Social Business - Servant of Chaos

Brandwatch Vizia Shakes Up Social Media Command Centers

Big Data, Command Centers, Digital Strategy, Social Business, Social Media

The concept of social media monitoring seems like a no-brainer. Marketers use keyword driven technology tools to tap into the vast oceans of social media data to reveal mentions of their brand, products and company and then determine how best to respond. It’s a model that replicates the traditional “media monitoring” approaches that have been in existence for decades.

But in the shift to digital, it’s not just advertising that is being overtaken by digital derivatives – news, commentary and analysis is challenging our ability to understand, collate, curate and respond to shifts in community, political and consumer sentiment. New forms of media engagement like social media has further complicated the situation, to the point where some form of digital or social media command center is not just useful but necessary.

Where once the news cycle evolved at a slower pace, this digital transformation has accelerated our need to understand and respond to these challenges. Our monitoring solutions must now be real time, contextual and their insights actionable. And we need to view them not as pretty visualizations to fill out our reports mid- and post-campaign, but as vital business intelligence systems that can inform our decision making. We need to think of these social intelligence systems as an MRI for brands allowing us to understand what resonates with customers, where the blockages are and what has velocity and vitality.

In short, the age of command centers is ending and the need for social intelligence is just beginning. It’s less about a room with big screens and funky graphs – and more about getting that vital information to the right people in your organisation at the right time.

This is where the new Vizia platform from Brandwatch comes into play. Announced today, Vizia combines a spectacular (yes, indeed) user interface with a business model that provides unrestricted access to users across your enterprise. This means that the same data source can be accessed and analysed by Marketing as well as HR, by Customer Service and the Executive Board. It puts data into the hands of the business decision makers at all levels of your organisation – in realtime.

You can find out more about the features of Vizia here.

As a next generation command center – or social intelligence platform – Vizia is shaking up the market which has been relatively uneventful for the last couple of years. With market consolidations and jockeying for position there has been little innovation – even amongst the smaller players and new entrants, but Brandwatch’s Vizia with its multi-screen display and generous licensing model is set to reinvigorate the market.

It’s particularly worth investigating where you need:

Broad access to social intelligence data and reporting
To showcase social initiatives across your business
A way to manage online crisis communications
To capitalise on real time marketing opportunities

Take a few minutes to watch the explanation video on the Brandwatch blog – it’s worth it to see the software in action.

We Are Smarter Than TV

FutureVisions, Innovation, Old Media, Social Business, Social Media, Videos

Back in 2007, Drew McLellan and I embarked on a journey of crowdsourcing discovery. Inspired by the We Are Smarter Than Me collaborative writing project, we wanted to see whether the collective intelligence of marketers across the globe could make sense of the emerging social media landscape. Three months later, the first edition of The Age of Conversation was published. It brought together over 100 writers from 22 countries and captured the mood of the time.

Three editions and six years later, working on these collaborative publishing projects has made me a firm believer in the power and insight that comes from focused communities. In fact, working on the latest edition – Age of Conversation 4 – is again reminding me of the breadth and depth of insight that comes from a diverse – yet focused – group of professionals.

The one consistent theme through all of the four editions, however, is the role of inclusiveness. From a brand perspective, we tend to think of this as a “loss of control”, but through the lens of the consumer, it’s a different story. Rather than seeing this transformation in terms of a shift of power, we should view it as a fundamental mark of mutual respect. And rather than thinking about limitation and even copyright, we should think of generosity and awareness. Effectively this shift means a transformation of what we consider the “marketing funnel” with “conversion” being less about sales and more about shifting our customer relationships away from transactions and closer to longer term engagement. This in turn requires an understanding of customer lifetime value.

The publishing industry has faced this transformation for decades and continues to struggle. The music industry is now making a much better fist of the challenge, but TV seems resolutely trapped in the quagmire of industrialised thinking. This makes the entire industry ripe for disruption. And platforms like Netflix and Hulu are well placed to deliver this kind of broad disruption. And as Oscar winner and artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London recently said, it’s time for TV to learn from other industries. It’s time for them to learn from the crowd. After all, we are smarter than TV.

James Vaughan via Compfight

Bridging the Social Chasm

Digital Strategy, Disruptive Technology, Future of Work, FutureVisions, Social Business

When IBM’s Center for Business Value released its 2011 report into the relationship between social media, marketing and brands, it revealed a “perception gap”. On the one hand, marketers had an understanding that their connected consumers “wanted” or even “expected” a certain style of interaction through social media. And on the other hand, there was the hard reality of what those customers actually wanted. The gap between the two was the distance between two competing realities.

But is anyone listening?

In reality, we are not really dealing with a gap. It could be better described as a “mismatch” – after all, a “gap” would indicate some alignment. But the problem for brands is that the distance between the two sets of expectations is growing. We are now dealing with a widening chasm in the world of customer experience.

Two years after IBM’s original report, even a casual investigation of most branded social media would indicate that the chasm is becoming more pronounced as brands continue to shift their marketing spend and resources into digital and social media (Gartner’s US Digital Marketing Spending Report indicates that 25% of the marketing budget is now devoted to digital).

But when it comes to business effectiveness, more budget is not necessarily always the answer (though there would be few marketers who would refuse an increase, I am sure). To bridge the social chasm, business must begin to re-think, re-action and re-calibrate their organisational approach to social:

Re-think: Start with what you know. Create a new social baseline and audit all your activity for assessment. Real time analytics and dashboards such as those from Anametrix can provide the kinds of decision-ready data that is essential to informed decision-making
Re-calibrate: If you have started a social business program in the last two years, it’s now worthwhile assessing its impact. Have you achieved the original milestones? Has the program had the kind of impact that you expected? Take a look at R “Ray” Wang’s 50 use cases that help demystify social business and think through the business processes and workflows that are business critical. Are your social programs impacting business results? If not, it may be time to recalibrate.
Re-action: This is no time for social business fatigue. No one ever said that change was easy. And equally, no business achieved competitive advantage by being complacent. It’s time to re-action the business programs that are core to your strategy.

What’s your experience?

Interestingly, this recent workplace research study by Microsoft revealed that there is also a chasm between business management and the workforce. Teams not only expect or demand more collaboration – about 17% of people are actively ignoring IT policy and installing social tools independently. This is delivering some value to the business – with 60 percent of participants in the Microsoft study indicating that their use of social tools has increased productivity – but this would be a far cry from the billions of locked-in value that McKinsey Global Institute’s 2012 study revealed.

If businesses can’t work to unlock the value in the low hanging opportunities within their own business, how long will customers have to wait?

It seems like there are whole industries on the brink of disruption. Social may not be the driving force, but it could be the trigger.

Microsoft Social Tools in the Workplace Research Study by Mark Fidelman

Twitter + TV Goes Beyond the 30 Second Spot

Disruptive Technology, Social Business, Social Media

Many companies spend a great deal of time, money and effort getting people to do something. Like switching brands. Trying a new product. Or watching a TV show. And to do this, they use advertising. TV has been the great transformer of the 20th Century – it has educated us, engaged us and even amazed us. And the thing it transformed was not the world, but our behaviour. But it has always been a one-way street – broadcasting its message from a single point to the masses.

And then along came the internet and provided a whole new way to be educated, engaged and amazed.

We have always known that there was an abundance of awe inspiring activity taking place in the world but it was often hard to find. Realising that fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) tapped our primal urge to fight or fly, in the war for ratings, broadcast media prioritised the sensational over the substantive. But in a multi-dimensional communications world, where the means of production (ie creating content) and distribution are readily and widely available, new forms and types of content are emerging – and with them, new behaviours.

Anyone interested in human behaviour knows how difficult it can be to change a personal habit. But trying to change habits within a culture add layers of complexity that can boggle the mind.

Which is why this latest move from Twitter has me intrigued.

Much of the innovation that we have seen emerge from Twitter has been invented and driven by its community of users. It’s one of the benefits of having a large and active, participating user base – ideas, trends and opportunities magically appear out of the interactions of the crowd. But the businesses behind social networks have an advantage over other types of businesses – they can observe real time and emergent behaviour and adjust accordingly.

When people started using Twitter and hashtags to collaboratively consume television programs it marked a new line in the sand for a struggling TV industry. The dominance of the single screen was well and truly over – and the rise of the connected, multi-screen experience was underway. Now, we can all collectively watch TV shows like #QandA, contribute to the fast flowing conversation online and compete to see our names flash upon the screen. Twitter, in many respects, has given us a reason to tune in at a set time on a set day. Despite our timeshifted life, it’s made TV relevant again.

And this new Twitter + TV offering is taking this a step further. Take a look.

What I like:

It taps into existing behaviours: we are already using Twitter to collaboratively consume content on TV. It’s a no brainer that this could be monetised or extended
Creative opportunities for extending the customer experience: smart brands (and I would include TV broadcasters in this) have the potential to radically transform the relationship they have with “viewers”
Encouraging participation: for all the energy and noise, we are still in the infancy of social media adoption. It’s one thing to have a billion users across the world, but getting that billion people to do something other than login and post once a month is the next great challenge

Some of the problems I can see arising:

Broadcasting more broadly: when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right. Twitter has never (and I repeat NEVER) understood its role as a community platform. The fact that it facilitates amazing conversations doesn’t mean that it is a “conversation company” as we have seen with various ham-fisted changes to functionality, and its short-sighted limiting of its own ecosystem etc. There is the potential for this new offering to generate more noise and simply broadcast more broadly. This would be a great missed opportunity
Most brands lack comprehensive multi-channel strategy: while we see some substantial and innovative approaches to multi-channel strategy and execution, most brands (and their agencies) lack the level of strategic understanding required to make this work. We can’t all be Red Bull – but we could be more successful if we invested in these channels and strategies
Digital skills are thin on the ground: a key to making this work will be deep digital skills and a collaborative approach to storytelling. Brands need to up their investment in digital skilling not just in marketing but across the enterprise. When social becomes the #1 channel for engagement across your business ecosystem (ie not just sales and marketing), then you’ll have the kind of competitive advantage you’ve been dreaming of.

RubyGoes via Compfight

Free Your Instagram Photos with FreeThePhotos

Digital Strategy, Disruptive Technology, Social Business, Social Judgement, Social Media

Remember when Flickr was cool? It has the no-brainer business model of $25 per year, in-built community functions like sets, groups and connections, and it helped manage copyright through various licensing arrangements. And the open API meant we could do cool things like

But then it lost its way.

Yahoo! stopped telling us about what they were doing and why. The diehards continued to post their images to Flickr but many others, attracted by easy-to-use apps, newly emerging and vibrant communities and a hipster ethic switched to Instagram, or Path or even to Twitter to share their photos.

When National Geographic suspended their Instagram account, it got serious

Over the lasts couple of days, I have written a couple of pieces analysing Instagram’s change of terms. It would be naive to think that Instagram did not expect a backlash of some sort, but by dumping the early adopters, they are opening the door to a more mainstream audience. The backlash then becomes a form of earned media, creating a social media news story that jumps into mainstream news consciousness.

Of course, the beatup around photo ownership is actually not about intellectual property – but about the influence we each hold within our social networks. Social judgement’s a vital and highly prized element in a digital campaign, and the change in terms from Instagram opens the door to a level of granular automation that perfectly compliments the shift to real time bidding and automated digital ad targeting via systems like Facebook Exchange.

But when big brands who have made a significant investment in building communities within Instagram take a stand, it’s time for the rest of us to take note. National Geographic’s single image announcement boldly features on their Instagram page – making it clear that the terms of use scheduled to take effect in January were not to their liking.

Next step – migration – Google+ or Flickr?

Now at this time of year, we can expect people to be taking MORE not less photos. And we will be wanting to SHARE them with our friends, families and random social network connections more than ever! So what is one to do? The obvious suggestion is to migrate photos to another service, close your Instagram account and find a new network for your photos.

Google+ has been recommended by some, with its Picasa-based system. But Google has yet to crack the non-tech feel to most of its systems and this is a major barrier to entry for the average non-tech Geek. My choice would be Flickr – and as I have a long standing account, it’s really a non-contest.

Free your photos

If you want to follow me over to Flickr, you can do so using this great new site – free your photos. It takes the pain out of the download and upload process.

Visit freethephotos.com
Visit Instagram.com and login
Visit Flickr.com and login (these steps make it easier)
Login and authorise your Instagram account
Login and authorise your Flickr account
Click the Free Your Photos button

It takes a while, but you can set the site to email you when the process is complete. Then it’s just a matter of using the bulk management tools on Flickr to sort through and arrange the images.

But is there a replacement for my Instagram app?

And of course, if you are looking for an alternative iPhone app to Instagram – one with filters and auto uploading etc, Flickr have just released one for iPhone and one for Android. There are also dozens of community sourced Flickr apps for Android available here.

Marissa Mayer will be loving Instagram’s early Christmas bonus

Judging by the number of new connection requests coming through from Flickr, it would appear that there is some shift already taking place amongst my network. Our natural inclination is to establish trusted connections within a new network early. So not only does Flickr benefit from new members, those members are bringing their community strength with them.

Instagram may have unwittingly delivered an early Christmas present to Marissa Mayer at Yahoo! But let’s see what the new year brings.

HT @JohnHaydon

Instagram Don’t Want Your Pictures, They Want Your Influence

Big Data, Social Business, Social Media, Web/Tech

Over the last 24 hours, the changes to the Instagram social network’s terms of use have rippled across the web. Many took to Twitter to voice their displeasure, while others determined it was a non event. In many respects, it was only a matter of time before Facebook began to expect a return on their $1 billion investment in the nine person strong social network startup.

Instagram responds

As I suggested yesterday, Instagram will measure community response to the changes and are likely to return with a watered down version of their terms of use. In a blog post from co-founder, Kevin Systrom, Instagram have moved to clarify the plain English ambiguity that comes with legalese.

Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.

The post also moves to clarify ownership rights and privacy settings – though it is worth pointing out that the privacy features in Instagram are not yet as granular as those offered by Facebook.

Big data is the hidden gold

The world of advertising has shifted substantially in the last 2-3 years. Those immersed in the world of digital will have a more nuanced understanding of “innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram” than the general public. It’s not simply a case of a social network selling your photo for use in an advertising campaign. It’s about using the META DATA associated with your photo to CONTEXTUALISE digital advertising within YOUR social network.

So, imagine that you ride a Ducati motorbike (as I used to). If I took a photo of myself on a Ducati motorbike at the local dealership and tagged it accordingly, that photo may appear in a Facebook ad (or an ad served via the Facebook Exchange elsewhere on the web). But most importantly, because we know consumers trust friends more than we trust brands, we are more likely to respond to advertising with an implied (or real) endorsement. So when my Ducati ad appears with a well crafted call to action, and you click through to an offer from your local motorcycle dealer, Instagram will have done its job – delivering a highly targeted contextual advertisement to a highly targeted, socially-influenced audience.

This can occur because each time you take a photo with Instagram, you upload not only the photo itself, but you connect that photo with other identities and data, like:

The caption of the photo and a list of hashtags in the caption
Location of the photo – latitude and longitude, and sometimes a location name
List of comments on the photo, each with the text of the comment and details about the comment’s author
Date and time the photo was created
Link to view the photo on the web in different sizes – thumbnail, low resolution and standard sizes
Count of likes, with details of each user who liked the photo
Details of the user who posted the photo – their username, website, bio, profile picture and full name

You’re not the product, your friends are

We often say that when you use a social network and the price of entry is free, that YOU are the product. But that is only half the story. You are not the only product – your friends and social connections are too.

And in a world that is inundated with messages and messaging, cut through comes via trusted sources. That’s why Instagram (or Facebook) don’t want your images, they want your influence, reputation and social connections.

Dell Launches Social Business Services

Social Business, Social Media

Much lauded for its own social business transformation, Dell is now taking its social media expertise to market, launching a new range of offerings through a collaboration between its marketing and services teams.

Targeting enterprise and medium sized business customers, the first offerings provide:

Education – best practice seminars for a range of industries
Advisory – strategy and optimisation
Listening and insights – social media monitoring and reporting
Listening Command Center – on-premise build out of a social media listening command center

Responding to the chaotic social media space, Maribel Sierra, Director Social Media Services at Dell explained that Dell’s customers are struggling to go beyond Facebook and Twitter. Customers are asking for Dell’s expertise in choosing tools, building training and scaling social media within the enterprise.

But it is not all about social media maturity. Customers are also wanting to understand how and where to get started with enterprise social media and how to gain executive support for social programs.

Pilot customers like Kraft Foods, Clemson University and Aetna have helped prove out the Dell model over the last year – and the range of services are expected to grow with demand. Right now, there are over 20 courses available through the Dell Social Media University – and they’re delivered either face to face or virtually.

These new offerings mark a decisive shift for Dell, providing a strategic services offering at the pointy end of customer experience for their customers. Working in this trusted space will keep Dell top of mind across their customers executive ranks. This will bring Dell into direct competition with organisations like IBM, Salesforce and the big consulting firms.

As 2013 begins to take shape, the future of social media innovation looks set to play out within the enterprise. On the customer side, expect more services firms to flood in as enterprises begin to transform social engagement into business value.