Social Collaboration Software

Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee Limited, an online community consultancy, and The Pillar Summit , an exclusive course in Professional Community Management. Richard's clients have included the United Nations, The Global Fund, Novartis, AMD, BAE Systems and several youth & entertainment brands. Richard is also the the author of the Online Community Manifesto. 


Avectra, the leader in web based membership management software, is proud to partner with FeverBee Limited to help organizations around the world understand best practices for creating thriving online communities and build invaluable communities of their own.  For more information on MemberFuse, Avectra's private online community platform, and Avectra Social CRM for Associations, click here.

• Manage what you can,
• Influence what you cannot directly manage and 
• Balance what you can neither manage nor influence. 
  

• Business managers and IT managers are beginning to work more closely together to co-own and co-sponsor emergent collaboration initiatives. Forty-six percent (46%) of respondents state that their organization's business and IT departments were jointly responsible for sponsoring the effort.
• Forty-three percent (43%) of companies cite financial gain (cost savings and revenue generated) from implementing enterprise collaboration tools. 

AvectraLabs Attends Web 2.0 Expo - Our thoughts...


Time flies! It’s hard to believe that this action/content-packed expo went by so quickly. I was impressed to find many of the sessions inspiring, exciting and relevant; kindling some ideas, (at least within me), that caused me to step back and take a second look at the big picture, a panoramic view if you will, of the amazing technology of our day! 

AvectraLabs made a strong appearance at Web 2.0 Expo (@w2e). It’s safe to say we stood out in the infamous Purple Pumas! The three of us pictured here include Luiz Lopes, Rocky Segarra and yours truly (Sterling Raphael).

Here are a few observations and ideas we gained at the expo. 

Luiz attended Tuesday’s session on Flickr PuSH: Real-time Updates on the Cheap for Fun and Profit by Neil Walker (@nolancaudill), Nolan Caudill. 

Neil had us taking a look at how Flickr developed around the pubsubhubbub (https://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/) -protocol for it’s new API which handles near real-time access to images and tons of other objects from Flickr. 

Ideas presented here open up a whole new experience for developers and for users, who won’t have to sit and wait for an API response.  The API will push data whenever it’s available. 

View the Recap and Slides...

Next Luiz attended Code As Craft: Building a Strong Engineering Culture - by Chad Dickerson (@ChadDickerson)

This was an impressive presentation.  Chad is the new CEO of Etsy. This talk was all about the culture he and his team cultivate at Etsy, and how things worked organically to match the type of company they are creating.  His discussion focused on ‘culture’.

• Culture is the game.
• Culture is what brings great people to your company
• Define the culture and show it, let everyone express it wherever and whenever.
• Not everyone is going to agree, but the culture will dictate respect when you do disagree. 

Chad reinforced the idea that "Engineers are Creative people” and because of that he encourages his engineers to give talks/presentations and helps them when submitting call to papers and trains them on presentation skills. Outstanding!

Collaborate with OpenSource world.

View the Session Slides. 

More at: http://codeascraft.etsy.com/

Luiz also attended the session “The Secret Path to Success in Online Video” - by Dina Kaplan (@dinakaplan)

Dina is one of the 3-founders of Blip.tv.  She discussed in some depth about the surge in online video series, an industry with much potential. I was interested in her discussion about blip.tv, and the reasons for failing on the first try.  I was impressed to hear how by tapping into an established community (Online Video Bloggers) they were able to listen to their requests and build a platform their users loved. Five hundred sign-ups in one day.  She encouraged posting content regularly, even if it’s not part of the series.  The use of Social Media has been a real success for them..  Eyes are drifting from TV to online.

 

Ignite NYC was the highlight of the week for me. 18 renowned speakers took the stage in rapid paced keynotes. One of the most entertaining was by Alexis Ohanian (@kn0thing) from Redddit.

One of the favorite sessions I attended was on Guerilla Marketing – by Jay Conrad Levinson @zakiwarfel 

It was a treat to hear from Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerilla Marketing. "Guerrilla methods are faster, less expensive, less rigorous versions of their non-guerrilla cousins. They offer an acceptable trade-off between rigor and cost effective techniques" - @zakiwarfel  "I'm referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always -- achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.  http://www.gmarketing.com/

A few notable quotes from my sessions include:

• @MBLOOMSTEIN discussing Content Strategy and says “Hoarding and Aggregating Content IS NOT the same as Curating” 
• @PeterKim says the key to using Facebook is a 3-step process. Starting with creating Awareness, then focusing on Engagement, finally the goal of Conversion.
• @adamconnor shares on giving better design critique by “Use a filter. Gather initial thoughts and reactions. Revisit them in the right context.” And “Lead with question show interest in the process.” I’m sure Rocky (the AvectraLabs UX Designer), is happy I learned a few things in this session!

Speaking of Rocky… he attended a few sessions including HTML5 the WOW and HOW – by @petele a Developer Advocate @ Google.

Pete was an interesting fellow and very clever in how he explained the HTML5 revolution and his enrollment with Google. He also went through a demo/tutorial on a small application using HTML5 and Javascript where he referenced the webkits and HTML5 elements we need to be using at this stage of the evolution.

HTML5 Tools, References and Kits we should be using include:

• We should be watching Paul Irish videos on htmlrocks.com
• HTML5 Cross Browser Polyfills - for less modern browsers
• Chrome Frame plugin
• Linear gradients rgba
• var els = document.getElementByClass
• .classlist api
• @font-face & Google API's learn more
• binary attributes
• Web Sockets - For sending and receiving messages
• Socket.IO to wrap around web sockets

References:

• http://www.html5rocks.com/en/
• http://petelepage.com/blog/2011/07/showing-hiding-panels-with-html-and-css/

Slides:

• http://bit.ly/pGGGn3
• http://petelepage.com/blog/2011/07/showing-hiding-panels-with-html-and-css/

Rocky’s favorite session was Mobile First, presented by Luke Wrobleski (@LukeW)- Co-Founder, Bagcheck Inc., LukeW Ideation & Design. 

Luke’s session talked about my favorite web topic "Mobile First". I am a hardcore advocate to this notion that Developers/Designers should be thinking about the Mobile version first for any web app.

Luke discussed three reasons for considering mobile first:  

1. The Mobile Growth
2. The Mobile force of making you focus
3. Mobile Extends your capabilities.  He mentions that in iPhone apps, the main function should be immediately apparent. Minimize the number of controls from which users have to choose and most importantly, create this first before getting to the desktop version of the app.

Key points:

• Google programmers are doing work on mobile applications first, because they are better apps and that's what top programmers want to develop.
• Mobile Web growth has outpaced desktop Web growth 8x. Smartphone sales will pass PC sales in 2012

Resources & References:

• The Touch Gesture Reference Guide is a unique set of resources for software designers and developers working on touch-based user interfaces.

These are just a few of many thought-provoking ideas we gained at the Expo, but suffice to say – this was a knowledge-packed event – a great learning experience!  Between yesterday’s miracles and tomorrow’s dreams, we live in a tremendous day and age!  

And that’s our recap for #w2e!

Don’t forget to follow @w2e and visit http://www.web2expo.com/ to register for future Web 2.0 Expos!

“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.”

- John Russell, President, Harley Davidson

So far in this blog series on Community Purpose we’ve discussed Employee Communities and External Social Networks. Today we’re going to focus on Communities for Customer Support.

What is a Support Community? 

The purpose of a support community is efficient facilitation of knowledge sharing. A Support Community socializes the support process by creating/ allowing collaboration around issues and feedback. Customers can help customers, and support people can interact in an open and conversational style while providing necessary support. Best of all the knowledge is searchable and sharable for future customer self-help. 

The Avectra Community:

MemberFuse, Avectra’s online community product, allows organizations to control the look, content, advertising and access based on the member data stored in netFORUM or another CRM system.

We are in the process of rolling out our own community platform to allow our customers to connect to each other and our support staff.

While it won't replace traditional support outlets, the Avectra Community can increase knowledge sharing, problem solving, and a sense of belonging with customers as they rally around issues and ideas to improve their experience. The need to contact Avectra support through traditional channels has the potential to decrease dramatically as customers will be able to find answers to common questions posted by their peers.




Another good example of support in a very social way, is GetSatisfaction, a simple feedback button that turns a comment or question into a knowledge base of users helping each other with the product or service.  Benjamin Gauthey, Digital Marketing, Microsoft Corp comments, “In our opinion, Get Satisfaction is one of the best social media feedback tools available today. Our customers love it because it creates a dedicated place where they can be heard and have a direct connection with our engineering team.”

Also, at AvectraLabs we’re experimenting with integrating GoToAssist  into our community platform. GoToAssist isn’t a Support Community, but is complementary to one. With GoToAssist you can easily view and control your customers' computers online to quickly resolve their technical issues.  It also provides you with secure live-support capability. They offer free trials for individuals and for teams.

Ideally, your support ecosystem would include Community, CRM, Ticketing and Live-Support Capabilities.

Every support community platform has unique benefits. Let’s take a look at just a few of the many …

Benefits of a Support Community 

• Improves Customer Experience by giving on-demand access to knowledge
• Knowledge Sharing - If you help a customer in a ticket or a phone call, that content is lost and not searchable
• Lowers Support Costs - It's more efficient for support staff to interact with customers in a community, then in a situation where something is resolved on a phone call
• Lets customers feel they're a part of a bigger community, not a lone customer with a lone problem
  

Keys to Setting up and Maintaining Your Support Community 

• Integrate them with your CRM - It's powerful if you track your customer feedback to their relationship with your company.
• Integrate with Ticketing System - Any support desk software you have, such as NetSuite.com  or zendesk.com will allow for integration with their API's. Make sure your online community can take a discussion or comment and create or track tickets with these systems.
• Monitor and Integrate Social - Your customers are talking about your products and services regardless of if they do it within your community. You need to listen, monitor and respond to customer conversations as it relates to support. 
• Allow your staff to be social with support. Zappos.com is a groundbreaking organization in many ways, but are infamous with how they handle support calls. Their support staff are allowed to be personable and social. It’s this unique approach to support that creates a culture at Zappos that attracts loyal and passionate customers.

As previously stated, when you tie together all your support tools, including Community, CRM, Live-Support, Ticketing System, and even external social networks… you create the ultimate support ecosystem.

I really like what Dion Hinchcliffe writes in his article on 12 best practices for online communities:

“Connect the community with the other CRM-related aspects of the organization. Customer communities have been used successfully for customer service, the generation of innovation, trend spotting, marketing, lead generation and many other activities. In the future, it’s likely that many customer communities will blur extensively with the organizations they are associated with and become more and more closely involved with their customers in a wide variety of activities. Those organizations that can do this successfully will likely reap rewards of efficiency, innovation, productivity increases and others, while assuming some of the risks involved in any sort of crowdsourcing activity.”

We are at the point where "Social" Business is now JUST BUSINESS. Your customers expect to be part of your community. Help them do so. 

One final thought. At Avectra we have many years of experience with associations, who create communities for their industry. The association business model needs to change to keep the associations relavant and funded. Avectra has tools that help with that. My point is... I find it interesting that we’re helping associations become more like for-profit corporations with their business model. But at the same time, we need to help for-profit corporations become more like associations by creating communities. A Customer Community is a step in the right direction. 

September 27 – 29, Silicon Valley Marriott, Fremont, CA

Sticky Content

‘Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice’

Woodrow T. Wilson

You guessed it! My topic is loyalty and my argument is that member loyalty to an online community is all but dead in this day and age.  Commitment to an online community, simply for the sake of being a part of a community, is gone.   Members are no longer assumed eternally loyal to an online community. Now that there are so many options online, commitment is diminished…competition is fierce!

For example, look at MySpace... do you think there's still many MySpace loyalists out there? Facebook is still holding strong, but Google+ is on the rise. Social Networks, regardless of the purpose cannot expect their members to stay and be loyal if the value isn't there or a better alternative becomes available.  Organizations cannot assume members will be loyal and connect to their community without some long-term, lasting value.  Organizations and community management must take a servant approach to engaging communities around content value creation. Above all, your community must resonate with the governing factor - loyalty, integrating all the trustworthiness and thoughtfulness associated with this remarkable trait. 

So, consistent with my themes in previous posts and speeches, content creates community creates COMMERCE... allow me to ask:

• What's sticky about your content that keeps your community engaged?
• What's allows them to collaborate or connect to that content, and
• Can they build relationships with other like-minded community members?

If so, relationships can be developed between community members.

Believe it or not, ‘loyalty’ is not a separate topic from my speech, to be delivered at ISSMM Converge, on ‘How to Monetize Your Online Community.’ In fact and indeed, loyalty is the backbone of Avectra and at the core of everything we do! 

During my session, will you, as an attendee, learn new, clear cut ways to turn your online community into revenue-generating enterprise?  Absolutely!  And, at almost every stage of my talk you will hear the overtone of commitment and loyalty relevant to members and organizations.  

Now on to ISSMM Converge:  

It is an exciting time in our field, and during Converge, I am looking forward to hearing from, and hopefully meeting, Lyle Fong (@lylefong) to get his perspective on the future of "gated" communities and how Lithium and other community platforms fit into this increasing crowded software category. (topic: Gamification of Social Media)  Lyle Fong is the CEO & Co-Founder of Lithium.

And .. I definitely anticipate meeting Angela and Jamie from Campbell Ewald and explore how advertising and digital agencies are using social to drive product enthusiasts communities. Also, I’d like to see how are they collecting data authorized from Facebook, LinkedIn, etc... And, are they putting this data back into a CRM to tell the bigger customer or lead story? Angela Zepeda, Managing Director, and Jamie Lewis (@hinj19), Digital and Social Strategy at Campbell Ewald – is one of the largest advertising and digital communications agencies in the United States. ( topic: From the Boardroom to the Sea; Real-world Case Studies)

Hope to meet and greet you at ISSMM!
 

Don't miss my presentation, How to Monetize Your Online Community.

Thursday, September 29th @ 10:30 am to 11:15 am

Sterling Raphael, President and Founder AvectraLabs / Avectra
@SterlingRaphael
LinkedIn.com/in/SterlingRaphael
 

If you need more information regarding Converge 2011 and the Institute for Social, Search & Mobile Marketing (Issmm), visit www.socialsearchmobile.org   If you are planning to attend and haven’t registered yet, today’s the day! 

Tags: conferences, sales, marketing, search engine marketing, social media, aol, mobile marketing, co, altimeter group, current tv, brian solis, gamification, issmm, social search mobile, mobile monetization, blogher network, lithium technologies

Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee Limited, an online community consultancy, and The Pillar Summit , an exclusive course in Professional Community Management. Richard's clients have included the United Nations, The Global Fund, Novartis, AMD, BAE Systems and several youth & entertainment brands. Richard is also the the author of the Online Community Manifesto. 


Avectra, the leader in web based membership management software, is proud to partner with FeverBee Limited to help organizations around the world understand best practices for creating thriving online communities and build invaluable communities of their own.  For more information on MemberFuse, Avectra's private online community platform, and Avectra Social CRM for Associations, click here.

Enterprise Social Collaboration & Innovation – Strategy & Implementation

Thursday, 11:00-11:45 am

Just to go on record, I am exercising my right to be anxious and impatient when it comes to attendance at Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. The 3-day conference is  simply going to be a whirlwind for me as I try to inhale all the cutting-edge discussions and expert-led sessions.

Glancing at the topics and speakers list for Thursday,  I couldn’t help but be overwhelmingly impressed by Karthik Chakkarapani’s professional biography. Particularly, the implementation of various enterprise applications and infrastructure projects at AHA, including the 'Enterprise Social Collaboration & Innovation' platform. “No doubt, we will hear practical, real-world advice from Karthik, who has caught the vision and inspires change!  

And then, along comes Michael Idinopulos, co-speaker and indeed, the icing on the cake. I loved his blog on a transparent Office, wherein he writes, “Every organization has its "prescriptions", information or transactions which employees need on a regular basis. If you make your social software implementation a place--better yet, the place--to fill those prescriptions, you greatly increase the likelihood of its adoption long after the hype and hoopla of the initial launch has faded.”

I’m trying to figure out how best to take advantage of all the critical knowledge and information at this conference and, at the same time, I can’t help but hope for some face-to-face encounters of the ‘same’ kind.  

Boston - now home of the Stanley cup!   Here we come!