Global Neighbourhoods

The future of social media

I am no futurist. The future often surprises me when it becomes the present. But I've been thinking lately, about the future of social media. Where is it all going? What does the world look like when social media becomes a commonplace, everyday activity for 100s of millions of people in the world?

I think the master trend is that social media technology will be continuously refined so that people will be able to behave and interact online as they do in everyday life. This is a long-term trend that started years ago, perhaps with the telegraph or maybe with the jungle drum. It speeds up and slows down but it keeps relentlessly moving forward.

Over the years, I've heard lots of predictions, some seemed logical at the time, others made you wonder whether the prediction was visionary or hallucinatory. But here are a few that keep coming up. Most have been around for years and in no case do I know whose vision came first. It probably doesn't matter. Vision only needs credit when it becomes reality.

Anyway here are some of the ideas I've heard that may come true--that I hope will come true:

1. Virtual reality in teaching. Some day students will take a VR tour of the wildlife lands of Africa, or the melting ice caps. They will understand what it really was like to have fought with mace and ax at at Battle of Hastings. This may happen in the classroom or the comfort of their homes--or both.
2. Computers will emerge out of the boxes. When we socialize online, we will no longer be confined to the types of devices we use today. Instead, when I talk with you, I will be watching a realtime avatar of you on my desktop or in my living room. If you are Chinese, I will speak in English and you will hear it in Chinese and the reverse.
3. Global Neighborhoods will be marketplaces. As in the tangible world, each of us will be familiar with multiple neighborhoods. But social media technology will have minimized the relevance of geographic barriers. In so doing, people will bypass government, language, currency and other barriers to deal with each other, trade, collaborate or inform each other.

Either that, or sometime in a few decades, some web surfer will come across this very post and shrug and smile about how off base I had been.

Personal & Corporate Brands. They Interdepend on each other

             [Personally branded. Scoble ponders what it means. Photo by Shel]

There's lots of talk these days about corporate and personal brands and in my opinion some of the speakers have very different ideas about what a brand is than I do. It takes me back to my last years in PR when the dotcom bubble was being inflated by dumb money backing dumber ideas. I remember more than one conversation in which someone holding a senior marketing title would talk about increasing brand presence on the internet. What they actually meant was making the logo in the banner ad bigger.

The way I see it, historically, a brand has connoted how people feel about your company, it's products and services. It is an emotional thing, rather than rational as a corporate position may be. Prior to the current Conversational Era, few individuals impacted a company brand--perhaps the CEO or some luminary in an advertising campaign.

But then social media erupted. Some companies had highly tainted brands before blogging such as Microsoft, who was generally regarded as a monolithic, heartless, Borg-like entity. But Scoble and a few thousand other employees started blogging, and that allowed outsiders to see there were real people inside Microsoft, trying hard to serve customers and make products that sucked less. These mid-level employees accomplished two things:

1. Collectively, they improved the Microsoft brand perception. They added a sense of Microsoft comprised of humans who cared.
2. Individually, some of them established significant personal brands.

It got interesting when Scoble left Microsoft. His personal brand traveled with him into his new endeavors. But it also stayed behind. Microsoft continued to retain a more human image.

This is different. Because of social media, a corporate brand can be reshaped by it's current and former  employees. For the individual, their social media contributions have become vital resume attachments. Potential new employers learn a whole lot more about you than that neatly typed resume ever served up.

For the company, the core of the bran is moving from the contrivances of marketing departments to become the sum total of the people who work for and have worked for a company. I am not certain how this will evolve, but I'm pretty certain that it means that how we feel about companies will be based on what we know about its people rather than what an ad agency's creative team can foist on you.

I think that's a good thing.[

Technorati. Old tools don't die. They just gather dust

            [David Sifry, Technorati co-founder. Photo by Shel]

My friend Joseph Thornley has a good post about Technorati, a tool that was essential when I started blogging. I'm betting some of you newer bloggers have never heard of it because it seems to have become either obsolete or irrelevant over time. Joe asked me to join in an "old tools meme," even though he knows I don't like memes. They are more clever link farms rather than conversation contributors.

But in this case, Joe touch a nerve because I'd been thinking about Technorati ever since I bumped into David Sifry, it's co-founder and chairman last week at The China Business Network dinner, where he was hawking his new company OffBeat Travel Guides. Still in private beta, OffBeat will give travelers customized, Michelin-type guides to destinations off the beaten path. David is unquestionably a social media  pioneer who has blazed a trail that millions of us have followed. Not that long ago, the Blogosphere was a form of online offbeat travel and David helped it become what it now is.

For many years, for reasons that Joe underscores well, Technorati was a must-use blog search and measurement tool. This is no longer the case. People have migrated to other, newer, simpler, more powerful tools, most notably Google Blog Alerts. I still have Technorati bookmarked, but until this morning, I had not visited it in months.  It now sits on the back shelf of my social media tool shed where--barring a surprise innovation-- it will probably just gather cyberdust.

But, from the user perspective, this is not so bad. Tools get better and we abandon old ones. I still have a manual drill. I haven't used it since I got the electric a few years back.

Following the evolution of tools is a good way to track the evolution of people all the way back to the time we lived in caves.  Technorati made some mistakes as a company if you ask me, but what's really relevant is that someone else came out with a better tool and people moved on. Today, Technorati acquired another company. Perhaps the move will help it leapfrog Blog Alerts.

If so, people will once again win.

Social Media Global Report: Charlene Li of Altimeter

A year of milestones finds her on her own

 

Charlene Li becomes the first person I've interviewed twice in this Global Report. I justify that because in the 54 weeks since the previous interview, a great deal has happened. She co-authored Groundswell the enterprise playbook for enterprise multimedia. She completed a nine-year tenure at Forrester Research and as I write this report, is putting the finishing touches on Altimeter, her new speaking and consulting service.

Charlene is one of the most frequently-quoted social media experts and has appeared on 60 Minutes, The McNeil NewsHour, ABC News, CNN, and CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USAToday, Reuters, Associated Press and even this blog. She's a Harvard MBA and graduated the College magna cum laude.

She took the time to answer these questions while flying back from New York where  AdAge had just honored her as one of the Women To Watch in 2008.

1. It has been just about a month since you stepped out of Forrester. How has your life changed during this brief period? What do you miss the most? What do you miss least?

Life is great - I'm spending my time doing more of the things I love, such as thinking and talking about social and emerging technologies, rather than dealing with typical analyst activities such as sales calls and inbound client inquiries. I'm also busy getting my independent business set up, such as getting a name, Web site, and most importantly, an assistant!!  I miss  is my colleagues at Forrester most. They are the brainiest, most honest, supportive group of people I have ever had the privilege to work with. What I miss least are calls from clients asking me to explain what Web 2.0 is.

Best of all, I have the freedom to spend time that I want and need with my family, and on myself. My kids love it. My  house is clean--or at least, less cluttered--and I'm meeting with a personal trainer regularly.

Life is good.

2. Speaking professionally, what do you plan to do with your time moving forward?

I'm going to be an independent thought leader on social and emerging technologies. I'll be researching and thinking about a spectrum of new technologies, and will be blogging about them. I'll be giving paid speeches and also be taking on a few consulting engagements on retainer. My goal is to have only a few clients who can really leverage my thinking and expertise.

3. What inspired you to write Groundswell? How has the experience changed you?

Simply put, I had a story to tell. And that story couldn't be told in a series of blog posts or in a Forrester report. It needed the time, expansiveness, and detail of a book to bring that story to life. The experience has been amazing -- my definition of success was that someone would come up to me with a copy of their dog-eared, heavily underlined book and tell me how it made an impact. It's been extremely gratifying to have that experience over and over again.

4. Groundswell is clearly for corporate audiences. How do you hope reading Groundswell will move the social media needle in the enterprise?

There's so much fear and confusion about what social media is and what it can do. My hope is that they will see it as an opportunity, rather than something to be loathed and feared. By breaking it down to the essentials, and putting it into the language of business, I hope people in businesses would see social media as a natural extension of what they do already.

5. There are three books that are being called seminal in social media. Cluetrain, published in 1999; Naked Conversations written in 2006 and now Groundswell. How would you describe the similarities and differences of these three books? How are they different?

Each book was written for the sensibilities of their time. Cluetrain was about the burgeoning power of the Internet and people's ability to connect with each other at the most basic levels - its role was to get us to think about the power of conversations. Naked Conversations was at the advent of social media, and exhorted people to put aside their fears and think about the possibilities -- it awakened the nascent interest in social media. And Groundswell is the handbook -- once you buy into the power of the groundswell, what do you do about it? The tools are available now and an ecosystem of agencies stand at the ready to support businesses.

6. You have spent a fair amount of time on the issue of ROI. You took GM FastLane and compared it at first with the cost of a monthly Focus Group, then you ran it again against a dated PR agency practice called "advertising equivalency." Do you think that focus groups and ad equivalence are fair and accurate measurement bookmarks or did you intend them more as place keepers?  Even if you accept focus groups and ad equivalence as fair comparison benchmarks, how does showing the lower cost of a blog against them, actually achieve an ROI for the blog?

Supplementing/replacing focus groups and ad equivalence are just some of the ways to gauge the value of blogs and other types of social media. The best way to measure ROI is to have a clear OBJECTIVE in the first place. Then decide how you will measure progress towards reaching that objective. For example, let's say one objective of the blog is to listen to what your audience is saying about the company, and to get feedback quickly on new ideas that you are considering for a product. The speed and detail of the feedback has a certain value to the company, just as the insights from a focus group has value. So to measure the effectiveness of the blog against the objective of listening to your customer, simply use the same measurement of ROI as you use for focus groups. What's that you say - the company does't measure the ROI of focus groups, or for that matter, any type of listening/feedback tool? Then I think the company has bigger problems than trying to figure out the ROI of a blog!

7. You stated in Groundswell that any corporate social media endeavor should start with the goal in mind and measurement would evolve from understanding the goal. Can you expand on that a little bit.

You can't manage what you don't measure. And to know what you want to measure, you have to know your goal, your definition of success. Otherwise, you're just spinning your wheels. All too often, I get asked what's the ROI of blogging. The right question should be what's the ROI of being able to listen to, talk to, energize, support, and embrace your groundswell of supporters? If you understand the value of these activities, of these objectives, then you can figure out how specific social media support your pursuit of that objective.

8. You inspired the title of this blog and much of my professional efforts when you stated that "Geography is becoming less relevant." When I interviewed you last August, you added that the advent of location-based technologies will make geography more relevant once again. How has your thinking on geography evolved over the past 12 months?

Geography is relevant in that it provides temporal context for relationships and content, but it's irrelevant as an arbitrary determinant of value. For example, a review for a restaurant in San Francisco from someone who lives in Boston may not seem to have much credibility. But if that person happens to be a gourmet chef, then geography is irrelevant. The reverse of that is if someone you know is nearby -- for example, I was using Twinkle at SFO, and a follower was also there. He noticed and blogged about it. If there had been time, we could have met up. Add social profiles, and I could start connecting with friends during flight delays.

9.  Cluetrain, Naked and Groundswell were all the result of collaborative efforts that exuded businesses to collaborate more. In retrospect, I found collaborating on a book to have been a Hellish experience, even if the result was good. Two members of the Cluetrain team have told me that the collaboration part was extremely difficult. Was this the case for you and Josh Bernoff, your co-author? What advice do you have regarding social media for author wannabees? Did the experience of collaborating impact or alter your thoughts on enterprise workgroup collaboration?

Trust is at the foundation of all great collaborations. Josh and I had a wonderful time writing the book, and the true test is that both of us would love to do it AGAIN. Here's the secret to a great book collaboration: Work together for eight years, during which time you've made each other write a bullet point over and over again until it's just right. Repeat that editing exercise at least a couple of times every month. Disagree strenuously and push each other to think about a topic so deeply that your brain hurts. Also manage and review each other at some point during that period. Do all this and then you'll be ready for a great book writing experience!

We were on opposite sides of the country so we used tools like wikis and Google Docs to collaborate. We also used these tools to collaborate with our Harvard Business Press editor as well as the marketing, PR, and sales teams at both HBP and Forrester. I thoroughly believe that enterprise workgroup collaboration works -- but only if the right culture and trust levels are in place outside of the collaboration platforms.

Last piece of advice for social media authors, or for that matter, any business book author. Know your audience and write to their needs. We knew our audience backwards and forwards because we talked to Forrester clients every single day. We tested the ideas, frameworks, and data every day. And we also knew what we wanted to accomplish with the book. The very first thing we wrote was the first paragraph that appears on the inside cover. That text was the guiding light for the book and it appears almost exactly the same as when we first wrote it. That shared clarity of vision of what the finished book would be was a key part of our successful collaboration, and also why I think the book presents itself so coherently.

10 Additional Comments?

Publishing a book is a long, long process. We started in January 2007, finished writing the book in November, edits in December, and then finally got reader copies in early March. But it wasn't until the end of March that I opened a box containing a single copy of the finished book. I tore open the box, held the finished book in my hands, and promptly burst into tears.

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I'm Speaking in China. Why this Excites me.

I'm reading Nixon and Mao by Margaret MacMillan. Until the year 2000, Nixon was my least favorite president, but as I read this recounting of his 1972 trip to what we then called "Red China," I cannot help but acknowledge the greatness of what he achieved by being the first US president to set foot in China. It really was a trip that changed the world.

I recall the controversy of the time. Some TV reporter--either Dan Rather or Sam Donaldson--stuck a microphone in front of Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser who had engineered the trip."Mr. Secretary," he was asked, "what does the United States expected to gain out of this China junket?" The implication was that the trip was nothing but political PR. Many of us suspected that it was no more than a stunt.

Kissinger had hardly been paying the reporter attention as he walked down some hallway of government, but on this question, he stopped. He turned to the reporter and spoke to him in the same tone one might might use to address a slow-learning child. "When we do business with a country, we never go to war against it." he said, glaring for emphasis then walking away.

It was a one-liner that changed my world view. First it taught me that people I do not like or trust, sometimes speak universal truths. It was a statement that made me realize that people I oppose are capable of doing great deeds.

It also gave me a new respect for trade and the human condition. In fact, there can be no freedom without economic freedom and that lesson resounds to me when I look at China today.

But mostly, following Nixon and Kissinger to China, made me incurably curious about the world's most populous country. Over the years, every time I thought I understood China, something new would happen to alter my thinking. China is simply too big, too complex and too rapidly changing for me to presume to have a universal statement about the place that could endure longer than a few weeks.

In 2005, I interviewed China's first blogger, Isaac Mao via email. He was the first person I talked to inside China and his answers contained surprises for me. Last year, I met him face-to-face over a three-hour lunch in San Francisco. We hit it off extremely well. He once repainted my understanding of social media and entrepreneurialism in China. He also let me understand how very rapidly China is changing. In the two years since we had talked, the number of Chinese bloggers had grown from 1.2 million to 25 million. Now, a year later there are nearly 50 million bloggers.

This is where one of those interesting triangulations takes place. In the past few months, through Twitter, then in real life, i have come to know the amazing Christine Lu, who along with Elliot Ng and Janet Carmosky have been working almost nonstop to launch The China Business Network (TCBN), an organization that aspires to be a catalyst in business networking between China and the West.

I have accepted their invitation to go to China to speak as one of the international speakers for CNBloggercon,  in Guangzhou Nov. 16-17. The conference committee is led by my friend Isaac. More than 500 of China's top bloggers are expected to attend and I feel honored to be among the very few international speakers addressing the group.

I'm also going to get the chance to see some of the country. I will be part of a small group of Westerners that TCBN has assembled to visit and talk with Chinese entrepreneurs in Beijing and Shanghai. TCBN has also agreed  to bake in enough time  to see a few of the wonders, such as the Great Wall and Forbidden City. I am certain that this brief journey will whet, but not satisfy, my curiosity. I expect this trip will change me in ways that I cannot yet imagine.

It has taken a good-sized global village to put all the parts of this event together. Edelman Digital is the lead sponsor.  Web2Asia and CNReviews.com are TCBN's China partners. I am grateful to them all.

One closing thought: Current relations between the US and China can be described as bumpy at best. Yet, they are the best they've been in my lifetime. I think they will get much, MUCH better during the lives of my grandchildren. This is indeed because countries whose citizens engage in business with each other come to interdepend on each other and this is a good thing in a great many ways.

@Firefox_Answers & @ComcastCares--a lopsided comparison

After writing about Frank Eliason who is the ComcastCares guy at Twitter, I started looking at other customer service attempts on Twitter.  I think Twitter is an ideal venue for companies to get closer with customers and helping customers with problems on Twitter seems to me to have great potential.

I also am a longterm user and supporter of Firefox (FF). In fact, my first interview for Naked Conversations was with the Firefox founders.

These two factoids converged after I downloaded FF 3.0 for Macintosh shortly after it was made available. While overall I'm happy with it, there is one very annoying glitch. Whenever I'm in GMail and click on a link, I get a virtually blank screen except for a menu bar that states: "Firefox prevented this page from auto redirecting to another page." I then have to click an "Allow" button. I've fiddled with all the settings and I just cannot make a direct, one-step connect.

Try saying that in 140 characters on Twitter. I dare you. But we'll get to that.

Repairing my FF glitch is not mission critical to my life or even my Internet usage. But it does add an unwanted step. Considering I go from GMail to the Internet a good many times every day, it can grate more than it should.

So, when I discovered @Firefox_Answers on Twitter, I was pleased. Firefox had come into a neighborhood where I hang out and it seemed to be offering someone to help people like me. Unfortunately, I find myself more frustrated with the customer service person than I am with the Firefox glitch.

If you look at ComcastCares, you see a photo of Frank Eliason. You see his email. The full account title include "by Frank." It did not start like that, but by listening to Twitterville and to his own customers, Eliason has evolved. He has email there. He answers almost everyone promptly, seven days a week. He demonstrates a credible passion for helping people.

You would think that service operations following the ComcastCares lead would study what he does then try to equal or surpass it. This does not appear to be the case with firefox_answers. There is no identifiable human. You don't even get to know whether you are dealing with one human or many. The avatar depicts--I think--the shadow of a cartoon fox. Nearly 1000 people follow Firefox_answers, I imagine many are people like me with problems.

When Frank Eliason talks with a customer who has a vexing problem, he calls them up and talks to them. He asks them to call him when the Comcast repair truck shows up. He becomes part of the solution and people are talking about it.

Here's what happened with firefox_answers. I am going to use the "she" pronoun, because it's my guess that the firefox_answers person is a young woman with some tech knowledge and about zero understanding of Twitterville where she works and represents her company. I also assume that she knows nearly nothing about customer service, which is what she is employed to provide.

Here's my play-by-play.

• I tweet, saying as best I can what my problem is.
• 24 hours pass. She tweets back asking a question.
• I answer as best I can within 140 character limit
• 21 hours pass. She tweets back with a more complex question.
• I tweet saying that I need a few paragraphs to describe it. I post my email for her to contact me. There is no email post on her account
• Two days of silence. No response
• I tweet, asking her where she went.
• She replies saying that she went away because it "sounded creepy" when I asked her to email me.
• I reply saying that I am easy to check out on Twitter & I'm not creepy. I just want to fix a problem.
• "Check you out," she writes back, "Now you sound REALLY creepy."

I quit. I may start using Safari more. I think less of Firefox. If they are going to improve their customer service, they need to do more than throw bodies at it. They need to understand that a customer with a problem is a problem for their reputation. They need to understand that Twitter is--among other things-- where people help people.

Advice to companies. Twitter is an incredible place for inexpensively providing personal service. You should check it out. Take a look at how Comcast is doing it right. Then look at Firefox_Answers for how to do it wrong.

7 Tips for new Twitter Users

[Jeremiah Owyang in Boston October 2007. Twitter made this night happen. Photo by Shel]

Unlike most social media tools, Twitter takes a while to understand. It took me about 30 days to figure out that it was among my most valuable tools and it was brought home by chance. I was in Boston and Twitter let me see that my friend Jeremiah Owyang was in a nearby hotel. We had dinner. Not a big deal, but this space of 140-character spoonfuls let me know that a realworld friend was nearby and available.

I call the place Twitterville because it very much works like a small neighborhood. You may just want to talk safely with a people you already know, which is what most people, so far, are doing. But a great many of us like to explore and find others with whom we share something in common whether that commonality is hummingbirds or iPhones doesn't matter much. Twitter is a big part of my global neighborhood, an online space where I can build friendships with people all over the world.

But Twitterville is booming. The population is on the rise. Those of us who have hung out here for a long time get lots of follows from people we do not know. It is flattering to be followed--at least in the safety of Twitterville. And occasionally many of us get caught up in those numbers as if it were some popularity contest, But for me, it is not a popularity contest. It is an important neighborhood to me and I learn something new and valuable with my Twitteville friends every day. I miss them when I am away too long.

So, if you are new to Twitterville, it is a friendly place. But people need to know a bit about you in order to want to spend time in conversation with you. This will not happen if you simply start and account, reveal nothing about yourself and your interests and then go around collecting follows. Some people may follow you back automatically, but it seems to me that will matter very little if the two of yo have nothing to talk about, other than how many new follows you've added.

There are a few things yo might consider doing first. Many of them are the same sort of activities, I've suggested previously for getting started:

1. Show yourself. Scroll through some pages and see what catches your eye. Chances are good that it will be the avatars. Personally, I like to have conversations with real people so I like to see real photos, not cartoons or the Twitterville place keeper. If you have a blog or Web site link to it. Under bio, say something about what you are really about. Saying your location is on iPhone is overused and unhelpful to someone deciding to follow you or not.

2. Read first.When I check out a new Tweeter, I read his or her most recent posts. If one interests me, I'll look further. If none does, I'm gone. My advice is to start by reading what others have to say. get a sense of the rhythm of Twitterville conversations before you join in. Wait until you have something useful or interesting to add to the conversation.

3. Celebrities don't count. You can always start by getting followed by a few celebrity Tweeters like Scoble, Calacanis and Loic. But they give you no credibility at all because they simply follow everyone. Their purpose is to be a new media star and it works well for them. But is that what you want from Twitterville. Those of us who have been around for a while see no value in their being listed at as Followers, because they follow everyone.

4. Post before you follow strangers. Take a few days and post a few thoughts on subjects yo want to discuss on Twitter. It can be work, play, news, sports, music whatever. But then when people check you out they know what you are about and can decide to follow you because they share something in common with you.

5. Avoid Spammer stats. The worst thing you can do is have stats that show you follow 149 people and 4 people follow you. You may be the nicest person in the world, but you have spammer stats. It's because you chose to follow a bunch of people but revealed so little of yourself, that no one wanted to follow you back. This is fixed by going slower, by posting tweets that let others know about you.

5.Have favorites. When you are new to Twitterville, you may not even notice that little star icon to the right of each tweet. You can use it to make that post a "favorite." I always look at what a new follower favors. It tells me a bit about what makes them tick. It shows your sense of humor and your passion points.

6. Take your time. Twitterville works like any other neighborhood. People start by chatting about weather, lunch--silly little things. Sometimes the conversation goes nowhere, tapering off into cyberspace. Other times, the conversation deepens. It evolves into a real friendship or a business opportunity. If you try pushing yourself too aggressively, people may respond to you in the same way they do the loudmouth at the party. They walk away in talk in circles that do not include you.

7. New in town? Don't be intimidated. Twitter really started only 14 months ago. We are all new to Twitter. There are 5 million here so far and I'm betting there are 10s of millions of people heading this way. There's plenty of room, because we all tend to cluster around those with whom we share common interests.

Enjoy yourself. Twitter is a valuable place but more important, it can also be an extremely enjoyable place.

Will you still love me when I'm 64?

I was 23 years old when Paul McCartney sang that question for the Beatles Yellow Submarine. Now I discover, to my great ambivalence that I will be precisely that the day after tomorrow. I was going to write something truly profound this Thursday, as I did when I turned 60, but I was afraid that by then I would forget what it was I wanted to say.

In fact, I already have. There isn't profundity floating around anywhere, in here. So instead, as I'm increasingly prone to do, I offer you a few scattered and random thoughts:

• This distance between 23 and 64 is a lot shorter than you think.
• Some of the most memorable experiences are simpler than you may think. For example, my first espresso in Italy. A smiling girl on a subway with who I never spoke, the first time I smelled jasmine.
• Babies. When you are young other people's babies are pretty much boring. When they are your grand children, it's entirely different.
• Letters about Medical and Social Security arrive every year after you turn 50. This year they are suddenly of great interest to me.
• I stay young by seriously considering a great many new ideas.
• I exercise like there is no tomorrow. One of these days, there won't be.
• The hardest human virtue for me remains forgiveness. I've been working on that one for a very long time. Oh yeah. I'm also not particularly good at shutting up.
• Pay attention to little details. Very often, that's where you'll find the most revealing secrets.
• Of all the things you can possibly run out of, time is the one you cannot replace.

May each of you live long and prosper. Hopefully, I will continue to do the same. Now where did I put my spectacles?

Communications pros, this is your time.

Pop Quiz! Quick, tell me, what the following people have in common:

Steve Rubel, Richard Binhammer, Geoff Livingston, Kami Huyse, Shel Hotz, Phil Gomes. There's more, but linking becomes so tedious after a while, don't you think?

What they share in common is that in recent weeks, each of them has been the subject of media interviews. Each of them also speaks regularly from the dais of industry gatherings. Each of these is a respected member of his or her community and there are dozens of other folk I could name. They also are all social media stars and you can find them in many of the usual online spaces starting or joining useful conversations.

A few years ago, each of these held in the inauspicious position that so recently was considered the role of the communications person. They carried or sent press kits. They wrote words that other said from the dais-often badly. They called the press to get others to speak to the editors and reporters.

All of this still continues. But something has changed.

We have entered into the Conversational Era when real people who a short while ago were relegated to stand one step back from the official company representatives, perhaps sometimes assigned to get the coffee or hail a cab. Now their position is evolving. They are being trusted by corporate decision makers to have public conversations about the parts f the enterprise they know. This is the time for the freelancer in a home office to build a global reputation because the are interesting in valuable in what they have to say.

Good corporate communicators and PR people speak with passion and accuracy. They often know what the listeners wants to know about and are more prone to give it than many of their clients.

Now, I know what some of you thinking. You're thinking about some awful PR story. Your thinking, as I often do about someone, who pitched you on something entirely wrong for your editorial needs. And so on.

I'm talking about the upper 10 percent of the communications profession. The rest are proof of Sturgeon's Revelation: "90 percent of everything is crap."

To that 10 percent who are moving into stage center, Rock on. This is your time.

SM Global Report: GeekSquad Founder Robert Stephens

Using Social Media to Build a Global Culture & Happier Customers

      
       [Robert Stephens presenting, photo by dougfl07.]

In 1994, with a personal investment of $200, and a used car, Robert Stephens started a little home computer business in Minnesota. To add a little flair, he called it "Geek Squad." In 2002, the organization had grown considerably when Best Buy, the world's largest consumer electronics retailer. Unlike most entrepreneurs who get acquired, Stevens elected to stay on board.

Today, Stephens oversees the world's largest tech support organization, with 17,000 employees, or "Agents," as his technicians are called. There are Geek Squad service departments in all Best Buy US and Canadian stores offering phone, in-store, and in-home support. It also has operations in Shanghai, UK, Spain and Shanghai.

Home tech and product installation support is conducted via a fleet of 5,100 "Geekmobiles" including  2,300 oddly painted and modified Volkswagen bugs. Wherever customers encounter Geek Squad members they see individuals dressed in white short-sleeved shirts and black ties.

At the core of it all is a behind-the-firewall social network on which Squad Agents play computer games, share information and solve customer problems. The social network maintains a cultural solidarity that seems to carry over from one store to the next.

Your Louisville repair center labels it's sections as "First Street,"  "City Council Chambers," for the executive offices, etc. What's the idea behind building a community culture in this way?

Every company has a culture. The key is to start at the source and build from there. When I first saw the size of the Louisville facility, I said "It's a city.  Let's call it Geek Squad City.  700 Agents living in harmony under one roof." The theme stuck and we used it - to define who we are. Even within companies, there are subcultures. Geek Squad City is distinct from other Best Buy divisions. We encourage individual department identity pride as a simple means of reinforcing quality.

How does all that serve your customer's needs?

The Geek Squad is a master brand with distinct subcultures.  Each department is branded.  This generates pride.  Pride helps inspire people to pursue quality.

Is it true that Geek Squad even has a Minister of Culture and a Public Defender's office? Can you give me the job descriptions for these positions?

There is no Minister of culture. Culture is everywhere and nowhere - so we would never have that department or title. Culture is the product of everything a company does and stands for.  The Public Defenders are a specific group who "detect disturbances in the force." They listen to blogs, podcasts, twitters, etc so we can make it easy for customer to communicate with us. We have been doing this for a few years and we continue to evolve our process. We believe customers won't write letters to us anymore. Instead they will blog it.

Why do Geek Squad members dress like 1960 FBI agents?

Every company that has any customer-facing employees needs a uniform. We looked around in 1994 and saw only a sea of polo shirts and mini vans. When you have no money for marketing, everything you do is marketing.  We looked at several ideas and were inspired by the dress of NASA circa the Apollo Era.  NASA of those days remains a great symbol of teamwork, impossible goals, and technical ability. 

Wearing a tie used to be a sign of conformity, but now dressing nice is an act of rebellion.

Why do they drive Volkswagens that look like Irish Police cars?

The "Black and White" motif gives us the flexibility to use a variety of vehicles that also maintain a consistent look and feel. Most of our business is word of mouth, so we need to be visible. The police are complaining that they are getting pulled over by civilians and being asked tech support questions.  We only realized later that we have been borrowing a large amount of our fashion sense from the Federal government.

I understand that Geek Squad has a private social network. Not even other Best Buy employees are allowed to join it. Is that true?

We employ wikis, forums, blogs, etc. We intend to merge them all for the entire company at some point. It's not integrated yet only due to technical issues. Long term, we intend to open up parts of it to the public as well. For example, we are completing a new system to combine internal knowledge management with a public "support wiki" for customers to get self-help on any consumer devices - and help from us if they need more.

What is the purpose of that social network?

Socialization is a primal form of learning. To maintain culture, keep your people talking. We use all of the new tools to spread knowledge. Especially with tech support. We need to "know everything." Since that is impossible, we use the power of our network to make everyone smarter. I guess you could say we are a subset of Google.

How does all this serve the customer?

We get answers to them faster if our internal network of people can talk with each other. New solutions get to all members of our global network faster.

Can you give me a couple of good examples of how the social network has served customers with problems?

Agent discovers a problem with a device and a software update.  They post it on a wiki.  Everyone else finds out and avoids problems.

I understand that the Geek Squad SocNet started as a networked game. Tell me about that.

We began to think about how culture can be preserved and strengthened as it grows larger. We noticed our Agents are already socializing with each other when they play online games. We foster that by hosting free gaming servers. The assumption is the more we can do that, the more they will feel comfortable to help each other out solving customer problems.


How do you measure the success of failure of your social network in terms of customer service?

I think participation is the first metric.  The more the merrier.

Do you measure it for ROI in any way? Just what do you measure?

I don't know if models have evolved to be able to measure the long term benefit but thankfully, the cost to try this stuff is low.  Everybody should be playing with these ideas.

We have seen movement on each of these metrics:

• Lower return and exchange rates
• Lower incidents of "damage claims" meaning Agents make fewer mistakes
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Profit margins are protected from erosion,
• Agent retention improves.

I am sure we will see others.

Is it true that you personally monitor social media for unhappy customers and sometimes call them up to talk?

Yes - and we have expanded this to an internal team called Public Defenders.

What's the thinking behind that?

Common Sense.  No customer expects a company to be perfect, but they expect you to try.  If we reach out, they know that at least we are trying. We then plan to collect data on this and use a feedback loop into what we call our Stage4  process - based on plane crashes.

• Detection-- What did the customer report to us? (or we detected)
• Treatment --What did we do to resolve the issue? (apology, repair, free house call, refund, all of the above)
• Cause -- What caused this to occur? (system failure, SOP, improper training, bad part, poor diagnosis)
• Prevention -- What need to be done to prevent this from EVER happening again?

I think our Stage4 process will provide an ROI and reduce the occurrence of every negative into 1000 positives.

How has social media improved Geek Squad?

It keeps us on our toes.  It provides real time feedback into our quality and systems.  It gives us new ideas for services and quality improvements.


Additional Comments?

All companies are in the service business, whether they realize it or not. If you have a web site, a store, a line, or a phone number, you are in the service business. As companies realize their margins erode thanks to commoditization, they will realize services are profitable. Then they have to decide: Will they 'own" or "outsource" their service operations. After that, they have to decide how authentic their experience will be.  Lastly, if they ask and answer these questions, eventually they will have to answer the questions above.

I recommend Pine and Gilmore's book that came out recently called Authenticity.  They called the experience economy in '99, and now authenticity is the next gold standard - and authenticity cannot be faked.