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Scorecard: Does Your Agency Fondle The Hammer?

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:12:39 +0000

Agency Partners Are Critical To The Success Of A Brand Your strategic agency partners are key to your success. They bring with them domain expertise, years of experience deploying, and a fresh injection of thinking that most brands can’t foster internally. As a result, relying on these agile partners outside of corporate walls if often key to responding to new technologies. Yet, as the technology landscape changes at an even faster pace than ever before, brands must have criteria in selecting the right agencies. Yet, Beware of Those That Fondle The Hammer Caution. Agency partners that are focused on technologies –not business needs, can destroy your brand. Although new technologies are emerging at an ever-increasing speed, creating a strategy based on tools will leave you in a churn of change, without anyway to escape. Agency partners that jump from one shiny tool to the next ( hammer fondlers ) risk poor implementation, not tying efforts to business goals and worst of all confusing your customers as you over-deploy. Don’t Let Your Brand Fumble In The Tool Chest — Focus On Building Your House Stop, breathe, think. Business hasn’t changed, just the mediums in which consumers are now using. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater just because new channels have emerged. Instead, focus on your business objectives and how they’ll meet your consumers existing behaviors, rather than yet another “Twitter strategy”. Rather than developing a strategy based on the latest tool –focus on the end goal of building a place for your customers to come interact with each other, and your brand. Look for agency partners that focus on customer behaviors, and business goals as the over-arching goal. Put Them Accountable: Score Your Agency Partners Now Use this review scorecard to see how your agency partners stack up now. Also use this as key criteria in finding new agency partners that focus on emerging technologies. Print it out, score them, and discuss plans to improve –be wary of those that aren’t ready to adapt. Scorecard: Does Your Agency Fondle Their Hammer? Criteria: Why It’s Important Scoring Criteria Points Strategy: Agencies are trusted partners in defining the direction a brand will head. Your trust in their experience to understand customers, your needs, and technologies is key. They must be experts at balancing all three spheres of the Web Strategy Spheres. 5) In addition to the below, develops a strategy based on your customers social behaviors see socialgraphics . 3) Develops a strategy based on your business objectives first. 1) Develops a strategy based on whichever technology emerges. ”You need a blog strategy” vs “You need a two-way communications strategy”. 0) Has no strategy. Vision & Roadmap. Agencies often come in two flavors: able to see long term based on experience, or unexperienced with only short term tactics. Your agency should have a track record in adopting new mediums –without throwing strategy out the window. Look for agencies that can see the long term –in the midst of many fast moving technologies. 5) In addition to number 4, allows for flexibility as new tactics must emerge. 3) Long term Vision: Has an over-arching strategy that spans quarters, if not years –not weeks, based upon customer goals. 1) Reactive: Have a different set of suggestions and recommendations based on whatever new technology appears. Last month, it was a Twitter strategy, this month it’s a Gowalla strategy. 0) Wait for you to tell them what to do. Partnerships: An Agency’s ecosystems is critical to their ability to implement –especially in a fast moving environment. Look for agency partners that can work well within your existing ecosystem of partners and technical teams, as well as bring their own set of strategic alliances to the table. The trick is, ensure your business goals are considered first –not the tools they have on hand. 5) Have a broad set of technology partners. 3) Only have a few technology partners, and coincidently are the same recommendations they present. 1) Has pre-built technologies –but not an agnostic mindset, recommends their technology over and over. 0) Has no alliances or ability to implement recommendations Proposals : What an agency brings to the table is going to help you determine how strategic your partner is. Look for agencies that are creative, can offer suggestions that haven’t been done before, or can defend why repeating an existing effort makes sense. Be sure to look for a pattern of proposals that first meet your customer needs and business needs –not just what they’ve done in the past. 5) When appropriate, willing to recommend other agencies to work with as that’s best for the client. 3) Provides recommendations that are agnostic of their existing tools or experiences. 1) Come to the table with case examples they’ve used for other clients –recommending you do the same. 0)Have no recommendations at all. Results: The ultimate measurement is the final ROI they provide to their clients. The proof lies within here. Don’t put success in fate’s hand, look for agency partners that set goals and benchmarks to achieve, and track their success over time. 5) Exceeds expectations of a positive ROI based on customer and business objectives. 3) Has shown success, but isn’t quite able to justify how it happened –they got lucky. 1) Was not able to demonstrate success –a weak set of customer engagements for a short period of time. 0) Was unable to demonstrate any capabilities at all. Total: Tally up their score Scoring and Rating Your Agency Partners Now that you have scored your agency partners, tally up the sum, then find out where they fall in the following ratings and rankings: 21-25 points: A strategic partner that has your brands best interest in mind and that of your customers. 16-20 points: A strategic partner that has your best interest in mind, but may be cutting corners when it comes to making recommendations for the long term, or truly understanding your customers. 11-15 points: Questionable partnership. This agency may have their own interests in mind before yours, as a result are certainly cutting corners by making recommendations of recycles campaigns, not thinking long term, or not investing enough resources in thinking long term. 0-10 points: Doh! Your agency fondles the hammer . You are at risk. Demand improvements or find someone that can meet your business needs now. Summary: Rather than Fondle the Hammer –Develop a Customer Strategy This scorecard, while will vary from industry to industry is a guideline for your success, having the right agency partners are key to you standing out in front of your customers –or just spinning your resources to no strategic end. Brands should use this scorecard in their discussions with account teams at their agency, and executive and account teams should hold themselves accountable to their own clients. With customers moving even faster to mobile, augmented reality, and location based social networks the rate of change is happening even faster. As a result, agencies must be strategic in their approach, or risk damaging the brand of their clients –or worse yet, losing the account all together. It would be great to hear from brands (buyer) and agency partners on how well they think they would score and why. Looking forward to the discussion.

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Scorecard: Does Your Agency Fondle The Hammer?

Forbes: Super Bowl, A Missed Opportunity For Pepsi

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:45:38 +0000

Left: There are four main categories of social strategy, yet with over 20 subset objectives, which we’ll discuss at a high level.

Greetings, fellow strategists, In my latest column for the Forbes CMO Network (read all my posts) I analyzed Pepsi’s big push into social. Also, you should see my detailed field notes, (I did my research before, during, and after the game, thanks to Trendrr folks) to measure any specific changes, before coming up with my findings. I did contact Pepsi pre article to get comments, although they sent me an email after the Forbes piece was up, see bottom response.

Super Bowl: A Missed Opportunity For Pepsi

Cola maker should promote its social cause on TV.

PepsiCo ditched the Super Bowl this year to make a major social media play. Instead of spending money for ad time on the Super Bowl, it’s relying primarily on digital initiatives to spread the word about its Internet-based Refresh Project contest and charity campaign.

The cause-marketing effort is a good one. Word is spreading through traditional media, online networks, social media and celebrity chatter. But I believe Pepsi made a big mistake in giving up its long-held Super Bowl ad real estate. A more integrated media approach–one that included the Super Bowl–would be a savvy play for Pepsi. And such integration is something top marketing executives need to keep in mind in their rush to embrace digital initiatives.

Let’s take a look at Pepsi’s campaign playbook.

The Big Gamble: Social Over Traditional Advertising
Pepsi, as a major ad player, knows that brand association is key to its marketing strategy. Company executives also know that there’s a shift in consumer adoption toward social technologies and that marketers can’t count on reaching the consumers they want to engage through TV. In response to this, Pepsi execs decided to spend the money the company typically plows into buying and creating Super Bowl spots–$20 million or so–to promote and fund a campaign that will identify causes that are worthy of supporting. At refresheverything.com Pepsi encourages consumers to submit ideas to improve community or causes then activate their personal networks to vote for the ideas. To date, the number of submissions possible for the first round of awards has been maxed. It also enjoys a continuous buzz on Twitter with the hashtag #PepsiRefresh.

Playing to its Strengths: Budgets, Celebrities and First Mover
Pepsi has a lot of things going for it. It has the deep pockets to keep a campaign going long-term. It has benefited from notable press buzz from being the first mover of a radical approach. Additionally, the company is using traditional media outlets to glean endorsements from celebrities, including New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on NFL.com. His charity of choice: the American Cancer Society.

Missed Opportunity: In-Game Tie-In
Pepsi made a misstep in this bold media shift: The company alienated a key channel and missed out on tying Pepsi Refresh to the most-watched TV event in Western media. By not having any in-game discussion on the advertisements, it was unable to use the Super Bowl or its advertisements as a catapult to launch the campaign into the social sphere. In fact, after the game, overall mentions of Pepsi and the Pepsi Refresh campaign remained relatively on the same trajectory as before. To look at a detailed set of my field notes and data, I’m tracking mentions using Trendrr of blog posts, Tweets and news articles on my field notes page.

Campaign Analysis: Advantages
Pepsi’s novel approach to social cause marketing is headed in the right direction. Pepsi benefits from:

First-mover advantage. By announcing a radical approach Pepsi took advantage of pre-event press coverage (including a story in Forbes).
Using celebrities to spur campaign. Pepsi invested in influential relationships by the utilization of celebrity endorsements.
Shifting to “we” over “me.” Pepsi has shifted traditional brand advertising efforts to now being more community-focused, enabling those who won the monies to spread the Pepsi brand on their behalf.
Planning for the long haul. Pepsi is making its marketing dollars go to work by extending the program over months, rather than a short flight of Super Bowl ads.

Campaign Analysis: Risks
While innovative, Pepsi has some clear challenges–and missed opportunities:

Pepsi has yet to show the world it gets social marketing. Its recent entry into the space with the edgy–but sexist–”Amp” iPhone applications resulted in severe backlash, and is now a case study on the infamous punk’d list.
Cultural mismatch. Pepsi’s history of mass marketing means it will need to change its internal culture to embrace social marketing, where success lies in letting go of control.
Missed opportunity to integrate Super Bowl TV ads with campaign. Pepsi’s biggest misstep is putting all its eggs in one basket–and not benefiting from synergies of multiple channels.

Takeaway: An Integrated Approach to Media is Best
By shifting so much of its annual ad budget from one channel to another, Pepsi missed an opportunity to spur word-of-mouth chatter about its Refresh initiative. Instead Pepsi should have relegated an appropriate amount of TV advertising budget to Pepsi Refresh, encouraging submitting ideas, voting and sharing in the context of the game. It would also introduce Pepsi as a socially conscious marketer to a larger group of people.

CMOs experimenting with digital and social technologies should not invest in them as a silo. They should instead be part of an overall integrated marketing effort.

JKO: Below is Bonin Bough, Pepsi’s Social Marketing strategist response via email. He’s given me permission to publish the following, and I appreciate the time he took to respond, and participate in an active dialog.

I enjoyed reading your initial analysis of our Pepsi Refresh Project.

Let’s me start by saying on your key takeaway, we are on the same page: An Integrated Approach to Media is Best.

And that’s the approach we’re taking with the Pepsi Refresh Project. Throughout the course of the year-long initiative, we’re absolutely using traditional channels — television included — to support it. Our decision not to announce the program on the Super Bowl was not because we don’t believe in the power of television. We do. Or that we don’t believe in the Super Bowl, specifically. We do. (As you know, we chose to advertise other PepsiCo brands during the game.) The decision was based on the opinion that it wasn’t the most contextually relevant way to tell the story. Arguable? Perhaps. But the conversation around the program — the amount of it and the overall tenor of it — thus far suggests that it may well have been the right approach.

But we’re going to continue to engage in, enable, listen to and evaluate the conversation. And if it seems that we need to course correct we will. A sign, I think, of an internal culture and a senior management that is embracing social marketing.

Of course, the Pepsi Refresh Project is about more than marketing. It’s about engagement … about building affinity and building advocacy by making a real and measureable difference in people’s lives. And that’s why we take very seriously your point about impact. We’ve aligned with top-notch partners including GOOD, Global Giving and Do Something in building the Pepsi Refresh Project. A leading academic and research group will be assisting with project follow-up and measuring community impact. We’re optimistic about the very great potential.

We’ll be watching and sharing as the ideas build, the stories unfold and impact becomes evident. I look forward to watching your analysis and continuing the dialogue throughout the course of the program and the course of the year.

JKO: Thanks Bonin, we’ll continue to watch the interesting moves Pepsi is taking in the space of disruptive technologies.

Quicktake: What Google Buzz Means

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:26:26 +0000

Google launches status update features
Google launches Buzz, which is similar to Friendfeed, which is now part of Facebook. Content will be aggregated, and then prioritized based upon the people you already email with, Harry McCracken and I call this a social graph based on history, “Historical social graph” or HSG. Secondly, this Google Buzz feature will rate and rank content based on activity and interaction within your social group. Users can choose to publish the Buzz in public, which will display on the Google Profile page. They also announced the ability to input this data from mobile devices and showed a voice to text scenario. They will make more announcements.

Enough about news, I’m sure you’ll find more on Techmeme, here are my insights.

Analysis: Impacts To Industry

At the high level, this is a strong move for Google, they continue to aggregate other people’s social content, and become the intermediatry. This helps them to suck in Twitter, Flickr, and any-other-data type as the APIs open up, giving them more to ‘organize’. This is Google acting on it’s mission to the world.
For consumers, the risk of privacy will continue to be at top of mind. Although the features allow for sharing only with friends or in public. expect more consumer groups to express concern. Overtime, this will become moot as the next generation of consumers continues to share in public.
For consumers, this could potentially have more adoption than Twitter as Gmail has a large footprint Google told me it’s tens of millions (active monthly unique). Of course, most Gmail users likely aren’t Twitter users, but there could be a large platform to draw from.
For small busineses and retailers, this will impact their search engine results pages, as a single top ‘buzzer’ could cause their content to be very relevant, if that person was relevant, then their influential content could show at top of SERP pages. Expect Google to continue to offer advertising options now around buzz content –fueling their revenues.
To Facebook, this is a direct threat, these features emulate Friendfeed and the recently designed Facebook newsfeed. Expect Google to incorporporate Facebook connect, commoditizing Facebook data as it gets sucked into Google and displayed on Google SERP.
This is good for Twitter in the short term, as it’ll amplify tweets, and suck them into a new system and give additional reach. Yet over time, status features will become a commodity, and Twitter as a destination will fade into the background.

Back in July 2009, I took a bold statement to say that Email and Social Networks are the same, I distinctly recall a lot of people disagreeing with this notion, but I think it became true today. Posted from the Googleplex at the live briefing, I also spoke to NYT.

Register For Webinar: Developing a Social Strategy by Objectives

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:11:17 +0000

Left: There are four main categories of social strategy, yet with over 20 subset objectives, which we’ll discuss at a high level.

Organizations that focus on social technologies suffer from the symptom of ‘Fondling The Hammer‘ . True social strategy stems from business objectives –not the latest technologies.

So often, companies develop social tactics based on the latest tool that’s sprung forth. Yet, so far and few in between to organizations develop an actionable plan based on business goals.

This second in our no-cost webinar series is coming up on the topic of social strategy. In the spirit of open research, we’re leading a discussion in public, and encourage you to join, learn, and share with others. Co-hosting with Charlene Li, we’ll be hosting a no-cost webinar to discussin how companies can develop a social marketing effort that meet business goals.

Although not a requirement, our sessions build off each other, read, watch, and listen to our previously recorded session, we discussed how companies should really understand their customers before entering the social space.

Register: Developing a Social Strategy by Objectives, Hosted by Altimeter Group
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST

Please sign up, we’re only limited to 1000 attendees and last time we have over 800 signups. If you are unable to make the live webcast, we’ll post the full set of slides and recording on this blog and the Altimeter blog, so please subscribe. The hashtag for this event is #AltimeterWebinar, and if you’ve questions you want to pose in advance on Twitter, I’m listening and will factor in the top questions, or leave a comment below.

Time to put the hammer down, and start focusing on building that house.

People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Feb 4, 2010

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:31:38 +0000

The submissions are defintly picking up, I’m seeing more submissions than before. Why? I attribute this to the start of the new year when many folks change up jobs, and the slight uptick we’re starting to see in the economy.

In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series (see archives) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

Congrats to Jeannette Gibson (Twttier) who has moved to corporate marketing to run social media at Cisco Systems. I’ve shared the stage with her a few times, she’s quite impressive, and has been successful in deploying social programs in B2B environments.
Congrats to Maria Povermo (Twitter) who’s ascended to the Group Manager, Social Media at Adobe Systems, (Altimeter client)
Dave Armon has joined Context Optional as director of strategic accounts.
Zena Weist (Twitter) has landed at HRBLock as the director of social media, congrats.
Ginevra Kirkland, long term customer advocate at Six Apart (I had the joy of working with her years ago as a client) has now joined the mighty team at Get Satisfaction as a Community and Account Manager read her post, as well as read the interview on Gsat blog.
Joe Stanhope joins Forrester Research (great folks) as a Senior Analyst focused on site optimization strategy, which includes coverage of Web analytics as well as online testing and targeting platforms.
WPP owned agency Ogilvy PR hired Dirk Shaw as a senior vice president in its 360° Digital Influence Practice. I’ve worked closely with Dirk in the past and have been impressed, congrats Dirk and Ogilvy.
Todd Bowman has joined (PDF) Senior Vice President of Sales at appssavvy
Joel Johnson is now a SVP Integrated Planning Director at Porter Novelli
Marc-Antoine Ross is the Community & Content Manager at SoftCity Technologies
Matt Dickman has been promoted to SVP, Digital Strategy at Fleishman-Hillard
Carey Sullivan has been promoted to Manager of Social Media American Electric Power
Angela Connor is a new hire as Social Media Manager at Capstrat
Chris WIlson has joined as a Senior Account Executive, Digital Strategy at Fleishman-Hillard
Michael Litman joins as a Social Media Planner at Dare Digital
Andrew D. Nystrom is a new hire as Digital Marketing Manager, Social Media at Red Bull North America #wings

How to connect with others (or get a job):
Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how you can too:

Submit an announcement
If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, fill out this form.

Seeking Social Media Professionals?
If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

Job Resources in the Social Media and Web Industry

Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, these affiliate fees pay for my hosting)

Read Write Web keeps announcements flowing at Jobwire, although is broader than just social media jobs

Facebook group for community manager group in Facebook

Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs

Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs

SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed

ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community

Teresa has a few jobs, some around community

New Media hire has an extensive job database

Social Media Headhunter

Social media jobs

Jobs in social media

Altimeter Group’s list of social media consultants and agencies

See this list of Corporate Social Media Strategists and Community Managers that I keep up to date

Hiring? Leave a comment
If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, please)

Matrix: Companies Should Factor ‘Social Influence’ Into Total Customer Value

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:00:28 +0000

Case Study: An Influential Mom Blogger Caused Mainstream Crises
Popular blogger, Heather Armstrong (@dooce) was dissatisfied with her non-working Maytag appliance. Following protocol, she called their support number, yet her issue was not solved. Stonewalled, she argued/warned the support staff that she was on Twitter, yet didn’t receive special assistance. Escalating further, she then flexed a muscle and told them she had over 1,000,000 Twitter followers –yet the support rep did not budge. Finally, she blogged and Tweeted against Maytag, initiating a boycott by her followers, “DO NOT BUY MAYTAG” and continues to chronicle her experience on her blog. While critics suggest she wielded her power with irresponsibility, the point is moot, what matters is her social influence was not factored into the support triage decision making process –making a minor support issue a PR issue now on Forbes.

Just as companies factor in value of a customers celebrity status, buying power or customer loyalty –companies must factor in social influence or put themselves at risk. That’s right, customers with more Twitter followers are more likely to get better service and support than those that don’t.

Trend: Consumers Becoming Influential Using Social Technologies

Companies Already Give Preferential Treatment To Famous and Wealthy Customers. Companies have given high influence customers preference for years. Take for example, shopping malls in the Los Angeles area have private entry ways for celebrities to enter the mall and receive priorty treatment. Or, how B2B companies cater to their top customers with special event days, golf outings, or other clients with deep pockets. Companies know that not all customers are valued the same, and as a result, treat them differently.
With More Consumers Adoption Social Technologies, the Problem Will Get Worse. The tide is rising, in fact with more consumers adopting social technologies, the amount of voices that companies will need to deal with will increase in volume. Treating each customer with the best possible service and support (Like Zappos unique culture) is ideal –but not realistic. Companies are ill-equipped to support millions of customers in real time on the social web. They must have prioritization programs in place to handle the high risk/opportunity accounts quickly.
Companies Who Don’t Factor In Influence Put Themselves at Risk. Companies can choose to not factor in the social influence of customers, but will be putting themselves at risk. It’s just a matter of time before a company has a social blowup, and by not trying to handle priority customers could cause a small issue to quickly escalate into a larger one. Also, savvy competitors who factor in social influence can swoop and acquire high influence customers from companies that don’t. Your goal, is to stay off this list.

Matrix: The Four Phases How Companies Factor Social Influence

	Description	Benefit	Risk/Costs
Do not factor in social influence	Companies treat all customers the same, regardless of number of readers, followers or social influence.	It’s cheap, companies don’t have to spend resources to understand if a single customer can influence others.	Run the risk of not prioritzing a customer that could influence others, resulting in missed opportunity or greater PR risk.
Ad Hoc:	Companies factor in social influence as it surfaces, such as a customer explicitly staying their influence, or a service member proactively having to find it.	Companies don’t have to invest in a program or system that tries to calculate this influence.	May miss opportunities of serviing a high influence customer, or may not realize a potential social crises till it’s too late.
Absolute Influence:	Companies factor in total number of Facebook book friends and activity, number of Twitter followers and assign a raw number.	Easy to calculate, and expect future Social CRM tools to do this with ease in the future.	Data may not be accurate: Numbers can be manipulated and gamed, resulting in companies misallocate resources. Risk of alienating consumers without social influence.
Relative Influence:	Companies factor in the true influence a customer has over their actual market –ignoring factors that may not be relevant.	Finally, companies can focus on those customer with social influence that impact other prospects and buyers in their specific market	Such a program is hard to setup and costly, and will require constant inputs and tuning. Risk of alienating consumers without social influence.

Companies Must Factor In Social Influence

Recalculate The Customer Lifetime Value Quotient. For years, companies have factored in the total value of customers over their entire lifetime, Stanford has methods to calculate this called the Customer Lifetime Value formula. These formulas factored in ability to be a repeat buyer, income level, and size of purchases over time. Just as companies spend more time with customers with deeper pockets, they should also spend the appropriate type of attention with followers that don’t.
Yet Recognize, that Not All Social Influence Is the Same. To be efficient, companies shouldn’t reward those with spammy followers they got from an overnight follow script, but recognize that influence isn’t always about quantity, recognize there are at least two types of social influence: The first, absolute influence is the total size of the individuals influence. Take Scoble for example, who has over a 100,000 Twitter followers and probally 100k subscribed to his blog is influential in a broad market. However, his relative influence within the high-end fashion market is low. D&G must factor in both types of influence in understanding how to deal with customers, therefore while Scoble’s absolute influence is high, his relative influence to the fashion market is low.
Expect New Technologies To Address This Problem. We’re seeing a whole group of companies emerge in the Social CRM space that are trying to address parts of these problems. Eventually, we should expect CRM systems to automatically indicate to customer facing employees the level of influence customers have. In the most radical future, customers may choose to broadcast their preferences to retail stores before the walk in based on preferences and past purchases in order to receive a better experience. If this happens, companies can match with their social influence, and treat them accordingly.

I look forward to hear from you: have companies treated you differently because of your social influence? What companies are doing this now? What are the risks of doing it or not factoring in social influence?

List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:36:00 +0000

As an industry watcher, I look at trends, data, spending, technologies, yet what’s really important is watching the trend of professionals as they grow into these roles managing disruptive technologies. Update: Brian Hayashi has created a spreadsheet of this with additional info –like Twitter handles. We’re staying coordinated so the data is matched, follow Brian on Twitter.

[Connecting with customers using social technologies is deceptively challenging, as most outsiders don't recognize the leadership to change internal cultural. Now, in public, let's recognize those who are paving the way]

Methodology: About this List
This 2010 list is an update from the original I started in 2008, it was woefully out of date as people moved around. This list is updated, as I’ve separated the large technology section in HW vs SW and am only linking to LinkedIn accounts.

A majority of this data is based off submissions in the 2008 post, which most which are self-submissions or from their fellow colleagues and we only link to their already public profile in LinkedIn for verification. We’ve spend days compiling this data, but due to the content ever changing, we expect there to be some inaccuracies, leave a comment if you see something that needs fixing. Thanks to Sonal Mehta a student at American University who I’ve hired helped me in this research.

Read Carefully: How to get on this List
In a world of noise, curation becomes very valuable, as a result, there are very specific requirements for this list, which include: 1) You must have a public LinkedIn profile page, as this is one of the best way to verify employment. 2) The profile indicates that social media is part of your full time employee role at the corporation–not just for personal or casual use. 3) You must work at an enterprise class corporation with more than 1000 employees, 4) Must be on brand side 5) You’ll kindly leave a comment below with the submission for review. Due to excess volume, submissions by Twitter and emails or other channels will not be included, kindly leave a comment in this centralized area below.

In an effort to keep information in a tight scope, I’m not able to include folks who are doing great work in other sectors. However, if you decide to create a list for other sectors, I’ll prominently link to it from this post. Update: Here’s a growing list for non-profits.

Sign Up For Upcoming Free Report: Skillset of the Social Media Strategist
The Altimeter Group is developing a free research report, on “Skillsets of Social Media Strategists” and will identify the attributes, backgrounds, experience of this emerging role, if you’re interested in receiving a copy, please register on this form. We will use portions of the data found in this post for the research report, so thanks for helping to update it.

Social Media Strategists at Corporations
The strategist is a program manager, who mainly focuses internally rather than being the external public face like the community manager. They are primarily responsible for resources, processes, teams, they are usually internally focused and ultimately, return on investment.

Airline

Automotive

Business Services

Consumer Product Goods

Electronics, Devices, Mobile

Financial Services

Health and Life Sciences

Hospitality, Food Service

Government, Armed Services, Education

Media and Entertainment

Retail

Technology, Hardware, Networking, Component, Computer

Technology, Software, Internet

Community Managers at Corporations
The community manager is primarily externally facing, and interacts with customers as the public face of the company. They are primarily customer advocates, evangelists, bloggers, community moderators, and experts at using social technologies to communicate. We honor them every fourth Monday of January on Community Manager Appreciation Day. To keep the focus tight, this list is only of corporate community managers, and not those on contract at community platform vendors or service companies on contract.

Automotive

Sylvia Marino Executive Director – Community Operations Edmunds.com Automotive

Business Services

Hospitality and Travel

Katie Hamlin Community Manager, Fodor’s Travel

Electronics, Devices, Mobile

Financial Services

Technology, Hardware, Networking, Component, Computer

Technology, Software, Internet

Social Media Researchers and Social Media Product Managers at Corporations
When I started this list in 2008, I didn’t have a specific slot for researchers and product managers who are creating these products. These roles are not folks who are using the technologies for marketing, support, or other business use cases (end users) but instead are researching and creating the products that the above professionals will use in their jobs.

I’m passionate about what these folks do, as I, myself, was a strategist/community manager at an enterprise corporation a few years ago.

O’Reilly Webcast Social Business: Taking “Social” to the Core of Your Organization

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:30:48 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was invited to join a discussion with Joshua-Michéle Ross (O’Reilly ), Stowe Boyd, thought leader, and Peter Kim (former colleague at Forrester, now at Dachis Group) on the topic of social business. Listen in, as there’s not really a lot of content on the slides to focus on, while you go about your work, driving, or workout.

Expect Rapid Evolution of the Branded Support Community

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:17:25 +0000

Companies With Support Communities Not Ready For Changes To Come
For over a decade, with simple BBS systems to community platforms, support communities haven’t undergone much innovation. Often a silo and tucked away in a website, these communities are going to take center stage. With social technologies appearing on every webpage, and more existing systems starting to connect, expect to see interesting use cases evolve. Support focused communities will evolve to touch marketing, sales, channel partners, CRM systems, and even become a thriving platform in the next few years. Let’s explore the rapid changes coming together.

A Support Community, Defined.
Take a look at Microsoft’s media centric Channel 9, VMware communities, or even AAA’s travel tips. These branded communities are offered by companies and encourage members to self-support each other, or the company will support them directly. The members are often customers, developers, or implementation partners. It’s not limited to them alone, prospects of a company may peer in to see how vibrant –or angry–the community is. There are over 100 technology vendors offer these commodity features.

The Opportunity: The Support Community No Longer A Cost Center
New forms of monetization for the brand are going to emerge. Support communities won’t just be a cost-center, we should expect to see new forms of value that meet the needs of the community members themselves, the brand, and the partners. To kick start the discussion here’s a few ideas of where I think the support community could evolve to:

Become a thriving marketplace of buyers and sellers. Not just through discussions, but through automated matching of buyers and sellers using reputation systems, and needs analysis tools. See how the concept of VRM is slowly taking hold.
New forms of value from third parties will spur innovation. System integrators, consultants, and other vendors who have services to offer community members will want to offer training, webinars, or other campaigns. Branded communities can monetize this as an intermediary.
Formalized advocacy programs will take hold beyond the organic evangelist. Some communities will offer features and programs that encourage members to join an unpaid army and reach out to prospects –and ready them to arms when the brand is under attack.
Communities members will ideate and start build new products with R&D. In some cases, they may help the brand define new products and be very involved in the R&D process.
Developer platform will let community create their own experience. Taking a nod from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, someday, support communities will offer platforms that will enable the members to create new applications, tools, and even products within the context of the community.
Connecting to CRM systems to offer better service. Community platforms will connect to CRM systems identify upsell, crosssell, and underserved accounts, increasing the efficiency of support.
Connections to other systems yield new experiences. Support communities will no longer be a silo but will connect to brand monitoring tools. ERP systems, business intelligence systems, web analytics, and social analytics tools.
The walls of support communities crumble as they connect to the public web. There are support communities in existence all around the web (see Get Satisfaction, UserVoice or even a customer created community). Expect to see branded communities tie to these off-domain systems.
Leave a comment below with your idea. The opportunities are abound.

A Key Constraint: Members first, Company Second
Despite the many opportunities for innovation of communities, first and foremost, the sanctity of the community members must not be broken. Companies have learned, often the hard way, that the members are in charge, so this needs to be a win for them first, the company second.

Join The Discussion and Upcoming Roundtable
I plan to hold a no-fee “Community Innovation” roundtable in Q1, to ideate the evolution of the branded community beyond support. Should you be interested in attending, I look forward to hearing from you in the following web form. I’ll be extending an invite to some key thought leaders in this space, to really spur the thinking from the top minds.

Growth at Altimeter Group: Supply Chain Management, Government Innovation

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:04:40 +0000

Two Key Additions In Growth Areas: Lora Cecere, Alan Webber
We’re pleased to announce that we’re expanding two new partners Lora Cecere (full bio), Supply Chain Management and Alan Webber (full bio), Government Innovation. Founding partner, coauthor of Groundswell, Charlene Li discusses the hires and the changes in the market. At the Altimeter Group, we’re not forced into limited topic areas, but instead look at the intersection of major themes. Each partner has a unique perspective, and we are constantly talking, sharing, and pushing our ideas by collaborating, you’re starting to see this manifest as Ray (CRM) and (Social) converge on Social CRM. We know that customers demand a holistic experience, so organizations will follow suit, here’s how our world of social technologies merges with these two new topic areas:

Supply Chain Management: Intersections with Consumers
In my area of focus, customer strategy, it’s important to expand the thinking to ‘where the customers will be’. With the rapid adoption of simple social technologies, they’ve caused great disruption to marketing, PR, media, and customer support. With customers and prospects explicitly giving off signals of what they want, don’t want, or intend to do, it gives companies the opportunity to anticipate their needs. We see this opportunity to tie these customer signals in social media and getting the right products to customers –when they need it most. So what’s next? Beyond social media marketing, or supporting customers with social technologies, an upcoming trend we see is tying social technologies with supply chain management. There are three areas where social and supply chain management start to converge:

Demand signals by empowered consumers using social and mobile technologies. As consumers indicate their demand for new products or intentions, these signals will be transmitted to companies, their distributors, and sellers to anticipate the needs of consumers. Companies can reduce their inventory, shipping, an risk of spoilage of limited shelf-life products.

Co-innovation of new products between consumers –and engineering. We’re already seeing some companies like Uservoice, SalesForce ideas power Nokia, Dell, and Starbucks to ask their customers what they want built, but we expect this trend to continue. Aside from reducing time and cost of the R&D process, companies can produce just the right amount of inventory, and benefit from an army of engaged advocates that participated in co-creation.

We’re pleased to bring on Lora Cecere from AMR, where her domain knowledge of supply chain management will cross over with many of of our areas of focus. Learn more about her on her bio on the Altimeter site, or on Twitter.

Government and Education Connect With Communities
Open government, citizen media, and social media used to organize and rebuild after a crises have all touched our lives in one way or another. Undoubtedly, government agencies are realizing the power of these tools to understanding their citizens, learning from them, and influencing them. As a result, expect disruptive technologies like mobile and social to quickly move into the government limelight, such as the TSA adopting a blog to connect with travelers.

Build better relationships with communities. We’re already seeing government organizations benefit from understanding these tools, and using during campaigning practices. As citizens have already adopted these technologies, government organizations can benefit by listening, understanding and responding to citizens using social tools.

Use social technologies to innovate programs. It’s not just about using these tools for campaigning purposes, but also improving existing programs. Take for example, San Francisco uses Twitter to located troublesome potholes, reducing the costs for city workers to find the areas to fix –instead relying on citizens to reduce costs. Expect new forms of innovation to emerge that will improve cultures and where people live.

It’s a pleasure to welcome former colleague Alan Webber from Forrester Research, who’s got a strong background on web user experience, and a focus on government innovation. Together, we’ll be crafting frameworks for government agencies, educational institutions and those that serve them on how to harness social technologies to improve their missions. Learn more about Alan from his blog, Ronin Research, his bio on the Altimeter site, or on Twitter.

Growth At the Altimeter Group
Back in late August when Ray, Debs, and myself joined Charlene, we were excited to try a new model. Now, four months later, we’ve over 40 clients on retainer relationship, that’s little over 2 companies signing on board with us per week and are about a dozen employees. We’ve previously announced new hires, recently we hired Valerie, our operations manager, who will keep the gears going as we help our clients tackle ‘wicked’ problems.

Although we’re best known for our focus on disruptive technologies like social, web and marketing, the Altimeter Group has a wider offering that expands to enterprise applications and innovating new products.

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