero Pulse » communities

Policy And Implementing It On Social Business Communities

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:00:49 +0000

Online Social Business Communities & Mitigating Legal Risks They Can Bring Up

A online discussion started by a community manager for his company’s internal social network brought out an issue which is critical to the smooth operation of online communities both internal and external. One of the users on their internal business website network copied and pasted an article off another site possibly without realizing it’s a copyright violation. When you build a community for the business and have a number of different users actively adding to content, linking and posting, there are almost always a risk for copyright infringement in some form or the other. Even if not deliberate, not everyone will be as aware about copyright and licensing issues as the next person and without moderation of every single post and activity before publishing (which is not viable for most) it’s always possible some copyright violation happens on the site which can snowball into messy situation with the owners of the content.

It’s clear that it may not be possible to be 100% sure this doesn’t happen so the objective is always to mitigate the risk and ensure that everyone is aware of it. This is done through educating users and putting in a policy. While most people may not directly be involved with plagiarism, something as simple as adding a picture for a blog post they published and later discovering that picture was copyrighted is enough to start a legal course of action.

It’s important to create a comprehensive policy which explains things like use of images. video, the need to use quotes and references while using extracts of other peoples work and it’s just as important to be able to explain this is simple terms. If every user that signs up is made aware of the policy for using the community or network the risk of them doing any of this (at least knowingly) is reduced. However, it’s good to be able to consider and account for what can be done should this still happen. What do you do if there is still content posted which is a violation of policy or copyrights?

This is where administrative capabilities come in handy. If your community platform has good administrative capabilities it gives you the option to step in and moderate content and user activities where it’s really required. If the software being used doesn’t give you moderation abilities, it can put you in a tough spot knowing something needs to be done but doesn’t let you take any action before someone else does.

A number of platforms put together by assembling various open source software components don’t offer this level of administration which is then really not suitable in a business situation where you, as a business, are held more accountable for everything published online. It’s like having the most comprehensive policy in place and not having the ability to implement it. The ability to moderate the community and content is the last line of defense against issues caused by such copyright violations.

Here are a few things that can be done to reduce the risk of copyright and content duplication:

Develop a user policy which is easy to understand and ensure all users have read the policy on sign up
Re-enforce the policy through offline training for internal networks where location is not an issue and by discussing it on the community where it’s not possible to educate users offline
Have a community manager or moderator who is assigned the responsibility of scanning the activity and content on the site daily and raising a red flag for any violation of the policy
Contact users who have violated policy through internal messaging or email so they understand what the risks of their actions are.
Moderate and take down any copyrighted content as soon as possible as a last resort

With a good user policy, constant awareness and the ability to implement the policy and keep the site clean and free from legal issues unwanted trouble can be kept at bay.

Social Networks Vs Email For Business Communication

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:00:36 +0000

Is Social Networking Software Pushing Email To A New Role In Business Communication?

This is more a personal observation than a researched study, but it seems that the role of email is changing constantly in the business communications environment as social networking software advances to play a greater role in this space. It was just a short time ago when email was the backbone of nearly all external communication with customers and those outside the office — and instant messaging, along with email is how we would communicate internally.

The best way to really understand the change that I’m talking about is this: a few years ago when you stepped into your office or workplace, what was the first few windows you would have opened on your desktop? For most of us, that would be Outlook or our web mail accounts — which we open like a ritual since this was the channel of all communication and the application that connected us to everyone else. Now, think about what the first few windows or applications you opened as you started your working day today. How many of those were social networking based applications or sites?

Social networking software is increasingly becoming the backbone of business communications. Just looking back to how I started this day and how I connected with others and communicated since the start of today is quite different from only email and instant messaging. 1) There was logging into our own internal community and checking for new discussions and updates to previous conversations. 2) There was checking our shared calendar for calls and meetings scheduled for the day.

Accepting some connections on Linkedin, followed by replying to some internal messages, and answering some interesting questions around social software in one of the groups. Adding my name to the attendees list on a Wiki for an event next month what the next thing I did. Then, replying to a number of direct messages and tweets on Twitter. As the day continues, I’m sure I will end up connecting and having conversations with several others before the day ends — and a lot (if not all) of these conversation will happen outside my email account.

Todd Famous did a post not too long ago on the CISCO blog on new forms of communications and collaboration and said:

“I used to get emails from friends through email but I now get almost all my non-work “email” via Facebook. My legacy email account has turned into an inbox for electronic account statements and alerts from social media platforms.”

This is something I can relate to completely, as a bulk of the email I receive during the working day are now notifications for updates that happen across other social networking sites and communities. The inbox is working more as a place to monitor these various conversations across different locations rather than being the actual place where the conversations themselves happen — and that’s a significant change.

As we move towards using social networking and collaborative sites for more of our collaboration and communication needs, how do you see the role of email evolving within this new environment?

Ownership Of Social Networks

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:00:51 +0000

Third Party Social Networks Vs Business Owned
Communities As A Social Marketing Strategy

If there is one lesson that has held true for social marketing, it’s that you have to learn to rely on customers to drive it for you — they will always have control. The third party social software space, which includes all the big social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, form a massive platform for people with common interests to get together and start conversations. If some of those people are your customers and the topic of conversation involves your business, that’s a big concern for you … right? This is a big concern shared by many businesses all over the world. Customers are likely to start conversations around your business with or without the businesses involvement, so the real challenge is “how can a business get more involved in this conversation” and have greater control over their social networks.

Building a community on a social network can be a great way to build a closer relationship with customers, build brand advocates from a customer base, and also help provide a platform to communicate closed loop marketing. Unfortunately, third party social networks only provide limited control — and businesses may find it very challenging to achieve these objectives without a greater degree of administrative control over their community and content.

This is where business owned, hosted social networks score over a third party community. It gives you better control over the content and direction of the conversation around your business — although not complete control over the actual conversation itself (which defeats the purpose of involving customers). A number of social marketing experts have said that customers are constantly looking for place to discuss their experiences and share views with other customers like them.

With third party networks for a business, even as an administrator, you have just as much influence over the activity and conversation as any other member on the network. It has its advantages in the ease of which it can grow, owing to the large size of the parent social network — but from the businesses point of view, it provides very little room to achieve specific marketing objectives and very little control.

While in theory, the business may be termed a group owner or administrator on a third party website — it’s very important to understand that privately owned and hosted social networks offer a far greater degree of ownership in it’s true sense, and from a marketing stand point, that’s the level of ownership you need. So, while investing in a comprehensive social marketing program (while third party social networks will still play some role), investing in building a business owned and managed social network offers some clear advantages for marketing to tap into and build those stronger relationships with customers.

They include:

Better administrative control over content and conversations
More control over the direction of the community
Greater ownership and control over the space which can be used for branding and marketing messages
Can be integrated with your other software platforms
Can be customized and scaled along with the growing community
Communities can be divided in to strategic sub-communities to enable more focused targeted marketing
More control over the software also enables the implementation of more analytic and tracking tools to measure effectiveness of marketing and attribute results to specific areas like blogs, message boards, photo sharing, RSS and so on

While both third party and business owned communities are important components of the social marketing mix, if you are looking for a way to control the online conversation around your business and take control of the social marketing direction, a community that is managed and owned by your business can help you claim that control.

Social Networking Sites – Where Fans Rub Shoulders With Their Favorite Stars

Tim Eisenhauer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:11:01 +0000

What’s common between Ellen DeGeneres, Brittney Spears, Ryan Seacrest, Kim Kardashian, and Oprah Winfrey? They all have between 2 million to over 3 million Twitter followers and staggering number of online fan followers. The celebrities and social networking relationship is making news headlines more frequently now, with Ashton Kutcher’s antics on Twitter, or some other celebrity taking swipes at their peers through their blogs.

Social networking and community software has been the technology foundation for a lot of PR companies and fan bases for popular movies, bands, artists, and celebrities … and this trend is simply going strong. Well known personalities who were once “access restricted” now “more human” and reachable through their community sites, blogs, or micro-blogging accounts. Social networks are now places where the bodyguards, PR agents, and entourage surrounding these stars seem to fall away. And celebrities have a place where they can just be themselves and freely exchange conversations with fans, while still having the physical security of knowing they won’t be mobbed while at their keyboards or iPhones. To them, these social software platforms are a great way to communicate with their audiences and reach out to them with the ever-so-important personal touch, while still keeping a safe distance.

To the fans and the audiences, this offers an experience like never before. It offers a chance to freely communicate or connect with their favorite personalities and makes them accessible like any other person on a social network. How else would we imagine being able to know what David Beckham has to say, get to comment on Fred Durst’s blog to kick start a discussion, or actually get Donald Trump to hear someone else’s opinion for once. Communicating with the famous has never been easier!

The social networking technology and social software platforms have become the PR agents of the online world, and provide a way for the stars to build stronger, more personal relationships with their fans. It’s lending a human touch to a space where it was badly needed and somewhat lacking. It brings together people with a common interest in a celebrity, a movie, a band, or person they admire and includes that entity in the conversation, giving everyone what they need. For those who have a fan base and don’t have or use the technology to back it, they may just be missing out on the new era.

The Licensing Cost Reduction Angle Of Social Software Communities For Business

Tim Eisenhauer — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:04:31 +0000

The Impact Of Social Software & Online Communities On Enterprises Suffering From Inflated Software Licensing Costs

There are several financial arguments for taking a social networking platform for business and investing in building an internal collaboration platform or internal community for an enterprise or business. There is reduction in travel expenses, creating a better communication platform which can reduce phone expenses, allow for flexibility of employee and partner location, reducing workspace costs and more. To really be able to justify investing in an internal social software platform to the financial heads of a business there needs to be a strong case but with clear cost benefits, it comes across as a sensible move. Let’s take a closer look into just one cost that several enterprise businesses spend a small fortune on “software licensing costs”.

In a typical enterprise business environment, you’ll find different kinds of stakeholders –including different types of employees, partners and so on. They may each have very different computing requirements: some quite basic and some may need more extensive software capabilities. Yet, most businesses issue similar hardware and provide standard installations of software across the board.

Now, an employee in sales may need the latest version of Microsoft Office and SharePoint to create and upload sales presentations and share documents, but someone in another function may not. The practice or need to install a fresh license of collaboration and communication software like SharePoint, Lotus Notes and other groupware for every new employee or stakeholder that’s now part of the wider organizational network can be expensive.

Just imagine in a larger organization how much that could add up in license fees each year? To think some of the employees may need an additional user license just so that they can use the internal messaging, instant messaging, or group notification function within the organization, is it really a justified cost?

This is where social networking and business collaboration software can play a crucial role in reducing unwarranted licensing costs. By migrating a lot of the common everyday internal collaboration and communication functions to an internal social software platform and making that the core internal interaction platform for the business the dependency on more expensive licensed copies of other software can be drastically reduced. Once that dependency on that software is gone, it will end up being used only where it is really required and doesn’t have to be used across the board just because that’s the standard internal platform the company works on. Most businesses have been stuck in this trap of having to invest a considerable licensing fee every time they add on a user or need to scale perhaps for a lack of a better solution. Now that there is good solution that is cost effective, scalable, and makes good financial sense, should we still be paying those inflated licensing costs each year?