Critical Success Factor 3: Simple Software

I always liked the story about how a goldfish doesn't know it's in a bowl because the way it experiences the world is the only way it ever has. I find myself thinking of that whenever something jolts me out of commonplace acceptance of the way things are -- "oh, right, just because it always has been this way doesn't mean it always will be."

This brings me to critical success factor #3 for deploying a successful social business software solution within an organization: simple software. We've been running Jive Clearspace 2.5.x since our proof of concept trial in August 2008. But as an organization we had experience with a few other social media platforms, so we're actually wiser than the goldfish.

And what we learned from trying other platforms was that if the software's not simple to use, not many people will use it consistently. They may give it a try when it's new, but over time the hassle factor wears them down. We really like how simple Jive Clearspace is to use and I'm certain that's a key factor in the success that we have had in developing our communities.

However, Jive Clearspace isn't perfect, of course -- and that's what reinforces my belief that simplicity is a critical success factor. Where there is too much friction -- when the way you have to use the software isn't easy -- we see people resisting using it. For example, we have many email addicts and it's not been easy to persuade them that using the wiki is as simple as firing off an email (especially from their BlackBerry). We can talk about and demonstrate the benefits of having their discussions in the wiki instead of trapped in separate inboxes -- and they get it -- but if they still have to take some extra steps, if it's not as simple as email, then people will tend to stick with what's simplest.

So, choose your software platform carefully. Look for lots of great features, of course (by simple to use I don't mean stripped down). But really look hard at ease-of-use factors, and be sure you test with ordinary, typical users over some time so you can learn what they think -- and observe what they do. It's another critical success factor for your internal online community.

The wiki meme

The famed biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to describe an idea that was passed along in minds much in the same way that genes are passed along in bodies. As our wiki project has continued, I think the wiki meme is spreading.

Let me explain. Our wiki spans the length and width of a very large corporation. Employees are getting into the habit of working across departments, groups, etc. What matters isn’t where someone works, but what they can contribute to the discussion. Speaking personally, I really like to discuss ideas with individuals across the company, and the wiki makes that possible like no other tool. It’s Web 2.0 in the wild.

Someone once said the businessman has no country, and I’m starting to think that the wiki-empowered employee has no division. Our wiki is fostering a less parochial, more cosmopolitan view of our company in the minds of its employees. This, in short, is the wiki meme.

Most of our employees aren’t there yet. They’re still asking about how to upload documents and whether it makes sense to start a blog. But I predict that the wiki meme will disrupt, in an increasingly fundamental sense, how our company does business. Once employees get used to working across divisions, it’s hard, if not impossible, to put the genie back in the bottle.

As I like to say, simple ways of doing business always triumph over complex ways of doing business – eventually. Let me rephrase that: Companies that will survive the upheaval of Web 2.0 will have to be more agile. They need the wiki meme to spread to all corners of the enterprise.

How’s your company doing? Is the wiki meme spreading throughout your office?

When Social Media Goes B-to-B

A team of analysts over at Forrester Research recently produced “The Social Technographics of Business Buyers," a really thought-provoking report on the use of social media by IT decision-makers in the b-to-b world (as opposed to the b-to-c world, where the focus has traditionally been). The headline on Josh Bernoff’s blog is enough to attract anyone’s attention: New research: B2B buyers have very high social participation.

Consider this from the related PowerPoint presentation (just register and log in to get it):

In the current economy, social media offer new ways to reach and engage hidden B2B technology buyers.

Hidden buyers? In other words, there’s an untapped market here, if only companies don’t mess it up. Overall, these buyers are more engaged in social media than the average consumer — for work and for play.

Another section from Bernoff’s post:

• 91% of these technology decision-makers were Spectators — the highest number I’ve ever seen in a Social Technographics Profile. This means you can count on the fact that your buyers are reading blogs, watching user generated video, and participating in other social media. Note that 69% of them said they were using this technology for business purposes.

• Only 5% are non-participants (Inactives).
  

• 55% of these decision-makers were in social networks (Joiners) — despite as mature business people and not college students, you’d think they’d be participating a lot less.

• 43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles, etc.) and 58% are Critics, reacting to content they see in social formats. Again the numbers are very high compared to other groups we’ve surveyed, and again the level of participation for business purposes is also very high.

While Bernoff notes that word of mouth was still the number one influence on buying decisions, he expects that as social media becomes more commonplace, the online ecosystem will become more influential:

Note that buyers use social technology but don’t rate it highly in terms of its influence on their buying decisions. This, despite the fact that [they] count on peers’ opinions to make decisions. I think this reflects that people haven’t gotten used to this sort of information as a key input in buying decisions. This will change, especially as better applications come on line.

Another great insight:

Buyer use of social media — across all types of social media — is highest at the outset of an IT project and lowest during the final phrase Forrester dubs “Review the payback or business results of completed IT projects.”

Using Forrester’s P-O-S-T (People-Objectives-Strategy-Technology) approach, marketers can make sure their marketing campaign “does” social media in the right way. And based on how b-to-b buyers act, we can make sure to have have all the rungs on Forrester’s Social Technographics ladder (Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators) covered in our campaigns.

At the end of the day, as Forrester’s research shows, any successful social media marketing stategy begins by understanding the social behavior of buyers. What do you really know about what influences your current and potential customers to make a buying decision? And how can social media help tip the scales in your favor?

Critical Success Factor 2: Support from the Top

This is the second in a series of posts about what it takes to successfully deploy a social media software solution inside an organization.

It took a while for this one to reach my consciousness. I guess that's because it's been there from the start and has never wavered. But the more I look into it, the more I realize how important it has been to us that our CEO has been our project's sponsor and advocate.

He's really set the tone in so many ways:

• Subtly, by forwarding emails to me and copying the sender when they've sent him something that should be posted in the wiki rather than sent around by email.
• Vocally, by mentioning the wiki in nearly every one of his enterprise-wide communications
• By example: from the start of our implementation he's been in the tool frequently, blogging, responding to discussions and commenting on documents
• With his direct reports: he's had me speak to his executive team several times, demoing the software, explaining our objectives in using it and regularly reporting our progress with it -- including reports that break out how each division is progressing, so each exec can see how s/he ranks compared to their peers.
  
• Financially, by signing off on the expenditures for our implementation.
• Leadership: setting expectations, creating accountability and providing direction as needed.

So, critical success factor #2 may not be a surprise, either, but it's real. I'm not saying you can't succeed without it. But your chances of success are much greater if you have strong support for your social business software initiative from the top. The effect on the organization is significant and invaluable.

Critical Success Factor 1: Strong Community Manager

I am trying to distill all that we have been learning about successfully implementing a social media solution in our organization (or as Jive has aptly named it, social business software). I'm going to write a series of blog posts about the critical success factors I have identified -- not necessarily in order of importance.

The first critical success factor, and the earliest one I identified, is to have a strong community manager. Sure, as the community manager I am biased, so take that into account as you read this. But I'm not looking in the mirror, I'm looking at the dozen local community managers we have throughout our enterprise (at least one in each division).

As I reported on our rollout and engagement progress each month, it became clear that some divisions were moving more quickly than others to gain adoption and derive value from the tool. Why was this? The strongest correlation I could find was with the local community manager.

This sounds so obvious: a strong community manager is critical to the success of your social business software implementation. But it's worth stating boldly. If you're serious about building a community, you'd better select and invest in someone well-suited to the role who has the skills, abilities, passion and bandwidth needed.

It's that simple. The single best predictor of your community's success is your choice of community manager.

Jive Support: Grade A

I spent many years in the call center and customer support industry, so I know as well as anybody that support professionals rarely get noticed except when they make a big mistake. When they do their job well, everything runs smoothly and we tend not to notice when that becomes normal and expected. We don't notice oxygen, either, except when it's missing and we can't breathe.

Well, we've been running Jive's Clearspace for about six months now and I just noticed I have 600 posts in the Jive Support area since then. I'm not an easy customer, either. I'm pretty demanding and I get cranky when things don't meet my expectations. I call 'em like I see 'em and I expect the support professionals I deal with to be just that: professional.

I'm happy to report that Jive's support team is excellent. Grade A. Responsive. Knowledgeable. Helpful. They get results and do it quickly. They take ownership for resolving an issue, they respond to follow up questions and extend themselves to resolve not only the original issue but any related (even tangentially) issues. And they do it all in a personable, friendly way, too.

Of course, I haven't really noticed this much because I have come to expect it. It's my normal experience with Jive Support now, and we don't tend to remark on normalcy. But in this case we should, because Jive's Support team is everything a software support area should be: so good you come to take them for granted.

Thanks, guys at Jive! Keep up the great work!

Getting Excited About Jive SBS 3.0

We're running Jive Clearspace 2.5.x and have been since September 2008. This week Jive released version 3.0, along with a name change: Jive Social Business Software 3.0 (as far as functionality is concerned, it's the next major release of Clearspace -- more on the marketing and positioning in a future post).

I've had a couple of demos with Jive now of SBS 3.0 and I must say I like what I see. Social bookmarking is something I really wanted, so put a checkmark next to that on my wishlist. Not only are individuals going to have a simple, built-in way to save their favorite locations, but teams will, too. The power of sharing bookmarks -- even external ones -- throughout the enterprise is very exciting. It's a social media tool that's proven to be powerful and I expect we'll find real value in it.

I'm most excited about the improved reporting, though. As a community manager, I have been seeking data, actionable data, to understand what's working, what's not, who's participating and how, and who's not. Clearspace 2.5 provides an array or reports, and we've deployed Omniture for web stats, too, but little of the data is what I could truly call actionable. We need it to be more granular, more flexible and more widely available.

I just got a peek at the new Analytics module for Jive SBS 3.0 and as a numbers geek, I'm drooling. Can't wait to get my hands on all that data and connect my old pal Excel to the data warehouse. Just from the examples Jive provided I can see it's got "actionable" written all over it, as well as flexibility in spades. Can't tell, yet, how easy it is to make is widely available, but have my fingers crossed for that, too.

One of my objectives for 2009 is to develop a custom set of actionable data reports. With the Analytics module and the data warehouse that's part of it, it looks like Jive has given me a huge boost toward accomplishing that objective. I still need to get under the hood and test it out, so I'll report what I find when I do that, but from the documentation I have seen so far, this is going to really be useful.

Beware of Pornographic Images

Did I get your attention? I hope so! We had our first case of pornography in our wiki today. This was not in the least bit questionable or borderline -- there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that it was pornographic.

So, how did it appear? Well, it turned out we were the victim of a bait and switch of sorts. An employee pasted in a link to an image on the Internet instead of uploading the image to the wiki. Because that method relies on a live link to an image outside of the wiki, when that image is changed by its owner, the image that appears inside the wiki changes, too, instantly. We went from displaying an innocent image to a pornographic image sometime overnight.

What are the lessons to be learned here?

1. Avoid linking to images as a method of displaying them. You are at the mercy of the image's owner when you use a link to display images.
2. All externally-linked images currently in the wiki should be identified and replaced by uploaded images.
3. We need to educate everyone about this risk and how to avoid it.
4. Overview pages for groups, spaces and projects in Jive Clearspace are especially high risks because the Formatted Text widget that people usually employ to display images on those pages only accepts a URL as the way to display an image.

There is a tedious -- but now mandatory -- workaround to use uploaded images in the Formatted Text widget in Clearspace instead of links to images outside of the wiki.

1. Save the image to your computer
2. Upload it as an attachment somewhere in Clearspace. We've created some Image Container pages for this purpose, so people can use those or create their own.
3. After you have published the page with your image attached, right-click on the link to your image attachment and select Copy Image Location.
4. Now go to your overview page, click on Customize, wait 5 years for it to open, edit your Formatted Text widget, click on the camera icon to insert the image, and paste the link you copied.
5. Save the changes to the widget and publish the page.

Please spread the word! Now, I'm going to follow my own advice and audit all the images on the wiki's main page to ensure they comply with this policy.

MFS Career Day

I'm looking forward to speaking to students at Moorestown Friends School, my alma mater, about careers in online community management. Rather than put together PowerPoint slides for my presentation, I created a Ning network and will use to illustrate what a community manager does, and then to allow the students to follow up afterwards. Should be fun!

Web 2.0 Empowers People, Especially Angry People

Our focus in this blog is really on internal deployments of Web 2.0 or social media technology (aka, Enterprise 2.0), but we do digress to comment on the broader aspects at times. This is one of those times, but I'll keep it brief and simply refer you to a post on my personal blog, if you're interested:

PlentyOfFish.com Sucks at Customer Service

You see, just as social media enables people to share, collaborate and communicate to benefit the enterprise, it also empowers angry people by giving them a platform to complain, loudly, when organizations treat them badly. I'm the "super empowered angry customer" (thanks, Keith Dawson) this time, but I also use the case to illustrate larger lessons about customer service.

If you're interested take a look. If you're looking for a dating website, now you know one to stay away from.