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Social Networking Software For Social Change

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:00:21 +0000

A Look Into The Social Software Components That Enable Change

Conversation has been central to the spread of social software in several areas. The very fact that social networking and community websites are great places to start conversations, discuss issues, collaborate and build awareness have made them invaluable tools in the hands of those nonprofit organizations and individuals working towards social change.

Several non-profit organizations have been able to use social software successfully to build momentum and bring the masses together and gather a more collective voice for their causes. We’re going to pick just one of them to break up the different components of a good social software platform and look into how these come together for an organization in achieving their goals.

Kiva.org is a prime example of how social software can be leveraged. The site has successfully taken the concept of micro-loans to thousands of people and benefited equally as many people changing their lives for the better. The site enables users to give out micro loans and uses the social software components very well.

Built on the foundations of a community based social website, the Kiva community has thousands of members who actively use the platform and their work has accounted for impacting several lives. So what are the components that makes a site like this tick? Let’s look into the social software components that makes all this come together:

Membership: As with most sites built around a social networking or community model, the Kiva.org site uses a “Register” option to join the community or sign up as a lender.

Groups: The groups feature as it’s commonly referred to has been aptly modified to create the “Lending Teams” which you will find in the “Community” section of the website. The groups technology helps signed up members join a common interest group similar to the groups you’ll find in Linkedin or Facebook. Kiva has termed these Lending Teams which users can join and each lending team works towards providing finance to a specific cause.

Member Profiles: The member profile or the dashboard feature is a must have in most similar applications and this is featured under the “My Portfolio” section for registered members to track their investments.

Articles: Publishing is key to any site targeting change and Kiva has “Journals” which allows members to get firsthand accounts of what borrowers have managed to do with the support of those micro loans bringing the all important transparency to the community. With regular reports of progress along with commenting features, this forms an important part of website.

Blogs: Kiva features a main blog as well as alternate blogs for developers and Kiva Fellows. A robust blogging platform is what gives a site like this a personal voice through which they can start conversations with visitors and members as well as discuss through the commenting section.

Messaging: This feature is used in a number of places to set up a communication channel internally as well as help spread the word and share. The “Do More” section noticeably uses this well.

Topics: The “help center” which forms the basis of support on the website is built out of an extensive collection of FAQs listed under topics which clears just about any question a user can have.

Needless to say with social software technology and some clear vision, nonprofit organizations can build some very active centers for social change and impact a lot more lives. Building a place for conversation and action towards the better, it’s certain we are going to see a lot more of social networking and community platforms being used for positive change.

Social Community Software For Business Marketing Strategy

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:00:54 +0000

A Valuable Lesson In Community Building For Your Business & Gaining The Upper Hand With Search Engines

Those of you who regularly read updates on our blog may have read the post titled “Social Networking For Businesses & Advertising Space – Is Your Online Community Space Really Your Own?” where we discussed the risk associated with building a community on a hosted social networking website or a third party network which you may have little administrative control over. While it doesn’t happen to everyone who has a Facebook group or a community hosted by a Saas company the possibility is there and it’s a risk that needs to be considered.

Communities that have been built for businesses are often fragmented across different websites as we have said often and mainly because these websites and networks offer a ready base of users and traffic that would have been difficult or needed more time to cultivate. It’s easier to go to Facebook or to Linkedin where your customers are rather than go through the process of getting them to your site and that’s what most would do. There is however an important marketing lesson to note here:

When you build a business website, all the content that goes on the website and all the content created as a result of activity on the website by others accounts for some value as far as search engines like Google go. Google notes the content on your website whether it’s blogs or discussion forums, documents, comments and so on and this has an impact on the page rank or how valuable a resource your website is seen as. Considering this is a very important strategy for generating better search traffic which can account for more customers and more sales, ideally, you need to keep as much of your activity and content on your own website.

The mistake that many tend to make is overlook this fact and they end up having a blog like yourblogblog.wordpress.com or yourblog.blogspot.com a community like yourcommunity.ning.com and articles posted at yourarticlesarticles.ezinearticles.com. While all of these are still helpful and a small portion of the traffic will still find itself to the main company website by way of links and banners, part of the search advantage from all this content is lost out to the sites that these communities are hosted on where this content is finally posted.

When you use a social software platform which can be integrated into your own business website, you essentially build all your community and content assets into your website and search engines trace all of this to one location or website. That could be blog.yourwebsite.com, articles.yourwebsite.com, resources.yourwebsite.com, community.yourwebsite.com, forums.yourwebsite.com and eventually you ensure that your website is a single valuable online resource for those searching for relevant information also giving you the upper hand with search engines.

While continuing to build communities on other websites is a good strategy to continue with alongside your main social marketing strategy, the emphasis should be on building value starting in your own back yard which in this case is your primary business website. After all that is where you ultimately want your customers and prospective customers to go and that’s where you expect to start the sales process. If you’re out building a community, keep it close!

Online Community Software For Customer Support

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:00:48 +0000

Social Networking & Customer Service – The New Business Norm

Let’s take a look at my last few interactions as a customer of some company seeking some customer service or support:

Last month the new 32 GB thumb drive I picked up at some store while I was traveling displayed problems copying data and file names would just turn to gibberish. I did a search for the model number and manufacturers name and finally found answers on a private technology forum. It seems like a number of people had the same problem with this piece and it didn’t take too long to find a working solution to my problem from those who managed to fix theirs.
We decided to do a long weekend break some time ago and heard of this resort from someone. I could have probably called him and asked him but instead I logged into a travel community site where some of the other members post their experiences on places they have visited and resorts they have stayed at. Sure enough, I found two or three good reviews on this place and that made up my mind to just go for it.
One of my laptops had a screen problem. Something I’ve never seen before where it started with a bad pixel, grew into a vertical line on the LCD display and then the lined kept multiplying. I went to the manufacturers website and posted my observations on the support forum there and within an hour someone from the community who had a similar problem got back to me through the thread telling me what to do.
I decided to check out a local band at a club we’ve frequented and grown to like. The problem is when a great band is in attendance, being a small place, it can get filled up quite quickly and we didn’t want to risk having to turn around at the entrance or wait in line. I logged into their social networking platform on their website and used the instant messaging system to have our names added to the attendee list to avoid any disappointment. Being a member of their online community has benefits!

The first and perhaps most obvious conclusion on my own actions above is that my first instinct as a customer in all these cases was to look online for the solutions to questions or issues I may have had. I didn’t bother looking for a phone number, calling someone or trying to directly contact the business. I went online. In some cases I found my solution on a website run by other consumers and general communities and in others like in case of the laptop, a community run by the business. Like myself, a lot of others just naturally prefer to use our pc’s or laptops which are always near us and look for some support online.

From the business perspective websites like the laptop manufacturers support forum or the club’s social networking enabled websites show these businesses know their customers look for service online and they need to be there when they are looking for it. If my behavior as a consumer is anything to go by, businesses which are not easily approachable online are missing out on being able to help their customers where many customers almost expect them to be. A business website which is social software enabled is in effect, that customer service rep waiting to help out. Think about this: what were your last customer service interactions online and did it make you feel better knowing the business had a website where you could find your answers?

Social Collaboration Software For The Sales Force

Tim Eisenhauer — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:00:26 +0000

The Social Business Collaboration Software Powered Sales Force

With the sales team being the front line in the quest for success for any organization, the need to strengthen their abilities as a team and equip them to function as efficiently as possible becomes paramount to their effectiveness. From businesses with smaller sales teams to ones with a sales force which can be hundreds and even thousands strong, there are a number of challenges which they can face which are unique to the sales organization. The ability to communicate easily and collaborate as a unit is perhaps one of the most common ones and while CRM software and blackberry’s are associated with making the lives of the sales team better, there is one other technology which is gaining ground very quickly…social networking software for collaboration.

Whether an in house sales force or a network of channel and partner sales representatives, the sales organization is often a widely spread very mobile organization scattered across locations or always on the move. Communication and content is a lifeline for the organization but the common complaint is a lack of a unified platform they can use to communicate on and work with each other. This often sees large numbers of sales representatives working as islands with no sharing of intelligence, best practices and a coordinated effort which could otherwise result in more efficient working and perhaps better revenues.

For the management, there are other challenges such as the need to send out individual communications with each sales rep with the alternative being to email or push out their communications and content across the entire sales force even though a lot of it may not be relevant to each one of them again creating an inefficient process. Training and development of new and existing sales reps is a constant concern with higher employee turnover rates than most other departments and the need to constantly update and enhance skills and information throughout the daily working process. So how is a social networking based business community platform going to address all this?

Building a collaboration network platform for the sales force is a great strategy. Sales teams at IBM, CISCO, T-Mobile and others have already experienced the results of leveraging collaborative social software in providing their sales teams with these platforms and here is just some of what has been observed by companies who have built such online networks for their sales organization:

Greater sharing of knowledge & best practices: – collaboration and social networking environments foster sharing of information and experiences which among sales organizations often translates to a widespread sharing of best practices. These best practices which are often posted by members of the sales team on the job come from practical experiences with customers and the practice of sharing this knowledge alone helps build a better sales organization.

Rapid turnaround time in getting answers to questions:- companies have seen with the ability to simply log in to the network and post a question on the discussion boards or forums, sales reps and channel sales agents find it easy to ask questions on handling situations, on product updates and other topics. What’s more is with all the other members regularly on the network, questions get answered quickly creating a strong process for ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Better objection handling:- it’s been observed that when sales reps come across customer objections while selling and post them within their network, they are replied to with multiple suggestions for handling these objections from others on the community. With everyone collectively pitching in on how to manage these objections, the learning curve increases and everyone gains from better success rates.

Constant pull-based learning & development process:- With the constant discussion, conversation, posting of learning content, presentations, blog posts, videos, webinars and other useful content the network also acts as a platform for continuous learning. Since it’s not pushed on employees it’s not seen as something they are forced to learn and rather, they are encouraged to participate in posting, consuming, commenting on and sharing learning content by seeing others do the same.

Single platform for distribution of content: Rather than have to email each sales rep or go through the other extreme of email the entire sales force with content and material which may not be relevant or useful to all of them, the collaborative network provides a single platform to which content can be posted to. Sales reps can simply login and take what they need whether it’s a product guide, specs update sheet or marketing collateral. This makes it easier for management to distribute content and spares the sales reps from being bombarded with what they may not need.

Single platform for communication and planning:- Perhaps one of the biggest plus points for management is having a single platform they can use to communicate with the entire sales team no matter how far they are spread and where they are physically located. Whether it’s sending out important notices or planning campaigns which need groups of sales reps to participate and discuss, the network provides a platform to communicate, plan and execute on what may otherwise be a daunting task.

Visibility into operations and recognition of performers:- The collaboration network brings a greater level of transparency into the working of the sales organization as well as to information which would otherwise slipped under the radar. Management can spot performers, contributions to the sales organization and spread the word on achievements to recognize outstanding sales reps and also to motivate the sales community as a whole to push the envelope and do better.

In short, the social collaboration software platform can bring a new level of cohesiveness to the working of the sales force and a unified sales force is powerful one. Quicker spread of information, better ability to plan and interact with each other and better communication can be targeted with building a platform exclusively for sales employees and a lot of businesses can benefit from the results seen by those who have been front runners in this space. After all if the goal is to push revenues, what better way than to equip the sales organization with the technology they need to bring home the results?

Social Networking – The Near Future Of Business Software

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:00:23 +0000

Collaboration Networks will be to Enterprises
what Social Networks are to Consumers

It’s always great to read a view point that’s so close to your own thoughts that you can’t say it better — and that’s exactly what happened when I read Padmasree Warrior’s post on the CISCO blog “5 Predictions For The Future Of Collaboration“. Her first prediction echoes what we’ve been seeing as more companies turn to social networking software to enable their internal and external collaboration requirements. The prediction is “Collaboration Networks will be to Enterprises what Social Networks are to Consumers”

Padmasree says in the post:

“At Cisco, we believe that the rigidly structured silos that were traditionally put in place in most enterprises will give way to more fluid, ad-hoc communities of experts. Increasingly, companies will rely on Collaboration Networks that bring together “clusters of experts” to get critical projects completed. These groups will form dynamically to achieve a shared outcome. This self-organizing cycle repeats itself on an ongoing basis, as the need arises. It’s both efficient and effective, in part because experts are drawn to projects and are thus motivated — rather than being “assigned” in a top-down fashion.”

Social networking software architecture is ideal for creating a collaboration network platform for businesses. Every business has its own processes and its share of custom requirements from their software to blend in perfectly. Social networking software provides that flexible basic framework that allows for communication and interaction between people online. With its open nature, it acts as a set of tools for employees to leverage in their daily work — and provides the perfect platform to encourage participation and collaboration without having management impose a software on them (as the Padmasree blog post points out).

If the rapid adoption of general social networking sites is any indication of things to come, collaboration networks will go the same direction as a natural extension of this framework for business needs. Just as social networking platforms like Facebook are now the broader structure within which other activities using software such as games, auctions, e-commerce, content sharing and more happen, we are likely to see applications such as CRM, document management, spreadsheets, customer service modules, and more all within the confines of a collaboration network login.

We already have customers building on a social networking platform and customizing it for their employees and departments by adding components such as stock tickers, sales performance dashboards, and RSS news feeds to equip them with more than the basic collaboration functionality. Given that platforms such as Communifire are geared towards customization and enhancing features, is it too hard to imagine that in the near future, a sales person in an enterprise organization logs into his/her internal collaboration network and has access to the company CRM data?

What is certain, is that we are still at the early phases of social software for the business — and the future is bound to see this technology find its way to the core of businesses computing. It’s already happening.

Lost, Survivor, or American Idol — The After Party Is On Social Networks

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 05:51:53 +0000

Lost, Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, or American Idol — if you’re a fan, the real party begins soon after each episode is aired. Location? The community sites where fans gather, tear apart, critic, discuss and share every minute aspect of the show. That’s where the real party begins.

Everyone’s favorite shows have not just hooked viewers during the half hour or hour during which they are aired. They have learned quickly to capitalize on their popularity and extend their grip over fans using social networking and community software features as an enabler. The official fan sites are equipped with blogs, videos, photos, discussion forums, wall-like updates, activity streams, polls, and everything needed for fans to come together and continue the discussion around their favorite shows.

Survivor now into its 20th season with Heroes Vs Villains sports daily blog posts from Jeff Probst with riveting opinions from the man himself. The steady stream of fan comments and activity provides a discussion base where opinions fly soon after each episode is aired and more is revealed.

American Idol’s site features the MyIdol Fan Community which is a full fledged community extension for die hard American Idol fans complete with blogs, photos, groups, forums and directory of members creating an exclusive online fan base.

Lost is just one of those shows where you compulsively need to discuss and have conversations after watching each episode and the show has no shortage of online communities setup to discuss this intriguing and mind boggling drama.

Fan communities have not just become a norm but have become and extension of tv shows and other events on the web. The enthusiasm they can generate brings together fans, spark conversation and turns them into passionate advocates for their favorite shows. With social networking and community software technology becoming more accessible, the ability to build such engaging social elements into a main website has been thrown open to smaller events and production businesses. One need not have the resources of ABC or Fox to learn from their community building experience and apply it to their own businesses, products, or offerings. Out-of the box solutions like the Communifire platform offer the social features needed to turn a simple information site into an activity filled, captivating community. The social network and fan community is at the end of the day, the online dimension to everything we love to rave about.

Customization Of Look And Feel For Your Online Community Software

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:00:08 +0000

The Good The Bad The Ugly Of Social Networks & Community Sections On Business Websites

Have you ever come across a company website where the design, look, and feel oozed professionalism and gave you the feeling that you were viewing a “credible website” — until you logged into the community section, forums, or the social network section of the site and you find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings again? This is usually a result of weaving in a free open source platform to extend the website to include a community section or features such as forums.

A majority of the free software hosted options for communities are not built with complete customization abilities in mind. They offer functional solutions that allow you to customize some options, and at the most, offer a choice of skins to adjust look and feel — but, to be able to add on a community area or social network as a seamless part of the website, one needs to be able to get down to the code and components that govern the basic look and feel.

While selecting community software for your website, be sure to select a platform that allows you to customize down to the fine details, and that will allow you to integrate it with the rest of your website. Solutions like Communifire, that provide access to the CSS style sheets (which are well labeled and documented) make it easier for you to customize fonts, colors, borders layout, and adjust each aspect of the look and feel to appear as a extension of your existing site.

This way, when someone comes across your site and navigates through the community (where people do spend a lot more time) they have the same design experience and familiarity carried through the entire site.

This is the kind of experience you have while using communities on sites like CISCO’s and others where the social networking and community part of the site is really a big part of the overall site. It doesn’t look like someone had a great aesthetic sense while building their main website and then decided to shabbily glue on a community platform as an extension.

Here is a check list of design elements you should check for to see if you will be able to edit or modify them to gel with your look and feel while selecting a social software platform:

Layout, spacing, and borders
Images and icon sets – including avatars
Colors – including background, foreground, font, borders, hyperlinks, etc.
Fonts and text style / formatting
Ability to add on components and widgets, like forms and anything else that may be needed

The entire point of evaluating a good social networking or community platform is to avoid having to build everything from scratch — but you still want your community to give the end user a seamless experience. If you select a platform which gives you that, you’ll have a community that’s functional and looks right!

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 as a platform for e-learning

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:00:39 +0000

Social Networking Vs Learning Management Systems As A Platform For Businesses Learning & Development

It is said the best kind of learning comes from participation and interacting with others. The learning that doesn’t come from having to study a prescribed course, but rather comes from sharing what you know and taking what you can learn from others in a collaborative environment. E-learning is usually associated with the former structured learning modules delivered through learning management systems and e-learning software platforms. These software platforms are great in the sense that they are geared towards structured learning and are well equipped to measure whether the knowledge has been delivered effectively through tests and other tools. There is a new competitor in the software arena, equally capable of delivering great learning … can you guess what kind of software this is? You got it … social networking platforms.

Let’s assume you are a software developer working on a project assigned to you. In the traditional business online learning environment, one would perhaps log in to the learning management system, select the courses relevant to the project requirements (or be assigned courses), go through the content within those modules, and then take a test to measure the learning. The objective is to equip you with the knowledge that you may need, given the tasks you have ahead. The courses and content are professionally designed according to the training and development objectives of the business.

In a similar scenario with a social networking platform, one would typically log in and collaborate with others on a project using the social network as the common working space. If you have questions or seek some information, you simply log into the network, pick the information you need from archived articles, reference documents, FAQ pages, or other content, much the way one would use a library.

Then there are the more interactive options of messaging questions to someone on the network, starting a discussion group, posting a question to a forum, chatting with other humans, and interacting with others to find answers. This format is based on a mentoring system, where just about anyone within the network can assume the role of a mentor and share knowledge.

This sharing based learning is extended, being able to post informative documents, blog posts, videos and links to other sites within the network to share what you’ve learned with others in the group. This in itself makes sure the best content and learning resources available online get shared on the social network, and the site itself becomes a rich resource of knowledge that is there for members to learn from.

Both of these software platforms offer a medium for learning and development, they have their strengths and weaknesses, but it’s worth noting they offer a different form of learning. LMS offers structured learning, which is more ‘push’ based, and social networks offer ‘pull’ (self service) learning, based on sharing and interaction with others. It can easily be compared to the kind of learning you encounter in a professional institution or that you encounter while working or interacting with colleagues, friends, and other social situations. In conclusion, both of these kinds of learning are essential to an all round development of knowledge, and both LMS and social networking software platforms will find a place in the learning and development frameworks of businesses.

ROI on Social Business Collaboration

Tim Eisenhauer — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:00:30 +0000

Need A Good Case For Business Collaboration Software Platforms? – Try 900 Percent ROI

There are businesses still mulling whether to use social networking software and build a better business collaboration platform for their employees and often they find themselves taking a back seat till they have a solid case why they should go ahead with this. CISCO it seems has come out with a good reason to build a case for better collaboration through great software. A recent article by Oliver Marks titled Cisco Releasing Sophisticated Collaboration Framework to Accelerate Your Business Value reveals how the company used collaboration best practices to better their business growth and productivity while achieving a 900% ROI.

The article on the soon to be released report states :

“The Report, ‘Creating a Collaborative Enterprise: a Guide to Accelerating Business Value with a Collaboration Framework’, shows how their best practices saved them US$691 million and increased productivity 4.9 percent in fiscal year 2008 against technology investments costing US$81 million.”

Now of course, this was for CISCO and we are talking about the savings and productivity increase across a team of 80,000 employees but that doesn’t mean smaller businesses have nothing to gain from this. In fact it’s a lot easier to implement collaboration best practices and create a better collaboration software platform within a smaller business with far less people which can be scaled as a business grows.

Another interesting point the article makes is the three important components that have to be considered while developing a collaboration framework for the business as one of these or some of these are often ignored:

Essentially, Cisco recommends organizations must carefully cultivate the three components of collaboration: people, processes and technology (something my colleagues and I have also been evangelizing for the last year).

Cisco’s collaboration framework prescribes three phases of collaboration: first investigative work, then performance process tuning and finally a transformation phase.

No matter how good the collaboration technology platform is, unless the processes are aligned with the people and the technology, the results won’t be optimum. Once the processes have been identified and people are comfortable with the technology, things fall into place. It has been known for a while that social networks and online business collaboration platforms have been great tools for communicating better, having discussions, organizing events and projects but things often come down to the question of ROI. “What are the tangible returns financially of implementing this?” I think that’s what will be answered with facts and statistics in this upcoming report and provide answers to those still waiting for the answers. For now, with a company that could implement a framework with 80,000 employees and display the kind of productivity and savings figures CISCO has, I am convinced not many businesses should have doubts and stay left behind.