On Wednesday, November 28th, it will once again be Tweet Jam time. This month we'll be concentrating on Socializing Customer Relationship Management and have lined up a great group of panelists.
The Questions
Businesses are moving beyond using social media to gather followers and likes. They are turning to social media channels to engage their audience in dialogue, take care of customer questions and concerns and personalize the customer experience with their brand. Take a look at the questions our experts will tackle below:
How do you define the core mission of Social CRM?
What are the key technologies/practices changing customer service today?
What role does Social CRM play in a larger Social strategy? Is it necessary to have the one before the other?
List 3 reasons why Social CRM projects fail to achieve expected value.
How do you see customer support strategies changing in 2013?
The Panelists
Anyone interested is welcome to join the event and connect with our panelists. The easiest way to join the conversation is by following or including the #cxmchat hashtag.
This month's knowledgeable participants will include:
Denis Pombriant — CEO, Beagle Research Group — @DenisPombriant
Hyoun Park — Principal Analyst, Nucleus Research — @hyuonpark
To hear our expert's weigh in, join us Wednesday, November 28th, at 10 am PST / 1 pm EST / 1700 GMT. The easiest way to follow is to use the #CXMChat hashtag. We will be setting up a chat room and sending out the details via Twitter on the day of the Jam. See you on the 28th!
In August, a group of top HP reps and product directors gathered in New York to show off the company's newest devices: laptops, tablets, desktops, hybrid PCs. But its flagship product--or at least the device HP reps spent the most typing selling to attendees--was the HP ElitePad 900, a 10-inch Windows 8 tablet designed for business. With a slew of business-friendly accessories (keyboard, docking station, Stylus pen), HP believes its slate can finally compete with the iPad in the corporate world. But what about Microsoft's Surface tablet?
Surface
Like most hardware makers in the space, HP's interest in the enterprise space is indicative of its larger struggles to keep pace with Apple in the consumer tablet market. Long have hardware manufacturers (or OEMs) relied on corporate customers to boost sales: Not only did these customers value low-cost products over high-end design, but their employees depended on legacy applications, meaning programs built for older systems that required backward compatibility to function--programs that would be too costly to migrate over to a new platform like Apple's. In this environment, Windows-based PCs thrived. But that's all changing thanks to the iPad. Apple's best-selling tablet has dominated the enterprise space--one recent study suggested the iPad accounted for 97.3% of tablets activated by enterprise customers last quarter, a strong indication that even stodgy business clients value quality design and user experience.
Apple now sells more iPads than HP does PCs. Mike Hockey, worldwide public relations manager for HP’s multi-billion-dollar personal systems group, describes this sea change: "Let's be honest, there's a certain expectation in the market--the iPad has set an expectation for what a tablet should be. We know that you have to design something that looks good. At the end of the day, nobody wants to be embarrassed to pull something out--it's got to have a consumer look and feel. If you pull out something butt-ugly these days, end users will revolt. It used to be, 'You take it; you're going to like it.' That's changed. It really has. You got the IT guys saying, 'I need X, Y, and Z.' But you have the end user going, 'Man, screw you, I'm going to bring in my own device.' So if you're not even close to the iPad, then why even bother?"
It's a radical change in thinking for HP. Only last year, the company was trying to sell me on the HP Slate 2, a super-thick, Windows 7-based tablet that had barely any of the functionality of the iPad yet sold at an alarmingly high price of $699. At the time, Hockey and his colleague Kyle Thornton, category manager for emerging products at HP, argued that due to the reliance of the enterprise on Windows and legacy applications, the HP Slate 2 would be a huge hit in the market, despite its deficiencies and appalling design. "To be honest with you, we've had many customers look at [the iPad], but they're not necessarily looking for that whiz-bang experience," Thornton said then. "Let me tell you, for a lot of customers, the Windows 7-based [Slate] performance is more than enough for what they're looking for… Now, the CEO might get the iPad, but for the 500 or 2,000 [employee] deployment? They're not going to get iPads. They're going to get something like this [Slate 2]."
Slate 2
In other words, the CEO gets the good device, while the employees get the cheap device. Look how much has changed: "I agree with you: Windows 7 was not the answer," Hockey told me over the summer. "I'm not going to argue with you. I'd be the first to tell you that Windows 7 on a tablet was not a very strong product. But we think that with this new generation of Windows 8, touch-enabled devices, there's an opportunity now."
All told, the ElitePad 900 is a pretty sleek device on its own. At 9.2mm and 1.5 pounds, the ElitePad is actually more appealing than many of HP's consumer offerings. The company hopes the tablet's accessories will set it apart: a two-piece Smart Jacket system provides extra battery life and ports; a docking station provides additional features such as USB and HDMI connectivity; and the company is also offering an external keyboard and Stylus pen.
However, these accessories are also the ElitePad's downfall: the thick and heavy jacket system is anything but Smart; the docking station provides little differentiation; and the external keyboard is a bulky slab of hardware that doesn't match the device's light-weight design, while the Stylus pen doesn't even attach intuitively the tablet itself when not needed. (Because the Stylus pen was foolishly designed thicker than the tablet itself, you actually need an external cover just to store the pen.) Compare that to Microsoft's Surface tablet, which features a sturdy, built-in kickstand as well as a super-thin attachable keyboard that doubles as a cover. Why would corporate customers want all the additional clutter of accessories if Microsoft's offering eliminates the baggage?
"Because you may have a situation where you may need more options--the [Surface] might not be enough for you," Hockey says. "If all I'm looking for is a notebook, well I might as well buy a notebook. If I'm just going to carry the Surface with a kickstand, what's the point? We've got notebooks that are down to 2.5 pounds now. I don't know what the Surface is with the kickstand--it's right at 2 pounds I think. If i'm going to have the kickstand and keyboard all the time, and that's really all I'm using it for, then why not just go buy a light-weight notebook or ultrabook?"
HP ElitePad 900
It's a talking point HP was clearly prepared to deliver. Only several weeks ago, HP CEO Meg Whitman knocked the Surface, which she said "doesn't function like a laptop," adding that "it lacks a keyboard you can do real work on." Whitman argued the Surface is more so geared toward the consumer space, while HP's offering will compete in the enterprise market.
One thing is for sure: HP can no longer rely on the same formula and advantages it has for decades. High-end design and user experience are now incredibly important, even in the corporate world. And with Apple's rocketing success in the enterprise space, HP and other hardware makers can't depend on Windows forever to sell its products.
Recently the eDJ Group, a leading e-Discovery research and analyst firm released a report about social media as it relates to legal discovery. In it, they make it very clear to companies of all sizes that there’s no excuse for not managing and preserving social media content for compliance and litigation purposes.
Keeping Up with Social Media
Seven years after social media became mainstream, more and more businesses have adopted, embraced or otherwise accepted its presence into their marketing strategies. But many more companies haven’t begun to address it as part of a holistic e-Discovery strategy.
For some, they waited to see how others addressed it; for others, social media was a fad that didn’t warrant additional concern. However, as social media has become an accepted marketing and customer service channel, organizations are struggling to get caught up thanks to regulatory standards put into place by FINRA and the SEC.
Elements of a Social Media Governance Policy
There are many ways companies can effectively integrate social media governance policies. Previously we’ve outlined 9 Steps to Developing a Repeatable Social Media Litigation Readiness Plan. In the eDJ Group report, they encourage companies to be specific when designing their policy. It’s simply not enough to advise employees not to post company information on social media sites; rather it’s more important to outline particular types of information that cannot be shared or posted, like trade secrets, earning reports and other sensitive and proprietary information.
The report also recommends including the following elements in your organization’s social media policy:
Guidance on acceptable use of company social media profiles for personal reasons
Clear rules on whether and how employees can use company intellectual property in personal usage of social media
Prohibition of disclosure of confidential information
Ramifications for policy violations
There's No Such Thing as Privacy
While having a social media policy tailored specifically for your organization, its employees and socially acceptable behaviors is important, it’s also necessary to understand the legal implications of the privacy expectations of the major social media networks. The report cautions that many of these sites have “crafted policies in such a way as to allow discovery of information to happen should law enforcement or the Courts require.”
The report outlines the policies of some of the major social media publishers as they relate to eDiscovery:
What does this mean exactly for your organization? It means that information is not as private as users might think it is and it can be much easier to collect as well. It means that if a company does not proactively retain social media content, it can still be accessible.
Define, Collect, & Preserve
Ultimately, the report serves to remind us that there is much more to social media than sharing of information. The preservation of information shared is also a key component that companies must also prepare for. Much like anything for which a company must develop a strategy, it’s critical to define requirements based on what’s relevant to its culture and the regulatory standards of the industry. In order to determine what method to use for social media collection and preservation, companies must first answer several questions so as to define requirements, such as:
Ondango, a third-party provider of Facebook stores, has secured a US$ 500,000 capital investment from a group led by London-based venture capital fund Connect Ventures. The new capital will be used to scale Ondango’s Facebook-shopping platform.
Based in Germany, Ondango provides a platform the company says allows users to set up a Facebook store in minutes, with no technical knowledge. Users pay a monthly fee and Ondango also says no e-commerce experience is needed to run a Facebook store on its platform.
According to Ondango, it will use the new investment to accelerate growth and scale its services for small- and mid-sized businesses. Specific areas where Ondango plans to focus improvement include driving traffic to Facebook stores and overall customer experience.
Not Waiting around for Facebook
A posting on DailyDealMedia credits Ondango for “subscribing to the theory of tapping into what is becoming known as Facebook commerce.” This refers to a Facebook commerce performed without the assistance of apps. While Facebook “flounders around trying to figure out how to best monetize its unofficial 1 billion users,” DailyDealMedia says third party providers like Ondango are trying to tap into its “massive user base.”
Independent data suggests Facebook commerce, whether supported by Facebook itself or a third party, could prove quite lucrative. DailyDealMedia references Booz & Co. estimates that the worldwide market for social commerce will be US$ 9 billion this year and top US$ 30 billion by 2015. As DailyDealMedia understates, “It’s anticipated that Facebook could perhaps amass a rather large slice of that social commerce pie.”
Social Media Has ‘Science Fiction’ Potential
In a recent CMSWire column about the Social Media Intelligence Conference, Matthew O’Connell indirectly supported the notion of Facebook becoming a major direct e-commerce channel by discussing the “science fiction” potential social media has to change our daily existence.
The pervasiveness of social media on the internet is obvious,” wrote O’Connell. “Within a very short time, we'll be (social networking) in our Google Glasses, Facebook Phone, contact lenses (MIT has a patent on these) or brain implants, with less effort and easier access. By integrating this worldwide system of information seamlessly into our reality, we are on the precipice of an entirely new language; one of vision, intuition, transparency. In this world, we are everywhere at once without leaving our homes… The power that companies like Google and Facebook have is nearly unlimited.”
While O’Connell does not discuss social commerce per se in his column, clearly he is describing a world where social networking becomes a pervasive, everyday means of interaction with the world, and we all know how big a role commerce plays in our daily interaction.
Several angel investors, including Andy Goldstein, executive director of the Ludwig MU Entrepreneurship Center, have also participated in this round of financing. More than 400 Facebook shops use the Ondango platform, mainly in the music, sports and lifestyle market segments.
A more collaborative LinkedIn Group. That’s the intention of a new tool announced today by Bloomfire.
Bloomfire for LinkedIn Groups enables owners and members of LinkedIn Groups to create a media-capable collaborative community. Bloomfire CEO Craig Malloy said in a statement that the free app “expands how we communicate in LinkedIn so we can share knowledge by showing instead of just telling or linking to outside content.”
Integrating Collaboration
Functionalities in the tool include the ability to upload and share any file type, such as videos, screencasts, images or documents, and to record and upload videos. Group attendees can also record screencasts, share presentations with attached slide decks, package related content into a playlist-like series, and search and retrieve previously uploaded content.
Dave McAnn, the company’s CTO, told news media that, with the LinkedIn Groups app, a LinkedIn Group owner “continues to own content moderation in their Bloomfire as they have in their LinkedIn Group, making the integration and experience as seamless as possible.”
The new tool is the first that Bloomfire has in mind for integrating its collaborative software into popular professional and workplace applications. The aim is to allow users to share knowledge in applications where work already takes place, rather than have to switch into such apps as a centralized content management system or a learning management system.
Getting Knowledge, Giving Knowledge
Bloomfire’s app — a “Bloomfire,” as the company calls it — is designed to give “finger-tip access” to knowledge, and to facilitate sharing between those who have specific knowledge and those who need it.
The Bloomfire tool utilizes key features of the company’s core knowledge sharing app. The full app also provides peer-to-peer social learning, in which answers to questions can range from text to multimedia demos.
The main app also features the capability to print presentation-ready usage reports, browse one’s Bloomfire home page to identify the most recent and popular shared content, and organize content by topics and keyword tags. And there's the ability to join the company’s Membership Subscription and get access to its billing engine, so that clients could be charged to be share valuable content as part of a community.
According to hacker group AntiSec it obtained access to an FBI laptop during March, and among the various files they acquired was one of over 12 million Unique Device Identifier (USID) codes for Apple devices. TheNextWeb reports that alongside the data was an incomplete list of user names and other personally identifying information including cell phone numbers and addresses.
The hackers have now released a "cleaned" version of this list, with just one million UDIDs. AntiSec says it hacked the laptop using a previously known Java vulnerability.
This year “convergence” is becoming much more than just a buzzword, particularly in the world of content marketing. As a recent report from Altimeter Group explains, three previously distinct channels are now merging to produce increasingly necessary hybrids.
Paid Media: display or broadcast advertising that requires a media buy, including banner ads, pay-per-click search ads, advertorials and sponsored links.
Owned Media: content assets a brand either owns or wholly controls, such as websites, branded blogs, social media profiles, videos, etc.
Earned Media: content that is user-generated and/or user-shared, including Tweets, Facebook updates, shares, reviews and comments made in open forums. “Another component of earned media is mentions in media or on social channels that are the result of PR or media relations,” reads the report. “For brands, earned media is the most elusive and difficult of the three channels; while it can be influenced, it cannot be directly controlled.”
The intermingling of these three approaches (illustrated in Altimeter’s graphic below) has been a natural result of digital marketing, as well as the growing levels of consumer connectivity. For example: paid advertising frequently incorporates social network-based conversations, or is re-fitted into the brand’s owned media, such as YouTube channels, for an extended shelf life. Meanwhile, owned media, such as a brand’s blog post, is now fed through social networks, often resulting in the generation of earned/shared media in the form of engagement.
“All channels work in concert, enabling brands to reach customers exactly where, how, and when they want, regardless of channel, medium, or device, online or offline,” explains the report. “With the customer journey between devices, channels, and media becoming increasingly complex, and new forms of technology only making it more so, this strategy of paid/owned/earned confluence makes marketers impervious to the disruption caused by emerging technologies.”
Strategies to Live By
But however natural, marketers are still struggling to harness the disruption this convergence has caused to their still segmented workflow. After all, brands have traditionally been organized into marketing subgroups of different territories and mindsets — not to mention departmental silos and disparate tool usage as well.
The report offers software vendors strategies for overcoming these related obstacles, including highly useful insight for planning:
Overview and forecast of converged media landscape
Converged media strategy checklist
Leading vendor comparisons (including Adobe, IBM, Google, Salesforce and Oracle)
Leveraging influencers throughout POE
Converged media campaign case studies
Content Marketing Mayhem
All in all, Altimeter has recognized content marketing as today’s key to business success. As brands of all types continue to extend their feelers into the world of publishing, this will only prove to be more true, and a well defined strategy will be required to inspire communities to share and thereby prolong the life of that messaging.
"Preparing for Paid, Owned and Earned integration is not just a demand of present reality, but an inevitable necessity of the future of marketing, advertising, and communications,” reads the report in closing.
How are you currently managing Paid, Owned and Earned (POE)? Let’s start a conversation in the comment section below.
Editor's Note: To read more of Chelsi's thoughts on content marketing:
