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New Blog Location

 

New Blog Location:

www.socialcrm.net

 

See You there!

Social CRM

What do I mean by Social CRM?  

 

What fascinated me, and brought me into, what I originally called Online Communities and then Social Networking was the realization that it was a natural extension and expansion of my old (and perennial) love: Customer Relationship Management. However, as I know it is clear for you, actual application sometimes (many times) falls short of the possibilities; very few have used Social Networking to create the opportunities for relationships to be established with and among their customers and partners, and leverage those relationships to create more, and better, opportunities for all.

 

As I move forward into new (and exciting) opportunities I thought it was a proper time for me to open a new Blog; I will devote this Blog to capture the thoughts and reports on the efforts I will pursue to help companies and organizations of all shapes and sizes to understand and act on the opportunity they have to use social networking as a relationship channel, and use those relationships to improve the value obtained by all participants.

 

Here is to the future!

 

P.S. this is my last post at this location; you can find me @ http://www.socialcrm.net/ from now on J

 

Filiberto Selvas

Do you “connect” with your customers? Like a good performer does?

I just came back from a concert (Luis Miguel, Seattle) and I couldn’t resist observing it as a “social experiment”, let me explain: In the few live concerts I have had the pleasure to attend I have always observed there is a moment when a “connection” happens between the performer(s) and the public; it is almost a magical moment, a moment in which there is a “synchronization” between the “waves” these two entities (performer(s) and audience) emanate and it is almost as if from that moment on it was one playing the other interchangeably.

It took Luis Miguel a good 50 minutes to reach that point; I have been in other concerts where the magical moment happens with the 1^st song, I was even once in an event when it happened through the declamation of a poem that was meant as an interlude!   

The point is: there is a magical connection moment, and from that point on it becomes a bidirectional positive cycle feed between these two entities…..  Do you have such connection with your customers? Is there such a positive cycle feed among you? A connection causing each of you to feel more enriched and satisfied because of it? And having everyone going home happy? (as I came home from this concert).

I hope you are; we all should have such connections.

What do you think?

Onward!

16 ½ years ago I joined Microsoft based on two promises:

1. That I could develop my career any way I wanted.
2. That all my efforts and the efforts of many others around me had as the ultimate objective to bring the power of computing to all.

In looking back I am amazed and thankful for all that I have been able to do working with so many others inside and outside Microsoft; this phase has brought me personal and professional growth beyond my expectations, I have:

• Had the privilege to meet and collaborate with hundreds of amazing individuals; and working with them brought forward (little by little) the benefits of computing to more and more people.
• Experienced what it means to call three cities in two countries “home”.
• Had the opportunity to meet and marry a wonderful woman (yes, thanks to Microsoft!)
• Gained and extra citizenship, but more importantly a kinship with so many people in so many countries.
• And so many more blessings that would make this list endless.

However the time has come for me to close that chapter and open a new one: I have accepted the position of Social Media Strategy Director at Avenue A Razorfish. This change offers me the incredible opportunity to continue to focus in an space I am passionate about, and do it through helping many different companies to understand and take advantage of it. I look forward to this new phase with excitement and anticipation, I can only imaging the growth and blessings that lie ahead and the opportunities for impact that will come with those.

I want to thank you for your company in this incredible and exciting journey!  I really hope we will continue to work together in the road ahead.

 

Filiberto Selvas

To, From & Among

In reading a relative unrelated post an old idea (one seeded and feed by many other posts & conversations) came back to me; here it is in a nutshell:

Most social networking efforts tend to “stand apart” from the source/hoster/initiator. Participants have to “go there” and they tend to become “isolated by groups” (internal versus external,

I propose that in the future social networking will become so fully integrated in products, services and companies communication efforts that it will be indistinguishable; and it will facilitate connections and communications among sets and subsets of groups according to likes/dislikes and commonalities (expressed or inferred); it will then become the root of Relationship Management (I am purposely avoiding the “customer” portion of CRM, as this will not be limited to that) and it will open incredible opportunities to generate new business models, products and services in itself. Common platforms are emerging and there will be benefits for many to share those platforms so that this sets and subset of groups will not be limited to a specific company or product and thus the networks scope of impact will be deep and extended.

So, if this is so open and available; what is the key differentiator that will render business opportunities you may ask? The business opportunity will be there, for those that are good at listening and acting based on what they hear.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Social Bookmarking “Perspectives”

Social Bookmarking is one of the most underappreciated “experience tools”; I believe this is because we tend to look at it and present it in customer experiences from a “single perspective” and with that we limit its value and possibilities.  Allow me to illustrate:

Think about the elements of social bookmarking as follows:

And draw a very simplified version of a group of users, Bookmarks and objects:

Let’s explore a few “perspectives” and with that what “possibilities” could be included in the customer experience:

1) What other gift ideas for the anniversary gift?

2) I want to connect with those that share my passions and interests.

3) What else is there to know about my passion that I don’t know about yet?

4) Based on the people that share my interests; what other things should I be looking at?

As you can see the “perspective” of social bookmarking that you choose to present offers different values and “experiences” to your users.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

The importance of understanding and catering to the user culture

Even when this interesting TechCrunch post by Serkan Toto talks specifically about Japan, and the importance to pay attention to cultural differences to make inroads in a different market, I think it should be read with a slightly more generic mind frame: what does this mean not only for different country cultures, but also for different audience cultures? What does this mean for a CIO Social Network versus a junior high soccer Social Network?

Couple interesting snippets:

• “..the country’s biggest social network, positioned itself as a tool for communicating at a distance through diaries and communities to meet like-minded members. It doesn’t primarily exist to make new friends (poking is restricted) or as a platform for public self-presentation.”

Note the statement makes it clear that meeting likeminded people does not imply making friends, it also makes the point that there are cultures (Japan in this case) where public self presentation is not desirable (at least not openly) and not a pre-requisite to meet those likeminded people (i.e. I can expose my interests and passions, without exposing myself)

• “Without apps that make sense, Facebook is crippled.”

I would like to read this one as: without contextual and relevant value for the participants there is no adoption/usage.

In summary: it is extremely important to understand the natural tendencies/behaviors your audience already displays; the technology and programs you may bring forward are about increasing and focusing these behaviors but not changing them (at least not until you have had a chance to establish trust and critical mass).

 

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Of missionaries and visionaries

This is not my original thinking; it was seeded in my mind recently by a treasured advisor (Thanks Randy), but it has remained with me, resonated and is bubbling out.

According to Wikipedia:

“a Visionary is a person with a clear, distinctive and specific (in some details) vision of the future, usually connected with advances in technology or social/political arrangements”

“Missionary: "mission" is derived from the Latin missionem (nom. missio), meaning "act of sending" or mitto, mittere, literally meaning "to send" or "to dispatch” in summary a missionary “gets us there”.

We need visionaries; but we can’t get there without missionaries; “there is a promised treasure” means nothing without the “and here is how you get to it, let me show you”.

Social Media/Networking, like many other spaces, has plenty of visionaries. We need them to also become, or be complemented with, missionaries… yes, it is a dirty job (missionary evokes the image of that person that made mistakes. was chased, misunderstood, mistreated, etc.) but without them wouldn’t get there.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Hidden Gems: Visualization of roles in Social Media

Visualization is very important for human beings; even when the most fortunate of us have five senses, we are clearly biased towards obtaining  information through our eyes… there are good reasons why the phrase “an image is worth a thousand words” was coined. In this line I want to highlight the work of Marc Smith, Microsoft Researcher; it was actually Marc’s lectures that introduced and hook me onto Online Communities & Social Media/Networking. Here a sample of Marc’s work: “Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups” available @ http://www.cmu.edu/joss/content/articles/volume8/Welser/

Another snippet of Marc’s work to get you interested:

• Take user participation in an online community/social networking space (let’s assume threaded discussions for now).
• Create a graphic which will be composed as follows:
• Y axis plots the number of days a user participated in an specific period.
• X axis is the average number of posts per thread
• Plotting each user the size of the “plot point” is determined by the number of posts the user created in the period. The color is determined by the date of the most recent post (recent participants are red hot, not so recent are cold blue)

A sample graph would look like this:

• See those bubbles in the upper left corner? Those are your answer people, you want to engage and establish a relationship with them.
• See that blue bubble in the lower right corner?  That is either a spammer or a troll, block that user.

Clearly the above are generalizations; depending on your objectives you want to foster different type of behaviors (sometimes you want discussion, sometimes answers and sometimes connections). Regardless of your objectives having the ability to graph behaviors this way to facilitate interpretation and identification of the right individuals is simply invaluable. Thanks to Marc and other for their work and showing us the way.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas