Community and group abandonment provides opportunity

Over the past few days, I have been having some discussions around the idea of Social Media Maturity.  People have, over the past few years, decided to jump onto the social media bandwagon without too much thought while opening the business up to quite a number of risks. In some cases management have excitedly patted them on the back and applauded them for their efforts.  Well done!

Today, is reminiscent of the past era of Web 1.0 when a website was considered to be an important component to businesses both large and small. While a lot of those sites were good in their day, their current existence is a historic relic in need of replacement. You see, the internet promised to make us all rich, well, that is what we were thinking.

With the rise of Social Media the game was about to change yet again. Marketing guru's have been selling 'snake oil' concepts and then leaving town. Today, the internet and Social Media platforms are littered with discarded communities, groups and Social Media accounts. Do not get me wrong, there are many great success stories, but there are far more failures.

I am reminded of a ghost town. Typically a place where settlers established a community but where the people, over time, got up and left. When you look around you're able to find all sorts of treasures which have been discarded and left to the elements.

On LinkedIN, I also suspect other Social Media platforms, there are a lot of groups which have been setup and are no longer used or have never gained traction. The interesting thing is that these groups sometimes have a membership in the hundreds or even thousands. There they lay to waste.  In the picture which I have included with this blog post, you'll see that I am the top influencer of a LinkedIN group. This group is not providing any great value to it's members so my status is easily achieved.

I then decided to take a look at a group which had been set up by a company as a way for them to interact with their customers as a followup to courses which they had provided. I am not sure how I ever got accepted into the group as I have never attended one of their courses. However, I have access to about 80 of their customers. What makes it even worse for this company is that they left a comment saying that they would be closing the group and yet the members are still subscribed to the group.

So, here is the "opportunity". Walk into the ghost town and take your place of residence or even the place of Mayor. In most cases, all you need to do is start a conversation and you'll become even more influential than the group or community manager. At the end of the day, the community manager is not the person who initially opened the group, but it is the person with the most influence.

Social Media's ability to be a disruptive force in the marketplace

During the fond days of my youth, I recall many times when I was singled out by my school teacher for being disruptive in class. I thought that putting a blow fly down a friends back provided great entertainment to the rest of the class.  Somehow, I had the ability to make the entire class break into an unruly cheer at the most inappropriate times.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in a meeting with the CEO of a company based here in Auckland. She was talking to me about some of the challenges which her business had faced over the past 12 months. It became clear that the business had to retreat and weather the storm for a few months. This resulted in a smaller team and exposed issues around employee engagement. While the media reports improvement within her company's industry, there is little sign of such improvement on paper.

This got me talking about how the use of Social Media can be disruptive in a positive way. It provides a catalyst for rapid change.  Just think about how quickly things have changed in the past few years, a mobile phone is now a handheld computer with phone capabilities. Thanks to companies like Samsung and Apple, we've seen rapid innovation change the game. We have also seen a number of changes which haven't ended in technological improvements but changes in government. 

Think about the industry in which you operate.  When was the last time there was a disruptive change which took people by surprise and reignited the market?  What would it take to bring about such disruption? Do you have any idea? What is the risk of not being disruptive?

Today, there is data being generated en-mass right around the clock. With the use of some great tools, this data can be analysed and used to pick up on new trends. Through the interpretation of these trends new products, services and solutions can be successfully taken to the market. Data of this nature reduces the risk of unsuccessful innovation and therefore drives down associated costs.

I have found that community management which enables both employees and customers to collaborate, enables multiple parties to solve business problems and also uncover pressing needs.  Some Social Media experts call this sort of thing "crowd-sourcing"; bringing people together to develop thoughts through social collaboration. Exciting stuff!

Being able to change the way business is done (being disruptive) within your industry will enable your organisation the ability to become a market leader. The cost of not engaging with employees and customers, in this way, could be that competitor gains a significant advantage and possibly robbing you of your customers.

How to video: How to add a recommendation for someone on LinkedIn

I've created this video to teach people how to add a recommendation to a contacts profile on LinkedIn.  Recommendations are a really powerful feature of LinkedIn.

What's good about recent NZ Government information security breaches? (ACC, EQC)

In recent months New Zealand has been plagued by security breaches within various government departments.  Starting with the Accident Compensation Corporation, Work and Income and more recently the Earthquake Commission.  Confidential private information has become available to all sorts of people.

I was reading Michael Sampson's blog post which he wrote on this subject, entitled The Cost of Doing Business with Email - The EQC Privacy Breach and What To Do About It.  In his post. Michael makes it clear that email is not the correct place for sharing information of this nature.  He also provides possible solutions and ways to prevent data leakage.  A Social Enterprise platform would be a much better alternative to email.

With all of these breaches, I am led to wonder if plugging the holes is actually the best outcome for New Zealand citizens.  One of the things which I talk about a lot is the need for organisations to be transparent.  In most of the recent security breaches there has been a lot of embarrassment for senior officials as investigations have shown significant issues within the corporate culture of the organisation. In a number of cases the leakage of personal data has just scratched the surface of a much more endemic problem.

In the case of the EQC breach, information was sent in a spreadsheet to the wrong person.  This spreadsheet contained information about insurance claims from the Christchurch Earthquakes, information which revealed how unfairly people were being treated.  As a result, people have questions and they are demanding answers.  Where they may have been unsure about the fairness of insurance payouts, the facts have now been revealed.

In a social world, people are demanding transparency and honesty from the organisations they find themselves dealing with.  People are revisiting old fashioned values of honesty and integrity.  "Revisiting" might be the wrong word, maybe I should have used the word "demanding".  People are demanding old fashioned values of honesty and integrity.

So my question is, should we be expecting the government to fix a data leakage problem, or should we be expecting them to fix much greater problems within the culture of their departments? 

Middlemore Hospital pt7: Did I manage to get an outcome through the use of Social Media?

This blog post is a continuation of a series based around my experience with Middlemore Hospital and the care of my sick mother.

1. Middlemore Hospital sends the sick home
2. Middlemore Hospital CEO to investigate the sending home of a sick patient
3. Middlemore Hospital and the challenge of external facing social media and business alignment
4. Middlemore Hospital - Management directs, but employees determine
5. Middlemore Hospital - By truly 'opting in' the benefits are too great to measure
6. Middlemore Hospital - Silence and the lack of ability to communicate

Today I heard from Geraint Martin, CEO of Counties Manukau District Health Board.  He left a comment on my previous blog post, for which I am thankful.  A few days ago I received a letter from Geraint about an investigation into the care of my mother, one which showed his commitment to ensuring that she would keep receiving hospital care until she was stable and well enough to go home.  The best thing is that within a less than a week of being sent the letter, she is now well enough to be at home.  She still has some recovering to do but a least she is able to be home.

My thanks go to Geraint and his team for all they have managed to do.

How often should a brand retweet per day and what effect is there on retweets?

People who follow me on twitter will know that I collect helpful little quotes about Social Media and the Social Enterprise and regularly tweet them out.  One such quote is as follows:

Unfortunately, in this case, I've lost track of where it came from, which I know effects the credibility of the statement. However, over time I have had a few people comment on the post, one of those being Ken Buist who was quick to share some observations on how this relates to the use of Facebook.  During some brief interaction with Ken, he asked the question "Does volume and frequency mean that we are now a culture that can only consume snippets, not articles or stories?"

The word 'consume' gets me thinking about social maturity, both in an online and offline world.  We all know someone who has a reputation for talking about themselves.  They seem to know better, they have a better story to tell and they don't really seem to listen to anyone else.  When you talk to them, it is always as if they need to interrupt without letting you finish a sentence.  The phrase "It's all about me" seems to sum such a person up.  There is typically an unease in a mix of frustration and embarrassment. I've just written that, knowing that I have just summed up many aspects of my own life!

'Consume' should best be left in the era of Web 1.0 where websites were static and people would go and consume information rather than interact. It is my view that Web 2.0 is about social interaction and in the sense of a brand, this is typically with customers. While marketing departments strive to drive interaction with customers, they still seem to be driven by getting results through traditional push style marketing techniques.

In part, this is where Social Media has become a disruptive platform as it completely challenges the conventional approach to sales and marketing.  I'll say it again 'People do business with people'.  To best do business with people through Social Media you need to find ways to connect people outside of your organisation with those within it.  You will also need to find ways of connecting customers with customers.  This is often done though the use on online discussion forums and product reviews.

One of the reasons I refrain from liking pages on Facebook is that I don't want to drown out the voices of my friends with brands pushing their marketing messages.  In other words I don't want to be sold to all of the time.  'Liking' a brand's Facebook page is like putting a sticker on my letterbox saying "JUNK MAIL PLEASE".  Would you then deliver junk advertising to my door two or three times a day?  I would think not.  So why do it through Social Media?  There is a reason for calling it "Junk" mail after all.

Here is another way to think about it.  According to Cara Pring the average number of friends a Facebook user had in 2012 was 130.  In some additional statistics, Cara also states that on average we will share 415 pieces of content on Facebook a year.  So with each of a persons friends posting 1.14  pieces of content a day, the average person will see about 148 posts per day.  What effect do you think your brand will have when, potentially, it becomes the most active voice in an activity stream?

On the other hand, what would it be like if customers are talking to customers about your brand?  What about conversations whose origins cannot be tracked back to your brand?  Authenticity plays a key role in social media and a message can never be more authentic than coming from a friend or other such trusted resource.  The easiest way to get customers talking to customers to provide exceptional customers service which can be translated into stories.