While visiting friends on the other side of Lake Como, we stopped by the lakeside town of Gravedona and visited the cemetery and the medieval church of St. Maria del Tiglio (St. Mary of the Linden Tree).
As you can see, family vaults are kept over generations and centuries, and are well maintained. This is possible in a culture where families simply don’t move around much. When families have moved away from their roots, people will sometimes travel on November 1st (Ognissanti – All Saints’) to spruce up their family graves elsewhere in Italy. Religious organizations hang around the cemeteries that day to sell pre-printed tags that you can hang on your family vault to show you’ve been there (in case your dead ancestors didn’t notice?), and florists – who tend to cluster around cemeteries – do a booming business as well.
Note: This was listed in the catalog as “Social Media: If You Liked it, Then You Should Have Put a Digg on It…”, which I wouldn’t have bothered to attend, but when I walked by the room the title had changed to “Social Media: Connecting with Customers”, which was a lot more obviously interesting to me. This was also one of the few panels that didn’t seem to treat large corporations (and those of us who work for them) as the enemy.
Panel:
Chris Bowler – VP Social Media Lead, Razorfish (moderator)
Jordan Corredera -Â Director of Online Marketing, Carnival Cruise Lines
Paula Drum – VP Digital Marketing, H&R Block
Malini Ratnam – Digital Media Mgr, Avenue A/Razorfish/JCPenney
First, each panelist gave an overview on what their company is doing in social media (comments on the companies themselves are partly my own, for the benefit of non-US readers who may not be familiar with these companies):
H&R Block
Well-known in the US as a tax preparation service, H&R Block’s problem is that their business is extremely seasonal, running from January (they kick off their advertising season with the SuperBowl) through Tax Day on April 15th. They are trying to use social media to stay in the public consciousness year-round. The overall theme is customer connections to build lifelong relationships.
Tactics include:
a tax news widget for tax professionals
YouTube contests
online community
tax-themed content related to other times of year, e.g. back to school, company benefits enrollment periods
provide customer service via Twitter and Yahoo Answers
helping tax professionals participate in these programs as well
along with the Social Media Club, have organized/participated in Tweetups in 10 cities
JC Penney
Penney is a very old retail company, and is trying to overcome a rather musty reputation with younger shoppers: “Trying not to be ‘your mother’s store’.” They have chosen to actively participate in women’s online communities.
Their first big project is the extremely funny “doghouse” video (which I had seen long before this conference, though I had probably forgotten that it was done by JC Penney):
At the time it had had 4.1 million views with a 60% completion rate, resulting in 600 (new) Twitter followers and 1100 tweets/retweets. It was initially seeded from a Penney microsite using Facebook Connect. Traffic crashed the server and led to higher fees. Offloaded the traffic to YouTube.
They’ve also set up a Facebook group targeted to women, after finding that segmentation by Penney sub-brands did not work. And they’ve got a customer service Twitter account.
Someone asked what was the ROI on the doghouse video campaign. The answer was that brand awareness, not ROI, was the objective; a hard sell would not have been as successful.
Carnival Cruise Lines
In 2005, Carnival set up a group planning tool built on Community Server. The Cruise Talk forum there grew to 500 posts/day, and was followed by a “scrapblog” and a Twitter account with 1300 followers.
Then came a blog by John Heald, a cruise director, which has become immensely popular, as measured by 100 comments a day [visitor stats were not given].This has grown into a multimedia extravaganza including live chats, videos (quality was an issue), etc. Cruising is inherently social, so this has worked well.
[D here: This is an example of how effective social media marketing can be when tied to a real personality. You can also build community around that person: Heald fans want to talk to each other, there are now even Heald-themed fan cruises.]
Then the moderator asked questions:
How do you set up your organization to participate in social media?
H&R Block: You have to figure out where does this fit. Customer service, communications, marketing, field coordination…? The company isn’t yet on board, we’re still in a skunkworks phase. We’re trading off media dollars with human capital – we have only one person for Twitter, which is a 24/7 job. [But she said later that some resources are being shifted to social media.]
Also, the Federal Trade Commission is changing the legislation about blogging [as relates to professional tax preparers]. We’re still figuring out how to train people, what legal disclosures are needed. Ideally, we’d like tax preparers to be blogging. Education and support are difficult. People need to understand that it’s okay to have your own personality.
JC Penney: Similar situation, we have no dedicated social media team. [Some problem of] brick and mortar stores vs. jcpenney.com. Facebook took off for us when it became a two-way conversation, but that takes dedicated staff.
Carnival: We have an online community manager with two moderators and a social media strategist. Not seeing any particular efficiences from online yet.
How can we measure the results of social media?
Page views, links to transactions.
How does this tie back to brand? How do we make the brand relevant to the new generation?
Word of mouth as brand tracker, but it moves over multiple years.
ROI = Risk of Ignoring
creating spheres of influence, measuring awareness
Traditional ROI isn’t the be-all and end-all – Twitter is free! [except for staff time]
Use Radiant6 to monitor buzz.
Facebook charges $300k for a brand page – Carnival elected not to spend this. Buying a YouTube channel can cost $500k plus media costs.
But you can get started for free.
If you’re going to lead social media [teams], you have to be doing it yourself.
Content creation is expensive.
How might employee culture affect the use of social media in older companies?
An interesting question, but, frustratingly, I didn’t note the answers. Maybe there weren’t any.
D’s Conclusions
A good and useful session, one of the few at SxSWi to address the needs of large companies and their employees.
I was very frustrated that Sun was not speaking on this panel, as we have one hell of a story to tell in this space.
And, even absent Sun’s support infrastructure for blogs, wikis, and video, I could have told them that there are cheaper ways to do this stuff than what Facebook and YouTube are charging for branded offerings.
@davewiner OMG I just died and went to heaven: Hugh Jackman is on Twitter. (Actually, heaven would involve being rather closer than Twitter) in reply to davewiner#
want a Twitter feature to filter out sports. Love you all, but really, really DON’T care about any of that stuff. #
@KathySierra we had a horse that was a meta-thinker: “Do I actually care about being on the other side of the jump? No. You go. Without me.” #
@sumaya I’ve been saying for years that I want a “filter out Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton, etc.” option in Google News. Nothing yet. in reply to sumaya#
@ckoontz I was fine doing all video editing in Windows XP/Vista w/ $99 Roxio VideoWave. Only switched to fit in with Sun colleagues in reply to ckoontz#
@davest That was fun. So far no one has taken me up on suggestion of Bollywood dance instruction for C1 this year. Damn. in reply to davest#
@jeffreytaylor FYI will be back on SFO May 29-Jun 4 for conferences, Enrico in tow. fwing wkd we’ll go to Santa Cruz or something in reply to jeffreytaylor#
I’ve been asked to talk to colleagues about social media next week. Have a feeling half the session will end up being about Twitter #
@avinashkaushik I used to have pet goats in Bangladesh. When they escaped into the garden, they ate the flowers, but not the vegetables. in reply to avinashkaushik#
real estate agent, claiming to practice Feng Shui, moved the sofa perpendicular to the TV. And I’m supposed to watch TV how? #
@lskrocki she left the TV, just made it exercise to watch it – have to move the friggin’ sofa! in reply to lskrocki#
@plasticbagUK you must be in the wrong hotel. The one where I stayed in Bangalore had breakfast of at least four different nations in reply to plasticbagUK#
Freedom House classifies Italy as only “partly free” (in terms of press/media) Repubblica.it (in Italian) http://bit.ly/UX2sC#
@DavidHowell accidental discovery due to proximity of sushi bar & coffee shop in a hotel, colleague who doesn’t like fish ordered a burger in reply to DavidHowell#
re. Dollhouse, remember: Joss is always going to f*ck with you. Always. #
interesting week on Twitter. An orca sends me a hat, and I’m comparing notes with a dog about goats. And let’s not forget the blue whale #
Saturday morning writing fever. I do enjoy this. Time to go eat breakfast and let the article rest a bit. #
better late than never: “SxSWi Report: Designing for the Wisdom of Crowds” http://bit.ly/SMjIL#
ps http://bit.ly/SMjIL contains some thoughts of my own on how video helps build community #
@SteveEdiger Powazek wasn’t my video, SxSWi do their own. I’m puzzled that they didn’t put the slides in (as I would have) – you need both! in reply to SteveEdiger#
NB: I have long wanted to attend SxSwi – where the cool geeks go to party – and this year had my first opportunity to do so, thanks to Sun. This conference is great bang for the buck: registration cost only $450, for four days of good, solid talks. I’ve been meaning for some time to write about sessions I attended and what I learned from them, but time keeps getting away from me. Here’s the first in a series. I hope the next will follow in reasonably short order – but I don’t guarantee that!
Why I attended this session: I work with communities, both online and off. And Powazek is a well-known name in web design, which has been part of my career, so this confluence of topics was irresistible to me.
From my notes:
Surowiecki’s premise is that the aggregate wisdom of “the crowd” can be greater than the wisdom of a single individual (no matter how expert).
According to Surowiecki, the elements of wise crowds are:
diversity
independence
decentralization
aggregation
Powazek gave suggestions on how to make the wisdom of the crowd work online:
give small, simple tasks (e.g., one-click vote on Hot or Not) – This works best when there is a definite outcome, e.g. a Threadless shirt design is chosen. A grass-roots news site gave a list of desired interviewees, participants then conducted the interview(s) of their choice via email
try to have a large, diverse group of participants – This is a sticky point. The Internet is inherently a place where it’s easy for people of all kinds to congregate (absent language barriers), but we still clump with people who mostly think like us. It takes effort to create a truly diverse crowd.
design for selfishness: participants have to get something out of it for themselves, even just a chance to win. The “greater good” is not sufficient motivation. (But personal glory can be.)
aggregate results so that individual behavior (e.g., tagging) leads to collective wisdom
(However, there’s the Heisenberg Problem: scoring creates a game, and therefore an incentive to cheat.)
Popularity does not have to rule. Amazon’s reviews/ratings are displayed with a histogram of results, and readers can rate each review (“was this helpful? yes/no”), giving feedback on the feedback.
Consider both implicit and explicit feedback.
Implicit:
page views
searches
rate of change
interestingness
Explicit = voting and rating, but never ask people to do more thinking than they have to, e.g. use a simple yes/no or thumbs up/thumbs down wherever possible.
Note, however, that you get better data when you don’t ask the question.
Design Matters
Kvetch.com -Â The mood of responses became happier when the color scheme changed from dark to light.
Red vs. blue – In testing, people shown blue backgrounds responded with more imagination, while red backgrounds led to better attention to detail. This may occur because red is a danger sign, so people are primed to be more cautious when they see red, whereas blue is calming, so they feel freer to be creative.
(Sun’s corporate theme color is blue, Oracle’s is red. Uh oh.)
This is relevant online because we have much less input than in real-life social situations. Virtual communications like email, blog comments, and instant messages come without the associated social data our brains are used to. In the absence of context, our brains fill in the rest. What we fill it in with is a byproduct of our own insecurities.
My own thoughts on this:
If you’ve spent much time interacting with people online in email, forums, blogs and comments, you know how easy it is misunderstand someone’s character or intentions when you only know them through text.
Misunderstandings can occur because of differences in language, culture and writing skills, as well as the above-mentioned human propensity to fill in our mental gaps with worst-case assumptions. We are especially negative in our assumptions when we don’t feel in control in our own lives – and, these days, who does? The result is flame wars and other online unpleasantness that simply doesn’t happen in real life.
In my first distance-working experience, I also learned that it’s hard for human beings to work with someone they’ve never seen. I suspect that we don’t quite believe someone is real until we’ve seen them face-to-face. In my six years working from Italy for a Silicon Valley company, I noticed that colleagues were poor at responding to me until they’d met me once (I traveled to California four times a year), then their attitude would change radically. It wasn’t that I did anything particular on my visits to inspire cooperation; it was simply that they now could put a face to the emails and the voice on the phone. I guess that’s human.
Conversely, we can have warm feelings for people we’ve only seen on screens. I have twice now embarrassed myself meeting actors in unexpected contexts, the first at CES, and, more recently, at SxSWi itself: I was wandering the halls when I saw a familiar face. This wasn’t unexpected at SxSWi; videoblogging buds and other folks I know were there. So my brain registered “someone I know and like,” and I rushed up to greet her with an enthusiastic “Hi!” before my memory kicked in with: “You know her from Buffy and Dr. Horrible.” She was completely unfazed; I’m sure this happens a lot to actors.
All this is why I’ve encouraged the Sun teams I’ve filmed to shoot brief introductions of themselves to share online: if you’ve seen their faces and heard their voices in video, you’re more likely to treat them kindly when responding to their text (e.g. in an online forum). And it’s easier to feel a sense of community, kinship, and cooperation with people you’ve seen and heard, even if only via recorded video.
The next step is to get video from non-Sun members of our developer communities. Working on it!
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