BIZTECHBUZZ in the world of social, cognitive, IoT and startups

Tag: BLOGHER (Page 3 of 14)

Leadership matters! One of the Top 5 Social Business Questions Answered!

One of the Top 5 questions people ask me is does it matter if your leaders are sold on social and the answer is YES!

Getting your executives to buy into the concept of a social business in most cases is something that they will either get straight away or not.  Those who are switched on to “modern” technology will not need much convincing that implementing social technologies in the workplace will improve communications and enhance productivity.  Those who don’t see the need for it, of course, require a little more persuasion.

leader
However you arrive at their participation, they will most likely be nervous about stepping into a less controlled environment.  It’s a bit like them going to the local swimming pool where all the employees swim.  There’s no hiding!

How do you approach executives who are not Social?!

My advice to getting them into the water is to let them observe for a while.  Get your enthusiastic evangelists publishing and propose that your leader checks in on these things.  With their permission ask a public question.  By that we mean something they will be happy to answer in public.  Encourage your other trusted evangelists to do likewise.  Use the fact that you have a team of enthusiastic users to vary the method of interaction.  Ask in a forum post for a suggestion, ask in a micro-blogging entry something else.

Make it easy for your leader to get into the water by making it easy for them to answer.  A couple of short sentences for the first few answers to things is all that’s needed.

Once you have the leader taking part, albeit on a light basis, we need to convince the leadership team that they too should look at taking part.  That team will only see value in doing this if they see the chief doing it.

The leadership team will likely be nervous about what their own areas of the organization are putting into the social system – they will be concerned that their dirty laundry might be getting washed in public.  Try to quash this concern.  Remember that a social business is one which is engaged and transparent (and nimble).

Show your leaders that by participating in the system and answering cross-departmental or cross-organizational issues their area of the business shows its value.  Remember – your value is in what your share – not what you know in a social business.

Commitment

Altimeter’s report shows that only about 1/2 of executives are engaged.  How do you get that commitment in your organization? 

leadership factoids

Having a strong commitment among the leaders in the organization sets the tone, volume and enthusiasm for the use of the system.  Remember that in any organization the leadership team are essentially “celebrities” and when they post information or participate in the system the staff become engaged.  As an analogy to this, while many people consider the old-fashioned two-page memo from the chief executive setting out policy and priorities to be deadly boring, everyone reads it.  Everyone engages.  So to get the engagement, to cross the social chasm, you need your leaders to start becoming more transparent.

You can facilitate this slowly by driving engagement from your core Social Business team from below.  Encouraging the execs to take a more active role in forum discussions, making the technology available to them on their chosen mobile device and empowering the gatekeepers to your execs – the secretaries – are all good ways of driving top-down participation which in turn drives bottom-up engagement.

Reverse mentoring as a technique for helping with engagement.  You should, however, consider preparing the ground by producing some executive training materials.  An executive handbook – amounting to a maximum of 5 pages of tips and tricks, some one-to-one time, and perhaps a presentation provided to them on paper or some other medium to help them get into the concept are all good approaches.  Above all show them that these are “special” materials – these are designed only for them.  They are intelligent people and like to be treated that way.  Give them the facts in tweet-size points.

Ask if you can check in on them from time to time.  If you get their approval then MAKE SURE YOU DO IT REGULARLY.  But not too regularly to avoid getting on their nerves!

"The Secret to Managing Multichannel Marketing"

I recently participated in a webinar with some top executives from SAP, Chubb Insurance, CitiMortgage and nonprofit Human Rights Campaign along with the Editor-in-Chief of Target Marketing Magazine, Thorin McGee.

We got together at the Union Club in NYC to discuss some of the questions about managing multichannel marketing in today’s business environment — utilizing the latest social tools and techniques, addressing new audiences such as Generation C and millenials, and how to stay ‘connected’ both internally and externally.

We’re taking the topic further this week in a FREE webinar sponsored by Target Marketing, where we’ll explore more on this topic, including testing new channels and using metrics to determine success. I hope you’re able to join me for this free webinar on Wednesday, December 4, starting at 2:00 pm ET.

Register NOW and don’t miss “The Secret to Managing Multichannel Marketing”. Bring your own questions to the webinar .Click here to register!

Levels of Maturity for Communities

Communities are essential for Social Businesses. All communities go through a community maturity model.

1.  Potential:  Planning phase of maturity.  It typically involves setting up the community elements required for long term success such as roles and responsibilities, strategy, mission, membership planning and activities.

community maturity model

2.  Formation of the community.  Having a great community manager is a key factor of success.   During the formation, the initial members and influencers

3.  Building and Evolving.   The community builds and evolves as it forms.   The best communities stick to their goals but evolve in the way they reach them.    Typically building and evolving involves driving traffic to community and increasing member participation.   The topic of content curation is also one that grows and questions of contribution of content and consumption is reviewed.   The community may review how to improve quality of content and how to train the leaders.

4.  Operationalization.  A community that has made it to this stage, has begun to do analysis adn use the insight to drive to its strategic objectives.   Typically, the metrics are around Collaboration, Consumption, and Contribution. Opportunities, Risks and learning are then applied.  This is the time to develop detailed action plan to achieve goals, maintain and monitor activity plan and content strategy, identify potential content gaps to feed to harvesting plans

and to train community members on social.

5.  Adaptive.   This final phase is where the community now takes on the personality of the members. It enables the community manager to drive the goals to the next level.

At IBM, we do Health Checks for our communities.  

These health checks do the following:
  • Ensure the communities have the design for success
    • Clearly defined strategy and active plans
  • Produce Healthy communities
–High volume of collaboration, contribution and consumption
–Connecting people to experts and people to quality strategy content
–Ensure Community roles and responsibilities are clearly defined
–Facilitate business benefits that lead to important organizational value
  • Utilize the Brokerage Service to ensure long term vitality and maturity of the community
–Consistently high participation, collaboration and contribution and consumption from the community members

IBM Announcement: The new Watson Ecosystem!

Today represents a milestone in the IBM Watson journey: the IBM Watson Ecosystem!

As you may recall, the Watson Technology is at the forefront of the next generation of cognitive computers: systems that can mine vast amounts of structured and unstructured data and share insights using natural language. Now, through the IBM Watson Ecosystem, you will have the opportunity to leverage this technology in the Cloud to build your own disruptive applications. We are initially focusing on the healthcare, travel and retail industries (in English language) but will be expanding this over time.

So, how exactly can you partner with us to develop ground-breaking solutions?

We offer three options:

1) Application partners can leverage the Watson Developer Cloud to build solutions using the IBM Watson technology
2) Content partners can deliver knowledge and expertise through the Watson Content Store
3) Partners with strong skills in the areas the Watson Ecosystem covers can offer these through the Watson Talent Hub.

Organizations that are interested in collaborating with IBM to develop Watson-powered applications can learn more here.

Friday Tip: Always on listening

My  mom used to tell me that God gave me two ears and one mouth because I was to listen more than talk.   In Social Media, listening acts as a guide, through the magical and interesting world of the blogosphere.

Listening should be a passion and an ongoing process that is necessary to keeping your strategy fresh and competitive.  It enables you to find opportunities, potential new stakeholders and enables you to proactively manage Social Trust.  

The value of listening is that it assists you in understanding your prospects, clients, and of course, your competitors.   It leads to action and awareness of conversations which will compel your company to respond.  

Since your URL isn’t just your website anymore, but everywhere you are on the web, listening is important to your digital presence.  You are building a brand through images and test, and your head is on the “guillotine” everyday if you just rest and don’t stay totally tuned in a systemic approach. Business, corporation related and societal events and basically everything is simply interconnected and needs dedicated listening all at the same time.

How do you listen?   I use IBM Connections internally, and IBM Analytics externally and also set google alerts, Hootsuite and check Tumblr for trending topics.      What do you use?

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