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ISSUE 02 · Q1 2013 THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL T HE A - TEAM. IT’s the advocacy era — and ADVOCATES ARE THE SUPERHEROEs in tHE FAST-PACED WORLD OF Performance Brand Marketing P10 PLUS: CREATE AN advocacy PROGRAM IN 7 steps P13
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Social Business Journal v02

Sep 14, 2014

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The quarterly journal of social business thought leadership, published by Dachis Group.
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  • ISSUE 0

    2 Q

    1 2013

    THE S

    OC

    IAL B

    USIN

    ESS JO

    URNAL

    THE A-TEAM.ITs the advocacy era and ADVOCATES ARE THE SUPERHEROEs in tHE FAST-PACED WORLD OF Performance Brand Marketing P10

    PLUS: CREATE AN advocacy PROGRAM IN 7 steps P13

  • 32 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    ADVOCATES ARE BETTER MARKETERS THAN YOU.

    Social is about authentic engagement, promising unprecedented access to customers (900M Facebook users) and insights (350M tweets/day).

    But how do you reach your audience with just a handful of community managers?

    To scale social engagement, smart brands are mobilizing advocates, partners, and employees to engage with their audience and spread their message.

    To learn more, sign up for a 1:1 tour at dachisgroup.com/tour

    of internet users consider consumer recommendations to be the most credible form of advertising. [Emarketer, 2011]

    of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from an online community of friends. [Gannett and The Etailing Group, 2009 ]

    Advocates are a more scalable and more trusted source for spreading your story to the market. It all comes down to trust and money.

    ADVOCATE INSIGHT

    And Dachis Groups Advocate Insight identifies and ranks a brands advocates based on their affinity to and interaction with specific social accounts of the brand.

    90% 67%

    PUBLISHERJeffrey Dachis

    EDITOR IN CHIEFDave Gray

    MANAGING EDITORLara Hendrickson

    CREATIVE DIRECTORBill Keaggy

    SENIOR ILLUSTRATORChris Roettger

    PROJECT MANAGERKrystal Spitz

    PRINT MANAGERLisa Vorst

    PRINTERStolze PrintingSt. Louis, Missouri, USA

    ISSN 2166-3742

    ISSUE HASHTAG #SBJ02

    CONTRIBUTORSAdam Clark EstesClaire GaulJacob HeberliePeter KimBrian KotlyarOlga KozaneckaKelly Kriegshauser James MacanufoW. Scott MatthewsTed MayRachel Meyerson Lauren PicarelloRay RenteriaCarly RoyeSusan ScrupskiAllison SquiresRick VlahaDavid VordtriedeJeff Wilson

    COVER ILLUSTRATIONDavid Vordtriede

    DACHIS GROUP515 Congress AvenueSuite 2420Austin, Texas 78701USAAMERICAS: +1 512 275 7825EUROPE: +44 0 20 7357 7358www.dachisgroup.com [email protected]

    Dachis Group helps improve your brand perfor-mance by measuring and managing your social engagement via a powerful suite of SaaS tools and services. The Social Business Journal is a free quarterly publication by Dachis Group. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopy, etc.), except as permitted by the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act, without permission of the publisher. Requests can be submitted at [email protected]. Any comments? Questions? Suggestions? Visit dach.is/02-sbj to let us know what you think.

    + D E P A R T M E N T S

    + F E A T U R E S

    + I S S U E 0 2 Q 1 2 0 1 3

    + A B O U T D G & S B J

    + C O N T A C T U S

    Copyright 2012 by Dachis Corporation. All rights reserved.

    THESOCIALBUSINESSJOURNAL

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    EDITOR'S NOTE

    THE COLLABORATORY

    ON THE MOVE IN SBI

    VIsual THINKING SCHOOL

    SOCial BIZ INSIDER

    THE ADVOCACY A TEAM

    ADVOCACY & SOCIAL CRM

    THE CONNECTED customer

    JAKub Hrabovsky

    milestones in social biz

    DISNEY's TWITTERVERSE

    UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE WITH EMPATHY MAPS

    a timeline by carly roye, bill keaggy, & chris roettger

    BY SUSAN SCRUPSKI

    a book excerpt BY DAVE GRAY

    DATA VISUALIZATION by jacob heberlie

    THE SOCIAL BUSINESS INDEX

    a book excerpt BY DION HINCHCLIFFE & PETER KIM

    THE BEST OF OUR BLOG

    ADVOCACY AT VODAFONE UK: olga kozanecka interviews...

    BY DAVE GRAY

    BY Brian Kotlyar, Rachel Meyerson, & Lauren Picarello

  • 54 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    For global brands, social brings both the promise of

    CONNECTING WITH MILLIONS OF CUSTOMERS.

    and the challenge of how to

    SCALE YOUR ENGAGEMENTAND MEASURE BUSINESS IMPACT.

    EMPLOYEE INSIGHT

    Faced with a limited staff, many brands are turning to their constituents including advocates, employees, and partners to scale their engagement across customers, fans, and followers.

    is a subscription software service that helps you mobilize and measure your comapanys staff to spread your message

    across social channels and measure brand impact.

    To learn more, sign up for a 1:1 tour at socialbusinessindex.com/employeeinsight

    Customers increasingly expect you to be in social channels. They expect you to respond quickly to their opinions, messages, and complaints.

    Welcome to the advocacy eraSocial Business makes engagement a necessity

    + E D I T O R S N O T E : D A V E G R A Y

    * T H E A D V O C A C Y I S S U E : W H A T S I N S I D E

    In this quarters issue we focus on advocates the genuine fans who spread positive word of mouth for your brand.

    As customers adopt social network technologies, word of mouth has in-creased in importance to the point that today, customers can make or break a brand by spreading their satisfac-tion, delight or dismay to thousands of people instantaneously. With digital publishing and search engine index-ing, one consumer opinion may rapidly reach over two billion people online.

    Today, brand marketers truly have no choice customers increasingly expect you to be in social channels.

    They expect you to respond quickly to their opinions, messages, and complaints. Unfortunately, most brands are woefully understaffed and under-budgeted to engage at scale successfully. But some brands have succeeded, and even excelled,

    by earning the energy and loyalty of advocates, both inside and outside their organizations. True advocates cannot be bought. Their energy and loyalty must be earned. In this issue of The Social Business Journal, we highlight some stories, strategies, and tactics* that will help you create strong social advocacy programs for your brand.

    Enjoy the issue your feedback is encouraged and appreciated. n

    Best,

    Dave Gray | @davegray

    STORIES | Imagine what youd do if your Facebook wall gets overrun with negative comments. Got advocates? PAGE 10

    STRATEGIES | Jakub Hrabovsky talks about completely changing social strategy, from mar-keting messages to true engagement. PAGE 14

    TACTICS | Dion Hinchcliffe & Peter Kim explain the four minimum capabilities a social CRM solution should have. PAGE 18

  • 76 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    The best of the Collaboratory

    SAPs slow start in social

    European diversity makes social difficult

    Be curious, not furious

    Building successful advocacy programs

    Accelerate using employee advocates

    + B L O G R O U N D U P : D A C H I S G R O U P. C O M / B L O G

    By Kate Rush SheehyFormer StrategistAustin@katerushsheehy

    By Olga KozaneckaConsultantLondon@olga_nk

    By Peter KimFormer CSOAustin@peterkim

    By Susan ScrupskiFounder, SBCAustin@ITSinsider

    By Dion HinchcliffeEVP StrategyWashington D.C.@dhinchcliffe

    For the past five years, there has been a reoccurring theme of SAP giving social the cold shoulder. Were starting to see them embrace the principles of social business, but could they be doing it all wrong? For starters, SAP has chosen to begin their social journey with two sub-par social platforms that have seen little traction in large enterprises. Social is about reinventing the way we work, and until SAP grasps that, they will never capture the human potential of social media.

    If European consumers are among the worlds most connected, why are their brands known for being so so-cially clueless? DG London Consultant Olga Kozanecka explores the reasons why most European brands are falling short of engaging their socially savvy customers, and how one company is doing it right. Because these brands havent invested the time or resources into social, they havent found a way to capture the linguistic and cultural differences of Europes diverse geog-raphy. Only when you blend central and local efforts can brands capture an audience as connected and social as Europes.

    Public forums are open doors for de-tractors. Whether online or offline, there will always be individuals who try to build themselves up by belittling others, and the Internet is their favor-ite playground. From bloggers looking to get hired after publicly insulting a brands social media campaign, to online fans who turn against a com-pany that wont hire them, there is no shortage of virtual jerks. Peter Kim has seen it all and offers his advise for dealing with the noise: dont get furi-ous, get curious.

    Its no news that creating a major advocacy program takes plenty of time and money, but could that be the understatement of the year? DG Managing Strategist Kate Rush Sheehy recently attended a crash course for marketers hosted by WordOfMouth.org, where she learned just how much time and money it can take. Brands tend to get discouraged when time passes and they dont see immediate results, but some of the most successful ambas-sador programs have taken years to ac-complish, not to mention huge chunks of marketing budgets. Dont give up! A successful advocacy program is always worth the hard work.

    One of the most under appreciated components of social business is actually your most accessible re-source for achieving social success. Employee advocacy happens when a business carefully cultivates their employees, and turns them into effec-tive, empowered participants. Having a small group of social managers to engage, interact, and help millions of customers just isnt feasible, and automated engagement tools practi-cally kill all previous efforts. Not only are your employees experts on your business, but they are also a plentiful resource made up of people who have vested interest in seeing your com-pany succeed.

    Read the entire blog post at dach.is/QPrpwhRead the entire blog post at dach.is/QPqBr4 Read the entire blog post at dach.is/QPrGPG Read the entire blog post at dach.is/QPrjoe Read the entire blog post at dach.is/QPr24S

    EDITED BY CARLY ROYE & LARA HENDRICKSON

    ILLUSTRATIONS by CHRIS ROETTGER

    Read the entire blog post at dach.is/QPqT16

    Five keys to great employee advocacy

    By Brian KotlyarSenior StrategistAustin@bkotlyar

    Consumers dont trust companies they trust other consumers. Brands around the world are realizing that customer advocates are essential in turning prospects into buyers, but could their most valuable advocates be right in the mirror? Employee advocates are the untapped support system that companies are missing out on. Not only are employees experts on the companys products, but they represent a trustworthy relationship between employer and company to the rest of the world. DG Senior Strategist Brian Kotlyar explores five key factors to successfully running an employee advocacy program, and determining whether or not your company is ready.

  • 98 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    A Hologram for the KingBy Dave Eggers Zo Scharf (@zoescharf)Designer, St. Louis

    Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others DontBy Jim Collins

    Cynthia Pflaum (@cpflaum) Strategist, New York

    Social successes on SBI+ S O C I A L B U S I N E S S I N D E X . C O M : A S N A P S H O T O F M O V E R S

    BY ALLISON SQUIRES & ADAM CLARK ESTES

    GRAPHICS by RICK VLAHA & JEFF WILSON

    Each week, The Atlantic Wire and Da-chis Group take a look at whos making a move in social, how theyre engaging and why it matters. This article showcases a few brands highlighted in the weekly Top 20 in Social Media series, which can be found at dach.is/PpuHM7.

    Over the past few months, we saw brands swing up and down on the Social Business Index. From riding the coattails of the Instagram announcement to the excitement of a brand announcing new products or events, spring brought some interesting shifts in the social sphere.

    A few common takeaways from brands making big moves:1. A diligent and effective social media

    team that responds quickly and con-sistently shows fans they can reach the brand via social

    2. Providing fans with interesting and relevant content inspires influencers to syndicate content to their friends

    3. Leveraging multi-media content related to a current event engages and excites a brands audience

    4. Adding a social component to a brand campaign greatly amplifies marketing efforts in the online space

    The following excerpts were written by Adam Clark Estes (@adamclarkestes) at The Atlantic Wire.

    WWE

    Remember wrestling? The fake sport company WWE (formerly WWF) that hit its peak popularity in the 1990s is surging in social media in April thanks to innovative uses of the theatrical elements that make wrestling entertaining in the first place. WWE jumped 16 spots on the Social Business Index and entered the top ten. The lift was catalyzed by two televi-sion events (Wrestlemania and Monday Night Raw), but what really caused the rankings shift was the interplay of current and past wrestling legends on the screen combined with an online content blitz, said Dachis Group strategist Brian Kotlyar. And blitz is a perfect word to use, as WWE didnt necessarily do anything par-ticularly innovative in order to build buzz around their events. Their social media team was just plain diligent and efficient. The company tweets roughly once an hour a mix of links back to photos and

    videos and retweets of WWE wrestlers content and updates its Facebook page at least half a dozen times a day. The frequency and well balanced variety end up giving voracious fans just the excite-ment they crave.

    Forever 21

    Forever 21 is creeping towards the top 100 having boosted itself 22 spots in the ranks this week landing at No. 136. Believe it or not, it was all about the weather for the fast-fashion retailer. Rather than simply adding updates to Facebook, Forever 21 takes it a step further and provides its fans with useful content like fashion tips and notices about sales. Whether its colored denim or colored hair chalk, fashion followers have a lot to dive into on Forever 21s Facebook page, says Dachiss Lauren

    Picarello. One post featuring colored dresses earned 10,000 likes and over 300 comments, in part thanks to the brands expanding global presence. Pi-carello added, We expect to see Forever 21 continue gaining traction in the sum-mer months across social platforms as the engaging content stream continues its shift from colored denim to colored bikinis.

    Wendys

    This was the week of Instagram and Wendys managed to get a boost in the rankings thanks to a single photo. Zooming up 14 ranks to No. 103, the fast food chain simply put an Insta-gram photo of fries dunked in a Frosty on Facebook, and fans responded in droves. Nearly 7,000 of them in fact. What really helped is posting the photo on Wendys subsidiary Frosty page for its two million fans to see. It wasnt so much that the picture was pretty, Dachis analyst Allison Squires explained: Both the Wendys and the Frosty Facebook pages appealed to their audience through this picture by sparking a play-fully delicious debate. But seriously have you ever tried it?

    Starbucks

    Did you know that the Frappuccino Facebook page has 9.3 million fans? Its true, and theyre active. Starbucks broke back into the top 10 this week thanks to a well executed Frappuccino promotion and a community service campaign. For the former, Starbucks invited its customers to post Twitter and Instagram images of their favorite frozen coffee treat during a weeklong Frappuc-cino Half Price Happy Hour promotion, and those that added the hashtag #frap-puccinohappyhour had the chance to win prizes. There was also the chance to create your own Frappuccino mixes online and share them with friends. Starbucks takes deliberate measures to create social components for many investments in their marketing portfolio, a lesson all companies should learn, says David Mastronardi of Dachis Group. In addition to Starbucks employees launching local projects, the Vote Give Grow program used online ballots to help give out $4 million in funding to 124 non-profits. Because the ballots were shareable, the program drummed up some good chatter across social media platforms. And all for a good cause! n

    As the world becomes an increasingly noisy space, brands continue to look for ways to scale their social engagement and measure performance. The Social Business Index, a free site run by Dachis Group, has quickly become an industry benchmark for Social Business performance, measuring and ranking the social conversations across 30,000 companies and 100 million social accounts.

    + WHAT WE RE READING: BOOKS & BLOGS

    I frequent Thedaily wh.at & adweek.com/adfreak for industry and cultural news. Nate Custard (@natecustard) Associate Creative Director, Lincoln

    The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human IntelligenceBy Ray Kurzweil Jed Singer (@jedsinger) Engagement Manager, Philadelphia

    The Art of the StartBy Guy Kawasaki Joe Pinaire (@joeknowsjoe)Associate, Austin

    n

  • 1110 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    Imagine this scenario: Its 8:00 a.m. on January 12, 2012 and the half dozen social media staff members at a company called Triple T Teas wake up to find the brands Facebook page overrun with negative comments. The usual positive conversation has been replaced by curiosity and outrage. Fans are engaged in a back and forth debate are Triple T Teas unhealthy? While some are questioning the basic ingre-dients of Triple T Teas, many more are watching from the sidelines. How does a staff of six begin to systematically address this public relations issue taking root on a social platform in front of such an enormous audience?

    BY Brian Kotlyar, Rachel Meyerson, & Lauren Picarello

    ILLUSTRATIONS BY DAVID VORDTRIEDE

    THE A-TEAM. ITs the advocacy era and ADVOCATES ARE the SUPERHEROEs in tHE FAST-PACED WORLD OF Performance Brand Marketing.

    10

  • 1312 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    1. define objectives

    Advocacy programs often suffer from a lack of clear objectives at the outset and a lack of solid measurement throughout their lifecycle. Setting clear brand and business outcomes that frame what precisely the program is expected to influence will do two critical things: first, it informs the strategy of the program. If you understand your Key Performance Indicators, you can plan your activities to influence them efficiently. Second, it en-ables ongoing optimization. If an activity isnt affecting your goals, then you can make adjustments much more rapidly.

    2. identify advocates

    In identifying advocates, we recom-mend that organizations cast a broad net and consider every possible advocate that could be beneficial to the organization. Given the myriad forms advocacy can take, it rarely makes sense to limit the scope of the search at the start.

    It is also important to remember that advocates dont exist solely outside the walls of the organization. The rise in credibility of regular employees is one of the single most important findings from the 2012 Trust Barometer study. Employ-ees can create influence online with cred-ible expertise, and a direct relationship to the brand. Dell, for instance, has enabled thousands of employee advocates to help engage with consumers, build trust, and produce results.

    A few common sources of advocate candidates are NPS surveys, loyalty program databases, look-alike targeting, frontline employee referrals and primary research on social media outlets. An emerging means of finding advocates, is to employ software-based aids. Dachis Group offers a SaaS application called Advocate Insight that helps organizations identify a pool of potential advocates based on big data processing of social media activity. This application can jump-start the creation of an advocacy program by streamlining the identifying stage of the advocacy process.

    what is advocacy?For brands, advocacy is the activation of people who are, or could be, pas-sionate enough to engage on behalf of the brand and ultimately expand the customer base.

    Advocacy goes beyond the idea of influencer outreach and beyond even word of mouth as a driver of commercial transactions. Advocacy in the age of social media encompasses the full gamut of potential positive outcomes that could be driven by a passionate and empowered individual. These outcomes range from word of mouth referrals, new product ideas, to crisis management and most importantly brand building.

    what advocates doFor some, advocacy is very narrowly

    defined as a source of referrals, a way to distribute samples, or a source of product recommendations. Each of these is measured for its direct ability to influ-ence sales. This is the wrong way to look at advocacy. Others include research as a potential value of advocacy. Companies like Communispace and Drillteam pio-neered the use of large communities of users as a viable platform for product and marketing research at large brands.

    A new era of advocacy has begun. None of the previous roles of advocates have been discarded. Sampling still matters. Referral programs still matter. Research communities remain critical. Nonetheless, the era of advocates as brand builders and reputation manag-ers has arrived. As individuals live their lives online sharing content, liking brands, or listening to music they are also engaging in the endorsement and co-creation of brands. This is both an op-portunity and a threat for most brands.

    The best way to grapple with this trend is through advocacy programs. These pro-grams marshal individuals into groups and systematically activates them on be-half of the brand to serve business needs. This could be for something as simple as liking brand content, as difficult as aid-ing in customer service, or as essential as responding during a brand crisis.

    11:00 a.m.Triple T Teas sends a message to its

    advocate community asking for help combating the spreading social media crisis on its Facebook page. Moments later the Triple T Tea Ambassadors spring into action. Acknowledging their high sugar and calorie content, dozens of conversations between advocates and

    risks and opportunities in a social age Many companies, like Triple T Teas, have embraced social media as a place to interact with customers, prospects and interested bystanders in novel ways. Over eight million brands have established pages on Facebook alone. With such unprecedented access, however, come challenges. How can an organization authentically engage with such a large audience? What happens when internal business process breaks down? Or a crisis occurs? The rules are changing and large organizations must change with them.

    why we need advocates10:00 a.m.Triple T Teas marketing decision mak-

    ers hold an emergency meeting. What is happening on the Facebook page and most importantly, what do we do about it? The typical social media PR playbook is quickly activated with a variety of tactics employed, ranging from a press release and influencer outreach tactics to direct social media communications.

    However, there is an underlying is-sue with all of these tactics scale. If a small team of community managers attempts to engage with thousands of outraged individuals, their efforts are quickly overwhelmed. Realizing this, Triple T Teas turns to their community of advocates known as the Triple T Teas Ambassadors. Identified and recruited by Triple T Teas for their passion and loyalty for the brand, this group of individuals holds the key to an authentic and scalable response to the crisis. Each Ambassador is briefed and empowered to spread accurate, credible messages to the wider community.

    Advocates are critical to the modern organizations marketing mix for two primary reasons. The first weve already outlined using the story of Triple T Teas. To get the outcomes that organizations desire, marketers must design programs and tactics that have the ability to scale to serve the needs of social media.

    The second reason for the ascen-dancy of advocacy is the simple issue of trust. Studies in recent years highlight a

    frightening trend for large organizations consumers no longer view traditional sources of information as trustworthy. Edelman Digital, an agency specializing in public relations, has conducted a trust study every year for the past 12 years, and it is now clear that the world has passed an inflection point in the nature of trusted communications.

    According to the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, international attitudes about trust have shifted dramatically. For example, CEOs are now considered among the least credible spokespeople in the world the largest drop in Trust Barometer history. Experts and aca-demics have seen a drop as well. The message is clear the general popula-tion no longer trusts business leaders to tell the truth. As CEOs become less of a source of credible information

    people are turning to their peers for trusted information. A person like me saw the biggest increase in credibility since 2004 in the most recent study. A similar rise in credibility was found among regular company employees, now featured as fourth on the Trust Barometer list.

    Trusted communications also impact business results. E-Tailing Group recently noted that six percent of online shoppers spend more after receiving rec-ommendations from friends. In another study, Nielsen Global found that 90% of consumers said recommendations from friends were the most trusted form of advertising. Coming in second (at 70%) were consumer opinions shared online. All of this points to consumer and em-ployee advocacy as the necessary levers for brands success online today.

    The Edelman 2012 Trust Barometer report shows huge changes in spokesperson credibility in just the last year. SOURCE: EDELMAN DIGITAL DATA EDELMAN DIGITAL CHART BY TED MAY

    UTILIZE advocacy in 7 steps:DEFINE OBJECTIVES > identify > Recruit > ACTIVATE > amplify > MEASURE > learn & OPTIMIZE

    Data captured by Dachis Groups Social Performance Index SaaS product makes clear a dramatic rise in negative market signals (the debates emergence) and the significant drop immediately afterward (the advocates swift action). CHART BY TED MAY

    Continued on page 31

    nutrition debaters ensue. Triple T Teas follows a steady drumbeat of carefully written broadcast communications and feeds a steady diet of trustworthy, ac-curate talking points and insider updates to its advocacy community.

    The result? A rapid decline in crisis con-versation and a calm exit from crisis mode

    to business as usual in a matter of hours. Companies that have endured far worse crises in recent months Chapstick, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase to name a few could stand to learn a thing or two from Triple T Teas tactics.

    How can other organizations leverage advocacy to obtain similar results?

    HERES HOW AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE ON HOW TO

    With social business, we now have the ability to see the true value of ad-vocacy and to use it as a lever to drive performance. At Dachis Group, weve broken down advocacy programs into a seven stage maturity curve that enables us to quickly implement advocacy programs and prove business outcomes at large organizations.

    The creation of an advocacy program is a seven step process: define objec-tives, identify, recruit, activate, amplify, measure and learn and optimize.

    Credibility of CEOs and government officials plummet while peers and regular employees see dramatic rise

  • 1514 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    As head of Social Media and Web Relations at

    Vodafone UK, Jakub Hrabovsky is responsible

    for digital and social media reputation management,

    online communities, and customer care. Dachis

    Groups Olga Kozanecka met with him in London

    to discuss the importance of customer advocacy.

    advocacy

    Anytime,

    + S O C I A L B U S I N E S S P R O F I L E : J A K U B H R A B O V S K Y

    anywhere

    INTERVIEW BY OLGA KOZANECKAPHOTOGRAPHY BY Claire Gaul

  • 1716 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    Olga Kozanecka: How do you define advocacy? Jakub Hrabovsky: I see advocacy as the way our customers and employ-ees are talking about and promoting our brand and services.

    Do you think advocacy has evolved alongside the digital and social landscape?I think advocacy as a phenomenon has always been around, regard-less whether weve been commu-nicating offline or online. People have always been expressing their opinions especially about topics they feel strongly about thats why successful brands couldve been successful long before the internet existed. Social media is a new channel but brand related con-versations have always been taking place over the phone, face-to-

    face, etc. What is different nowa-days is that we can have conversa-tions with our advocates wherever they are, and in real time, as those conversations are taking place out in the open. And of course those advocacy messages spread much more easily now across the social universe, in effect making advo-cates more powerful.

    How do you see the relationship between advocates and influencers? I think that in the social media world any customer interacting with your brand could potentially be an influencer. It really depends on how interesting their story is. Social media is all about the quality of the content you share. This I think drives peoples online credentials and authority they get, and makes them influential in a particular area.

    The influence they have can be positive for a brand, or negative. By general rule, influencers have a large following on social chan-nels precisely because what they share is seen as interesting and relevant. Advocates on the other hand are your brand loyalists people who are passionate about your brand and your products, and who at free will spread a good word about your brand, albeit often at a smaller scale. Both advocates and influencers can also help you identify issues you might have not known about, because social media give them the opportunity to share instant feedback. Its important to listen and learn.

    What types of advocacy behaviors do you see exhibited among consumers?For a telecommunications organiza-tion like Vodafone, when it comes to social media, around 90% of all the incoming traffic is customer service related, either reporting a problem or an issue or asking for help. The positive feedback comes when your brand recognizes there is a conversation happen-ing, engages if appropriate and delivers against customers needs. So whilst the initial contact that a customer makes with us through social media might bear negative connotation or sentiment, we see a great opportunity to turn the negative into a positive response. Reacting in real time, leading with support and help, is the main op-portunity to convert a detractor into a potential advocate. I think social media as a channel is particularly suitable for this purpose because more often than not people will reward you and spread good word, which strengthens [a] companys reputation. The more traditional of-fline channels dont enable similar real-time feedback.

    Can you think of a successful exam-ple of an advocacy program, either

    within Vodafone or more generally within the European market?I think Costa Coffee is a great example of an advocacy program in the UK market. The company has completely changed their strategy when it comes to social media engagement, in particular through Facebook. Whereas in the begin-ning they were trying to engage with customers by communicating marketing messages on their social channels, they went to create a real online haven for coffee lovers, focusing on great content and the feeling of enjoyment that good cof-fee brings. The social element and joy of having a coffee with a friend were crucial. What resulted was an online community of fans, who became well equipped to act as advocates of the brand and share the Costa story throughout their

    networks. Their Facebook page literally went from a couple of hun-dred people to over 500,000 in a very short time. I see this as a tre-mendous success for the brand and a sign that theyve done something very right in terms of activating their customers and turning them into advocates.

    So how have advocates played a role for Vodafone?Where we are finding social me-dia particularly beneficial is call deflection and the ability to utilize peer-to-peer help and community advocacy. We are in a place right now where we can quite comfort-ably say that, and this is based on a thorough internal study as much as on phone surveys, that our Web relations approach that weve been practicing for the last three-and-a-

    half years has resulted in 20% call deflection, which literally means saving millions of pounds for the brand. In terms of community building and advocates cultivation, the return on investment is clearly visible. What weve been doing all this time is using advocacy outreach tactics on our own forum and across all available social media channels where were continually nurturing our super-users and influencers who are providing expert advice to the Vodafone community by offering knowledge and hands on expertise. So our focus lies in making sure the super-users feel appreciated and recognized for the great work that theyre doing simply out of their passion for our brand and their interest in technical matters.

    Our web relations approach that weve been practicing for the last three and a half years has resulted in 20% call deflection, which literally means saving millions of pounds for the brand. Jakub Hrabovsky: Reacting in real time, leading with support and help, is the main opportunity to convert a detractor into a potential advocate. I think social media as a channel is particularly suitable for this purpose. PHOTO BY Claire Gaul

    Continued on page 31

  • 1918 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    Customers must be able to establish a social identity and should be able to interact with other customers as well as the companys workers in the social CRM environment.

    A social venue

    @Joejean

    Contests

    Doe, Jane

    PinIt!

    Joint product design

    My Pins!

    Conversationdriven

    Good social CRM

    tools direct activ

    ities

    of a social CRM

    environment into

    accumulated, dis

    coverable, and re

    usable

    forms. The artifa

    cts of these activit

    ies are

    customer solution

    s, product sugge

    stions,

    and sales opport

    unities.

    Shared collective in

    telligence

    The SOCIAL way

    Social CRM is more effective and useful when participation mechanisms help guide inputs with specific requirements and toward productive goals.

    Customer participationmechanisms

    Deploying social tools to interact with online customers en masse will enable thousands of customers to engage. Scaling mechanisms are essential for social CRM to produce effective results.

    Conversational scale

    Can you see me

    now?BIG AD! $

    WholeGrocers

    Honk if you like billboards!

    BIG AD HERE!

    HEYIm a really big ad

    YOU!

    The OLD way

    $$$ Transactiondriven

    Innovation andprediction markets

    Social customer support

    SALESCollects information from transactions building a limited database around existing customers, theres no integrated way to garner prospect info.

    SALES Are interaction-based and aimed as much at potential customers as existing ones.

    MARKETING Revolves around conversation and engagement.

    POSITIVE FEEDBACK Gets amplified to thousands even millions online while negative sentiment is quickly detected and addressed.

    MARKETINGOne-way advertising is less effective as consumers have many other sources of information and influence.

    SUPPORT Dynamic and available via multiple platforms, accessible when & how the customer likes.

    @Jeanjeans

    Uh, er...hold please.

    LIMITED FEEDBACKSurveys provide limited feedback even as customers share experiences via word of mouth and unmanaged social channels.

    SUPPORTCustomer service often has limited hours, often with service reps following scripts, giving customers limited, shallow support.

    Zip code?

    SOCIAL CRMviavia

    Building advocacy Say goodbye to rigid processes.Say hello to Social CRM.by DION HINCHCLIFFE & PETER KIMVISUAL EXPLANATION by chris roettger Excerpted from the

    book Social Business by Design, published earlier this year by Jossey-Bass.

    19

  • 2120 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    In 2011, only 6 percent of organi-zations had implemented social CRM, although a survey of thirty-three hundred companies in late 2011 determined that 56 percent are planning to do so. Research firm Gartner estimates that social CRM will be a $1 billion industry by the end of 2012, reflecting increasing adoption by companies as a common strategy and replacement for existing CRM approaches. By moving proven methods, use patterns, and features into a usable tool set, social CRM promises to be a predictable, reliable model, guided by the tenets of social business, for applying social media to customer relationships.

    Many of the social media tools and communities that companies have deployed already to meet CRM needs are good examples of social CRM, despite the industrys focus on optimized, pre-designed tools.

    Whenever social media let customers have a relationship with a business in other words, interaction that is publicly visible to other customers whenever possible social CRM can occur. The old CRM model, a closed, asocial mode of customer interaction, is the antithesis of social-CRM and much less likely to lead to rewarding outcomes for the business and its customers.

    Social CRM paints a vision of creating a deeper, more engag-ing community-based relationship with an organizations customers and prospects instead of the tra-ditional approach where custom-ers are relegated to a well-defined,

    rigid communication management process. Because it is one part online community, one part crowdsourcing, and one part customer self-service, social CRM can create an emergent, collaborative online partnership with customers that can result in an array of improvements to business perfor-mance in the customer relationship process. Beyond being just for the benefit of the business, however, customers in social CRM approaches tend to have more control over the customer care process, have more sustained contact with the organiza-tions they care about because they are more likely to obtain what they need, and use self-service, mutu-ally visible participation, collective history, and social conversations to assist each other as much asand typically much more than the clas-sic CRM model ever could or even was intended to.

    Like many aspects of social busi-ness, however, the crowd often has its own thoughts and feeling about how work gets done. For social CRM, this necessarily entails less de-terministic control and outcomes at times, although many solutions now zero in on and optimize for predict-able and reliable behavior, even if they reduce innovation. The Intuit example in Chapter Three of Social Business by Design of encouraging customers to help other customers within Live Community is a prime example of the customer care aspect of social CRM in action. A canonical pattern here is this: a social CRM environment will let a visitor ask

    a question publicly and let anyone else in the community, customer or employee, answer it.

    Social CRM tools can also support processes that generate new ideas from a community. Dells IdeaStorm allows customers to try to solve the companys problems for user and company benefit.

    For example, users generate an idea such as pre-installing specific software packages, and the commu-nity votes on its merit. At the core of making the process work is the ques-tion of who decides what the right official answer to a customer prob-lem is or which ideas will be selected and how non-employee submitters will be compensated. These are questions that organizations need to work through in order to transition their customer relationship manage-ment to a social business model. We explore how best to determine moti-vations and rewards for participants in the social business design in Part Three of the book.

    By its very nature, social CRM is asymmetrical when it comes to levels of participation; there are always many more customers than work-ers. Success here is defined by how effectively the resulting social busi-ness solution deals with the number of customers who will interact with a business through these new channels while still governing the relationship to make it consistently responsive and successful from a customer perspec-tive. Participation (for example, gen-erating user support questions) must be balanced with equally effective issue communication and resolution, operating within the requirements of corporate policy and commercial law guiding marketing, corporate commu-nications, customer service, consumer privacy, and so on.

    Get Satisfaction is a prime exam-ple of a targeted social CRM service designed to address the problem of asymmetry in the company-to-customer relationship. Get Satis-faction helps over sixty thousand organizations deal effectively with conversational scale from Fortune

    500 enterprises to small start-ups while having consistent policies and procedures for responses to custom-er-initiated social engagement.

    Conversational scale is a significant challenge for companies without the right social business tools, because they are so outnumbered by the size of their communities. Although social CRM ultimately includes all customer rela-tionship touch points, Get Satisfaction focuses on customer service inquiry resolution. When a customer arrives at a Get Satisfaction social CRM community looking for help, he or she will ask a question. Get Satisfaction realizes that a million questions from a million customers are far too many to deal with efficiently. Consequently, it puts similar questions into the same bucket. If someone says, Im having problem X with your product, and that question has been asked before in similar fashion, the customer is asked to combine his or her question with that bucket. Because its a social environment, everyones questions can be seen and combined when possible. Instead of talking to customers about a million individual issues, only perhaps a few thousand total conversational buckets exist instead, each of which can have a conversational thread on how to resolve the issues contained in it. In fact, thats exactly what happens after enough collective intelligence is built up in the community: when a question is asked and then put in a bucket with other common questions, a solution and often even a set of solutions is usually waiting for the customer.

    Given that early social CRM provid-ers have focused on only a specific phase of social CRM, it begs the ques-tion of the full range of functions that a social CRM solution should have. As with most other aspects of social media, there is now a wide range of social CRM tools, large and small, simple and sophisticated. Therefore, as an organization grows, it will want the option of expanding the nature of the social relationships it maintains with the marketplace, whether market-ing, sales, customer service, product

    development, or other business func-tion. The best social tools arent overly structured; social media are dynamic and highly fluid, and its because of this characteristic that so many different outcomes are possible, so tools must be flexible and open-ended to accom-modate a wide range of outcomes.

    At a minimum, an effective social CRM solution should have four capabilities:1. A social venue. Customers must be able to establish a social identity and perceive other customers and their contributions, as well as be able to dis-tinguish the companys workers from other customers. They should be able to interact with both types of parties in the social CRM environment.2. Customer participation mech-anisms. Although general-purpose discussion forums are open-ended and can be used for many types of participation, they allow customer contributions to head in any direc-tion, productive or otherwise. A little structure, though not enough to kill valuable emergent outcomes, can go a long way. Social CRM becomes more effective and useful when par-ticipation mecha-nisms help guide inputs with specific requirements and toward productive goals. These might include specific features to enable transactions around social customer support, competitive contests, innovation and prediction markets, or joint product design. Some services, such as Kluster, pro-vide finely tuned controls that can be adjusted to find the right mix of struc-ture and open participation. Newer social CRM tools increasingly have pluggable participation applications that let third parties offer rapidly de-ployable, industry-specific customer relationship solutions very similar to Apples successful App Store but

    aimed at useful customer relationship scenarios.3. Shared collective intelligence. Social media are most successful for businesses when focused participation creates a shared repository of knowl-edge from combined user participa-tion. Good social CRM tools direct activities of a social CRM environ-ment into accumulated, discoverable, and reusable forms. The artifacts of these activities are customer solu-tions, product suggestions, sales opportunities, and so on. Successful social CRM creates relationships that get better the more people use them.4. Mechanisms to deal with con-versational scale. Many businesses still worry that deploying social tools to interact with online customers en masse will create unexpected costs or overhead as thousands and, in some cases, millions of customers try to engage with them. Since most existing social media tools have not been de-signed explicitly to deal with this, this is an area where social CRM tools shine. Service-level agreements that guarantee that customers will get a response if the community at large doesnt deliver or tools that bucket identical inquiries together, as well as other scaling mecha-nisms, are essential for social CRM to produce effective results.

    Social CRM will be the primary way that traditional organizations will transform customer relation-ships in the social business era. However, the biggest barrier to adopting social CRM is not the technology, the tools, or customers: rather, its the mind-set about what CRM can and should accomplish. Social CRM is not about managing customer records or maintaining email blast schedules. Its about forming a close partnership where the organization retains a leadership role and the use of social media re-sults in the creation of vibrant cus-tomer community relationships. The elimination of decades of inadequate channels of customer communica-tion will unleash a sudden tide of opportunities, as well as challenges, in the move to social business. n

    Social CRM paints a vision of creating a deeper, more engaging community-based relationship with an organizations customers and prospects instead of the traditional approach where customers are relegated to a well-defined, rigid communication management process.

    Learn more about Social Business by Design here: dach.is/sbdbook.

  • 2322 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP ITS BEEN (AND ITS ONLY JUST BEGUN)

    BY CARLY ROYE & BILL KEAGGY INFOGRAPHIC BY CHRIS ROETTGER

    MILESTONESIN

    SOCIALBUSINESS

    Early 2000s

    THE BEGINNING

    July: ARPANET commissioned by DoD

    CompuServe introduces online chat

    August: WWW released by CERN

    August: Pizza Hut online ordersJune: AOL

    launches

    July: Amazon goes live with user-generated reviews

    November: TheGlobe.com allows personalization, content publishing, and interaction with other users

    Spring: Six Degrees, the first social network, is launched

    August: Blogger debuts, allowing

    easy publishing to the Web.

    April: The ClueTrain Manifesto

    April: Dodgeball (precursorto Foursquare) launches location-

    based social networking

    Crowdsourcing & communities

    September: Delicious debuts social bookmarking

    May: Professional networking site LinkedIn launches

    August: MySpace launches

    February: The Facebook launches at Harvard

    April: Burger Kings The Subservient Chicken campaign goes live, marking the beginning of viral brand campaigns

    July: Howard Dean becomes the first

    candidate to build a social network and fundraising

    campaign onlineFebruary: YouTube launches social video

    June: The Dell Hell story by Jeff Jarvis

    December: Wists launches as a visual bookmarking / social shopping site

    April: Andrew McAfee publishes his E2.0 manifesto, introducing online collaboration for enterprises

    July: Twitter (social

    microcontent) launches

    September: Facebook becomes available to anyone 13+ who has a valid email address

    November: Office Maxs Elf Yourself gets 193

    million visits during the holiday season

    June: The first iPhone is sold in the U.S.

    October: Dion Hinchcliffe expands the definition of Web 2.0 to include social media

    September: Get Satisfaction launchesFebruary: JetBlue

    strands passengers in grounded planes

    April: Dachis Group is founded by Jeffrey Dachis the term Social Business is coined

    October: Jive releases its 4.0 software platform, defining it as Social Business software

    March: Skittles home page is a live Twitter stream

    November: Facebook Pages debut

    July: United Breaks Guitars becomes a YouTube hit

    January:Foursquare launches

    February: Old Spice launches its The Man Your Man Could Smell Like campaign

    March: Pinterest launches visual social bookmarking

    January:Arab Spring

    January: At its annual Lotusphere conference, IBM declares Social Business the next wave of enterprise computing

    August: Salesforce embraces social as messaging platform for customers and employees

    September: Social Business Index launches

    February: Twitter rolls out expanded brand pages

    March: Pinterest surpasses LinkedIn

    and Tagged to become the 3rd

    largest social networking site

    March: Facebook Timeline for brands is introduced

    May: Facebook becomes the largest tech IPO in history at $38 a share... so whats next?

    March: @ComcastCares joins Twitter, marking the rebirth of customer service online October: The term Web

    2.0 and the Read/Write Web is coined at the Web 2.0 Conference, marking the beginning of a collaborative medium on the Internet

    July: Yelp relaunches as a user-submitted

    local review site

    1994

    1995

    1997

    1999

    2000

    2003

    2004

    2006

    2007

    2008

    2009

    2010 2011

    2012

    1969

    1980 1991

    2005

  • 2524 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    + B O O K E X C E R P T : T H E C O N N E C T E D C O M P A N Y

    CUSTOMER

    THE

    Customers are connecting, forming networked communities that allow them to rapidly share information and to self-organize into powerful interest groups. Companies will have to be more responsive to customer needs and demands if they want to survive.

    CONNECTEDBY DAVE GRAY

    PHOTO courtesy U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

    ILLUSTRATIONS by DAVE GRAY

    This article is excerpted from the book The Connected Company by Dave Gray, SVP Strategy, Dachis Group, published September 2012 by OReilly. Learn more about it at dach.is/OGUpYC.

  • 2726 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    The balance of power is shiftingThe balance of power is shifting from companies to the networks that surround them. Connected, communicating customers and employees have more choices, and more amplified voices, than ever before. They have more knowl-edge than ever before. These trends are only increasing with time. This means the network customers, partners, and employees will increasingly set the agenda, deter-mine the parameters, and make the decisions about how they interact with companies.

    A wake-up call at starbucksIn February 2007, Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz sat down to write a difficult memo.

    Schultz, always in the habit of visiting stores around the world, had noticed that the Starbucks experience was deteriorating. And in 2006, Starbucks legendary growth had started to slow. The amount of money customers were spending was starting to dip.

    In his 2007 memo, The Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience, Schultz laid out his concerns. Espresso machines, which increased efficiency, were too tall; they created a wall that blocked the line of sight be-tween customers and baristas, a barrier to conversation and connection. Flavor-locked packaging, which guar-anteed fresh roasted coffee in every cup, also made the stores more antiseptic, depriving them of their rich, flavor-ful, coffee aromas. Streamlining store designs increased efficiency, but many customers perceived them as sterile, cookie-cutter designs.

    We have all been part of these decisions, wrote Schultz. I take full responsibility myself, but we desperately need to look into the mirror and realize its time to get back to the core and make the changes necessary to evoke the heri-tage, the tradition, and the passion that we all have for the true Starbucks experience.

    The memo was meant to be a wake-up call to the senior executive team as they embarked on their yearly strategic

    planning process. But it soon became much more than that. A little over a week later, a colleague stepped into Schultzs office. Someone leaked the memo, he said. Its on the internet.

    Schultz was shocked.Reporters were already calling, but Schultz was too

    shaken up to grant any interviews. This had been a con-fidential memo to the CEO and a small group of senior executives in the company. He couldnt believe any of them would have done such a thing.

    The memo had first appeared on a blog called Starbucks Gossip and was quickly picked up by the mainstream me-dia. The speed at which word spread, and the breadth and depth of the online conversations that ensued, as-tonished Schultz:

    The day after the memo was posted, the mainstream media picked it up like a whirlwind. The Wall Street Journal. The New York Times. The Associated Press. Bloomberg, Reuters, the Financial Times. Online finan-cial news sites and independent blogs. Articles quoted the memo and parsed my words, usually under dour headlines that implied, or stated outright, that trouble was brewing at Starbucks. Online, readers posted com-ments one after the other. Many of them stung. Stunned as I was that the memo had been leaked, I was also astonished by the depth of conversation it unleashed, as well as the speed. It seemed that everyonecustom-ers, partners, analysts, reporters, industry insiders, and business experts had an opinion about the memo, its motive, what it meant for the future of the company as well as what it said about me as a leader.

    Schultz says he took two very important lessons from his experience. First, nothing can be pre-sumed confidential. Second, Starbucks did not have a voice in the global conversation:

    The heated online conversations about the memo were beyond Starbucks influence, more so than any other con-troversy we had experi-encedthe good things about us, our values and the acts that distinguished us, these were getting lost in the public conversation. The millions of dollars we invest-ed in local communities. The health-care coverage and stock we extended to part-timers, at a considerable cost to the company. While we never put forth press releases about many of these initiatives believing they were just the right things to do we also were not getting credit for them

    Our website, with its beautifully designed pageswas primarily a one-way dialogue, inadequate in the digital

    age. Starbucks had no interactive presence online. No way to speak up quickly on our own behalf, to talk di-rectly to customers, investors, as well as partners, or let them talk directly to uswe were losing control of our story, in the stores as well as the real world.

    The leaked memo and its aftermath were a wake-up call for Schultz. I was not sure where to begin, he writes to-day, but we had to do something.

    Somethings happening hereIf Starbucks didnt have a voice in the global conversa-tion, who did? The Starbucks Gossip blog, the main-stream media, readers, customers, analysts, and so on in other words, anyone and everyone who was interested: the network. And because the memo was interesting, it cascaded through the network, gaining momentum as it went, like a tidal wave.

    These kinds of cascading effects are common in net-works. An initial event strikes a chord: its interesting, fun-ny, sad, disgusting, or enraging. As a result, it is shared, commented on, analyzed, and argued about. And as it moves through the network, it is amplified, sometimes to an exponential degree.

    Cascading effects can be initiated by customersIn 2005, Dell learned a tough lesson when they shut down peer-to-peer customer forums, and Dell customer (and blogger) Jeff Jarvis, who had recently bought a machine that almost immediately malfunctioned, expressed his dissatisfaction on the Web in a post titled, Dell lies. Dell sucks. Jarvis coined the term Dell Hell, saying Dell didnt respect [customers] enough to listen to them.

    Within a week, Dell Hell was a story in The New York Times and Business Week. Hundreds of other bloggers chimed in to tell their Dell Hell stories. At the time, Dell had an internal policy not to reply publicly to blogs. So the company remained silent, and the PR nightmare snow-balled. Sales plummeted, along with Dells reputation.

    Dell has learned from its mistake, and in 2010 launched a customer listening command center to monitor and proactively respond to online conversations. Founder and CEO Michael Dell is active on social media, engaging with customers directly.

    In another incident, Canadian musician Dave Carroll was traveling on United Airlines in 2008 and had checked his guitar into baggage, when his plane landed at Chicagos OHare airport en route to Omaha. He became concerned as he watched baggage handlers on the runway throwing guitars. When he arrived in Omaha, he found that indeed the neck of his $3,500 Taylor guitar had been broken. He

    filed a claim with the airline, but they refused to honor it be-cause he had failed to make the claim within 24 hours. For nine months, he tried to negotiate with the airline. Finally, in frustration, he wrote a song titled United Breaks Guitars and released a music video on YouTube. The songs refrain: I should have flown with someone else, or gone by car, cause United breaks guitars.

    The video was an Internet hit. Within one day of its release, it had amassed 150,000 views. In a few weeks, that number had risen to 5 million, and in December, Time magazine listed it as number 7 on a list of top viral videos of 2009.

    Once the video was released, United contacted Carroll to try to right the wrong, but it seems that their efforts were too little, too late. Bob Taylor, owner of Taylor Guitars, gave Carroll two free guitars, and Carroll refused compensation from United, asking instead that they revise their customer service policies and give the money to charity. United do-nated $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz as a gesture of goodwill, but by that point, the damage had been done.

    Cascading effects can be initiated by employeesIn 2009, two Dominos workers videotaped themselves doing disgusting things to food one put cheese up his nose and mucus on sandwiches while the other nar-rated and they posted the video on the internet. One of the employees, who identified herself as Kristy, said, In about five minutes itll be sent out on delivery where somebody will be eating these, yes, eating them, and little did they know that cheese was in his nose and that there was some lethal gas that ended up on their salami. Now thats how we roll at Dominos.

    Within the week, the video had garnered over a million views. We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea, said Dominos spokesman Tim McIntyre to The New York Times.

    Kristy Hammonds, 31, later said in a company email that it was just a joke and that she was sorry. But the damage had been done.

  • 2928 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    Cascading effects can be initiated by enemies or competitorsIn March 2011, conservative activist James OKeefe, posing as a member of a Muslim education group, se-cretly videotaped NPR fundraising chief Ron Schiller saying republicans were racist and xenophobic, and that NPR didnt need federal funding. Schiller resigned and the CEO was forced to step down shortly thereafter.

    Cascading effects can be initiated by senior executivesOn June 30, 2011, tech blog The Boy Genius Report published an anonymous memo from an executive at Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM), addressed to the RIM Senior Management team, starting with the words, I have lost confidence. While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. The letter went on to plead for drastic changes.

    The company issued an official reply, saying, It is par-ticularly difficult to believe that a high-level employee in good standing with the company would choose to anony-mously publish a letter on the web rather than engage fellow executives in a constructive mannerRIM is none-theless fully aware of and aggressively addressing both the companys challenges and its opportunities.

    The Boy Genius Report published the response, but at the same time also published more anonymous letters from RIM employees supporting the original memo and accusing RIM of poor leadership, leading to low morale throughout the company.

    The ATM revoltIn September of 2011, Bank of America announced that it would start charging customers $5 per month to shop with their debit cards. In early October, a 27-year-old gallery owner in Los Angeles named Kristen Christian set up a Facebook event page, inviting 500 of her Facebook friends to move their accounts to local credit unions by November 5, which she called Bank Transfer Day.

    Together we can ensure that these banking institutions will al-ways remember the 5th of November, she wrote. If we shift our funds from the for-profit banking institutions in favor of not-for-profit credit unions

    before this date, we will send a clear message that con-scious consumers wont support companies with unethical business practices.

    Christians groundswell movement quickly snowballed. Within three days, 8,000 people had signed up to attend the event.

    I was tired, wrote Christian in another post. Tired of the fee increases, tired of not being able to access my money when I need to, tired of them using what little money I have to oppress my brothers & sisters. So I stood up. Ive been shocked at how many people have stood up alongside me. With each person who RSVPs to this event, my heart swells. Me closing my account all on my lonesome wouldnt have made a difference to these fat cats. But each of YOU stand-ing up with methey cant drown out the noise well make.

    By November 4, the day before Bank transfer Day, at least 650,000 people had added $4.5 billion to cred-it union savings accounts. That same week, Bank of America dropped its plan to charge additional fees.

    Power in the networkBy changing the way we create, access, and share infor-mation, social networks are changing the power structure in society.

    Customers like Kristen Christian can pick up a mega-phone at any time, and if they have a message that reso-nates with the network, it can gain momentum very fast.

    Rogue individuals can target you in sting operations, as James OKeefe did, or they can simply act stupidly, as the Dominos employees did.

    Disgruntled employees can get their message out through leaks or anonymous memos like those from Starbucks and RIM.

    However it happens, once something is released to a network, it can rapidly spin out of control.

    Clearly, social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, which didnt exist in 1999, have gained momentum far more quickly among the general population than they have in corporations. Customers are connecting and shar-ing information at a far faster rate than the companies that serve them. Theres no question that when it comes to social networking, companies lag behind their markets.

    Networked customers can easily bypass formal channels to get information and support directly from each other.

    Think about where you go when you want to make a buying decision today. In general, you go to peers first. If you want to go to a restaurant, you might go to Yelp! or Urbanspoon to read recommendations and reviews from customers. Booking a hotel? If you care about comfort and service, you might go to Hotels.com to read some

    reviews, or if price is a priority, you might go to Priceline, where you can set your own price. Want to watch a movie? You can find the best picks at Rotten Tomatoes, Netflix, or IMDB, where movie-watchers have a voice.

    These peer-to-peer conversations subvert traditional mar-keting channels. Cust omers trust each other more than they trust companies, who have a vested interest in making them-selves look good. A 2009 Nielsen study found that 90% of customers trusted recommendations from other customers more than any other form of advertising. And customers have begun to recognize, and exercise, their power.

    This power, in and of itself, is not necessarily new. Customers have always had the power to choose what they wanted to buy. Customers and workers have always had the power to share their experiences with friends and peers. They have always had the power to promote or demote a company based on what it promised and what it delivered. Customers have always been able to vote with their wallets.

    But they werent connected to a global network with the potential to amplify their opinions and experiences to hurricane strength. And that little thing we call linking makes all the difference.

    Any dictator will tell you that in order to control the state, you must control the media. So ask yourself: who controls the media today? And which way are the trends heading?

    In February 2010, a nonprofit organization called WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables between the US State Department and its consulates, embassies, and diplomatic missions around the world. It was the larg-est leak of classified material in the history of the world, and there was nothing the US government could do about it. Once information is released to a network, it cant be pulled back. Wikileaks has demonstrated definitively that no secret, corporate or political, is safe for long.

    Weve been saying the customer is king so long that it has become a clich. And in most cases, our actions dont match those words. But customers will be kings and queens, not only in name, but in fact. One by one, cus-tomers are recognizing the power that comes from a world in which their choices are infinite and their voices are am-plified. They are connecting. They are organizing. They are gaining mass and momentum.

    Customers dont need to revolt in an active way. All that is required is for a new company to come along and offer a better service. Connected customers will become aware of such services far more easily than they have in the past, and share the information more quickly, too. If the new service is interesting, it will quickly cascade through the network.

    Some companies have figured out how to create these kinds of direct relationships. Amazon allowed customers

    to write negative reviews on the stores website since the day they launched. That was a controversial decision at the time. Why would a retailer allow anyone to post infor-mation that would help a customer decide to not to buy something? Jeff Bezos recalls a publisher calling him and saying, I dont think you understand your business. You make money when you sell books. But Bezos knew bet-ter. He understood that what connected customers value is a company that will help them make better buying deci-sions. And today we all understand that.

    To think that this customer revolution wont affect your business is naive. It will affect every business. It is al-ready shifting the balance of power. It is changing the way power is controlled and exercised. It will change the way companies are organized and the way they do business.

    Eventually, every customer will be a connected custom-er. And if you want to win over connected customers, you will need to become a connected company. n

    Notes for chapter one Most of the stories here can easily be found by Google search. Influential sources include the sayings and writings of Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Clay Shirky, Peter Kim, and Dion Hinchcliffe. If you havent read it yet, check out The Cluetrain Manifesto.

    STARBUCkS: For that anecdote, Im indebted to the candid thoughts Howard Schultz expressed in his book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul, (Rodale Inc., 2011).

    DOMiNOS: Stephanie Clifford, Video Prank at Dominos Taints Brands, The New York Times, April 15, 2009.

    BANk Of AMERiCA: Bank withdrawal numbers from the Credit Union National Association newsletter, November 4, 2011.

    CUSTOMER RECOMMENDATiONS: 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey.

    AMAZON: Jeff Bezos recalls a publisher calling him and say-ing I dont think you understand your business. You make money when you sell books. From A Conversation with Jeff Bezos by Franois Bourboulon, Les Echos (blog), June 23, 2011.

  • 3130 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    Continued from page 17

    Olga: How about using advocates for crisis management?Jakub: I think for that particular matter the internal social team bears the bulk of responsibility. When it comes to technical problem resolutions, if customers dont know how to set up their handset etc., then yes, the community is likely to take care of itself and the advocates / super users will help together with the dedicated moderation of the Web Relations team or through peer-to-peer intervention. However, when it comes to corporate cri-ses, its the company and internal spokespeople who are responsible for communicating through social media channels keeping the target audiences up to date.

    Do you differentiate between your super-user advocates on the forum and your fans on the Vodafone Facebook page or your followers on Twitter?As a brand we have the responsibil-ity to listen to all of our custom-ers. Whether on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or our own forum we as a brand have a responsibility to listen and engage with customers through whichever social media channel they prefer. Failing that wed be missing opportunities from the reputation management standpoint, customer care angle, and the overarching NPS (Net Promoter Score) perspective,

    because we wouldnt be engaging with people who are talking about our brand and services to us or their peers, followers or friends.

    How do you know who your advocates are?Were actively listening to online conversations through regular social media analysis. We highlight par-ticularly active users that are talking about us and/or directly to us.

    And how do you measure success? We have a clear set of measures were looking at. On the one hand, were tracking the overall volume of online conversations and looking at sentiment scores. On the other hand, we also measure how commercially viable our social media activities are, in terms of cost savings through call deflection, and sales through direct sales via Web Acquisitions.

    Have you run any internal advocacy programs aimed at activating employees? We have a pretty open policy at Vodafone, providing our employees with a clear set of guidelines, rules and principles as to how they should engage on behalf of our brand. If they like Vodafone as a brand, they will act as our advocates on their own accord. Vodafones responsibil-ity is to be a good employer, so that people are proud to be associated with the brand and promote our products and services. n

    Jakub HrabovskyGoalQuickly develop holistic understanding of someone with this visual persona we call an Empathy Map

    Time10-15 minutes per subject

    MaterialsMarkers and whiteboard (or paper)

    PurposeThe best way to understand your target audience is to get inside their head. Whether its a customer, a user, an em-ployee, we can start to define what it is that they think about and the forces that are at work on their lives. When we know this, we can begin to understand how best to solve their problems.

    How to do it1. Introduce the subject and draw their head at whatever fidelity you can even a large circle that will accommo-date writing inside it will work (just add eyes, ears, and nose). Give this person a name. When creating a representative of a large or diverse group of people (users, for instance) it may be better to have an

    abstract or fictional title. But a real person or role will get you stronger examples.

    2. Based on what information you want to collect, label different areas around the head. You may want to start by writing Hearing to the left, Seeing to the right and Think-ing in the center of the head. Sometimes adding Feeling below can help.

    3. Putting yourself in this persons shoes is key to creating empathy. On a given day, what is this person experiencing? Ask everyone to fill in the blanks. What is he hearing? What is she thinking and seeing? What is he doing, feeling? As you capture information, consider emphasizing the more significant pieces of the puzzle and color-coding different types of thoughts, sights and sounds. n

    + V I S U A L T H I N K I N G S C H O O L : E M P A T H Y M A P S

    Understand your audienceBY W. SCOTT MATTHEWS & JAMES MACANUFO

    SKETCHES by W. SCOTT MATTHEWS

    Learn more about visual thinking and facilitation techniques like this in the OReilly book Gamestorming by Dave Gray, James Macanufo, and Sunni Brown: dach.is/QPs4O9.

    THE A-TEAM3. recruit advocates

    You should now be left with a sizable and detailed list of people who might prove to be excellent advocates on behalf of your brand. The challenge is turning that list into an actual group of committed advocates.

    For recruiting to work, the brand must be transparent with the expectations and privileges associated with the program. This also requires clarity of vision on your side what do you expect out of the advo-cates? What resources are you prepared to invest in the program? An understanding of these elements lets you broker an au-thentic relationship with potential recruits.

    Once youve defined the nature of the relationship you desire, rank your advocate candidates by their likely ability to achieve

    the specific goals you seek. For example, an advocacy program for customer service should require extensive knowledge and passion for brand products accompanied by a willingness to share that knowledge. Take this opportunity to get the best of the best.

    One effective practice is to have individuals undergo a rigorous applica-tion process to become advocates. This is beneficial for two reasons. First, it ensures that people who join the program are truly excited and committed to participation. Second, it is an opportunity to elicit ad-ditional information about your advocates and use it in your ranking and segmenta-tion of the advocate pool.

    4. activate advocates

    Advocate activation usually takes the form of a series of creative ideas that benefit from the distributed authentic-ity and passion of an advocacy program. Advocacy brings unique challenges of managing, guiding, and empowering ad-vocate activity. Strong programs provide the resources that advocates need to be effective, but also set them free to be their authentic selves. The goal is to inform and guide without stifling love or passion.

    At this stage, brand advocacy pro-grams commonly employ community platforms and other technology to facili-tate communication, organize efforts, and build a unified advocate culture. Technology could be something as simple as a Facebook group, as complex as a standalone forums and community solution, as innovative as a mobile appli-cation or some combination of all three.

    It is also important to consider how to reward advocates. There are a number of

    Continued from page 13

    Continued on page 34

  • 3332 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

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    Its a big world, after allCharting The Walt Disney Companys Twitterverse

    Twitter didnt exist in 1928 and neither did cartoons with synchronized sound. Regardless, one whistling mouse character started a media revolution as disruptive as Twitters 140 characters.

    Walt Disneys Steamboat Willie (considered the debut of Mickey & Minnie Mouse) seems ancient to us now. But that grainy black and white cartoon rodent was ahead of his time. And The Walt Disney Company continues to be ahead of the curve in the age of social.

    Many of us start our day (Good Morning America) and end it (Jimmy Kimmel Live!) with Disney property ABC. Pixar and Disney films are practically part of the family. But you may be surprised to learn that most of the chatter in Disneys Twitter portfolio isnt about fairy tales

    or mind-blowing computer animation. Almost half of Disneys +30 million

    followers are thanks to interest in actual humans like LeBron James, Hope Solo, Venus

    Williams, and Tim Tebow.

    ESPNs network of journalists stoke the social fires by talking sports (and trash) and feeding us fast facts via Twitter, driving the company to #2 on the Social Business Index (socialbusinessindex.com).

    Still, Disney has competition. Companies like Viacom seem to be doing a better job making their fictional characters accessible on Twitter. Relative newcomer Spongebob Squarepants (Nickelodeon) has an audience of half a million while Disneys 100-year-old Tinker Bell has just three thousand.

    So... have you found and followed Nemo? What do you think Buzz DMs to Woody? And then theres Snow White what does she think about all of these remakes and retweets? Disney and many others with huge (or not) followings have major engagement and advocacy opportunities via social. To the generations growing up in this connected world, will an @ reply from Mickey mean more than hugging a sweaty person in a mouse costume at a theme park?

    Probably. n

    WORDS & VISUALS BY JACOB HEBERLIE

    + D G D A T A V I Z : D I S N E Y S S B I R A N K & T W I T T E R A U D I E N C E S

    30.7 million total followers

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    SOURCE: SOCIAL BUSINESS INDEX

  • 3534 ISSUE 02 Q1 2013THE SOCIAL BUSINESS JOURNAL

    Now starring in your products lifestream: the fabulous me

    + S O C I A L B U S I N E S S I N S I D E R : S U S A N S C R U P S K I

    At the end of 2008, I made some end-of-year predictions. Some right on the money, some completely wrong (like Nokia over Apple on smartphones. Sheesh).

    One that I was right about, however, and seemed odd at the time was this one: The Long Tail of Micro-Influence Will Disprupt... Everything.

    Back then, Twitter was still gather-ing steam. The Arab Spring wouldnt happen for two more years, and Twitters charm was mostly (only) appreciated by tech industry and social media enthusiasts. The liner notes on this slide read:

    Twitter. Who knew? Something so innocuous could create so much disruption. Mini micro web-celebs with their legions of adoring fan/fol-lowers will mess with reputation and loyalty all across the globe. When networks of networks connect, the micro-sharing phenomenon will whip its long tail and knock out the best laid plans of strategic planners.

    Even Facebook didnt roll out its ability to Like a page until 2010. But the unfettered ability to deliver this kind of interactive brand power into the hands of todays consumers is staggering. The escalating strength behind the consumer voice is writ-ten about all the time, but mostly by marketers who see the target shape-shifting into some sort of brand-message-devouring monster. But, its important to see the con-sumer from the inside out through their eyes.

    Ive often said these sharing and voicing behaviors arent new, but the platform upon which we can now take action is fresh and highly significant. In 2012, every man, woman, child, and some influential domestic animals have become the equivalent of celebrities. Each personal Facebook News Feed and Twitter stream (along with every other personalized social feeds activity stream) presents a custom-ized view of a world that orbits neatly around the individual. Theres a heightened sense of self-impor-tance thats reinforced by the social attention we give and get. Were all moving toward a Social Atten-tion Economy where we are firmly established as the center of gravity for all that revolves around us. This includes, family, friends, employ-ers, partners, and yes, products and services. So when we talk to a brand, we expect a response. We demand service from our brands in a way that has only been reserved for celebrities, athletes, rock stars, royalty, and the super wealthy.

    So, what does this tell us about Advocacy? In short: advocates mat-ter a lot to brands. And, the race to

    secure and cultivate advocates is just beginning.

    When a brand is fortunate enough to enter into an individuals orbit, thats an opportunity to secure a new advocate. Advocates are passionate brand defenders. They take bullets for you. They stake their own self-importance and reputation on your product or service. But remember, they are at the center of their social center, not you. To the degree you can complement or extend their personal brand identity, there is a big win-win in the offing. Remember, be-hind every tweet, like, mention, and complaint is an attention-seeking quasi-narcissist that demands your time and respect. To the degree you can fold into their personal narrative, you will earn their brand love and all the rewards that are reaped from that special relationship. In other words, the key to advocate passion is relevance. Be worth their limited time and attention.

    So, as for my 2008 prediction, I was correct. But in that prescient observation, what I couldnt see was how we can now use sophisticated tools to identify, attract, and cultivate those wild and woolly social beings.

    As the socially connected world grows more dense, more rich, and more attention-starved, your brand advocates will play an even greater role in amplifying and legitimizing your brands promise. The time to start investing in an advocacy program is now. Similar to the early days of the Internet, being ahead of the curve will pay dividends. n

    Continued from page 31

    THE A-TEAM / advocacy in 7 stepsdifferent ways to approach rewards in ad-vocacy programs. These range from highly symbolic (non-financial) rewards all the way to paid compensation. Unfortunately, there is no simple set of rules that any or-ganization can follow to solve the advocacy rewards conundrum. Instead, it makes sense to adhere to a set of basic principles when interacting with advocates.

    The most important principle in rewarding advocates is to ensure that the rewards encourage a behavior that the advocates would commit anyway. Reward schemes that incentivize advocates to behave in unnatural or inauthentic ways taint the spirit of the relationship and move dangerously close to pay-for-advoca-cy schemes. This more cynical approach might work for a while, but it will typi-cally backfire as advocates lose interest in having another job advocating on your behalf. In addition, this re-introduces the problem of scalability into the program. If advocates only act for financial reasons, then the program is inherently limited in its impact to the amount of financial re-ward your organization can bring to bear.

    5. amplify advocates

    There is a new problem emerging among brands that have embraced social media the challenge of consistently generating interesting content to share in social channels. For many brands this is one of their greatest challenges on a day-to-day basis. After a few months the resources required to constantly interact

    with the community in a visual, branded way overwhelms the brands ability to do anything but seek out images, compose questions, and generate conversation. Advocates are an excellent way to ad-dress the issue.

    Most advocacy programs, even the most lightweight contests or promotions, result in a bevy of user generated content of varying levels of quality. This content, amplified organically in social channels or even promoted with paid media, can gen-erate authentic interest and conversation around the brand. Longer term that con-tent can be the foundation of the content calendar for months into the future. Some Dachis Group clients work with their advocates to generate content postings, testimonials, blog posts, and even high-quality promotional videos all at a lower cost and with a greater level of authenticity and trust than traditional marketing.

    6. measure advocates

    With the correct tools and planning, advocate activity is one of the most measurable contributors to business outcomes available to marketers. Brands have the advantage of tools like Dachis Groups Advocate Insight, to locate and track brand contributions of advocates, as well as foreknowledge of a programs tactics and objectives to design measure-ment and reporting for their program.

    Most advocacy programs rely on a combined dashboard approach that en-compasses brand metrics, advocacy com-munity metrics, and business metrics. Ad-ditionally, the strongest programs will also

    include product and brand insights that can be integrated into business strategy.

    7. learn & improve

    Learn from your advocates. Ask them questions, thank them, show them that things are changing, and while you make them a part of the process, also give them room to engage and develop as advocates.

    This stage of the advocacy process seems easy, and in fact, it should be easy. Unfortunately, most organizations really struggle with capturing feedback from external sources and integrating it into operations. It is worth it though. Advo-cates are typically not just a brands most outspoken customers, they are also often a brands most frequent and profitable customers. Learning from advocate com-munities is not only a feel-good exercise for the advocate community, it also con-tributes to business performance.

    the advocacy opportunityEngaging with advocates is a business and marketing tactic born of the social era and perfectly adapted to success in the social era. Creating relationships with advocates is not