Leadership in the time of Social Media

Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Trends

(Cross posted from Gautam Ghosh on Organizations 2.0)

As organizations get more and more linked to external stakeholders, and their people become unofficial spokespeople on social networks like Twitter and Facebook and become marketers whether or not it is their role.

In such times – specially for organizations that are living in this hyper-linked worlds – what are the leadership behaviors that should be adopted.

Not surprisingly, these behaviors are not new. As I mentioned earlier, the tools of web 2.0 promise real organization development, and therefore, the behaviors of leaders must reflect the tenets of OD and these times.

They are:

  1. Openness and Transparency – In the web 2.0 world there is little there is hidden, even vague terms of services cannot be changed without people noticing. A leader always has to remember and more importantly live this with the utmost sincerity – both within and externally
  2. Conversation – It is not just about being transparent, leaders should also engage with employees and external stakeholders about what issues they face and if nothing else – they should acknowledge it, and if needed communicate what they are willing to do about it. Of course, sometimes legal and stockmarket requirements can require executives not to make forward looking statements. In earlier non-internet times I reckon this was known simply within the organization as MBWA
  3. Content – Leaders must realise that their organizational brand and product brands are what users interpret – and that they cannot control it. Indeed, they must actively work to give it away – understanding that there is nothing so powerful as an idea owned by the users. How can you as a leader encourage content and conversation creation, both within and externally to the organization.
  4. Collaboration – Leaders of hyperlinked organizations know that people and groups cannot do things independently anymore- they have to collaborate with partners, other employees, other stakeholders to create lasting impact. Their own behavior sets the tone for all their employees, so they must be and be seen to be collaborative.
  5. Communities – Leaders understand that people -internally and outside the organization – are part of shared interest groups – around various ’social objects’. For employees that could be “how we use this cool tool to solve problems” to “employees who like football” – and externally it could be “people interested in the benefit our product gives” – and if you are a certain kind of organization, you could have communities around your product too. As a leader you have to understand the deep universal desire of people to connect around a certain shared passion. Identify what ties in to your objectives, and then understand how to facilitate it – give it sustenance. What are the tribes who you will align with?
  6. Collective Intelligence – Leaders know that when communities have conversations and collaborate, new and better ideas get generated. They might be better than the ideas the firm comes up on its own, and there is no shame in admitting it and embracing it. This is the pinnacle of giving up control and becoming part of the community yourself.

The question is – are you as a leader ready to make the transition?

Social Media in India: International Software and services company review

Posted on 20. Nov, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

Software and Services companies have been believed to be making good use of social media for their marketing and promotion. Our research on the Fortune 50 international companies in India not just confirms this but also shows that these companies have made special efforts for Indian customers. Hence in this blog we will review the social media efforts of these Fortune 50 international companies in India.

The Fortune 2009 lists IBM (#28) and Microsoft (#49) among the top 50 in the software and services sector. Interestingly both the companies have customized social platforms for the Indian consumers. While Microsoft targets the Indian social web with Mera Windows, IBM has an India Page for IBM Smartmarket to target the Indian SMBs (small and medium businesses)

IBM Smartmarket

IBM smartmarket is basically a social commerce platform targeted to SMBs. This platform is specifically designed as a one stop shop where SMBs can find vendors for their required software products, thereby reducing their research and purchasing costs. IBM smartmarket has an India website customised for Indian vendors and clients. Here members can research available software in their industry area and read product information, reviews, ratings etc. Members can also get their queries answered by other members regarding the specific product, compare different software, rate software products and write their own review. Smartmarket also gives access to online product trial and purchase. Moreover there are expert blogs, community forums and a separate blog for it’’s India webpage called India Insights to learn and discuss. That said however there are certain questions which still are to be figured out, like how do these vendors get on the social commerce platform? How does IBM make money from Smartmarket ( if it does) ?? How does one software gets listed above others in a search? (it does not appear to be sorted in terms of ratings)\n\nOverall IBM smartmarket is actually a smart move to engage SMBs on IBM platform. However a social commerce platform can be more than this. For example Xbox XNA community allows third party developers to develop applications which can then be curated and purchased by the community. Wishpot allows users to create their wishlists of the products they want to purchase in future and others can collaborate to suggest the best offers, places, products and prices etc.

Mera Windows

Mera Windows is Microsoft India’s effort in the social web. Presently this community is very actively being used for the promotion of Windows 7 in India. The community platform holds many interesting features like a blogroll of expert blogs and news feed which aggregates the latest updates on the homepage. There are also discussion forums with discussion ranging from ”12 common Windows 7 problems solved” to ”how healthy is your PC battery”.  The community recently hosted the launch party of Windows 7 where all community members were given free invites and a chance to get the RC version of Windows 7 uploaded on their notebooks, which is a good example to leveraging an existing social community platform for promoting an offline launch cum trial event.

We can see Microsoft India is on the right path and has made some right decisions in its social business strategies. However a community of Microsoft Windows in a market as important as India deserves more engagement from the consumers. Microsoft has already set many benchmark examples in social media like Microsoft Dynamics Community for an SMB network and Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) award for an advocacy program and hence in the near future we would like to see similar efforts from them for the Indian social web.

Community Platforms: What makes a good one?

Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by karthick in Reports, Reviews

How do you categorise and cherry pick the best community platform? What would be the baseline that you would target? This the purpose of the post and what follow sis an analysis of what we have put together.

The breakdown.

First a definition is in order. What is a Community platform?

A community platform refers to the community platform “tool”. This is a tool (open source or otherwise) that enables people to build their own community networks or groups. So if I wanted to start a community for Kawasaki Bikes or Micheal Jackson dance moves club, what is the community platform tool that I should look into?

That’s my purpose in the series of blog posts that will follow. I plan to analyse a bunch of various tools, each bringing it’s unique features to the table, and then see what would broadly fit your (and well mine too) needs.

The Methodology of Analysis.

When one looks at a community platform, there are a range of things that comes to mind almost immediately. The first and foremost guiding principle in all of these platforms is the vision of the platform. To allow for user engagement and to do it seamlessly. That’s the broad picture, however , there are a lot of things that have now almost become standard (thanks to the large social networks like Orkut and Facebook) for communities in terms of features and new companies entering the market (for community platforms) as well as the ones already existing have to introduce them as basic options. So these features would be bundled in one area and then we have some features that we need to look at. Without further ado the 10 points that we are looking at.

1.User Features
This would be a no brainer. If a community cannot provide features that allow for sharing within a group of people, there’s not much to look into. Features I would say are important to look at? Here’s a quick check list of other features a community platform should look at incorporating.

* Detailed profiles (adding avatars and information)
* Formation of Groups
* Addition of friends and members to the group
* Relationship types between profiles (choose person as friend/buddy/casual acquaintance)
* Gallery option – Photos, Videos, Audios upload and download options
* Forums or Message boards for community discussion
* Blogs (individual and group authorship)
* Instant Messaging or offline messaging.
* RSS feeds – importing and exporting from groups or profile tracking updates.
* Search – within the community and specific groups.
* Widgets to enable display of relevant information
* Wikis and collaborative document sharing options.
* Tagging of posts, blogs, communities and threads.
* Event organisation and reminders.
* File Sharing for all types like .ppt, .doc, .xls, .pdf, .zip
* Email notifications for new users registered and any personal interaction.
* Polls to curate content or discussion within members.
* Bookmarking of discussion threads, profiles, updates etc.
* SEO’ed URLs of posts or groups (to a public community)
* Embedding options for content from other social networks.

Pretty exhaustive right? I’m sure you can add to that list to let me know what I missed out on. You’d also be amazed as to how quickly all of those points mentioned above are becoming benchmarks for good community platforms.

Functionality
Every community platform should have good functionality and should be enabled. Broadly this means the framework they are built upon and the availablility of that framework. Would open source frameworks then score higher than all? Not necessarily. We need to see how functional the community is once it’s set up. How easy are the interpersonal relationships between various groups. What is the cross flow of information? Can it be scanned easily?

Admin Controls

Good administrator controls allow for moderation of groups and communities and sharing and keeping access controls that help the community to be moderated well. Broadly these are some of the features I would look at.

OpenID/Social integration – One easy access login to the community.
Facebook/twitter API integration- the rage is to use your facebook and twitter logins making the integration necessary.
Theming/design – Any good community needs to offer users the chance to build custom themes and design.
CMS extensible functions – Allowing the platform to act and enable content management.
Network privacy settings – Everyone wants a secure network don’t they?
Advertisement display control- What ads can you filter, what sizes can you display, can you turn them off?
Portable Data – If for some reason we want content to be bundled and posted elsewhere.

Cost of the package

This hardly requires an introduction and it is a reason the public has taken a love for open source platforms – because they are free. But when one would like far more options than what’s put up and doesn’t have the time to personally wait for others to offer them solutions, one has to invest in a platform that offers custom service at a price. The price should justify the features offered. The other factor related to price is the bandwidth or spacing offered by the platform. Some self hosted platforms offer limited space for files and content to be uploaded while others seem to offer large enough storage spaces for media. Other smaller factors would be what is the file size limit for sharing and uploading and whether access controls are provided to make them public or private.

Popularity
Who is using it? How many people recommend it? What is the user database. All valid questions to ponder over and consider as a measurement factor.

Extensibility.
Cross API integration/management is something that fast requires looking into. With many different functions required out of a social network and new terms like lifestreaming coming into the picture, a robust community platform would have to provide or have a vision of what the future might be like and model their platform to incorporate that. In keeping with the times and technology, one ensures users don’t migrate as soon as something new comes out.

Analytics/Tracking at the backend
Almost a given pre-requisite to monitoring member usage and traffic to a website hosting the platform, analytics give us a good flow of information, tracking and statistics on user behaviour. This also lets us know what features are relevant, what aren’t good enough, what must be enhanced and the like. While powerful analytics tools like Google Analytics are available, a custom made one measuring not just the traffic but many other things would prove very useful.

Mobile, web, desktop clients.
I predict that in 5 years time, we will have almost no need for the computer and everything we do will be in our hand held mobile systems which would be powerful mini computers in themselves. A community platform that lets people stay connected with a mobile enhanced version so it works across browsers of the mobile OR allowing for a mobile version of the download would most definitely push them up the points ladder in the community platform rankings.

In the course of the next few weeks, we’ll take all the tools we have found (a large number giving us an extensive view of the space) and categorise them broadly on these parameters. We are eager for comments as well and sharing your experiences with various community platforms too!

Social Media in India report: International automobile company review

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

This is the third post in a series where we will review performance of companies (and brands) using Social media to connect with Indian customers. As mentioned in our methodology post on soon to be published Social Media in India report, we are reviewing top Indian and International companies from the Forbes list for their presence in social media in India.  In the previous posts we had reviewed some of the Indian companies” ( like the Tatas, Airtel, Reliance Communications) presence on Social Media. In this post we will be reviewing the presence of some international automobile companies on the Indian social web.

The Forbes 2009 list features 4 automobile companies in the top 50 having an Indian market presence. They are Toyota (3), Volkswagen (15) , Mitsubishi ( actually the list ranks Mitsubishi UFJ Financial as the 21st company but since the parent company also has an Indian presence in the car & SUV market, we have considered it for this review ) and Honda (39). Out of these, we found Toyota & Mitsubishi doing something interesting specific to Indian consumers.

We begin with Toyota, the Forbes 2009 rank 3 company. The international automobile major has an Indian presence through cars like Corolla, Camry, Innova, Altis, Land Cruiser, Prado etc. Owing to its global positioning as a company that is concerned about environment, the company has partnered with NDTV ( an Indian news and media company ) for its ”Green Future” web platform. ”Green Future” is essentially an environment news platform which features many influencers speaking on environmental causes and supporting various campaigns conducted by the company and the news channel. However, this social platform is more than just environment gyan. It has many social applications which takes its readers across multiple levels of social engagement. Readers can read news, watch videos, post comments and opinions on various topics. There is also an ideation platform called ”24-hour green ideas” where members can pool in their creative ideas for an eco-friendly future. Moreover, there is a separate kid’’s platform called ”Kid’’s club” where the next generation is being guided to a cleaner environment by engaging them to share their stories and thoughts, poems etc on environment.

Overall, Toyota’’s ”Green Future” is an interesting social website built around a noble cause which the company has known to support for years. It is an impressive start as an environment news channels that features many influencers and celebrities talking about a greener earth. Perhaps in the future they would like to have these celebrities blogging and interacting with readers- something on the lines of Huffington Post- or adopt a user generated environment news aggregation model like ngopost.org. In the future we would also like to see Toyota leveraging its user engagement to promote trial and purchase of its products also.

Moving on to Mitsubishi; the Forbes international rank 21 company has presence in India through cars like Lancer, Cedia, Pajero, Montero, Outlander. The Japanese auto major recently launched an online reality contest called The Great Driving Challenge for the promotion of Mitsubishi Cedia. Contestants were shortlisted on the basis of votes from visitors/members who rated the contestant based on their testimonials, profile and uploaded online content like blogs, photos, videos etc. The final 3 contestants were then sponsored for a paid road trip on Mitsubishi Cedia sports car on their chosen circuit where they were supposed to post blogs, photos and videos based on their trip experiences. Finally the winner was decided on the number of posts, content quality, user votes and number of profile visitors.

The Great Driving challenge is a good example of an online reality show. It effectively integrates the product marketing with the social media campaign. Unfortunately many such campaigns die out after some time and so does the buzz around it. If such social media campaigns are kept alive all round the year, we think it would add a lot more value to the company. Young and Free Alberta is one such example of an online reality contest where members & participants are kept engaged all round the year.

Summarizing, we can see international car companies making special efforts in social media for Indian customers. This shows that these companies recognize the importance of engaging customers around their product or social object (lifestyle, passion or cause) as well as customizing social media campaigns for target markets. In the near future we would like to see companies like Toyota and others, which have excellent social platforms and applications for international markets ( e.g. togethergreen.org) , bringing their Indian counterparts to an equivalent level.

Social Media in India: Methodology and Scope

Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

With the advent of social technologies grabbing marketing spaces, many brands can be seen embracing social media for adding value to themselves. Dell, IBM and Starbucks are some of the best examples of companies having a majority of their marketing efforts directed towards social media. In India you can see Tata, Airtel, Reliance BIG, HT Media, Toyota and many more doing the same. Hence we at 20:20 social thought it would be interesting to see how different companies are performing in social media specifically in the Indian Ecosystem and document it in form of a report.

In this report we want to look at 2 sets of companies; International companies having a separate social media presence specifically for India and Indian Companies again having a social media presence in their parent country; and rank them on the basis of their presence and engagement. This is to ensure that Companies are compared on an equal platform since most of the international companies have been using social technologies for quite some time while many Indian Companies have recently realized their importance. Also as we want this set of companies to be internationally recognized, we have chosen Forbes top 50 International companies having Indian presence and top 50 Indian companies in Forbes 2000 list as our sample space.

Moreover we will limit our scope of research to either company websites building conversations around a social object like a lifestyle, passion or cause bigger than the company itself. ( eg: Tata tea for jaagore.com) or Community platforms like Sunsilk gang of girls or social applications like Tata Indica Xeta Shootouts.\n\nHaving said that we will particularly look into four things to rate Companies” social media engagement and presence :

1) Social Object: Since communities and conversations don”t happen in vacuum, they coalesce around a social object which can be a lifestyle, cause or passion. We will see whether the company’’s website/ community platform which is meant to engage users or utilize their social behaviour is built around any social object ( See our position paper)

2) Infrastructure for engagement: Brands/ companies can engage their consumers on various levels of engagement like content consumption, curation, creating, collaboration, trial, purchase and recommendation. We will see whether the company’’s social platform has infrastructure to engage consumers on these levels of engagement.

3) Interactions on the social platforms: Once seen that the company has infrastructure to engage consumers, the next logical step would be to see that till what levels on the ladder of engagement ( consume, curate, create content etc.) do the consumers actually interact.  We will be rate companies on their company to user and user to user conversations in social media.

4) Multiple presence: Many companies like Tata, Reliance, Airtel etc have multiple social media platforms and we think that some credit must be given to this.

Also as there is a scope that many outliers who do not appear on the Forbes list might be doing something exceptional worth deserving a mention and for this report we will also look for some such benchmark examples.

However we would like to keep the scope and parameters open to readers for discussions. Any comments, suggestions are most welcome

Social Media in India: Tata review

Posted on 19. Sep, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

This is the first post in a series where we will review performance of companies (and brands) using Social media to connect with Indian customers.Here we will review a large Indian conglomerate – The Tata group. This 140 year old group of companies is currently headed by Ratan Tata and operates in a large number of businesses like software services, energy, materials to products like cars, watches, beverages etc. The group was lately in the news for acquisition of Cores, Jaguar & Land Rover and for launching the world’s most economic car – Tata Nano.  We researched the umbrella of Tata companies and found Tata Motors (especially Tata Nano), TCS, Tata Docomo, Tata Tea and Fast Track watches worth discussion in this review.

We begin with Jaagore.com ( meaning ”be awakened” in Hindi ) , the Tata tea and Janaagraha (a non profit NGO) initiative for awakening Indian youth. Jaagore.com ‘one billion votes’ is an online voter registration campaign with the mission of generating one billion votes in India. Launched around the time of 2009 general assembly polls in India, it created a lot of media hype. This social platform gave all the necessary information to the user on how to become a registered Indian voter along with registration status. Moreover the ‘awakened’ were encouraged to recommend the initiative to their friends and invite them to join the movement. The Jaagore volunteers took the initiative offline and went to colleges to talk about the campaign and get people registered on Jaagore.com. No doubt in the first year itself it had more than 600,000 registrations. Post the Jaagore success during the elections; Tata tea and Janaagraha have relaunched the Jaagore campaign to eradicate corruption in India. They are currently using the same web platform to publicize their TV advertisement and get members to pledge against corruption. Awakening the Indian citizen and making them aware are clearly an excellent choice of a social object for Tata tea. Also the current Jaagore platform shows excellent member engagement around content consumption, collaboration and recommendation. In the near future, we would like to see engagement building around other steps of the ladder of engagement like content curation, creation, trial, purchase etc.

A substantial social media presence can be seen for Fastrack, the Titan (Tata group Watch Company) brand targeting Indian youth. Impressively, although the company has a 140 year old brand heritage, yet it has a fresh and youthful appearance on social media for Fastrack. What we like most about their facebook and twitter outposts is that they are more than just official pages and we see them brimming with activity. There are genuine interactions on the platform and the brand participating in them, which is something you rarely see. For example, on Fastrack’s facebook page you see more than 90 brand to user and user to user interactions in the last 15 days, which is commendable given that most companies just post basic content without initiating any interactions. With 800 tweets and 7,500 facebook fans, Fastrack is making great use of social media. The Fastrack official website fastrack.in is a cool community platform which entertains users through comic strips, wall discussions, avatars and chill zone. What we love most is that it is concerned whether your internet connection is ‘Go-Kart’ or ‘Bullock-Kart’ ( broadband or dial-up in fastrack.in lingo). In the future, we would like to see more social applications that aid youth interactions to build a vibrant fastrack community.

Another Tata brand using social media for its marketing applications is Tata Docomo. The Indian conglomerate and the Japanese telecom major JV is making some news in the social web. Their web presence is limited to Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Bigadda and Youtube with no single dedicated community. However, the interaction levels are high and users feel a ‘personal’ touch in communications.

Other Tata entities like Tata Nano, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services: Tata’s software services arm) and Tata Motors also have a huge fan base on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. Similarly Tata Indicom interacts with consumers through its coporate blog.  We expect that these Tata companies will graduate from outpost pages and corporate blogs to cohesive communities built around strong social objects.

Summarizing, here is a conglomerate that has let each of its brands nurture its own social media identity. Most of their social media outposts are brimming with two way interactions. Not only have they touched civic social causes with jaagore.com but they have also developed youth centric engagement platforms like fastrack.in. In the future, Tata Group can bring people together around larger than life social objects to form strong communities with a shared purpose not only because that would mean more economic rewards for Tata but also because big corporations like them can do it with their resources and brand power.