CIO

, , , , , , , , ,

CIOs: The Social Call Center

Part 11 of our series, What CIOs Need to Know About Social Media. A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this post, we take a look at Cohen’s fifth point, Impact On Operating Environment.

Creating the Social Call Center

You can create a social-media-enabled call center from your existing customer and internal call response capabilities via a combination of tweaks, training, and new capabilities. You definitely don’t need to stop what you’re currently doing, blow up your current call centers and start over.

Typical call center


Attribution

Why should you get involved in social media monitoring and response? Market Force Information, a customer intelligence firm, says these functions are becoming ever more critical for enterprises, “Because the impact of negative customer experiences has never been greater for brands. With the ability to instantly broadcast their frustrations, consumers can turn a single adverse instance into a PR nightmare. Estimates show that defecting customers will typically share their negative experiences with eight to 10 people, and one in five will tell 20 people. Yet, a well-handled response can actually increase loyalty.”[1]

Before you do the social call center makeover, however, you should have a strategy. Ideally, your social media call center strategy will flow from an overall organizational social media strategy. (We talk about creating an enterprise social media strategy in a series of posts from our Be a Person: The Enterprise Social Operating Manual, beginning with Create Social Computing Strategies.)

Once your strategy, objectives, and tactics are in place, your social media makeover effort should involve at least the following points:

  • Call center operators should use their own names. It is social networking, after all. Operators may not want to use their full names, however, and if this is the case, adopting a name convention using first name and last initial should suffice. But strongly consider having agents respond as themselves, including information about their social media participation. Our mantra, Be a Person, implies using the people in your organization as the face of your enterprise. Whether you look at it this way or not, your call center associates are the face of your enterprise to their callers, and the front line of humanizing your organization. Allow them the freedom to be themselves rather than adhering strictly to scripts. This may be the biggest transformation you need to undertake in your social media makeover.
  • Ensure that social media interactions are made a part of callers’ customer history. In fact, if you are in the market for a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, ability to track social media should be an important vendor selection criterion.
  • Call center agents should have access to a complete customer profile before responding. Depending on the volume of call center social responses, you may want them to create a new profile for every interaction.
  • Decide if call center agents are responsible for social media monitoring. Tracking what is said on social media is a crucial part of any enterprise’s social media practice. If your center is responsible for this activity, your operators will be monitoring customer-to-customer conversations on a variety of platforms. You’ll probably want to track which comments and content come from which sites and harvest profile information from the person’s profile on the sites in question. There are plenty of third-party applications that can help with this. Your biggest concerns will be how to integrate this monitoring into your CRM and call center operations, and how to report it out to the relevant areas of your enterprise.
  • Ensure that all agents are properly trained on social media. This may seem like a no-brainer, but if your operators aren’t well-versed in the capabilities and differences in the way they engage with different social networking sites, you run the risk of making it into our Social Media Hall of Shame. At the very least, agents must understand when their interactions on social media are public, and when they are private (for example, direct messaging on Twitter versus simply responding).
  • Set clear guidelines on selling. If sales and promotion are among the responsibilities of your call center, you need to be very careful in how this is done on social media. You’ll find that users of social media are generally fine with being pitched as long as it’s in the context of a conversation or a relationship. If the conversation is initiated by the social media user and concerns products or services, you’ll create one guideline. If the contact is initiated by your call center, you should have another. In general, if your agents are helpful, provide useful content, and aren’t obnoxious about selling, you’ll be more successful. Remember that social media is a powerful sales medium, but the most successful technique for sales is through recommendations by friends, not via push messages.
  • Provide a process flow for responses. We like the Air Force response decision tree that we mentioned in the previous post, Use Social Media to Manage Corporate Reputation. In general, agents should be trained and consistently reminded of your processes for dealing with negatives. As Meg Gerritsen Knodl said at a recent Social Media Breakfast, “There is a point where the conversation is over, and you don’t need to respond”

So far we’ve been focusing on the work you need to do to transform your call center and some of the risks involved. Next we’ll take a look at the benefits

Up next: Benefits of the Social Call Center.

For soup-to-nuts, strategy to execution processes, procedures and how-to advice, see our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises. The book (itself part of a series for different audiences), is available in paper form at http://bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson Save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

[1] Market Force bit.ly/rFwUq4

CIOs: Social Media’s Impact on Operating Environment

, , , , , , , , ,

CIOs: Social Media’s Impact on Operating Environment

Part 10 of our series, What CIOs Need to Know About Social Media. A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this post, we take a look at Cohen’s fifth point, Impact On Operating Environment.

  • Web 2.0 Content and Presentation Standards
  • Review and Approval Processes
  • Managing Corporate Reputation
  • Versions and Update Controls
  • Impact On Operating Environment
  • Establishing Project Priority
  • Compliance

Social Media and Operations

The first thing the average CIO might think about when considering the effect of social media on operations is server and bandwidth load. These are important, for sure, but we’ll get to them in a subsequent post because we think the first impact to be concerned about is your contact centers, whether they be internal help desks or inbound customer service centers.

Outside the box, inside a cube


AttributionShare Alike

You should be concerned about social media in these areas not so much because social media represents a new drain on resources, but because this new communications modality can help your efforts in a variety of ways.

Chances are, as a CIO one of your frequent headaches is maintaining an internal or external contact center. Keeping everyone up to speed on the latest changes in your products or the most effective workarounds for problems with legacy products can be a real pain. Plus, there’s no real way to know exactly what kind of inbound traffic your staff will face from day to day. Add to this the fact that many times, callers are irate and abusive, and the call center can be a pain center for CIOs and their staffs.

Broadly speaking, your inbound call center is in the reputation management business. Public perception of your brand and your organization can depend on how well your call center takes care of customers. By the same token, how well you take care of internal customers who call your help desk can affect the reputation of your organization, which can, of course, affect future funding. Finally, as a CIO you may find that your marketing and communications organizations have dumped responsibility for new concepts such as social media monitoring, sentiment tracking, and interacting on the company’s behalf on social networks on your organization.

All is not lost.

You don’t need to fear these broadenings of your contact center’s responsibilities because with a plan and a few of the right tools, you may find that social media can make all of your contact duties easier, despite the apparent increase in workload these new responsibilities may represent.

As it turns out, contact centers are an ideal place for your organization to centralize its social media response because the kinds of competencies required dovetail nicely with the traditional capabilities of the contact center.

While it’s true that other areas of the enterprise – product marketing, sales, communications and the C-suite – must provide information and guidance on social media to the call center, your call center systems – call tracking, bug tracking, CRM – and the training of your call center staff – good customer relationship practices – are exactly what your company requires to create social media success.

We’ll take a look in detail at how you can use social media to transform your contact centers into more-efficient, more-aware, and more-effective ambassadors for your company in the next post.

Up next: The Social Call Center.

For soup-to-nuts, strategy to execution processes, procedures and how-to advice, see our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises. The book (itself part of a series for different audiences), is available in paper form at http://bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson Save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

, , , , , , , , ,

CIOs: Brand Your Enterprise Online

Part 9 of our series, What CIOs Need to Know About Social Media. A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this post, we take a look at Cohen’s fourth item.

  • Web 2.0 Content and Presentation Standards
  • Review and Approval Processes
  • Managing Corporate Reputation
  • Versions and Update Controls
  • Impact On Operating Environment
  • Establishing Project Priority
  • Compliance

Brand Your Enterprise Online

Your enterprise may employ branding tactics in your offline marketing, or you may feel that you either don’t need to, or don’t have the money to.

Online, you must pay at least some attention to branding efforts. A brand is a promise, and it’s also a handle by which people can find you, refer to you, and talk about you online. We’ve said before that online, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. And if you have a haphazard, disorganized, or confused brand online, they may not come because they don’t associate what you do with your online presence.

Online Identity Calculator

Online Identity Calculator – cambodia4kidsorg

All your online marketing efforts should reinforce your brand, and aim to drive traffic to your Website, the center of your brand presence. It’s great to get people to read your blog. It’s great to have thousands of followers on Facebook or Twitter. The goal, however, should be to make your Website the hub of all your social media activities.

The first step is to ensure your domain name (the part after the www) is easy-to-remember, easy-to-spell, and content-appropriate. Make it simple, direct, and if possible, the first thing that comes into people’s minds when they think about the problem your business solves. Don’t be too clever.

For example, if your products deal with drinking water filters, ensure that the word “water” is part of your domain name.

If it’s going to serve the purpose of being a hub of social networking activity, your Website needs to be optimized. At a minimum, your site must:

  • Have a call to action
  • Clearly describe your business, purpose, and products
  • Enable users to bookmark, tag, or email your URL to a friend

Have a Call to Action

Of the Must Have Three, the call to action is the most important. If your site merely explains what you do and, somewhere buried on an interior page, allows your visitors to take an action to support you, it fails. Period.

Design your site to clearly communicate what visitors can do to help you, and give them a positive action they can take, whether it be a buy button, a “Like Us on Facebook” button, or at the very least, a newsletter signup button.

If you’re not doing these things, don’t begin using social media.

The reason is simple. Much of your activity on social networking sites can’t actually enable a direct action. For example, the best action that can happen upon reading one of your tweets is for the reader to click on an URL to go somewhere else. That somewhere else is your Website. Other social media sites are similar: Blogs, tagging sites, photo sharing sites, and so on, all lack features to complete a significant action. They’ll all lead people to your site, where you must make it easy for them to act.

In our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises, we discuss the importance of a consistent social media branding and graphic presence in the Triangulate Your Social Media Presence section, and we talk a bit about site org­anization in the Engagement on Your Site  section. These activities will help re­inforce your online brand.

Socialize Your Website

Here are a few other specific recommendations for “socializing” your Website:

  • Ensure that your About page clearly describes your business in a way people will respond to. Yes, your board and your corporate structure is important, but is that the main thing you want people to know about your enterprise? Link to all your social media sites in this section.
  • Organize your site from your users’ perspective — If your site is organized based on your organizational structure it likely is not optimized for your users. This penchant for site structure mimicking organizational structure is called showing your corporate underpants.
  • Add commenting to your site — You’ll come to love it. And don’t require approval before comments are posted. See the previous section, Dealing with Negatives on page 203 for reasons why. A nice, free option for adding comments is DISQUS,[1] but be careful of privacy concerns when users use Facebook or Twitter to log in to post comments. We use DISQUS on our site.
  • Add an RSS feed to your site — RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication and is a way for people to subscribe to a page or a site and receive updates using an RSS reader such as Google Reader or others. It’s what’s behind those little orange icons ( ) you may have noticed on Websites. If your hosting software doesn’t already provide the ability to add RSS feeds to your pages, you may need to get a techie involved. You can also use third party software such as FeedYes[2] and others.
  • Ensure your site is usable — Usability is a deep and broad subject and beyond the scope of this blog. But in general, use text and background colors that provide a lot of contrast; don’t make text too small (especially if you want older folks to read your site); and avoid garish or distracting graphics. Also you need to think about your major navigation and whether it is logical to the typical user. And beware of putting important material in the upper right of pages. Users often ignore that area since it very often contains advertisements.
  • Ensure your site loads quickly — Sure, everybody in your organization might love the Flash movie that loads every time a user goes to your main page, but is it really worth a 30-second load time? And will it just annoy frequent visitors? Aren’t the frequent visitors you want to optimize your site for?
  • Register your site with all the top search engines — You need to be found.
  • Claim your blog on Technorati.com — Technorati indexes tens of millions of blog, but to be sure you get into their directory, you need to claim your blog.[3] This allows you to specify categories your blog will appear in, and specify tags for the blog, enabling others to find it. In addition, Technorati will track the effectiveness of links you embed in your blog, calculating your Technorati Authority.
  • Search Engine Optimize your Website — Use WebsiteGrader.com[4] to make sure your site is attractive to Google.

Once your main site is optimized, you’re ready to start to build or improve your online brand.

Next we’ll consider Cohen’s fifth point, Impact On Operating Environment.

For soup-to-nuts, strategy to execution processes, procedures and how-to advice, see our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises. The book (itself part of a series for different audiences), is available in paper form at http://bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

[1] DISQUS: bit.ly/cbLzgB

[2] FeedYes: bit.ly/b7etvb

[3] Find out more about claiming your blog at: bit.ly/97muSS

CIOs: Versions and Update Controls – Social Media Optimization

, , , , , , , , ,

CIOs: Versions and Update Controls – Social Media Optimization

Part 8 of our series, What CIOs Need to Know About Social Media.

A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this post, we take a look at Cohen’s fourth item.

  • Web 2.0 Content and Presentation Standards
  • Review and Approval Processes
  • Managing Corporate Reputation
  • Versions and Update Controls
  • Impact On Operating Environment
  • Establishing Project Priority
  • Compliance

Creating and Managing a Social-Media-Aware Website

Frankly, Cohen’s discussion about version and update controls doesn’t really talk about anything different for social sites. Every enterprise site should have a content team, a Web Content Management System (we like Tridion), and enterprise-quality search engine (we like Endeca), a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) team, and good policies and procedures to ensure that dynamic and static content is managed, updated, edited and retired – in other words, a Content Development Life Cycle (CDLC).

Integrated Content Development Lifecycle

Integrated Content Development Lifecycle

The social media component of your enterprise site must fit into these structures, and can be treated in the same way as any other dynamic content. What we think changes when your site goes social is the necessity for a Social Media Optimization (SMO) strategy and practice. Developing SMO and integrating it into your version controls and update calendars is the essential activity you’ll need to undertake if you want to succeed in socializing your Website.

Social Media Optimization

SMO is a very deep subject, but let’s get started with a quick list of Social Media Optimization rules, created by Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations, who coined the term, and explained it like this:

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs .

Bhargava proposed 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)[1] which were later expanded to 16, and which we’ve adapted below:

  • Increase your linkability
    Enable and encourage others to link to you, and you should aggregate and link to your other content as well
  • Make tagging and bookmarking easy
    Enable others to tell a friend; list relevant tags on your pages
  • Reward inbound links
    Enable permalinks (links to, say, a blog that will never change) and feature bloggers who link to you
  • Help your content travel
    Submit PDFs or videos, and the like, to other sites to increase their reach
  • Encourage the mashup
    A mashup is when someone else does something with your content; the classic case is the Google Maps Mashup[2]
  • Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you
    The classic give to get; contribute to the community and it will come back to you; link users off your site if it will help them
  • Reward helpful and valuable users
    Reward influencers and champions by promoting their works on the homepage, develop a rating system, or just drop them a quick note in private telling them you appreciate them
  • Participate
    If you’ve read this far, you know why
  • Know how to target your audience
    If you’ve read this far, you know why
  • Create content
    While this seems like a duh moment, think about the content you create in terms of how it can be spread by your community
  • Be real
    If you’ve read this far, you know why
  • Don’t forget your roots, be humble
    Just a good rule to live by, overall
  • Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
    Pundits from Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose) to Woody Allen (A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies) have advised this
  • Develop a Social Media Optimization strategy
    A Social Media Optimization strategy, like all strategies, involves defining objectives, setting goals, and tracking progress
  • Choose your Social Media Optimization tactics wisely
    Don’t do social media to keep up with the Joneses — the Joneses may have a different audience, different objectives, and different resources
  • Make Social Media Optimization part of your process and best practices
    As we’ve stressed, don’t graft social media onto your organization; assimilate it and make it part of your way of doing business

Next we’ll consider how to Brand Your Enterprise Online.

For soup-to-nuts, strategy to execution processes, procedures and how-to advice, see our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises. The book (itself part of a series for different audiences), is available in paper form at http://bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

[1] Bhargava’s 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO): bit.ly/cbHXMh

[2] Google Maps Mania: bit.ly/an0Hly

CIOs: Techniques for Handling Trolls

, , , , , , , , ,

CIOs: Techniques for Handling Trolls

Part 7 of our series, What CIOs Need to Know About Social Media.

A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this post, we continue our look at Cohen’s third item.

  • Web 2.0 Content and Presentation Standards
  • Review and Approval Processes
  • Managing Corporate Reputation
  • Versions and Update Controls
  • Impact On Operating Environment
  • Establishing Project Priority
  • Compliance

General Approaches to Trolls

So how do you deal with trolls? Well, first you need to determine that the person is really a troll, not just a clueless newbie uninitiated in the norms of your community. This can be a difficult process, and so you should refrain from taking any action until the troll has established a body of work that has annoyed your community. Of course, that means letting a potential troll stir things up a bit first.

In the following we consider various strategies for dealing with trolls. When we refer to community below, think your Facebook page, your blog, or perhaps your proprietary community space.

Antisocial Networking - By planeta Ron Mader

Ignore Trolls

Many online pundits recommend ignoring trolls. This, however, is easier said than done, although it can be a very effective approach. The problem is, everyone has to ignore the troll. If even one community member engages the troll, the chase is on. However, the community manager should respond to trollish posts with a gentle reminder of the community guidelines for behavior. You may want to repeat this a few times, after which you should counsel the community to ignore the troll.

Ignoring trolls works because the main need a troll has is to be recognized, and responded to. If the troll’s posts are ignored, their behavior is not reinforced, and they may go elsewhere or fall silent.

But universally ignoring a troll is very hard to do. While long-time community members may recognize the troll’s posts for what they are — cries for attention — new members may respond to the outrageous or off-topic troll posts and give the troll the recognition they crave.

Others recommend responding to troll posts with love and understanding. We think that any response is likely to reinforce the behavior. While it may be effective to take the discussion offline, where possible, and try to convince the troll that their behavior is self-defeating, this is an approach with a low likelihood of success. Remember, the troll is probably a troll in real life as well. You’re not likely to be able to change a troll’s personality (at least, without years of psychotherapy).

OK, here’s a bit of troll humor:

  • How many trolls does it take to change a light bulb?
    Three. One to change the bulb; one to severely criticize the bulb for going out; and one to insult your parentage for complaining about the dark.

Do Not Confront and Out Trolls

There’s a school of thought that confronting and shaming trolls will be effective in discouraging them. For example, blogger Kirsten Sanford recounted[1] how she dealt with a troll who personally insulted her: She exposed his email address and his network address:

Everyone, say hi to Paul! [email address and IP address redacted] Paul left this wonderful comment for me recently. It left me feeling confused as to why someone / anyone would take the time to spew so much vitriol. It really makes no sense.

We do not recommend this approach. Sanford is not likely to change Paul’s mind, and also not likely to convince him to stop harassing her. What is more likely is that Paul will change identities and network addresses, and step up his harassment.

But even more important, confronting Paul as Sanford did runs the risk of making her look petty and vindictive. As Abraham Lincoln said, it’s better to say nothing and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Ban Trolls and Troll Posts

If you’re in charge of your community, you may have the power to delete troll posts and to ban members who are trolls. In fact, there are probably lots of things you can do about trolls:

  • Delete the post — This can be a controversial move, and could harm the trust you have build with your community members. We recommend that before you delete troll posts, you ask your community to weigh in on the move. Of course, you should only take this step after ignoring the troll has not worked, or if you’re unwilling to try that approach.
  • Ban the troll — This can also be controversial. If you have control over the membership of your community, you may have the ability to ban a troll for a period of time, or to remove them from the community altogether. If your community requires new registrations to be approved, you may even be able to prevent the troll from coming back. Be sure you have community support before taking this action.
  • Moderate all posts — Once again, if you have control, you may be able to require that all posts and comments in the community be approved before being published. This affects your entire community, and puts a big burden on your community manager. You are essentially saying that you don’t trust potential and existing community members, and that’s not a good way to start off or maintain a relationship. We recommend that this be a temporary solution at most. Requiring moderation for all posts will definitely affect community trust, and may cause defections.
  • First post moderation — Moderate every member’s first post. Once approved, the member is free to post anywhere. Depending on the level of control you have on your community software, you may be able to require moderation for the first post in each forum the user posts in. This technique can help blunt the effect of trollbots,[2] and it probably won’t bother your community members as long as they understand its intent. But it will do nothing to prevent the chronic troll.
  • Let trolls become part of the conversation — If your community can handle it, then let them handle it. It’s probably the next best solution if ignoring doesn’t work.

No matter how you want to deal with trolls, you need to create a troll policy as part of your community guidelines and make sure all community members understand it.

Next we’ll consider the fourth point in Cohen’s list: CIOs: Versions and Update Controls – Social Media Optimization.

For soup-to-nuts, strategy to execution processes, procedures and how-to advice, see our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises. The book (itself part of a series for different audiences), is available in paper form at http://bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

[1] Sanford’s Dealing with Trolls: bit.ly/aOgy9L

[2] Trollbots are automated programs that cruise sites looking for open comment boxes that they can paste in advertising or other obnoxious material. There’s a hilarious automated troll simulator on Alex Kigerl ‘s site: bit.ly/ohUjUz

, , , , , , , , , ,

CIOs: Techniques for Handling Social Media Negatives

Part 6 of our series, What CIOs Need to Know About Social Media.

A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this post, we continue our look at Cohen’s third item.

  • Web 2.0 Content and Presentation Standards
  • Review and Approval Processes
  • Managing Corporate Reputation
  • Versions and Update Controls
  • Impact On Operating Environment
  • Establishing Project Priority
  • Compliance

Dealing with Trolls

Trolls can wreck your community. And pretty much every community eventually has its trolls. Trolls exhibit negative, hostile, antisocial, and deliberately provocative behavior. They may have an axe to grind, or they may just be people who thrive on discord, on getting a rise out of people, and who may not really value the community. We say may not because there are some trolls who just can’t help themselves. They may actually be the most committed members of your community. They just have the type of personality that produces antisocial behavior.

Offline, the troll might be the person in your book club who never shuts up. Or the busybody that, while often productive, needs to poke her nose into everything. Or the guy who always offers off-the-wall solutions during meetings and insists on bringing them up repeatedly, long after the decision has been made.

Online, trolls are empowered. If there are no policies and procedures in place to check them, they can dominate every conversation and sidetrack every productive dialog.

Types of Trolls

The Communities Online site[1] categorizes trolls into four types, which we adapt below, adding our own fifth category:

  • Mischievous
    Mischievous trolls have a humorous intent. Often, they might be a regular community member playing a good-natured prank. They are not abusive and rarely create trouble. Generally there is no harm in responding to them. Some members may find mischievous trolls annoying, particularly if their presence leads to lengthy threads that distract the community from its true intent. Other members find that the troll’s humor and light-hearted antics provide the community with an opportunity to laugh together.
  • Mindless/Attention Seeking
    Mindless trolls have a tendency to post lengthy stories of questionable veracity, or commenting on every post with off-topic or provocative statements. Mindless trolls are generally harmless, although their activities can rise to the level of extreme annoyance. On rare occasion, the fictitious posts of a mindless troll may lead to insightful debate and discussion. There is generally no harm in you responding, but it is often best to simply ignore them. If response is necessary, let the community respond.
  • Malicious
    A malicious troll is blatantly abusive to the group and/or specific individuals within the group. One of their characteristics is that within a very short time of gaining access they begin targeting and harassing members. In some cases, the troll has a prior history with the group or someone within the group. In other scenarios, the troll is simply looking for a fresh meat market. As a community manager, respond to such trolls carefully. Generally, community members will step up and enforce community norms themselves.
  • Destructive
    Around 1999, destructive trolls began to appear in mail groups and online communities. The primary purpose of this type of troll is to completely destroy the group it has infiltrated. Destructive trolls may work on their own, or possibly in teams or gangs. As a community manager, you may need to directly confront this type of troll, and eventually may need to ban them. Be sure to enlist the support of the community to take any enforcement action. If the troll does actual damage to the community forums or software, feel free to immediately ban them, assuming you are supported in doing so by your published community policies.
  • Trollbots
    Sometimes a troll is not actually a person, but an automated program called a trollbot. Generally, these bots are not interactive, and usually just post canned text as comments to other posts. An example of a recent trollbot was the Ron Paul trollbot from the 2008 presidential campaign. Such bots are an annoyance, but if you run an open community — one that doesn’t require registration and approval — you will get visited by trollbots. Enlist the community in identifying their posts and feel free to delete them.

Our next post will go into more depth about General Approaches to Trolls.

For soup-to-nuts, strategy to execution processes, procedures and how-to advice, see our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises. The book (itself part of a series for different audiences), is available in paper form at http://bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

[1] Community Online’s Communities Online: Trolling and Harassment: bit.ly/cuCoEG

, ,

Leadership on the Cutting Edge

Over on Capsule’s blog, Aaron Keller has a thoughtful post on the role of the CEO as contrarian. He contends that, basically, someone has to be on the other side – either skeptical when the team is overly pumped or inspiring when they’re in the dumps. Keller talks about how the role of the organization is to reduce risk, and such a role, embodied in the leadership, is the antithesis of innovation, which involves plenty of risk.

The post got me thinking about the role of leadership during times of rapid, threatening change like, say, now, with social media, mobile, tablets, the always-on enterprise, and other intimidating and rapid technological change.

Rather than being the contrarian, I think leaders should be from Missouri – the “Show Me State.” Innovative leaders’ stance should not be, “That’ll never work” or “Whoa, that’s way too risky” but rather “Prove it to me.” Innovation requires a demanding skeptic, making sure that everyone has their ducks in a row, rather than a stomper of ingenious fires. Prove it to me seems like more of a positive role – I know you guys can do it, and so prove it to me.

However, to inspire continuous innovation, you also have to make room for failure – and irrational exuberance. An organization that tolerates well-meaning, ambitious failure is going to be more innovative, and won’t reject change agents, expelling them like a virus, as Keller says.

Years ago, when I brought a proposal to develop The Nielsen Company’s first Web application to the president, he told me, “Fail early. Fail often.” Radical words, but a good prescription for innovation. He was telling me it was OK to be bodacious. But he also asked me to commit to a deadline (and he also said he wouldn’t give me the money I was asking for; I found it elsewhere). He wanted me to prove it to him.

While he wasn’t Nielsen’s best leader, and was actually out of a job within a year, his advice has always stuck with me as has Edison’s retort when asked how he felt about failing so many times to create the light bulb: “I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

How can you encourage that attitude and that determination in your team?

We’d like to hear about how you foster innovation in your organization. And if it happens to be about social media, so much the better. Use the Leave a Reply section below to let us know what you think.

, , , , , , , , ,

CIOs: Dealing with Negatives on Social Media

Part 5 of our series, What CIOs Need to Know About Social Media.

A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this post, we continue our look at Cohen’s third item.

  • Web 2.0 Content and Presentation Standards
  • Review and Approval Processes
  • Managing Corporate Reputation
  • Versions and Update Controls
  • Impact On Operating Environment
  • Establishing Project Priority
  • Compliance

Dealing with Social Media Negatives

One big question that comes up almost immediately when enterprises start to use social com­puting is: What do you do about negative comments?

As we said in the previous post, when dealing with this question, it’s helpful to recognize that if you act in the world, you probably have detractors. The great thing about social media is that for the first time you can find and address negativity, in real-time.

The old techniques of responding – libel laws or lawsuits, pressuring media outlets, and using traditional media to confront and refute naysayers – not only don’t work online, but can result in generating even more negativity.

A recent example of the traditional approach, and one that has made it into our Social Media Hall of Shame, involved international food giant Nestlé. Like a lot of large food companies, Nestlé is the target for various groups who disagree with their business and agricultural methods. Some of these groups had taken to posting defaced versions of the Nestlé logo on Nestlé’s Facebook fan page as a critique and protest of the company’s policies.

In series of posts widely seen as an attempt to silence or intimidate these critics, Nestlé posted, “We welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic — they will be deleted.”[1]

This post breaks a cardinal rule about running online communities that we discuss in the Community section of our book, , Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (being slowly syndicated via this blog): Govern your community with a light hand. Your community members expect to be involved in major community decisions, and they certainly do not expect to be arbitrarily censored.

The company also threatened action for trademark infringement if critics didn’t comply. Incredibly, Nestlé also posted sarcastic replies to negative posts.

Nestlé’s old-media attempt to stem negativity was, unfortunately, all too predictable, as was the result. Rather than doing anything to respond to, placate, dissuade, or even just acknowledge the dissenters, Nestlé whipped up a storm of protest that eventually made the mainstream media news — blowing up a relatively unpublicized group of protesters into media darlings.

Here’s a typical post from their Facebook followers after Nestlé’s blunder:

[W]ould like to personally thank Nestlé for providing a place for all the people who see their unethical, disgusting and lethal practices for what they are to share their opinions. Finally we have a way to share how much we hate their practices. If you don’t boycott Nestlé already, start now, please.

One poster stated she’s not a fan and wanted to have a “Register My Disgust” button on the Facebook fan page. Another was a bit more reasonable:

I like some Nestle products so I qualify as a ‘fan.’ I would like Nestle to make them even better by removing palm oil. I would like to enjoy my Kit-Kats without feeling responsible for rainforest destruction and orangutan deaths.

And this wasn’t Nestlé’s only social media blunder. When Greenpeace posted a critical video on YouTube, the company lobbied to have it removed based on use of its logo, generating lots of free publicity for Greenpeace.

The poor besieged person in charge of the Nestlé Facebook page did try to do some damage control, posting:

This [deleting logos] was one in a series of mistakes for which I would like to apologize. And for being rude. We’ve stopped deleting posts, and I have stopped being rude.

This was a good move. It does three things: It acknowledges the mistakes; it pledges to stop deleting the logos; and it humanizes the company by taking personal responsibility for the action. Our first rule for using social media is to Be a Person, not an organization.

So what went wrong here? Well, obviously, Nestlé has the right to protect its logos and trademarks. But was it really the best approach to sarcastically criticize and threaten the dissenters? What the company failed to realize is that social computing gives the same power to individuals as it gives to big enterprises. You need to keep that in mind whenever you make a decision to deal with negativity about your business.

By the way, you may be interested in the end of the story. After a two-month campaign led by Greenpeace against Nestle for its use of palm oil, the company gave in and announced in May 2010 that it will rid its supply chain of any sources involved in the destruction of rainforests.[2] There’s no telling what role the bungled responses on YouTube and Facebook had in this resolution, but they sure didn’t help.

Our next post will go into more depth about Techniques for Handling Negatives.

For soup-to-nuts, strategy to execution processes, procedures and how-to advice, see our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises. The book (itself part of a series for different audiences), is available in paper form at http://bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

[1] Bnet’s Nestle’s Facebook Page: How a Company Can Really Screw Up Social Media: bit.ly/asqGGB

[2] Mongabay: bit.ly/aZLjio

, , , , , , , , ,

CIOs: Use Social Media to Manage Corporate Reputation

Part 4 of our series, What CIOs Need to Know About Social Media.

A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this post, we consider Cohen’s third item.

  • Web 2.0 Content and Presentation Standards
  • Review and Approval Processes
  • Managing Corporate Reputation
  • Versions and Update Controls
  • Impact On Operating Environment
  • Establishing Project Priority
  • Compliance

Managing Corporate Reputation on Social Media

Chances are the first thing you as a CIO think of when you think about social media is, “What if people – even customers – say bad things about us online?”

When dealing with this question, it’s helpful to recognize that if you act in the world, you probably have detractors. People have more than likely been talking negatively about you offline for some time. You’ve never been privy to their conversations, and you’ve had limited or no ability to address them directly or to know their concerns. Now that social media has brought these negative conversations out in the open, not only are they spread more widely, but you get the chance to do something about the root causes. That’s fantastic! You can find and address negativity, in real-time, for the first time in history.

The natural inclination of most enterprises is to try to suppress, delete, or otherwise eliminate dissent. In a world where access to broadcast media was expensive, restricted, and guarded by gatekeepers, this type of approach was effective. Enterprises could use libel laws or lawsuits, could pressure media outlets, and could use the media to confront and refute naysayers. Many enterprises employ these techniques in social media as well.

Often, however, the old tools for dealing with negatives not only don’t work online, but can result in generating even more negativity.

Three points from our excerpted from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (being slowly syndicated via this blog) can help frame your thinking about managing your enterprise’s online reputation:

Keep Records

It is critical to keep records of interactions with participants using social media. If you control the community space, say, on your own Web site, make sure everyone knows that you will delete posts that are offensive.  Copy the offending post into a call record before deleting it online, and be honest with your community about your action.

Negative Posts

When encountering a negative post (that does not violate your published terms of service), encourage the poster to explain him or herself. Often they will reveal the source of their frustration. Use the Air Force blogging decision tree (see the previous post in this series for information) to guide your response. If a response to the negativity is not covered in the FAQ, let the subject matter experts respond.

Troll Policy

A troll is someone who repeatedly posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages. Ignore trolls. Do not engage them. If they violate your terms of service, request management approval to delete them from the community.

Of course, there’s much more to protecting your online reputation, and we go into more depth in the next post in this series, Dealing with Negatives on Social Media.

, , , , , , , ,

CIO’s Social Media Review and Approval Processes

A post on Mashable from a year and a half ago is still relevant to enterprise CIOs grappling with the impact of social media on the enterprise. In the post, Lon S. Cohen lists seven things CIOs should be considering. We’re taking a closer look at each of the item in Cohen’s framework. In this blog, we consider look at Cohen’s second item.

  • Web 2.0 Content and Presentation Standards
  • Review and Approval Processes
  • Managing Corporate Reputation
  • Versions and Update Controls
  • Impact On Operating Environment
  • Establishing Project Priority
  • Compliance

Social Media Processes

As part of your social media strategy, CIOs should consider what policies should govern the enterprise’s social computing use. The first thing that might occur to you when you think of social media policies are those that control who speaks and what they say.

Yes, social media usage policies that control who and what are important. But policies, practices and procedures laying out how to speak may be even more important. Don’t assume that because your employees are social-media-savvy that they know best how to be evangelists for your enterprise. The following, excerpted from our Community Building Checklist chapter in our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (being slowly syndicated via this blog), can help you as you think through your social media processes.

  • Establish, in writing, best practices and procedures
  • Ensure staff is on message
  • Empower staff to be proactive and participative
  • Position community as means to engage, not a distraction
  • Create Rules of Engagement
    • What to do with negative content
    • What to do with negative members (more later)
    • What to do with staff that blabs
    • Study how the US Air Force deals with various types of community members, in the next figure

      Air Force Web Posting Assessment Flowchart

      Figure 85 — Air Force Web Posting Assessment Flowchart[1]

  • Decide whether to hold employees and other community members personally responsible for content they publish
  • Decide how staff should Identify themselves in posts
  • Decide if staff members who post elsewhere should add a disclaimer to their posts: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent [Organization’s] positions, strategies or opinions.”
  • Encourage all members to respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws and set penalties for non-compliance
  • Confidentiality: Decide whether to prohibit citing or referencing clients, partners or suppliers without their approval
  • Create a linkback policy for material reposted from other sources
  • Create a prohibited language policy restricting hate speech, ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity
  • If you are regulated, ensure all employees understand what can and cannot be said online
    • Understand the legal ramifications of creating a public record or a public meeting by discussing topics online
    • User-Generated Content (UGC) may need to comply with policy, copyright, trademark
    • May need to treat information as part of records subject to retention policies
  • Be careful out there: Some laws may restrict your ability to censor employees online:
    • Political Opinions
      • Many states, (such as California) prohibit employers from regulating their employees’ political activities
      • Unionizing
      • In many states, talking or writing about unionizing is strongly protected; union contracts may permit blogging; states may protect “concerted” speech — protecting two or more people who discuss workplace conditions
    • Whistleblowing
      • Many may believe reporting regulatory violations or illegal activities online is protected, but whistleblowers must report problems to the appropriate regulatory or law enforcement bodies first
    • Reporting on Your Work for the Government
      • Government workers writing online about their work is protected speech under the First Amendment except for classified or confidential information
    • Legal Off-Duty Activities
      • Some states may protect an employee’s legal off-duty blogging, especially if the employer has no policy or an unreasonably restrictive policy with regard to off-duty speech activities
    • Reporting Outside Social Media Site Memberships
      • Some organizations require employees to report other places where they contribute online
    • Set Guidelines for At-Work Social Media Use
      • Most enterprises believe at-work use of social media saps productivity, but some studies find just the opposite.
    • Review the following policies for ideas for your social media policy:[2]

    Our next post will take a look at Use Social Media to Manage Corporate Reputation.

For soup-to-nuts, strategy to execution processes, procedures and how-to advice, see our book, Be a Person: the Social Media Operating Manual for Enterprises. The book (itself part of a series for different audiences), is available in paper form at http://bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

  • [1] Air Force Web Posting Assessment Flowchart v.2 (PDF): bit.ly/dvdtGS

    [2] See SocialMedia.biz for a great list of social media usage policies: bit.ly/cyou3a

1 2