S.M.A.R.T. Blog

The Social Media ROI Challenge: Are We Making Progress?

This post revisits the social media ROI (return on investment) question, focusing in particular on whether we're making progress in terms of the challenges put forth by organizational leaders and other experienced professionals who have been resisting increased digital engagement. Playing off the ROI acronym, it provides alternatives for interpreting the ROI argument. It then articulates – and counters – seven assumptions on which the resistance arguments are often based. The post concludes with some indications that leaders may be moving away from specious arguments and balancing concerns about ROI with the equally important COI (cost of inaction), and invites others to share their insights and experiences as well.

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A little over a year ago I wrote The Social Media ROI Challenge: What it Really Means (and 7 Related Faulty Assumptions). After kicking off this year with Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU and Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road, I thought I would revisit and update my thoughts on the question of social media ROI (which can also be extended to the adoption of other new digital technologies).I welcome the insights of others as to whether and how we're making progress on addressing the important Digital Era issue of new technology adoption by organizations and their leaders.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

ROI is Often Code for...

Technological advances continue to outstrip the willingness and ability of many organizational leaders to address the opportunities and challenges they present. When it comes to social technologies in particular, skepticism has been widespread, and often manifests itself in questions about the kind of return on investment (ROI) leveraging these technologies can produce.

These questions seem perfectly rational on the surface, and it appears that leaders who ask them are fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities and acting as good stewards of their organization's limited resources. But looks can be deceiving. All too often the ROI argument has been used as a smokescreen and/or a form of filibuster against moving forward. In my experience, when organizational leaders and other experienced professionals talk about the ROI of social media, they’re not just referring to Return On Investment. ROI, in fact, is often code for: 

• Ridiculous Online Indulgence. In their disdainful dismissals of social media, people still highlight the (over)abundance of vapid and banal social media activity (e.g., people sharing what they had for lunch) and characterize the people who engage in it as shallow and narcissistic, with too much time on their hands.
• Real professionals Only Interact in traditional ways. There is a clear bias among many professionals toward how things have “always” been done. The phone, and in-person exchanges - and even email - are seen as inherently superior to newer forms of digital interaction. More importantly, the different types of exchanges are viewed as mutually exclusive rather than integrated and complementary.
• Resist Out-of-the-box Ideas. In spite of all the media hype surrounding social media and digital technology, people are not particularly quick to adopt – let alone embrace – new ideas and thinking.
• Reserving Our Interest/Investment until we see what others do. For better and worse, most senior professionals tend to follow more than they lead. Though there may be a strong desire to “keep up with the Joneses,” very few people actually want to be the Joneses.
• Risk aversion Over Innovation. Even when they recognize that they probably need to move forward, fear – of the unknown, of failure, of unintended consequences – holds them back. The risks of engagement are always clearer than the risks of inaction.
• Respect Our Idiosyncrasies and Inconsistency. If pressed, leaders and other experienced professionals would have a hard time defending their negative positions on social media and other digital technologies, especially relative to other positions and decisions. But many of them seem to expect others to accept their arguments at face value and not question or challenge them.

 

7 Faulty Assumptions Underlying Resistance

Generally speaking the resistance arguments contain a number of implicit - and often faulty - assumptions, including:  

1. Social media technologies – particularly the public platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – represent the complete range of digital technologies available today. 

• Today’s digital capabilities are far greater than most people realize – and they’re expanding every day.
• People need to think beyond software, to hardware and networks and analytics too (i.e., SMAC - social, mobile,analytics, cloud).
• When it comes to software in particular, they need to think beyond specific platforms to the tools and technologies that comprise them.

2. Organizational leaders know the ROI of current practices for marketing, branding, selling, etc. - and it's good. 

• The links between many current practices, such as advertisements and trade shows, is difficult, if not impossible, to measure.
• The costs of traditional approaches can be much higher than comparable digital efforts.

3. Current communication and collaboration practices are efficient and effective and cannot be improved on by leveraging new digital technologies.

• The limitations, challenges, and frustrations of email are well-known.
• Many in-person meetings are considered an avoidable waste of time.

4. It's appropriate to hold new practices - particularly new digital technologies - to higher standards than existing practices.

• People need to be willing and able to critically examine current approaches. There should be no sacred cows.
• The relative value and utility of different approaches should be determined based on a fair assessment.
• It’s unrealistic to expect any approach to working to be “drag free.”

5. Leveraging new technologies requires adding them to rather than integrating them with or substituting them for current practices.

• We should all be open to identifying ways to work smarter, not just harder.
• The best approaches to achieving goals/objectives should be pursued.

6. It will all settle down (or maybe go away?) at some point, so why bother engaging and suffering through all the chaos before it does.

• The only constant in the Digital Era is change. Expecting things to settle down is unrealistic.
• By the time the laggards choose to engage, it could be too late. At a minimum, they will have missed out on a number of potentially great opportunities.

7. It's better to wait for a "silver bullet" solution than to invest in the necessary hard work now to climb the required learning curves and lay a foundation for future success.

• As in other aspects of running an organization, there are no silver bullets.
• Success in the Digital Era requires a new mindset, as well as new knowledge and skills. Learning new ways of working is unavoidable.

 

We're Making Progress (Slowly)

It's perfectly appropriate for individuals and organizations to decide not to take more advantage of the digital capabilities that currently exist, as long as they're making informed decisions. When it comes to organizational leaders in particular, they have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the new environments in which their organizations operate so they can provide the proper guidance, both strategic and tactical, as well as the necessary resources their organizations need. 

As a practical matter, digital  technology is only going to continue to advance, and the longer people wait to understand and embrace it, the more risks they take with respect to creating and maintaining their own success. In addition to being concerned about the ROI, in other words, they should also be thinking about the COI – the Cost Of Inaction.

Fortunately, there are encouraging signs. I'm seeing and hearing less resistance. And although there is still some reluctance, the acceptance of new realities and the need to understand (if not embrace) them is increasing. Here are a few specific examples from my own recent experiences:

• In two weeks I will be leading a digital engagement strategy session for the Midwest region of a large grocery chain. This chain's excellent brand reputation has facilitated their talent acquisition efforts for years, but as they expand into new markets where they're less well known, they recognize they have to up their digital engagement efforts to continue to attract top talent.
• Earlier this year I met with two different groups of executives and senior professionals in transition (in one case presenting Job Search in the Digital Era to over 100 job seekers). The response to both sessions was extremely positive, with virtually no skepticism about new social technologies and their importance. The recepton to those talks has led to a project focusing on how senior professionals can and should enhance their digital competencies, from both career management and organizational leadership perspectives. (If you would like to participate in this project, please email focus@denovati.net)
• I am also developing an initiative with a leadership consulting firm that will help leaders develop their digital competencies. The managing partner has the vision to recognize that no quantitative "proof" is needed to determine that this is an important area his firm and their clients must begin to tackle. Proof of concept is sufficient for him to move forward.

Although progress is often painfully slow, I am encouraged by the shifts in both attitudes and behaviors I'm seeing so far in 2013. Are you seeing encouraging signs too? If so, I'd love to hear about them!

 

Related Resources

Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU

Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road

What's Your Social Media Sophistication? The SMQ Quiz 

"Social Media" is SO 2009! 7 Proposed Semantic Upgrades

SMinOrgs Social Media Primer

Digital Era Leadership: Defining Characteristics?

Note: many of the above pieces include links to additional resources.

SMinOrgs is Becoming The Denovati ____ (help us decide)

Earlier this year we announced an initiative to create a new brand identity for SMinOrgs. This blog post details the reasons for making a switch, as well as the 13 criteria we developed for selecting the best new brand.

The results of the survey we conducted to solicit feedback on the four options we identified produced a clear winner: Denovati (day-no-VAH-tee), which translates roughly as follows:

• De = Digital Era
• Nov = short for novani, the Latin term for colonists, immigrants, new residents...
• Ati = being in the know

I will share detailed results and reflections on the survey in a future post, but for now I'd like additional input on what the new official name of the SMinOrgs Community should be. In other words, although Denovati will be the brand identity, it doesn't by itself reflect what this group is and what it does. Here's a current working description of the group:

We are a global, multi-disciplinary group of professionals who share information and resources and collaborate with one another to identify and create best practices. Our members represent organizations of all types and sizes in all economic sectors. Our mission is to help these individuals and their organizations function more efficiently and effectively in the Digital Era. Going beyond marketing/branding, sales, public relations and customer service, we primarily focus on the internal applications and implications of social and digital technologies, particularly in terms of the opportunities and challenges they create for employees, leaders, and organizational functioning. 

One of the key benefits we offer is access to foresight (about the present, future present and future trends, etc.), which allows members to gain insight into how their professional lives and organizations are likely to be changed, maybe even radically transformed, as the Digital Era progresses.

We appreciate your taking a quick minute to respond to this poll question:

If it's not visible above, you can also access the poll directly here.

Thanks so much for providing your input and participating in our ongoing rebranding efforts! We have started working on developing a new logo, color scheme, tagline, etc., and will continue to share the results. If you'd like to participate in our logo and related development activities, please send an email expressing your interest to rebranding@denovati.net.

As always, we appreciate your help.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

Job Search in the Digital Era

As the Digital Era continues to evolve, it is increasingly important for professionals to provide the same level of care and attention to their professional identities in cyberspace as they do to their presence and reputation in the physical world, especially when they are looking for their next career opportunity. This presentation offers guidance for: 1) Establishing and managing your digital professional brand, 2) Defining personal and professional boundaries and protecting your privacy, 3) Leveraging digital tools and technology to achieve goals, and 4) Bridging the physical and digital worlds.

I really enjoyed giving this talk to members of The Executive Network Group of Greater Chicago last week. Apparently other folks found my tips valuable as well. The deck was "hot" on SlideShare and was featured on their home page in both the LinkedIn and Facebook sections! I also got some positive feedback about it in some of the LI groups where I shared it, which is always gratifying.

Enjoy!

- Courtney

 

Job Search in the Digital Era from Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs)

Pinterest Optimization: Making Boards Work for You

Establishing the correct boards for your organization is critical for a successful Pinterest presence. Did you know you can also use secret boards, as well as community and staging boards, to maximize your engagement and management efforts? This post offers tips for both general board management and specific ways boards can be used to manage content.

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Our last Pinterest related post, Pinterest Optimization: The Value of a Pinventory, offered guidance for reducing unnecessary duplication, improving board focus and content, and better managing new pins. As part of our ongoing effort to create and share best practice tips based on our own experience, this post discusses board management and how to utilize special boards to facilitate content management.  Should you need any assistance regarding how to implement these recommendations, please email us at denovati@denovati.com.

Our next Pinterest post will offer additional recommendations based on what we’ve learned from our efforts to enhance ongoing management. If you’d like to stay abreast of our Pinterest updates, please follow our Pinterest Resources board. You can also subscribe to the Denovati SMART Blog to receive other great Denovati content. 

- Sean Pearson, Assistant Community Manager

 

General Board Management

Board/Pin Balance. Finding the right board/pin balance is tricky. Too many boards and too many pins are both overwhelming for folks. Develop a strategy that makes sense based on your organization and its goals and objectives, as well as the interests of your target audience(s). Remember that, especially initially, less is more. And since your total boards and total pins will increase over time, you should be prepared to tweak this balance as your Pinterest presence evolves.

 

Naming Boards. Board names should be broad, while capturing the essence of the content. Two key points to remember:

• Keep your board name to 22 characters or fewer, so the name displayed on the main board page won’t be truncated.
• Occasionally you’ll realize you need to change the name of a board. When you do, remember that board URLs include the specific board name, so changing name will break all links to that board. Therefore, it’s a good idea to track where you reference specific boards (e.g., in a blog post) so the links can be updated when the URLs change.

Note: Pin URLs aren't uniquely associated with your account and don't change, so you can move them between boards without worrying about breaking their links.

 

Board Order. Plan your board order so that your most important boards are in the top two rows, as these will be the first that users see when they visit your board page (with the board in the center being the most predominant). It’s probably a good ideas to record the layout you create (e.g., in your Pinventory), so you can refer back to it if the order should accidentally change.

 

Content Management

Secret Boards. Secret boards only appear to the owner of the account, and items pinned to secret boards do not show up on any activity stream. For organizations, secret boards can be very useful for checking pins and establishing a pinning queue. We recommend creating boards like Pins to Check and Posting Queue, along with these tips: 

• If you have multiple people logging into your account, one person should be responsible for overall management (including managing your Pinventory) and should be the only person to post directly to the public boards. Everyone else should post to the secret boards.
• From the Pins to Check board, the Pinterest manager should verify the pins are not duplicates, establish their provenance (i.e., trace them to their original source), and edit the captions as needed. Then they should then add the pin to the Pinventory and then moved to the Posting Queue.
• To ensure a steady stream of activity, periodically move content from the Posting Queue to the relevant public boards. Note: When you move a pin from a secret board to a public board, it does not appear in your activity stream, so your followers may miss that this pin is new. To avoid this problem, you’ll want to post the pin as if it’s “new” while retaining the edits you made to your copy. 

 

Community Board(s). Community boards are a great way to establish a place for anyone in your community to engage with you. Take the opportunity to invite like minded people to pin to a community board. Community boards are not without risks, however: there is a strong possibility for duplicate content, for example, as well as pins that are off topic, poor quality, and/or of dubious origins.  Here are some tips:

• To make it easier to control content posted to your boards by others, you may want to consider having only one community board (which is what we have done).
• Keep your community board clean by deleting duplicates, removing inappropriate pins, etc.
• Pins you want to keep can be kept in the community board or relocated to one of your focused boards. Note: Since you can’t technically move the pin, you’ll have to repost the pin as if it’s “new,” being sure to give credit to the person who shared it with you.

 

Staging Boards. You may have content that fits into multiple boards but is popular in its own right (e.g., infographics). A good way to manage that content is to create a staging board where all content of that type goes initially, which allows followers to see the pins before they get sorted. After a period of time (e.g., a week), you can move the pins to their final home (and update the Pinventory!).

 

Come Pin with Us

There are many ways for people to engage with us on Pinterest and contribute to the ongoing evolution and success of our presence there:

• Follow one or more of our boards. We follow back! We check out every Pinner who follows us and follow any boards they have that are focused on social and digital technologies.
• Repin our content to your own boards. We’ll thank you with a like and/or a comment.
• Like/comment on our pins. It’s a great way to let us know what you think.
• Suggest pins for us by adding @Denovati to your own pins.
• Tell us about some of your favorite Pinners by sending a message to denovati@denovati.com.
• Become an Denovati Pinner by requesting access to our Community Pins board. Just send an email to denovati@denovati.com with your request. We’d especially love people to share their own original images for our Digital Era Images and THIS is Social Media boards. 

 

Also Check Out 

To learn more about Denovati’s Pinterest presence, check out the following:

• Pinterest for Professional Purposes? Not as Preposterous as it Sounds!
• Pinterest: 8 Pointers for Organizations
• Pinterest Optimization: The Value of a Pinventory

Digital Era Leadership: Defining Characteristics?

What does it mean to be a leader in the Digital Era? Have the requirements for success drastically changed, or are they fundamentally the same? This post invites people to share their thoughts, as well as related resources, on the defining characteristics of leadership as the Digital Era progresses and evolves.

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In honor of President’s Day in the United States, I’d like to solicit people's views on what leadership means in the Digital Era. Specifically:

• Do leaders need to exhibit new values, traits or behaviors to be effective? If so, what are they? And on the flip side, are there values, traits and behaviors leaders need to stop exhibiting?
• Should leaders be directly involved with social technologies. If so, where, how and to what degree?
• What kinds of fiduciary responsibilities do new social and digital technologies present for leaders?

We’re currently working with Silverman Research to develop answers to these questions by analyzing various "conversations" in cyberspace that try to tackle them. We've created a database with over 70 sources 400 data points (e.g., a blog post and its comments), and we'd love to add more perspectives to the mix. In addition to telling us your own point of view, we appreciate your sharing links to articles, blog posts, and research studies that address one or more of the questions above. And of course we invite you to share the post with your own networks so that we can expand the conversation even further.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

Note: This project is an extension of research we started in August 2011. The preliminary results of our efforts were summarized in a blog post entitled “What Does it Take to be a Leader in the Digital Era?” Jerry Carducci and Karin Wills have also developed a forthcoming publication tentatively titled “Leading in the Digital Era: Communications, Relationships, and Decision Making.” If you’d like to be notified as soon as it’s available, please send a message to de-leaders@sminorgs.net. Thanks!

Do You Have What it Takes to Take SMinOrgs to the Next Level?

Rebranding SMinOrgs is not the only important activity for 2013. We’ve also been developing a strategy to grow the Community, both in the near term and over the long haul.

 

To facilitate and lead this growth, we’re exploring the creation of a team of professionals who would commit their time, effort and expertise in a variety of activities in exchange for an equity stake in the organization. Here are the leadership and other contributing roles we’ve identified so far: 

• Membership growth and retention 
• Business development and revenue generation 
• Digital network design and maintenance 
• Community management and member engagement 
• Content wrangling (creating, managing, editing, repurposing, etc.) 
• Digital marketing and public relations, including SEA and SEO 
• Graphics and visualizations 
• Event creation and management 
• Education and training 

If you or someone you know has the initiative and drive - as well as the relevant skill set - to join this team, please send a message expressing your interest to leaders@sminorgs.net, and I’ll follow up with additional details. 

 

Thanks!

 

Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

Founder

PS - Not that familiar with who we are and what we do? Our State of the SMinOrgs Community 2013 report should bring you up to speed.

"Social Media" is SO 2009! 7 Proposed Semantic Upgrades

At the risk of inspiring unresolvable semantic discussions, this post addresses seven Digital Era terms that should probably be replaced and/or removed from the lexicon and suggests both existing and new alternative terminology to use in their place. What other proposed changes would you make?

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I generally try to avoid semantic arguments. Having clarity about the meaning of various terms, especially those related to emerging technologies and trends, is no doubt important. But when the terms and their meanings are evolving, discussions about them can devolve into an infinite loop of opinions and perceptions that produce neither clarity nor consensus.

That said, there are some uses and misuses that have been bothering me for a while now. And since we’ve reached a reasonable level of maturity and stability in a number of areas, I think it’s time to give serious consideration to making semantic changes that enable us to use more accurate, logical and fact-based language to refer to elements of the world we live in – and to stop using passé terms unnecessarily.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on my proposals, as well as any additional recommendations you may have. Thanks!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

Going from the general to the specific...

Social Media. Wikipedia lays out a decent denotation of the term, but the connotation still varies widely. And in my experience, most people equate the term with the public platforms, assuming the social media universe is solely comprised of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and their ilk. That assumption not only misses the point that it's the technologies underlying those platforms that constitute social media, it also (more importantly) leads them to draw erroneous conclusions about the potential that social media holds for both them and the organizations of which they're a part. Plus, for laggards and resisters, the term evokes a negative visceral reaction that's hard to overcome.

I'm not proposing we do away with the term altogether, I'm proposing that we be more precise about when and how we use it. When referring to public platforms, it's the appropriate term. But when we're talking about the technology more broadly, it's better to use an alternative...

Alternative 1: I prefer the terms social technology or social technologies, which are still accurate descriptors but less loaded.

Alternative 2: A more encompassing alternative is social and digital technologies, which encompasses not just software, but also hardware (i.e., mobile devices) and services (i.e., cloud-based computing).

Alternative 3: My personal favorite new term is SMAC, which stands for social (software), mobile (devices and access), (data) analytics, and cloud (computing) and reflects the convergence among these technology movements. Individually, each movement is incredibly powerful. Together, they have the potential to create dramatic transformations. Over time, they will be virtually indistinguishable.

 

Anything 2.0. A few years ago it was important to append 2.0 to various terms (e.g., Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Government 2.0) to reflect the fact that social media was causing a shift from static internet-based sites with one-directional communication to collaborative sites characterized by multi-directional communication. As social technologies have become more integrated into digital platforms of all types, as well as the organizations that leverage those platforms, it's probably no longer necessary to add the 2.0 qualifier.

 

Social Business, Social Enterprise, Social Learning. All three terms accurately convey their intent; unfortunately they all also have distinct meanings that have no specific connections to social technologies. Both Social Business and Social Enterprise, for example, along with Social Entrepreneurship, are used to refer to for-profit businesses that have charitable or socially-oriented missions. And Social Learning is most strongly connected to social learning theory, which was developed in the late 1970s.

We could argue that we need to find better language to reflect the phenomena these terms refer to, but I might suggest that we should simply stop trying to use them. Over time, as social and digital technologies become more integrated into all aspects of organizational life, the “social” qualifier will become redundant and unnecessary. This applies not only to the terms above but others like social intranet and social recognition.

 

The New Normal. Although it will continue to evolve, the Digital Era is fully established. Even resisters and laggards are impacted by enhanced forms of communication and collaboration every day, often without even being aware of it. So referring to the realities created by social and digital technologies as a "brave new world" or "the new normal" implies a novelty that no longer exists. It is, simply put, just normal.

 

In Real Life (IRL). This term originated to distinguish earth-based interactions from cyber interactions. And even though resisters continue to use the term to disparage digital communication as being inferior to face-to-face communication, most folks have come to realize that it’s all real life! More importantly, rather than creating a false dichotomy between the different ways in which we know and interact with one another, we are better served by figuring out how to integrate them in the most efficient and effective ways to achieve our goals and objectives. This term should go, but we probably still need something to distinguish the virtual and physical worlds. I’ve been experimenting with using earthspace. Yeah, I know - it's kind of awkward. I’d love to hear alternatives…

 

Microblogging. This term is still technically accurate, but it now seems antiquated and kind of clunky, perhaps because the activity has morphed into wall posts, shares, and status updates on a variety of platforms both public (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, G+) and private (e.g., Yammer, SharePoint and a host of social intranet products). And because Twitter and Tumblr have emerged as the dominant microblogging platforms, people tend to refer to those sites and their related activities by their brand names rather than using generic terms. Basically, no one ever says, “I’m going to microblog about that” or “I’m going to post that to my microblog.” Now that I think about it, did they ever?

Note: One could argue we should also get rid of the term “blog,” which no longer literally reflects what they are or do, but we seem to have good consensus on the connotation so it’s likely to stick around.

 

Smartphone. People who own these devices obviously use them for much more than talking on the phone. More importantly, their other uses are likely to be much more significant. Given that, it's more accurate to refer to them as mobile communication devices or a mobile computing devices – or MCDs for short. Yes, people may look at you funny and make fun of you at first, but eventually they'll agree the term is more logical and even a bit more elegant. It's kind of got a Star Trek vibe... :)

Adopting  the term MCD can also bring an end to the silly-sounding term phablet, which according to the Wikipedia definition is a “portmanteau of the words phone and tablet.” If distinguishing based on size is important (which I’m not sure it is), perhaps we can adopt mini-MCD, midi-MCD, and maxi-MCD (which would include both full-sized tablets and hybrid devices like Microsoft’s Surface.

 

What other changes would you suggest?

State of the SMinOrgs Community 2013

The Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community began in May 2009 as a LinkedIn (LI) group, and quickly expanded to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. In early 2010, the S.M.A.R.T. (Social Media and Related Technologies) Blog was launched. Since then we have continued to grow and expand, most recently establishing a presence on Google+, Pinterest, and Tumblr. The start of a new year seems like a good time to reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’d like to go in the year ahead.

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Scroll down to view the embedded SMinOrgs State of the Community report or click here to view/download the report on SlideShare. Here's a quick list of the contents:

• About SMinOrgs
• Reflections from the Founder
• Looking Forward
• SMinOrgs by the Numbers
• Current and Future Projects
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• S.M.A.R.T. Blog
• SlideShare
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• Email
• Facebook and Other Platforms

As I put together this report I was surprised to realize how much we’ve done and how much has changed in the past year. When you’re immersed in the day-to-day, progress feels slow and incremental at best. Pausing to take stock helps put the daily grind in perspective and allows for a moment, however brief, to relish our accomplishments.

But we can't rest on our laurels...

To lay a stronger foundation for our future, the Community is undergoing a “digital makeover.” The first step in the makeover is to create a new brand identity that better reflects our evolving focus on new technologies beyond social media (i.e., mobile, cloud computing, and big data and analytics). We have identified four possible options and are currently seeking input via this survey. The survey will remain open until mid February. If you haven’t already provided your feedback we’d love to hear from you! Once we’ve decided on a new brand, we’ll transition to our new identity by rebranding some of our existing digital properties and creating new ones.

 

Other major initiatives for 2013 include:

• Developing  a long-term strategy for Community growth and development, as well as more tactical short-term plans
• Creating and sharing more original content focused on both high-level issues and practical concerns
• Embarking on a large-scale member recruitment campaign
• Optimizing our web presence and increasing traffic flows via search engine optimization and other means
• Exploring ways to monetize the Community and its activity

We have formed a Global Leadership Team (GLT) to help guide our decisions and lead some of our activities in all these areas. The current GLT has over 15 passionate professionals from the US, Canada and Europe, and their input so far has been invaluable.

We are also in the process of creating an Equity Leadership Team (ELT), which would be comprised of professionals with relevant expertise who are willing to invest sweat equity to help build the Community, in exchange for a financial return once the Community becomes a sustainable business.

If you think you have what it takes to contribute as a member of the GLT or the ELT, please send an email expressing your interest and highlighting your credentials to leaders@sminorgs.net.

Here's to a fabulous 2013!

Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD
Founder, SMinOrgs

PS - I'm curious to know if anyone knows of other reports that focus on things like "social engagement," "digital engagement," "community engagement," "social enterprise," "social learning," "social recruiting," or "government 2.0." It'd be great to see what other organizations are doing along these lines. Thanks!

 

State of the SMinOrgs Community 2013 from Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs)

Increasing Social Engagement: A Little Recognition Goes a Long Way

You know that new social intranet or knowledge-sharing platform you built, beta-tested and launched with great fanfare? It WILL increase your team’s collaboration and productivity, but you need to provide the right level and type of recognition.

This is the first guest post from Richard D’Ambrosio, a trusted executive communications advisor and member of our Global Leadership Team. The value of having one’s contributions acknowledged is underscored by recent developments in the area of social recognition, both as stand-alone software systems (e.g., You Earned It, MTM’s Carousel, and Small Improvements) and integrated into larger applications (e.g., NewsGator’s Spotlight module for Microsoft SharePoint). I expect we’ll see even more synergy among various social engagement movements and tools over time.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

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Neuroscientists are just now beginning to grasp the full ebb and flow of chemical reactions in our brains, and how that flow triggers our actions.

As a professional communicator for 20+ years, I’ve worked on projects from national sales conferences, to small team meetings, to being the community manager for online knowledge sharing platforms. What I’ve found, and what many sophisticated neuroscience researchers are proving, is that a simple system of recognition can go a long way to triggering the neurons that incent the right social media behaviors.

This holds tremendous potential for knowledge sharing and other objectives sought by social media platform managers. According to a recent survey from the IBM Institute for Business Value, almost two-thirds of companies are applying social capabilities internally “to find information and collaborate more effectively.” Eighty percent expect to do so within the next two years.

However, these firms may not maximize their investment and obtain the results they need if they don’t fully comprehend the dynamics of popular social media sites like Facebook, where one out of three adult Internet users are sharing some kind of content.

 

A Thank-You Can Go a Long, Long Way

When I helped launch a knowledge sharing platform in a prior role, we worked in advance with people leaders to identify key objectives our sales team was already working towards. We chose a handful of core expertise needs and built some offline activities supplemented by an online center of excellence for each of the initiatives.

We uploaded job aids and other critical sales tools to these sites. More importantly, we seeded the centers with comments from some of the sales leaders and individual contributors working on the project. Then, we actively and very publicly recognized anyone who contributed. Our SVP also chimed in online and off, personally thanking subject matter experts and sales people who were joining the conversation.

The reaction was phenomenal. The sales team and others ramped up their contributions as they saw their peers receiving positive feedback. The engagement far exceeded previous online usage, and unlike the launch of the tool two years earlier, we didn’t have to hold raffles or provide financial incentives to get our teams to contribute.

In fact, we didn’t spend a dime outside the project buildout. Participation was driven solely by personal leader recognition, both online in the tool, as well as at town halls, staff meetings and other offline activities. We also saw a correlation between contributions and peer-to-peer informal recognition.

 

The Gamification of Knowledge Sharing

In an article published last year in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Digital Business, spoke about an experience he had with TCS, Tata Consultancy Services, the Indian software development company.

TCS was using a tool where any of its 200,000 employees around the world could ask questions to and get answers from the entire enterprise. Employees were rated and recognized for their participation. After a while, the company did some analysis of the discussions being shared and who was participating. According to McAfee, they noticed that some people were offering answers and expertise not directly relevant to their role.

McAfee believes that “some combination of the peer recognition and being on top of the leader board, that kind of status, was so valuable to them that they were doing stuff that was exactly outside their job description.” He goes on: these employees were “doing it for the joy, doing it for the peer recognition, doing it because of the game-ification. Making visible how good you are.“

 

Put These Tactics on Your Checklist

I have witnessed this dynamic over and over again throughout my career as a communications professional and consultant.  But getting there isn’t easy. There are still a number of core activities that need to be in place to create a rich environment that will kick off and reward contribution.

I strongly advocate a number of strategies including:

• ensuring subject matter experts are readily accessible through all internal social tools and are rewarded for responding to questions and requests in a timely manner
• targeting and incenting experienced high-performers and leaders for contributions
• leveraging multimedia wherever and whenever possible
• directly demonstrating the link between business goal achievements and social knowledge sharing through prominent company-wide communications and events

There are a number of other very productive supporting strategies that require buy-in from internal business partners that also could trigger the neurons that initiate and sustain the right behaviors. Key among them is incorporating knowledge sharing in annual performance goals and reviews. McAfee suggests “enterprise-level collegiality” make up to 10-15% of performance reviews.

Unfortunately, I’ve found changing performance management programs, which speak to the broader culture of an organization, are much harder to come by. More on that in another post…

 

Richard D’Ambrosio is a writer and consultant with 20+ years of experience in the media and with large and mid-size corporations. His passion is for helping organizations achieve their goals, through leadership development and effective communications. Richard believes that social media is rapidly changing the way institutions organize workflows, share knowledge and develop talent, and is collaborating with SMinOrgs to advance strategies and tactics that will assist individuals and organizations in reaching their full potential. You can read more of musings on his Narrativity blog.

500+ Books about Social & Digital Technology: Trends and Opportunities

It’s probably no surprise that over 500 books have been written about social and digital technologies over the past 15+ years, and that many of these focus on social media marketing. What’s more intriguing are the topics that have not received much attention yet from thought leaders and authors. This post offers a brief introduction to a research project that explores the Digital Era literature and (in true 2.0 fashion) invites people to participate in its ongoing development.

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Last year, with the help of Marci Stewart and Genifer Snipes, I embarked on a project to identify all the books that had been written about social and digital technologies. It was a naïve quest that has turned into a very ambitious undertaking. Although I was aware of the most well-known books from the past five or so years, I had no idea how many other publications were out there, or how far back they stretched. We’re now at 520 – and counting!

In this post I share some project details, the initial high-level results, and what we plan to do next. More importantly, I’d like to invite folks to participate in the development of the project by sharing the questions, analyses, and information they’re most interested in. And of course I welcome recommendations for books lists, titles, and authors, to make sure our final list is as complete and accurate as possible.

I look forward to hearing from you!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

Methodology

Here, in a nutshell, is the approach we have used to create the database:

• We selected Goodreads as our primary source of information, primarily because it’s vendor neutral – and of course it’s a social media platform in its own right!
• We seeded the list with titles from “best of” lists like The 25 Best Social Media Books of 2011, 10 Best Social Media Books, and Top Social Media Marketing Books.
• For each book we collected the publication data, Goodreads rating information, title, author(s) and book description.
• To expand the initial list we checked the titles listed under “Readers also enjoyed similar books” and “Lists with This Book.” Once we had exhausted those sources we conducted 40+ searches using all the potentially relevant terms we could think of, including general terms like social media and big data as well as specific terms like Facebook and Tumblr.
• In an effort to make the data collection effort more manageable, we only included books that were written in English and had at least one review. Yes, that’s somewhat arbitrary – but we needed some kind of cutoff! We also tried to limit the database to books that were targeted to non-technical readers.
• Throughout the process we added relevant titles as they were brought to our attention if we hadn’t already identified them.

Using the book descriptions, we created a three-tiered coding scheme to reflect their focus:

• Perspective: conceptual (focused more on conveying information or discussing topics at a high level) and tactical (“how to” oriented).
• General focus: categories ranged from macro to micro and included society, commerce, marketing, workplace, individual, and data.
• Specific focus: used to indicate if a book was specifically focused on a single topic (e.g., cloud computing, Twitter, mobile, LinkedIn).

We’re happy to provide more details about our methodology upon request. Please add a comment or email books@sminorgs.net with your specific questions.

 

Initial Results

To convey a general sense of what these 500+ books are all about, we have created two Wordles using the books’ titles (after cleaning them up by deleting unnecessary words and combining similar terms).

The first Wordle includes all the relevant terms (click to enlarge):

Because SocialMedia, Guide, Marketing and Business dominated the results, we created a second Wordle without those terms to dig a bit deeper into the books’ focus (click to enlarge):

The initial results may seem “no duh-ish” to some folks, especially early adopters. There’s nothing particularly revelatory about the fact that the books published to date have had a heavy emphasis on business, specifically social media in the context of marketing. The “how to” focus of many of these books, as well as the promises of success, are also not surprising.

But some of the emphases are less obvious. For example:

• Blogging (which has been declared “dead” at least twice in the past 5 years) remains a primary topic.
• Even though Facebook is a significantly larger platform, Twitter and LinkedIn have received relatively more emphasis as book topics.
• Although people are still wrapping their brains around what to do with data, there have been a relatively substantial number of books focused on the topic (e.g., analytics, metrics). Similarly, cloud computing has also been a fairly significant topic of discussion.

And perhaps most importantly, we need to think about what’s not been addressed, as those are the areas in which there is perhaps the greatest need – and the greatest opportunity for thought leaders and authors. These include:

• More discussion and guidance about topics like gamification and mobile technologies.
• How social and digital technologies can and should be used in non-commercial sectors, including in non-profit and religious organizations, public sector entities, and academic institutions. In a similar vein, there’s probably a need and opportunity for more focused discussions on digital communities and community management.
• Applications and implications of new technologies inside organizations (e.g., enterprise 2.0, social business, social enterprise).
• Leadership-oriented discussions, especially in terms of what it means to be a leader in the Digital Era.
• The human-capital management implications of new digital technologies, as well as legal/policy issues and risk management considerations.
• Applications and implications of new technologies for individuals, including digital competencies, jobs, professions, and careers.

 

Coming Up

We are conducting more in-depth analyses of the data (including a formal text analysis in conjunction with Silverman Research) and plan to share more results in the coming weeks/months, including:

• A slide deck of Wordles that reveal emphases by year, category, etc.
• An infographic, which will include things like the first time Social Media appears in a book title and most popular buzzword(s), as well as various representations of general and specific categories.
• A white paper that offers a more formal treatment of the methodology, results, and implications.

If you’d like to be informed as soon as these and other results are published, please join our mailing list or subscribe to the S.M.A.R.T. Blog.

 

What’s on Your Mind?

To enhance the value of this project, we’d love to hear from you. Specifically, we’d like to know things like:

• What books would you like to make sure we include? Are there specific “best” lists we should double check? Favorite books or authors? Your own tomes? We’re especially interested in hearing about recently-published books, as we are more likely to have missed them.
• What other topics, categories and/or questions do you think are important to explore?
• What questions do you have? What would you like to know? What are you curious about?

Please add a comment or email books@sminorgs.net with your specific suggestions. Thanks!

 

Related Content

Paper or Digital? The Results are In… And It’s a (Virtual) Tie! With over 500 votes and nearly 200 comments, the results of a recent poll indicate people are fairly evenly split between paper and digital book formats. Although the poll wasn’t perfectly scientific, the richness of its results can be of great value to authors, book publishers, and designers, as well as professionals in other fields such as training and development, academia, and communications.

4 Big Barriers to Social Media Adoption in Organizations: Key Research Findings. The results of a unique and ground-breaking study by Silverman Research (n=644+) indicate that there are four main barriers to increased adoption of social technologies in organizations: lack of knowledge and understanding, unprepared leadership, fear, and the absence of a well-grounded business case. This post highlights those findings and offers recommendations for overcoming the barriers. It also provides a link to a free report with details on the research and its results.