After running the popular series that evaluated and discussed ThinkFree’s experiment in Social Media, I decided to compile all of the posts into one free and downloadable ebook for your reference.

Download as a Word doc

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The Series on PR 2.0:

The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations

Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part I

Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part II

Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part III

Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part IV

Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part V
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Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook

Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted what he calls “The Great Social Experiment,” where he tested the art of online social networking to evaluate whether or not joining conversations across popular online communities would benefit his company. Crow created a roundtable featuring Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, and me to offer feedback, constructive criticism, and advice to help ThinkFree and other companies learn from his experiment.

Before you read below, make sure to first read, “The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations.”

3a. Is social networking the right tool for the tests I created?
3b. Are my expectations of social networking in line with what it can do?
3b. What is social networking best geared to address?

Source

In order for businesses to understand the value and focus of a valuable social media campaign, it requires a dedicated strategy, goals, metrics, and a tactical plan.

It all starts with answering two simple questions, “why do we want to participate?” and “what do we hope to get out of it?”

The process of answering these questions will define how and where to participate and how to measure success.

The next step is to listen and answer the following questions.

Where are your competitors?

Where do key words take you?

Are there conversations taking place about your company, products, and if so, where?

You’ll find that there are hubs across Social Media that will require your participation. In ThinkFree’s case, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, ThinkFree Docs, and most importantly, the company blog, would be the areas of immediate concentration. Plaxo, Twitter, and others, might require attention and effort at a later time.

ThinkFree’s business would benefit from the promotion of the great content residing in ThinkFree Docs, the capabilities of ThinkFree Office and also the ability to source and promote content from and to the community across other networks.

But it requires time, investment, cultivation, sincerity, and, it is not an overnight process.

Each network represents a collective of various groups of people who orbit an axis of common interests and each group as well as each network maintains its own ecosystem. Basically, what this means is that each community serves a different purpose, not just in who you reach, but how and why. The discussions and the very nature of the conversations are different from network to network.

The point that I can not emphasis enough is that you get out of Social Media what you put into it.

You have to observe before you can participate. Doing so will answer all of your questions and even dictate how to engage.

Click here to read the responses from the entire roundtable.

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Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part II

Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part I

The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
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Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook.

blog

Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted what he calls “The Great Social Experiment,” where he tested the art of online social networking to evaluate whether or not joining the conversation across popular online communities would benefit his company.

Crow created a roundtable featuring Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, and me to offer feedback, constructive criticism, and advice to help ThinkFree and other companies learn from his experiment.

Before you read below, make sure to first read, “The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations.”

2. How should we be judging the outcomes from social networking activities? Are there tools you recommend?

As I mentioned in my last post, in order for businesses to understand Social Media, it requires a realistic strategy, goals, metrics, and a tactical plan. It all starts with answering two questions, why do we want to participate and what do we want to get out of it?

This is usually where traditional media and new media split. Traditional marketing is rooted in tangible results such as press coverage, traffic, revenue and those things should still matter in conversational marketing. This can’t be solely driven by experimentation because time is money!

Metrics must be determined before engaging and then actively monitored and analyzed to modify future interactions and targets to stay on track.

However, there is an investment component in all of this that’s somewhat comparable to the model of having a great customer service infrastructure. It’s actually a significant cost center to all businesses that care about having a global community of happy, satisfied, and enthusiastic customers. The difference is that with Social Media, an outbound element is added to the traditional inbound model.

No it’s not a copout for aligning metrics to engagement. It is, though, a different way to look at things. And, it brings the discussion outside of just PR and marketing. Meaningful engagement can also be led by product marketing and customer service.

Last year I discussed the concept of scientifically analyzing the Return on Participation (ROP) or Return on Engagement (ROE), which called for feedback to help determine what it is that matters to businesses in order to justify the expense of running social media campaigns.

The easy answer is as true today as it was then. It’s different for each company.

It’s also different specific to the campaign you’re running.

I think it creates new line items that are separate from traditional marketing and should receive funding and resources from both marketing and customer service budgets.

In general, some of the most effective ways that we’ve measured success to date include community feedback, trackable conversations, traffic through landing pages, referrals, and also registrations specific to campaigns. Really, it’s similar in concept to Web marketing. However, measuring conversations and tracking associated activity is an interesting and creative art.

The tools that we use to track activity and conversations include Technorati, Twitter, blogpulse, Google Blog Search, Compete, Google Analytics, Alexa, specific social network searches, among others.

What’s the value of a conversation?

What’s the value of transforming an unhappy customer into an enthusiast?

Many companies can learn from big businesses who are shifting their reward-based strategies from who can take the most calls in an hour to who can create the most enthusiasts.

Like I’ve said, customer service is the new, new marketing and there’s a lot to learn from separating (or expanding) engagement from PR to those immersed in the product, its value, benefits, strengths, and weaknesses.

Measurement is a combination of customer service, brand resonance, brand loyalty and bottom line business traction and lead generation.

And like I’ve always said, businesses will earn the respect, and ultimately the business, of the customers they deserve.

Click here to read the responses from the entire roundtable.
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Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part I
The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
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Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook.

media+2.0

Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted what he calls The Great Social Experiment where he tested and practiced the art of online social networking as a strategy for helping his company join the conversation across popular online communities and in turn, evaluate the business implications for doing so.

Crow assembled a roundtable of those active in the Social Media landscape to offer feedback, commentary, constructive criticism, and advice for the good of all marketing.

Those joining the conversation are Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, and me.

Before you read below, make sure to first read, “The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations.”

Question One (Well 1a, 1b, 1c):

1a-Did I devote enough time to the exercise?

1b-More to the point, where should social networking be placed in terms of marketing priorities?

1c-Does this change for companies that are more or less mature?

Honestly, Jonathan did not invest enough time, effort and sincerity in his quest to cultivate meaningful relationships within each community of not just peers, but also users. His experiment, while ambitious, was spread way too thin, only allowing for a superficial interaction with very little value for him and also the people who participate in the communities in which he wished to reach.

Jonathan has a full plate of marketing activities to run and therefore can’t be everywhere at the same time. This challenge is common throughout marketing departments everywhere. This is why businesses are starting to consider hiring fulltime community “managers” or build community teams to dedicate the required time and resources to cultivate relationships online.

The development of friendships must be based on something meaningful, interaction, basically invested in, before a community can give back. It’s just the nature of things.

What’s the intent? What value do you bring? What’s the goal for participating?

Social Media requires cultivation and a genuine desire to help those around you. It’s more aligned with Customer Service than marketing I would say.

I’ve always believed, among others, that Social Media shares many principles and beliefs with anthropology. Any in-the-field engagement requires a “holistic” view, observation, and complete understanding based on a “four-field” approach, Biological, Socio-cultural, Linguistic, and Archaeology. Of course, not everything applies, but it’s pretty close.

There’s much to learn from approaching Social Media and online communities from this foundation because it forces us to think, learn, and observe before we pretend to be part of any new culture. And the only way to truly “go native” is to spend time acclimating into the very culture you wish to join.

You have to start as a person and not as a marketer in order to fully appreciate your surroundings. It requires immersion.

In order for businesses to understand Social Media, it requires a strategy, goals, metrics, and a tactical plan. It all starts with answering one simple question, “Why do we want to participate?”

Is it about trends?

Is your competition devouring customer mindshare?

Is it a new avenue for sales?

Or, is it because you wish to bring value to communities and increase customer service and loyalty?

Should you even be here?

It all starts with why and what you expect to get out of the engagement that helps define how to participate.

The next step is to listen and answer the following questions.

Where are your customers?

Where are your competitors?

Where do key words take you?

Are there conversations taking place about your company, products, and if so, where?

At that point, and only at this point, can you answer the question of where Social Media fits into a company’s marketing hierarchy – regardless of maturity.

But everything comes down to the investment made into each community. You get out of it what you put into it. And, in the era of Social Media, companies will earn the relationships that they deserve.

Click here to read the responses from the entire roundtable.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce or Facebook.

communications

Social networking, and social media specifically, have been painted as the new marketing landscape for businesses to engage with their communities of customers wherever they congregate.

In my view, we’re starting to hit a ceiling of discussion versus execution and practicality.

I believe that we’ve theorized enough. There is certainly no shortage of “experts” who can point to “why” Social Media should work for business and improved communications, however, there IS a shortage of people showing others “exactly” how to do it, how to measure it specifically, and which tools of the trade work most effectively for individual campaigns.

It’s time to divide the market of Social Media experts so that we can grow as a group of doers, not just thinkers.

While I will always look to the future to help others evolve, I will also share what I learn and what it means to PR, marketing, sales, and business branding. This way the information can be analyzed and redeployed within – specific to the goals and culture of the company and the team.

Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted “The Great Social Experiment” where he tested and practiced the art of social networking as a strategy for helping his company join the conversation and in turn, evaluate its business implications for doing so. The goal was to examine whether his engagement would increase both ThinkFree’s and his professional network, gain market intelligence both on product as well as the industry as a whole, and expand the company’s market outreach.

Basically, Crow, like many other marketing professionals, are trying to find out how Social Media can help businesses grow and whether or not conversations have real world business benefits. A side note, I would add, is that I wonder if his participation also affected and contributed to his personal brand.

Now, ThinkFree is an interesting company to profile because at the end of the day, it compete s against Microsoft Office, Google Docs, as well as other hot Web 2.0 companies. No easy task indeed.

ThinkFree offers an online/offline office suite that is completely compatible with MS Office. The company also created a Social Network of its own, ThinkFree Docs, which is basically a community built around discovering and sharing documents and building a network around content and content creators.

His first step was to jump in.

Crow targeted the following networks:

ThinkFree Docs
digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Pownce
Technorati
Reddit
Twitter
Jaiku
Newsvine
Flickr
Plaxo Pulse
StumbleUpon
Yahoo!360
MySpace
Friendster
LinkedIn
hi5
orkut

While some of Crow’s targets are right on, others are secondary or even tertiary for accomplishing his goals – just by knowing the culture of each community from experience. However, this is his experiment, so what he learns is important to everyone else who may or may not have jumped in yet and to what extent each community applies (or doesn’t) to their business. He represents many who are actively seeking ways to engage and/or how.

Crow points out, “It feels like I just went into a single’s bar and shouted, ‘will somebody be my friend!’”

He continues, “Who is listening and are we talking in an echo chamber? The answer has been a little mixed. Yes, I have met new people, and am having new conversations. Is it as much as I was expecting or hoping for? No. But the lesson I am taking away from this is that if you do want to build new contacts that can help you, and that you can help, it takes time. Social networks are not a magic formula…Like in the outside world, it takes time to get to know people and develop relationships that can lead to meaningful action. I guess I fell into the trap of looking at these resources as a commodification of friendship. And, we really need to break out of that mentality – myself included.”

Jonathan’s observation is perhaps one of the most common realizations of any good and optimistic marketer. And, this is exactly the point where the Social Media market and its practitioners start to fragment.

Jonathan however, is already a lot further along than most. He’s engaging and writing about his experience. He’s calling out to others to examine his participation and to offer advice, insight, and feedback so that he can engage more effectively.

Many companies and Social Media consultants dramatically underestimate the resources, time, dedication, and passion it takes to engage and cultivate relationships across multiple communities. It’s just not the same for any two networks.

However, Jonathan participated and contributed to the communities he wished to engage genuinely. He did not sit on the sidelines; he shared, learned, observed, and also emerged with real world feedback.

For example, in part three of his series, Crow discusses the different classifications of social networks he observed during his experiment and offered advice for business professionals looking to also jump in.

Aggregators
These pull together feeds from other profiles and sites, keep track of what you and your contacts are doing. Great examples of this are: Flock (as I mentioned already), Plaxo, and Pownce. Somewhat Frank has a great list.

Connectors
These sites connect people, groups, networks, make suggestions based on profile information. The best example is LinkedIn, but obviously Facebook, and MySpace.

Feeders
These sites feed data that is then used in other sites. Typically media based, examples would be YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps, iLike and ThinkFree Docs.

Publishers
These “sites” are where
peop
le come for their entertainment or information. Twitter, Jaiku, and obviously YouTube, ThinkFree Docs, Flickr, etc.

His advice:

1. Start with the sites that best do contacts.

2. Connect with others. Expand your network

3. Get your aggregator sites going.

4. Publish away. Get involved. Don’t spam!

Crow’s experiment continues and it is both a looking glass into real world obstacles and a crystal ball that will reveal where true opportunities reside and in turn, will define and shape realistic expectations and associated metrics.

Crow summarized, “In the end my expectation of social networking bringing thousands of friends and generating enormous buzz was obviously misplaced. What I found is that it requires just as much effort (maybe even more) as blogging, newsletters, and traditional PR tools (such as email;), but as a marketing manager you need your company to be included in the conversation wherever that conversation occurs. Increasingly those conversations are happening in social networks. It is not an either or proposition. You have to go through traditional channels and these new tools.”

Jonathan is not alone. He has many peers who are wondering what to do and to evaluate if their engagement is on track.

He believes that there’s something in this story for everyone, and I think he’s right.

Therefore, Crow has created a roundtable of those active in the Social Media landscape to offer feedback, commentary, constructive criticism, and advice for the good of all marketing. Those joining the conversation are Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, and me.

The discussion will be based on several questions posed by Jonathan:

1. Did I devote enough time to the exercise? More to the point, where should social networking be placed in terms of marketing priorities? Does this change for companies that are more or less mature?

2. How should we be judging the outcomes from social networking activities? Are there tools you recommend?

3. Is social networking the right tool for the tests I created? Are my expectations of social networking in line with what it can do? What is social networking best geared to address?

4. How much of getting social networking to work is the contacts you bring with you? How aggressive should one be in reaching out to new contacts? Should I, for instance, try to befriend Chris Anderson even after I have composed a note meant to appeal to what he is interested in?

5. How can I build better mechanisms into the framework to increase feedback?

You can follow the conversation here.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce or Facebook.

Last year, at Ismael Ghalimi’s Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, I was more than encouraged about the future of shifting from a traditional PC/server software-based architecture to an anywhere, anytime Web-based collaborative office. 2007 is the new 1984 – meaning Office 2.0 applications represent to consumers what Apple meant to PC users over 20 years ago.

While there were some clear leaders, usable applications, and more importantly, promise, the greater story lies in just how realistic it is to actually start the shift now. Over the last year, I have been experimenting with the deployment of many web-based services from accounting/invoicing (Freshbooks), online reporting, blogging, and forum moderation (SiteKreator), document, spreadsheet, and presentation, creation, collaboration, and sharing (ThinkFree – I migrated from Google Docs), file exchange (YouSendIt), and intelligent, integrated searching and clipping (BlueOrganizer) among many others. I’m also preparing to start an evaluation of Collanos, which is software designed to facilitate team project collaboration.

I’m more than happy to report that as each day passes, my internal and external network of viewers and collaborators is rapidly expanding. And we really are only at the beginning.
In preparation for the upcoming Under The Radar Office 2.0 Event (I’m part of their blogger network), O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo, and of course The Office 2.0 Conference later in the year, I’m starting a new series of application-focused posts. “Office 2.0OLS” is dedicated to chronicling my experience with the migration towards making the underlying principles of Office 2.0 a day-to-day reality in my workflow.

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Office2.0 office+2.0 undertheradar ibdnetwork o’reilly oreilly web2.0 2.0ols freshbooks sitekreator thinkfree google googledocs collanos ismael+ghalimi utr itredux

The other day, I was reading Read/Write Web before heading up to Office 2.0 and Richard McManus posted some great questions to stimulate dialogue and create a forum for truly interesting market and technology analysis.

Does Office 2.0 represent a revolution, a paradigm shift? Or just incremental improvement on Microsoft Office?

What Office 2.0 apps and services best represent the paradigm shift of Office 2.0 to you?

Do you agree that Google’s web-based office apps are more evolutionary than revolutionary?

Should we be looking to big companies or startups for paradigm-busting apps?

Alight, well let’s see if we can answer these during my assessment of the following panel, along with an overview of day one

I attended, One Day in the Life of an Office 2.0 WorkerModerator: Matt Marshall of VentureBeatPanelists: Eric Hoffert of ShareMethods, TJ Kang of ThinkFree, Tom Snyder iNetOffice, Sridhar Vembu of Zoho, Kevin Warnock of gOFFICE, David Young of Joyent

Let’s see, a day in the life of an office 2.0 worker…aside from Yahoo and Skype, Solitaire, personal phone calls, and 20 smoke breaks….OK, just kidding, but not really

We did walk through some pretty cool applications and mash ups, which highlighted just how day-to-day productivity can be streamlined for workgroups, SMBs and even across the enterprise.

Honestly, the conversation was a bit dry, almost awkward. And, the demos were definitely rushed, but still were interesting! Because of the fast pace however, it was difficult to capture the nuances of the various mahsups.

Yes indeed, the topic of the Office 2.0 was a distraction.

“Office 2.0 is a nice name, but is it useful?”
“Office 2.0, don’t we also have Lunch 2.0?”
“Office 2.0 seem more like a buzzword.”

Although the perspective and commentary that resonated with me was offered by a Google Docs product manager who said, “Office 2.0 doesn’t make it for her. It’s like saying the car is the horseless carriage 2.0. It’s all about collaboration.”

Over at Isabel Wang’s place, she also captured a couple of additional takes on Office 2.0.

Stowe Boyd writes that Office 2.0 is about connectedness and not productivity, and knowledge acquisition versus knowledge management.

Ismael himself defines Office 2.0 as online services.

Although, we’ve more than covered this discussion (see my interpretations of the various definitions here), I think it’s still important to keep the dialog going because Office 2.0 in my opinion represents gems from all of these concepts.

Office 2.0, like most things “2.0,” are simply trying to catapult and document a new movement and the version number really works in some cases. It won’t be office 2.0 forever, but it’s better than saying “next generation of paradigm shifting online productivity suites”…especially while the market is developing and unfolding.

So, in a nutshell, Office 2.0 is about:
Connecting online and offline workflow
Enhancing productivity
Leveraging social media
Encouraging trackable and manageable collaboration
Driving knowledge acquisition, distribution, and management
Integrating (or mashing-up) online applications to create new solutions that help employees stay connected and more capable/productive
Reducing dependency on email, fax, and conference calls
Creating new ways to work and opening the door for new deliverables

The exploration continues…

So on that note, let’s get back on track and talk a little bit about those who stood up to discuss there applications on Day One.

Eric Hoffert of ShareMethods
ShareMethods was founded in 2003 to deliver high quality products powering collaboration and communications between sales and marketing. The founders come from a background of building software applications for Fortune 500 marketing organizations.

TJ Kang of ThinkFree
Like most of the speakers, ThinkFree develops office productivity solutions for platform independent computing. ThinkFree is a Microsoft Office compatible application suite comprised of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics software-all usable online and off.

Tom Snyder iNetOffice
iNetOffice designs and develops Internet-based document solutions. The company had issued a press release entitled, “iNetOffice and ShareMethods Join Forces to Create Online Office Mashup and Ajax Mashup Specification.”

The application mashup demo featured Salesforce.com, Google, Thumbstacks, iRows, ShareMethods, and iNetOffice to shows the power of composite applications, increased productivity, and open standards interoperability

Sridhar Vembu of Zoho
ZOHO almost goes without saying, but still, they provide one of the biggest online rivals to the MS Office franchise – at least among the early adopter segment. During the show, the company announced its ZOHO Virtual Office which created a series of offline discussions. Products include, Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show, Projects, CRM, Creator, Planner, and Chat.

Kevin Warnock of gOFFICE
gOFFICE is a free browser-based online office suite It allows customers to quickly create documents via a web browser – sound familiar? The customer types in their browser, chooses a letterhead design and receives a professionally formatted PDF file in moments. Customers do not require Adobe Acrobat, as the PDF files are created on the gOFFICE servers.

There’s more to gOFFICE than at first glance. Kevin did offer some of the more humorous sound bites from the presentation including, “I emailed Google and offered the gOFFICE URL, but I never heard back from them.” He also wasn’t sure how to maximize the potential for gOFFICE, so he stated, “I don’ know what to do with it. So, if you have any ideas, see me afterwards.”

David Young of Joyent
Joyent offers simple, powerful, Web-based software that provides small teams with email, calendars, contacts, and shared applications.It’s a fully hosted app, with nothing to install, configure, and there’s no need for computer staff or consultants (which I like!). The surprising part here is that hosted plans start at just $15/month.
At the show, Joyent also announced the Joyent assistant. For $450, customers have access to 10 hours of a real-life, business-savvy personal assistant.

Google also graced us with two product managers to highlight Google Docs and Spreadsheets. While it was a bit hurried, it was good to see the products in action.

Now back to those questions…

Does Office 2.0 represent a revolution, a paradigm shift? Or just incremental improvement on Microsoft Office?

It’s an evolution and it could represent a paradigm shift. But, let’s not be naive and assume that Microsoft won’t just release an extension of Live to wipe out any potential competition. In the meantime, however, the latest batch of online productivity applications are useful and worth consideration as a complement or replacement to MS Office. The most interesting developments will be in the future mashups and acquisitions to create uber suites.

What Office 2.0 apps and services best represent the paradigm shift of Office 2.0 to you?

Aside from the “givens,” including Google Docs and Spreadsheets and Zoho Virtual Office, to me the biggest opportunity for a paradigm shift have not yet been announced. between the leading O2O companies. Again, pay attention acquisitions and mashups.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I will not utilize many of the solutions available today. For example, I’ve already deployed SiteKreator, Approver.com, Yousendit, and we’re integrating FreshBooks next month. We’re also evaluating Joyent.

Do you agree that Google’s web-based office apps are more evolutionary than revolutionary?

Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets are more evolutionary only because they are hosted applications that benefit from social media, but they are by no means category killers, yet.

Truthfully, while most of the companies at Office 2.0 demonstrated compelling features and benefits, the real category definitions will emerge by the next Office 2.0 conference.

All in all Stowe Boyd had it right when he said, “Death to all Office 2.0 panels! I am enjoying the Office 2.0 conference, in general, but the stream of panel sessions is wearing me down.”

It needed a bit more direction, organization, and opportunities to demonstrate how any Office 2.0 company will be successful and how they can form alliances while also enlisting realworld users. Hats off to Ismael Ghalimi for pulling this first event together…and for capturing Office 2.0 as a viable market in of itself. Ismael, you did good!

Visual highlights from the show…

Steve Gilmor and Vic Podcaster discussing PodcastWest

Classic moment during a presentation highlighting Google integration

Images from:
Industry Standards for Office 2.0Moderator: Tantek CelikPanelists: Kaliya Hamlin,Ivaylo Lenkov, Narendra Rocherolle, Bob Sutor

As of now, the Office 2.0 conference and the blog at ITRedux are truly the only forum to consistently track the Office 2.0 industry state and direction, first hand.

For more Office 2.0 pictures, please visit flickr.
Welcome Party
Day One
Day Two

Also, jump over to Business Two Zero for solid commentary by David Terrar on Office2.0.

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Tags: office2.0, office+2.0, web2.0, web+2.0, briansolis, office20conference, itredux, ismaelghalimi, joyent, inetoffice, sitekreator, freshbooks, goffice, thinkfree, sharemethods, venturebeat, zoho