I get the whole information distribution thing. I blogged recently about how effectively Australian band Powderfinger had been in using Twitter to build enthusiasm for their free concerts. I see lots of other good examples – ABC Radio for example. We’ve even had tremendous success – for another business I own Twitter has become a very powerful sales and communication channel.

But

The system has issues and the risk for enterprise in my opinion is too great – particularly in the B2B context.

Here are my concerns:

1. The system is flakey – part 1

The whole ‘fail-whale’ thing is cute for like – 2 minutes. Google gets its butt kicked when Gmail is down for 10 minutes yet constant service from Twitter is a rare thing. Running a major service channel through Twitter with this service standard? Sorry, I wouldn’t be hanging my career on that option

2. Hackers Rule the Roost

I used to get angry when people sent me DM’s about ‘I’ve added you to my mafia family’ or ‘are you as smart as me’. Then I realised these users were subject to hack attacks and spam attacks.

Here’s an example of a user who I consider to be prominent issuing an apology:

This would be a tough conversation with the CMO or CIO – ’Lets get on Twitter. Good chance we’ll spam our followers, our account will be hacked – but it’s all good. Everyone’s doing it…’

3. The system is flakey – part 2

What is it with changes being lost, blocks being unblocked, the system being severely constipated before it suddenly spews out a torrent of ‘past due date’ content?

This is poor. And again, in an enterprise context – why would you put trust in a system with these flaws?

4. Inappropriate Content

I’m pretty diligent about blocking anyone who mentions money, sex, or religion. But most days I find companies and individuals with followers who are so suspect it beggars belief that they haven’t been blocked or reported.

I’ve seen some really really inappropriate avatars used by Twitter accounts – why aren’t these users blocked?

Worse, I’ve seen some major US companies following users who have avatars that are quite shocking. I have to ask. If you’re following users who have graphic images of women – what is your Twitter strategy? Is this really a reflection of your company’s values? One of these companies is a major brand in the social media space.

So how are we protecting our brand in this free-for-all world? Can someone fill me in on what Twitter is doing to police this space? And don’t give me that ‘oh there’s a new report spam link’ – rubbish!

5. Widespread Abuse

This really irks me. Company names and brands are being hijacked. The proliferation of this abuse is amazing.

Given I work in the CRM space I’ve been watching a couple of accounts. One account bbakari uses the Twitter API to flood the service with – spam.

Here’s an example

Now, granted I can block this user and not worry about the mindless river of drivel – but the fact is if you search for Salesforce.com or SugarCRM.com this torrent of spam clogs up the search results.

And just so you know, this is bbakari’s second account on Twitter. His first account @freecrm was killed off.

My Conclusion

Personally, I like Twitter. I follow people whose opinions I value and I like that they use the service appropriately. I like the fact I can tie my other social profiles into Twitter.

I can see the value. I can see the big picture with Twitter being a useful tool for information distribution.

But if I put a CEO hat on I have concerns – serious concerns. Would I recommend a B2B company jump into Twitter – probably not! I think their social media strategy would make more sense and they’d get better value focusing elsewhere.

Thanks to the team from Social Media Academy I’ve been given the opportunity to present at their global multi-day event next week – Social Media Tools Week. Given we’ve just launched Smart Social Media – this is a great opportunity to outline some of our thinking on social media.

The topic of my presentation is

Social Media Monitoring – Why the Executive team needs to be using these tools

Why this topic?

Several reasons. Firstly, social media monitoring tools like Scout Labs have quickly evolved from brand buzz monitoring tools into significant business intelligence portals.

Secondly, TEC speaker Gary Bertwistle is a big proponent of business leaders being active thinkers. Gary’s speaking topics like ‘What made you think of that‘ and ‘Leading Innovation‘ has influenced how I think information should be used in organisations and the importance of a business leader having access to knowledge that isn’t shaped by functional prejudice.

The current business climate means their are many threats and opportunities and business leaders need to be alert and need to be looking across more than the traditional information channels. I’ll also drill into why Government agencies need to be using these tools as well – and why they are more powerful and useful than existing services (like news clipping services).

My presentation is Thursday the 19th at 10.30am AEDT (9.30am for those of us in Queensland).

I’ll be posting more details on my presentation between now and Thursday.

I’ve been doing a bit of strategy work recently around social communities. I’ve posted before about communities and how 2009 seems to be the year they are coming of age. I’m pretty excited about where the community space is going in terms of functionality, deployability, and sustainability.

Building a social community isn’t viable for every company but given the breadth of good platforms (from Ning, through to enterprise solutions like Xeequa, Awareness, Mzinga, and Igloo) they warrant attention and discussion within the context of your social media strategy.

This presentation is a simple overview of Social Communities. It’s an extract from a larger presentation that I put together for TEC groups here in Australia and New Zealand.

Through one of my LinkedIn groups a fellow group member – Munib Karavdic raised a question as to whether a new St George product is an example of a Blue Ocean product. I originally set out to review the site in question and draft a quick response but ended up turning it into a blog post…

So I had a good look through the promo site. I can see a number of BOS principles reflected in this product.

Before I share my thoughts lets look at the existing Australian market space of transactional banking – largely a vacuum of innovation – bitter red oceans of competition. I suspect the last really innovative move was ING launching their internet only transaction accounts which has since been eroded into a red ocean. In reality it’s nothing more than poor tit for tat incremental changes. I think even NAB’s recent elimination of fees is simply a red ocean reaction.

Given the information at hand, I can see some clear elements of Blue Ocean thinking in this product; though some aspects of it might not qualify (i.e. the flat $5 fee per month – is that really lowering costs for the customer? If so, how is this communicated by presenting it as a flat fee when their competitors are promoting fee removal?).

What I find interesting is that I can see how they are appealing to their tiers of non-customers in a couple of interesting ways – primarily through 3 key strategies:

Savings Targets

Helping customers develop good savings habits

I see this as a really interesting attempt to move the idea of a transaction account away from being something you get in the mail every month to an interactive tool that you want to receive.

As we all know, setting up young people with good savings behaviours is important for their financial future. I think this is a reasonable attempt by St George to promote and support positive financial behaviour (as opposed to the disgraceful behaviour of some banks – ‘oh you’ve maxed your credit cards – let me give you more credit).

Budgeting Tools

Simple graphical tools for those customers who aren't numerically minded

This is the bit I think has real traction. This appears to be a legitimate attempt to help non-financially minded people make sense of the flows of money in and out of their lives. Whilst many of us might think it’s a simplistic representation of a financial situation – if it works for the customer then – it works. This isn’t new as some credit card companies already to this – but providing it as a service on a transaction account is. What I see here is the bank realising they have this data anyway to so why not aggregate and package the data so that their customers can use it and potentially modify their behaviours. What’s that you say? Banks and altruistic behaviour make strange bedfellows…

Round Up

An interesting approach to rounding...

I’m not sure what they are thinking with this feature. Whilst I get the virtual coin jar idea I’m not sure it’s solving a problem. But if this feature is another way of forced saving by stealth then in reality it’s a positive. Personally, I think there is more merit in rewarding account holders with bonus interest for every coin deposit they make over a certain amount.

Is this a Blue Ocean product?

Tough question to answer given the information provided – as I can’t help but feel they’ve missed some critical factors that (if included) would have created massive barriers for their competitors – chief amongst these is any form of measure of engagement and contribution. Deep down, this still smells like a bank product. I’m not quite seeing how they understand or recognise participation – and in my opinion – this is the holy grail

Have they really erected competitive barriers – I don’t have enough information to say yes or no. Maybe they have if you look at it in the context of their 3 peers. But I would argue not if you were to look into say the second tier of banks or more importantly the mutual sector (i.e. Credit Unions) where engagement measurement is more natural and intrinsic.

I think St George deserves praise for launching this initiative – but I can’t help but feel someone – more than likely a credit union is going to see this and really seize the day – particularly in terms of engagement that isn’t based on traditional bank metrics (i.e. share of wallet). I guess time will tell!

We wrapped up another Drupal CMS project today for Brisbane customer – Mobicon Systems.

Tom Schults and his team had a good site that was doing an OK job for them but wasn’t built on a content management system.

We recommended they migrate their site to Drupal – the world’s leading open source CMS.

Mobicon Systems has developed a world leading mobile freight container lifter and handling vehicle – in other words a Straddle Carrier.

Wondering what a Mobicon Straddle Carrier is?

Here’s a picture

The new way to move freight containers

Basically these are a versatile, self-powered container handling machine that are changing the way shipping containers are managed in a variety of environments – including defence. The Mobicon units are a great example of Australian innovation – looking at a limitation with current container lifters and developing a cost effective alternative.

I’d argue that what Tom has developed is a great example of Blue Ocean Strategy thinking.

As someone who primarily focuses on social media in the B2B world, it’s always good to be able to look into different markets and industries to find examples of how companies are using social media in ways that provide examples of how to do things properly and professionally.

Earlier this month, Australian band Powderfinger did just that. As I watched the events surrounding their 3 concerts in 3 cities in one day extravaganza unfold I couldn’t help but admire a number of aspects of what they did.

Here’s what I liked.

1. They built momentum in a sustained, practical, grass roots way.
2. They were coordinated across a number of tools
3. They engaged with their community in ways that were meaningful, engaging, and personal.

I was fortunate in that I was able to watch the momentum and enthusiasm escalate because prior to the concerts, I was able to set up Scout Labs to track the band and key aspects of what they were trying to do (i.e. promote their forthcoming new album).

Lesson #1 – Sustained Momentum

Powderfinger primed their Twitter network by teasing them with details – but they did this in an intelligent way

Powderfinger priming their Twitter network prior to the concerts

What we see here is the band giving their followers a polite reminder of the pending announcement of the first venue.

As the events started to unfold the band kept up the Tweets but importantly, they also kept up the engagement.

Powderfinger engaging with the community on Twitter

Priming everyone for the first event, and following through with the teasers – getting Sydney ready. By now, mainstream press has caught on and is scrambling to position their sites as being ‘in touch’. In reality though Powderfinger has control of the story and is at this point – off on a journey with their fans and their community.

Powderfinger and the concerts now have their own life

Again using Scout Labs, what I’m seeing is that the band has created an event that now has its own life – I’m seeing the sentiment and excitement grow as tweets, blog posts, pictures, and even movies start to flood into the social sphere.
As an aside, if you get a chance, have a look at this Twitpic – http://twitpic.com/jvube – how close and personal is this performance?

I can continue to show you the Tweet stream across the day, but I think you get the point. If in doubt, go and have a look at Powderfinger’s twitter thread – @powderfinger_au

Lesson #2 – Coordination

I swear I beat this drum every day. Start with a strategy and then create an integrated, coordinated platform.
I see this with Powderfinger. From Twitter, Twitpics, YouTube and finally to their website – Powderfinger engage their community. They actively encourage their followers to share content via their site – and when I check in Scout Labs to see what photos and videos have been loaded into the social sphere – I see lots of content.

What do we learn from this?

1. Powderfinger clearly understand where they are likely to connect to their community and have placed themselves within these neighbourhoods
2. They’re not afraid to leverage others content. In fact they actively encourage it. Why suppress innovation?

Lesson #3 – Engagement

Go to Twitter and have a look at the threads. The band answering Tweets from their followers, encouraging feedback and multimedia from the day.

Post event Powderfinger continues to engage

Their website – it’s about engagement. So whilst Powderfinger are out in the social sphere creating awareness and building their profile, the core goal is to get them back to their core website.

This is not hard. Powderfinger has focused on engagement and this is a key point for companies working in the B2B world.

How did the community react?

This is why I work with Scout Labs. Scout Labs captures comments and sentiment. Here’s a comment from their service

I think these spontaneous acts are a great way to give back and show that “fame” has not got the best of them

You can’t buy this type of feedback – but without Scout Labs how do you know about this?

And when I look at the photos and the comments on the photo’s I have a clear understanding of how well Powderfinger connected and what they’ve achieved.

Summary

As I said at the start, Powderfinger did a few things really well:

• Note the subtle request for their network to spread the news? Nothing overt, just a simple request. This is trust – I don’t need to shout at you
• Did you note the followers count – the band clearly aren’t out to build a gazillion followers. I like this – respect the network and let the network do its job… Rather than what we see too often on Twitter – abusing the API to add tens of thousands of meaningless followers.
• Classic groundswell actions
  • ‘Send us links to where you’ve posted’ – we want to share this with you.
  • ‘We’ll have some photos and videos for you in the coming days’ – we’ve got fresh content to come back or use our tools to have us deliver it to you (i.e. RSS).
  • Seamless transition from the ‘event’ to promotion of the new single off the new album.
• Powderfinger know where their community is and are there ready to engage. For those of us in the B2B world, this is a critical point.

In a B2B context this is very important. They encouraged sharing rather than trying to control the message or the content.

These are good lessons for all of us – job well done Powderfinger

Earlier this week I published a case study about how we used Blue Ocean Strategy for Smartpen here in Australia.

This was a really interesting project for us to undertake as it allowed us to utilise the skills we developed following our training with UCSI-BOSRC.

This presentation is the first in a series that we’re producing around this project and what we’ve learnt from it.

We’ve focused on the basics of Blue Ocean Strategy and how the core outcome of the work was the development and execution of a detailed social media strategy. The social media strategy is the key bit, as this underpins how we created the uncontested blue oceans.

Smart Company – An Australian online business magazine ran an interesting story today about the proliferation of software-as-a-service vendors and the attraction of this model for SME’s.

Whilst this isn’t news, Michael’s story delved into the important issues surrounding the need to ensure your SaaS vendor has the right infrastructure, expertise, and security in place to protect your business data.

Ask questions and review the provider’s written policies. Your questions should cover the:

• Type of facilities and security arrangements in place – reputation and history are important.
• Infrastructure and virus protection used.
• Backup procedures and storage – think business continuity planning.
• Privacy policies.
• Level of data encryption to protect website transactions.
• Hardware and power redundancy.
• Qualifications of operations staff.
• Hours and procedures of site monitoring.

I think Michael only addressed half the issue. In reality customers need to also examine what contracts and legal terms are in place to govern data ownership. As we’ve seen in the US this year, when SaaS vendors go bust it gets very ugly very quickly for customers.

So whilst your data might be secure what are you going to do if the service is shut off by the Administrators?

Customers need to be asking questions including:

1. Do you have clear ownership of your data AND the right to demand your data from the vendor or whomever is in control of the vendor if the service is shut down for a period of more than X hours?
2. What recourse do you have to get your data in a timely manner?
3. Is the vendor obliged to warn you in advance of a likely shut down of the service?

Now let’s take that a step further.

Data is one thing, but what about the customisations you have built into the SaaS solution? The sales reports, the sales process, the email templates, your marketing campaigns, your business dashboards, knowledge base, quote templates, and document library – do you see the broader issue? Yep, the data’s secure but we’re screwed as we can’t get it and nor can we get our customisations.

So whilst it’s important to ensure the vendor has a proper data centre and knows what they are doing you need to ask a lot more questions and be prepared to put the vendor under a pretty harsh spotlight. Your ability to operate your business depends on it. The worst case scenario is you pay a premium to get your data back and are then faced with having to implement a new CRM system – more implementation cost, more training cost, more unproductive hours.

These types of issues are why we chose to partner with SugarCRM as the core CRM platform that we recommend for our customers. No other vendor in the CRM space provides customers with the options and peace of mind as SugarCRM.

Here’s why two key reasons why I make that statement:

1. SugarCRM can be deployed on your own infrastructure, Sugar’s Cloud, or a hosting partner of your choice
2. If you choose a hosting provider it’s a very simple process for them to extract the system structure and send this to you so that you also have a back up of the CRM system – in addition to the system data.

This is peace of mind. This is SugarCRM putting control in your hands.

I caught in interesting story on Australian radio this morning. Noted Twitterer @612brisbane Spencer Howson was talking about his foray into the world of Internet auction sites. What was interesting this morning was his experience in providing feedback to a seller. In a nutshell Spencer provided negative feedback about one aspect of his experience. On the surface, this seemed reasonable and reflected his feelings about his experience.

What Spencer found unusual was the seller contacted him and asked him to change the feedback because he or she felt the feedback was harsh or unwarranted.

The fact is Spencer cared enough to provide feedback.

As we note too many of our customers when we get talking about social media monitoring, and the potential for negative feedback to be made public

With thanks to Scout Labs

I really like this image and tag line from Scout Labs – it’s one of the best I’ve seen – and it’s a point I make to all of our customers.

Putting aside whether Spencer was fair or harsh, I think the seller has missed a great opportunity to engage in dialogue with a customer and address his concerns – and also build trust and goodwill.

Rather than challenging Spencer and trying to embarrass him into a back down, my recommendation would have been to acknowledge the feedback, thank the buyer for caring, and then communicate what steps you’re taking to learn from this and improve the operation of your business. And don’t forget to ask the customer what they think you should do to improve your service – chances are their perspective is reflective of other customers.

What percentage of your customers give you direct feedback? What percentage of your customers talk about you in the social-sphere? How would you know?

This is where tools like Scout Labs come to the fore. Social media monitoring allows you to dial into what your customers, non-customers, and the community are saying about your product, your company, and your services.

Social media monitoring is NOT a marketing exercise – it’s about aligning your whole organisation to your community – from the executive down into R&D, sales, service, marketing, finance, and logistics. And it’s about finding opportunities to engage in dialogue.

As an aside, does your company engage in email marketing where the “From” address is ‘do-not-reply@’? Do you see the issue here?

I was introduced to a new service this week called SoftwareShortlist. This service aims to change the information dynamic around software from vendor-led to customer-led. Given one of our goals is to help SME’s make the right software decision based on their needs – this service appealed to me. This YouTube video gives you a good intro:

Having dealt with many dozens of SME’s over the years one of the complaints we’d often here is that vendor sales reps were more focused on punching out deals and maximising their revenue/commission rather than solving customer problems in a meaningful way. As Axel Schulze from Social Media Academy rightly pointed out earlier this year – the world is changing and the sales profession needs to change or find itself marginalised if not redundant. I agree with Axel – though I’m more optimistic that sales will adjust.

In my opinion, SoftwareShortlist is another example of how the world is changing for sales people. Using Web 2.0 technologies the service is going to take information control away from the vendor and the sales person and put it in the hands of the crowd – the information is being democratised. As customers use SoftwareShortlist and develop their own opinions and needs away from the control of the vendor the challenge therefore is how the sales team adapts to this new world.

What will the sales person be doing that couldn’t be done by an inside sales person? Or the vendors active contribution to the community’s knowledge pool?

SoftwareShortlist is still in Beta, but for now the idea has merit and I hope we see the service grow quickly in the future.