Nathaniel Hansen

We have the conversations, we need people to analyze and synthesize what customers are saying

“We have the conversations now…we don’t need Nielsen…we don’t really even need some of these deep analytics anymore…we have the conversations” ~Jodee Rich, CEO, PeopleBrowsr

“You need someone who can read into the data and say “this is telling me…” @richmeyer

“There are way too many analytic solutions out there & not enough people to analyze the data and turn it into action.” @richmeyer

“Organizations need individuals/teams within to leverage analytics into actionable items that can help meet brand objectives.” @richmeyer

“A “spot-on” CSV of 100 Key Influencers w/social links + a summation of these Influencers’ latest messages/social objects + a graph of who follows them and who they follow.” @Nat_Hansen

“We helped (this brand) find 10,000 followers who REALLY loved them and their click through rate went up significantly…it (stories, conversations, and numbers) absolutely become dollars when it becomes what people are really thinking about us.” ~Jodee Rich, CEO, PeopleBrowsr

MANAGERS AT AD AGENCIES ARE MORE INTERESTED IN THEIR BUSINESS MODEL & MONEY VS. HOW PEOPLE FEEL: Putting a brand-oriented organization like an ad agency in charge of nurturing a community of people within social networks is a mistake. An ad agency’s business model is based on revenues earned from media. They create broadcast messaging for broadcast media. The growth of vibrant social communities is better done by those from WITHIN those same communities, individuals committed to the core values of whatever that particular circle lives for.

If a community is only nurtured for transactional purposes, its members interact differently than if the community has been formed around a passion, a shared interest. Good content-marketing is informed by deep insights derived from conversation snippets within social networks. And most brands and agencies are not staffed with the right people to discover such insights. They are smart but they are bound to their business model.

The best organization to build a social community consists of those who care about and have “grown up” within that community itself…whether it be the community OF THE BRAND ITSELF or a non-branded community that is GENRE-SPECIFIC (in which a particular brand tends to flourish). Additionally, those familiar with social networks and how to use social technologies are the best to train these community leaders. To sum up: Orient towards those who care about people as the ones to initiate AND grow a community within social networks.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IS A TOP PRIORITY IN COMMUNITY CREATION: A number of organizations I am working with now in Europe are dealing with this exact issue. The ad agency for these organizations has been in charge of informing the ethos of the customer-facing materials. But now, in both cases, it turns out that the budding communities forming around these brands need leadership and nurturing. And there is no-one managing the brand or on staff at the agency that truly cares about the quality of the community. The PRIMARY discussion is: how many Likes can we get AND how many of those Likes can we turn into dollars or euros? At the outset of growing social communities, such strong focus on growing Likes and turning Likes into dollars/euros can suffocate the organic growth of a circle of people simply coming together to share a common interest or passion. To sum up: Peter Ecomonomides of FelixBNI says, “social psychology is far more important than economics”.

SCALES OF CARE: I remember consulting to a large sales organization years ago in America. I worked with an I/O Psychologist to assess the 100 person staff within the organization as part of an HR project. The study yielded some interesting results. Of particular interest was the psychological make-up of the COO and the Director of Sales. The tests we were using showed, as one scale of measurement, an individual’s care for other humans…that is, how much concern someone had for another person and their feelings/needs. The COO and the Director of Sales scored 1 and 2 respectively on a 100 point scale, with 100 marking deep care for others. To sum up: Do NOT put Directors of Sales or CFOs in charge of policies related to social communities. This is the vicinity of those in Customer Experience and the customer journey.

Choosing Fun in relation to Key Influencers within the Interest Graph can be very effective. Check out this twitter campaign for a cell phone company in Turkey. Brilliant! Thanks to @helena_chari in Athens for turning me on to this!!

BE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC, NOT PRODUCT-CENTRIC: While it is true that not all COOs or Sales Directors globally might score in the same way, this example points to an important issue for those building social communities. Often the decision-makers in the room at enterprise-level organizations are the CFO (who influences the CEO) and leaders from the Sales division. On one level this makes sense since sales is the life-blood of most organizations and the CFO is the “dutch uncle” (ideally) who maintains efficiency and the books. But a CFO and a Director of Sales are NOT the right people to nurture a social community for a brand, nor to dictate how such a community ought to be created and populated. This is best done by individuals who understand customer-service, who care passionately about user-experience and who have a bias towards giving power to the customer in such forums. And that’s why large organizations globally are gearing more resources towards Chief Customer Officers vs. Chief Marketing Officers. See Harvard Business Review article on this subject here AND here.

STAFFING FOR CONVERSATION ANALYSIS: I recently interviewed a large interactive agency in a major European city. I was particularly interested in discovering to what extent the agency analyzed customer data for the purpose of deriving insight. In other words, aside from receiving metrics and analytics from a social monitoring solution, did the agency employ OR contract with individuals who studied conversations by influencers around a brand. And, if so, what training or background did those individuals have. It turned out that the tool the agency was using showed communities around interests related to a brand along with stats on those who occupied the communities BUT the agency had allocated no resources or staffing toward peering into the conversations. To sum up: agencies and brands MUST staff in relation to customer need vs. product need. Social communities are best served by those who understand the human heart.

ANALYSIS OF CONVERSATION AND STORYTELLING: Something very powerful emerges when one knows what others are interested in talking about. Consider for a moment how powerful it would be for that interactive agency to spend time looking at the last 100 tweets/status updates/blog posts/thread comments OF the top 100 online influencers around its customers’ products. And what if the person studying this messaging had a background in psychology, writing psychological assessments and/or in journalism, feature stories. Agencies MUST consider contracting with or employing such people to do exactly this task. The creativity that emerged from the focus groups of old is amplified in potential with so many conversation snippets now discoverable within social networks around ANY topic. A psychologically-aware storyteller who understands the power of mashing-up content IS the individual ALL agencies and brands should be sending headhunters to find. Non-branded Twitter communities created on-the-fly for research purposes can be very powerful scopes for those with a trained eye and a trained heart. To sum up: Agencies and brands MUST hire individuals or contract to organizations who specialize in community and conversation analysis. Storytellers are vital to community conception and creation.

GOOD QUESTIONS TO ASK: Interactive and ad/marketing agencies should be asking themselves the following questions:

1. Are we satisfied with our process for deriving insight, customer intelligence and stories from our current social monitoring solution?

2. How much time are we spending on conversation/community analysis at the outset of social marketing projects? And on-going?

3. Have we considered hiring individuals trained in psychology and journalism to (a) analyze conversations within social communities and (b) create sticky content from the insights derived from these conversations?

4. Have we realized the full potential of non-branded Twitter communities as a valuable resource in gaining customer insight, gaining competitive intelligence and in our storytelling processes?

CONVERSATION INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS AT SLIDESHARE by THE SOCIALIZERS

RESOURCES:

Research.ly, a solution created by PeopleBrowsr, to create on-fly communities around ANY topic. This is an invaluable tool for market research and social community creation.

Copyblogger – a great resource for those who create content of all kinds.

Oxford Internet Institute Projects – this institute in the UK is deeply interested in the Hows and Whys of the Internet. The research they are doing is fantastic!

The Chief Customer Officer Council – The Chief Customer Officer Council is the first of its kind — a member-led peer-advisory network offering unparalleled insight into the critical issues facing CCOs.

WOMMA – Word of Mouth Marketing Organization – WOMMA is the premiere non-profit organization dedicated to advancing and advocating the discipline of credible word of mouth marketing, both offline and online.

The Socializers presents in Cyprus and Piraeus Bank (WINBank) wins social banking award in Paris

Two news updates from Europe on The Socializers.

One: Nathaniel Hansen, CEO of The Socializers, presented at IMH 9th Communications Conference in Nicosia, Cyprus on May 27, 2011. See video below, find the presentation at Slideshare and read more about A Thousand True Fans here.

Two: ‎TheSocializers are very proud of our client winbank and Giorgos Gavril, Director of Interactive in winning top social award at EFMA Online Banking!! http://bit.ly/efma_award2011

Piraeus Bank was awarded by the International Agency European Finance Marketing Association (EFMA), as the leading presence in Social Media in Europe (Best Approach to Social Media in Europe).

According to the announcement, the award was part of the conference “Online banking: the e-volution” held in Paris and covered the platform “Think Green”.

This platform has created an online community of users who are sensitive to environmental issues and share their news and reflections on such topics. It has presence in the most popular social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr) and has already, after about 2 months of operation, more than 5,000 members.”

The Socializers performed social intelligence gathering related to this project and taught bank leaders from the various silos on the principles of social business and the value of engaging in conversations with customers within social networks.

A THOUSAND TRUE FANS as derived VIA KEY INFLUENCERS: A POSSIBILE PROCESS FOR DISCOVERING YOUR PERFECT AUDIENCE

Discussing A Thousand True Fans with Eleftherios Hatziioannou in Athens, Greece. May 25, 2011.

A Thousand True Fans essay by Kevin Kelly:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php

First, organize 1,000 by Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/first-organize-1000.html

A DEFINITION:
“A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.” ~Kevin Kelly, The Technium

…………………

“In the entertainment area, there are members of the hardcore fan base.
The equivalent of the guys who will camp outside of an Apple store to get the new iPhone.

On the innovation curve, these are the fanatics.
The more interesting group is the one immediately to the right of the fanatics.
The ones who move you across the chasm and into the mainstream world of the “early majority”

These are the ones who need to be identified.
Because these are the real influencers.

Fanatics are important in the entertainment world.
Is this equally so for other industries?

The fanatics are important …. but the “visionaries” are crucial.” ~Peter Economides, FelixBNI

…………………

“For example, let’s say you launch a Facebook campaign to get 1,000 “likes” for your brand page. You make your goal of 1,000, but what’s to say those people will attend your event or even visit the page at a later date? You have to offer them something of value in order to create a social consumer. That social consumer might then provide feedback on the event and even influence peers to attend. Figure out what your audience wants, and give it to them — over and over. You have to give them a reason to both connect and come back.” ~Brian Solis, Altimeter Group

……………………….

How does influence translate into dollars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztUOVVZAxvU

……………………….

A PROCESS: A THOUSAND TRUE FANS as derived VIA KEY INFLUENCERS

1. TWITTER SET-UP AND BRANDING: Set up a non-branded Twitter account for market research purposes related to specific customers (ie. – Tourism, Hotel, Restaurants, Art, Fashion). Value: This will be our “window” into the Interest Graph.

2. KEY INFLUENCER IDENTIFICATION & FOLLOW: Identify 1000 Key Influencers using Listorious (http://www.listorious.com) AND Research.ly (http://research.ly). Follow these 1000 influencers in the non-branded Twitter account. Value: Know the Social Influencers related to your vertical market, customers and competitors. Connect to them for realization of sales goals, event opportunities and growing awareness in regions/communities you may not have penetrated. Grow the network around the customer for the purposes of connection, sales and marketing.

3. CSV FROM TWITTER (with 3rd Party Tool): Download a CSV from Twitter (with a 3rd Party Twitter Export tool like Export.ly – http://export.ly).

4. CSV TO FLIPTOP (or other tool): Upload CSV of Twitter account to Fliptop or another tool to discover influencers’ locations ACROSS The World Wide Mind (http://www.theworldwidemind.com). Value: (a) I get to see where my influencers are in other social properties AND (b) I get to hear and see what they are messaging about.

Discussing The World Wide Mind with Eleftherios Hatziioannou in Athens, Greece. May 25, 2011.

5. FOLLOW THE INFLUENCERS IN FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN AND OTHER SOCIAL PROPERTIES: We will translate our findings into actual friends in the social networks and begin the process of connecting with these friends. Value: Influential friends in the Social Graph that we have discovered via the Interest Graph.

6. TWEET CREATION/COPYWRITING: Turn entire corporate site, blogposts and other collateral into tweets. The goal here is to get around 150 tweets for scheduled posting. Also, derive and mash-up content BASED UPON current and trending conversations WITHIN The World Wide Mind. Value: Influencers who follow you will become aware of what you offer and interact with you on this. Note: for a non-branded research account, we can copy-write industry and niche-related tweets.

7. TWEET SCHEDULING: Schedule these tweets in Social Oomph – (http://www.socialoomph.com). Value: This will be pre-scheduled so you do not have to keep tweeting (the tweeting will be automatic).

8. KEY INFLUENCER CONTENT SUMMATION: Summarize what the 30-50 top influencers are saying in the Twitter accounts. This would be “culled” from their latest 100 tweets. Value: This is a very powerful option, that will give branding teams insight into what top influencers are talking about.

9. KEY INFLUENCER ENGAGEMENT: Engage and nurture relationship with Key Influencers. Results sought: (a) Getting the Key Influencer to follow you back (b) Getting the Key Influencer to re-tweet, share or post a message originating from you (c) forming a business partnership with the Key Influencer for mutual benefit and the benefit of the customer (customer-centric business).

RESOURCES:

THE WORLD WIDE MIND: http://www.theworldwidemind.com

A THOUSAND TRUE FANS: http://www.a-thousand-true-fans.com

THE LONG TAIL DEBATE: Long Tail Debate: http://bit.ly/long_tail_debate + Long Tail Keywords http://bit.ly/long_tail_keywords

The World Wide Mind

The world is made of stories, not of atoms. – Rukeyser

worldwidemind

THE PRISM OF STORIES: Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism is the “eye in the sky” at this time. If one wants to peer into the World Wide Mind, no better microscope is needed than the Conversation Prism. The networks and social sites within this Prism are both social and interest focused. The Prism is a living image that pulsates with our conversations, relationships and potential. And our mysteries.

THE MYSTERIES WITHIN THE PRISM: If one peers deep enough through the Conversation Prism, the resulting transparencies AND mysteries are truly profound for the individual, the community and humanity itself. In fact, one finds that transparencies (what is revealed) tend to invoke even deeper mysteries. In the words of the great and current mathematician, Grigori Perelman, “Emptiness is everywhere and it can be calculated, which gives us a great opportunity.” It could be said that the white space, the “dark matter”, the shadows within AND between the social properties in the prism offer the MOST potential. Tools like Research.ly and Recorded Future are helping humanity plumb these seemingly “empty” spaces.

THE HUES OF OUR GLOBAL MIND: I have identified one property from each shade of the Prism. These are first layers of an onion: the conscious level of our World Wide Mind, our collective psyche. The next layers are found through the conversations discovered when one searches one’s interests, customers, competitors and questions WITHIN the World Wide Mind.

communitymind

QUESTIONS DEVELOPERS SHOULD ASK THEMSELVES: Developers should ask themselves what new apps, new social properties and new functionalities lie BETWEEN these existing social properties. Which of these social properties should “mate” one another? What does a conversation between Quora and LinkedIn sound like? What does a love affair between Technorati and Disqus look like? Are there categories that have yet to emerge? Can the Prism be even more finely divided?

SOCIAL BOOKMARKS: STUMBLE-UPON presents only web sites suggested by other like-minded Stumblers. Think: Bookmark. Not all those who wander are lost. ~J.R.R. Tolkien

COMMENT AND REPUTATION: DISQUS builds active communities from comments at your website, blog or web portal. Think: Debates & Innovation via Conversation.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it. ~Joseph Joubert

WISDOM OF THE CROWDS: REDDIT is a source for what’s new and popular on the web. User’s vote content up and down. Think: Democracy. Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. ~George Bernard Shaw

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS: QUORA is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. Think: Question Answered! Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much. ~Francis Bacon

COLLABORATION: BASECAMP is the leading web-based project management & collaboration tool. To-dos, files, messages, schedules, & milestones. Think: TeamWork. Unity is strength…when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved. ~Mattie Stepanek

SOCIAL COMMERCE: GROUPON negotiates huge discounts—usually 50-90% off—with popular businesses. Think: Coupons. A History of Coupons Infographic. -http://bit.ly/history_of_coupons A History of Groupon. –http://bit.ly/history_of_Groupon

BLOG PLATFORMS: POSTEROUS lets you post things online fast using email. You can attach any type of file & POSTEROUS posts it to your POSTEROUS blog & social properties along with the text of your email. Think: Writers and Authors. It’s not what happens to people on the page; it’s about what happens to a reader in his heart and mind. ~Gordon Lish

BLOGS/CONVERSATIONS: TECHNORATI tracks the authority and influence of blogs AND provides a comprehensive & current index of who & what is most popular in the Blogosphere. Think: Bestselling Authors. One of the biggest challenges is how do you make that content more easily discoverable, easily consumable, easily digestible. ~Fortune Tech

SOCIAL CURATION: PAPER.LI organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Think: Journalism. Curation itself isn’t new; it’s just the way that some of us are doing it online that’s fairly new. The tools have evolved, but the goal of capturing a story and turning people’s attention to it isn’t. ~Andy Carvin (http://twitter.com/#!/acarvin)

SOCIAL CURATION 2: SPOT.US enables the public to commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting. Think: Journalism. We no longer look for news, it finds us. ~Lee Mikles

STREAMS: TWITTER – The ultimate source of Interest-related information. Everything and anything is being messaged about 24/7 here. TWITTER is THE golden key to discovering INFLUENCERS. Think: Giant Rivers of Information. Twitter is a tool for “anarchic learning and peer support”. ~John Davitt

NICHEWORKING: YAMMER is a tool for making companies & organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: What are you working on? Think: Walkie-Talkies in The Factory. Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. ~Yammer HQ

DIY + CUSTOM SOCIAL NETWORKS: JIVE is THE social business solution delivering features of popular social networking, community, collaboration, and content management software in a single highly secure enterprise platform. Think: Social Business. Business Process Management (BPM). Jive enables businesses to engage with their employees and create environments where ideas can be shared, knowledge can be shared, and expertise can be shared, to create efficiencies and help unlock value. What’s missing is businesses understanding how to organize for that collaboration to occur, and how to integrate those tools to allow collaboration. ~Jeff Dachis, Founder and CEO, Dachis Group

SOCIAL PHONES: SKYPE is a software application that allows users to make voice calls and chats over the Internet. Group calls, file-sharing also. Think: Telephone
The acceleration of Skype. http://bit.ly/skype_stats2011

SOCIAL NETWORKS: FACEBOOK is THE BIG-ONE. You dream how you want to do it and you can do it here via a dizzying array of apps and methods of communicating. Think: The Ocean/Universe. There’s lots of stuff none of us have ever seen before. That’s good in some ways, but limiting in other ways. ~Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook

LISTENING & TARGETING: RESEARCH.LY allows users to build “on-the-fly” communities based around any interest. Non-branded Interest-Graphs built with RESEARCH.LY provide one of the BEST sources of real-time collective intelligence. Think: Market Research/Focus Groups
Jodee Rich, Founder and CEO of PeopleBrowsr, talks about Research.ly – http://bit.ly/about_researchly_2011

BUSINESS NETWORKING: LINKEDIN is a networking tool to find connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Think: Career Building/Networking with Colleagues. See Twitter and Quora as golden keys to LinkedIn. Data will be the platform of the next era of the web, of Web 3.0. This is where some massive innovation will happen that will transform our lives. ~LinkedIn Founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman

ATTENTION/COMMUNICATIONS DASHBOARDS: HOOTSUITE is a web and mobile social media dashboard that helps individuals and organizations spread messages, monitor conversations and track results across multiple networks including Twitter and Facebook. Think: Thread & Needle (this is a tool for “knitting” communities). “HootSuite was created at a digital agency called Invoke where we experienced the problem of managing multiple social accounts on multiple networks for multiple clients,” said Community Marketing Director Dave Olson. “So we set out to solve this problem elegantly. We created a comprehensive social media dashboard allowing you to manage multiple networks & profiles from one place, plus share access with teams without compromising security.”

REVIEWS & RATINGS: YELP is a hyper-local search network and app where you find restaurants, hotels, bars and TONS of other types of businesses. Think: Reviews.
How Yelp got its name from the CEO: http://b.qr.ae/yelp_name

LOCATION: FOURSQUARE gives you & your friends new ways to explore your city. Earn points & unlock badges for discovering new things. Think: Social Compass.
What do users want in a location-based app? http://b.qr.ae/users_locationbased_apps

VIDEO: YOUTUBE is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the United States. Also the world’s 2nd largest search-engine. Think: TV. YouTube to spend $100 million on TV shows. Plans to create online TV ‘channels’. http://bit.ly/YouTube_TV_100milliondollars

sCRM: SALESFORCE is a collaboration suite for the enterprise to connect and share information securely in real-time. Think: CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Why did Salesforce.com succeed? http://b.qr.ae/salesforce_success2011

DOCUMENTS & CONTENT: SLIDESHARE is an online slide hosting service. Users can upload files in the many file formats. It is also amongst the World’s Top 10 tools for education & e-learning. Think: PowerPoints. White Papers. Dissertations. Professional Writing.
How to Maximize the Value of Slideshare for your business? http://bit.ly/maximize_value_of_slideshare2011

EVENTS: MEETUP helps groups of people with shared interests plan meetings & form offline clubs in local communities 
around the world. Think: Circles of Interest. Mapping the genome of groups may help us understand ourselves as we behave within a broader collective. ~http://bit.ly/the_value_of_groups

MUSIC: LAST.FM lets you effortlessly keep a record of what you listen to from any player. Based on your taste, 
Last.fm recommends you more music and concerts!Think: Music Community/Social Radio. THE social property that allows one to mine the subconscious psyche of the community via music discovery. There is so MUCH hidden gold here in this endless and tapestried symphony of artists. ~Ladydust

WIKI: WIKIPEDIA is a free encyclopedia built collaboratively using wiki software. Think: Encyclopedia. A history of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

VIRTUAL WORLDS: WORLD OF WARCRAFT is currently the world’s most-subscribed Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with more than 12 million subscribers as of October, 2010. Think: Dungeons & Dragons morphing into actual economies and battlegrounds. Virtual Currencies. Virtual World Master List (flipped sideways so download this PDF and rotate clockwise: https://thesocializers.com/VW_masterlist.pdf)

LIVECASTING: USTREAM allows you to broadcast video LIVE to the world from a computer, mobile or iPhone in minutes, or watch millions of live OR pre-recorded shows. Think: Social TV. Social TV platforms and research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_television + http://bit.ly/future_of_socialTV_report2011

PHOTO: FLICKR is the largest and best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Think: Photo Communities. About image retrieval via tags – http://imageclef.org/2011

RESOURCES: The demographics and statistics on useage of specific social networks 2011 report by Ignite Social.

Managing Global Social Communities for Enterprise-Level Brands: An interview with Eleftherios Hatziioannou

NATHANIEL HANSEN, CEO OF THE SOCIALIZERS INTERVIEWS Eleftherios Hatziioannou New Media Manager of s.Oliver and former Social Media Manager for Mercedes-Benz Global.

This is the English version of a feature interview I submitted to Marketing Week Magazine in Greece. The article was published in the May 1-5 2011 issue. The Greek version may be found here.

eleftherioshatziioannou

1. How do enterprises handle the 24-7 nature of online social communities?

This is indeed one of the big challenges businesses have to deal with in a truly globally connected world where people get more and more used to non-stop real-time interaction. When Europe goes to bed Asia rises. There is a 24/7 stream of information and conversations going on which can be of interest for brands and businesses. But business can handle it! How? Like in real life it is all about defining some kind of a rhythm to manage the information and issues. Once you have set up the processes, roles and tools, you just need to be disciplined and do your work day-by-day. And never forget: What counts in real life counts for the social web as well. Over time you create a culture and people understand when to expect an immediate answer and when it can take some time. Communities are smart enough to understand that even a community manager needs a break. I suggest to everyone involved in social communities to be really open about what they can offer and what not. One solution could be defining a “netiquette”, which includes basic rules and guidelines about what people can expect from you and when. Like the “old school” signage at the doorstep of your shop.

2. What criteria do you use in discovering technical solutions for social campaign management and internal facing social solutions?

It depends on what you are looking at and in which phase of your social media engagement you are in. It is an evolutionary process after all. Let’s have a look at “web monitoring”. I suggest that if you are just getting started you do a lot of manual work: reading through comments, searching for tweets related to your company and also creating lists of the blogs which are interesting for your business and subscribing to them. You could organize relevant blogs with tools like Google reader for example. There are a lot of other free tools, e.g. Twitter search, to start with.

However, once you grow and start doing more activities it makes sense to look into professional monitoring tools in order to manage the amount of topics and also being able to analyze and report to your management. I recommend looking at different tools and deciding which one fits your needs best. It doesn’t mean that the expensive solution is also the best. What I definitely prefer are tools which allow you to not only have a “radar” system in place but to work with your findings by transferring them into your internal collaboration space. Think about reading a critical or false statement in a blog which you want to share with your PR colleagues who decide whether to make an official statement or not. The more you open up for the online dialogue the more you want to assign tasks with just a few clicks. Other than that simplicity is king! You want to make it easy for your co-workers to embrace the “change”.

3. What goals are realistic when managing social communities and how do excellent community managers succeed?

Behind every blog, account and profile there is a human being with basic needs: The need to be heard. The need to be appreciated. The need to be part of something greater than himself/herself. An excellent community manager understands these needs. He acts like a real friend. If you want to be a good community manager just think of how relationships and friendship works in normal life. He is the “real deal”. He is not faking anything. He is like a bridge between the inside and the outside of the company translating the language and culture in a way that it can be understood in both directions. He is a strong communicator with excellent social skills. A real champion talks with and not to the community. He filters topics according to their relevance for his audience and balances between company’s and the community’s interests. And last, but not least, he always keeps his promises and openly corrects mistakes. Belive it or not: Communities forgive when you are open about your mistakes. And who’s perfect by the way?!

4. How would your strategy differ when managing social media outposts and a branded community?

The biggest difference would be that in a branded community – which is more of a private thing – you can do more and dive deeper into user engagement. People sign up – with all the data you need to know to be safe- because they really want to be in touch with you. In general it is more of a “trusted” environment where you can engage on a deeper level. Look at it like a VIP lounge in a club. Members feel special but also expect a more “exclusive” treatment. It is more difficult to reach a broad audience if you are not a company like Apple or Google who managed to build huge audiences and communities around their excellent products and services giving special benefits to loyal users, e.g. like testing new devices first or using services before the official launch. I like the concept of branded communities especially in the B2B space where you want to have a certain level of confidentiality or privacy.

It is a different story to build and manage a community on a open and massive platform like Facebook for example. There is definitely less control. People “like” you on the go by simply clicking one button. The same applies to leaving your page again. It is a much faster game and you need to really make sure not to overload the community with your contents and tasks. This applies to formats, tonality as well as lengths of post or videos,etc. related to your communications.

thesocialgeneration

5. What types of insights are most valuable to you from business intelligence gathered via social network analysis? How can such insights also be applied internally in fomenting culture change?

All insights are valuable. The more you know the better you understand the game. At least in this stage of the social media evolution. What is interesting though that in the beginning you appreciate growth in quantitative aspects. “We grew by 1000 fans in Facebook over the past week”, “we have 500 new followers on twitter this month”, “we served 1.000.000 impressions with our campaign”. This numbers definitely help creating awareness and build momentum in the beginning because we were used to measure success in such facts (e.g. CPM – cost per mille). However, I find it much more important to look into the qualitative aspects as well. And in this regard we are still at the very beginning! There are no broadly applied KPIs yet which make your performance comparable. But anything is possible: Why not measuring service levels based on the amount of complaints coming in in relation to problems solved on Facebook? Why not comparing ratio of positive mentions to negative mentions on twitter in comparison to the last month to understand customer satisfaction levels? I guess it is pretty clear what I want to say. Social media is more than just a growing number of fans. Social media is all about real conversations taking place. And there are tons of valuable data available. Think about customer feedback or suggestions related to your product or service. The question is how to handle this inbound stream of information and learning from it?

6. What are your favorite online communities? Why?

My favorite social network is Facebook. I created my profile back in 2006 when I was helping a friend after work to build awareness for a social learning network among students. And back then Facebook was still a platform mainly for students. So we thought it would be the right place to promote this startup.

If I look at Facebook today it amazes me how much they have done right in the course of the past few years. The speed of action. The level of continuous innovation. And of course the massive growth in users and usage. They also managed to hire a lot of talent. I love Facebook for allowing me to connect with my family and friends around the world. They are far away but still so close. I know what`s happening and I can choose how public I want to be. But the social web offers more than Facebook: Think about blogs and how they democratized publishing. Think about twitter and how fast we learn about news in the world today. Or think of the new rising stars who built their audience on YouTube. I find it really amazing to see how technology allows human beings to thrive!

7. You’ve spoken in interviews about culture change internally. Often a period of “cleaning up the organization” prepares the enterprise more fully for social engagement. Speak to the challenges of doing this and also the specific obstacles in a country like Greece.

Change is never easy and you have to make sure that people understand what it is all about. This means that you first have to understand where people are standing right now and what their values are. A colleague in HR in his late 50 with no Facebook profile needs to be addressed differently than a 30-year old colleague in the Marketing team already reading blogs about marketing related issues. What I find valuable is to use the concept of “storytelling” for internal change. Create relevant stories related to the values and challenges of your opponent and also make time to look into and explain the social web. Ask your CEO to “Google” himself or do a live demo of mentions about your company or products. This will work magic – trust me.

Finally, really take your time. Change does not happen over night. Spread the virus, talk to as many people as you can. Walk the talk. You cannot preach change without living it yourself. So spend a lot of time sharing links and information related to social media. Create working groups and inform people about the latest stuff and news. In short: Evangelize and keep walking!

8. Forward looking, what developments in technology do you believe are most relevant to where social communities are headed? How about in relation to where internal corporate culture is headed?

A really interesting question. What is happening right now is that we are going through a complete transformation of our communication and information behavior based on the technologies available and the development of infrastructure (networks, devices, prices for data plans). If you look at the younger generations (digital natives) you see that using various media simultaneously is a normal thing. They got used to real-time information, easy sharing of information, collaboration with friends and all the other technology-driven advances. It has become a natural thing to them. Now, imagine what this means for the “workforce” of tomorrow. Do you think they will come and work for companies which are stuck in the past? Working on ancient soft- and hardware? You cannot expect that they come into the office and forget about all the great tools and features they use in their leisure time.

So besides the cultural change in terms of opening up for online dialogue, embracing social media as a driver for business excellence and stronger customer relations we need to answer the following question: How does the workspace of the future look like? How do we learn from social media about better collaboration? And how can we make work being a playground again for more creativity and innovation? How can we empower our teams to excel?

zodiacsocialteam
Eleftherios Hatziioannou (1), Babis Mavridopoulos (2), Nathaniel Hansen (3) and Peter Economides (4) at the Intercontinental Hotel, Athens, Greece. March 2011.

9. What’s your favorite spot in the world?

Generally speaking I love the sea. Especially the Aegean. I guess it has to do with my origin which lies on Rhodes, in the Dodecanese, where my family lives. The deep blue colour, the sandy beaches and the lovely sun in August/ September are truly amazing and work magic if you want to re-charge for business. I will be back in May or June.

Add’l resource: Brian Solis interviews Eleftherios Hatziioannou on Solis TV here.