Social Media Darwinism » Enterprise 2.0

Do you need to be an Extrovert to be in Social Media Marketing?

Paul Dunay — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:07:23 +0000

Great question which I found myself asking last night after I reviewed my recent Myers Briggs score. I found it interesting that my score came in as ENTJ.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the Myers Briggs test it asks you a bunch of questions from multiple angles to rate you on 4 basic scales: your Favorite World (Introvert/Extrovert), Information (Sensing/Intuition), Decisions (Thinking/Feeling) and Structure (Judging or Perceiving). The result is a 4 letter score such as mine – ENTJ – which means a person who prefers being an Extrovert rather than an Introvert who prefers Institutional Information over Sensing, that prefers Thinking rather than Feeling when it comes to making Decisions and prefer to Judge Structure rather than perceiving it.

But focusing on the Extrovert angle for a second, I began to wonder if you need to be an extrovert to be in social media. Certainly internally in your organization you need to be an extrovert if you want to organize a Tribe or movement in your company to take on social media. And for sure you need to be an extrovert if you plan on becoming a proclaimed social media expert or guru. But I never thought of myself as an Extrovert, even though I know the test is very consistent (yes I have taken it before and gotten the same score – even before Social Media existed).

I wonder if this spectrum from Introvert to Extrovert will play it’s way out on Social Media. Meaning if the 1-9-90 rule (see link to my post) will actually change over time. The 1-9-90 theory that says out of every hundred people who join a community or network – 1% actively contribute – 9% contribute from time to time – and 90% are lurkers. Perhaps as more people get comfortable being extroverted and live completely transparently then we will see a shift in that law to a ratio that resembles more of the online population.

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Who is your Social Media lightening rod?

Paul Dunay — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:44:33 +0000

I have been in talks with a few companies lately about their social media efforts especially when it comes to supporting customers using social media (the topic of my new book). And I have noticed a difference between the successful ones and the not so successful ones.

It comes down to one basic organizational difference …

At the highest level there is really 2 ways to organize your social media efforts: Centralized or Decentralized. Do you have a team that is very loosely coupled with no clear leader that coordinates your social activity and it feels strained or hard to hold together? Or do you have one team with one goal with many players all connected together under the leadership on one person – what I call the Social Media lightening rod.

You can tell the difference very easily in a meeting or in my case with a meeting at a client because as soon as someone mentions social they all say you need to speak to Person X.

Having seen a number of teams at various companies over the last few months it’s clear that social has made some big strides at even the most obscure companies. Many of which have virtual teams of folks who are interested in social media and are happy to help the cause at their company. But the big difference between them and more successful ones at social media is the lightening rod.

Most often I see there is a person who could emerge as the lightening rod but just hasn’t been given the authority or stepped up and assumed the role. If this is you (and you know who you are) my question for you is what’s holding you back? You know you want to do this and your company needs you to do this. So stop holding yourself back and just do it!

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Social Media is not a campaign it’s a commitment!

Paul Dunay — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:47:04 +0000

A while back I created a post called – There is no “campaign” in Social Media because when marketers use the word “campaign,” it tends to suggest an initiative to get a message out to a targeted group of constituents. It also implies there will be a beginning and, somewhere down the road, an ending.

And I still believe that is the case …

And despite a number of comments I got about that post both positive and negative – I think I stopped short of really nailing the issue which is – social media is more than a campaign it a commitment!

Its a commitment to your organization to be more open and transparent, its a commitment to your customer to listen and respond, its a commitment to your community to always be there when you need them, its a commitment to be open to developing new products and services that take input from your community, its a commitment to take the high road when issues arise (as they always do) and most of all its a commitment that tells everyone in your company that this is the way things are going to be and we are going to be part of this – good bad or indifferent.

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LinkedIn Search Optimization (LSO) Critical for B2B Marketers

Paul Dunay — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:18:47 +0000

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search results. This gave birth to a whole industry centered on optimizing search results for a given term. For B2C or B2B Marketers this was a huge revolution.

But for B2B Marketing fans I think you need to expand your game around search to start include what I am calling … LinkedIn Search Optimization (LSO).

Late last year LinkedIn launched an advanced search feature on their site. And if you haven’t already spent some time plugging in your favorite B2B marketing keywords either paid or organic – you should. The results you get may surprise you.

I would start by searching for terms where you would expect your major thought leaders would appear – if they don’t show up on the first page of the results I would start perfecting their profiles to clarify what they do and what their strengths are using keyword rich descriptions in their bio and the description of their current role. Their headline should also be changed manually to display their expertise not their last job (which is the default). Also, your thought leaders email address should be at the end of the summary area or in the contact field labeled “public”. And you may want to remind them to update their status as often as possible. People in their network are most likely interested in their new projects and professional achievements – why not keep them abreast of what’s happening so they can refer them to a friend.

Personal branding expert Dan Schawbel suggests that your profiles should be rich in keywords that anyone would be searching for. For a good example check out these searches for the terms Facebook Marketing and Social Media. Ok ok yes I was doing a vanity search just to see how I would rank but I was very impressed by the results I got for Facebook Marketing – someone had their profile so well tricked out with keywords that they ranked higher than people who actually work at Facebook.

Clearly there is a new practice emerging here, a practice I feel B2B marketers can benefit from if they focus on it.

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Web 2.0 Expo – cool stuff seen on the floor of the show

Paul Dunay — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:48:00 +0000

Here are a few companies in alphabetical order I thought had shown some real promise at the Web 2.0 Expo

Ascentium – A model for the agency of the future

I spoke to the CMO, Romi Mahajan who explained Ascentium’s go-to-market strategy to me. They are the nexus of a digital marketing company mixed with a technology firm that does Microsoft CRM, Business Intelligence and Analytics to provide creative solutions for brand perception and instantiation.

No doubt very useful and very powerful when they come together (I read this as an agency mixed with a lead nurturing platform that can track ROI!). Not only do they build cool marketing campaigns but they can connect to your sales process. They in effect unify sales and marketing so that clients see that their campaign pay off – thereby eliminating the normal tension between sales and marketing.

Romi was also a speaker on Agency 2.0 on how should agencies of the future be organized. Clearly I would think Ascentium is a model for agencies of the future.

Brickfish – Measuring Social Engagement

Brickfish offers an innovative way for brands to connect with their target audience online. They offer a launching pad for highly viral marketing campaigns that allow you to reach consumers where they live on the social web. They get them to listen to your message and interact with your brand, and more than that, they produce the results.

What does this mean – as I understood it – they make various viral marketing campaigns or social applications that can then be shared with friends who can customize them to post it to their blog or website via an iFrame. The iFrame technology allows Brickfish to measure where, when, who and how many times your messages were viewed.

Some examples are Coach engaged consumers to design a new tote. Nike asked consumers to share their inspirational athletic achievements. Kodak got consumers to share their Kodak moments to celebrate their new low-ink printer. All of these examples needed consumers to make customize the message and make it their own then spread it virally. Best off Brickfish is an all in one platform to do this.

HiveLive – Platform for building unique communities

I spoke to the CEO John Kimbel and visited with HiveLive crew on the Expo floor and was very impressed. HiveLive has a very different take on Enterprise Communities. In short, what they do is act as a platform that aggregates all your types of media (both new media and social media) to create a very different type of experience than say a standard community. So that means they integrate things like blogs, podcasts, wikis, forums into a “Hive” (one could say mashup here). That can be customized to the experience you want to create for your users.

One of their customers is Serena Software. Their CMO, Rene Bonvanie is a forward-thinking marketer who’s been leading the community charge for quite some time now at places like SalesForce, SAP, BusinessObjects, and Oracle. Below is a video where he does a great job explaining Serena’s vision of a new model of community-powered marketing and how they’re using tools/technologies (like Facebook, HiveLive, and YouTube) to reinvent their business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDsJE98NPbM

InsideView – Smart marketing and sales tool

I was lucky enough to have breakfast with the CEO Umberto Milletti. Who started InsideView in 2005 because he saw that “business information was becoming more distributed over the web” though articles, interviews, various databases and then eventually social networks.

He viewed this as an opportunity to aggregate these sources of information to provide a composite view of a person or a company through the use of some proprietary Natural Language Processing.

All comes together in a mashup within your own CRM – InsideView integrates with all of today’s most popular CRM systems namely Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and recently announced Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, and Landslide.

InsideView also tells you who you are connected to in Facebook or LinkedIn. It’s a form of “Smarketing” as Umberto called it.

Over 200 companies use their application with hundreds of sales reps using the application. They sell per seat licenses but they also have a free version in the spirit of Web 2.0 with a limited version of the functionality. No doubt this is a company to watch in the coming years!

Wi5Connect – Welcome to Social Learning 2.0

I spoke to Matthew Bowman, VP of Sales and Marketing, from Wi5Connect who explained what they did as a “different approach to learning that marries two technologies – Social Networking and eLearning” into an easy to deliver SaaS solution.

Their new product LearnSocial is a revolutionary new way for businesses to train employees. Different than online learning, user manuals, or instructor lead training, LearnSocial is an online community that captures the power of social networks and fortifies with a state-of-the-art Learning Management System (LMS) platform. Finally, an effective learning tool that allows you to better engage, track the engagement, correlate progress to training, and measure ROI.

Matt called it “a way to combine the brain trust hidden in all levels of your own organization with the magic of your own corporate social network!”

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Unleash your Community on the Election!

Paul Dunay — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:48:00 +0000

One of my most trusted friends and mentors recently joined a very intriguing company called – SuccessFactors (stock symbol SFSF). They specialize in HR software with a SaaS product that is second to none in the market.

From a marketing and social media perspective several things about this company got my attention and my envy as a marketer.

First was the clear communications from the top down. The CEO Lars Dalgaard uses email to the entire company much like an internal blog at all hours of the day reporting back on things like successful client meetings and other interesting findings. Best of all it creates an open dialog with the entire company and builds an internal sense of community and esprit d’ corp.

Next was the sheer amount of new client wins that are coming out of this company. I monitor their RSS feed and every time I turn around they are pumping out press releases with another new client name in it. Kudos to the communications department and the sales team for making that happen!

But what really got my attention was how they unleashed their own internal community on rating and ranking each of the Presidential Candidates by 10 different competencies and published it on their public website. This is a fabulous example of demonstrating your product and its possibilities by connecting it to something that everyone is interested in.

So when last I checked here was the tally…

1) Budgets/Cost Controls – Vote McCain
2) Communication – Vote Obama
3) Decision Making/Judgement – Vote Obama
4) Dependability – Vote Obama
5) Global Perspective – Vote McCain
6) Integrity/Ethics – Vote Obama
7) Listening Skills – Vote Obama
Leadership – Vote Obama
9) Managing Conflict – Vote Obama
10) Planning – Vote Obama

Overall Winner – Obama

Sorry Hillary but I guess you already knew that!

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BlogCouncil.org – Solving the Challenges of Corporate Blogging

Paul Dunay — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:20:00 +0000

How do you enable legions of bloggers if you are a company like Microsoft? What policies and procedures do you put in place? What approval process can handle thousands of blogger posting each day? Who owns the corporate blog, Corporate Communications or Interactive?

Andy Sernovitz, with input from early participants like Sean O’Driscoll from Microsoft started the Blog Council to help corporate bloggers address these and other issues on a weekly basis. I decided to reach out to them and get some more information and perhaps some clues on how to deal with these questions. Enjoy …

Link to Original Audio Source

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About Andy

Andy Sernovitz is CEO of GasPedal, a word of mouth marketing consulting firm. He is author of the hot and sexy new book Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. Seth Godin wrote the foreword and Guy Kawasaki wrote the afterword.

Andy teaches Word of Mouth Marketing at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and previously taught Internet Entrepreneurship at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He was a founder and CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), which made the idea of consumer-friendly, consumer-controlled marketing into the #1 most important marketing phenomenon. He recently left WOMMA to return to private life and is now its “President Emeritus.”

In past lives, Andy founded and ran the Association for Interactive Marketing, the big trade group in the dot com days; was an email marketing guru; ran a business incubator; started some startups; and sat on some boards.

About Sean

Sean O’Driscoll first joined Microsoft Corporation in 1992 as part of the worldwide sales organization. During his early years with the company, he held several positions responsible for the recruitment, development and engagement of Microsoft Partners. As part of these responsibilities, Sean was accountable for developing business alliances with many of the company’s largest independent software vendors, including Great Plains Software, Siebel Systems and Computer Associates.

In 1998, Sean joined Microsoft’s professional services organization and helped establish the company’s first support and consulting business focused on global ISV, system integration, and OEM partners. In January 2003, he rejoined the Customer Service and Support operation as Director of MVP (Most Valuable Professional) and Technical Communities.

In his current capacity as General Manager, Community Support Services, Sean is responsible for developing social media and community-based support models and leading the worldwide MVP program. The MVP program is designed to award and recognize amazing individuals in technical communities around the globe who share a passion for technology and the spirit of community.

Sean is currently transitioning out of Microsoft and has launched CGT Consulting, an independent consultancy focused on applying social media and influencer programs to driving business strategy and long term results.

Sean graduated from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, with degrees in business administration and philosophy. He now lives just outside Seattle, Washington, with his wife Kari, and two daughters, Erin and Lauren.

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Ideas for putting RSS to work in your organization

Paul Dunay — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:27:00 +0000

Many organizations continue to suffer from information pain points – information overload, too little information, siloed information, or overflowing email that is worthless to many in the organization. RSS is gaining traction within organizations to help ease the pain, so here are some ideas for using it exclusively inside your firewall:

RSS for Sales
Track leads, opportunities, contracts and new product development releases

RSS for Marketing
Monitor campaign progression, collateral development and contract status

RSS for Customer Service
Disseminate product and procedural updates; monitor customer resolution issues and out-of-service conditions

RSS for Product Development
Subscribe to a new ideas pipeline, product design phases and stage-gate funding committee nominations

Where’s the buzz? Employees can use RSS to save time in getting to the right information when and where they need it. Rather than spamming your employees with this information, give them a place to subscribe and pull it in when they have the burning need.

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Using RSS and Wikis for Enterprise Collaboration

Paul Dunay — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:51:00 +0000

Eastern Mountain Sports is using Web 2.0 tools to encourage collaboration internally by rooting it within their business intelligence (BI) analytics dashboards. They use the RSS feeds to report on exceptions and alert users when certain operational metrics are out of tolerance range.

By integrating Web 2.0 tools with their BI tools, decision makers can quickly access a unified, high-level view of key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sales, inventory, and margin levels, and drill down to granular detail that analyzes specific transactions.

The company also plans to create a wiki that will let the internal user community test and refine hypotheses. In particular, they want their associates to share tips and best practices and initiate dialogues. If certain items sell better than others, the associates should be able to analyze the transaction characteristics and selling behaviors that produce the results, and then use the collaborative tools to extend that insight throughout the organization.

So where is the Buzz? Web 2.0 tools are popping up in a variety of places, and this an excellent example of how they’re being used within the enterprise to speed the right information to the right parties. As marketers we are looking to build communities using tools just like this, so let’s not forget our own internal communities (like the sales team, hello). As you know, the quickest path to new revenue is very often through your existing customers.

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Marketing in a Wikinomics World, a podcast with Don Tapscott

Paul Dunay — Wed, 09 May 2007 10:12:00 +0000

I love my iPod, but apparently so do scores of tenacious hackers. These rogues have created a number of iPod hacks even though Apple hasn’t opened its architecture. The iPod’s closed architecture is good at keeping competitors at bay. But it also limits what users can ultimately do with the device.

But here’s the real question: Is a business model that locks in customers and discourages user innovation genuinely sustainable? According to my instincts, and the principles of Wikinomics, I say no.

To explore this further, I conducted an interview with Don Tapscott, co-author of Wikinomics. Don helped me understand more about this emerging economy and what role marketing needs to play in it to be successful! Enjoy …

About Don

Don Tapscott is a speaker, author and consultant based in Toronto. He specializes in business strategy and organizational transformation. Don is Chief Executive of New Paradigm, which he founded in 1993, and Adjunct Professor of Management, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He holds a B.Sc. in Psychology and Statistics, and an M.Ed. specializing in Research Methodology. He also holds two honorary Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) granted by the University of Alberta in 2001, and Trent University in 2006. Don lives in Toronto, Ontario with his wife, Ana Lopes, and his two children: Nicole Tapscott and Alex Tapscott.

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