1. Tech Talk: Social Media Optimization and What Gigya Brings to Passive Content Discovery

    Tuesday, 6 Jul 2010 View Comments Posted by: Joann Jen

    Companies today invest countless hours, not to mention thousands of dollars, trying to organize content and develop keywords that improve search engine page rank and increase web traffic.  The fact of the matter is that boosting organic web results through search engine optimization (SEO) and creating contagious content is not enough. While these techniques do successfully improve active content discovery and organic referral traffic, what if your customers aren’t actively searching?

    How do you use Social Media Optimization to increase passive content discovery?

    In this age of infomania, where most of us have Tweetdeck or Facebook up on our screens during the day, passive content discovery is increasingly prevalent. While we aren’t actively searching for content, when something interesting gets populated into our social stream, we typically click on the link and check it out. Oftentimes, it doesn’t matter if we were doing something else. Links, referrals,  images and recommendations from our friends and family typically receive first priority. That’s why optimizing web content to get information into as many social feeds is more important than ever.

    This week’s Tech Talk post features Gigya, an on-site social optimization technology that enables content discovery through social channels by aggregating social API for single API access.  For users, Gigya allows for a seamless experience connecting into third-party websites through social platforms and provides an easy way to share content they’d like to recommend to their friends. For businesses, Gigya builds the pipes between social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and corporate websites, helps lowers the friction in the registration process through single sign-in registration, delivers insightful reports about web traffic by platform — all the while, gaining access to a user’s social graph and friends through sharing.

    We’ve provided two videos (from Gigya) that illustrate how easy Gigya can be used to share content and drive engagement.

    Gigya for Sharing Content

    ESPN Using Gigya Sharing from Gigya, Inc. on Vimeo.

    Gigya for Engagement – Live Chat

    Gigya / PGA – Social Live Chat Plug-In from Gigya, Inc. on Vimeo.

    Another business use case for Gigya is the tool’s ability to deliver granular analytics about user interaction and web traffic by platform. With Gigya, businesses can aggregate analytics from multiple social platforms – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace Google and Yahoo into one user interface. Through these types of reporting, it’s easy for companies to measure and compare which content gets shared most frequently and on what platform. Other possible metrics include: total connected users, new users, new connections by platform, newsfeed posts, newsfeed posts by platform, status updates, messages sent, messages sent by platform, referral traffic and referral traffic by platform.

    Right now, we’re just skimming the surface of Gigya, I’d highly recommend poking around the Gigya website for more information. Special thanks to Ben Pashman, Senior Vice-President of Business Development at Gigya for the interview.

    Next up for Tech Talk review is Klout. Do you have any questions you’d like to ask about Klout, the “standard for influence?”

  2. Customer Feedback: Breaking Down the Silos in Your Organization. Part 1 of a 3-Part Series

    Friday, 7 May 2010 View Comments Posted by: Kira Wampler

    What do busted computers laptops and broken guitars have in common? The answer…broken customer feedback and busted support channels.

    When Jeff Jarvis complained about his Dell computer in the infamous “Dell Hell” blog posts and when Dave Carroll chose songwriting over suing United Airlines with his wildly viral “United Breaks Guitars”, they gave the companies ample warning that they planned to talk. They were subsequently ignored and then proceeded to unleash a storm of negative sentiment that significantly impacted both companies’ reputations and bottom lines.

    busted laptops_broken computers

    In Dave Carroll’s case, he spent nine months contacting United Airlines, including talking to flight attendants and gate agents the very day the issue occurred. His last exchange with the company, before he created the now-famous video that potentially dropped United’s stock price by 10%, was with a Mrs. Irlweg who said “United would not be taking any responsibility for what had happened and that that would be the last email on the matter.”

    In Jeff Jarvis’ case, he was so dissatisfied with the performance of his laptop and with the service, or lack thereof, that came with it, that he unleashed a storm of negative sentiment through his Dell Hell series of posts on his blog.

    When I’ve chatted with folks about these examples, the conversation often revolves around dealing with the storm. Responding is an important topic, but, in my view, the big opportunity is to prevent the storm in the first place. Why wait? You probably already know what the busted computers or broken guitars are in your organization. Your biggest detractors are already talking to you. They are using every available channel, which sadly, are often silo’d from one another.

    Your job as a S.P.I.C.Y. leader within your organization is to get ahead of the busted computers and broken guitars and break down the silos. In Part 1, let’s spend time on how to connect the customer feedback silos in a way that’s meaningful to your organization and your customers. Parts 2 and 3, coming soon, will be about what to do with the feedback once you’ve got it.

    Part 1: Connecting Customer Feedback

    • Audit your existing “voice of customer” channels: How many are there? What are they capturing? Who’s monitoring them and what’s being done about the feedback? Are they survey-based only or are there data analytics and social web monitoring included as well?
    • Map your customers’ end-to-end experience: When I was a S.P.I.C.Y. leader myself at Intuit, I was part of a cross-functional team that mapped the experience from the moment a small business owner lost the ability to get business done to the moment she got back to business. We also identified the key “moments of truth” in that experience – which things really mattered to the customer not just which ones mattered to us – by using our own data first and then interviewing customer to validate the moments or adjust them based on the interviews.
    • Overlay the moments of truth with the feedback channel audit: Where are the gaps? Where do the channels overlap? What feedback has come through to show how you’re doing against the key moments of truth for the customer?
    • Establish a baseline of customer experience and priorities to improve: Based on the audit, mapping and overlay work, you’ll likely have a clear picture for where you’re doing well on customer experience and where you need to improve. From the baseline, in alignment with your company’s objectives, you’ll want to create measurable priorities to improve the experience.
    • Establish a regular process for reporting: You’ll have a couple of levels of reporting. You’ll have ground level, emerging issues reporting that is much more real-time. You’ll also want a report-out that should go as high as you can in your organization where hard, longer-term decisions can be made. In some cases, decisions can be made quickly that have a big impact on customer experience, like Southwest Airlines going back to black & white text on their online boarding passes based on customer feedback about the cost of printing in full color. In other cases, the decisions are harder and more complex.

    You’re probably asking…now that I’ve done the heavy lifting of connecting the feedback, what next? Part 2 in the series will cover how to measure the value of customer feedback and Part 3 will cover closing the loop on the feedback, even in heavily regulated industries.

    I’d love hear more from all of you. How are you connecting customer feedback channels today? What’s working? What’s not?

  3. Wanted: a S.P.I.C.Y. Leader at Intuit

    Tuesday, 20 Apr 2010 View Comments Posted by: Kira Wampler

    Okay, I had to start my first blog post at Ant’s Eye View with a funny headline. In all seriousness though, as someone who’s just left a social media/community leadership role at a large company and was part of the interview team for my replacement at Intuit, the right person to lead a social media team is S.P.I.C.Y.

    Being a S.P.I.C.Y. leader is about successfully transforming corporate cultures to focus on customers while achieving company goals. It’s not about how many followers, fans, connections or Word with Friends’ games you have running. S.P.I.C.Y. attributes are:

    • Smart: Do you use good data to make decisions, and is the data fairly obtained and applied? I’ve seen a lot of snake oil, internally and externally, around data, or the lack thereof, and the social web, so smarts are required to make sense of it all. Smarts are also required to do the hard work of connecting the dots between customer success and your company’s success. Last but not least in the smarts category is rigor around the data. Are you rigorous in setting real business objectives or you do chase after shiny objects? And, if you’re someone who’s rigorously set priorities, then how do you adjust as you acquire new information?
    • Passionate: If you aren’t interested in talking about your products and services, then who the heck will be? It’s okay to care passionately about your products, services, company and, above all, your customers. In digital media, true passion, not smelly promotional passion, cuts through noise. Passion also cuts through the noise internally, especially when combined with the smarts mentioned above.
    • Interested: Are you naturally curious about the world around you, your customers’ lives and your products or services? Do you take a systematic approach for learning new “cultures” and new projects and, most importantly, then apply that learning to constantly improve on your teams and your work. And, my deep belief is that naturally interested people are naturally humble. We’re all learning our way here, and being humble goes a long way when operating in new cultures and partnering with internal teams. Speaking of…do you do more to recognize others than to gain recognition for yourself?
    • Caring:  A deep, enduring commitment to customers (and soon-to-be customers) is the hallmark of a S.P.I.C.Y leader at Intuit. Thanks to amazing folks like Roy Rosin and Scott Cook, I learned early on about the importance of caring for customers and prospects by learning from them directly – through follow-me-homes, Net Promoter studies and listening and responding to them on the social web. And, then taking that learning and doing something about it, even if it hurts.
    • Youthful: No, this isn’t when I tell you to hire someone who is 20 and has been using some form of digital device since birth. Not that there is anything wrong with those folks! In fact, what’s exciting about being youthful is the belief in the power of change. Change is a constant on the social web and in large corporations. Driving change, not be driven crazy by it, is the key to success in this role.

    Most importantly, spicy or no, be a leader. Whether you’re going to manage a large team or influence other teams, leading is key. Leadership encapsulates all of the above attributes with the critical addition of being willing to make tough decisions, stand up for your team and lead what is often significant change in a large organization. Leading is also about understanding that you can hold standards and goals high, while supporting your team and internal partners to make it happen. All too often, I’ve heard folks say that “you can’t do “x” because this is all new.” Well, if there was anything I learned from Battlestar Galactica, leadership is even more important when facing the unknown.

    Here are some examples of job descriptions for social media leaders, including the one I wrote for my replacement. And, in the great minds think alike category, here’s an excellent post from Christine Morrison, social lead at Intuit’s TurboTax on leadership qualities for social media folks inside companies.

    I’d love to hear about your experiences either hiring for social media/online engagement leaders at your organization or about trying to get one of those jobs. What did I miss? What’s off base?