HorizonWatching

Fourteen Social Media Disasters: Learning from the mistakes of others

Social media can work wonders for your brand, but it can also spell disaster.   A colleague recently asked me for a list of examples of where the wrong post or tweet has damaged a brand’s reputation.  I had a few examples on the top of my head, but thought I would do some extra research on the side to see what else I could find.

After some research, I produced a deck titled “Social Media 101: Social Media Disasters”.  I’ve loaded the deck to Slideshare and have embedded it here:

Social media 101: Social Media Disasters

View more presentations from Bill Chamberlin.

Examples of bad social media can be tracked back to a focus on social media governance by companies. 

• Lack of real-time monitoring
• Not responding to customer concerns
• Lack of corporate social media policies
• Employees not trained in company policies
• Lack of professional Social Media managers
• Too much focus on self-promotion (lack of relationship building)
• Lack of due diligence before launching social campaigns

We can all learn from these mistakes.

• Having a social media presence that represents your brand means responding quickly and directly.
• You need to plan for the worst while expecting the best.
• A professional and responsible manager should be in charge of all communication on the various sites and this person should be very well versed on the many risks of social media.
• All employees are potential spokesmen for your brand. They (including executives) should be trained in the basics of good and bad social media communications.

There is a risk to participating in social media, just like there is a risk with any other channel or method used for external communications.  Smart companies acknowledge that risk, but have focused on limiting that risk by hiring professional social media managers on staff, putting in place proper social media guidelines, and ensuring that employee and management alike are trained in how to best represent the brand when participating in social media.

WOMMA School of WOM: The Art & Science of Creating Talkable Brands

On May 9-11 the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) comes to my neck of the woods (Chicago).  The event is the “School of WOM:  The Art & Science of Creating Talkable Brands”.  You can check out the event and register at http://womma.org/schoolofwom/about.html

I’m on the speaking agenda along with my colleague Susan Emerick (@sfemerick) and our friend and colleague, Chris Boudreaux and (@cboudreaux) SVP of Management Consulting, of IBM’s strategic partner, Converseon.  We will be speaking on May 9, Tuesday afternoon.  Our topic is entitled “IBM: Empowering Employees to Participate in Online Conversations.  We’ll discuss how we’ve developed an ongoing social listening and engagement process within IBM designed to enable IBM employees to become active in the social conversations happening everyday.  Hope to see you there.

The School of WOM event has a jam-packed schedule of presentations from brand names you all know, including:

• IBM
• Gap
• Kellogg's
• Nabisco
• McDonald's
• Chick-fil-A
• SAP
• Random House

You can check out the full agenda here http://womma.org/schoolofwom/faculty.html

It’s a very rich and full agenda.  I’m really looking forward to it!!

Thursday’s Chicago AMA Event - Social Media: Beyond the Chaos

This Thursday, I am on the speaker list for a special event organized by the Chicago branch of the American Marketing Association.  And I’m looking forward to not only presenting, but meeting a bunch of new people who are interested in social media marketing.

There will be three other main speakers in addition to myself, all with 20 minute presentations about our experiences with social media marketing, whether in B2B or B2C.   After the presentations, we will have a panel Q&A discussion. 

I’ll be talking about two topics during my 20 minute slot.

1. How IBM is approaching the development of a digital communications strategy that aligns with the IBM Brand.
2. An overview of how we at IBM plan out social media marketing strategies.

I’ll post my slide deck up on Slideshare tomorrow at http://www.slideshare.net/HorizonWatching

The other speakers joining me are…

• Blagica Bottigliero, Director of Social Media, Motorola Mobility
• Troy Janisch, Social Media Manager, Digital Marketing, American Family Insurance
• Jennifer Severns, Creative Director, Zocalo Group

You can read up on their bios at this site.

Here are the event details:

• Event Name:  Social Media: Beyond the Chaos
• Date of Event:  Thursday, March 31, 2011
• Time:  Registration opens 3:30pm.  Presentations begin at 4pm.  At 6:30 we will close the presentations down, but people can stay up until 8pm for networking opportunities.
• Event Location:  Alhambra Palace / Marrakech Room, 1240 W. Randolph Street, Chicago, IL
• Registration:  If you have not registered, you may still be able to get a ‘ticket’ to the event although last I heard they were almost sold out. The registration website is http://www.chicagoama.org/events/social-media-beyond-chaos. 

For those of you wanting to follow along on Twitter, the hashtag will be #AMASocial.  If I don’t see you at the event, perhaps I’ll see you on Twitter!

You Are Invited To The Social Business Jam

Last week, I posted about the emergence of the Social Business term to represent the next stage in how companies are using social and collaboration technologies in order to conduct business.  My post “The Social Business Train Is Leaving The Station Are You On It?” provides an overview of the trend and makes the case for why it is important.

As a follow-up, I wanted you to be aware of the Social Business Jam.  On February 8-11, 2011 IBM will host the Social Business Jam (www.ibm.com/social/businessjam).  Should you register, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with leading experts on topics such as:

• Building the Social Business of the Future
• Building Participatory Organizations Through Social Adoption
• Using Social to Understand and Engage with Customers
• What does Social mean for IT?
• Identifying Risks and Establishing Governance

I will be jamming…along with some leading Social Business experts, including:

• Charlene Li, Founder of Altimeter Group, Author of “Groundswell”
• Mei Li Tan, CMO, Treasury & Trade Solutions, Citigroup
• Steve Wylie, GM of Enterprise 2.0 Conference
• Vittorio Cretella, CIO, Mars Inc.

Join me in the Jam.  Should be an interesting discussion.  It all starts February 8th, so register NOW!!!  www.ibm.com/social/businessjam. 

For those of you on Twitter, we’ll be using the hashtag #sbjam 

The Social Business Train Is Leaving The Station: Are You On It?

I expect the Social Business topic to be among the most talked about trends in 2011…and all that buzz is justified.    In fact, the buzz will kickoff next week as IBM conducts it’s Social Business Jam February 8-11, 2011.  I’ll post more about the Jam next week, but for now, head on over to http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/social_business_jam/ and register for the Jam. 

Social collaboration is changing the way business is being conducted. Enterprise processes are being transformed by social technologies. Over the next 10-15 years, social computing capability will becomes part of every business function within the company.  I fully expect that social capabilities will become embedded in every single website, computing device for every participant in every single business transaction. 

In the future, all participants involved in a company’s business processes and transactions will have the ability to share content, comment on content, rate/vote on content, and collaborate in an open and sharing environment.  In addition, all this social activity will generate data that will be mined and analyzed in both batch and in real-time.  The insights generated will be a critical input into all business processes, including research, product development, marketing, sales, technical support, and even business processes like accounting, procurement, and legal. 

Since social will eventually be embedded in every business process and transaction workflow, social computing capability will need to be a critical part of every business application.  As a result, I expect entire business application suites will be rewritten to make use of social collaboration features.

Analyst Perspectives

“The social business model is changing the way companies generate and conduct business online, and IDC believes that this model will have a long-lasting impact“ - IDC (link)

“Social Technologies Will Drive The Next Wave Of BPM Suites” - Forrester (link)

“Just as the Internet had a disruptive impact on organizations' processes and business models at the beginning of the decade, today social media is changing the way business is conducted”. - Gartner (Link)

“Business application vendors are integrating social features into their applications and the dividing lines between transactional tools and social environments are fading.” - Gartner (Link)

“To optimize investments, competencies, and outcome, it is essential that enterprises establish a shared understanding of social technologies and trends, coordinate strategies and initiatives, and leverage investments.“ - Gartner (Link)

Implications

• This will require a cultural transformation within most older, established companies.
• Business leaders must realize that 80% of success of social business efforts will come from strategy, planning, roles, and processes — only 20% will come from the technology platform.
• The path to a Social Business requires definition, education, and career paths.
• Centralized implementation may be required for company-wide social tools, standards, policies and practices
• Social capabilities will become embedded in every single website, computing device for every participant in every single business transaction. 

An important thing to realize is that the success of implementing social technologies into mature businesses will be how well business leaders can lead a cultural transformation in order to leverage these new social technologies.  Business leaders must realize that 80% of success of social business efforts will come from strategy, planning, roles, and processes — only 20% will come from the technology platform. All these new capabilities will require new Career Paths and Education tailored to the new social technologies. 

The Social Business Train Is Leaving The Station….are you on it yet?

For More Information

• BusinessWeek:  Social Media Marketing and  Collaborative Management
• CIO.com:  Web 2.0 and Collaboration
• Forrester: social (search) and Enterprise Collaboration
• Gartner:  Business Gets Social 
• IBM:  Collaboration Solutions and 2011 Social Business Jam 
• IDC:  Enterprise Collaboration and Social Solutions
• InfoTech:  Collaboration & Teamware and Business Process, Workflow & Forms Automation
• InfoWorld:  Collaboration
• Wikipedia:  Social Computing
• Video: Gartner – Business Gets Social (link)
• Altimeter, Nov 2010 (link)
• Dachis Group: The 2010 Social Business Landscape (link)

A Social Business Strategy Can Make A Company More Responsive and Agile

One of the big buzzwords of 2011 will be ‘Social Business’.  It’s an outgrowth of terms we’ve seen the last 3 years like social media, social media marketing, social computing, social networking, social CRM, and digital strategy.   I think this term will take hold because it will resonate better with business leaders, who want to make sure social activities leads to business success.  And yes, I do believe a well-implemented social business strategy can help a business become more successful.

Successful businesses put the customer at the center of everything they do. Successful businesses should, in fact, have as a major objective to help their customers be as successful as possible. To do that they need to understand their customer’s business problems and their strategy for solving those business problems. Successful businesses can sometimes be better at anticipating a customer's business needs than the customer itself.

To be successful, companies need to look for ways to increase the volume and quality of conversations they have with the customer. Increasing the volume and quality of conversations help them get closer to their customers. It helps them understand their customers better and hopefully, anticipate their needs.

The social computing trend allows companies to develop a social business strategy that can allow them to get closer to customers. A well designed and implemented social business strategy can enable an increase in the volume and quality of conversations companies can have with their customers. The great thing about having those conversations digitally is that they can happen 24X7.  So wherever you are and whenever you have the urge, you can have a conversation with your customer. 

These conversations can be initiated by the customer or by a company employee.  Through the use of mobile devices, employees can participate in these conversations wherever they happen to be in the world.  And those conversations can be happening at any hour of the day.  Being active socially means that employees can potentially reach customer contacts no matter what level they reside within the customer's organization.  Relationships can be built on social networks with even the most senior contacts within a customer organization.   Employees can share digital content about products and services with customer contacts, getting information in the hands of customers much faster than waiting for a face to face visit.  And the neat thing is that all these digital conversations can occur in real-time too. 

So look for the Social Business buzz to pick up steam in 2011.   To summarize, by implementing a social business strategy, companies can 1) get closer to their customers, 2) understand their needs better, and 3) be much more responsive to their needs.   And a big benefit is that by being more responsive, companies can be more agile, responding to those needs faster than competition. 

Implementing a social business strategy is not easy.  You can’t do it just by setting up a social platform.  It requires hard work to change culture, implement new roles, business processes, etc.  I’ll save that discussion for another future post.

For More Information

For those of you wanting to do some extra reading, here are some links for you to explore. It’s not a comprehensive list, but it’s enough for now.

• The Social Nature of Agile Teams   http://agile2007.com/downloads/proceedings/009_whitworth-SocialNature_627.pdf
• Social Business Software from IBM:  http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/socialcollaboration/
• IBM LotusLive: A Social Networking and Collaboration Platform:  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp4728.pdf
• Voice of Customer 2.0: Social, Agile and Integrated  http://www.rightnow.com/files/whitepapers/Voice-of-Customer-2.0-White-Paper.pdf
• The Programmable Web:  Agile, Social, and Grassroots Computing  http://maximilien.org/publications/papers/2007/Maximilien+Ranabahu07a_presentation.pdf
• Social media and agile leadership    http://www.slideshare.net/TribalCafe/social-media-and-agile-leadership-5998719
• Agile tales of creative customer collaboration   http://www.slideshare.net/cperrone/passionate-teams-cooperative-customers-388318
• Seven Social Media Trends for Engaging the Workforce:  http://www.slideshare.net/FHInternalComms/seven-social-media-trends-for-engaging-the-workforce-2283754
• Some blog Posts to check out

• A Changemaker in the Making:   http://davidparker9.wordpress.com/
• The Agile Executive:  http://theagileexecutive.com/
• A Social Business Agile Manefesto   http://c7group.com/blog/agile-social-business-manifesto/
• Remaining Agile Amidst Seismic Shifts in the Social Media Landscape  http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/023076.html

Top Ten Digital Marketing Trends For 2011

If you are in the marketing profession, I think you’ll agree that our profession is experiencing some major disruption.

The traditional marketing theory and methods I learned at Kellogg Graduate School of Management back in the mid-90’s are still very valid.  Half the battle is still doing the all important work of market segmentation, targeting, and positioning. I still refer to my 7th edition of Phil Kotler’s textbook Marketing Management from time to time (although that book is now in it’s 12th edition!)

However, back in 1995, we had no clue just how much the Internet would impact marketing over the next 15 years.  And the impact has been very significant. The Internet has turned into a game changer for marketing. 

Leading edge marketing professionals understand that they need to learn how to leverage all the new digital marketing capabilities.  It is a great opportunity to build brand value, increase revenues, and cut down on marketing expenses.

So with that in mind, lets take a look at the top trends in online / digital marketing for 2011. 

1. Marketing Budgets Will Continue to Shift Towards Online.  Customers and prospects are increasingly going online early in the buying cycle to gather information, form relationships, and make decisions about how they will buy.  As a result, marketing leaders must move marketing mix budgets to mirror where the customers and prospects are - online.  Online channels can reach a very targeted audience, are lower cost, and are becoming more measurable.  As a result we should expect the continued decline in the use of traditional media.  This cannibalization of traditional media will bring about new marketing channels, professions, and processes as well as a decline in overall advertising budgets.  Traditional agencies and publishers must transform their businesses to include digital marketing capabilities.
2. Social Media Marketing Is Maturing.  Those in the marketing profession can sense that we are in the middle of an important transition to the use of social media for marketing purposes.  While the past few years many marketers have been experimenting with social media tactics, in 2011, leading marketing teams will be executing social tactics that are fully integrated into the overall marketing strategy. An overall social media marketing process will emerge that has firms following a never ending cycle of 1)Research, 2) Plan, 3)  Engage and 4) Measure.  Simultaneously, a new set of marketing capabilities are emerging, including Social Listening Research, Influencer Marketing, Community Marketing, and Social Gaming.  These new capabilities will require new marketing marketing professional Career Paths and Education tailored to the new social media marketing realities. 
3. Mobile Marketing Set To Take Off.  In conjunction with the Social Media Marketing trend described above, the interest in mobile marketing has exploded, driven by the tremendous success of and media buzz around Apple’s iPhone, Google’s introduction of Android, and Apple’s introduction of the iPad.  As smartphone adoption grows, mobile marketing will expand beyond mobile messaging, and make mobile email, mobile websites and mobile applications viable channels in which to conduct marketing.  The combination of new devices, faster networks and new location-aware technology, will fuel this steady march toward greater significance.  Some key mobile marketing trends to watch in 2011 include Location Based Services, Mobile Apps, Mobile Gaming, Event-Based Mobile Marketing, and Augmented Reality.
4. Personalized Marketing Customizes Messages To Individual.  Expect more personalization capability to be embedded in websites in 2011.  Regular visitors to a web site will see a page based on all the information collected from previous visits.  Marketers will present personalized sites to these customers by organizing information and prioritizing it based on the individual's liking.  Products and services offered on those pages will be pre-configured. “Anonymous” visitors to websites will get customized messages based on referring URL, search terms, geo-location and other insights.  Personalized marketing will be extended beyond the website to other digital channels, including social media marketing, mobile marketing, and email marketing.
5. Social Video As A Marketing Tool Gains Momentum.  Video is an incredible way to connect with people online.  Until the Internet, the only way to get your video message to a mass audience was to pay for a TV commercial.  Today, social media sites and video go hand in hand. Distributing video via your social networks is a powerful way to imprint your images into the memory of your customers and prospects.  Video strengthens the relationships you have with existing customers and it helps prospects get to know you better.  So in 2011, there will be a focus among digital marketing professionals to understand how to make the best use of Video Marketing within Social Media Marketing Strategies and Programs.
6. Search Engine Optimization Gets More Complex.  Customers naturally use search engines as their primary vehicle to find information on products and services.  But its not a one search engine game anymore as Google’s been joined by Bing in the US market and there are important local players like China’s Baidu and Russia’s Yandex.  On top of that, social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are increasingly becoming an important source for searching.  Add to that search engine innovation, mobile search, and geo-location search and the job of the marketing professional to ensure their brand is on the first page of search results gets so much more complex.
7. Marketing Analytics Helps Make Sense Of All The Noise.  The explosion of social conversations across the many online channels is providing marketers with a never ending stream of incoming data.  The challenge for marketing professionals is to turn all that data into insights and then develop strategies/actions based on those insights.  Marketing analytics applications can help, but they need to get better at integrating data from all sources (web, search, video, mobile, and social conversations).  Analytic applications will also need to get smarter and more predictive about customer buying preferences based on all that data.   In 2011, I expect to see a focus on the development of advanced analytic capabilities that can identify, analyze and describe patterns within all the information “noise”, giving marketing professionals important predictive insights they can use for making better decisions.
8. Real Time Web Assistance Connects Buyer With Experts.  Online customers and consumers are some of the most impatient and demanding around.  They expect answers from your online support group right away.  Live chat services allow operators to interact with online customers and respond to their questions quickly, helping you convert web queries into customers and site traffic into transactions.  In 2011 watch for leading edge companies to combine the use of Twitter customer service accounts and the real-time chat services to provide ways of connecting product / service experts with customers in real-time in order to solve customer business issues.
9. Online Privacy Concerns Continue.  Privacy issues continue to be an important trend for marketing professionals to be out in front of as government regulators have threatened to legislate solutions if the industry does not take action by itself.  Creating a secure online transactional environment is absolutely critical to a maintaining trust in customer relationships.  All it takes is one significant privacy issue to negatively impact a brand.  Privacy concerns from customers have forced brands like Facebook and Google to continually adjust their business models.  As enterprise marketing gets more social and mobile, privacy issues must be dealt with very carefully. 
10. Digital Marketing Optimization Emerges As A Priority.  The past few years we have seen new ‘islands’ of marketing capabilities emerge within the marketing profession.  We are moving beyond Web 2.0 with all sorts of new channels and capabilities including mobile (messaging, websites, apps), rich media (video, podcasting, gaming), social media (blogs, microblogging, social networks, user generated content), and more.  The state of digital marketing is such that these ‘islands’ are not well integrated into an overall cohesive strategy.  In 2011 expect to see a focus from marketing leaders to focus on optimizing and integrating these separate initiatives into an overall umbrella digital marketing strategy.

So these are the online and digital marketing trends I’ll be watching closely in 2011.  A look through the above list tells you that there is so happening in online marketing.  As it is in almost every industry, Internet technology is totally changing the rules.   

CIOs: Social Computing Is The Most Risky Emerging Technology

IBM recently published it’s 2010 Global Risk Study and the findings confirm that IT leaders today are very concerned about IT security and business resiliency.  The report found that 88% of those surveyed say that their company’s approach to risk is less than expert.  This comes at a time when there are increasing demands on IT leaders to accelerate their implementation of emerging technologies like cloud computing and social computing.

IBM surveyed 560 IT managers and CIOs from all types of companies located all over the world to talk in order to understand issues surrounding IT risks from the perspective of IT leaders.  IBM wanted to understand what their biggest obstacles are, where their biggest challenges lie, where they see the greatest potential for adding business value.

What caught my eye was a couple of questions in the survey that dealt with the risk involved with implementing emerging technologies.  Respondents to the survey were asked how their organization is positioned to acquire and deploy five emerging technologies

1. Social computing/networking tools
2. Mobile platforms
3. Cloud computing
4. Virtualization
5. Service-oriented architecture (SOA)

Of these five technologies, social networking, mobile platforms and cloud computing were rated the most risky emerging technologies.    Social networking tools (64% respondents) came out on top as the technology that posed the greatest risk.  Second was mobile platforms (54%) followed by cloud computing (43%).  See the graph of the survey results below.

  

According to the survey report, IT leaders say that the risks of these emerging technologies include issues related to accessibility, use and control of data (especially regarding social computing/networking), and the danger of having unauthorized access to confidential, proprietary information.

It’s not surprising that social networking/computing technologies is perceived as a risky emerging technology.   Most enterprises are still trying to figure out how to leverage social computing and extract business value.  There needs to be a greater focus by IT and Business leaders on establishing social computing processes, methods, and professional roles.   Once this is done, the risks can be minimized and social networking tools can be fully integrated into the IT infrastructure and business process workflow.

For More Information

Get the report  The evolving role of IT managers and CIOs Findings from the 2010 IBM Global IT Risk Study

Browse for more related information at the IBM Smarter Security & Resilience website.

Successful Social Media Marketing Requires A Dedicated Community Leader

The social media marketing trend is an important trend for businesses of all sizes.  Business leaders and marketing managers are realizing it can be used to help strengthen relationships and perceptions people have with a company, a brand, a product.

Most social media marketing efforts today need to apply the basics of community marketing and management.  Because at the heart of it, social media marketing efforts should be launched to strengthen relationships the target audience has with the topics and people that are important to your company’s success.  A successful community can accomplish that and more.

I see many social media and community marketing efforts fail because of lack of funding for community management resources.  Many of these social sites and community efforts are developed to support a product launch and then a few months down the road the blog posts dwindle to a few posts a month, the tweets slow down, and the conversation stops.

To be highly successful, communities need to be funded for and supported by dedicated professionals fulfilling certain functions. There are four key functions that can help result in a successful community.

• Exec Sponsor(s): Serves as the group’s champion, internally and externally. Is able to envision the value of the community over time to both the members as well as the organization.
• Community Leader(s): Plays the most critical role in the community's success by energizing the sharing process and providing continuous nourishment for the community. Communicates a sense of passion and guides the community towards its goals through consulting, connecting, facilitating, helping, guiding
• Community Council Members: Advises community leader in launching and sustaining the community. Frequently takes on additional roles as listed below.
• Community Members: Without these there is no community; the essence of a community is its members. Contributes and extracts value via content, programs, and social/professional network

The community leadership is the most important function. My experience tells me that many in management think that communities 'can run themselves' without dedicated community leadership. Without dedicated community leadership, communities are subject to the momentary whims of the members, relying on the members’ discretionary willingness to perform such functions. In most cases, leaving the community to the membership results in a decline in activity. It is a rare community that can continue to survive without dedicated support.

Forrester says that there are four key tenets of a community leader: 

• Community Advocate:  The community manager’s primary role is to represent the members of the community. They must listen, monitor, and respond to requests and conversations, both within the community platform and in email.
• Brand Evangelist:  Community manager promotes events, products, and upgrades using traditional marketing tactics as well as being part of conversations within the community. The community manager must first earn and maintain trust.
• Facilitator:  Defines, plans, and executes content strategy. Uses forums, blogs, podcasts, and other tools to create content. Mediates disputes: Encourages advocates and deals with — or when necessary removes — detractors. Works with corporate stakeholders to identify content, plan updates, publish, and follow-up.
• Research and Development Contributor:  Gathers the requirements of the community and presents to product teams. Plans and analyzes results of surveys or focus groups. Facilitates relationships between product teams and customers.

To Forrester's list I'd add the following tasks that many community leaders end up performing themselves:

• Social Media Manager:  Manages the communities presence in the social media and collaboration sites
• Meeting Facilitation:  Schedules and facilitates meetings. Ensures meetings stay focused on goals of the community.
• Subject Matter Expertise:  Shares knowledge and experience.  Ensures the community continues to seek out new and innovative solutions and methods.
• Relationship Management:  Builds relationships between the members to strengthen the overall community.
• Knowledge Management:  Gathers, posts and organizes the community knowledge.  Ensures all members have access to content created or referenced by the community.
• Analyst:  Analyzes the community content and membership network to identify and extract value.
• Technology Management:  Ensures that the community platform and tools supports the goals and objectives of the community.

These responsibilities do not have to be managed by a single individual. Many times there is more than one community leader.  Also, a good community leader has a good group of council members and one or more of the council members may be accountable for multiple responsibilities, which is likely in the early stages of community development.

So what type of skills are needed by the Community Leader? 

• Strong online communication skills
• Approachable and conversational
• Has the ability to relate to members online and offline
• Comfortable with Web 2.0, social media, and collaboration tools

Two other important requirements.    The community leader must 

1. Have a passion for the community domain (topic area)
2. Have a passion for helping others learn and collaborate. They must experience job satisfaction from helping others.

CIOs: Are YOU Participating In The Social Media?

(Note:  I originally posted this as Opening The Social Computing Door at InfoBoom, but thought readers here on HorizonWatching would enjoy the post as well)

At the heart of it, social computing really is all about enabling conversations between two or more people in an open environment. By making conversations more public, we can all learn from each other.  The benefits are very similar to the trend of open source development.  Social computing promotes open conversations instead of ‘behind closed doors’.  In doing so, we encourage learning and collaboration.  And that leads to better decision making.

So how should CIO’s be leveraging social media in their careers and for the enterprises they serve?

Participating in Conversations
First, future IT leaders can begin adding their voice to public conversations happening about subjects important to the IT industry.  If you aren’t participating in the public conversation, you can’t influence it.  My research, 2009 CIO Award Winners Are Not Embracing Social Media, found that 35 industry award-winning CIOs and IT leaders are not active in the social media.   These and future award winning IT leaders should be sharing their thoughts in a public space, not only behind the closed doors.  

For one perspective on this topic, John Suffolk, CIO of the UK Government discusses his views on blogging in Should CIOs blog publicly? and his views on the evolving role of the CIO as a Chief Collaboration Officer.

Gaining Business Leverage
Secondly, CIOs can help the business leadership team in achieving goals for the enterprise by providing leadership and guidance on how to leverage social computing and collaboration platforms, both internally and externally:

• Learn how transformational social media can be to helping increase growth and/or drive productivity to improve the bottom line. 
• Work with business leaders to find ways to embed social computing into the framework of every enterprise business process, including product development, marketing, sales, and customer support.  

I’ve compiled links to resources, blog posts, and articles that can help you understand just how transformational social media can be. Check them out at:  Social Media Case Studies and Lessons Learned.

Getting Smarter
To work smarter, we’ll need smarter organizations — enhancing and benefiting from their people’s expertise, enterprise and creativity, rather than inhibiting them.  CIOs can lead in transforming the collaborative infrastructure and processes of our places of work by enabling social conversations that will allow employees, partners, and customers to take advantage of the full scope of an instrumented, interconnected and intelligent planet.

Jumping In
Interested in following some CIOs that are active in the social media?  My research Top 50 CIO and IT Leaders in the Social Media, provides you with a list of CIOs who are setting an example for others on how to leverage the social media.   Explore their blogs and tweets, learn from them, and perhaps you can start adding your thoughts to the conversations as well. 

Want to be more active in the social media, but not sure how you should get started?  Check out my post Leveraging Social Media: 12 Steps To Develop Your Personal Online Brand.