The Secret Sauce of Social Success

A few notions for implementing a Web 2.0 framework in your organization.

David Shaw © 2009

Everybody’s getting social these days. “Gimme a wiki, no, not that blue one, give me a red one. Oh, and throw in a tweeter, too, they’re so cool. And a Friends tab! We’ll put that on our web. My kids watch Friends!”

The next thing you know, Newsweek magazine is asking readers for their views on Iran in no more than 140 characters; the City TV breakfast host in Toronto is wittering about his race with the mayor to see who has the most followers; the web site about undies wants to know your closest friends; the premier of Ontario bans FaceBook because, well, he knows better than 250 million people; police are in schools warning parents about FaceBook and MySpace; the corporate IT folks are freaking about security; and senior management is trying to preserve command-and-control.

At least the TV host is living it.

The short story is if you’re not using these tools, you won’t understand them. The longer story is that most organizations implement them in ways that give rise to a lot of noise and very little signal. This is not so unusual. We tend to first use new technologies to do old and familiar things. This is unfortunate because social networking has the capability to transform organizations so they can meet the challenges rising from a transformation in the marketplace that is light speed ahead of most organizations. Those that don’t catch up will face a sudden disconnect from their market.

Here is an outline of one approach:

• 
  
  Collaboration in Web 2.0
  
• 
  
  Develop a strategy to engage
  
• 
  
  Develop objectives
  
• 
  
  Map objectives to functions
  
• 
  
  Map functions to Web 2.0 tools
  
• 
  
  Make connections

Collaboration in Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has many faces, and even more interpretations. Nobody really understands what it means, where it is going or what will be the future outcomes.

But fundamentally Web 2.0 is about collaboration. However, there are so many tools that can be used in different ways that it is hard to develop a productive strategy and even harder to predict the future. If you’re lucky your organization will adopt a strategy for information management that will integrate Web 2.0 with existing tools such as document- and records-management, and map them to business processes and service models.

If you’re unlucky, you will end up with new islands of technology and information, in the way that PC hard drives have become the repository of the most current data, and email has become the repository of many corporate decisions. The figure below is a high-level view of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, showing how to apply it in an obvious and low-risk manner. This architecture was deliberately designed to show you how to introduce the tools in ways that provide benefits without requiring a wholesale change in corporate culture.

But as shown below other strategies of engagement should deliver greater benefits, and at the same time meet the challenges of a socially networked marketplace.

Applying Web 2.0 in the enterprise

Develop a Strategy to Engage

To develop a unique strategy for your unique organization you should synthesize your understanding of the needs of the organization and your understanding of Web 2.0. This is why it is important that you use the tools. But ideally the tools are not used in isolation, in the way that word-processing is isolated from email. Collaboration requires that the tools be integrated, easy to use, and part of the daily process.

Two examples are given below.

In the first example, the goal is to drive volume by connecting supply to demand, using amplification of word of mouth. This drives customer sentiment in a positive direction. This is a principle that can be generalized across all social-networking applications.

The example depicts an organization that has integrated certain aspects of its intranet with an extranet for customer access. Typically, this would be used for managing joint projects. The intranet is internal, behind a firewall. The extranet exposes part of the intranet to customers, subject to security mechanisms and access controls. The web portal is the public-face of the organization.

In a sense, these are different views of a single collaborative platform. For example, a blog published by an expert within the organization would be accessible on the intranet, extranet and web portal. You don’t want to force people to have to go and find something, or to stumble on it by chance.

The outcome is some desired objective or set of objectives. The outcome shown below is “Market Buzz” but you could have more concrete outcomes like products sold, members registered, issues identified and closed, and so forth.

Engaging customers and prospects in a community

However, these activities are driven dynamically by a wide range of possible connections. The nature of the outcome can not be predicted. For example, you may discover that the issues you thought were important are not shared by the crowd, or that your market opportunities are in a different area than you planned.

Shown above are social connections because social conversations dominate all human activities. Although in some cases we can seek to guide these conversations in some constructive way, they are essentially unpredictable. Some examples of connections are given further below.

The difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is that Web 1.0 was largely a solitary experience. We each trolled the web, and perhaps sent a link to a few friends. We couldn’t easily find like-minded people around the world and engage with them.Web 2.0 gave us the tools to engage the world in conversation by establishing and/or joining communities of interest.

These connections between people are both static and dynamic. We all have regular friends, workplace friends and occasional friends. We engage in conversations that are constantly evolving. Thus, in a digital social network our possible connections with people and their interests and objects evolve dynamically. Feedback about those connections can be used to drive the social network to produce business outcomes.

The next example shows how a different type of organization, perhaps a nightclub, would use a different strategy. This strategy leverages an existing social destination, such as FaceBook or MySpace, and synchronizes content between the social network and the web site. Existing promotional networks, such as “Things to do in My City”, would provide further amplification. A communications plan for special events could provide the basic grist for conversation and amplification.

Leveraging FaceBook and existing promotional networks

Develop the Objectives

At a more granular level are the statements of objectives describing the specific planned results of your Web 2.0 strategy and what it is you are trying to achieve. When you write an objective, remember the SMART acronym: Each objective should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound. The objectives state the meat of what the strategy is trying to achieve. When the project to implement the strategy is complete, you need to be able to show that the objectives have all been satisfied. At times, you may have only a vague idea of the goals and objectives but struggle with trying to determine the best way to express them.

Map the Objectives to Functions

When you have identified the objectives, use a spreadsheet to map these to specific functions. A few examples of functions are shown in the below figure. This is another reason why it is important to have experience with Web 2.0 tools. Without such experience, you won’t be able to do this mapping.

Map objectives to functions

Map the Functions to Web 2.0 Tools

The next step is to map the various functions to a Web 2.0 tool. Several tools are shown in the below figure but there are numerous others that you should include in a spreadsheet. As you do this exercise, you will have to weigh the value of each function and tool, examine trade-offs, and set an achievable scope. You don’t need to implement every tool to have success.

Map functions to Web 2.0 tools

Experience has shown that the below technical criteria are critical success factors. One of them, pattern matching, will be discussed further.

• Templates


• Ease of use


• Single sign-on


• Workflow integration


• Access
  
  
  
  • System tray
  
  
  • Portal gadget
  
  
  • Desktop gadget


• Security
  
  
  
  • Profiles, ACL, content/document classification


• Unified communications
  
  
  
  • Including notifications


• Tagging


• Federated search


• Topic clouds


• Making connections (pattern matching)

Of these technical criteria, four are extremely important and might be called the secret sauce in successful social networking:

• Making connections for feedback
• Linking for navigation
• Generating topic clouds for browsing
• Federated search to find stuff across several types of applications

This article only deals further with filters to make connections. Linking was discussed in Taxonomies & Their Cousins are Important.

Make Connections

In a small world it is easy to strike up conversations and, in a reasonable time, make connections with folks having somewhat similar interests. Thus, we might end up belonging to several communities of interest or practice.

In a larger world, even one as small as our enterprise, it is difficult to make connections outside our work group or department. Social networking software makes these connections on many criteria and presents them to us so we can make choices and decide which connections are relevant or otherwise important.

Put another way, to participate in a large social group people need to know what is going on. Suggesting connections is a form of feedback about activities and decisions being made in the group. Obviously this feedback has to relate to the objectives discussed earlier.

Making connections to provide feedback

The figure above shows the basic feedback mechanism. In any area of concern, whether it's interests, issues, objectives, product sales or whatever, there will be the current hot hits everyone is buzzing about, and a long tail of lesser subjects. By getting views on the hits, and using pattern matching to suggest some other subjects in the tail that might be of interest, a dynamic feedback mechanism is created. It has the effect of increasing interest or participation across the entire spectrum. But be aware in your filter design that positive feedback is self-reinforcing and can create a herd mentality.

Feedback increases the participation level

The below figure shows how a simple filter might work to suggest people you might consider as online “friends”. Like the promise in eHarmony, it matches people based on similar profiles. Here, it has suggested a connection established between Person-A and Person-B based on their similar profiles dhfnthfh.

However, there are many possible types of profiles. They can be demographic, purchases made, shared issues, common expertise or whatever else is important to the objectives of your social network. Multiple profiles can be weighted and combined in different ways to increase the participation level and produce direct measurable benefits.

Making connections

Selecting the right profiles and designing the right pattern-matching feedback filters is absolutely crucial in the success of your social-networking application. The resulting collaborations will drive your organization dynamically, much as conversations are now driving your market.