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, TNNFacebookers 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
- 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.
- Profiling - This step would involve trying to classify your employees in the following ways -
- What kind of postings are they carrying out?
- Do they respond to user queries?
- Do they post about new stuff that is happening in the industry/ market ?
- What is the influence they have built?
- Who is their audience?
- Sharing and Connecting - This would look at building an online community within the firewall amongst the people you have profiled so that they can share and curate the content each of them create on different site
- Collaboration - The next step would be for these online innovators to create content jointly or ideate on what they can work together – or to reach out to each other when faced with a external query not in their area of expertise.
- Converting and Supporting - When one does steps 1 and 2 – one would also discover disgruntled employees – This step looks at how HR and Operations can respond to the source of that negativity so that the at least become neutral if not positive. However, I foresee companies still not being open enough to do this, but one does hope!
- Energising and Retaining - Clearly employees who engage in social media in the work arena are excited by other rewards and recognitions than employees who are not vocal about their work. HR and Operations needs to think new ways to energise and retain these employees – and giving them augmented roles with social media responsibilities
So CEOs, COOs, HR professionals – are you ready for Social Employee Relationship Management?
Announcement: Kaushal Sarda Joins the 2020 Social Team
Posted on 09. Jan, 2010 by gaurav in Announcements
I’m delighted to announce that Kaushal Sarda has joined the 2020 Social team as a consultant.
Kaushal will head the Bangalore office for 2020 Social and focus on B2B, technology and startup clients. He will also work with Gautam to develop our collaboration/ innovation practice, where we connect employees and partners to help clients achieve their business objectives. Finally, he will work with Upasana to strengthen our “build” practice, where we build online communities using white label or open source platforms.
Previously, Kaushal has worked as a CRM consultant at Capgemini Consulting and founded SaaS based enterprise collaboration platform Uhuroo. He writes about collaboration and innovation at his Creating Connections blog and is a regular speaker on these topics. Kaushal holds an MS in information systems from George Mason University.
Do connect with Kaushal on email, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.
The making of a Social Organization
Posted on 21. Dec, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
At 2020 Social one of the things we believe is that we are a our own petri-dish. We experiment with technology and processes to convert ourselves into the kind of organization we think is suitable to be called social.
So not only do we have a blog, a Facebook page, a twitter account, a twitter list showcasing all our tweets – we’ve also now started a wiki to focus on building a repository of social media successes in India – and will invite participation from like minded folks soon.
On the other side of the seriousness spectrum we have started a Fun page where we publicly talk on the lighter side of life at 2020 Social
Internally we are driving online collaboration using three tools, Google Apps for mail, document sharing and calendering - Socialtextfor internal conversations and collaboration on a wiki – and Basecamp for project management.
As social media enthusiasts we have noticed that internally even we need to see a business/behavioral benefit to using a tool – and we understand that more traditional businesses would need to see it more.
One of the way to showcase this is look for external cases where ROI has been calculated – but we believe that using the tools showcases a greater commitment and a better story for any client.
What do you think?
If you’re in the advisory business how many times do you apply your advice on yourself?
(Cross posted from Gautam on Organizations 2.0)
Tata Indicom Uses Account Statements to Invite Customers to Participate in Its Blog and Forum
Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Case Studies
I was pleasantly surprised recently to see that Tata Indicom is using its account statements to invite customers to participate in its blog and forum –
I have been presenting slides on how real employees (including old friend Nidhi) use the Tata Indicom corporate blog to have real conversations with their customers –
I tend to be very particular about building the right customer community platform using the right software (which, very often, is something like Lithium), and for a reason. The right platform enables and encourages the right behavior, opens up new degrees of freedom, both for community users and the administrators.
However, the Tata Indicom example is a reminder for me that brands can do a lot of right things without using sophisticated software. Their blog is built on the free Wordpress blogging software and their forum is built on vBulletin, not a particularly sophisticated forum software. The forum user interface is unwieldy, the different pieces of software don’t speak to each other, and there’s only so much that Tata Indicom or their customers can do with it.
However, even though Tata Indicom doesn’t have the right software to run a customer community, it sure has the right soul and, in the end, the right soul matters more than the right software.
When we build online communities for our clients, we work hard to get both the software and the soul right. Ask us how.
Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.
Janaagraha Launches Its Citizen Action Community iJanaagraha
Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Announcements
Bangalore-based civil society group Janaagraha, which had earlier tied up with Tata Tea to launch the Jaago Re (wake up) campaign during the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections, has launched its citizen action community iJanaagraha today.
In its finished avatar, the iJanaagraha online platform will have strong location, community and activation layers and connect citizens with activists and politicians around civic issues at the polling booth level.
In the first phase, the iJanaagraha platform asks citizens to stay awake (Jaagte Raho) and register online to vote and also volunteer to become an Area Voter Mitra. Area Voter Mitra will run get-out-the-vote drives in their neighbourhoods, with support from Janaagraha and the Election Commission of India. The activities in the first phase will be focused on the long overdue Bangalore local elections (see iJanaagraha Blog).
On his own blog, my friend and co-conspirator Jasmine Shah shares his experiences in running the very successful Jaago Re campaign and looks ahead to Jaagte Raho.
I have been associated with Jaagte Raho/ iJanaagraha initiatives over the last six months as a member of the Janaagraha Technology Advisory Group. Members of the 2020 Social team have also been working with Jasmine on strategy and project management aspects. It’s exciting to see the project in public after months of work. It’s even more exciting to know that only a fraction of the project is in public view as of now, and some of the most powerful pieces are still in the pipeline. Stay tuned.
Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.
How to leverage Social Technologies to Build Online Talent Communities
Posted on 12. Dec, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
Some thoughts I put together – on how the Recruiting function can leverage Online Talent Communities to build a pipeline for future workforce.
I know there are no great examples of “real” Talent Communities – and that is why I think the first organization that gets it right would benefit the most!
Thoughts? Send me an email ! View more presentations from Gautam Ghosh
How to Create a Talkworthy Experience Ecosystem: The Social CRM Toolkit
Posted on 11. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in How To Guides, Ideas, Reports
The Experience Ecosystem
Companies are beginning to realize that their brand is now realized on the Social Web, in conversations between strangers, who amplify, quash, or otherwise reshape each others’ opinion on the product or service, often based on first-hand experiences. These messages play off against marketing messages pushed by advertising agencies in the mind of the customer, and increasingly, customers are listening to their peers, instead of marketing messages.
The Social Web exposes any misalignment between implicit or explicit expectations set by the CMO in marketing messages and the actual experience delivered by the organization run by the COO. It is therefore critical that the CMO and COO be in absolute alignment, so that the organization (over-)delivers on what the brand has promised, leading to customer delight, loyalty and advocacy.
At the core of this approach is the idea that conversations are driven by experiences. If you want to drive positive conversations about your brands, you should start by creating an experience that is worth talking about.
The Experience Ecosystem provides the framework for creating talk-worthy experiences. It consists of all the touchpoints between the organization and the customer, including products, services and partners, sales and support channels and interactions, and the values for which the organization and its individual brands stand for.
At 2020 Social, it is our belief that the best way to create an experience worth talking about is to design it collaboratively, with your customers, employees and partners.
Deconstructing the Experience Ecosystem
So, the obvious question arises: How do you collaboratively design an Experience Ecosystem that drives conversations and results in close-knit communities?
You start by listening. Your customers, partners, and employees are talking to each other about you, often in public, and their conversations include a treasure trove of feedback about your Experience Ecosystem, along with ideas to improve it. In short, they offer clear signals as to how they will take ownership for the experiences and conversations that will drive your brand.
However, listening is only the first step. You also need to respond to these people and participate in these conversations, not with the intent to direct them in one direction or another, but with the intent to engage them and learn more. Over time, as you track these conversation threads, you should seek ways to build profiles for the people who are participating in these conversations, and identify which conversations, and which people specifically, are the most valuable to you.
Some of these conversation threads will involve responding to and converting prospects who are considering your products or services. Other conversation threads will relate to supporting existing customers seeking an explanation or a solution. Still other conversation threads will be about customers, prospects, partners or employees giving you feedback on your Experience Ecosystem.
In each of these cases, you should try to tie together related conversation threads to unleash the power of collaboration. A prospect considering your offering may benefit from the reviews and experiences of other customers. An existing customer might find that other customers have already shared useful tips on how to solve common problems. Finally, your customers, partners and employees can collaborate to find the best ideas to improve your products, services, and sales and support processes, or design entirely new ones.
Once you have collaboratively designed a talkworthy Experience Ecosystem, you should build community platforms to catalyze the formation of communities, and transform customers, partners and employees into evangelists.
The Social CRM Toolkit is Still Evolving
The toolkit to create an integrated talkworthy Experience Ecosystem is still evolving, but it’s already possible to connect the various activities described above, as my colleague Dave Evans recently pointed out in his October 2009 ClickZ column.
Social media monitoring tools like Radian6 and Visible Technologies already incorporate workstream elements. Not only that, Radian6 connects with Salesforce CRM, apart from Twitter. New tools like Buzzstream are designed for profiling and responding to influencers, and not just listening.
With Facebook, Twitter, OpenSocial and now LinkedIn offering robust APIs, it’s now possible to find or build powerful social applications that connect with other solutions in the toolkit and make sharing easier than ever before.
Collaboration solution vendors are an integral part of the mix because they enable your customers, partners and employees to collaborate and co-create innovative products and processes. I expect enterprise collaboration solutions like SocialText and Cynapse and ideation platforms like Accept Ideas and WebStorm to start offering integration with other applications.
Social commerce solutions like Bazaarvoice play an important role in the ecosystem by converting and cross-selling to customers and we should see such solutions offering more integration too.
CRM tool vendors are also expanding in both directions and introducing social media analytics and community features. Salesforce and RightNow now offer a full suite of community features including ideation, support and knowledge sharing and even connect with Twitter and Facebook. Apart from the integration with Radian6, Salesforce also supports integration with the Lithium community platform and customer support applications like Helpstream.
At the other end, community platform vendors like Jive, Lithium and Neighborhood America are also aggressively introducing social media analytics and social CRM features.
Update: Social CRM Resources
Since I wrote this post in October 2009, I have come across several interesting conversation threads about Social CRM. Here is a selection of some of the most useful resources I have found so far:
- Paul Greenberg puts a stake in the ground on Social CRM.
- Jeremiah Owyang starts a list of Social CRM vendors.
- Fabio Kipriani explains the benefits of social CRM.
- Lithium’s Chief Community Officer Joe Cothrel gives a great overview of the evolution of Social CRM.
I’ll be grateful if you will help me understand the Social CRM space better by sharing your favorite Social CRM resources in the comments.
Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.
2020 Social builds and nurtures online communities for Indian and international clients, connects their customers, partners and employees, and helps them achieve their business objectives.
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