The “six ways to make Web 2.0 work” article has been getting a lot of retweets on twitter, and a lot of references from different blogs (footnote: really interesting to see the echo-chamber that blogs and twitter have become to be when you research something like this, some even repeat the entire article with embedded “we agree” additions throughout the text). The thing is: I don’ t get it. Where is the real relation with Web 2.0? Are any of these points mentioned specifically related to Web 2.0? Or can I replace Web 2.0 with any modern new technology? Although the answer might already be clear from the way the question is phrased, my answer is: Yes.

I think all the six points mentioned can be valid for any technology introduction, that is: if the introduced technology  is going to be used by humans . Do a check yourself, and you will probably agree. the reason that I say “can be valid” is that some might not necessarily be true for some occasions, and other points/rules might pop-up for others. My current employer has developed a methodology that structures the synergy that is required between People and Technology in order to achieve the desired business outcomes. So far, the methodology has mainly been put to practice for introducing the New World of Work in Enterprises, but due to its generic nature it can be used for any situation where the synergy between people and technology is crucial.

Agree / disagree? Let me know, I am interested in feedback on this …. !

Forrester published a missing piece of the puzzle yesterday. Already had some discussions with clients in B2B regarding the social technographics for their audiences, but so far very little information was available. That changed yesterday when Forrester published a new report that specifically addresses the bussiness-to-business sector. And guess what, even Forrester thinks the results are startling (to say the least).

Forrester’s advise? MOVE, MOVE, MOVE! Well, to be honest, those are my words, their advise is a little more subtle: “If you’re a B2B marketer and you’re not using social technologies in your marketing, it means you’re late“.

Ok, after playing with a dummy account in January 2008 I finally registered vanWilgenburgh last week and re-started my Twitter experience. Opinion so far? Damn, another distraction channel …..

Mainly listening in on some interesting people Twittering, doing very few posts myself, still figuring it out I guess. To be honest, I far less sceptical than I was a year ago, starting to see some value here. Got tips? Let me know!

Although I pre-ordered this, which got me in to Seth’s Tribe, I did not find the time so far (or should I say make time available?) to actually read it. To be honest, so far I found Purple Cow far more remarkable to read, but then, this might still change (and I will keep you updated ….). The good news is that there is consistency here ….. there is a red line, curious to find out whether this red line is still able to surprise me before I finish the book

The book already got me thinking though, how do I combine Seth’s thoughts in Tribes, with todays reality, and the POST method handed to us by Forrester ….. ping me if you have thoughts about this

No I did not, but I’ve been strangely busy in also sorts of ‘real life’ stuff: birthdays, marriages, kids, dog, painting ….. So, time to write new blog posts has been very limited, but, in the reading I’ve done in the lost in-between minutes I’ve come across two things that I would quickly like to share.

The First is a quote that is funny and sticks:

“You can’t take something off the Internet. That’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool”

I think it does a great job of describing the problem that large corporates have in controlling the messaging around their brands and products. If ‘the word’ is out, and you don’t like it, there is nothing you can do about it. Well, there is one thing: face it, and join the conversation!

The second is a great image from Forrester: The New Marketing Funnel. No comments on this one, I will do a separate post on commenting this illustration (ok, one comment: I like it a lot!).

I had an interesting (offline) discussion with regards to my previous post. The key feedback I got was that ORM focuses on the negative side of the online conversation, it is still triggered from organizations trying to stay in control of their brand. Fact is that the real value in the online conversation is only tapped if organizations focus on the opportunity. In simple words: if your brand/product is being talked about, learn from it, understand the opinion/perception and leverage it!

I partly agreed with this feedback, although the real life cases I have seen sofar quickly learned a key lesson: you can only tap the value of the groundswell if you forget about control. Your Customers are in control, and they are waiting for you to listen and react.

I attended the second Social Strategy Talk yesterday. First of all complements to VINT! Great event, good speakers, good interaction, in short: an inspiring meeting. Thanks for organizing this. Below my observations and thoughts (although I have to admit that I did miss the end because I had to leave early due to other obligations).

Nokia – Younghee Jung

Younghee had an inspiring story. The relation to social media and social strategies was less clear to me. She elaborated on a community design competition organized by Nokia Design.  The competition was held in real, physical communities (Dharavi, Jacarezinho, Buduburam). They basically researched Urbanization as driver for new requirements for mobile phones. I found the presentation interesting, and inspiring because the environment and social and cultural dimensions of these communities are way off from my day to day life.

Interesting was also how the MC (Menno van Doorn) challenged us to talk 10 minutes to someone and come-up with a design for a new mobile phone that would make that person more productive.  No shocking ideas resulted, although the idea of a beamer in a mobile phone sounded far off, someone in the audience (Stijn Grove) actually new that phone is already for sale on http://www.chinavasion.com (for only 257.98 euro )

After Younghee’s keynote, three enterprises got 10 minutes each to present their social strategy, and ask the audience a key question. The audience was divided in three groups that would work on these questions in the break.

Vodafone:  Listening to the groundswell – Arie de Zeeuw

The Vodafone presentation by Arie de Zeeuw was very inspiring. In my opinion they really made the right start in joining the online conversation: “start listening”. They made this start with an intern who got the assignment to listen for three months, and do no more than that. Their conclusion after these three months: ” we have been blind for a very long time”. Key question for much of the conversation they tap on the internet is ” what to do with it” . Many things really deeply touch their internal processes and are far from easy to resolve. Arie pointed out that CEO level commitment was critical to follow-through on the input they got. They have this commitment at Nokia, as they are on a quest to be the top mobile brand in the Netherlands (which is a challenge as there is very little brand loyalty for mobile operators in the Netherlands).

The initiative that started with an intern has grown into a 6 FTE Web Relations team. This team will not engage in online discussion, but will use a new internal process to trigger changes and formal responses from the Vodafone organization.

Their lessons learned sofar:

1.       No guts no glory. But, respect the web, learn the rules of the game (conversation / community) and stick to them

2.       Be Fast, this is what the online community expects. Fast as in: “faster than the normal internal systems”.

3.       Learn and improve. The online feedback offers ample input and opportunity to change the organization and its services for the better. These changes are often not simple, but the reward is high.

Sellaband: Embracing the groundswell – Pim Betist

Great start of this presentation. He made us listen to some music, asked our feedback. My opinion (and of many others in the room): really good music. His statement: you would never have heard this artist without the Sellaband Community.

Their model is simple and interesting. The community pays for the production of a CD: they essentially fund the artist, and get a copy of the CD and a share in the revenue. In the end Sellaband will save us from a world of Britney and Justin clones.

Their key question was a challenging one: how do we move forward? Pim explained that they see two key models in moving forward, that might be mutual exclusive: “Broadcaster”  vs. “Facilitator”. Essentially: do we solely facilitate the process, or can we also started broadcasting (marketing?) the things we really like in the music database that we are creating as Sellaband. My personal opinion: facilitate broadcasting by community members, turn them into DJs and Personal Radio Stations.

KLM: Energizing the groundswell – Hans Zijlstra

Hans explained Club China and Club Afrika. Two initiatives to create communities for starting entrepreneurs that are focusing on doing business in/with these areas. The value for KLM is improved brand engagement: loyalty, co-innovation, marketing effectiveness and organic word of mouth. I particularly liked the simple drawing that Hans had in his presentation. It showed how community insight would be the foundation on which profitable growth can and will be build (I will try and post that illustration later here). The key question for KLM was an obvious, but not a simple one: how can we further build and leverage these two communities in a way that will contribute to the bottom-line of KLM

With regards to my earlier post on Listening to Twitter, I actually found two more things that I think are interesting to share.

ComCast

I referred to the interesting article in the New York Times regarding how Comcast is embracing Twitter as an additional channel for communication with and support of their customers. Take a look at this Twitter User: Comcastcares. This show the interactions that they are having and the responses from the Twitter users that this users interacts with. I think we can all learn from just observing the threads of the discussion this user/comcast is having.

Setting up a simple monitor for twitter

I overlooked this option myself, so figured others would suffer from the same problem. If you do a search on Twitter then in the top right there is an orange RSS icon  with “Feed for this query”. This is of course a very simple way to get automatic updates on the things you want to monitor on Twitter pushed to your desktop in an RSS Reader.

(originally posted in Dutch on August 20th, 2008)

Twitter is a nice example of innovation driven by technology. For those not yet familiar with Twitter: you can send messages (tweets) with a maximum of 140 characters, everyone that subscribed to your ‘tweets’ will automatically receive all your updates (most often via SMS).

My first encounter with Twitter left my clueless as to why anyone would want to use this. 140 characters? Receive updates via SMS? What is the use? Another great example of technology push: geeks will love it, but there is no broad adoption as the value is unclear to the average joe.

The value of Twitter for Organizations

I’m still not a real Twitter adept, but it is clear by now that organizations can no longer ignore what is happening in this new communication channel. Why not? As the the Cluetrain Manifesto already stated: ‘Markets are conversations’. Marketing and PR have changed by now, organizations can no longer simply broadcast their corporate message into the market. They need to engage in the conversation that is taking place. In order to do this step 1 is to listen (the Groundswell nicely elaborates on this as well). Key question of course is: how? With all the conversation taking place on Twitter, how can I monitor all these tweets to see who is saying what about my products or markets?

Step 1 – Listen: what’s being said on Twitter

Twitter is offering search functionality (after the acquisition of summize) which allows you to search through all tweets. This offers organizations the opportunity to regularly monitor what is being said about their product, markets and services. Take my old employer for instance, a query for Tridion will return a lot of results, here are two examples:

A positive example: “My apologies Tridion. One-hour support response for business hours only. Thanks to Andre for his assistance.”

A negative example: “Back from a usergroup meeting. Tridion is just as bad as it was 3 years ago….How can someone work with that crap?”

It does not take a lot of thought to come up with actions that you could take for these tweets. A good example of an organization that is actively using Twitter is Comcast. The New York Times has a good article on how Comcast is not just listening to the online conversation but also taking actions. The article also shows that the tone and style of the (re)action need to be carefully chosen. The online user might feel like ‘big brother is watching’, which will undermine the potential positive impact of the actions taken.

Step 2 – Joining the conversation on Twitter

This step starts by claiming your name on Twitter, which can be a challenge as anyone can register a ‘name’. As a result, many brand names have already been ‘hijacked’. This posting contains a good overview of brands and their presence on Twitter. As this post also shows, not everyone is making the distinction in listening and joining the conversation. My advise: get your name(s), actively listen, and use the POST method to determine if and in which way your organizations wants to embrace the conversation on Twitter. In short summary this means: first get the social technographics of your audience clear, then determine your objectives, and based on these develop a strategy & plan how you want to engage in the online conversation.