Originally posted on Jive Talks.

Replacing five business software platforms (website, intranet, extranet, team site, CRM) with one, more useful solution

The Why

A fast-growing, social media agency is by design a very fluid and fast paced environment. At 7Summits we thrive on being creative and collaborative to help solve our client’s problems. By design, we crowd-source idea generation and distribute it across our team to bring out the best ideas and solutions for our clients.

Like most organizations, as we grew, so did the number of software systems to help us manage different areas and functions of our business, from Sales and Marketing, to Operations. Here is a high level outline of those systems and their purposes – it’s by no means exhaustive, but you’ll get the picture:

Lately, we’ve seen a tremendous growth in the number of prospects, clients and employees needed to perform our work, each of which is touched by one or more of these systems in some way. This rapid growth spurt started to highlight inefficiencies that larger organizations are probably feeling as well. They are using these same systems in a more prolific, and therefore limiting, way.

Common issues we experienced include:

• Inefficient effects of using email as the primary communication tool
• Risk of employee and client confusion – where do they go to get what they need?
• Information overload – lots of things in many places
• Version control – effects of redundant content repositories
• No central dashboard for everything
• Duplicate logins, content, contacts
• Impacts of all of this on collaborative working

The aha moment!

After some quick analysis, we realized something. Not only are there inefficiencies in these more traditional systems, but there are a mass duplication of efforts, tasks, and data.

Being a Jive Software Premiere Partner, we often discuss the benefits of Social Business Software (SBS) with our clients and prospects. However, we initially chose it only to manage our public facing website. It dawned on us that we could collapse five different (and antiquated) platforms including our website, intranet, extranet, team site, and CRM system into one solution by leveraging Jive SBS as a replacement. By introducing the benefits of social networking and collaboration, this solution also offers us a unified environment to manage our business lifecycle from acquisition through retention in a much more efficient manner. Imagine logging into one dashboard at the beginning of your day and being able to do everything in one place. That’s something that companies have been wanting for some time – a very exciting prospect that it has finally arrived!

The Plan

One benefit of being a smaller business is that we can implement wholesale change without having to interrupt hundreds or thousands of users. Having worked at a Fortune 500 company in the past, I realize the impact of any large scale implementation or change to enterprise software. Most large and medium businesses have similar issues and could benefit from leveraging SBS in a similar fashion to consolidate one of more systems.

The Goal

Some internal goals that we set as benchmarks for this project included:

1. Embrace a social business model. Hey, it’s in our DNA.
2. Unify our system architecture.
3. Remove duplicate content, efforts and tasks
4. Facilitate collaboration across all audiences
5. Create one login/account for all systems
6. Enable cross pollination of content
7. Expose and educate SBS benefits for all audiences
8. Enable Project Collaboration – and in a way that supports working virtually
9. Realize the full benefits of how will it change our working environment?

Our goal in writing this blog and sharing it with the larger Jive and Partner community is to share a common problem and offer a solution. We will be sharing more insights on our agency blog as we report our progress toward executing this effort for our own benefits. We welcome your comments or feedback on this approach.

The best content is genuine, not automated. It is posted with the intention of not only being viewed but talked about. The question is, how do we get readers to talk about our content? And how do we get readers to share that conversation with us so that we can participate and further engage?

As patrons of the social web, we now have access to an endless amount of interesting and FREE content, so much so that content quickly becomes nothing more than a commodity. Content is shared, copied, altered, and distributed through an endless number of channels.  This mass distribution ultimately removes any sense of exclusivity of intellectual assets as well as the ability to track a reader’s allegiance to any one source for content, if they have a preference at all.  Great content alone becomes not enough to keep people coming back; it now must be combined and interlaced with an alluring, value-adding user experience that is appealing to the audience.

A great deal of businesses spend a significant amount of time and resources creating content to share and engage their audience with, but many don’t know how to turn that content into an all out experience.   At our agency we see many companies using sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, as distribution channels for their content, integrating and linking their accounts to automatically redistribute information with little thought as to how it could be used to create a worthwhile experience for their reader.  While open social sites can be a valuable platform for increasing visibility, they should also be seen as a platform for interaction and an extension to a user’s experience with that company or brand.   As dicussed in a previous post, content should be designed to travel to the social web.

I like to compare this online interaction to meeting someone for the first time.  After all, that’s what you’re doing with your content, meeting a reader with the hopes that you will hit it off and meet again another time, whether with further content or at the point of purchase.  To engage in a meaningful introductory conversation, you might ask the other person questions about themselves, invite them to share their opinions, or even increase your likeability by sharing a weakness and asking for their advice.   After engaging in this initial conversation, you would promptly respond to the other person’s comments and questions, creating a TWO WAY conversation and a personal experience for your cohort.   After the initial conversation (or visit to your website, blog, or profile), you would hope to keep in touch, and would make it easy to do so by exchanging phone numbers or email addresses.  In terms of content, easily keeping in touch could take the form of a prominently displayed signup page for your RSS feed, or links to your Facebook and Twitter pages.

That being said, we are extending our hand for a virtual shake.  Please provide a comment telling us how you create an experience surrounding your content for your readers, or possibly choose to keep in touch via subscribing to our RSS or visiting and interacting with us on our other social sites, as we would love to learn more about you, our valued reader.  It is very nice to meet you.

Today while trying to order my lunch at a local fast food vendor, I couldn’t help but squint and take issue with their menu layout. A combination of unbalanced background colors, photography and fonts completely threw me as I was trying to quickly scan my options and make a selection. Anyone who’s been to In-and-Out Burger or Five Guys will appreciate how a simple, easy to read streamlined menu can aid you in your dining selection.

This dining dilemma reminds me of an increasing number of recent conversations with our clients and prospects. We are seeing a growing number of on-domain communities that suffer from lackluster adoption, limited engagement, or even worse, ghost towns with no activity at all.

While there are many factors that play into launching and sustaining a viable and flourishing community, one very important focus should be on the User Experience (UX). In our assessment, part of these failing communities can be attributed to a poor User Experience design. A community is no different than a website with respect to striving for balance in the User Interface (UI). Calls to actions need to be clear, and content, design and functionality should be balanced so as not to overwhelm a user. Consideration around UI elements, including their size, placement and hierarchy is also critical. Structure and depth should be clear, and the user must be able to self-identify where they are and that while interacting and engaging in the community they are deriving value at every step.

When deploying a community social software solution, it is tempting to cut corners to save time and money and meet a deadline through bypassing UX and using a default template with just the standard UI elements. In our experience, this is a mistake, as no two communities and their respective requirements are the same. Often most of the project budget is allocated to software purchase, technical integration and install. In our view, making an investment in a solid content strategy and user experience as well as items like user adoption/activation strategy can go a long way in alleviating the possibility of creating an expensive ghost town community (that does not return on its investment). At 7Summits, we are definitely of the mindset that getting  a concept out into the wild and in front of real users is the best way to test, validate and refine your community. However while you’re evaluating or scoping your community project, consider that allocating part of your time and resources to focus on the user experience first is a sound investment in a viable community.

It’s been over a week now since we wrapped up our time with Jive Software as part of their national “Get Social Tour.”  The tour launched April 21st in Los Angeles, with scheduled stops in Houston, Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston. We supported Jive’s tour as the Premier Partner in both Chicago (May 25th) and Philadelphia (June 17th). Jive continues to impress us with stellar people, real client case studies, and mini-seminars geared toward beginner, intermediate and advanced thinking on the application and activation of Social Business Software (SBS) both inside and outside the enterprise.

The executive breakfast in Chicago was over-flowing and Tony Zingale (Jive CEO) shared a great perspective on the limiting nature of current technologies (eMail, CRM, ERP) and how SBS can re-invigorate the enterprise. Tony made many great points during “the tour”; however wewere really struck by his position that these generations-old technologies lack the ability to support innovation. This resonates because we are meeting companies every week that are struggling with innovation even when it is a tenant of their core beliefs and strategy toward remaining competitive. The collaborative nature of Social Business Software is breaking down barriers to innovation by combining a user experience that is already accepted in mass (i.e. Web 2.0 effects) with a company’s strongest assets: it’s people. This unleashing of the individual is core to idea generation and we’re not just talking about employees here. SBS fundamentally changes how companies are engaging with employees, partners, customers and prospective customers. And it’s already creating a material competitive advantage for many companies - and we got to meet some of them in Chicago and Philadelphia.

The coolness of Get Social Chicago only got better as the day ended when we had a chance to chat with David Armano of Edelman after he saw some of our work on display at the event.  David is a true thought leader in this space and it was great to share thoughts on where all of this is headed.

Paul Stillmank - CEO, 7Summits

The role of an online community moderator is a relatively new one. And like any new role, it's going through its developmental stage right now. It is most often confused with the role of Community Manger which has more to do with the overall direction that the community is taking in terms of content and features rather than moderation. I took a quick look for this role on simplyhired.com and there are currently a wide range of job titles that overlap in this area (http://www.wordle.net) pointing to bit of confusion in the market:

Dawn Foster did a nice job of distinguishing roles (and by community size) in her blog post Community Roles: Manager, Moderator, and Administrator. I also like the slideshare Best Practices For Moderating Your Online Community by mZinga. We find more mature thinking like this published every week; however, we still  a lot of questions about community moderation and what to look for in a good community moderator.

One question that companies are asking prospective community moderators is “what online communities are you an active member of?” We like this one because it gets after both experience and passion for online community. Online community participation is an important attribute in a solid community moderator. Active community

participation provides insights into successful use of Web 2.0 effects, facet-based browsing designs, and helpful techniques being employed by other leading professional network communities.This has ramifications to 1) enhancing the feel of the community that they are moderating, 2) positioning the community for ongoing activation, and 3) supporting member retention. The community moderator needs to be on the pulse of what is going on in the online community space – what works and what doesn’t work. Here is a sample of the type of participation that is needed in a single individual:

• Active participation in LinkedIn including various groups for professional networking
• Facebook fan-page and business-page participant for both personal networking and professional brand affinity
• Knowledge and use of vertical or niche search engines
• Presence and participation in popular, topical social media outlets like Slideshare, Delicious, Digg, Vimeo, etc.
• Professional and/or personal blogger
• Active membership in professional and/or personal communities that are aligned with their interests
• Personal Facebook account with rampant, ongoing use
• Personal and professional twitter accounts with active participation
• Youtube channel with follower-ship
• You get the idea...

Finding and hiring the right Community Moderator is important. In addition, there are other moderation strategies that important once that individual is on board:

• Create a community overview that summarizes the community’s purpose and tone. Include a list of goals for members that can be realized by joining your community. Then, moderate the community in a fashion that keeps the tone and direction on par with the community’s intended use. Some communities audit moderator contributions against that community summary, providing the moderator with useful feedback that helps them stay on track.
• Moderation should be moderate (pun intended!). Some communities launch with the presupposition that they can hypo-activate the community. They presume that all they have to do is “get members” – assuming that once members show up, things will start to happen. Do not assume the members will do all the work from the start and that they don't need assistance after they have joined. On the other end of the spectrum, do not excessively moderate all user generated content (UGC) either – that is a major turn-off as well.
• Get an experienced moderator. We see many communities launch where the moderator is chosen based on who just happens to be available. Under-utilized employees do not make good moderators! Here are some important items to consider so that you are enabling your moderator while managing the outcome as well:  
  • Provide a certain level of autonomy. This is not a science yet and there will be specific learning that happens with your community. Don’t jump on the moderator when something goes wrong. Let them experiment, fall down, get up and move on.
  • Have a clear job description.
  • Create community moderation guidelines so that expectations are clear. And then don’t forget that they are guidelines.
  • Afford your community moderator and other community leaders opportunities to stay abreast of the latest trends in their role/space by encouraging them to join other communities.
  • Plan to sponsor a couple of key events per year where they can flock together with others in similar roles.
  • Provide time and avenues for them to accelerate their subject matter expertise in your topical community. Do this before the community launches and then keep it going during the beta period and after launch.
• Membership is a good measure of successful community activation. Engagement is a good measure of effective moderation. This is a very community-specific measurement. The focus is on the conversations or discussions that people are having in your community. The moderator can help make some of these connections.
• Monitor your community for both key participants and content. Then feature popular content and contributors on a regular basis. Look for the number and type of interactions that people are having with other community members to find members to feature. For content, typical measures would include the number of views, sharing, ratings, comments, replies, and more.

Paul Stillmank
7Summits

We’ve talked (and we’ll keep talking) about the need for a strategy to apply social media to your business.  The islands of Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter accounts, Youtube Channels, and one-off blogs need to be reigned in and managed. A strategy integrating them into an overall marketing and execution plan is needed.  These new media components can become important to how your organization grows its business, or they can become paid hobbies for fervent employees leaving you to ask later on whether any value was gleaned from their activities.  Even after your strategy is developed, even after HR and Marketing have aligned your brand with your employees’ online behaviors, even after you’ve figured out how to reach a relevant target audience in their media; you need one last item to activate your social media strategy.  You need to find your social spark.

Time and again, we see overzealous companies trying to ignite a fire, but with no real spark. They’re trying to build a bonfire that can be seen all across the social web. They want to attract as many people as possible to their brand, their product, their service.  They’ve amassed their best content and product information (the wood for that bonfire); they’ve even stacked the cards in their favor and dumped a little kerosene into the mix with some blogger outreach and paid blogger programs; yet things just aren’t igniting as they’ve planned. They still don’t have any fire.

We’re finding that the answer can be different for different organizations. For Zappos, it was a Twitter aggregation model. For Siemens it was a focused Info-Center for employees to channel their social power. Dell lit a fire with IdeaStorm and @DellOutlet. Starbucks lit several raging fires starting with mystarbucksidea.com and then adding a blazing hot Starbucks Fan-page. Blendtec lit their fire with a viral youtube series Will It Blend? It takes a little creativity to find your spark, but it starts with a mindset change.

We see traditional corporations that move into Social Media adopting a defensive posture.  They take the standard PR position of trying to manage the message.  They might hire a PR Social Media Agency. This is the mindset change that needs to occur.  You don’t want to manage the message, but engage the conversation.  Think of it as a party with a room full of people.  Don’t worry about the two people in the corner talking trash about you.  Get the rest of the room to look to you as the conversation catalyst.   Have everyone else want to get into your conversation. There will always be negative noise in the digital world.  Don’t focus on snuffing it out.   Focus on building the positive, collective voice so big that any negativity gets drowned out.

Sure moderation needs to occur, but it’s not the focus.  Every time I see a job posting for a ‘Social Media Moderator’, I wonder how much different that organization would be if they hired a ‘Social Media Catalyst’ or a ‘Social Media Evangelist’ instead.

In the book, Groundswell by Charlene Li, Charlene lays out the requirements for sustaining a social networking site.  She suggests that to be successful the site must:

• Enable people to connect in a new way
• Be effortless to sign up for
• Shift power from institutions to people
• Provide an open platform that facilitates partnerships

These points are all true, but they alone are not enough. Twitter had everyone one of these, but that fire smoldered along for over a year before igniting when Ashton Kutcher competed with CNN for the most followers.  That event brought Twitter’s bonfire to life. Of course, the answer isn’t to go out and engage a movie star for your strategy, but asking these questions may help find your spark:

• How do you monetize all of the user-generated content out there about your products/services?
• What will spark the conversation?
• What’s your ‘pick up’ line?  What do you hope the response to be?
• How will people even know about your conversation to begin with?

In your quest for the answer to these questions, you will hopefully discover your Social Spark.

Paul S.

7Summits

There is an art and science behind designing your content to travel on the social web. Anyone who has seen the conversation prism by Brian Solis is well aware of the many distribution channels and outlets in the social media ecosystem. But what are the ingredients needed to seed your content?

• Reference the Strategy of Giving and you will find a business framework that encourages offering things (including content)
  for free: http://www.strategyofgiving.com/
• Social Media Press Releases offers us a new way to think about and distribute PR: http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/smr_v1.5.pdf
• Setting Content Free at Ford - http://www.slideshare.net/scottmonty/setting-content-free-at-ford-web-20-expo

In the social web, content is being generated about our companies,products and people everyday whether we are apart of the conversation or not. And therein lies the difference between the social web and its previous iterations. Conversation is now key. Content may still be king, however conversation can amplify its effect whether having positive or negative connotations for a business. Dell's Ideastorm is a textbook example of how a brand can take negative content and energy surrounding their business and products and channel it into a positive dialog with its consumers now creating positive UGC.

Create great content

Best stuff for social media has:

• No registration
• Valuable information
• Minimal promotional aspects

Break content into bite-sized, digestible chunks.

Optimized Content is King

• Optimize your titles
• Optimize your content for SEO and Social pickup
• Use Tagging, Metadata and Hashtags
• Enable user-tagging of your content (folksonomy)
• Categorize Your content (Taxonony)
• Optimize Your Digital Assets Video, Photos, Audio
• Give your users tools to seed your content on the social web - Re-tweet buttons and social bookmarking apps.

Key takeaways -

• Content is still king, become a publisher!
• Conversation is queen, inspired by content
• Design your content to scale
• Create content that adds value
• Design your content to spark conversation
• Allow your content to be easily shared and distributed (de-centralized)
• Mine your data - there is good content here
• Empower your audience whether consumer or stakeholder to spread the
  word with the right set of tools
• Mashing up different content can create compelling widgets/apps
• Content comes in many forms (conversations, comments, text, images, video etc)

Paul Stillmank

7Summits