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Todays #SocialMedia Tweetchat Topic: The Social Media RFP: How to Get the Best Results

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RFP_ImageIf you want to purchase an accounting system, customer relationship manager (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform for your company, it’s a pretty established process.  There are a few meaningful vendors in your space determined by the size of your company, the features are all pretty clear and there are case studies galor for how-to and how-not-to select, implement and run those systems.  Now, if you want to source some external help for social media, well that’s a different story.

We hear how everyone is a social media expert whether they’re certified or self-proclaimed.  You can find people who believe many are akin to snake-oil salesmen and of little use.  But if you are a company who needs external help, how do you weed through this entirely new industry?  That is the point of this post, to effectively source external software and/or services to help deliver on your social media initiatives.

The industry is growing by the day: Agencies (traditional, interactive, digital, public relations, etc), Consultants (individual or small teams), web-development (SEO, measurement, advertising, now with social elements), Software Vendors, Service Vendors and you could continue to sector this list ad nauseum.  All of these different components all have varied levels of experience whether personal or corporate and varied levels of perceived successes.  Wading through all this fluff to get to someone who can meet your specific needs is difficult at best.  One of the most proven methods of sourcing external suppliers is through a Request For Proposal process or RFP.  As stated in Wikipedia, an RFP is:

“is an invitation for suppliers, often through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific commodity or service. A bidding process is one of the best methods for leveraging a company’s negotiating ability and purchasing power with suppliers. The RFP process brings structure to the procurement decision and allows the risks and benefits to be identified clearly upfront.”

Where to Start?  There is a widely accepted order by which to initiate and execute a typical RFP.

  1. Establish Criteria for Evaluation: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there” ~ Alice in Wonderland.   Two key things here: 1) pull together a cross-functional team to develop criteria.  this gets broader input and incorporates all departments from the start which will make ultimate buy-in that much easier. 2) evaluate your needs and develop criteria that would best meet those needs.
  2. Vendor Research: Once you have identified the criteria by which to evaluate, begin to research which vendors may fit (large agencies, small consultants, big integrators, small off-the-shelf, etc) and develop a preliminary list.
  3. Request For Information (RFI) or Request For Qualifications (RFQ): Some will say this step is not necessary or that it drags out the entire process too long.  I tend to disagree however as it allows you to understand the market better and, done correctly, will provide additional direction for your RFP.  From the RFI, you can eliminate roughly half of the prospective vendors on you list.
  4. Develop and Send the RFP: Here are 2 RFP Templates to consider Sample Social Media Template from Social Media Group and  Sample Unbranded SEO RFP.  Possible organization by Purpose/Goals, Criteria, Timelines, Vendor Questions / Responses, initial cost estimates.  The RFP should convey what you are looking to accomplish, the criteria by which you will measure, the expected timelines, additional capabilities and cost estimates.  This will elicit consistent responses by which to evaluate and rank the responses.
  5. Review the Responses: taking into account the criteria, evaluate the best responses by committee (remember the more input along the way, the easier the buy-in at the end) and narrow down to a top three (or simply choose a winner – see the next bullet for why not to do this)
  6. Interview the top 3 responses: At this point, you notify the vendors they have either made it to the finals or they have been eliminated from consideration.  By having this process, you maintain the most negotiating leverage.  During this phase, you can narrow the scope, interview vendors and negotiate final costs.  If vendors know they are still competing, they will continue to put the best package together that they can offer.  If you wait to negotiate pricing after you award a final vendor, the negotiating leverage moves to the vendor.
  7. Make a Selection:this speaks for itself.  Remember to organize timelines and accountability from both sides to make sure everyone knows who’s responsible for what during the installation process.

Now this is a traditional process and for the most part I would follow this procedurally.  My one hesitation is actually in developing social media criteria, companies will typically lump technology, strategy development, execution, community management, SEO, advertising purchasing, etc into one big project labelled “Social Media Initiative”.  Personally, there is not one company let alone person who could pull this entire project off.  My recommendation then, is to create sections of the RFP and allow vendors to submit responses only for those areas where they are strong or to actually create 3-4 separate RFP processes which most companies are not equipped to pull off.  Let us know in the comments if there is a better process that you have encountered.

While this is a good start, it does not provide the nuanced detail needed to truly start this process for your own company.  For this, we bring in the creator of the Social Media RFP and top strategist Maggie Fox.  Maggie and her team at the Social Media Group work with companies like Ford Motor and SAP to deliver social media solutions.  She will moderate this week’s session and help us all prepare to source external suppliers to help meet our social media needs.  This week’s topic and specific questions include:

Topic: The Social Media RFP: How to Get the Best Results

Q1: How do you formulate a proper RFP that conveys your social media goals?

Q2: How do you identify the vendors, consultants or agencies to send your RFP to?

Q3: How do you evaluate your responses to pick the best solution?

Please join us this week as Maggie Fox moderates our Tuesday #socialmedia chat at noon EST.  You can follow along by watching #sm43 from any twitter client or simply from our LIVE page.

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

Posted via web from marcmeyer’s posterous

This weeks #Social Media Tweetchat Topic: Socializing My Business – What Comes After the Chit-Chat?

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chitchatcafeEveryone’s talking about integrating social media into our everyday business.  Whether you have a small local business or are a global enterprise, everyone is interested in the best way to incorporate social media practices in some way to solve their business challenges.  As with any disruptive technology there are no shortages of short-sighted integration strategies. Initially we all focus around the new shiny toys/technology then we focus on the people side and the individuals who are using the shiny new toys are how great they are for it.  Eventually we need to evolve, to discover the best ways to integrate into our management and business practices.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen many attempts at defining the RIGHT approach.  First, it was Forrester with the POST methodology where the People, Objectives, Strategy then Technology were the core focus.  This approach turned everyone into strategists, albeit for the betterment of campaigns.  Campaigns are how agencies are oriented, client teams organized by geography then charged with the next big idea to WOW consumers.  Therefore, this is how many large companies who outsource their creative and marketing duties with agencies started “trying out” social media, through a number of well-thought out , one off campaigns.  The problem with the campaign approach is that everyone figured out that if social media is about developing relationships then a series of unique campaigns could not possibly deliver on the expectations that social media marketing promises.

On the other side of the spectrum, the Dachis Group recently rolled out their methodology around Social Business Design.  This approach says that the only way to compete in the future is re-organize the entire enterprise from the ground up with a framework to be a social business by design.  There is some good thought here around culture, business process and technology however no company wants to be the first one to scrap decades of legacy to “try” a new way to build a company.  Even if the management agrees to it, the shareholders will demand proven solutions.

So where does that leave companies?  Right now it depends on their leaders.  If you break out small businesses, it comes down to the type of leader that runs the company.  Some individuals “get” Twitter or other tools and will figure out how to make them work best to solve their unique business challenges.  Other small business leaders still need to be convinced this new “fad” will last before they invest any of their time into it.  For each respective small business competing in a local market, it will come down to whomever continues to build better relationships with their consumers whether online or off.  If customers feel a connection, they will patronize that local company whether they follow them on Twitter or not.  It’s still that simple.  Want proof?  Look at how many small businesses still do not have a true website…and they have made it this far.  Focus on a great product and over-the-top service and people will continue to purchase from you and spread the good word.

For larger business competing in multiple markets or globally, social business will play a larger part of their business success.  The speed by which information travels socially is simply overwhelming, good or bad.  Consumers have a new expectation for engagement, service and transacting.  Companies who succeed will be the ones who are able to embrace this new consumer, employee, partner or shareholder and manage appropriately to those expectations.  Note of caution: Simply communicating quickly does not equate to a new, successful social business.  So what else is there?

Social business transformation is happening from many fronts and is yet to be perfected.  But one thing is for certain, you do need to understand more than just technology and culture to truly apply social to your business.  While every business is different from it’s management, employees, culture, focus, expectations, etc your consumers are still the same as your competitors.  The big question then is how to win.  In my opinion, those who consider the underpinnings of prior corporate revolutions will be better suited to transcend into this new age than those who continue to stay shallow in their thoughts.  Consider such areas of practice such as:

  • Psychology: Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs which refers to 5 basic needs including: physiological, safety, social, self-esteem and self actualization
  • Sociology: which is often referred to as the Social Science, is the study of human societies.
  • Network Sciences: LikeMetcalfe’s Law – which conspires that networks (of faxes, phones, computers, people, or anything else) dramatically increase in value with each additional node or user

These sciences have influenced business revolutions including the information, management and globalization business revolutions that have helped shape the pace by which we operate today.  The question is how the new Social revolution will re-shape traditional business practices today and in the future.  Less discussed movements like social production, cognitive outliers, the wisdom of crowds and distributed transparency will certainly help shape this business revolution and the companies who embrace these learnings will emerge as leaders in the future.  The only way to get your businesses out front will be to look beyond the shallow dialogue like openness, authenticity, transparency and building relationships that is prevalent today and start understanding how the sciences will continue to influence business and consumer expectations.

Social, Managerial and Organizational Dimensions will all have an impact on both intra-organizational and inter-organizational aspects in social business integration.  To take us through this week’s conversation will be a true change agent in her own right, Kristi Colvin.  Kristi has a tremendous amount of experience leading corporate integration of disruptive technologies.  She will lead us through a series of questions to help challenge us to think deeper in managing our organizations through this monumental, customer led sea-change that is upon us.  The topic and questions follow:

Topic: Socializing My Business – What Comes After the Chit-Chat?

Q1: Why do we even need to integrate social into our businesses?

Q2: How should you begin to socialize your business and what should you expect?

Q3: What does social business integration look like for employees & the company?

This week’s chat will take place Tuesday 1/15 at 12 noon EST as usual.  To follow the discussion, use #sm42 from any popular Twitter app (like tweetchat, Tweetdeck,Seesmic) or from our LIVE page.

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

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This weeks #socialmedia tweetchat topic: Engagement Through Customer Service: Your Contact Center & Social Media

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Callcenter We hear so much chatter that companies have to be participating in social media.  The chatter then leads into who should do it….and Voila! A single person is assigned to it.  That person is usually born of the marketing or public relations (PR) team and the goal is rather simple: 1. Listen and 2. chat it up in an effort to create customer relationships.  Customer Relationships! are you kidding me?!?!  Who in marketing or PR has ever had to directly sell or service a customer (let me help you – not many)?  So why don’t we ever hear about social media from the people who are responsible for managing direct customer experiences on a daily basis?  That’s right, the customer service teams, talk about resources!  Customer support, service, tech support usually have dozens if not thousands of company representatives waiting for you to call.  Ahh, therein lies the issue.  Customer service is typically reactive and most likely engineered to react via the telephone.

It is interesting to consider though.  Customer service is probably the one department with the most experience in developing customer relationships across your entire organization.  Every executive understands the numbers associated with keeping a customer versus the cost of acquiring one, yet Service rarely has a seat at the executive table.  Executives all proclaim that Job #1 within their companies is to over-deliver on quality and service and yet none really have any idea on what the Experience is in buying from their company.  The experience is what social media is all about.  Every experience a customer has with your organization plays a part in developing not only that customer’s relationship with your company, but the relationship of that customer’s network too.  Developing customer relationships are about managing a series of defining moments with customers (ie: pleasant to talk to, was I treated with respect, was my inquiry answered timely, did rep answer or fulfill my question). Contact centers are traditionally very strong with telephone support so incorporating online social media into contact centers is certainly a challenge. There may be nothing more important however to developing a truly social enterprise than incorporating the contact centers in a meaningful way.

The challenges abound.  Systems are all centered on a phone switch, representatives trained to be reactive and solve problems, integration into core infrastructure including ERP, CRM, even accounting and not-to-mention many contact centers are wholly or partially outsourced.  With that last part it now becomes an entire corporate ecosystem that has to change instead of a couple of people in a department.  The payoff though is equally impressive for any company who can transform their client relationships with customer service being at the core.  Consider a blog regarding a comparison of cameras debating which to get.  If your camera company was the only one to contact that person and offer a promotion or simply a closer look through a video demo, your chances of the sale are good, however your chances of developing a relationship through a positive defining moment are great especially when exposed to that person’s network.  Consider a tweet for someone in a strange town looking for some comfort food.  If you are the only restaraunt who responds and delivers on that experience, youhave created a tremendous asset in that customer’s network however large or small it may be.

As social media has enabled citizens access to limitless information regarding your product and your company, it has also created a new class of customers.  These customers have access to insights, reviews and most of all – random thoughts regarding their most recent defining moment with your company.  The rules are changing and contact centers must change with them.  Social media is propagating a new class of defining moments for companies to deal with.  Those moments are no longer siloed to a channel of communication (ie. phone, email, letters).  They permeate all channels and the customer expectations are re-set to near real-time for answers and for attention by your customers.

Companies at the front of this revolution to infuse social media into their service channels will most likely be leaders in their respective industries.  Our moderator this week is no exception.  Shashi Bellamkonda directs social media across Network Solutions, the de-facto leader in all things needed for businesses to manage a web presence.  Shashi is one of the few social media all-stars that actually is recognized in the industry for what he does as much as by what he says.  Shashi will lead us in this discussion coming with first-hand experience in how major corporations actually handle social media inside their service units.  The topic and questions follow:

Topic: Engagement Through Customer Service: Your Contact Center and Social Media

Q1: When should customer service engage with consumers using social media?

Q2: How can contact centers scale to meet the demands of social media?

Q3: How can you determine if Customer Service is being effective with social media?

As always, the chat will be Tuesday (01/05/10) at noon EST.  You are invited to join the discussion or at least follow along by tracking the hashtag #sm41 and be sure to include it in all your tweets.  Another way to follow along is to use our LIVE page as well.  We look forward to a tremendous discussion!

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

Posted via web from marcmeyer’s posterous

This weeks #socialmedia tweetchat topic: Advancing the Discussion of Social Media & ROI

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Return on Investment or (ROI) is one of those terms that has been mis-used by all in 2009.  As we look to 2010, how can we get back on track.  We know there is going to be a strong influx of interest in social media projects by companies.  In fact, a report from econsultancy and bigmouthmedia suggest that 86% of the 1,100 companies surveyed plan to spend more on social media in 2010 and 13% plan to spend the same amount.  The report is further detailed here. With all this investment in 2010, will any of it be tied to ROI or will it be looked at as non-financial impact?

We stated that the term ROI is widely mis-used.  Here’s what we mean:

This is NOT ROI:

  • The return of my Twitter usage is 2009 is 1,637 followers.
  • I increased the page views of my website by 300% on an investment of $120.
  • I increased my brand awareness by putting better content on my blog.

The actions above relate to non-financial impact on a business.  For more information on Impact on Business we did a post a couple of months ago here.  What seems to happen is that we take what is a financial term (ROI) and mix it around with investments in media measurement or listening tools or other social media tactics that are a part of non-financial metrics like building relationships, brand management or engagement.  While these are all necessary and they do require an investment, the results are almost always non-financial.  Therefore, if you are in front of executives and trying to attain funding or approvals, they will be interested in financial returns as measurement.  While redefining the terms to meet your specific needs may be fun or even cute, no one is going to sign up for ROI when it means Return on Interest or Return on INgagement.

So what is ROI?  The accepted definition of return on investment is very straightforward: gain from investment minus cost of investment, then divided by cost of investment.  In other words, recruitment, engagement, interactions, listening are all very important pieces of the ROI equation however until that customer or prospect does something (ie: make a purchase) there is no financial measurement.  The exception to this is the relation to cost savings realized by an investment.  A great image of this was done by Olivier Blanchard:

roi1

Another important piece of the ROI pie is about actuals.  ROI is not about what we think is going to happen, it is about what happened.  Or in the words of Olivier again, “It’s not about potential, it’s about actual performance.”  So ROI is not a forward looking statement, rather it is backwards looking results.  So if you are looking for a quick refresher, check out this widely viewed deck on ROI here.

You may have guessed already on who could possibly by moderating this much needed discussion on ROI.  If you guessed Olivier Blanchard aka “The Brand Builder” then you are correct!  Olivier has long been a recognized and sought after practitioner and speaker on the topic of social media ROI.  He brings a very clear yet in-depth understanding to the topic and we are thrilled to have him moderating this chat with us.  The topic and question this week are as follows:

Topic: Advancing the Discussion of Social Media & ROI

Q1: How can strategy & planning can impact ROI?

Q2: What are the steps to integrate SM across a business?

Q3: What is the difference between measurement & ROI?

Please join us this Tuesday 12/22 for the weekly chat event at 12 noon EST.  The hashtag for this event will be #sm39.

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

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#SocialMedia Tweetchat #35-Stop Campaigning & Start Conversing – The New Marketing Paradigm

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conversation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Build a relationship, garner trust and a customer will never leave.  Sounds pretty easy!?  In fact we have been talking about it since the dawn of time (social media time anyway) with the Cluetrain Manifesto that started in 1999 and identified that the Internet has forced marketing to be more about conversations than messages.  Since then we have Valeria Maltoni the Conversation Agent (a past moderator here), a great book called Naked Conversations written by Shel Israel (an upcoming moderator) and Robert Scoble and countless other examples.  So why is it that companies still market via campaigns and agencies still win business with this approach?

A classic example of movement for the sake of motion? Possibly.  Consider all the money and effort that goes into concept, strategy, creative, execution of marketing campaigns.  Brands spend all that time creating a pitch to consumers, introducing themselves time and time again, selling stuff to unwilling customers then when it’s done, they see how much product was sold, cut off the pitch to those customers and prospects then rinse and repeat the whole daunting process all over.  So where is the conversation part of this we have been talking about now for at least 10 years?  Not the cordial, “wave to each other at a cocktail party” conversation but the relationship conversation that lasts for months, years or longer?  The conversation where you find out what each other needs and wants (notice I said both), you know, a real relationship not a manufactured one.

So what does that look like and how do marketers break out of the campaign mentality?  Think about the impact of this scenario: A company with multiple brands has a consolidated marketing department focused on customer relationships.  They are in charge of courting the consumer and understanding how they live, work and play.  From that relationship, the company understands what products (Brands) can help that customer and how they add value to that consumer’s life.  Then the Brands become stewards for helping those customers buy the things they need (considering people like to buy things yet do not like to be sold).  The company pours their monies into acquiring a customer once then facilitating their purchases across the various products.  This is very different than what happens today as each Brand pays to acquire the same customers over and over across all brands independently.  This may be some utopian dream to many but the speed of communicating and the ubiquity of access to communicate is forever changing the old norms and customers have left that station.  Companies need to figure out how to adapt and soon.

We are very happy to have Tom Martin moderating this topic on tuesday.  Tom spends a lot of time in this space covering all aspects of branding, marketing and social media and brings a creative approach to his work.  He will help us work through this topic and facilitate a great learning opportunity for all of us.  The topic and questions will be:

Stop Campaigning and Start Conversing – The New Marketing Paradigm

1) What is the difference between a marketing campaign and a customer conversation?

2) How do agencies have to change in order to create conversations instead of campaigns?

3) What are some examples of brands or agencies that have succeeded in making the jump from campaign to conversation?

The chat will take place Tuesday 11/24 at noon EST.  We will use the #sm35 for the event

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

 

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November 10th #Socialmedia topic-Social Media’s Impact on Business and ROI

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Social Media’s Impact on Business (and ROI)

gas_powered_blender

Feeling like stirring the pot a bit this week so we thought a discussion on ROI should do it.

ROI certainly can stir the pot.  But, saying that most of everyone’s conversations on this topic are not actually ROI, rather Impact on Business (IOB), takes the act of stirring and turns it into a blender.  Ahh, much better!

So let’s start by saying that just because it’s “social” does not mean it should be held up to standards typically defined by financial returns whether in business, government or non-profits.  Someone can start a blog or join twitter simply to better understand the tools or to connect with associates they just met at a conference.  This becomes truly social and may at some point have an impact on your business whether financially or some other measure but does not need to be tied into sales goals just because an employee wants to post office pictures so other offices can see how they decorated for the holiday party.  That’s a beginners first step into social computing but not what we are interested for this discussion.

What we are looking for here is to better define and understand what we sometimes mean when we refer to ROI as a verb instead of referring to ROI as a financial metric.  The real definition of Return on Investment (ROI) is: gain from investment minus cost of investment, then divided by cost of investment.  Business books are written, classes are taught, and undergrad studies are derived from this very straightforward metric.  When I talk about ROI, I try to dumb it down a bit into either: 1) increase revenues, 2) decrease costs, or 3) increase in shareholder value and that assumes a financial investment of course.  So why then, does the term ROI get thrown around so much in the context of social media when no financial gain or costs saved are referenced?

Impact on Business (IOB) is the actual term that should be used when discussing things like: # of followers, brand awareness, mentions, impact, conversations and what ever else you can think of that is not related to a financial calculation.  The impact of an employee being nice on twitter is great.  The fact that the customer decides to continue service (Retention) as an indirect effect does not make the time that employee spent on Twitter an actual case for ROI.  It is however, IOB. Olivier Blanchard actually was the first that I know of to begin this discussion a few months ago here.  Companies all over are using social media to have an impact on their business like Kodak measuring Smiles or any company promoting their Facebook fan page.

Many industries discuss IOB like fast food, IT, or big box retailing and it affects every company’s business in some way or another.   You can even consider different departments of a company and the impact of HR, Payroll, PR, Sustainability, Operations play in a company.  Although often not connected directly to revenue, a company would have a difficult time without those departments.  Impact is easier to measure if you don’t have to tie it back somehow to ROI and ROI is much easier to measure if you don’t try to include calculations of impact.  To lead our discussion this week is Jacob Morgan, a principal at Chess Media Group, who focuses on Social Media ROI.  Jacob is well versed in this type of discussion and brings a lot of expertise to the table.  The questions will attempt to progress the discussion from ROI as a catch all phrase to the differences between Impact and ROI for businesses and how to align them.  They are:

1.  Whether Impact or ROI, what “Investments” could be measured to prove out value in Social Media?

2.   How can you prove value from Impact or ROI to executives to continue or try Social Media?

3.  What are some examples of businesses attaining true ROI from Social Media?

Plan on joining in this discussion Tuesday 11/10 at noon EST.  To join either follow #sm33 on Twitter or follow our LIVE site.

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

 

Posted via web from marcmeyer’s posterous

Social Media Saturation Yes, Maturation No.

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baby steps

Not another post about social media…Yes and no, but indulge me.

Yesterday Jason Breed of Neighborhood America and I were talking about elevating our game with hashtagsocialmedia in the same fashion that #Journchat tried to do Monday night on Twitter. Journchat, if you were not aware, hosted some live sessions in a number of cities that coincided with their regularly scheduled Monday night session. It worked to a certain a degree if not for the sake of trying. They get props for trying to raise their game.

Meanwhile, I had been expressing to Jason that I would like to see that eventually happen with Hashtag Social Media as well-namely some type of larger more event like type of setting for #socialmedia; and it was then that Jason brought up a seriously major point.

“What could we say or do that people have not already heard countless  times?”

Which led me to pause, reflect and nod my head in agreement. I think he’s right.  Has social media or the writing and talking about social media reached a level of saturation? In my opinion yes. But with a caveat. Yes, for those of us on the front lines and in the bubble. What more can we read and or write about that has not already been said? What power list have we not seen? What 10 sure fire ways to do something in social media have we not bookmarked, read or saved a half dozen times? How many blog posts about social media measurement have resonated with you? Whose Venn diagram have you saved and shared with your colleagues? How many slideshares about social media have you embedded?

Saturation yes. Maturation no.

After Jason and I agreed that though much has been said and repeated about social media, we both then agreed that there is still much, much more to learn, share, and expound upon. If we were to look at the Gartner Hype Cycle for example or even just your traditional bell curve, and we were to determine where social media, holistically speaking, was located  on the curve, we would both say we had not even come close to critical mass.

Why?

Before you can run you have to walk. before you can walk you have to crawl. The history of social media is but a mere blip on the radar that is social computing, networks and clouds. Its a starting point that we have to get beyond. Let’s quit spinning our wheels about what it is and get to, “What it can do and how”.

We can all continue to write about things that we have all read countless times in different forms, and then we can slap each other’s backs and share it amongst ourselves. or we can step beyond that monotone and truly start to think about social media on business levels and use levels and not adoption levels. Am I wrong or am I just too close to the subject?

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The ROI of competitive intelligence

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eaves

Rachel Happe is hosting this weeks #socialmedia session. I bring her up for a reason, which you’ll soon see. For those of you that are unaware of what #socialmedia is, I will quickly explain and then get to my point. Every Tuesday at Noon EST, Jason Breed of Neighborhood America and myself host a one hour Twitter session around the business of social media. Every week we have a different host to moderate  a session wrapped around some of the hottest social media issues revolving around business. They’re job? To challenge and question and probe participants to reach higher in their assumptions about what social media is.  The list of people that have hosted over the past few months is like a who’s who of social media practitioners. They include Jason Falls, Geoff Livingston, Toby Bloomberg, Lee Odden, Mack Collier, Danny Brown, David Alston and Beth Harte, to name a few.

Now more to my point. In one of Rachel’s recent posts on her new project blogsite The Community Roundtable, which I highly suggest you check out, she does a snap shot  view of how community managers use Twitter. She highlites  Connie Bensen, Dirk Shaw, Guy Martin, and herself. In each case, we see how each person manages to monitor the twit streams in their space. In every case, they all manage to monitor the sandbox or boxes in which they play. Why? Because it gives them more information, knowledge and data. And the best part, it’s free and for the most part passive.

Call it competitive intelligence or call it consumer intelligence, call it whatever intelligence you want; but don’t dismiss the value of this information. On the surface it may not deliver the troika that I constantly talk about when talking about hard ROI in social media- make money, save money, or increase equity but if I were going to place a value on competitive intelligence I would say, to use a few sports analogies- It’s the 6th man in basketball, the utility club in golf, the setter in volleyball, the pitcher with the rubber arm in baseball, or the slotback in football. Simply put, don’t underestimate or discount the value of competitive intelligence.

To not take advantage of competitive intelligence that is freely available is more like giving the competition a constant headstart. Or better yet, if you are a hitter in baseball, you’re starting with a strike before you even step in the batters box.

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Crowdsourcing-Social Media Listening Grids

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Over the last 8 weeks @jasonbreed and I have had some tremendous #socialmedia Unpanels at Hashtagsocialmedia.com. Last Tuesday, David Alston of Radian 6, hosted a session titled Developing Corporate Listening Grids. the comments and the discussion was at such a high level, that developing a deck from it was a no-brainer. But obviously it doesn’t happen without the participation of the attendees and their voices.

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10 reasons why the Unpanel worked.

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wordle

Beth Harte recently asked if I would write a guest post on her blog and this is the post that she’s getting based on yesterdays first Twitter based Unpanel

So Tuesday was the first official Unpanel event on Twitter. A one hour, once a week, no holds barred, fast paced moderated twitchat. Or to quote Jason Breed, one of the founders, “an Unpanel is a purposeful interaction with individuals around their industry or business on Twitter….”

This Unpanel was significant on a few levels and I want to highlight ten reasons why you might want to make a point of blocking off the time each week to participate in a truly engaging and elevated conversation about social media.

1.  We had a moderator that absolutely drew out of the 100, yes that’s right, 100 participants, more than just the cursory “social media is all about transparency” comments. Did I mention that Beth Harte was the moderator? We could not have had a better “first” moderator/host.

2. Pre-set questions; but not your normal “what is social media” questions. Below are those questions..

Q1:  Where are the deficiencies in business around People, Interactions & Technology? In other words, where does social media make sense in a business setting when addressing those deficiencies?

Q2:  Play the “What if” game.  Addressing the above deficiencies, remove all barriers and let the imagination roll.  (For example, what if CRM systems were filled up by buyers not salespeople) Use the “In a perfect world” scenario when plugging in a social media solution. What does that world look like?

Q3:  Combine the identified needs in business with the “imagine if” comments and let’s create a high-level road map

3.  Incredible discussion. Powerful give and take. Amazing connection with people on social media issues that we can all relate to that get beyond the echo.
4.  A discussion on Twitter with actionable takeaways.
5.  Value. I harp all the time on the value of a tweet or the value of a persons tweets, and in the span of one hour, there was more value in what was being said than what might be gleaned from a week of following a so called social media expert..
6.  The website Hashtagsocialmedia, provided a forum to follow the tweets right on the site. It also provided Beth’s tweets on the side panel so that we could see Beth’s insights and followup questions. Key and critical to pushing the discussion to a higher level.
7.  People worth following AFTER you’ve had conversations with them, Not before and not based on who they are following, I cannot tell you how many times I said during the Unpanel, “Wow what a great point”…
8.  As awesome as Beth was, the Unpanel will have a different moderator/host with a different perspective every week and thats an important aspect. They don’t have to be rock stars to bring value to the discussion.
9.  A compilation in one place, of potentially the best minds in social media, that SOME people might not know. And we’re able to talk with them. Only through the power social media is this possible. How cool is that?
10.  It’s going to get better as more people participate

The Unpanel is a very atypical event and that was a good thing, so maybe it should be that it was “un-typical?”. I dunno. Huge shout out btw, to Beth Harte, Jason Breed and Terry McKyton