Eric Schwartzman

Managing online communities isn't always all it's cracked up to be.  Sometimes, things go a little sideways.

That's just what happened to me. I have always been impressed with Rachel Happe's deep subject matter expertise in online community management.   

She has invested much time and energy thinking about and helping others figure out how to actively manage online communities, even in some of the toughest, most delicate situations.   

Having recently had some challenges of my own participating in a Linkedin Group set up by Kim Albee of Genoo and managed by her intern, I decided to share my situation with Rachel, get some guidance, and see what I could learn. 

And learn I did. So will you, if you listen to this episode.  

Not many organizations are brave enough to leverage communities to market themselves. Content marketing is still a safer and easier-to-grasp approach.

But for the organizations that can pull it off, generating leads, building awareness and making a market -- particularly for considered purchases with longer sales cycles -- via social networks makes a lot of sense, because it’s a way for the market to come up to speed and self-educate, which is less expensive then direct sales and has the added credibility of learning through a peer, rather than through a sales person, where it typically takes longer to establish trust.

In this episode Rachel Happe, principal and co-founder of the Community Roundtable, an online resource for community practitioners, discusses:

Why B2B communities are more sustainable.

Peers are more trusted than authority figures.

Strategy for participating in someone else’s community versus your own.

Value of differentiating service offerings through social networks.

Using online social communities to prequalify prospects.

B2B Online Marketing LinkedIn Group managed by Kim Albee, president of Genoo

What makes a good community manager.

Community for information sharing versus engagement.

Eric’s guest post on Scott Monty’s blog.

Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook are important for awareness and consideration, but late stage buying decisions are more likely occur on niche networks.

Should community managers be held to the same standards as community members?

Is posting relevant links to a community a good way to stimulate conversation, or is requiring members to post only questions a better way to germinate discussion?

Do communities with user ratings make it easier to assess the community without having to invest the time and learn first hand?

Photo by William White on Unsplash

B2B Social Media Podcast - Our guest panelist is Allan Schoenberg, director of corporate communications who leads B2B marketing at CME Group.

1. Match.com Lawsuit Raises Key Issue: Who's Responsible for Truth? - Is it your responsibility to share relevant information with your customers, even if you're not sure it's accurate?

2. Is Facebook ready for B2B? CME Group is about to implement the new Facebook comment API into sections of its site. Allan says traffic to our site from Twitter/Facebook has been going through the roof. CME was initially skeptical about Facebook's B2B potential, but Allan is impressed with recent Is this a big new opportunity for B2B?

3. Google releases Analytics 5 and tests Multi-Channel Funnel reporting. Amy Chang, Director of Product Management at Google Analytics, announced the new feature at AdTech SF last week. Justin Cutroni has a blog post on it, and we have a two-part series with Justin coming up on this podcast.

4. B2B Daily Deals Site Launches with Business Publisher - Daily deals sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial already have significant scale in the consumer arena, and the former has already begun experimenting with B2B offers. Business-to-business daily deals platform RapidBuyr launched yesterday, aided by a close partnership with Advance Publications-owned regional business publisher American City Business Journals.

Allan talks about how CME integrates the Facebook API into its site and its potential to leverage events promotion.

Paul will emcee the B2B magazine Social Media Awards breakfast in New York on May 24†, present and present a pre-conference educational seminar at the BMA Annual Conference in Chicago on June 1. The topic: Unleash Your Inner Publisher

Eric teaches the Social Media Marketing Workshop in Los Angeles from June 30-July 1.

Allan Schoenberg is director of corporate communications at CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse financial marketplace. His team oversees media relations, social media, crisis management, message development, international initiatives, and broadcast/digital communications. CME† is one of the financial industry's most active social media participants, with a Twitter following of more than 750,000 and active presences on Facebook, Linkedin and a variety of other channels. He also has worked for Accenture, Edelman Worldwide, and Fleishman-Hillard. He is currently stationed in London.

Search engine marketing remains a tough slog for Google competitors like Microsoft’s Bing, which, despite six straight quarters of market share gains, was still at just 13.9 percent as of March. Still, the only company in the space to achieve such a six-quarter streak before then had been Google.

 

Social search, geolocation and digital video are among the hot frontiers at companies seeking to improve our search experience. Adam Sohn (@adamsohn), senior director of public and influencer relations for Microsoft Corporation, believes Bing can gain ground on Google in these areas of search, with his proof coming in the form of a growing list of partnerships between Bing and companies like Facebook, Yahoo and Research in Motion. Adam sat down with “On the Record…Online,” the official podcast of the PRSA Digital Impact Conference in New York to discuss his keynote at the conference , which was titled: "Bing: Does the World Need another Search Engine?"

LISTEN

Show Notes: 1:50 Search industry changes reflect profound shifts in how people are using the web, with the usage pattern shifting from searches for websites using keywords to attempts to complete complex and personal tasks and projects, Sohn argues.  More than typing in a single term to find a web site, searchers are looking to book travel, make purchases or research health conditions, for example, and in a more relevant way.

 

2:30 Search engine industry analysis reveals that one in four searches fails, in that the user is not able to easily accomplish what they set out to do. Search engines, to reach the next level, will need to successfully analyze the intent of the searcher to make the search meaningful.

 

2:50 Search sessions are now lasting longer than ever, with more than half running 30 minutes or more. That suggests two things to Bing: people are seeking to complete more complex tasks online and may be having a harder time doing so.

 

3:35 Google search continues to dominant the search industry, with the competition composed of would-be challengers like Bing seeking to steel market share. 

 

4:10 Search industry evolution is proceeding apace as new forces like social networking and mobile input have an ever greater impact on search.  Once upon a time, search   consisted only of a bunch of web sites and algorithms to find them. Now vast amounts of information are flowing into the web each second from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare … user- generated video via YouTube, Quora’s conversations among experts, and mobile aps where location matters.

 

5:00 Geolocation search is an important aspect for the future of search engines because, with your permission, search engine companies will soon be able to use where you are to empower your searches.  Mobile phones generate sensor data that can make search algorithms smarter in their offerings. In a future scenario, search engines may see that you are searching for driving directions, combine that GPS data from your phone indicating that you are moving 65 miles per hour, and then surmise that you need driving directions and freeway routing.  If you were at moving 2 miles per hour, the same search would ideally yield walking directions.

 

5:55 Social search and mapping represent other near-future advances in search, Sohn says. Say you are using a search engine to find a place with good pizza. The search engine would then layer social networking on top of mobile searching, giving you note only the closest restaurant as you move, but an idea of which of your friends have already checked in there.  Sohn believes people will interact with search on a digital map canvas in many cases, as well through voice-activated search. Mobile and mapping will remain areas of focus for search design because of their explosive growth.  

 

8:50 Search continues to grow, and Bing sees it accelerating further still as generations of young people continue to graduate from high school and college who have never searched for anything without using the web.  Other segments continue to increase their increase their use.  Bing recognizes that it is a lesser player, but it does reach 30 percent of the market on its own and in combination with Yahoo, its strategic partner.

 

13:05 Social media marketing is clearly as vital to search companies as many others. Bing has success with contests featuring user-generated content (who can come up with the best Bing jingle) as well a partnership where Bing users could gain credits with the Farmville social media game.  Bing’s marketing team is constantly trying to predict the direction that the search engine industry will move in, and social search was a trend they spotted a while back.  This has its most impact when you can spot a trend in technology and match that with marketing strategies that meet a customer need.

 

14:08 Facebook search is obviously an emerging force online, and Bing is poised to take advantage, having announced last October a partnership with the social networking giant.  Bing has been working hard to take Facebook information and merge it into Bing.  Again with the user in complete control, and seeing only things you’re friends want to show you, you would know have a social signal in your search results. Not only would do you see ten blue links in your search results, but also notes on which links your friends have ”liked” one of those ten.  Such personal search results help you separate the wheat from the chaff.  Social search will be a huge investment area for Bing, which is the only search engine with a Facebook deal.  Bing expects to announce related news in the next few weeks.

 

17:10 End

 

About the Guest Host

Greg Williams (@gregscience), an independent consultant specializing in public relations for medical science and technical companies. After beginning his career as an editor for the Associated Press, Greg has since served as a public relations strategist for two international public relations firms and two university medical centers, and as a writer for institutions including Eastman Kodak and the National Academy of Sciences.

 

These show notes were search engine optimized by Greg Williams.

The B2B Social Media Marketing Show #8 - Should B2B companies discipline employees for noncompliance with their social media policies?

We discuss an incident reported by the New York Times involving Reuters reprimanding an employee for criticizing the newswire's management style via Twitter.

But accordingly to the National Labor Relations Board, a federal government agency, that may be unconstitutional.  Should you update your corporate social media policy as a result.  Listen to find out.  

Social networking isn't just for internal communications anymore.  Next up, we discuss the pros and cons of private internal social networks behind the firewall to increase productivity inside the work place, Salesforce.com's Chatter customer survey and other internal social networking platforms.  

Is it time for B2B marketers to put a mobile search marketing strategy in place?  You’ve heard that the marketing wars of tomorrow will be fought on the small screen.

Smart phone usage and mobile search continue to grow, with analysts predicting nearly 3.5 billion mobile searches per month by next year. 

And already, 80% of smart phone users research purchasing decisions within a 10 to 20 mile radius of their location, which certainly makes sense if you’re shopping for pizza or tires. 

But what if you’re a B2B buyer of highly specialized products and services? What role does or will mobile play in B2B sales cycles?  

Our guest panelist is Chris Boudreaux (@cboudreaux), founder of Social Media Governance and Senior VP at Converseon.  

This is the B2B Social Media Podcast by Eric Schwartzman and Paul Gillin, co-authors of Social Marketing to the Business Customer -- the first book devoted entirely to B2B social media marketing.

Thanks to Erica Klein, Vice President/Digital Sales at TargetSpot for the heads up.

Reuters reprimanding of employee for Tweet may be unconstitutional (Apr. 6, 2011) Erin Kurtz (@eekurtz), Reuters Head of Publicity. Deborah Zabarenko (@dzabarenko). Steve Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) of the New York Times.

Company Settles Case in Firing Tied to Facebook (Feb. 7, 2011)

Should your employer have access to your Facebook account? (Feb. 21, 2011)

Social Networking Sprawl - is our network of connections getting too big and are internal or special-purpose social networks the answer?

Salesforce.com Customer Survey: Productivity Gains of using Chatter for Internal Comms was the result of the best pitch Eric's ever received for this podcast, and it was by Angela D'Arcy (@angelaDRC) of The OutCast Agency.

Steve Rubel's column on "Validation Era" of online marketing

Rise of Services like Path, Instagram, Beluga and GroupMe. Uniqueness of these services.

Eric's guest post on Scott Monty's blog on internal social networks

Should B2B marketers have a mobile strategy?

About our Guest Chris Boudreaux (@cboudreaux) is SVP of Business Integration at Converseon, where he helps the world's largest brands to achieve business objectives through social media by transforming business processes, data integration, and governance.

Prior to Converseon, Chris created and led the Social Media Management offering at Accenture, where he also advised clients in digital marketing and online product development.

His work has been featured by industry researchers and journalists including Forrester and Gartner, and he founded Social Media Governance, the foremost resource on governance in social media.

Chris is co-author of The Social Media Management Handbook, and he has helped leading global corporations including Bank of America, Boeing, eBay, IBM, Kodak, Kohler, Novo Nordisk and Microsoft.

In the dynamic realm of mobile app marketing, insights and expertise are invaluable assets. Rich Devine, a seasoned professional at ZAAZ, a digital marketing agency renowned for its proficiency in design, optimization, and analytics, delves into the intricacies of mobile app marketing. With a specialization in mobile advertising and app marketing, Rich Devine is well-equipped to share his insights and secrets.

ZAAZ's expertise in this domain has positioned them as leaders in the industry, making them an invaluable resource for navigating the complex landscape of mobile app marketing. In this discussion, Rich Devine offers valuable perspectives on strategies, trends, and techniques that can drive success in the highly competitive mobile app market.

As mobile devices continue to shape consumer behavior and engagement, understanding the nuances of mobile app marketing is crucial for businesses and marketers. Rich Devine's insights shed light on how to harness the potential of mobile advertising and app marketing to reach and engage audiences effectively. By tapping into his wealth of knowledge, professionals in the field can gain a competitive edge and achieve their goals in the ever-evolving mobile app marketing arena.

Navigating Mobile App Marketing for Multiple Locations

Mobile app marketing presents unique challenges for businesses with multiple locations or brands sold through resellers at various locations. Marketers need to adopt a nuanced approach to address such scenarios effectively. Strategies should focus on geo-targeting and localized campaigns to ensure marketing efforts resonate with specific audiences in diverse locations. Consistency in branding and messaging is crucial, even catering to various locations. Additionally, optimizing for local search and leveraging location-based data can significantly enhance the success of mobile app marketing in these scenarios.

Key Mobile Marketing Trends and Considerations

Staying abreast of mobile marketing trends is essential for advertisers looking to remain competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. The mobile marketing is dynamic, with emerging trends continually shaping the industry. Marketers should pay close attention to augmented reality (AR) developments, location-based marketing, and mobile commerce. The proliferation of smartphones and the growing use of mobile apps underscore the importance of mobile-first strategies. Moreover, understanding user behavior, preferences, and the path to conversion is critical to crafting effective mobile marketing campaigns.

Optimizing User Interface for Mobile Conversion

The user interface (UI) is a pivotal aspect of mobile app marketing, directly impacting user engagement and conversion rates. Mobile users have distinct expectations and behaviors, necessitating a tailored UI design for a positive small-screen experience. Marketers should prioritize responsive design that adapts seamlessly to various portable devices and screen sizes. Intuitive navigation, streamlined forms, and quick-loading content ensure a positive user experience. Employing A/B testing and user feedback can further refine the UI to encourage users to visit and convert once they find the mobile app or website.

Enhancing Mobile User Experience and Conversions

The initial step is leading mobile users to a mobile app or website; the real challenge is ensuring they stay engaged and convert. The mobile user experience (UX) significantly differs from desktop devices, necessitating specific considerations. Mobile marketers should optimize page load times, simplify navigation, and reduce conversion process friction. Implementing intuitive call-to-action (CTA) buttons and ensuring mobile compatibility across various platforms are vital strategies to encourage user interaction and conversions. By addressing these aspects, mobile marketers can create a positive small-screen experience that compels users to stay engaged and take desired actions.

Addressing the Mobile-Desktop Disparity in User Experience

The discrepancy in user experience between mobile devices and desktops poses a significant challenge for mobile app marketing. Users expect seamless and efficient interactions on their mobile devices, which differ significantly from the desktop experience. To bridge this gap, marketers should adopt mobile-first design principles. This approach prioritizes the mobile user experience during website or app development, ensuring that navigation, content, and functionality align with user behavior and preferences. By seamlessly adapting to the mobile environment, marketers can increase the likelihood of user engagement and conversions.

Strategies for Sustaining User Engagement and Conversion on Mobile Devices

Sustaining user engagement and conversion on mobile devices requires a multifaceted approach in mobile app marketing. Marketers should optimize the user journey by providing clear, concise, and relevant content. Implementing personalized recommendations and rewards can incentivize users to stay engaged and convert. Regularly updating and improving the mobile app or website and promptly addressing user feedback is essential for maintaining user satisfaction. Moreover, monitoring user behavior through analytics and conducting A/B testing can uncover insights to continually refine the mobile marketing strategy.

Geo-Targeting and Localized Campaigns for Mobile Marketing Success

Geo-targeting and localized campaigns are indispensable strategies in mobile app marketing, especially for businesses with multiple locations or resellers. These approaches involve tailoring marketing efforts to specific geographical regions, enabling marketers to connect with local audiences effectively. Geo-targeting allows for personalized content delivery based on a user's location, increasing relevance and engagement. Localized campaigns further enhance brand resonance within distinct markets. Successful implementation involves understanding each location's unique characteristics and preferences, aligning content and messaging, and leveraging location-based data to drive conversions and brand loyalty.

Leveraging Location-Based Data in Mobile App Marketing

Location-based data is pivotal in mobile app marketing, enabling businesses to create highly targeted and relevant campaigns. By harnessing the power of location data, marketers can deliver personalized content, promotions, and recommendations to users based on their real-time or historical location. This approach enhances user engagement and conversion rates by providing valuable, contextually relevant information. Additionally, location-based data aids in geo-segmenting audiences and measuring the effectiveness of mobile marketing campaigns in specific geographic areas, enabling marketers to refine their strategies for optimal results.

Mobile App Marketing Tips

Mobile Marketing Campaigns for Impulse Purchases vs. Considered Purchases

In mobile app marketing, strategists face the intriguing challenge of tailoring campaigns for consumer behaviors—impulse purchases and considered purchases. For impulse purchases, where consumers make quick and unplanned buying decisions, mobile marketers often leverage flash sales, limited-time offers, and eye-catching visuals to capture attention and drive immediate action. In contrast, considered purchases involve more thoughtful decision-making processes. Here, mobile marketing efforts provide comprehensive product information, reviews, and comparison tools to empower consumers with the information they need to make informed choices. Navigating this duality within mobile marketing requires a nuanced approach that aligns with the nature of the product or service being promoted.

Using Google Webmaster Tools to Localize Sections and Pages on Your Site

Google Webmaster Tools is a valuable resource for optimizing mobile app marketing efforts. One key aspect of its functionality lies in localizing sections and pages on a website. Localization is critical for catering to diverse audiences and regions, ensuring content resonates with the target demographic. Marketers can customize and optimize content, keywords, and metadata by utilizing Google Webmaster Tools to enhance visibility in local search results. This approach enhances the website's relevance for users in specific geographical areas, contributing to the overall success of mobile app marketing campaigns.

Designing Websites for the Mobile User

Designing websites with a mobile-first approach is paramount in the era of mobile app marketing. Mobile users have distinct preferences and behaviors that demand responsive and user-friendly designs. Mobile-focused design entails creating websites that are not only visually appealing but also responsive across various devices and screen sizes. This approach emphasizes efficient navigation, fast loading times, and intuitive user interfaces, ensuring a seamless experience for mobile users. Effective website design for mobile users is a cornerstone of successful mobile app marketing, as it directly influences user engagement, retention, and conversion rates.

How to Convert Websites Designed for Stationary Computers to Work for Mobile Browsers

Adapting websites initially designed for stationary computers to function seamlessly on mobile browsers is a pivotal consideration in mobile app marketing. This process involves a comprehensive transformation of the website's layout, content, and functionality to cater to the limitations and nuances of mobile devices. Techniques such as responsive web design, which automatically adjusts the site's layout based on screen size, and optimizing images and media for mobile consumption play a crucial role in this conversion. Additionally,

Mobile search volume is growing exponentially.  In 2009, there were around a billion monthly searches being made from mobile devices.  

Today, that number has more than doubled to 2.3 billion, and analysts predict there will nearly 3.5 billion mobile searches per month by 2012.

Already, 80% of mobile searchers research their purchasing decisions within a 10 to 20 mile radius of their location.

And if you think the future of the mobile web is going to be all about apps, think again.  

The #1 access method for local information is the mobile web browser, with nearly 21 million users per month. But with the use of maps and apps on rise for mobile search, and growing importance of mobile as a channel, where will tomorrow’s mobile search war be fought, who will be the winners and where are the opportunities for disruption?    

In this episode, Rich Devine (@richdevine) of ZAAZ, a design, optimization and analytics agency discusses:

How is mobile search different from web search.Mobile site search and social optimizationThe difference between mobile local and hyperlocal searchHow universal search impacts SEO strategyOptimizing for Yelp filtering criteriaFord’s mobile search strategy

In the second part in our two part series on Mobile Search, we’ll talk about how to optimize different pages on the same site for different locations, the benefits and drawbacks of mobile sites vs. custom apps and how to monetize more than just e-commerce transactions.

Social marketing research, social media monitoring social media analytics have become essential tools for companies seeking to identify issues and correct misperceptions in real time. 

Reputation management on global scale requires a combination of social media monitoring software and human intelligence.

Online issues management and sentiment analysis may depend on instant analysis of Twitter conversations around keywords, but human common sense is needed to interpret emotion, sarcasm and slang.  

Social networking research tools represent the latest evolution in the offering of Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group, a descendant of Factiva media monitoring service, according to Martin Murtland, vice president and managing director of Solutions for Communications Professionals at Dow Jones Enterprise Media. 

Dow Jones today offers a suite of high-tech, customizable analysis function, including social media monitoring   Issues management is also nothing new for Cindy Droog, APR, senior public relations specialist in Corporate Communications at Amway, a Dow Jones client using its services to field an ongoing reputation study in 19 markets per quarter. Amway, along with other direct sales giants like Avon and Mary Kay, have long battled against misperceptions, including that they are akin to illegal pyramid schemes.

What has changed is that Amway now instantly learns of negative conversations in the fifty countries it does business in, and engages with factual arguments in hopes of changing minds in a public forum. They also have learned the value of going beyond reaching out to “influencers” with 1,000 followers in Twitter to engaging those with ten followers, if they think they can win that person over. Cindy and Martin sat down with us in DC at the PRSA International Conference.    

Show Notes:  

2:41 Media monitoring is just the first of four product elements built by Dow Jones for marketing and PR customers that fall under the acronym MADE (for communications success).  M is for media monitoring (Factiva tradition), A for analysis (Dow Jones Insight, listening platform covers social media research and analysis), d for discover (research-on-demand services for issue discovery) and E for engagement via internal communications (a newsletter publishing platform called Editorial Workbench) and external communications (Dow Jones Media Relations Manager, a news-enabled media contact database).  

4:39 Reputation management forms the core of Dow Jones’ value to its client Amway, which uses the Dow Jones product suite to run a reputation study based on real-time conversations in Russia, China, Japan and Germany. Social media strategy for the company is then shaped by observation of the human-technology mix and culture in each market.  

5:54 Web 2.0 research now represents a main method by which Amway achieves opinion mining in the search for brand misperceptions. As the “grandfather” of direct selling, Amway and its PR function are continually grappling with the traditional misperception that the company represents a “pyramid scheme.” The later phrase continues to represent a central keyword in Amway/Dow Jones complex searches along with strategic qualifiers.   

7:23 Sentiment analysis efforts must be efficient to be valuable, a fact that has required Dow Jones technologies to become ever better judges of relevancy.  Without combining the technology with real people in each country, especially as a company seeks to listen to conversations in several languages, true relevancy cannot be measured. Google Translate and Tweetdeck’s translation tools have value for a topline read, but nuances will be caught by native speakers, Droog says. Social media engagement at Amway is shaped by its decision to  empower affiliate PR staff within each market. In Russia, for instance, this approach has helped the company to temper its response to posts with negative, attention-grabbing headlines, but that then go on to praise the company.     

8:54 Social medial monitoring achieves relevancy incorporating human intelligence, even within the tech-driven Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.  The company tailors each analysis program based on in-depth client conversations, analyst review of a clients’ business objectives, key issues, competitors and markets to determine what they want to measure and why. Text mining technology is then brought to bear as analysts create complex Boolean search strings in the native languages to catch local nuances. Media monitoring packages are then put through a quality assurance processes in Dow Jones labs, and finally, field tested by the client.  Even then, quarterly updates often swap out search ideas, and situations call for on-the-fly searches.  

10:46 Rich text analytics, when automated, can achieve no greater than 60 percent accuracy in terms of determining sentiment, according to some industry sources (see January 29, 2010, podcast featuring Converseon CEO Rob Key). Murtland agrees, but argues that automated analysis is good for is determining broad themes within sentiment and for identifying the highly positive or negative. Dow Jones helps clients improve on those results with services that let clients take and score their own random sample sets, or that enlist Dow Jones to do so when precision is a must.  

14:25 Social media influence measurement is an emerging field, and Dow Jones is tinkering with how to help it mature, says Murtland.  Influence measurement tools like Klout.com represent a good first step for the industry, but Dow Jones hopes to soon offer tools that navigate tricky questions like whether or the most chatty social media users are the most influential (mentions data from “E-labs.”  Could not find). Under way in Dow Jones labs are efforts to incorporate context into measurement of a blogger’s influence, and to arrive at better measures of an outlet’s combined online and offline influence.  

16:00 Social marketing research helps Amway make the most of its human capital, says Droog. The company began its social media analysis effort with the goal of unearthing global trends, but found it was more important to identify local trends. Social media communities form locally, and most effective conversations are held by real people sharing their passion in each market. Amway was able to steer some local reps away from one-way, declarative marketing messages (we are the best in the world) toward statements more likely to start conversations.  

17:46 Social media policy and related training are among the biggest opportunities, and challenges for the companies.  When effective, both elements can empower a local sales force, but policies crafted at corporate headquarters often do not translate perfectly for 50 local operations.  As a result, Amway has moved toward “trans-creation” of training and policy, working with local offices to shape local versions.  

18:50 Social media listening is the future of customer service, according a blog post by Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst at blog called Web Strategist.  Companies will find clients   with the problems and solve them long before they call customer service.  Amway now fields joint PR/customer service teams that huddle to deal with problems in each market. What has changed is that the teams must solve within minutes customer service problems that they used to have days to think about.   

20:23 Social media analysis tools enable Dow Jones’ clients to reduce signal-to-noise ratios in client monitoring efforts.  This helps them to spot potential risks and opportunities more quickly, with algorithms that catch, not just keywords, but also temporal spikes in their use, and in context.  

23:58 Social media monitoring and analytics are only useful in real time, which makes latency of information a serious challenge for companies like Dow Jones. Murtland’s team speeds things up by using algorithms that decide on which information should be processed at what speed.  A site updated once a week will be less likely to be processed as quickly as one that updates several times an hour. Business intelligence gathering speed at Dow Jones is also accelerated by the company’s experience in delivering trading information into clients’ black box trading systems in a matter of milliseconds.    

29:33 End Podcast    

Show notes optimized by Greg Williams (@gregscience).

I know what you’re thinking.  Private social networks for internal communications are stupid.  

Be open. Right?

But there are plenty of situations where internal social networks make a lot of sense.

Think about it.  

Today, we use activity streams on social networks for marketing, sales and customer service.  

But there’s nothing private about Facebook, and if you could social network with your coworkers and business partners privately, you could do more with less.

But how do businesses social network privately?

How do you get your own private Facebook?

In his last month's keynote at Dell’s B2B Social Media Huddle in London, Brian Solis said that he never shares information that gives him a competitive edge.  

So, what do you do if you want to use activity streams for collaborating with your coworkers and share proprietary information?  Email is great for person-to-person communications, but it’s a lousy collaboration tool.  

Is there a safe way to build your private social network?  

Google Wave was an early (now defunct) attempt at private social networking, but it was before its time.

Salesforce.com introduced Chatter, its exclusive social networking service, as an extension of its SaaS CRM platform.  It made its private social networking service free.

To listeners of this podcast, it will come as no surprise that access to a safe activity stream in a private social network behind a firewall can bring new efficiencies and added productivity to the workplace.

Internal Communications Tips

In this episode Robin Daniels, VP of Product Marketing, Chatter talks about...

The results of their latest customer survey

28% fewer meetings

32% less email

50% said they could find information faster

Why Google aborted Wave

The Salesforce Chatter Community Etiquette Guide

Overcoming Internal Adoption Challenges

How Chatter protects customers against hackers

How Chatter compares to SharePoint

Seesmic integration for easier engagement and an open question to Loic LeMeur

Chatter’s biggest weakness

This episode on private social networking advances a previous conversation with Chris Messina of Google on activity streams. If you’re interested in this topic, the episode with Chris is a must-listen.

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

The B2B Social Media Marketing Show #7:  Are social Q&A services worth your time, searching tweets by LinkedIn profile data and how SXSW used social sync to make registration data useful.  

Our guest panelists are Jim Cahill (@JimCahill), Chief Blogger and Head of Social Media for the Process Group of Emerson (@EmersonProcess) and Vidya Shivkumar (@thelenticular) Director, Product Management @Janrain, a user management platform for the social web. We welcome your comments, criticism and feedback. Post a comment to our show page at iTunes.

In this Episode:

Facebook Questions relaunched in limited public beta Will this service be LinkedIn or Yahoo Answers? Is it a threat/alternative to LinkedIn, which as made Q&A a strong point?

Blog Post by Monique Neely (@inspiredmomma) on using Linkedin Signals for finding and analyzing tweets by industry, company and time frame.

The Future of the Web is Data by Ben Parr

B2B Social Media Lead Generation Explained

What’s new at Emerson? What’s new at Janrain?

B2B Social Media Keynote at the Digital Impact, May 5-6 in NYC

Upcoming B2B Social Media Boot Camp on May 16th in Chicago

Keynoting the Dell B2B Social Media Marketing Huddle, Brian Solis shared with laser precision why you're reading this blog post, why I wrote it, and what social means for the future business.

And here's a little hint.

It's not about PR.  And it's not about marketing.  It's about something much, much bigger.  If you read this excerpt from his talk, which I've listened to several times already, you're taking the first step toward reinventing your future and your role as an agent of change at your organization.

Here it is...

"It's up to you to determine the value you will produce and then just do it.  Invest in your community through intelligence, help, insight, and guidance.  It's about becoming that expert that you once relied upon to get your story out there. Your job moving forward is to find the social consumer and engage with the social consumer. Build authority for yourself and the organization you work with and then design the entire ecosystem around experiences that can be shared and should be shared."

"This a really powerful time in the history of business. Where people want to engage directly with you and you want to engage directly with them. This isn't just about social media. It's also about business reinvention. It's about revisiting your mission, purpose, story, and culture. Because in order to have a front-facing engagement strategy, a lot of those things are going to have to change."

 

 

"It's not just about social media.  It's bigger than that.  What you're looking at right now, why we're here together right now, is actually one of the first steps in transforming business, putting customers right back into the front and center of everything you do, which goes against decades of companies moving away from that. As a consumer, we all know that pain. When's the last time you tried to get someone on the phone at a business because you had a problem help with their product or service. The process is automated know."

"And know, suddenly Twitter, Facebook, blogs, everything that gives customers a voice, gives them power. So now businesses have to do an about face.  And this is part of the job that we each have.  We have to show why, we have to show how, we have to show to what extent, we have to show the business value and the business outcomes of all of this.  But more importantly, you're change agents.  And you jobs overall, is to make your companies more relevant, not just to the social consumer, but to everyone in general."

I interviewed Brian Solis for a chapter on building the business case for social marketing in my book Social Marketing to the Business Customer. This was before he joined Altimeter, and he outlined the social media research methodology he was using at the time to collect, classify and analyze evidence of purchasing decisions being influenced and made through social channels.

One of the things he mentioned, which he repeated in the Dell B2B Social Media Huddle Keynote, was the amount of time and energy that goes into collecting the necessary research that goes into building a smart social media strategy.  This makes his move to Altimeter a wise one, because now, he no longer has to give that research away to make a market for his services.  Now, social media research IS his service.  Kudos Brian!  Very well done.

And thanks to Neville Hobson for recording the presentation and making it available as a podcast.