2020 Social: Because Business is Social

The Social Employer Manifesto

Posted on 26. May, 2010 by Gautam in Announcements

David Armano recently posted the Social Business manifesto focusing on the relationship between a social business and its customers.
So I thought I’d give a shot to making a manifesto for the Social Business and its relationship with employees.

1. We will no longer view you as “employees” only to do the work you are assigned. Instead, you are co-creators, participants, critics and advocates.
2. We will actively ask for your input on products, services, structures, processes and give it to you to co-create them with us.
3. We will focus not on the time you spend in office but the results you achieve.
4. We will provide value, not jobs.
5. We will provide you the tools to connect across silos, departments, locations to meet the changing demands of a networked economy and social customers.
6. We will focus on your needs vs. our ends.
7. We will together focus on reducing the noise within the organization.
8. We will together destroy processes that do not let us build human relationships within and without.
9. We will encourage you to build relationships that connect all of us with partners, stakeholders and customers in ways where we all benefit.

Skills For Social Media Evangelists

Posted on 23. Apr, 2010 by Gautam in Announcements

What do you need to make your business “social”?

Caroline Dangsen puts down some characteristics she thinks the social media evangelist needs to shepherd the organization to become social:

• Passion for the business
• Appreciation for the organization’s cultural heritage
• Limitless determination and stamina
• Ability to influence
• Skills to maneuver the political landscape

These five characteristics are in addition to excellent interpersonal skills and a passion for social media.

Looking at these – it is worth noting that these are similar to Change Management skills – and I think Enterprise 2.0 and social media evangelists should look at the already considerable literature on driving organizational change – and take some pages out for it – and focus less on the tools and more on the cultural aspects. Caroline’s post is worth reading in this light

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Social Media Stories 6-12th March

Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Announcements, Media, Reviews, Trends

So another week passes us by and we bring to you a round up of news stories and happenings from the Indian social media sphere.

1)    The Economic Times featured an article on the latest takers of social networking sites ‘Social Networking Bug bites’ by Sarah Jacob and Harsimran Julka on 6^th March. The article states, ‘More than ever before seniors are finding themselves drawn online for the same reasons as young adults; to stay in touch with family and friends, meet new people from the comfort of home, bridge the generation gaps and even find jobs’.

Comment- It was only a matter of time before this would happen. Considering the popularity of social networking sites as well as the speed at which technology is becoming simpler and efficient, it makes sense for seniors to join in on the fun and build on interests while maintaining relationships and other parts of life.

Decoding Social: How Are Social Technologies Changing Business, Media and Society?

Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by gaurav in Announcements, Ideas, Media

At 2020 Social, we understand that the nature of knowledge is changing from stock to flow and knowledge will become redundant in the blink of an eye, if not shared with others. On the other hand, if we share knowledge with other, often for free, they repay us with attention, and we create more opportunities for ourselves to learn and share more.

In this spirit, we will be sharing all our research, point of view, conference and workshop decks with the community of social media practitioners and enthusiasts we have learned so much from.

We speak at almost a dozen events every month, and sometimes use the same ideas across talks. For instance, I have given several related talks on “how to scale passion?” or “what can entrepreneurs learn from activists?” at BITS Pilani, IIT Roorkee, TEDIndia, Startup Saturday Delhi, Social Media Club Mumbai, IIT Delhi and Pecha Kucha Bangalore. Each talk is a work-in-progress artifact and I have seen these ideas evolve, each time I talk about them. While individual slide decks for each talk are interesting as artifacts, I’m beginning to think that it’s better to share a master slide deck (that’s in constant beta) so that people can easily refer to the latest iteration of our thinking.

New Openings at 2020 Social: Consumer Practice Lead and Build Competency Lead

Posted on 21. Feb, 2010 by gaurav in Announcements

As 2020 Social’s suite of offerings have evolved, the senior team is increasingly getting stretched across our competency areas and practice areas.

So, Dave leads our business-to-consumer practice and the plan competency, Kaushal leads our business-to-business practice and the build competency and Gautam leads our employee and partner practice and the engage competency, while I help out across all three competencies and practices.

My target is to take Dave and myself off this grid so that 2020 Social can function even when we are away, let’s say, for speaking at conferences.

To get there, we will need to fill three key positions over the next three months: the business-to-consumer practice lead, the build competency lead and the engage competency lead.

Last week, we announced openings for the first two positions:

- Consultant (1): Ideally Mumbai, but also Delhi or Bangalore

Role: Develop the digital marketing strategy and define the business case for social applications and community platforms for consumer and media clients. Establish thought leadership in the domain of how Indian consumers engage with web, mobile and social technologies through blog posts, white papers and conference talks. Set up the Mumbai office for 2020 Social and establish and grow client relationships. Over a one year horizon, manage a team of 5-6 Associate Consultants and Analysts.

Define Your Sandbox Early, But Stay in Constant Beta

Posted on 21. Feb, 2010 by gaurav in Announcements

STAYING IN CONSTANT BETA WITHIN A SANDBOX

As an entrepreneur, you need to articulate your offering early in your startup’s life cycle, and still stay open to change, especially if you are in the fast-evolving social technologies space.

After nine months of running 2020 Social, I have learned that the key is to define a big enough sandbox early, then stay in constant beta, and play within that sandbox.

THE EVOLUTION OF 2020 SOCIAL

In June 2009, 2020 Social started off as an insights firm, focused on tracking conversations on the social web and identifying trends international clients could benefit from.

Within a hundred days, we realized that the social opportunity in India itself was big enough and reinvented ourselves as a consulting firm, focused on advising Indian and international clients on how social technologies are impacting their business strategy.

By October, we were ready to move beyond pure-play advisory services and offer full solutions to our clients. Since then, we have been working hard on building our BUILD and ENGAGE capabilities, apart from strengthening our already mature PLAN capabilities.

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.

Social Media In India Wiki

Posted on 19. Jan, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Announcements, Ideas

Social Media in India Wiki

If someone questioned me what does the term ‘best idea’ refer to, I’d probably reply that which is the simplest and the most logical. You know when an idea just suddenly seems to stare at you in the face and makes you jump up and scream “But of course!”. Well, that is probably your best idea.

Keeping this in mind, the best idea that had us hollering at 2020social was that of building a Social Media India Wiki. Considering the growth rate of social media in India, it just makes complete sense to provide one single platform that is built not just by us at 2020social, but by all the social media players in India. The idea just clicked as the obvious next step.  So much so, it just instantly made me wonder how no one else had thought of it (thank god for that). But then again, my CEO isn’t considered the social business strategy guru for nothing!

The wiki as a single platform creates a two-fold contribution:

1) We share information and resources, thereby promoting healthy competitive growth.

2) We also guide each other by sharing our experiences and issues faced.

Thinking about Social-ERM

Posted on 13. Jan, 2010 by Gautam in Announcements

Many business leaders and HR professionals I meet and talk to take stances that are either on the lines of “Oh, Orkut and Facebook is such a drain on my company resources and time ! I need to ban such stuff – or at least regulate it – so that we can do our jobs better”

Or (and this is a smaller number) some CEOs, COOs, HR professionals and many Marketing professionals – the ones who are more open-minded, say – “Hold on, here are some things that are changing at a fundamental level in the way we engage with the external world, and our employees are out there on Facebook, Linkedin, Orkut, Twitter – talking about their jobs, our products, answering questions from their friends and strangers. If we can’t ban this, how can we channelise it?”

Welcome to Social ERM

Yeah, I just coined the phrase Social ERM – and I take this off from the concept of Social CRM that Gaurav blogged about.

So what would Social Employee Relationship Management do?

1. Listening - Monitoring of the social web to keep track of what your employees are saying on various platforms about their work/ industry/market/ customers/ organizations/ other employees.

Social Media India This Past Week

Posted on 12. Jan, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Announcements

We, at 2020 Social, have decided to maintain a weekly round-up of the social media happenings in India. As one of our New Year plans, this initiative is aimed to keep a tab on the market pulse and the trends taking place, thus making it easier for people to touch-base with the SM industry happenings in India.  This post covers the week of 4^th Jan- 9^th Jan 2010.

Lots of important happenings this week with surprises galore like SRK’s entry in the Twitterverse, Chetan Bhagat’s feud with the 3 Idiots team and numerous launches from the corporate players.

1) Beginning with the big one that really grabbed eye-balls was SRK’s joining the Twitter bandwagon on 2^nd Jan 2010. At the time of writing this post, Mr. Khan had 67922 followers with him following a meager 17. You can visit his profile at http://twitter.com/iamsrk.

Many section of the industry have termed the move as evidence of the rise of social media in India and hope that with King Khan’s presence on Twitter, more action would be recorded on the part of corporates and other members of the Indian public.