Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Developing a social media strategy - prevent flops

The best way to prevent social media flops is to create a sound strategy in the first place. It sounds a lot of work and too much for many small businesses but this model has proven to work even in small organizations:

* ASSESSMENT
Social Media Assessment (4 quadrant assessment model) find out where your customers are, where they hang out and what is on their mind. Takes you a week or two to make it right. But you learn more than ever before. If you feel you know already - this is your first red flag to a social media flop. Check your customers presence, research how your brand is seen in the market, research your partners and your competitors.

* SWOT
The assessment leads you to a good ol' SWOT analysis. You will find out what your (brand, product, service) strengths and weaknesses are from a market point of view - develop your opportunity and threat profile. You do that in a few hours.


* STRATEGY

Now since you know more about your market from a social connection and conversation point of view develop your strategy: Goals objectives, value to the market, major activities to achieve your goals, resources, budgets. Develop a strategy team that includes some of your customers (the X-Team) - that is the most magic difference to old world strategies. May take a few days and online conference calls. But if you do it without your customers - you flop - guaranteed.






* PROGRAMS

Once the strategy is sealed, you construct and execute your programs together with your X-Team. Instead of the old model of blowing something into the market you work with the market. May take a week or two to develop. The key to successful programs is PARTICIPATION and CONTRIBUTION. Each program need to be designed that your eco system contributes and other participates. Otherwise it is just yet another marketing splash - random noise. But your X-Team will prevent you from that type of campaigns anyway.

* REPORTING
The key like in any other business project: Measure, Model and Tune your activities until they are truly successful. Select the right tools and monitor your activities daily - some in real time.


So all in all it may take a few weeks - but you have a wonder weapon - versus yet another boring marketing campaign nobody is listening to.

Make a difference WITH your market!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Social Media 2.0 - The Next Generation








Organizing Social Media Across Departments

Where most businesses start:

When companies begin to engage in social media they typically start in the marketing department with some rather tactical marketing campaigns. In those early models a large company either hired some social media "experts" to do the campaign or found some engaged people internally. The rest of the organization does "business as usual". The problem quickly surfaces in sales "What are these guys talking to my customers", on the service side "what are they promising to our clients", and the product management team still doesn't get any feedback how to better launch the next generation products. While it is obvious that social media is a key method to create a better customer experience, a better way to listen to the market, a faster way to react to needs and a less expensive way to become part of the market, the "social media marketing campaigns" alone can't do the job. An isolated "campaign" is often counter productive and it would be better to just not engage at all.

What did we learn:
Learning from the early experiences we developed a holistic approach, a cross functional organization model that is able to carry out a social media strategy. The so called ComStar model integrates all departments that have a touch point with the market into the social engagement strategy. Only a small core of social media trained and experienced people is necessary to help steer even large global enterprises into a new direction. An internal social media strategy and it's leverage effect makes it possible.

The Principle:
At it's core, the ComStar Model has one principle:
- Develop a social media service team (SMST) that supports all departments in the organization
The SMST members do not necessarily tweet, blog, comment themselves instead empowers others to do so.
Similar to IT team, finance support or HR that services an entire company, the SMST functions the same way.

How it works:
With the ComStar Model, the SMST (Social Media Service Team) is the guardian angel of the social media strategy. The main objective is to inspire, motivate and service the strategy relevant departments such as marketing, sales, service, product management, HR and other. The departments in turn engage with the customer base, prospects and the market in a whole. In this model the SMST is the cordial spine for the engagement, while sales keeps the control and the relationship to their customers (even so in a different more social manner), marketing keeps being the creative part in the new engagement model “not pushing the message” but fueling the conversation, product managers get the tools and methods to better listen to needs of the market and service teams get the support to be better integrated in customer issues.

Change
Behavioral changes, in particular with "the old guard" on the sales side, are as painful as necessary. Change has never been an easy task. But also change has never been more important and has never shown more successful results like today. Creating some fan pages and a few tweets don't create a better customer experience - nor does it generate the often promised millions of additional revenue. But a great and ongoing trust building relationship with the market does, as we can see in cases like Zappos.



Presentation:
We will present the model in greater detail on
Fri, Aug 14, 2009 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT
Leasdership Series Webinar


Agenda:
- Social media impact to our business operations
- ComStar, an organization model for social media strategies
- Comparing structural differences
- Implementation challenges
- Job description, work flow and responsibilities
- Motivation and compensation considerations
- Cross functional reporting models
- A holistic view to corporate social media

Registration

Social Media Evolution

ComStar, a Cross Functional Organization Model and Strategy for Social Media engagement

When companies begin to engage in social media they typically start in the marketing department with some rather tactical marketing campaigns. In those early models a large company either hired some social media "experts" to do the campaign or found some engaged people internally. The rest of the organization does "business as usual". The problem quickly surfaces in sales "What are these guys talking to my customers", on the service side "what are they promising to our clients", and the product management team still doesn't get any feedback how to better launch the next generation products. While it is obvious that social media is a key method to create a better customer experience, a better way to listen to the market, a faster way to react to needs and a less expensive way to become part of the market, the "social media marketing campaigns" alone can't do the job. An isolated "campaign" is often counter productive and it would be better to just not engage at all.

Learning from the early experiences we developed a holistic approach, a cross functional organization model that is able to carry out a social media strategy. The so called ComStar model integrates all departments that have a touch point with the market into the social engagement strategy. Only a small core of social media trained and experienced people is necessary to help steer even large global enterprises into a new direction. An internal social media strategy and it's leverage effect makes it possible.

At it's core, the ComStar Model has one principle:
- Develop a social media service team (SMST) that supports all departments in the organization
The SMST members do not necessarily tweet, blog, comment themselves instead empowers others to do so.
Similar to IT team, finance support or HR that services an entire company, the SMST functions the same way.

With the ComStar Model, the SMST (Social Media Service Team) is the guardian angel of the social media strategy. The main objective is to inspire, motivate and service the strategy relevant departments such as marketing, sales, service, product management, HR and other. The departments in turn engage with the customer base, prospects and the market in a whole. In this model the SMST is the cordial spine for the engagement, while sales keeps the control and the relationship to their customers (even so in a different more social manner), marketing keeps being the creative part in the new engagement model “not pushing the message” but fueling the conversation, product managers get the tools and methods to better listen to needs of the market and service teams get the support to be better integrated in customer issues.

Behavioral changes of "the old guard" in particular on the sales side are as painful as necessary. Change has never been an easy task. But also change has never been more important and has never shown more successful results like today. Creating some fan pages and a few tweets don't create a better customer experience - nor does it generate the often promised millions of additional revenue. But a great and ongoing trust building relationship with the market does, as we can see in cases like Zappos.

We will present the model in greater detail on
Fri, Aug 14, 2009 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT
Leasdership Series Webinar
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/404589362

Agenda:
- Social media impact to our business operations
- ComStar, an organization model for social media strategies
- Comparing structural differences
- Implementation challenges
- Job description, work flow and responsibilities
- Motivation and compensation considerations
- Cross functional reporting models
- A holistic view to corporate social media

Registration:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/404589362



Axel Schultze Axel Schultze MyXeeSM

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Webinar Q+A Assessment Case Study July/22

Q: I recently put my business on Twitter. I work for a hotel and the Brand in general does not have a page but individual properties do. Yesterday I received tons of messages and tweets about how angry this customer was at a different property but because we have the same brand name we were guilty by association. How do we address this?
A: I suggest you introduce that customer to the respective manager of the hotel and at the same time explain how the business is structured. You help the customer get to a person and the rest of the community to understand the connection. Offer your help if the customer needs it regardless of the responsibilities - like you said "Guilty by association".

Q: How did you select the tools, did you conduct any thorough testing? Are there any other tools you suggest?
A: To be honest, we selected the tools based on how easy and well the companies responded. The market is in a very early stage. It was more important that the vendors are "social" as well not just a bunch of hackers with no connection to the outside world. Please check our Tools Week page on our website for more tool.

Q: How much of the assessment effort happened via the tools and how much was an additional manual effort?
A: Tools always run in a short period of time and the "brain work" is the lion share of the work. If you'd ask how much time was the ratio without tools, I'd say 80% data research and 20% intelligent analytics work. Now it is 2% system and 98% brain work.

Q: Can you make some rough price indications?
A: It may range from $2,500 to over $100,000 is that enough indication? The cost is pretty linear to the size of your eco system - mainly equates to company size as well. You may find people doing it for $295 - and as always you get what you pay for.

Q: Do you offer a class specifically for conducting assessments?
A: Interesting question. Not really. After thinking a bit more about your question: Even so the assessment is only the first step in a series, you need to see the whole picture. In the class the assessment sessions actually start rather late as we need to make sure students get the full picture rather than just a facet.

Q: We are a marketing focused consultant but don't do those types of assessment, do you think we can work with your consultants or is there a potential conflict?
A: I'd definitely get in touch with them. The risk that you two compete is rather limited. The opportunity to do more successful joint project much more attractive.

Q: We sell exclusively through distribution channels and don't have access to customer data. Any suggestion?
A: You still have end customers - even so you don't know them. So there are a few strategic questions to explore like: Is there a conflict if you try to get in touch with your market? Will partners helpful or not? Is the market potentially interested in a dialog with you? What would the purpose of an engagement be (get market data or actually having a conversation)? So0 more questions - no answer, sorry. But contact any of us for a deeper discussion.

Q: All I hear about social media is "free". Who invests in those expensive assessments?
A: For instance if you allocate 10 people from a 500 people organization, you most likely invest $1-2 Million in salary, overhead and other cost. Not much to create a better customer experience - still enough to make sure you invest it right. The assessment cost is a tiny fraction of the cost you are going to spend - so you better make sure you start in the right direction - the assessment is giving you this assurance.

Q: Can we get the link to the presentation?
A: This Link

We had a few very company specific questions, and suggest you get in touch with any of the presenter or academy and explore ways to answer them.

Thanks again for participating. Let us know how we did, by tweeting about it.



Axel Schultze Axel Schultze MyXeeSM

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Spoken Word

Silicon Valley Offline Social Get Together - July 21

Please join our friend Julie, who runs an awesome restaurant called Neumanalia in a less so obvious place for a great restaurant: Hayward, CA.
Next week Tuesday - July 21, 2009 | 7:30 - 10:00 PM
French / American Cuisine
!!!
Spoken Word
spotlightNeed a chance to express yourself?
Want to hear what others are doing, seeing, thinking?

What is Spoken Word?

Spoken Word is a form of literary art or artistic performance in which lyrics, poetry or stories are spoken rather than sung. "open mike"

Join us for an evening of fun and companionship in a great setting.
Special Bar Menu !!!
Wine $7.00
Premium Beer $4.00

742 B Street
Hayward, California 94541
510.583.9744

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

PayPal Case Study - Social Media Ignorance

Paypal was one of the first online payment services and had a great start but over time lost the edge. The company seems to struggle with their internal administration and adjusting their business processes to meet customer needs.

Company Background
Paypal has 160 million customers
Their support centers work shifts and deal with approximately 60,000 support cases every day.
Over 1,000 support people handle on average 60 calls per day.
You cannot email or use other ways of communication than phone, fax or post.

Support team
To deal all day long with frustrated customers is not a very pleasant job, so fluctuation is rather high and the level of competency very low. It takes on average three calls to find a competent person. Some customers suggest you don't use a case number as you don't want to get back to the same person.
Most of the support calls are very low level issues with routine answers, nothing special, simply based on lack of user help and a pretty confusing system administration (a user voice nails it: "This is done by a bunch of engineers and never reviewed by business people"). Many functions are even unclear to the internal teams. Support staff admits it is not very intuitive if it is anything other than pushing the pay now button. Everybody can read that in great detail in thousands on public complains.

Customer Experience
People still really like the product. Some even donated a website like This Link Lots of discussions with thousands of valuable inputs that - as it appears- non of the paypal people ever read. Paypal instituted a feedback form that customers are asked to fill out after each and every support case. Even so many people probably are too angry to even bother, some do, I did. But that source of customer feedback evaporates in the dysfunctional organization.

More Market Research?
Now the latest hit was that I received an invitation to participate in a survey - yet I have to be "elected" to join. However I get $200 if I participate after I am elected. But it looks like I have to drive to Mountain View to do the in person interview. A "market research institute" actually is doing the gigg. I don't want to know what that cost in total.

So here is a company that has free feedback from millions of users and thousands of cases but just doesn't bother to care - instead pays a research institute to create yet another source of feedback?

Paypals Social Web Presence
There is a paypal account on twitter, mainly tweeting "please follow us so we can DM you" - 63 updates, following 123 people
There are hundreds of paypal groups on Facebook from paypal fans to paypal frustrated customers
There are 18 groups focusing on paypal on LinkedIn with over 3,000 members
There are paypal customers on MySpace and many other sites, the feedback is priceless.
Yet paypal seem just not to care.

Even internally people know what the issues are: A support person inside paypal (very nice and very professional) "...I know, we asked numerous times to fix those issues but nobody seem to listen".

How to actually fix the problem
Social Media for Paypal could become a life saver. Not as a marketing gigg but to improve and fix a dysfunctional operation.
1) At first a company team would aggregate and distill the customer feedback using established assessment methods and available reporting tools.
2) Then develop a customer supported advisory board and rigorously execute - fixing the top issues.
3) Tackle more problems and just grind through the list from top to bottom.
4) Ask the folks from "paypal sucks" groups and sites to HELP.
5) Using the, by then established, processes to figure out how new features need to be developed (co-creation)
6) Get feedback in a structured way through groups and networks rather than through useless questionnaires
7) Create forums where customers help customers, supported by maybe even less but better educated paypal support people

Non of the above has anything to do with sales or marketing - just building a better company.

Who Is Responsible?
Is this the responsibility of Dickson Chu Vice President of Global Product and Experience? Or is it Ryan D. Downs Senior Vice President, Worldwide Operations? Or is it Scott Guilfoyle Senior Vice President, Platform Services? Or Barry Herstein Chief Marketing Officer? Philipp Justus Senior Vice President, Global Markets, responsible for growing the company? Everybody has his/her fair share.

But No, Scott Thompson, the President is the one who need to engage his executive team in a cross functional initiative to fix the dysfunctional organization.

Social media is not a cool marketing gigg - it is a strategic engagement to react to the major changes in our society reflected by changing customer behavior and an ever more demanding market.


Axel Schultze Axel Schultze MyXeeSM
Social Media Academy

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

How to start in social media?

I get more and more of the very same question: "Axel, I finally decided to get into the social media thing, do you have some advice?"

OK - too long ago I started from scratch, so everybody please chime in and add to it.

1) Give your engagement a purpose (other than just trying it out or selling something). For instance: You may want to learn more about your customers, you may want to help others in an area of your expertise, you may want to know more about your partners, you may want to learn what issues your customers have, you may want to learn from others about an area where you feel you are rather weak... Again don't sell and don't be as boring as "expand my network".

2) Start on two places: let's say LinkedIn and Facebook. Create your profile by:
- Adding a picture of yours, don't make it too special amongst the 6 billion you are unique enough as you are
- Add your real name, your real background. No need to hide anything - it is out there anyway.
- Be open, the more information you provide the approachable you appear.

3) Social networking is about connections, conversations, exchanging experience... Invite all your friends from your address book to join you in your engagement. Don't select only 5 or 10 - don't be shy, you may be surprised who else is already there for years. So invite them all. If you are not comfortable to invite 1,000 - they only get an invitation from one - YOU. Don't embarrass any of your friends, contacts or alliances by not connecting with them.

4) In the next few days you may be busy with confirming invitations, thanking them that they connect and asking them for their experience. They may have good tips for you as well. Keep the dialog over the next few weeks - make sure you leverage the connection for conversations - not just as yet another address book.

5) Now look for some groups with interesting topics or interesting people. Don't forget your purpose by selecting the groups. Sign up with 2 or three, get familiar with the conversations. If you like it chime in, if not you may as well just leave the group. Once in the group: Don't sell but just develop your skills and help others develop their skills with what ever expertise you may have. You will see others trying to sell something - don't imitate (we'll get to that later).

6) You are now a few weeks into it. You may wonder how much time you spend with no results. If that is the case: Your conversations or your network may have not been in line with your purpose. Or you may wonder how many wonderful and helpful people you met in such a short period of time - great - you are right on track.

7) The selling and doing business with those people almost reach the melting point. When can you go out and do business, sell something take orders....? Give it some more time. The social web is like a secret society you don't get to the secret in the first few levels.

8) By now you may feel good about exploring other places and spaces. You may want to signup with Twitter and follow conversations that are in line with your purpose. Search for specific terms and check the people out. Also here, invite the people who are relevant to you and your purpose and follow them. Forget all the hype around getting thousands of followers. You are here for a reason - people who collected stamps in the past collect followers now - I guess you are not one of them.

9) Other places may be of interest: Create a little clip on your laptop and post it on YouTube, upload your presentations on SlideShare, store your bookmarks on Digg. You may find a few other interesting tools based on recommendations from friends. By now you do a lot of things and use a lot of tools based on recommendations from friends.

10) You are getting into the upper levels of the secret society. You learned a lot based on recommendations. You started tell others about your experience and recommend the tools to others. You retweet, write it to others on their wall... YOU NOTICE BY NOW: You never saw an advertising from LinkedIn or Twitter, you never received a cold call from any of the tools vendors you use. Nobody ever sold you something but you may already pay for some of the extras or reporting tools that help you follow your purpose. You may recognize: All it takes is recommendations. If somebody would have called you at home to use "Friends-or-Follower" you may have dropped it because thats the last thing you want.

11) As you join more groups you recognize the guys who ask hundreds of questions, answer the question right away and put a URL you should visit. Thousands of SEO and outsourcer try to sell you that way - and I'm sure like anybody else you just hate it. You reached an important point of understanding. Selling and advertising in the social web just doesn't work. But you have this wonderful group of people who helped you and you helped them. And while you still want to do business, introduce your solutions and make a living you learned by now RECOMMENDATION is the currency in the business web. Recommendation = conversation, conducted by others. And maybe you experienced it already - other people recommend you and maybe even your business or products because what you produce or sell is helpful to somebody else.

12) You look back - probably 6 or more month passed by. You are proud that you made it through the maze of valuable and stupid information, through people you met and others you have known for many years. Your initial goals may be achieved and you feel good about the social web. Now you may take it to a whole new level - take your company and help the entire team to make sense out of all this. Make your team and your business partners a helpful hand to your customer base and your industry. Work with your customers and make them so happy that they RECOMMEND you. They can do that much better than you ever will in your life. When all the connections of all your team mates and partners recommend your products and services because they are helpful to others you become one of the top successful business person - without selling a thing.





Axel Schultze Axel Schultze MyXeeSM

Shocking report - How Teenagers Consume Media

How Teenagers Consume Media
the report that shook the City | Business | guardian.co.uk" ( This Link )

What is shocking to me: What pretty much everybody is talking about finally shook the British Guardian.

More shocking: There is no way to comment on this report. It is electronically "printed" with no way to interact. I have to admit I haven't been on a news paper site for quite a long time and recognized that this seems still to be the standard.

At the New York Times you have to sign in to "recommend" an article. But also wait until all adds are loaded.

However on SF Chronicle you can provide a comment on pretty much everything. So why spend $200 Million on a new printing press?

Axel


Axel Schultze Axel Schultze MyXeeSM

Monday, July 13, 2009

Your Twitter Profile Sucks

Too many people wonder why their followership doesn't work too well, get unfollowed or not followed in the first place. Starting with a good profile seems to be essential:

1) Give your account your real name

2) Have a photo up - any photo as long as it is YOU

3) Point people to your main URL (check http://xeesm.com)

4) Mix your profile well (not your resume, not some funky info - just what is your main concern

5) Custom wallpaper is nice but definitely the last thing I improve

6) Your location is more than a courtesy - people look for others in their vicinity

7) Don't "protect" your profile - protected means "don't touch me" and many including me just never even ask to get in touch.

8) Understand that 3 values are part of your profile: Followers, Following, Updates

9) UPDATES is a big influencer of your profile - some people check older tweets as well. Tweet what you think makes sense to your network - mix personal and business aspects in a healthy way.

10) Let pretty much everybody know that you are on Twitter - trust me it helps a lot.. Thought I share this with the group.


Axel


http://xeesm.com/AxelS

Friday, July 10, 2009

Webinar Q+A "Customer Experience Development"

Thanks again for the great participation in today's webinar "Social Media - A new Customer Experience Model".
Here are the answers to the questions from all participants:

Q: It's important to be able to respond quickly, honestly and openly in SM environments. Is this affected by the SM team acting as a service entity? Does this slow down the process and make you appear less transparent?
A: It may slow down the process by only a few minutes. The processes you institute are similar to support escalation processes. The ST will escalate findings to the respective people. The advantage for the customer is to get to the right person right away. But don't think too much in complicated service escalation. The trick is to create a social escalation process.

Q: Do you offer special classes for sales teams or marketing teams, or only leadership classes?
A: We plan functional specific classes in fall - but recommend those only for businesses that have already a strategy.

Q: What are the social media maturity levels in the various geographies around the world?
A: There are several studies in the Internet. The net of it is that developed countries are almost equal in maturity. There is no big difference between the US, Brazil, UK, Germany, Australia, Argentina, Spain, Poland... The much bigger concern is the cultural differences that lead to different behaviors and even different use of tools. India for instance uses Orkut much more than facebook, Germany still uses nick names more than real names, Sweden is way more adoptive than the US...

Q: Are you planning an East Coast location for the Academy?
All classes are Online. But we are going local for various reasons. We started in Australia and currently run the first leadership class there. We start in the UK in September and plan other countries. But all classes remain to be online.

Q: How many students are typically in a class?
A: The first classes grew from 7 to 15 and we accept 25 as max. There is a lot of interaction and collaboration so we have to cap it.

Q: The Consulting services you offer, who are the consultants?
A: The Academy Certified Consultants are the ones we involve and recommend. The number is growing every quarter. Very large projects I lead myself and work with the graduates or other members of the faculty.

Q: Do you have a case study where the business is very confidential - like medical doctors?
A: Let me say this: We should not get slaves of an attractive development and try to squeeze every business into the social web. Think about it this way: If there are people out there discussing a certain product, service or technology, you should be part of that conversation. If not - than just don't. Computers are in every household but we still cook great dinner without it ;-)

Q: Should SMM strategy be different for Small Office or Home Office than what you presented today - which is more adapted for biggest companies - having their brand known on the market ?
A: Social Media strategies are no different for smaller than for bigger companies. Our focus on bigger companies is because they are typically leading a market and the smaller companies are followers. But there is ZERO difference. The scope is different but everything we teach, from assessment through strategy to execution can be applied to a 5 people startup and to a multi billion $ global enterprise. Why? Because the customer may be the same person in either case.

Q: Very interesting, do you offer a class specifically to customer experience management?
A: I believe a successful customer experience strategy can only work in concert with an over all strategy. So the Leadership Class at the end does that.

Q: Can we hire you to work with our management team?
A: Yes, but not before 2010

Q: Do you plan to do off line / classroom classes?
A: There are no plans to do that. Social media is all about online engagement and we practice that from the second session on. Our curriculum is build in a way that it wouldn't even work off line because of all the information to digest and exercises to perform.

Q: Do you offer company discounts?
A: Yes we will for more than 5 attendees

Q: Is there any deadline for registration?
A: Not really. But we have over 500 prospects and only 25 seats each class. So the morning class will be booked pretty soon. The next class will start January 2010.

Q: Do you provide some guidance what to check when hiring a consultant?
A: We have an open wiki where both, consultants and customers helped building a catalog of questions:
This Link

Q: Can I become a trainer at the SMA?
A: Generally speaking yes. We offer all graduates to teach either their own or part of the core classes. Laureen Earnest and John Todor will offer their own classes in fall this year.

Q: Can we switch between evening and morning classes?
A: We ask you not to. We are doing a lot of group exercises and that would not work if you switch. Only if you have to miss a session, then you can.

Q: Do you offer company specific classes?
A: Yes we do.

Q: Do you hire?
A: No we don't. All instructors and faculty are active practitioners of the social web with their own business and every day experience in the real world.

Q: Not sure I trust any certification. What do you certify?
A: I fully understand the concern. Here is what we certify and why we believe it is important: This Link

Q: Do you provide your consultants with leads and business opportunities?
A: Don't put this into considerations. View the education as a foundation for your business and don't rely on others, neither the Academy nor anybody else promising you business. I suggest you chat with former students about that.

Q: (Summarized) several questions about registration, entrance exam requirements...
A: Please visit the website for more details:
Leadership Class details: This Link
Requirements and entrance exam: This Link
Class registration: This Link
European classes: This Link

Q: Can we get the presentation?
A: Yes. you will find it here on the blog.



Axel Schultze Axel Schultze MyXeeSM

Xeequa Version 2.4 Released

Navigation and Feature selection
Communities that do not plan to use any of the main features such as Events, Discussions, Videos or Blogs can turn the feature of by checking the box in the community settings. Only admins (Board) will still see buttons.

The Blogger API is expanded so that a community can syndicate content with a Blogger based blog. This feature is only available to Gold programs and up. Each post on the community blog will be posted on the connected blog and include the authors photo and name. If the author has a XeeSM, it will also post the XeeSM. (see Social Media Academy Blog) This Link or on our revitalized Xeequa blog at This Link

XeeSM Integration
XeeSM is fully integrated with Xeequa now. So if you have a SeeSM setup the social sites will be visible in the Xeequa settings and vice versa. Also the connection in Xeequa are synchronized with the "favorites" in XeeSM. CHeck it out if you don't have already This Link




Axel Schultze Axel Schultze MyXeeSM

Last Call - July 10 Event

Social Media based customer experience model
This Link

Monday, July 06, 2009

Social Media based Customer Experience Strategy

The real underlying power in Social Media is a new customer experience model. Too many hip "social media campaigns" failed because it was just old ideas blasted into a new world. Too much money was invested in fan pages or online community that became dormant after just 3 or 6 month - or worst - was never adopted.

"Anybody experience with..."
Social media is about the most often asked question: "Anybody experience with...". Customers asking for help from real users, real customers - names they would never get from the respective business. Over 160,000 Toyota driver, 65,000 John Deere customers, 50,000 IBM customer, 25,000 SAP customers, 10,000 Dow Chemical customers... customers in all industries for all types of products asked those questions and most found answers. You are right - this is not 100% of their respective customer base - but these are the most vocal and therefor most influential people. Neither business processes automation, nor the next generation CRM, or a marketing campaign or yet another survey can help. If you and your team are not part of the conversation - your influence is ZERO.

"The new customer experience model"
Social Media in a business world is NOT having a LinkedIn profile, is NOT listening to tweets of somebody walking their dog and is NOT browsing through facebook pages. Social media in business is first and foremost "The New Customer Experience Model". Based on a thorough social media assessment of your ecosystem you create a good old SWOT analysis and create a strategy that leverages your team, your partners, your customers, vendors and others to become part of the conversation - not the old "message blasting one way street" - no - a meaningful and mutually beneficial conversation with your customers, your prospects and the rest of the market.

The Social Media Academy is running a complementary webinar this week July 10th. This Link which is all about the new customer experience model, case studies, methods, frameworks, reporting tools and ways to make it happen.

Friday, July 03, 2009

Citrix / Webex - A social media case study


The Social Media Academy students of the Leadership Class conducted an exciting exercise where they performed a full social media assessment reviewing Citric' Online business by applying the four quadrant assessment methodology. The Assessment is done to better understand a corporations social presence in the market. The four elements concern Customers, Brand, Partners and Competitors.

Process, tools and results will be presented July 22 in an online presentation. Please check details and register here: Social Media Case Study