2020 Social: Because Business is Social

Welcoming Puneet and Arushi – Interns at 2020 Social

Posted on 28. Jan, 2010 by Gautam in Announcements

Over the last week we had two new people who have joined the team at 2020 Social.

Puneet Singh (Twitter) from Fore School of Business, Delhi and Arushi Gupta (Twitter) from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have joined us as interns. For the next couple of months they will work on specific live projects that will impact.

Puneet would be working on a project in which he would be looking at Business to Business (B2B) Communities – and finalising on what are the various types of B2B communities that can be leveraged by organizations to engage with their clients.

Arushi would be working along with Karthick and Freddie on what goes into building private community of young trendsetters – a community focused on observing trends and also on how marketers and organizations understand and engage these trendsetters.

TOI Article on How Social Activists in India Are Using Social Networking Platforms

Posted on 26. Jan, 2010 by gaurav in Media

I was quoted recently in a TOI article on how activists are using social networking platforms.

I like how Indian social activists are using social networking platforms for fundraising, or creating awareness for their causes.

Isha Foundation’s $100K win in the Chase Community Giving Contest is a good example of non-profits using social platforms to get support for a cause for fundraising. A very persuasive lady from Isha Foundation even called me to ask me to write a post supporting their bid.

The Wall Project, Batti Bandh, The Bicycle Project and The Sapling Project have all got attention recently for using Twitter and Facebook for promoting their programs. The Pink Chaddi Campaign, Grassroutes, NGOPost, Bell Bajao and Blank Noise are some of my favorite examples of Indian digital activism campaigns.

However, using Facebook and Twitter to spread a brand-related or cause-related message doesn’t excite me anymore. I would be excited if activists used social platforms to enable collaboration, like Vote Report India did, or build a long-term community, like iJanaagraha is trying to do. I have earlier written about the need for activists to go beyond content and conversations, to tap into the collaboration, community and collective intelligence layers. Ellen Miller’s Sunlight Foundation is showing us how in the area of government transparency and accountability.

Here’s the full text of the TOI story –

Social networking sites are new age activist’s handiest tools
Mahafreed Irani, TNN

Facebookers had a new distraction last week: a request from 100 US based charities to vote for them so that they could mop up a cool one million dollars to pursue their ‘big idea’ to change the world. Thousands of users from India logged on to vote for their favourites like Give India and Isha Foundation in the Chase Community Giving race. For them, it was the easiest way to contribute to the cause.

Social networking sites have clearly moved beyond frivolous chatter and self-aggrandisement to a worthier cause: they’ve become the new age activist’s handiest tools. From bringing people together to beautify walls in the city (The Wall Project) and encouraging them to save electricity (Batti Bandh) to getting them to donate their old cycles to rural children (The Bicycle Project) and engaging them in sapling plantation drives (The Sapling Project), these sites have built up successful online movements and then dexterously steered them into real life.

The benefits of building a movement using the Internet are self-evident : no capital costs and speedier-thanspeedy responses. Every time Batti Bandh organiser Keith Menon has to make an announcement , he simply posts an update and the over 6,000 members and fans of the Batti Bandh community on Facebook get the news delivered to their inbox. Netizens from countries as far away as Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, Netherlands and Pakistan have joined the group and posted their views on the campaign.

Like Batti Bandh, the other three movements too were initiated in Mumbai and then went national thanks to the online momentum. Take the Wall Project—what started as a touch-up for a Bandra home has now become a movement with over 2,000 volunteers to beautify cities across India. After photographs of paint jobs of walls along Senapati Bapat Marg were uploaded, members from Bengaluru, Pune and Kolkata started discussing their own city walls on the forum. Parag Gandhi, one of the facilitating members , spends a few minutes giving direction to the conversation—the rest of the content, including photos, news and updates are user-generated.

A user in Pune who wants to paint walls asked, “We are a group of 50 people and very enthusiastic about painting. There is no doubt that we have many walls dying for a dash of colour but the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) won’t permit.’’ In response, a member was quick to post, “Forget the PMC, when they see the value you are creating they will automatically come to you. Find private walls, educational institutes, schools or hospital walls instead.’’

Catalysts for change are using Web 2.0 platforms to engage people and spread the word using already existing social networks. Some prefer using technology to initiate the campaign too. Just last month, two Mumbai techies Satish Vijaykumar and Ranjeet Walunj created a website, a Twitter profile to make sure their city could breathe easy. The internet was used as a propaganda tool for their initiative The Sapling Project. A few tweets and Facebook statuses later, over a hundred people had signed up for the sapling plantation drive. They met at Shivaji Park, collected saplings and now post updates about their saplings’ progress on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

Impromptu acts of kindness have sprouted on Twitter too. Last week, tweeple from India started the T4H (Twitteristan for Haiti) by posting links to the Google Crisis Response page and the American Red Cross page to encourage their followers to donate. Popular tweeple like user ‘@b 50/Bombay Addict’ on Twitter posted updates like, “India gives $1m aid to Haiti. What? Rs 4.6 crore? That’s all we got? The daily turnover on BSE+NSE is Rs 80,000 crore.’’ and “The BMC will spend Rs 15 crore to clean Mumbai’s beaches. And that’s all we got?’’ to provoke his following of over 2,500 to donate.

On Diwali day last year, Twitter member Anaggh Desai decided to use the power of online networking to raise some money for charity. The 46-year-old Mumbai-based entrepreneur asked people to send him a Deepwish (Diwali greeting on Twitter) and pledged 25 paise for every wish that he received to Goonj, an NGO. Excited by the idea, 41 other tweeple decided to donate amounts ranging from 50 p to Rs 5 for every greeting tweeted at them. After 36 hours, Rs 55,000 was collected from tweeple all over India and even the US and Saudi Arabia towards educating the girl child.

The city also participated in two twestivals (offline meets organised and promoted online to collect funds for charity). The Mumbai chapter of the twestival last September collected Rs 40,000 for the NGO Help A Child.

Menon from Batti Bandh wants to leverage the power of the community on Twitter to facilitate car and taxi pooling . He is in the process of building an application that will let tweeple tweet their starting point and destination , show the route on Google Maps and allow other tweeters to join in.

However, there are dissidents. Social media researcher Gaurav Mishra thinks that online communities need to take their activities to the next level. “After a person has switched off electricity for an hour or planted one sapling, what next?’’ he asks. “Organisers have to decide on how they want to create sustained involvement .’’

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

How are banks, financial services leveraging social media

Posted on 25. Jan, 2010 by Achintya in Case Studies

I was reading the latest blog post on 2020 Social blog by mohit on Social Community efforts by banks and financial institutions and realized that I might have something interesting to add here. In my view the thing worth noticing about the social media efforts by these BFSI institutions is the difference in the way their communities are architectured when they are targeting different segments of customers.

Background: When it comes to investing & saving ones own hard earned money , people prefer researching, asking others, going for tried and tested methods and moreover playing safe. Investments and savings are something that are although done by almost everyone but then not everybody has an expertise and hence people generally prefer taking expert advice, ask peers, research, read news just to keep themselves informed and updated. Many banks, financial institutions, trading and brokerage companies have realized this behaviour and are using a social web presence to solve their problems.

Scope: In this post I have covered three types of social media efforts by the BFSI sector. The first category represents the social media efforts by banks & financial services towards personal banking, the second category of efforts are towards targeting corporates, SMEs & entrepreneurs while the third is towards targeting the investors into stocks to make them smart traders. You will see a fundamental difference in the way these institutions use social web to target these three different categories.

Illustration:

a) Social media efforts towards personal banking: A large no. of BFSI institutions have realized that providing a platform to people to talk and learn about their business needs helps them multifold. Firstly, it helps them position themselves as an institution which cares to enable people to make smart savings and investments. Secondly, it helps them listen relevant conversations and establish conversations and relationships for business development. Thirdly, it helps them understand the current needs and feedback of customers which is like the best market research ever. In this a very inspiring effort has been made by the Young&Free Alberta community powered by the Servus Credit Union to give a voice to the young generation. Y&F launches annual contest where the community chooses its spokesperson. This spokesperson then participates in the community as Y&F ambassador and educates and converses with others through blogs, videos etc. Y&F also oganizes many events for its commuity which include year round online contests and offline events. (For more details see mohit’s post at 2020 Social blog).

ING Direct is also making several efforts in wooing savers on social web. They have a Saver’s Blog and a community for publishing feel good news about markets and investment called Savings feel good. The news is either submitted from press or by community members. The community also runs timely contests to build interests.

Another interesting effort in this direction is by mint.com which is a maney management and budgeting software company. They have a tweet aggregator platform with tweets from various experts on savings, budgeting, retirement, loans etc.They also have an official blog on similar topics.

As you must have realized that all these communities are architectured around people expressing their financial needs and helping people make smart savings and gain important informations about investments.

b) Social media efforts for corporates, SMEs and entrepreneurs: In such efforts the focus is to help the SMEs and entrepreneurs network and gain valuable information and aid related to their business. For example the Visa Business Network helps you find out businesses in your locality, related vendors, partners, suppliers and customs. It also helps you discuss important information in your work related discussion group, set up business related goals and get help from others to achieve them. A possible goal can be ‘to same some xy amount of money by year end. The person can get interesting article links from the community on savings. Or a goal can be ‘to find business through referrals’

Effectively you can see that the aim of the community is to help businesses communicate, learn and network. It helps the financial institute powering the community listen about the financial needs and ideas among entrepreneurs. Also it sends across the message that the bank reaches out to help businesses which helps them bringing in more business. Amrican Express, HSBC and Bank of America also has similar business networks the details about which you can get from mohit’s  last blog post

Another interesting effort here is by Kiva which is a one to one micro lending community where entrepreneurs submit their business idea. For this kiva partners with micro lending institutions. The community helps the entrepreneurs reach financial targets.

c) Social media efforts focussing on stocks and trading: There are a bunch of trading communities which are helping people become smart investors, invest in right direction, communicate with expert and get relevant market information. Also these communities help professional traders gain reputation as influencers. A good example is Covester where members can follow other members investments, read and write information blogs and if they see a trader making very good investments, the can align their investments with him and give him a share in profits for sharing his data.

There are other online invester’s communities like Zecco, Moneyrec, Stockhouse and Trade2win. Tipd gives a stock and financial news aggregation platform and news community. People consume, curate and create news articles on a model similar to digg.com. The value for these stock related conversations can be estimated from the face that certain corporates like Berkshire Hathaway have discussion forums for their own stocks.

Visiting these communities are worth it. We would love to have some such India focussed communities by large banks as there are many people here who because of dearth of good investing knowledge  and lack of trust on private banks go for safest government investments like FDs and RDs giving very low returns. Also there are many who do not understand the financial jargons of the large investment products given by these banks. Banking communities can definitely help there.

How Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Can use Social Media

Posted on 23. Jan, 2010 by Gautam in Events

I was at the 4th Indian Marketing Summit today on a panel discussion with luminaries like Mahendra Swarup who founded Indiatimes.com, Bikky Khosla of Tradeindia.com, Prof. Govind Hariharan from the Michael J Coles College of Business, Kennesaw State University and Rajeev Karwal, Founder and CEO of Milagrow.

The presentation I made is here:

The other panelists chose to speak rather than present, so I can’t share the presentations here

There was a lively Q&A session where some students asked me interesting questions on cloud computing, ranking users on Twitter and how Social Media could help small enterprises recruit employees.

Overall a great learning experience for me!

Forrester Report on Social Technographics in India

Posted on 23. Jan, 2010 by gaurav in Reports

Steven Noble from Forrester interviewed me some time back for Forrester’s Social Technographics in India report. Forrester released the report last week and sent me a copy.

The Social Technographics profile is based on in-person interviews with 353 SEC ABC online adult respondents in metropolitan India (including Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Chennai) between March and April 2009.

Using the top Indian website in each category (as per October ‘09 data from Vizisense) as a reference, it’s easy to see that these numbers cannot be right, especially for Joiners –

- Overall Internet Population: 42.9m

- Creators: No estimates
- Critics (Mouthshut): 0.8m (2%)
- Collectors (Digg): 0.9m (2%)
- Joiners (Orkut): 15.5m (36%)
- Spectators (YouTube): 10.9 (25%)
- Inactives: No estimates

I had earlier tried to estimate the Social Technographics profile of metro India using public data. Since then, I have revised some of these estimates, based on Vizisense data and discussions with the JuxtConsult folks.

Incidentally, Forrester also released its new Social Technographics in the US report last week and added a new category called Conversationalists, to factor in the increased importance of status messages on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

Based on back of the envelop calculations, with Vizisense data as the starting point, here are my broad guesstimates for each category:

- Creators: 3m (7%)
- Conversationalists: 5 (12%)
- Critics: 5m (12%)
- Collectors: 5m (12%)
- Joiners: 20m (47%)
- Spectators: 20m (47%)
- Inactives: 15m (35%)

What do you think? Do the Forrester Social Technographics numbers resonate with your experience with social media in India?

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Global Post Article on Caste-Based Communities on Facebook and Orkut

Posted on 23. Jan, 2010 by gaurav in Media

I was quoted recently in a Global Post article on caste-based communities on social networking platforms in India.

I have earlier written about how caste-based communities on Facebook and Orkut reflects the realities of India’s splintered society.

The ancient Indian custom of caste has made its way into the modern world of social media.

Social networking site Orkut — the most popular social media platform in India — is not only a place where young, urban Indians can connect with friends like Americans do on Facebook. It’s also a platform where they can meet others in their caste… (and) engage in benign discussions and debates on various caste-related issues like marriage, religion and politics.

So what’s happening here on Orkut, Facebook and other social media sites in India? Some argue the country’s young people no longer feel comfortable talking about caste in public. Instead, they retreat to an anonymous online world to debate and discuss issues. Not everyone agrees.

Social media expert Gaurav Mishra said Orkut and similar sites do not increase caste discussions. Rather, they accurately reflect that Indians still very much identify with their caste and want to form groups around them.

“Surprisingly with urbanization, with education, with more people traveling and getting exposed to other cultures, these divisions have not really gone away. Caste even now — even in urban, educated India — is still an extremely big issue,” said Mishra, CEO of online marketing firm 2020 Social. “So therefore it is not surprising given how deeply entrenched caste is in Indian society that it manifests itself online also.”

As more Indians go online, and the internet reaches beyond the most urban and educated layer of society, caste activity will become only more prevalent, Mishra said.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Agencyfaqs Story on How Real Time Search Is a Game Changer for Marketers and Content Creators

Posted on 23. Jan, 2010 by gaurav in Media

I was recently quoted in an Agencyfaqs story on how real time search is a game changer for marketers and content creators.

I believe that real-time search is indeed a game-changer of search. The real power of Twitter lies not in being able to send and receive 140 letter messages, but in being able to search for tweets about people, brands, locations and events in real-time. Twitter realizes this: that’s why it has put search at the center of its redesigned homepage. Facebook realizes this: that’s why they are moving strongly towards a public status message oriented design. Google and Microsoft/ Bing realize this too: that’s why they are working hard to integrate real time status messages in their search results.

The ability to search real time status updates is already changing search behavior for early adopters like myself. I use Twitter search to discover what people are saying about a breaking news story, who else is present at the event I am attending and what are the early reviews for a movie that was released earlier in the day. The next big step is an ability to search for what my friends, people like me, or people near me are saying. As this behavior is adopted by the mainstream, I expect profound repercussions for both brands and publishers.

One important change is that search results will become both more dynamic and more personalized. Which means that search engine marketing will begin to look more like social media marketing. Suddenly, the depth, duration and keyword density of your content will begin to matter less and the freshness, relevance and proximity of our conversations will begin to matter more.

Along with the above changes in content search and consumption, I see a parallel change in content creation. When Blogger, Wordpress, YouTube and Flickr made it easy to create and share articles, videos and photos, several consumers started thinking of themselves as writers, photographers and filmmakers. Still, the focus was on creating content, and it needed significant time and effort to create content, so the barrier was still to high for most.

Then, Twitter popularized the idea of real-time status messages and the content creation barrier came crashing down. Not only that, the nature of content itself changed, to conversations between people. So, people are more likely to organize themselves around conversations now, not content, and that’s a fundamental shift.

The self-perpetuating viral loop is at the core of word of mouth marketing and Twitter and Facebook have made it more potent than ever. Word of mouth has always been the holy grail of marketing and, now that it is more easy to seed and track than ever before, all marketing is beginning to look a little bit like word of mouth marketing.

Here is the full text of the story:

Points of View: Will real-time search affect the business of search?
Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi, January 18, 2010

Google and Bing have introduced the concept of real-time search, which will also show results from recent Twitter, Facebook and blog updates. Is this the way to go now?

Pushkar Sane
Chief digital officer, North and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group

For starters, it will increase the ‘volume’ of indexed pages and the natural search rankings for brands may change rapidly based on momentum built by social conversations. Brands will need to re-orient their approach for search as it will bring up organic results with social conversations, making it difficult for brands to get their ‘controlled content’ in front of people. They will have to try harder in organising content, integrating ’social elements’ and optimising it continuously.

While positive conversations will help in enhancing brand equity, negative ones will accelerate the erosion as bad news travels fast. Finally, brands need to create a seamless strategy for digital with search and social at its core by getting rid of specialist silos within digital or within marketing.

Mohit Hira
President, Training.com, NIIT

If you had searched, on Google for Copenhagen on the morning after the climate talks failed, you’d have first got a Google Map result and then one old item on the Climate Summit followed by a Wikipedia entry. Now, try the same search in real-time using Google’s Experimental Lab. You’d get links posted by the minute on BBC, Twitter, YouTube and a chronological list that grows longer before your eyes.

The action has been shifting from publishers to user-generated social media content. If you’re smart enough to worm your brand into digital conversations in real-time, you’re likely to get picked up. Not in weeks or months, as is the case with new sites and search engine optimisation (SEO), but in minutes. But this doesn’t mean that life is short for search engine marketing (SEM). It will take a while before everyone switches to real-time search by default. Also, things will be unpredictable in the short term.

Mahesh Murthy
Founder and chief executive officer, Pinstorm

SEO has become a low-value commodity activity, farmed out to individuals. Till a few years ago, all you had to optimise were text results. Today, a smart business will optimise results related to text, videos, images, twitter updates and blog entries – because the search engine results page consists of all of these.

I hope it will lead advertisers to increase their focus on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Advertisers will find that if they are not on Twitter, their customers and rivals already are – and that the conversation is already going on there. Many brands tend to think of things in the TV paradigm – ‘run me a month-long campaign’. A social media campaign has to be 24 x 7 x 365.

Gaurav Mishra
Chief executive officer, 20:20 Social

I believe that real-time search is indeed a game-changer for search. The real power of Twitter lies in being Able to search for tweets about people, brands, locations and events in real-time. The ability to search real-time status updates is already changing search behaviour for early adopters like me. I use Twitter search to discover what people are saying about a breaking news story or who else is present at the event I am attending.

As this behaviour is adopted by the mainstream, I expect profound repercussions for both brands and publishers. An important change is that search results will become both more dynamic and personalised – meaning that search engine marketing will begin to look more like social media marketing. Suddenly, the depth, duration and keyword density of your content will begin to matter less and the freshness, relevance and proximity of our conversations will begin to matter more.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Agencyfaqs Cover Story on Indian Newspapers and the Internet

Posted on 23. Jan, 2010 by gaurav in Media

I was quoted recently in an Agencyfaqs cover story on whether Indian newspapers are losing out on the web.

I have earlier written about noteworthy social media initiatives from Indian news and media companies. Here’s my take on why we haven’t seen more such initiatives so far and why I see it changing over the next 2-3 years.

Newspapers in the US are rushing to build business models for the web because the print business is in trouble. Newspaper readerships and advertising revenues continue to fall and more young people are reading news online than in print.

In India, the newspaper business is in much better shape. Only one-third of Indians read newspapers, which means that there is a lot room to grow readership. Advertising spend in India is low at half a percent of GDP, compared to two percent in most developed countries, so there’s also room to grow advertising revenues, even after factoring in the increasing influence of TV and digital. Finally, the internet user base in India is only one tenth of the newspaper reader base in India, so the numbers don’t always add up for building an online business model.

However, even though newspapers aren’t in a do or die situation today, they do need to build a strong digital business for tomorrow.

Searchable multi-media content, user participating through rating, commenting and sharing, journalist blogs, and presence on social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter are already standard for several Indian newspapers. I won’t be surprised if Indian newspapers also adopt consumer generated content, two way conversations between journalists and readers, customizable home pages, and even social networks and APIs over the next two years.

If they don’t stay ahead of the wave, it will be a do or die situation for them before they realize it.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Social Community Efforts From Banks & Financial Institutions

Posted on 22. Jan, 2010 by Mohit in Reviews

Banking and Finance Industry is very competitive. Customers are becoming impatient and loyalty for brands is decreasing. Slowly brands are realizing that they can no longer appear monolithic, imposing and they need to find new ways to engage customers to retain and build relationships.

Web in its new avatar (Social Media)  facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration, has given consumers the power to make or break reputations, enhance or damage brands, create winners and losers in the marketplace, and do so with lightning speed. At the same time, social media offer unparalleled access to unfiltered customer opinion, opportunity to understand  the real influencers,  and opportunities to leverage user-generated content.

Note: There are many popular blogs, forums, and review sites around Banking and Finance. But in this post I am focusing on how large banks and financial institutions are adopting social media to reach out to customers, prospectus and Influencers.

Community efforts from Banks and Financial Institutions.

HSBC Community for SMB

This online community HSBC Business Network is for SMB and entrepreneurs. The focus is to empower new start-up companies to succeed by enabling them to network and form relationships with each other, as well as leveraging the expertise and support of HSBC’s business specialists

Common Wealth Credit Union (Groundswell Award Winner, 2008)

To positioned itself as a progressive and transparent financial institution with heart, Common Wealth Credit Union launched an online community for Alberta’s Generation “Y”. A lifestyle platform for youth to self express and support called Young & Free. Its a fully integrated marketing campaign combined with a spokesperson search to find the voice of Alberta’s under 25 crowd.

Common Wealth embraced the power of the social web by tapping into popular sites like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter to create an immersive experience where compelling user-generated content takes centre stage. To position it as a democratic, transparent organisation they launched a yearly campaign to find  “Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson”.

The winner from the contest became a paid employee of the credit union, working full time with the job description: talk, type and tell good stories – essentially a full time blogger for the credit union for one year.

American Express – Open Forum

The Open forum is a very interesting way that American Express is using to share information and start conversation with small business owners.  Some of the key highlights of the OPEN Forum initiative are: building brand equity, acquiring new customers, and building loyalty of existing customers.

It’s a excellent example of how to develop a vibrant social media community around a target segment.

Schwab Listening community (Groundswell Award Winner, 2007)

Charles Schwab launch a private online community “Money and More” made up of 350 25-to-40 year old Generation X non-Schwab clients. Idea was to listen to a focused group of Gen-Xers that was brought together on a community platform to better understand – how to become their investment service provider of choice 10 or 15 years down the road. What they learned was so powerful that they were able to create new products and services to meet the needs of this target group— resulting in a 56% increase in GenX customers vs. a year ago Based on insights from the community, Schwab lowered account minimums to $1,000, introduced Schwab’s high-yield Investor checking account with a high yield, and developing an online landing page specifically for the Gen X target.

Barclays Bank – 100 Voice Community

The 100 Voice community is student focused community where students can share their opinions on money management and student finances. Its a marketing driven program to create visibility and conversation around the benefits of the Barclays Student account and enable students to share their experiences with others.

Bank of America : Small Business Online Community

This Small Business Online Community includes a ‘Forums’ section, where SMEs can post questions and seek help and advice from others in the community. Registered users can also post their stories of business success and share tips for overcoming business challenges. The community-generated content will be supplemented by a range of expert articles.

Vancity – ChangeEverything.ca

Change Everything is a project of Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union. The Change Everything web site was spurred by the spirit behind Vancity’s new campaign. ChangeEverything.ca is an online community targeted (but not limited) to residents of Vancouver, Victoria and B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

Once Registered, the user start blogging about his progress toward making that change. But the real substance of the site happens when someone comes across the user blog and gets inspired; they can join it. Now both of them are blogging, discussing, and potentially collaborating on making the change happen. Its one of the best community engagement program I have come across.

I intend to update regularly this list of Banks and Financial Institutions on social media. So, if you know of any other Bank or FI with social media presence, do send me an e-mail or leave a comment below.

Cross-posted at Mohitvermablog.com

Tips on leveraging Twitter for Social CRM purposes

Posted on 22. Jan, 2010 by Freddie in Blog, How To Guides

I recently bought all twelve books in the Saga of Darren Shan from Dial-a-Book. Dial-a-book was able to sell me all the books via Twitter. They don’t have a website and I’m not sure if they even have an actual store. More prominent organizations who have used Twitter to close deals are Avaya – who finalized a $250,000 sale from a single Twitter post – and Dell Outlet which recently announced that revenue from the twitter account reached $6.5 million. In India, Infosys closed a sales deal following a query on Twitter by a prospective client. All these firms were able to identify a potential customer, engage in conversation with him and close the deal. Essentially that is what Social CRM is all about.

There is hardly any doubt that Twitter can and should be used as a social CRM channel. Here are some helpful tips on how to go about it:

Step 1: Listen

Listening on Twitter includes setting up one or many searches to follow any conversation that relates to the brand, company, products, services and industry.

Tools that can be used for this:

• Twitter Search: Once you get the hang of its advanced search feature it is easy to see why this is probably the best Twitter search tool. It allows you to create complex search queries with a lot of ease.
• Some other good tools are Twitterfall, Twendz and Ubervu
• Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, CoTweet and PeopleBrowsr also have commendable search features.
• Listening tools such as Radian6, SM2 Techrigy and Buzzstream have search features. However the tools listed above are capable of streaming results in real-time.

The key to good listening is setting-up the search string which for the most part is an art dictated by one’s need rather than a pre-defined set of rules. Life could, however, be made easy if one were to pay attention to the following:

• Geographic limit
• Language restrictions
• Date range
• Use of operators (AND, OR, NOT)

Step 2: Profile

This step includes:

• Checking the authenticity and relevance of tweets to identify influencers.
• Profiling the influencers.

Going through the tweet history of the account is enough to reveal whether or not the account is a bot. This will also provide some data to do a quick analysis of the person or organization behind the account. In addition to this, the bio section and any link provided by the account could reveal more information about them. All this information should be collected so that there is more to the person or organization than just one tweet that matched a keyword during the search process.

In my experience so far, Buzzstream has been the best tool when it comes to profiling influencers.

Step 3: Assign

This is the part where the external consumer facing CRM process meets the internal employee facing world of enterprise collaboration. It includes:

• Figuring out who in the organization is most suitable to respond to a particular tweet. Then assigning tweets to employees and departments accordingly.

Conceptually it might seem easy to take a tweet from the search result, profile the person and send the information to the appropriate department or employee. The big issue lies in how-to merge two different technologies. While Step 1 and Step 2 involve external tools, this step calls for combining of those with an organization’s internal systems. It is understandable that organizations are hesitant to allow external tools to interfere with their legacy systems.

From the above mentioned list CoTweet, PeopleBrowsr, Radian 6 and Buzzstream have features that enable a user to assign tweets to different employees. However, this requires everyone in the organization to have their own accounts to access that interface. In addition, emailing tweets and profiles to colleagues or departments could easily flood inboxes. While small start-ups would be able to work with this set-up, it is far from ideal for medium and large organizations.

Step 4: Respond

It is important to realize that this step is the organization’s first conversation with the consumer. From a marketing and communications point of view, responding is probably the most important step. While one person might have been assigned to respond, it would not hurt to include others in composing a response. This step includes:

• Making sure those responsible to respond have been given all necessary details and that they reply within a ‘reasonable’ timeframe.
• Making sure the best possible response is composed.

The key to this step is creating the right response. This is again more of an art that depends on the original tweet. If it was a query or complain then obviously a helpful answer would be the best response. At times, however, one might have to ask the person for further explanation so that appropriate help can be offered.

The tools necessary to carry out this step need to be built internally.

Step 5: Track

Once the response has been sent track any follow-up conversations. In essence this step includes repeating everything mentioned in Steps 1, 3 and 4. However, this time around the activity is more focused because one knows who to listen to and who to assign to.

Tools that can help you do this are:

• Twitter Search
• Twitoaster
• Tweetconvo

Reviewing the above explained steps of Listening, Profiling, Assigning, Responding and Tracking, Salesforce seems to be one vendor who is moving close to providing a complete solution. Last year they integrated Twitter in their CRM offering and introduced Chatter – a collaboration tool. Another tool that seems exciting is PeopleBrowsr. It is rich in feature most of which are free to use and others are adequately priced.