A while ago this site published a wish list of improvements that it felt could be made to Microsoft Outlook to equip it for identity management in the modern world. This particular article actually generated an email response from Microsoft suggesting the use of their Business Contact Manager add-on for Outlook. Since that time Microsoft has also released Outlook 2010. Yet neither of these solutions offered the support for extended identity information that should be necessary in managing our connections today.

Can we obtain identity information from social sites, like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. From some yes, others no – much actually depends on how the application is built. Facebook for example assumes we already know the person and have no need to retain an independent record of that person’s identity. Twitter holds some information, but does not provide access to their email address. LinkedIn enables us to download to Outlook (or any other software that can handle .VCF files) the person’s electronic business card. Plaxo, is actually a social capability that allows you to automatically backup you contact records.

Despite early attempts at electronic exchange of business cards the technology never really succeeded. So we give out, old fashioned, cards then go about transcribing them onto some form of electronic record. In actual fact a person’s identity is made up of a series of documents, tasks, emails, phone calls, etc. that form one part of the whole interaction we have with that individual. So If I sit down at my computer and search for “Paul Connolly” then I will find everything I have on file for him as well as any associated Internet based updates. Hmm, nice in theory but not always practical and thus we can see the card is merely the tip of the iceberg, and this does not even start to account to the heap of records the average corporation maintains about that individual.

Yet think about how many identity records you use on an average day and you will be surprised how many times you supply email addresses, usernames and passwords in order to access systems that we are entitled to use. Open IDs still have not gained as much ground as they ought to have. Is it because of a reluctance to make use of a single digital identity on the part of the user, or is it because of a lack of trust of the vendors? What is surprising is the number of Internet based applications that login using a Facebook account, perhaps this is the de-facto Open ID.

Facebook with nearly 500 million members is therefore reaching somewhere in the region 1 in 14 of the world is interesting because it is seen by many as trustworthy. Yet I cannot see LinkedIn allowing you to login using a Facebook ID. Yet there are now many marketing applications that leverage Facebook in order to perform marketing based activities. Perhaps the reason that you cannot download an email from Facebook actually works in its favour in putting marketer and customer together in a way that maintains separation and can be ignored by the user if they wish.

Privacy of contacts should be taken very seriously by corporations, yet social applications do allow marketers and prospects to mingle in the same space, albeit for a period of time, and that can be crucial, yet so is the need not to be making ‘advertising noise’ during that connection. This is one reason why the customer wishes to maintain a certain distance – and quite how much is of their choosing, not the marketing organisation.

For any business it is important to maintain as full a data set about customers and prospects as possible, even if you have no email address then skype ID, Facebook ID, LinkedIn ID etc may well be important facets which will need to be recorded. The earlier comments regarding the shortcomings of Microsoft Outlook remain valid even with the 2010 product. Social identities are as important (if not more-so then physical or email addresses) in order to keep an ongoing dialogue with that individual. The next generation of contact data that we store must be socially aware.

I am not saying that she is wrong about the importance of web video, but I have always been a firm believer that each corporation will make the steps necessary to become involved in the social web at their own pace. Much of the urgency will depend on the type of industry that you are in; the more consumer facing you are the more likely it is necessary for your business to have a video presence on the web. If your business manufactures gas turbines for the oil industry then the need for video is not so urgent. Everything must be put into perspective, yet one thing is true each corporation should be considering using the social web in order to demonstrate their expertise and build trust in their eyes of there perspective customer.

That said the availability of web video as a marketing and educational tool is something every business should look at. On the whole though, to the uninitiated, web video sounds like another opportunity to post advertising for free, yet this is one idea you should remove  immediately from your mind. Whilst there is a place for advertising on the social web, video is not it (unless you intend to provide s sneak preview before it hits the TV screens).

Social video allows you to go beyond the advert; provide educational material for customers, explore the lives of the characters within your advert; provide an industrial insight about the processes you use; etc, etc.

Video clearly has a place as an educational tool. YouTube, with 1 billion videos viewed each month, is no longer the only source of video on the web. Facebook has recently added a video engine and the new Twitter interface also allows direct access to video. Vimeo is another video engine that is focused towards the needs of business.

Web video presence needs as much thought and planning as does defining a social media presence. Whilst it is important to be ahead of the competition, knowing that others in your industry are already using web video is no reason to panic and put amateurish video onto the web, after-all any fool can pick up a video camera and start shooting. What is important is understanding the process and giving due diligence to the process of building this presence.

Here is one example of just such a site:

The content may be vital to the reader, but it is obliterated, in part, by the new social widget that sits on the left hand side of the page. It is a common sense design criteria that it is possible to use spare ‘white space’ (or indeed the background) that exists on any website. However there are two cardinal sins on this particular website:

◊ Covering the site banner, and

◊ Overlaying text

It is possible that the site owners have not tested the widget on all browsers, as this writer is currently using a new update of Firefox, yet the end result is not pleasing and destroys the reader’s ‘customer experience’. Instead of commenting on the article through one of the links provided it brings up a site design issue and hence the comment here.

It is true that another person can go to the same site and not experience the same issue, yet it remains true that there is no substitute for testing. Most of these glitches are also ironed out very soon as in a week’s time even this writer will not find the same issue upon returning to the page. The fact remains that however temporary the effect is unprofessional.

Sadly there are many so-called ‘Social Media Marketing experts’ talking on this subject on a daily basis. The majority of these are merely advertising people who are simply advising businesses on how to leverage Social Media sites as a tool for traditional advertising. Lets be clear here – there is nothing wrong with leveraging the channel as an advertising mechanism. However advertising only has a tiny part to play in leveraging the Social Media Channel for business success. What is far more important is being involved in the ongoing dialogue. Therefore it is important to take a more holistic view in defining a strategy to manage your social media intervention.

One aspect of Peter Giblett’s new book “Is your Business Ready for the Social Media Revolution?“, is moving away from advertising based marketing towards building a dialogue with customers, prospects and the industry at large.

There are three pillars to leveraging Social Media for business success:

• • Building a communication & collaborative capability
• • Intelligent intervention in the marketplace
• • Generating revenue as a trusted adviser

Some advertising specialists think only in terms of generating in income from this channel, but this approach will not ultimately lead to success. So lets look at each of these in turn.

Communications & Collaboration

The whole history of business involves communication, in-fact trade or barter may have been one of the reasons we humans learned to talk. Humans are adaptive creatures and new communications capabilities will always be arriving, in fact it seems to be a large part behind driving many technological advances. Today we face a changing world of business communications where everything is more rapid, in short bite sized chunks. We naturally want to be involved in a dialogue before we buy anything, the net result is that we want to be able to trust those products that we decide to purchase.

From a business standpoint part of that dialogue involves a wide range of people who are involved in getting any product to market. This more than ever before is a collaborative process. In the past collaboration has been about reaching out via email, we often forget to involve all the knowledge-holders within an organisation, let alone with suppliers, customers etc. Collaborative efforts have always been based on team membership.

The collaborative challenge today demands the involvement of a wider audience, including suppliers, customers, and other partners we are able to improve the level of communication and take appropriate action. Understanding that a customer’s business is closing early on Wednesday for a corporate event and keeping the trucking partner in the loop will ensure that deliveries are re-scheduled and arrive at an appropriate time for processing. Included are industry experts; don’t know the answer to a problem – look it up on-line or find an expert. Social media is bringing those experts closer to your business as a normal resource and in many cases without paying an exorbitant fee (although you should always expect to pay for valuable contributions).

The section “Invest On Relationships” discusses the value to be gained from improving collaboration within the workplace. Everyone has competencies they bring with them from either their social life or prior workplace. They have a sphere of collaboration, starting with themselves, expanding to the people they work with. This builds through teams and departments to the company as a whole. Each step potentially adds expertise. Ultimately it is the individual spheres of influence touch customers, suppliers, and third party partners with whom we are able to build a trusting relationship over time.

Intelligent Intervention

When people are talking about your brand your finger needs to be right on the pulse! The response needs to be immediate, proportionate and relevant.

Googling your brand or company should show your web-site to the top of the search results, but it is unlikely to show what someone just said about you on Twitter. Using traditional search engines it takes time and a lot of effort to discover what was said yesterday. A negative blog may take months to discover via traditional search. This is where it is important to build a social media intelligence capability. is about knowing what is being said about a product and having a plan to respond proportionately in any given situation. The triggers are questions about ‘What is being said about my organisation, my product, my competitors?’ To a large extent these are traditional market research questions, but we have never before had such a powerful view about people’s thinking. People are giving their views every day about topics that may have some relevance to your business. It is driven by what is important to people at a specific point in time.

In addition we can link this general knowledge with a knowledge of the views of customers, when retaining social media ID’s of customers when they make on-line comments (and remember there may be many). This information is closely allied to marketing intelligence.

Monitoring solutions are available that will automatically monitor the Internet buzz and throw up an alert when action is needed. Rewarding recommendations is a key. What do you do when an independent person spontaneously says something good about your product and company? At the very least it is important to thank them, one airline thanked a customer by giving a 25% discount on flights because of something said on Twitter.

Helping people with their problems is one of the best ways of intervening in the marketplace. Solving someone else’s problem will win you kudos, even if the person does not use your product. What happens next time they are looking to buy? You will be high on their wish list and possibly the only candidate.

Revenue Opportunity

Advertising on the Social Media channel will generate an income, but this will generally be at the same rate as advertising on the Internet. We may be able to tweak this a few points by focusing advertising campaigns towards specific demographic groups. But this is not where the real power of the medium lies. For business the Social Media channel is based on trust and expertise. You have to demonstrate expertise in order to build trust, and it is this that will ultimately bring revenue.

This is where leveraging this channel requires a shift in thinking. The marketing communication budget is not simply about advertising, it must now think about customer involvement. A corporation’s ability to leverage the Social Media channel to collaborate and be involved in the marketplace becomes important. It builds a revenue based on trust and expertise in specific areas.

A prospective customer who has found you through a specific Social Media is interested in the services that you have to offer, they will come to you because they already trust you and they are interested in your product. Hey isn’t this better than Yellow Pages?

The ROI of Social Media

Social Media can be viewed by many as the current must-have, but at what cost? Are corporations setting aside the ROI in order to jump start their enterprise social media presence?

It has been said that it is not possible to identify an ROI for collaborative improvements and that we only see the real improvements in the rear-view mirror. Yet defining an ROI for any project or proposed solution is about producing a best estimate at the time the need is perceived. That is as relevant for any Social Media project as it is for any other corporate change. Remember the major impact of social medial is more in the area of business than with the technology that underpins it.

The other aspect here is about contributing to an improvement in business results. This should be measurable through Business Intelligence. It is valid to measure the contribution made by Social Media to the bottom line. This must include a value for the collaborative effort, and for web intervention (including the real value from promotions offered). Spending should be appropriate, but will always be based on business drivers.

—————————-

This article is based on segments of Peter Giblett’s new book “Is your Business Ready? For the Social Media Revolution”. This book is now available on Amazon.

Since then activity on the site seems to have waned significantly. More correctly that is the activity of those within my network, it may of course be different with the people in your network. Wave’s biggest problem has always been: “What would I use it for?” and I have heard this question so many times. First and foremost Wave is a product that will be used to communicate and collaborate. It has the capability of extending the collaboration in a team, project, or corporate community. It should be used with existing connections, it is not really for networking and building new connections.

I have explained the power of building documents by collaboration to my business partners, but there is still a preference to “Send me a copy and I will take a look while at the cottage this weekend”; with Wave there is no copy – it is all on-line. That is of-course one stumbling block – the whole world is not yet connected. People do walk away from a reliable DSL line from time to time and the collaborative document is not available in cottage country, or even on a plane.

Wave has several types of templates that can be opened:

* Discussion: Introduce a topic; make several alternative proposals; obtain feedback

* Task Tracking: to define a set of collaborative tasks and review progress.

* Meeting and Agenda

* Brainstorming: to allow ideas on a discussion topic to flow.

* Document: Everything you need to create a collaborative document

Of course it is still possible to open a plain, blank Wave. But in adding these templates Google has put thought into how we might use the product. From a project perspective it may be possible to introduce a discussion or a brainstorm wave and at a later stage pull the key ideas into a document wave.

From everyone that I have talked to about Wave it is the idea of synchronicity that is the largest challenge. Each person needs to understand the advantages of working synchronously, this can for some be a challenge, because they follow the activity of others rather than focusing on their own contribution. In the documents that I have created I have been the only participant of the wave when I have gone through my initial thinking, no matter how rough or polished the item – the reason: to get the initial thought documented before opening it up to comment from others. The great thing here is that the document can have gaps, sections where your thinking is incomplete – I have found it important to state something like “{{FURTHER THOUGHT REQUIRED}}” at those points where you desire additional input otherwise others may take your incomplete statement as a complete view and never change what you have written.

One of the biggest challenges can be about deleting elements of a document. There can be two views of the correct form of words to be used, but you do not want a war between two participants over one small section of the document.

A method by which it is possible to link the contents of  traditional emails into a Wave is one area that still needs to be addressed by Google. It is clear today that there are big challenges to adopting Wave in certain sectors of the community, where email is an important tool. Perhaps an application that works on the Blackberry will be a giant step forwards. It is already possible to use Wave on the iPhone through the browser and even possible to remove the Safari wrapper for Wave to appear as a fully functioning program. There is an application for Android phones, although from recent chatter this is problematic. Get over smart-phone usage problems and this may enhance Google Wave usage.

I am yet to meet any person or corporation that is using Wave at the heart of their communications strategy, so the feeling is more dead halt than wave of the future at this time. We should continue to look back at this product.

It is not so much a case of an enterprise remodelling itself around a technology, but leveraging a series of technological platforms in order to get closer to its customers and the marketplace at large. Through the aid of Social Media it is relatively easy to visualise how a corporation selling consumer based products can leverage tools like Twitter to build visibility, but it less obvious how this benefits a corporation whose customers are other businesses. There should however be little difference between the approached, it is simply the audience that changes, between the B2C and B2B models, and the amount of work needed in order to win new business.

How the corporation manages that relationship should remain the same. The key aspect is that doing business is being focused more and more on a trust based relationship. Business owners do not want to buy a product because they are told this by an advertisement (whether on TV or in a trade publication) that it is the best they need that statement to be affirmed or denied through their trust network. Building the collaborative corporation does not gain support by “rail[ing] against the old corporate order and proclaim that they’re working for its downfall” this is simply not the case, yet the new world must be understood to be implemented.

Business has always been founded on our ability to communicate, right from the first time we humans ever traded or bartered. According to Ramon Vela how we buy things has changed. People are less influenced by slick advertisements and more by what they know about the person they are buying from and whether they can trust them. Vella provides training for technology sales people entitles “Becoming the Trusted Advisor” – the basic concepts here though can apply to much more than technology sales that is Vela’s forte.

Enterprise 2.0, Collaborative Enterprises, etc and how business leverages Social Media is all the people in the equation not the technologies. It is about visibility and being seen as the expert in your field; contributing the the knowledge base in the marketplace; providing value even before building a commercial relationship; and problem solving. Obviously this article is only scratching the surface of the problem, please add your views.

That however does not guarantee people will buy from your offering. That will depend largely on presentation on your website once the person arrives and whether the product the company is selling really relates to the prospects specific needs.

Leveraging Social Media also takes us beyond the act of advertising and I have talked about this before, in particular the three key components: Improving communications and collaborating more closely; Intelligently intervening in respect of things said about the product/brand/company/marketplace; Each comes before the building of a revenue stream. It is essential to be seen as a market expert, and be seen as providing value, becoming a trusted resource. Leveraging Social Media is about more than marketing it is about connecting and communicating with your target audience – engaging them even when they don’t want something, but not doing so in a way that makes them feel you are chasing them for future sales. It is about being a resource to solve their problems. In fact Social Media can be a very effective customer service tool.

Erica Friedman, Social Media Optimizer and Publisher at ALC Publishing says “Advertisers are having major issues trying to understand the metrics associated with Social Media and are resistant to interacting directly with customers, except in very small, measured ways”. I have my suspicions they are measuring Social Media in the same way as they have measured any other media. She also points out “Once upon a time, long before radio and TV, people had to talk to their customers, in order to keep their business going. The friendlier and more open and easy to work with, the better your business did. We’re starting to see that model coming back, on a global scale”.

Social Media is about talking to the customer or prospect. Basically Social Media can simply be the platform by which a connection is made. It is still essential to win over the business, human to human.

Patrick Murphy of SiliconCloud makes the point that “that adverts are more targeted to your social media profile”, well they should be targeted to succeed. The 22 year old single woman sees a different advert than the 43 year old married man when they are on the same page at the same time. From the viewpoint of Facebook or LinkedIn this is the power of what they can offer an advertiser.  Now whether the demographic focus of a specific product is right for the target audience is another question. That is where it is important to build a market intelligence for each product any corporation markets.

The reason it is important for corporations to leverage the power of Social Media as a part of there marketing strategy is as Firas Abo Assaf points out that according to a recent survey “80% of decision makers say they found the vendor, not the other way around” and “According to Marketing Sherpa, 80-90% of business to business transactions begin with a search on the web”. With search engines becoming more Social Media aware the social media contributions made do become important. What this means is that buyers are increasingly aware of what they need and are researching the market before buying. This also has a relationship to the interaction with the marketplace through the Social Media channel. Buyers are looking for value from their suppliers and Social Media can be a part of that value chain.

The thought “Once upon a time, long before radio and TV, people had to talk to their customers” it seems like we have come full circle, yet we are using different tools to facilitate this.

You can imagine what my Sunday morning had in store for me. Yes, you have guess correctly it was the day to poke around what Wave had to offer. It also occurred to me that some of my loyal readers may wish to have me un-peel some of the features for them.

One of the first things to understand is the nature of Google Wave, just what is this beast that is currently competing with Windows 7 as the most exciting new product of 2009. Wave is a collaboration tool IS NOT a social media tool. As a collaboration tool it is therefore useful important to have people to collaborate with. I did find two people on my contacts list, both called Tom, and both CEO’s of their respective firms that I had been communicating with over the last six months or so, but not really candidates for a test message. Fortunately I did have another professional networking connection, Sheryl, who had a Wave account already and had given me her wave address previously.

By way of a quick note: If you use FireFox then you do need to be using version 3.5 and you will need to download the Google Wave Add-in to ensure that the features work correctly.

The first thing you will notice about Wave is the fact that it does look very similar to familiar email type interface. It even has in ‘Inbox’ which is strange because your ‘outbound’ waves are also located in you inbox. My preferred name would be ‘Activity Centre’ instead of Inbox, but I did not name it.

When you sign-up for any system you get the obligatory welcome message, the same with Wave, one of these is about the ‘Extensions Gallery’. These are a series of useful add-ons that can add to the functions.

Have a look at the extensions available, you are likely to find something of interest. Here is the multi-user Sudoku information. Personally I am not sure I want to add this extension and compete with others on this game, but each to their own. I did however download the Ribbit conference call extension and Google’s maps tool. Eventually there will be hundreds of gadgets and probably the majority will need to be consigned to the waste bin, but some good ones will be provided as well.

They key aspect of any of these gadgets is that they can be added into a Wave as can be seen with the map that has been embedded into my wave below. Now I hear you ask surely this is no different than adding a map into an email. True. You can add a map to an email, and many people do, but I have normally found it best to do it via cut and paste. Within the Wave this is a live map and the others in the wave can zoom in or out. Wave allows videos to be embedded right into the message and played in situ. Other extensions will be added in time and these extensions can add powerful facilities that will have serious business use in the future. So here is my “Hello World” test message with embedded maps.

So as I said earlier the key aspect of Wave is its capability as a collaboration tool, and this is where Google must be hurting themselves right now. How can you have a collaboration tool, yet not have people to collaborate with? Most frustrated users that I have heard from seem to have this question on their mind. I think they have a valid point. My first invitations will be sent out to those that I intend to be collaborating with on live projects (right now) or those that I feel I will be working closely with in the near future.

I said earlier that when I started with a fresh Wave account I had two contacts already. I wondered where these came from so explored the ‘Manage Contacts’ hyperlink. This takes you to Google Contacts, which I have found to be very flaky and please excuse me if I do not show you any pictures from it as it is more likely to crash every instance of Firefox running (including this one). Being a pre-existing Gmail user I had several hundred contacts on Google Contacts already (this list must have been built from my recent email traffic) because I use Outlook as my contacts master and do not store contact on Gmail. I imported my outlook contacts list into Google Contacts (1700+ people) and found another half a dozen Wave users in my contacts list.

This is the one aspect that Google needs to work on. I also wonder how you communicate with an email only person, because despite the best intentions of Google many will not move over into the new world in an instant, so a Wave will need to be communicated to both Wave and Email users at the same time. I know that I shall be writing more as I explore more of Wave, and right now I am off to send out some invitations to my close collaborators.

Business Intelligence is traditionally capable of measuring business performance via a number of indicators. Traditionally the majority of these are financial indicators relate to the corporate balance sheet and are an indication of corporate performance. However many global corporations measure activities that have no immediate link to the balance sheet, such as production cycles. In the same way it is possible to measure the contribution made by Social Media to the business.

There are however several aspects that we do need to consider in looking at the value proposition made by Social Media to the business:

♦ The value of enhanced communications and collaboration.

♦ The ability to listen and understand what is being said about us.

♦ Responding appropriately to customers/prospects.

♦ Engaging the marketplace.

I have spoken much about the value to be gained from improving collaboration within the workplace. We have to consider that for every employee there is a sphere of influence radiating out from themselves through their team into the company at large an even influencing those outside the organisation. This collaborative sphere should be seen as one that adds value. However through the use of Social Media the company is investing in relationships. We must remember that collaboration is much more than communications it is about experts speaking up when appropriate. Experts can be found across the business in all roles, it may be as little as the truck driver who knows that customer deliveries must be delayed by half a day because the customer is closed due to a function, or it may be the analyst who discovers that two drivers have overlapping routes and that the delivery schedule can be rationalised and made more efficient.

Listening and understanding what is being said about our business is an important factor of Social Media. For example the music industry has always employed talent spotters on the street who are listening out to the youth to see who the latest upcoming artists are, yet this reach can only go so far. Social Media can add an extra dimension to this capability. Being in-tune with what is being discussed can allow a prospective talent to be identified without being in the locality.

Listening and understanding applies to all types of businesses, but how? Googling your brand or company should show your web-site to the top of the search results, but it is unlikely to show what someone just said about you on Twitter. Using traditional search engines (like Google and Bing) takes time and a lot of effort to discover what was said yesterday, let alone an hour ago. The social media landscape is busy and plenty of noise so monitoring searches on Twitter can also waste time, a resource that is precious in any business. The challenge is to identify and hear the conversations happening on blogs, social networks, forums, news sites, and more. You will need a tool that allows you listen to millions of conversations in real-time without having to waste time. It is important to respond appropriately and the majority of the time a simple thank you goes a long way. Yet a person who starts a hate campaign against your product or company needs to be placated, or managed well before the press come knocking on the door.

As an aside it should be noted that Social Media is a two way street. Part of listening is being seen to be paying attention. If someone follows you then you should consider following them back – it is seen as being attentive to your audience. CNN has over 150,000 followers on Twitter yet the service only follows a handful of people. Following back is an essential part of being responsive. I am not saying you follow everyone blindly, again business guidelines are required here, but you should consider following competitors, customers, prospects and market experts at a minimum.

Responding appropriately is a vital component. Giving away a free flight because a passenger praised your airline’s check-in procedure may not be a proportionate response. These elements should be decided upon within the marketing department, yet be executed across the company.

Engaging the marketplace is perhaps the most important aspect that can win new business. In researching a talk I gave earlier this year on Social Media I saw how a Customer Services representative at Dell Computer answered a question on Twitter about when Windows 7 was planned to be released. This release date is now only days away, but at the time few people knew. Because Dell customer service answered the question they gained a friend in the overall PC user community, even if the person asking the question was not a Dell user they may consider Dell to be on the short-list for their next purchase. The expertise is not about answering questions on your product, or brand, but giving fair advice on your competitor’s products, and also responding to general discussions in the marketplace.

We should also remember that monitoring competitor information in Social Media is as simple as investigating your own performance. Here everything is open an visible to all. Social Media is full of opinions and counter-opinions, these change almost by the hour and can be influenced by a wealth of factors. If you are not monitoring your competitors they will be monitoring and measuring you.

Engaging the marketplace is about being seen as the expert, the ‘person’ everyone wants to listen too. This is about building trust, being the market expert. That is adding value to the business.

Business Intelligence is though about the ability to measure the value in the things that we do for the business. Normally BI measures $ value, $ costs. Social Media Intelligence is more a process of discovery of the things being talked about. Yet measurement is still important. It should be a valid business goal in real-time to track and measure campaigns, brands, products and sentiment (positive, negative or neutral), and provide additional context by analysing results over time, as well as comparisons with competitors.