8 posts tagged “shel+holtz”

Odd question posed by Ragan.

• Own as in who should start it? Anyone who has learnt what it is and thinks it's relevant, preferably someone in the internal communications team.
• Own as in maintain it? If it works and grows, then you need to speak to HR and IT. Get some community facilitators on board to help nurture the community.
• Own as in control the conversation/relationships? Shel Holtz says the employees that use it. That is, the community.

Social media internally or externally is not about ownership or the tools, but about the right culture of transparency and trust. Companies will adopt it if it is obvious there is a business benefit, and the learning curve (props Paul Adams) is steep and quick - and should be cheap.

If newspapers are in decline because of social media, then when was the last time you went to Encyclopedia Britannica to find out something rather than Wikipedia? It's been a while.

Well, Britannica has moved on to what Shel Holtz describes as its 'first significant foray into the social media space.' Has it missed the boat? Hardly.

In Now is Gone, Toby Bloomberg is quoted as saying: "For those organisations...that think they have missed the virtual boat, it is moving out of dry dock; there is no need for swimming yet, but it is quickly picking up speed." The interview was dated June 14 2007.

There is an important lesson here for companies unsure of the idea of social media for internal or external use. Britannica decided to get it right, rather than get it first.

Dan Greenfield asks if agencies have 'Got social media?' As it's not about the technology, Dan rightly points out that agencies are "training their staffs and immersing them in the ways of blogs, social networks and podcasts [and] daylong social media immersion seminars for clients and potential clients."

Britannica has short-circuited the issue of taking clients and potential clients along with them by making bloggers the initial beneficiaries of its social media embrace. This is one of five social computing benefits identified by Rex Lee, namely: "A well designed social computing environment encourages interactive participation of the right people."

Britannica can never compete with Wikipedia. But its place as a by-word for expertly-researched and expertly-corroborated information, coupled with its social media programme, might just make it relevant again.

A couple of surveys show how much progress the new web has made in the enterprise, and also just how far there is to go.

Joe McKendrick flags a survey from Evans Data (registration required) of 385 corporate managers and developers that found:

• Most Web 2.0 applications are being targeted at internal corporate requirements, versus consumer engagements. Close to half of the survey participants are focused on developing applications for internal use inside their companies. Less than a third are building Web 2.0 applications intended for delivery on a subscription base to online users.

That's progress. So much is written about PR and marketing in relation to social media, so it is refreshing to learn that not everyone has forgotten about the need to internalise and unlock some of the value of conversation. Dennis Howlett says "CXO’s instinctively know that internal collaboration, whether through rudimentary technologies like blogs and wikis hold significant efficiency promise."

Preaching to the converted here, but back on planet Earth, it would no surprise to many that among the findings from a survey of 30 chief communication officers by the Arthur W. Page Society and the Corporate Executive Board was the following:

• Only 25% report having incorporated new media aggressively in the communications department's portfolio

Picking up the the baton to tackle some of the common issues that result in businesses waiting for all of the answers before making a decision, Shel Holtz addresses:

1. Resistance from the legal department
2. Lack of return on investment
3. Too labour intensive
4. Lack of expertise

Maybe the cultural change required to give up control of the message is another obstacle I would flag, though whatever the surveys says, Geoff Livingstone hits it on the head in Now is Gone when he warns, "It is incumbent on communicators to learn new media, not just on a thoeretical level, but as practitioners."

Has corporate social media - that is Enterprise2.0 - reached its tipping point? Shel Holtz thinks it has - imho, it has not.

Malcolm Gladwell says tipping points have three rules:

1. Law of the Few
2. Stickiness Factor
3. Power of Context

Rule 1: Now corporate social media may have ticked the first rule - companies everywhere have evangelists for social media, those who are experimenting either off or on the company clock, and companies are increasingly supporting these individuals. Chris Brogan talks enthusiastically about social media toolkits and social media strategies. The latest Melcrum Blog has a podcast of IBM's Michael Kiess also talking about how to develop a social media strategy.

Rule 2: As for the stickiness factor, the jury's still out. In many cases, wide-spread adoption is still seen as technologically risky and, as Brenda Hodgson says, the theory is sound when talking to specific companies,

"...while telling people what not to do is generally easy, the challenge is always coming up with "best practices" within these niche areas."

Rule 3: The final rule is not yet met. Gladwell says that human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem. This one could require the generational tipping point from X to Y to be reached, as fear, uncertainty and doubt masquerades as derision.

That's not to say that companies shouldn't prepare. Shel Israel's rather excellent SAP Global Survey is coming to a close, and his early findings (bold added) suggest exciting times ahead:

• Social media is active and growing on all continents and most major islands of the world.
• As innovators start looking past blogs, blogs are taking off in the enterprise.
• All social media tools get adopted first by non-corporate users, then seem to catch on in the enterprise two years later. Video is hot now among consumers. Watch for massive corporate adoption in 2009-10.
• Social media tends to start with kids. Think of what that means to your enterprise moving forward.

What do Wal Mart and A&P Supermarkets have in common? Both are seeing the impact of social media up close and personal.

Wal Mart authored their own fate by starting a Facebook page. Not everyone likes Wal Mart - and now they had an outlet for their views. What did Wal Mart do? Well, as Jerimiah Owyang reports here and here - not too much. They could have taken down the page, but haven't - so at least they know that you can't stop the interweb.

Which is more than A&P Supermarkets. They are asking for a parody video filmed by two teenagers in one of their stores to be taken down, and have filed a seven-figure lawsuit. B.L. Ochman and Shel Holtz cover the debacle well.

Shel also suggests that corporate blogging - one of the higher-profile forms of social media - may have reached its tipping point, as a company joining the conversation doesn't make massive headlines anymore. The flip of this normalizing is that attention shifts to companies - such as A&P Supermarkets - that get the even the basics horribly wrong.

Both Cadbury's and HSBC have got a wave of good press in the past couple of weeks for listening.

The global chocolate manufacturer is bringing back its Wispa bar after a concerted campagin (reported here by Shel Holtz) by those looking for a 'smoother, more velvety chocolate', while HSBC, the self-proclaimed 'world's local bank', has decided not to take away interest-free overdrafts from student's as soon as they leave university - again because of a campaign on Facebook.

Reading Jeremiah Owyang's post proclaiming that if you want a wave then drop a pebble, it seems that is what consumers did - and the wave caught both Cadbury's and HSBC.

The causal relationship is not too different for companies. If businesses really want to open up a two way conversation with their workforce, then let the employees drop a pebble. To kick-start matters, maybe internal communicators - who themselves should be early-adopters - can set up their own Eneterprise2.0 placeholder - a Twitter account, blog, Facebook page etc - for employees with different levels of adoption to come to you with thoughts and opinions. Yes, it bypasses the organisation, but it keeps the 'I' in ROI low and does mean that the ripples from more employees can reach you more quickly.

Shel Holtz was sent a pitch for a social media release from a company that didn't read around enough to appreciate his experience on the subject.

So is the PR industry's (lack of but growing) experience of social media the bridge between what's happening in the real world and evidence that social media is more than just Gen Y's plaything? (speaking of which - this video is proof that all companies need a 14-year old on their communication team!)

A working group has been looking into optimising the social media release for almost a year now, and because a successful release brings together all of the elements of social media, and because some companies are wont to fund PR spend more easily than internal communication spend, maybe this is the open door for communicators to push on.

The PR industry is making sure they are everywhere those who need to access the release expect them to be. And what communicators should be focusing on is being everywhere their employees expect them to be.

Because the whole interweb will be three-dimensional sooner or later, says Shel Holtz. He goes on to say, in pretty much the same way that blogs should not be assessed by the number of comments, Second Life success should not currently be judged by avatar numbers. Oh, and incomplete facts! This coming off the back of a recent Wired article, which had been preceded by a similar write-up in Brandweek.

Like Shel, I am no cheerleader of Second Life, though I do have an avatar and an introduction to Second Life video on this blog. But If blogs are only now normalising in the corporate sphere, then there are many other social media systems that companies should be thinking about before Second Life is put on the table. Could it get any more real than that?

Update: Check this recent Scoble thread out about the value (or not) of some of the current crop of social networking systems.