Global Neighbourhoods

GNTV: Dell's Richard Binhammer

What a difference two years makes in social media.

In 2006, Dell was scorned by bloggers who accused it of shoddy support and products. I was among them.

Dell today is praised by many of the same people as one of the companies that most “gets it.” The company’s social media activities are a key component to a turnaround-in-progress.

Dell uses a whole lot of social media tools in some innovative ways. It is the first, and perhaps only public company to have an investor relations blog. It uses Twitter as a clearinghouse for closeout products. It has a site for customers who have good ideas the company can transform into products.

Dell is certainly more trusted today than it was two years ago, and has the stats to prove it. But it has not overtaken H-P as the #1 computer company. And last quarters results disappointed Wall Street.

So why does Dell do it? I asked Richard Binhammer, the Dell Communications officer most involved in social media, whether social media was increasing sales and market share.
Binhammer, known best in social media circles as RichardatDell replied flatly: “That not what we use it for. We use it to listen to customers and respond to what they want from us.”
He said a great deal more in this far-ranging interview.

GNTV: Measurement Part 3: Radian6 Counts it All

Perhaps this interview with Marcel LeBrun,co-founder of Radian6 should have been our first in this series, because most measurement processes start with monitoring, and a growing number of companies find Radian6 the best available software for finding every time you or your company is mentioned in social media.

The Montreal-based start up used a go-to-market strategy of approaching large PR agencies whose client demands for finding everything being said about them in the social media has been accelerating at an exponential rate.

Radian6 does precisely this and apparently it does it quite well. It also supplies lots of graphics to soothe the analytically starved PR agency clients. Here's a brief video we shot a little later that shows you how it works: But, monitoring is not interpretation. Radian6 gives you what you need to measure. It shows you relevant trends and that is essential to meeting analytical needs.

But Radian 6 does not interpret this data. That is the job of several companies such BuzzLogic who we interviewed in our previous measurement segment. Nor can it tell you the ROI of your own social media campaign. We showed how SeaWorld accomplished that in our initial segment. In our fourth and final segment, we'll show you how one consultant is approaching what is often the most overlooked of all part of social media measurement: the human element.

GNTV: How BuzzLogic Calculates Influence

In our first segment of what will be at least a four-part GNTV series, Sea World San Antonio explained how they measured the ROI of a social media campaign designed to get roller coaster enthusiasts to try a new ride over a two week end period. What I liked was that this was a simple, straightforward measurement designed to see a monetary return on a hard dollar investment.

But, much of social media's goals is less tangible. A great many programs are designed to get closer to people who influence their markets. But measuring influence is more complex and less tangible than measuring dollars. No one has yet figured out how exactly to do that.

A company that seems closer than most is BuzzLogic, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company. In this segment, co-founder Todd Parsons explains how his company's software can measure influence by topic at any point in time.

       

                             

                               

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GNTV: Disney--Raising Kids on Social Networks

I’ve said it before: if you want to understand the future, go talk to some kids. Watch what they do. Watch their habits. Chances are these won’t change much as they go through life. The emerging generation seems to me best described as the Online Generation. They hang out online in spaces that are virtual. There they form relationships that are very real.

Kids today are joining online social networks at increasingly early ages. At Club Penguin, acquired by Disney last year, they are joining at pre-school age.

The Disney Internet Group hopes to attract kids, then with a series of other online virtual world-based communities continue to engage them. Their portfolio now includes Nickleodeon  and Toontown. Most recently came the highly engaging and interactive Pirates of the Caribbean,  which mostly attracts boys. Soon Pixie Hollow will come out for teenage girls who can assume a Fantastic little avatar.

Last year Disney bought Club Penguin http://clubpenguin.com/ which now is estimated to have more than 100 million users, some of them as young as age 4. Under heavy security, Penguin members can meet and talk with other children. They can learn commerce by selling goods and services in exchange for virtual money. And as the kids grow older they can transition from one Virtual World designed for them to another, each providing the quality charm of Disney that is part of Disney’s occasionally controversial trademark.
So what happens when this Online Generation grows up and enters the market and takes seats in the cubicles of your business? How will this Online Generation emerge? Will they be the same or different from their own parents in the market and as professionals?
I took those questions with me to Disney Interactive Studios in Burbank recently, where I interviewed a few members of the senior team including President Steve Wadsworth. In their vision, as they express it on this clip. The next generation will be more social, more collaborative and perhaps a better place.
All things considered, I tend to agree.

GNTV: A Talk with the Twitter Guys

The founders talk candidly on where they've been & where they're going

I recently visited the Twitter team in its South Park offices in San Francisco, where all 17 members—including the three founders-- sit in a single room at one long table.  I got to interview each of them while another senior colleague unloaded a Costco shipment nearby.
Of all the emerging tools of social media, Twitter is the most conversational. The mobile SMS service lets people chat in compact 140-character spoonfuls. Some use it 20-30 times or more per day and have thousands of followers. But the average user only posts three times a day and chats only with a few friends.

I spoke mostly with Biz Stone, who I got to know in Spain last year. Biz talks about how the team started as an entirely different company and discovered the power of Twitter in serendipity fashion, but was smart enough to change course abruptly.

Biz made clear that Twitter’s main focus is making the product more reliable and more robust before the company turns to any revenue producing.

We discussed briefly that businesses are starting to find ways to use Twitter. He talked about Jet Blue. But in our 20 minute chat, we never got to others that include Seesmic, who launched exclusively on Twitter, as well as H&R Block, the tax people who have used it so successfully, or the Dell Outlet program that lets Twitter users get early discounts on close outs.

Teaser: GNTV’s Shel Israel talks with Twitter founders about how the company got started, who uses the popular service and how. They examine business models and how business is starting to use the mobile SMS service.

GNTV. A few clarifications

There has been a great deal said about GNTV in the past couple of weeks, some of it painful and most of it helpful in one way or another. My special thanks to Tyme White for a thoughtful and perceptive post that has generated, the last time I checked, over 135 comments.

I cannot address every comment, but there are several areas where I think I can add to this conversation by clearing up a few assumptions and misstatements:

• GNTV is not a new concept. I have been working on the idea since last summer. The idea came to me as an outgrowth to the SAP Global Survey on Social Media, Business & Culture. I wanted to use video to get people to talk about ideas and practices that will help professionals use social media in their organizations. I believe that this is a small audience today that will grow quickly and soon. In my mind, it is very much like Naked Conversations was when we published in January 2006, trying to show the potential for corporate blogging. There were very few corporate bloggers then, but the number has grown quite quickly. I am as convinced in the rightness of this thinking now as I was back then, perhaps more so. I am as determined today to make this show a success as I was back then.

• I often suck at first. I almost got sacked 3 times as a cub reporter. Three years later I was the Assistant night editor. I got sacked from my 1st two PR clients, then went on to start and operate a successful boutique PR agency for 17 years. Robert & I had 6 months to write Naked Conversations. In our 1st month of posting material we got shouted down on everything we posted. In the end, we delivered a book that many people think breaks ground. Scoble & I 1st spoke at Les Blogs 2, where we did so poorly I posted and apology blog. Six months later, we were being mobbed by admirers as we stepped off the dais.

I have learned by doing a lot in life but this time it has very clearly backfired. Someone wrote me that it's like I was ready for a script reading in a summer stock barn, but found myself alone on an opening night stage on Broadway without so much as a sound and lighting crew. That being said, I will get better.

• The sponsorship thing. I first approached a sponsor last September. He said yes in December, before I had serious discussions with Scoble and long before FastCompany was involved. I pitched Robert to start a video production team with me, funded by the two sponsorship deals we had landed. Robert is not really a startups kind of guy and approached FastCompany, who hired Robert to build a video network. Fast Company brought me in, I assume, on the basis of Robert's very strong endorsement of me and on the fact that it appeared I had a sponsorship in my pocket. They cut a deal at that time which I could only describe as generous. On Feb. 27, three days before sponsorship funds were to come in and while I was in Detroit, prepping for my interviews with Lutz & other executives at GM & Ford, my sponsor called to tell me the bad news. The funding cut was for reasons that had nothing to do with my program. It also had nothing to do with the recession as Robert misstated in comments. After getting the call, I immediately contacted FC, expecting to be cut right there. But instead, FC offered to procure sponsorship through their sales department. That effort actually began about four weeks ago and there are several possible sponsors. It is moving slowly, because that's how large companies move on new projects. While I cannot possibly know for sure, the feedback I'm getting is that none of them has been discouraged by the clips they have seen or the blogosphere conversation.
• I ain't quitting. Absolutely nothing that has occurred to date has made me doubt the potential for GNTV. While a great deal of online video is designed to be entertaining, GNTV is intended to be useful to a global business audience. We will never try to be American Idol or even some deviation of the Muppets. The show is essentially an interview show. Meet the Press was never among the most popular shows on television. Visually it is quite tedious. But it turns out there is a pretty constant audience for intelligent discussion of politics and current events. The show is now in its 62nd year. Oh yeah, one other relevant factoid. It had no sponsor for its first two years on television.

         

GNTV: Making a Splash with Social Media Measurement

Measurement is a really tough issue for social media proponents. Every business needs to measure results. But   social media is different than say, PR clip counts. It's not the placements, it's the conversations. And some conversations are obviously more valuable than others.

I've been talking to Measurement experts and tool vendors for GlobalNeighbourhoods.TV over at FastCompany.tv . Over the coming weeks, you'll see their clips.

I asked each of them the same question: "How do you measure a conversation?" Each gave me a good answer. Kami Huyse was the most compelling. She brought me to SeaWorld San Antonio where she got me totally immersed in the answer. As this 1st installment on my GNTV series will show you.

A few clarifications about FastCompany TV & GNTV

I got hit with a firehose of questions regarding FastCompany.TV, GlobalNeighborhoodsTV (GNTV) and my new collaboration with Scoble. A few drill down further than I can answer, but I'll try to answer a few that I was frequently asked.

• FastCompany.TV (FCTV) is intended to be a video blogging network. Scoble.TV is the first node and he is a FastCompany.TV employee who's show launches March 3 as does GNTV. They are separate shows. Robert and I would like to do something together, but that is a future show possibility.
• GNTV will have it's own page on the FCTV site as will Scoble.TV.
• Robert and I may cover the same people and companies. We may even interview the same person at the same time when that is easier for all parties. But he and I have different styles and ask different questions.
• I am not a FastCompany employee and I have no plans to become one. I am contract talent. My focus is to produce great content on GNTV. While Robert and I will talk and plan, his job is to do what he has always done and to build an FCTV network. He has a ton of ideas for programs but will build slowly at first. His goal is to have six GNTV programs by year end.
• FCTV is a separate, but related, entity to Fast Company and FastCompany.com. We are the same brand, but I have not had any contact with FC editorial staff. I cannot help you or your clients get interviews there. If you have something that is not right for my show, but I think Scoble might like, I'll forward it to him.
• I plan to produce a minimum of 15 clips per month, hopefully more. I will vary the length greatly and let viewers tell me the length they prefer.
• The best way to pitch me is through email. A direct Twitter to shelisrael also works. I do not take phone calls from people I do not know. I will try to get back to anyone who requests an interview, but it may take me a few days.
• I will travel for GNTV but it limited by time and budget. The best way to see me is when you are in the SF Bay Area.
• Like any media person, I'm interested in exclusive breaking news, but that is not my central focus. I will show some product demo, but that again is not my central focus. I am interested in telling people, mostly how social media is changing life, customer relationships and life.
• The best style to use with me is a naked converstaion. If I find you using talking points that were refined in committee. I may be polite, but it is unlikely that I will post your interview.

Got more questions? Send them in. What you ask me helps me figure out this new endeavor of mine.