S.M.A.R.T. Blog

The Denovati Pledge - Would Love to Add Your Voice

The Denovati are Digital Era explorers, pathfinders and pioneers who seek to understand and effectively leverage social and digital technologies. The Denovati Pledge reflects the commitments, hopes, promises, motivations, goals, and/or interests of members of The Denovati. If you consider yourself a member of The Denovati (and really, shouldn’t we all be?), you’re invited to make a public declaration to be shared on The Denovati Group’s website.

 

The new website for The Denovati Group is coming along nicely. One of the features I'd like to include is a page where individuals and organizations share their commitments as members of The Denovati.

The Denovati are Digital Era explorers, pathfinders and pioneers
who seek to understand and effectively leverage
social and digital technologies

 

What are Digital Era explorers, pathfinders and pioneers?

• Explorers are futurists and leading-edge thinkers, as well as organizations pushing boundaries and searching for new frontiers of technological capability.
• Pathfinders are early adopters who test and determine the value and viability of new digital tools and platforms, as well as organizations that seek out the best ways to leverage new technologies to address specific needs.
• Pioneers are later adopters who not only help establish the longer-term viability of new technologies but also devise the best approaches to related practical issues like governance, risk management, and human capital management.

Don't think of yourself as an Explorer, Pathfinder, or Pioneer? No worries. The Denovati is an inclusive identity that also incorporates people who are just getting started on their own digital journeys - no experience required!

 

What’s the Denovati Pledge?

Members of The Denovati are unified by a shared interest in and commitment to enhancing individual and organizational success through social and digital technologies. The Denovati Pledge is an expression of that commitment through a succinct statement that reflects one’s primary focus or key priority. Here are a few sample pledges (all of which begin with the phrase, "As a Member of The Denovati”):

• I am committed to ensuring people (especially organizational leaders) receive the education and training they need to develop and maintain the digital competencies required for success in the Digital Era.
• I am passionate about social learning and collaboration, digital transformation of organisations and how we engage with the future.
• I hope to provide thought leadership that will enable changes brought about by mobile, social, big data and cloud to lead to positive outcomes for businesses and their employees.

 

How to Make a Pledge

Anyone can make a pledge – you don't have to be an early adopter or thought leader, or even feel like you have any expertise (yet). Pledges can be made by organizations as well as individuals.

You also don’t have to be formally affiliated with The Denovati Group to make a pledge, but you do have to follow two rules. Here they are:

1. Your pledge should begin with a phrase like one of those above. Other examples include, “My primary concern is," or "I am primarily interested in," “Our goal is,” and “We strive to.”
2. Your pledge must be no more than 200 characters total, including spaces. The phrase "As a member of The Denovati" does not count as part of the 200 character limit.

In addition to your pledge, you may also provide urls for your LI profile, and any relevant (i.e., focused on social and digital technologies) website, blog or other social media presence (i.e., Twitter, Google+, Facebook). We’d also love to know whether you consider yourself an Explorer, Pathfinder, or Pioneer – or some combination of the three!

Please send your pledge and additional information to denovati@denovati.com.

We reserve the right to edit pledges, request additional information, and/or exclude any information/links that don’t meet our standards. We will notify you when the page is published.

I’m looking forward to reading – and sharing – your pledges. Thanks!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD - Founder, The Denovati Group

PS – Although the site hasn’t been officially launched yet, we have set up the Denovati SMART Blog and have begun posting to it. If you’d like to subscribe, click here.

Social Media and Employee Voice: The Current Landscape - A Research Report

Many people have been talking about the impact of social media on employee engagement and employee voice, but for time-constrained organizational leaders and human capital professionals who want to understand the connections, it's virtually impossible to find those conversations, let alone read and make sense of them. A recent report by Silverman Research can help. Commissioned by the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD), it synthesizes the relevant literature and discusses its implications. This post provides a summary and links to the full (free) report.

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This is a guest post written by Laura Hillman, Research Manager at Silverman Research.

Many organisations, as part of their efforts to be an employer of choice and provide a better experience for their employees, are committed to enhancing employee engagement. A key aspect of this effort is the annual “employee engagement survey”. But in spite of their good intentions and sincere investments, employee engagement surveys often don’t provide the meaningful insights they claim to. What is advertised is an opportunity to speak up where all opinions are heard, but in reality what is conducted is a tick box exercise that is often tiresome for employees to complete. With the decline in response rates to engagement surveys, getting employees’ views seems more difficult than ever. This is contradictory to the ever increasing online presence people have where thoughts and feelings are shared willingly.

There is a mass of literature demonstrating the link between employee engagement and various organisational benefits. These include a more satisfied, trusting, cohesive and productive workforce. However, where there is an increased prominence of employee engagement, employee voice still remains in the shadows and in many organisations never gets beyond the annual employee survey. Apart from transitioning to the internet and some advances in analytical capabilities, the basic model of employee surveys has broadly stayed the same for the last 50 years. When we consider that social technologies are offering some pioneering ways of eliciting voice, it is a particularly pertinent time to review current thinking in this area and embrace social media platforms in order to encourage advancement and change.

In early 2013, Silverman Research were commissioned by The Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD) - the world’s largest HR professional body - to write a report reviewing the current literature on social media within the workplace and the impact it is having on employee voice. The idea behind the report was to create a summary of existing literature on the subject and to act as a guide for future research. Using a range of literature materials including journal articles, blogs, discussion forums and books, the most up to date thinking and practices were captured to cover existing ideas on employee voice, uses of social media within organisations, the benefits and barriers of social media and how social media should be embraced to allow for an authentic employee voice.

The report (available for free here) proposes the adoption of an approach that focuses on social media within the workplace, empowering employees to speak up. Companies are encouraged to mirror the use of social media in our everyday lives to cultivate an information sharing and communicative environment where people feel as though they can voice their opinions and really are listened to – something which has not been possible until now.

The report also argues that our conceptualisation of employee voice should not be static, but rather should evolve in line with technological and social developments. In recent years, as a result of the relentless advance of social media, employee voice too, is evolving rapidly. The greatest difference is the shifting patterns of communication, from being one-way or two-way to being multi-directional. This has developed from giving employees a say behind closed doors to enabling them to engage in an open forum. It is hard to ignore and as such, is voice with muscle.

Social technologies allowing new forms of collaboration also lend themselves to collective decision-making. This aggregation is crucial in the evolution of employee voice because it is a necessary condition under which the wisdom of crowds can be harnessed. The result is a new form of collective employee voice that is mobile, organised and intelligent.

To date, much of the conversation within organisations has been about the risks and threats (especially to employers) that may be associated with social media. However, the perils of an open approach to employee voice and the benefits of more traditional closed systems are often overrated. Moreover, there is little organisations can do to stem the rise of social media. This reiterates the point that organisations should be designing their future in employee voice.

We still don’t know which aspects of organisational culture will be most affected and what new advancements will arise to enable an enhanced employee voice. Despite these uncertainties, one thing is for sure; drastic changes are afoot to the way in which employee voice is expressed within organisations.

 

Laura Hillman is a Research Manager at Silverman Research. She has an MSc in Organisational Psychology from Goldsmiths in London and specialises in the application of social technologies to employee research.

For more information please contact: laura.hillman@silvermanresearch.com

 

Denovati, Here We (Be)Come!

Earlier this year we announced an initiative to create a new brand identity for the SMinOrgs Community. This blog post details the reasons for making the switch, as well as the 13 criteria we developed for selecting the best new brand. As the effort evolved, it became evident that what we were doing was much bigger than simply coming up with a new name for SMinOrgs. It was really about rebranding and consolidating SMinOrgs, the Renaissance Strategic Solutions consultancy, and the Global Center for Digital Era Leadership (GCDEL) under a single unified identity.

The results of a survey we conducted in February to solicit feedback on the four brand options we had 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 = those who seek knowledge and/or are in the know

Put another way, the Denovati are Digital Era explorers, pathfinders and immigrants who seek to understand and effectively leverage new social and digital technologies.

The Denovati Group can be viewed as an alliance that enhances the success of individuals and organizations in the Digital Era. Here's an overview of how the alliance will be organized, along with some of our working taglines (click the image to enlarge it).

 

 

Our working short descriptions are as follows:

• The Denovati Group enhances the success of individuals and organizations in the Digital Era through research, thought leadership and guidance, consulting and training services, and a professional community that fosters communication and collaboration.
• The S.M.A.R.T. Blog explores the applications and implications of Social Media And Related Technologies in organizations, focusing on both opportunities and challenges from both conceptual and tactical perspectives.
• S.M.A.R.T. Resources include white papers, research reports, ebooks and other materials that provide both strategic and tactical Digital Era guidance for individuals and organizations.
• Denovati Solutions (formerly Renaissance Strategic Solutions) helps individuals and organizations function more efficiently and effectively in the Digital Era through the design and implementation of innovative and leading-edge strategies and programs.
• The Denovati Network (formerly the Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community) is a global, multi-disciplinary professional community that helps individuals at all skill levels successfully navigate Digital Era opportunities and challenges.
• Through research and thought leadership, the Denovati Institute (formerly the Global Center for Digital Era Leadership (GCDEL) and SMinOrgs) provides a forum for exploring important Digital Era issues that individuals, organizations, economies and societies face.

We are still finalizing our brand identity, including the logo and color scheme, and have started building our new website and related digital network. We'll be revealing additional changes gradually, targeting a full official reveal by the end of May.

Stay tuned... Lots of new and exciting developments are in the works!

Welcome to the Digital Era. Now What Do You Do?

Like many professionals - especially those who have attained "senior" status - you are probably unsure of the steps you need to take to enhance your skillset to include digital competencies. If that's the case, you may benefit from participating in a discussion group focused on Digital Era opportunities and challenges. This post provides details and an invitation...

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Earlier this year I gave presentations to two groups of senior professionals in transition. With the first group, comprised of HR professionals, I talked about what it means to be a leader in the Digital Era. For the second group, which included 100+ people from all functional areas, I gave a formal presentation on career management and job search.

One of the most profound take-aways from both sessions was the sincere interest the attendees had in better understanding social and digital technologies and how they can be used by individuals and organizations. They fully understand they can no longer dismiss social media as a fad, but they've barely begun to leverage new technologies to achieve their goals - primarily because they are overwhelmed by the possibilities and have no clue where to start.

Over the past several years I've researched and written about Digital Era leadership, digital competencies, and the need for formal education and training, but I always felt like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness. It's very exciting to now see signs of a growing appetite and demand for learning and understanding among later adopters, especially those who occupy senior ranks.

To capitalize on this interest and determine the best ways to help these professionals climb the necessary learning curves, I have decided to run some discussion groups focused on Digital Era opportunities and challenges, from both individual and organizational perspectives. These sessions, which begin next week, will help me better understand the perspective and needs of digital rookies in particular, and will help participants better understand what they need to know/do to be successful as their careers progress.

The initial focus groups are comprised of senior professionals from all functional areas who are currently in job transition, but I also welcome the opportunity to talk with people who are currently working and those in earlier career stages. 

If you'd like to participate in one of these focus groups, please send a message expressing your interest to focus@sminorgs.net. Please be sure to include a link to your LinkedIn profile, so I can learn more about you. In the short term these groups will be face-to-face, so participation will be limited to folks in/near Chicago, but we can experiment with virtual discussions as well if there's enough interest.

Thanks! I look forward to hearing from you.

Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

Related Resources

Welcome to the Digital Era

• 10 Digital Era Truths (link)
• The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards (link)
• Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up? (link)
• Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU (link)
• "Social Media" is SO 2009! 7 Proposed Semantic Upgrades (link)

Digital Era Leadership

• What Does it Take to be a Leader in the Digital Era? (link)
• 4 Big Barriers to Social Media Adoption in Organizations: Key Research Findings (link)
• Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road (link)
• The Social Media ROI Challenge: Are We Making Progress? (link)

 For additional resources, check out slides 44-51 in the Job Search in the Digital Era presentation deck.

 

Custom Google Maps: A Great Digital Engagement Tool

 

One of my favorite features of Google Maps is the ability to create personalized maps that you can save and share. I've used the feature to map out a route (and more) when we took a road trip through the Western United States in 2011, and to develop a daily tourist itinerary for a visit to Dublin, Ireland in the fall of 2012. 

But custom Google maps aren't just useful to individuals. They also have a variety of potential applications for organizations, groups, and communities, which can use them in ways that produce value for both themselves and their individual members/stakeholders.

 

Key Features

Google maps are...

Visual. The popularity of infographics and sites like Pinterest and SlideShare clearly demonstrate how much people appreciate visual displays. Google maps are a great way to show geographically-oriented information in a visual way. Here are some examples:

• We have created a Member Map to illustrate both the geographic diversity and relative distribution of the membership in our LinkedIn group. In a similar vein, non-profit organizations could use them to share chapter information, chambers of commerce could display member businesses, and academic institutions could use them to illustrate where their graduates have ended up (an alumni diaspora if you will).
• ERE.net has a EREjobs map that enables recruiters to "navigate through recent recruiting job openings geographically."
• Craig's List created a housing map that shows properties for sale and rent, as well as sublets and available rooms.
• Google has a 2007 Googleplex map that displays "photos of life at Google Headquarters."
• The America's Highway project produced the America's Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66 map.

 

Customizable: As many of the examples above illustrate, the pins on a custom map can include more than simple text. They can include photos and links to websites as well. You can also change the pin icons themselves and format the text in a variety of ways, and even edit the html.

 

Flexible. Map owners can choose whether to make their maps public or keep them "unlisted." They can also opt to leave the map in its Google location or embed it on their own website (as we have done).

 

Collaborative. Map owners can invite other individuals to develop and edit individual maps.

 

Dynamic. As soon as there's a significant change, most maps can be updated quickly and easily.

 

Engaging. There are many ways to use Google maps to generate interest and dialogue. At the simplest level, people who view the map can rate it or write a comment directly on the map. When the map is embedded in a website, it can also stimulate discussions about the map's contents and/or give people an incentive to take action. Finally, the map and its activity can be shared via social media to regularly invite people to check it out and engage. Here's one of our recent tweets as an example:

Toronto is the seventh urban area to hit 100 members! ow.ly/iaX8v Check out our updated member map!

 

General Development Tips

You can get super-fancy with Google Maps, which involves lots of coding and technical skills. But as Google themselves noted when they introduced the feature in 2007, it doesn't have to be complicated. You can create a fairly simple map manually, using a free service like this one, or by converting data in an spreadsheet to a KML file (we used BatchGeo for this) and then uploading it (if you'd like specific tips on doing that, please email maps@sminorgs.net).

Here are a few specific lessons Assistant Community Manager Sean Pearson and I learned from our recent efforts:

1. Every map has an "owner," who has to have a Gmail account. Rather than having the owner be an individual, it's probably better to create a Gmail account using a corporate identity (i.e., myorg@gmail.com).
2. If you have map collaborators who don't have access to the login credentials for the corporate Gmail account, each of those collaborators will also need a Gmail account.
3. Individual Google maps are limited to 200 pins. If you're going to need more than that, you'll have to collapse pins and/or create multiple maps.
4. Determine how you want to display the list of pins on the left-hand side of the map, focusing on an arrangement that best meets your goals and makes the most sense to a map viewer. Once you've determined that order, make sure the pin list accurately reflects that order, both when the map is created and as you add to it. It's very easy to drag and drop the list items to create the desired order.
5. It's also very simple to embed a custom map on a web page. Google creates the code; the only adjustment you may have to make is to correct the height and width to fit in the space you've allocated.
6. The default url for custom maps is L-O-N-G! Google will also create a short url for you. If you don't plan to embed the map in your own website, use the short url.

If you're experienced with creating custom Google maps and have other tips to suggest, we'd love to hear them. And although we're no experts, we're also happy to try to answer any questions you may have.

Happy mapping!

- 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!

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.

Online Social Learning Communities: Necessary but not Sufficient

As the Digital Era progresses, professionals at all levels and career stages need to develop and maintain a core set of digital competencies. These competencies can be developed informally, through online social learning communities, but they must also be developed through formal education and training programs. Academic and other organizational leaders must recognize that it is in their own best interests to make bridging the new (and expanding) digital divide a strategic and tactical priority.

In 5 Ways Social Learning Communities Transform Culture and Leadership, Meghan Biro asserts that "we are seeing the beginnings of an online social movement which will enhance traditional classroom education and breathe new life into the world of work" and describes some of the shifts behind this movement:

1. Online learning communities are challenging the value of academic ‘brands’.
2. Online learning communities have leveled the financial playing field and advantaged learners, not purveyors of degrees.
3. Online learners are empowered, and they will change your culture.
4. Leaders are born and made.
5. Online social learning communities are changing the value of employer brands.

I love the term "online social learning communities," which aptly describes the focus of the two digital communities I have founded: Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) and the Global Center for Digital Era Leadership (GCDEL). Like many early adopters, my knowledge of new technologies was informally acquired, through my own efforts - and mostly through cyberspace. As I've learned, I've shared that knowledge and expertise with others and have facilitated their ability to share as well. But as valuable as my informal learning has been, I know it's not for everyone. In fact, it's not for most people. I deal with digital rookies all the time, and I can personally attest to how challenging it is for them to develop and execute a self-directed learning plan. Many of them don't even know where to start. I've explored the new Digital Divide and the need for Digital Era competencies, and I don't believe we have the luxury of time for people to be self taught. The situation is becoming too urgent.

I've recently started talking about the flaws in our LIY (learn it yourself) approach to skill development. As Meghan notes, organizations are reluctant to invest in training and developing their staffs - and when it comes to digital skills in particular, there's a prevailing assumption that people can figure things out on their own. They can't - and they don't - which creates tremendous inefficiencies and diminished effectiveness. This is as true for so-called Digital Natives as it is for Digital Immigrants.

Many early adopters and social technology mavens scoff at the notion of formal education and training in maximizing the use of new technologies. I've addressed that issue too, arguing that though formal learning is not a substitute for experience, it does lay an effective foundation that enables people to climb their learning curves faster and better.

The bottom line, as Meghan alludes to, is balance. We need both formal and informal learning, in whatever combination makes the most sense for an individual and an organization. The key, though, is to recognize and respect that learning MUST be a priority. If nothing else, enlightened self-interest should compel leaders to make it an operational priority.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

Related Resources

The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards

Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up?

Social Media Education and Training: Pro or Con? Please Discuss…

Social Media Education & Training: Where We Are. Where We’re Going.

A Master’s Degree Specialization in Social Media & Online Communities

What's Your Social Media Sophistication? The SMQ (version III)

For even more resources, check out slides 35-42 from my closing Impact99 keynote, The Road Forward: Striving for Balance. More recent pieces can be found in the November and December blog archives.