Driving Social Media From Behind the Firewall

This is a guest post from Michael Brito, and the fourth and final installment in the Internal Social Media series. Michael is here to share with us some of his actual, real-life experiences with implementing social media inside organizations.  Special thanks to Michael for sharing his experiences from the trenches. You can follow Michael on Twitter or check out his social media blog.

Most of my professional career, I have been fortunate enough to work for some fantastic global brands; Hewlett Packard, Yahoo! and Intel. Within these organizations, my core focus has been driving consumer engagement using tools and strategies of the social web. And even though HP, Yahoo! and Intel are completely different organizations, many of the same challenges and conversations have arisen quite consistently.

Here are some things I have learned a long that way that I hope you can start thinking about within your organizations or small business:

Measuring Social ROI

A few years ago, it was the standard to measure growth rates in Twitter followers, Facebook fans and RSS subscribers.  Couple that data with a few slides from Omniture and management was all good; they rarely asked any questions. Even today, these are still very important metrics to analyze and report on but the bar has been raised.

The question we need to start asking ourselves is “how do we go about quantifying these numbers to show how they drive true business value and/or revenue?” Some have done a really good job, like Dell and the Dell Outlet Twitter account; but even then, there are several unknowns like the whether or not the sales from that program cannibalized higher margin sales on Dell.com or elsewhere.

I have read post after post that talks about “100 ways to measure social media”; and while these may be really good ideas, I think that having 100 ways to measure social media is contributing to the problem.  There is a lack of focus and specificity; like having metrics A-D-D.  If I am leading a marketing organization, all I have time to look at is 2- 3 metrics max.

So, these metrics should give me the insight to determine if the amount of financial investment I contribute to social media is actually driving sales, retaining customers or cutting costs. I don’t have the magic formula because there isn’t one. It will be different for every organization. And driving brand awareness won’t cut it anymore.

Research

There was a time in my life when I hated research; especially since I spent three years in grad school, yes three.  But research is a valuable asset if you do more than just talk about it.

The Forrester Social Technographic Latter of Participation is a great resource that allows marketers to understand how their users interact and behave on the social web. At Intel, we hired Forrester to map our internal audience segments to the technographic profile and the insights we learned were eye opening.  Since then and during my tenure at Intel, we used that data (which was not public) to drive many of our social media engagements; some of which are still in existent.

For example, last year at Intel we launched Digital Drag Race as a part of the Core i7 product launch. Digital Drag Race was a contest that focused on user generated video. We knew from the research that a high percentage of our segment was considered content creators (i.e. those who create content and share it on the web) so we built the entire program around that specific behavior.  The results were fantastic and we exceeded the metrics goals we decided upon prior to launch.

Top-Down Organizational Support

If an organization is not ready to embrace social media 100% internally from their leaders, they will not succeed in driving effective customer relationships externally. Embracing social media is more than simply saying “we want to join the conversation” and then investing a couple hundred thousand on a Facebook app promoting the next product. It’s a cultural shift that starts at the core of the organization; with the very people who represent the brand.

It is critical that management empower their organizations to work collaboratively. Building communities from behind the firewall is no easy task. There are a lot of things to consider; and collaboration across the organization (marketing, legal, PR, business units, customer support) is imperative. Decisions can take months and sometime years. Having adequate support and empowerment from senior management is important, especially during the budget planning process.

Full scale integration with other marketing channels: launching a blog, twitter account and Facebook page is useless unless there is tight integration across the board with retail, online, search, channel partners, resellers, paid media and the list goes on.  I don’t think it’s realistic that every piece of external communication has “social” built into it but it should at least be explored. In my experience, social media is usually an afterthought and this needs to change. Social media is an excellent way to humanize a brand; and adoption of it is growing exponentially across the globe. It’s important that brands think about integration from the beginning to prevent themselves from having disjointed, irrelevant communications.

Seeking Participation Across the Organization

A blog is good, but a blog without a solid editorial calendar, a human voice and a subject matter expert is not good.  Too many times, marketing and PR departments launch blogs and expect for people to actually read them.  I am sure it happens in some cases, but the true value in social media is when you have subject matter experts engaged with consumers on the social web answering product relates questions and/or offering customer support.

This brings up a whole new set of challenges, especially if the organizational culture has not fully embraced social media.  Usually marketing and PR departments have to seek out “volunteers” in the organizations or find the employees that are already active in the space. And even then, most employees who are interested in volunteering and are passionate about their products have other responsibilities so bandwidth becomes an issue.

The last thing you want to happen is for an employee to build up a solid reputation online and become a “trusted advisor”; to then have to abandon the community because of bandwidth. One solution would be to hire dedicated “technical advisors” where their sole responsibility would be to engage online; or seek management support in adding in “social participation” related job responsibilities within various job roles across the organization (i.e. a network engineer would code 80% of the time; and blog/tweet/whatever for 20% of the time). It would be part of their job and they would be measured on it.

Global Social Media Programs

This was part of my responsibility at Intel and it’s not easy. What may work in the US, Canada and maybe the UK will not necessarily work in India. For global brands, this nut has yet to been cracked but there are some good learning and best practices that can help brands manage this.

At Intel, there was a team that launched and managed a “social media integration forum” conference call once a month. Marketing leads from across the world attended and shared a little about any past or present campaigns or promotions. The calls were excellent but the challenge was that they were rarely actionable.  It was more about sharing and less about planning.

Marketing departments must not only share what’s going on in their regions; but they should also work together on integration with these various programs.  It’s going to be a challenge because social media is culturally driven.  However, there are certain things that US teams can do to help other regions succeed in the social web like providing digital assets (videos, widgets) that can be translated in various languages. Also providing a tool set or framework that will help global teams to create blogs/communities; and then consistent sharing of best practices and key insights.

Your Turn…

Thanks again, Michael, for sharing your practical and tangible experience around internal social media! What do you say folks? What questions might you have for Michael, and what experiences have you had that might be similar or different? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments.

How many languages do you speak?

Once again, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post from Twitter friend and savvy social communicator, Arik Hanson. I love shining the spotlight on smart, compelling people and Arik certainly fits that bill. Do take the time to check out Arik’s blog at Communications Conversations, and be sure to connect with him on Twitter to say hello.

In high school, I took French. I know, I know, Spanish is more practical. But I took French because there was this gorgeous girl—we’ll call her Sarah, to protect the innocent—that I was just dying to talk to. French class gave me an excuse. But, turned out, learning the French language also gave me a way to connect and converse with a whole bunch of other folks across the world.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve never actually used my French-speaking abilities to communicate with another living soul, but the opportunity is certainly there. C’est la vie.

The point: Learning a different language gave me the chance to communicate with a different population that I previously didn’t understand.

Think about the role of a community manager or social media strategist. They not only need to be able to “speak” social media (the easy part), but they most certainly need to be able to understand basic PR, marketing and communications principles.

Wait—we’re not stopping there.

There’s definitely an IT element to social media, right? Gotta be able to talk to those folks—using their terms and jargon. What about sales? They have a stake in the game, right? OK, I’ll give you that one. It’s pretty easy to talk to a salesperson—but you still need to understand what motivates them (hint: it rhymes with “stash”). Leadership? What, you thought you were you going to start engaging customers one-on-one online and not talk with senior leadership? You most definitely need to be able to communicate effectively with the C-suite. In fact, you need a whole heck of a lot more than just “effective” communication skills to talk to this crowd. You need to be able to build an argument. Make a case. And back it up. Big time. Oh, and they’re probably going to want metrics and measurable results, too. Don’t forget that little nugget.

Community builders need to be bilingual—multi-lingual really. You need to be able to step into an IT meeting and talk about firewalls, CSS and HMTL. Then, 10 minutes later, walk into a meeting with the CEO and tell him why you think it’s a good idea that he start engaging customers on Twitter.

You need to be able to sit in a room full of world-class marketers, savvy PR pros, IT staff and Wharton-trained leaders and talk intelligently about how you’re going to integrate social media tools into the existing marketing and communications mix.

You not only need to be able to speak different languages, but you also need to understand the worlds these vastly different groups live in. What makes them tick? What are their goals? What do they really care about? And how can you take all the information, make sense out of it and tie it together and put a big bow on it and deliver results for the organization?

But, that’s your job. You’re a community builder. It’s not a 9-5 job people. It’s 24/7/365. It’s thinking on your feet. It is, as Amber has said many times, “bridge building.” But before you build the bridges, you need the foundational elements. Like understanding the languages.

Parlez vous des médias sociaux? Technologie de l’information? Ventes?

Building the Social Media Chamber of Commerce: Humana

We’re all clamoring for real live examples of what’s working and what’s not, and I’m more than pleased to turn the stage over to Greg Matthews from Humana to share what’s he and his team have been up to over there.

Greg is the Director of Consumer Innovations where he’s focused on using social media to create different kinds of interactions with consumers, and he blogs at CrumpleItUp.com. As we wrap the “Building a Social Media Team” series, what better cap off than to hear – straight from the organization – what’s working for them? This post is big, but it is FULL of ideas and takeaways. Grab a bevvy, sit back, and learn.

Humana made the decision to step – lightly – into social media last year.  But the interesting thing is that it wasn’t really one decision, but many . . . perhaps dozens of decisions, happening all at about the same time. And when you think about it, it’s really not all that surprising that in a company of 29,000 people operating a complex business, the benefits of using social media became obvious to lots of us.  Or, at least, too enticing not to try.

For those of you who don’t know our company, we’re one of the bigger health benefits companies out there.  Here’s a pop quiz:  How many of you love your health insurance brand?  Nobody?  OK, how many of you find your health insurer easy to work with?  Ahh, yes.  A few more, but still not many.  How many of you find the health system easy to navigate?  Crickets again.

Can you imagine why we might want to make a deeper connection with consumers?  Why we might want to collaborate better with doctors and hospitals to make sure that our members get the best care for a reasonable price?  To connect healthy people with programs that will keep them healthy?  Then you can imagine why social media started to appear on everyone’s “solution radar” in 2008.

How it started

For me, it started with a realization that I couldn’t keep telling people that social media was a solution unless I started actually living it out.  So, I started doing the usual stuff – blogging, setting up a facebook page and even a twitter account.  You can read more about it here and here .

But things really took a turn when our team got some good press from the social media campaign for freewheelin.  That led to a presentation to Humana’s executive committee, and a directive to create some kind of company-wide platform that we could use to help bring together Humana’s social media activities into a common place. After having done some pretty low risk exploration, we figured that the first thing to do would be to lay out a set of principles to live by – and the Town Square was born.

The Town Square is a concept that says every department in the company can get a “lot” on the town square, and build whatever kind of building suits their business needs best.  It’s the place for Humana to understand, explore and use social media to take its business forward. It’s not about tools or technology; it’s about a new model for interaction and collaboration.  It’s for our customers, yes, but not JUST our customers.  It also applies to the way we work with doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, employers, the government and – yes – each other.

The Town Square model

We figured that if we were going to be working in social media, we needed to apply social media principles to the way we worked.  And that means that we weren’t going to be a governance committee.  Or an approval board (oxymoron alert!).

There’s only one rule in the town square . . . but it goes with six fundamental principles.  The rule is: We Share.  We share our ideas and plans.  We share what’s worked and what hasn’t.  We share vendor recommendations.  We share reference materials and resources. The fundamentals are important too, although pretty obvious:

• Authenticity – We’re honest, accurate and thorough.  We’re not marketing; we’re having a conversation.  We don’t keep secrets or spin the truth.  We’re people, too.
• Active Listening – We’re taking the time to stop talking and just listen.  We want to hear what you have to say – even if it’s negative.  When we enter a new space, we’ll listen first before we start talking.  We’ll listen for how we can make your life better or easier.  We are changing the way we work based on your needs.
• Going Where They Are – People go to the places and do the things they know, trust and enjoy.  You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you.  If it’s necessary for you to come to us, we’ll build you a bridge.
• Personal Voice – We will interact with you as people, not as a corporation.  I am accountable to you as a person, not as a corporation.  We will use language that you can understand – not just what’s convenient for us.
• Learning through Action – Nobody has found the “magic bullet” in enterprise social media.  We will try new things.  We realize that we will make mistakes and do things incorrectly, but we will learn as we go.  We’ll be honest about what we’ve learned, and celebrate our smart failures.  We’ll get better every time we try.
• Sharing/Open Source – We are adopting a culture of sharing, both inside and outside of Humana.  If we can’t share our successes and failures, we limit our ability to learn.  We don’t have to control, but we do have to communicate.  We will create a culture that emphasizes and values collaboration and sharing.

So now that we had a framework, we needed someone to start building around the square.  I mentioned before that there were a whole lot of people who’d begun to work in the space.  Our Perfect Service Innovation team was the first part of the company to work with an internal wiki for knowledge sharing.  Our Web/New Media team has launched a series of videos (over a million views on YouTube – pretty amazing!)  And another part of our marketing organization had launched a real social network for pre-retirees.

Continuing the Town Square metaphor, we needed to find a way to bring together the right people from around our business to carry the learning forward – we call it the “Chamber of Commerce.”  A group of 17 people – none above the Director level – from 14 different departments of the company.  They are all either currently engaged in some form of social media or preparing to be.

How we run it

We run it as a radical social media democracy.  It’s an un-committee.  We don’t have a charter, and we don’t have rules.  We don’t have a P&L and we don’t have a budget.  We don’t have a leader and we don’t have any formal reporting structure.  We even live-tweet our meetings (watch for hashtag #hcoc for Humana’s Chamber of Commerce).

We’re what a management guru might call a self-managed team.  The Chamber of Commerce itself doesn’t actually do any work or have deliverables … but it does set up workgroups that people in the team can voluntarily join – and since they’re all leaders in their organizations, they can also commission others to help. The Chamber of Commerce meets every 3-4 weeks, and our agenda usually looks like this:

• Updates from last meeting
• 1 member presents an update of their social media work: what is it, how and why did they do it, what have they learned?
• We incorporate a “voice from outside” to provide expertise
• One or more work-groups present updates

How does it work? It’s amazing.  It’s the only team I’ve been on that has nearly 100% attendance at every meeting – even, as it turns out, when they’re called at the last minute.  And you don’t have to look hard to figure out why.  It adds value to people’s jobs.  It fuels their passion.  And it’s one of the rare groups that actually lives up to the saying “you get out as much as you put in.”

What it means for Humana

We’ve recognized up-front that this new way of doing business will stretch and redefine the capabilities of every department in our company.  As a group  . . . so #hcoc will advise:

• HR on Creating a culture of collaboration, and on hiring, training and rewarding people for collaborating and sharing
• Marketing on having a conversation and building a brand based on collaboration
• IT on issues of security, access development and toolsets
• Legal on IP, compliance, liability and indemnity

I have to admit at this point that this is a new team – we’ve only been meeting since January.  We have really tough issues to tackle, and we all have “day jobs” that keep us busy.  And frankly, the biggest threat to the Chamber of Commerce is biting off more than we can chew.  But the value we can bring to our company is this:  There are very few large companies that have really made social media a differentiator for their business.  And I can’t really think of any in health or health care.

We know that health, and the health system, have to change.  Humana intends to continue leading that change through innovation and our focus on consumers. There’s a lot of work to do . . . but luckily we work in a company with 29,000 other people who can help.  And that’s what the Chamber of Commerce will be tapping into.

Special thanks again to Greg Matthews and the kind folks at Humana for sharing their experiences (follow Greg on Twitter and tell him thanks, too!). Let’s talk about what you’ve learned. I have to say that if a big, monolithic company like Humana can pulll this off, maybe you can too?

I am a Material Girl and want to live in a Twitter World

Today’s post is courtesy of the lovely and talented Ms. Rachel Reuben (@rachelreuben).

Rachel is is the Director of Web Communication & Strategic Projects at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She’s a member of the blogging team at http://doteduguru.com , and published “The Use of Social Media in Higher Education: A Guide for Professionals in Higher Education” in July 2008. Oh yeah, and she’s smart and fun and I’m delighted to have her guest post.

One of the sentiments I hear most on Twitter is: “The Twitter community is so helpful.” And, they’re right. So, why don’t we experience this more in real life?

I’ve found being hooked into the right network on Twitter has made a world of difference in my every day life — both professionally and personally. I get helpful tips for everything from developing a code of conduct for my online community, to how to make the best hamburger.

After a challenging afternoon at work, I recently tweeted about this helpful phenomenon, and it made me wonder why aren’t so many people we interact with in real life like this? I want to live in a Twitter world. Is this too idealistic?

@AmberCadabra responded, “What do you think the difference is? Birds of a feather flocking together and that? Or something else?” So, here’s my best guess at what causes this phenomenon.

In great part, we come to Twitter to find like-minded people. We are attracted to those with similar interests in real life. In certain fields and geographic locations it’s especially hard to find them physically nearby. Twitter gives us a virtual world filled with creative, brilliant, entertaining, people, and most of us have at least one common thread — we aren’t afraid to ask for help, and we’re equally as happy if we can provide it. It’s natural we flock together. We realize, there are more people like us out there. We’re not in this alone. There are others going through similar professional challenges and life changes. It’s a support group where you can hide behind your avatar, and not have to be in a room facing other people. Others who have been through similar situations are happy to jump in and share their lessons learned, or even just to be a virtual shoulder to cry on. There’s something ridiculously comforting knowing there are perfect strangers out there who support you, even if it is only 140 characters at a time.

I’ve developed some incredible friendships with people I only know through Twitter — most of whom I’ve never met in real life. Every single one of these relationships started because they were helpful to me, or I was fortunate enough to be helpful to them.

We tweet about our professions. Regardless of our individual fields, there tends to be overlap with social media. If I’m looking for help on something technical inside a Ning community, I don’t have to just reach out to my colleagues in higher education. Community managers across the globe spanning all industries can and often jump at the chance to help. Twitter difuses geographical boundaries. It sort of reminds me of the old-school chat rooms in Prodigy and AOL in the early/mid 1990’s, but in a much more immediate and focused way.

Imagine what the world would be like if real-life was like our Twitter world. You’d go to a grocery store and there’d actually be a real-life bagger, and s/he would ask if they could bring your groceries to the car for you. (Oh wait, that does exist at Publix in Florida.) You’d go into a Wal-Mart, where everyone has aprons that say “how can I help you?” and they actually would, instead of nervously avoiding eye contact and running away from you when you can’t find something in their behemoth of a store. You’d sit in on a committee meeting at work and offer to help with the next task at hand, and everyone in the room jumps at the chance to help as well. You walk into a packed auditorium and ask if anyone knows how to fix your broken Facebook application, and half the crowd stands up and shouts the answer to fix it.

In reality, most grocery stores I frequent don’t have baggers, would never offer to help bring groceries to your car, and are never around when you need help finding something. Committees tend to be filled with naysayers and difficult individuals who aren’t there to really contribute much.

But… what if they did? What if Comcast repair technicians were all as helpful as Frank Eliason is on Twitter (@comcastcares)? (Side tweet: Is Frank giving customer service workshops to regional directors who supervise these technicians to spread their service throughout the organization?) What if every single employee at Home Depot responded as quickly and kindly as @thehomedepot does — including follow-ups 24 hours later? Do these companies have the same inward culture as they appear with their Twitter personas?

If you’re representing your company/business/brand on Twitter — are you being helpful? Or, are you just “listening” and there for damage control? Excellent customer service is still the foundation of solid business success, and Twitter provides the perfect way to expand your customer service initiatives into this space. If you’re helpful on Twitter, that will build a strong foundation for relationships outside the Twitter world, which is, unfortunately where the far majority of us have to live most of our life. We could use more helpful people in this real life world.

What do you think it is? How does Twitter breed helpful people? Is Twitter doing the breeding, or are we just flocking together as Amber suggests?

I don’t know about you, but I want to continue being useful and surround myself with helpful people who reciprocate. I’ll wait here over in this Twitter world.