Global View – The World Cup & Social Media

                                                           

 

 

Image Courtesy of Adidas.com

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been focused on the World Cup as has most of the world. But as we’ve been drawn into the fever, the controversies (Goal – England!), and the off-beat (Miniskirt scandal), we’ve also been working on several large global projects for our clients around the world. And just as you watch for the details of how your team won or lost, our clients have been watching to see how they will win or lose. Because, in global social media and online communities your team can’t take a dive to stop the action or disrupt the play. Instead you must be focused on the details and the flow of your effort.

By details, we mean not just the players but their skills. In the social media world that means understanding that Twitter in Japan is big and growing, but it is pretty much ignored in Italy. So in Japan, you want Twitter on your team. In Italy, we’ll let’s just say that we’d put Twitter on the bench for at least the first half. Facebook in Germany is a big scoring striker for the B2C focused company, but in B2B it’s a ball boy. While over in Japan, Facebook wouldn’t make the team. So as you look to expand globally, research your offerings in terms of your audience. It will help a lot in terms of the results you’ll achieve (or miss)… each player has a role in the game and on the team. Don’t offer up each player as a starter when some should be on the bench.

For online communities, the make up of your team is just as vital. But so is your coach who is focusing on the details of the game’s strategy & tactics while also being the one keeping their eye on the details. For example, your coach should understand that even though many platforms are able to work in a double byte language like Japanese, the audience may want both Japanese and English titles when using your community. Each of those little buttons that perform a task on the site must also be in the local language, yet often they remain in English. The devil is in the details…

We’re excited by the recent interest in globalization of social media and online communities by our clients and prospects. But just as regionalism really isn’t dead in the U.S., differences in cultures are far greater than the differences in languages alone. Don’t expect that the offering you provide in English will translate across to your next targeted area. Instead, collaborate with your audience to define their needs and select the tools that will help them the most.

Afterall, fans follow teams where there are players they can relate to and admire, not teams that continually frustrate them…

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Impact Interactions Welcomes Experienced Social Media Professionals Lauren Bittner & Adam Crawford!

With our continued growth here at Impact Interactions, we’ve recently added two experienced professionals to help our clients’ social media and online community projects succeed. Please join us in welcoming Lauren Bittner and Adam Crawford to our team!

Lauren Bittner (Social Media Consultant) brings over nine years of professional experience in the social media and loyalty programs to help our clients drive deeper, meaningful relationships with their members. With consulting and management experiences ranging from IBM and McGraw-Hill to Allstate Insurance and Ace Hardware, Lauren has a strong foundation in the B2B social media world. She will initially support the Hall of Fame and Expert member recognition program at Cisco’s CSC as well as support additional projects both for Cisco and our other B2B clients.  Prior to joining us at Impact Interactions, Lauren helped improve usability for client sites as well, bringing another dimension to our services for clients. Lauren got her start in social media at online community pioneer Participate.com.

Adam Crawford (Social Media Consultant, Business Development) is an experienced social media professional with over ten years experience in helping large organizations with their social media and online communities. In his experience, Adam has managed teams of moderators for such diverse companies as NBCi, ATT, AARP, and Ace Hardware. Further extending his social media experience, Adam was an Account Development Manager for Open Text, a leading Enterprise 2.0 content management and social media software company for the past five years. This gives Adam a wide understanding of not only the processes and procedures for social media programs, but also a solid understanding of the technology requirements needed for success. Prior to Open Text, Adam worked for Participate.com as well. In his new role, Adam will help Impact Interactions with Business Development and consulting work.

Please join me in welcoming Lauren and Adam to our team.

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Has “Twitter Policing” Gone too Far in the UK?

Impact Interactions recently returned from a weeklong trip to London’s Internet World Conference held from April 27th – 29th. This journey across the pond allowed us to gain a firsthand insight on where the UK market is in terms of using Social Media in B2B settings. We learned that consumers and businesses alike are a bit behind compared to US efforts utilizing Social Media. Amongst consumers, Facebook is a popular site but Twitter is a foreign tool to many people in the UK. Businesses and consumers are struggling to figure out what philosophy and tools they should adopt in regards to Social Media. A recent court ruling has also raised questions over government policies in place to monitor threatening messages online.

For example, read this InformationWeek article titled, “Twitter Bomb Joker Convicted” for further evidence. Paul Chambers, a 26 year old accountant has been fined $1,500 for a Tweet he posted earlier this year which was clearly a joke. According to The Register, Chambers, frustrated with the closure of an airport due to poor weather tweeted, “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your s*** together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” Chambers was charged with sending a threatening electronic message and The Doncaster Magistrates’ Court left no doubt on where they stand for this type of behavior.

Now I do not claim to be an expert in terrorism policy. However, in my opinion this conviction goes a bit too far and like many businesses in the UK, government officials have a lot to learn. I understand that they must protect travelers at all costs, but convicting people who are obviously joking and present no immediate threat is going off the deep end. Not to mention that Tweeting about an impending airport bombing is not the best route to secrecy (even more reason to believe Mr. Chambers was just kidding). What are your thoughts on this, as well as other Social Media trends in UK and across Europe? Please leave us your feedback below. We would love to hear from you. You can also access our presentation at this year’s Internet World conference titled, “B2B Social Media: What Works 2010” by accessing the Social Media Resources tab above.

Eric Willey, Manager of Client Services

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Baseball and Social Media Success: It’s the Little Things

by Matthew Lees

Springtime seems finally to be reaching the northern hemisphere in actuality, not just in name. The April rains that crossed the US have caused their shares of headaches (or worse), but they should eventually bring May flowers; school children are sensing they’re on the home stretch toward summer vacation; and baseball season is underway.

As social media analyst and baseball fan – I met my wife at Doc Gooden’s no-hitter in 1996 – I’ve often observed several similarities between the two realms, the most relevant of which is the importance that baseball and social media place on doing the little things well.

Baseball
Baseball is ultimately about the small moments. A game may ultimately hinge on a grounder that just glances off the diving second baseman’s glove with two outs in the 6th inning, an alert runner on second tagging up and taking third on a foul ball the right fielder catches halfway in the stands, or a sacrifice bunt that moves a runner into scoring position.

Sure, a game-winning three-run homer in the bottom of the 10th is exciting. Effective, too. But these don’t happen every day. More often than not it’s the small play, the play that goes unnoticed at the time, that makes the difference. Add these up over the course of a 162-game season, and it’s the little things that separate the playoff contenders from the “We’ll get ‘em next year” crew.

(The importance of the little things is the reason why there aren’t many great baseball movies. Baseball is about holding the runner on third base when there’s a grounder to first, fouling off four pitches before drawing a walk, and bringing in a relief pitcher an inning earlier than planned to give the starter’s sore arm a little more rest. And most of the time during a baseball game is spent with ostensibly little going on, with the inactivity is broken by intense bursts when the ball is put into play. But producers of baseball movies tend to require high drama, the 3-2 pitch with two outs in the bottom of the ninth that the aging slugger hammers into the center field seats. The pace and unpredictability of real baseball doesn’t play well in the theaters.)

Social Media
As with baseball, it’s the little things that matter in social media. For every video that goes viral – the social media equivalent, perhaps, of a home run – there thousands of seemingly insignificant interactions with customers in branded communities and throughout the social Web: the reply to a question in an online forum, the blog post that gets retweeted, the Facebook post that announces an upcoming event. It’s the aggregate of these day-to-day interactions between you and your customers, readers, subscribers, users, and partners that have the biggest long-term impact.

How? None of these actions is big or brash or glamorous. But they’re part of the slow and steady relationship building that, though unheralded, gets long-term results. The question you answer in the community forum could solve a customer’s problem without the need for them to call your contact center (thereby saving your company money while saving your customer the time and effort); the blog post you write could generate a conversation that sparks a new product idea; and the Facebook post could draw someone who eventually becomes a new customer.

If your social media initiative hits word-of-mouth gold, that’s great. But focusing your strategy on home runs is like stacking your baseball line-up with power hitters. You’ll get some dramatic wins, but be in last place at the end of the year.

It’s spring time, when everything can begin anew. And it’s the little things that matter most. Play ball!

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What Have You Done For Your Community Lately?

If I could sum up the advice I gather from books and seminars about networking and building business relationships, whether it takes place on a social media site like “LinkedIn” or a face-to-face meeting, it would be this: “Ask not what your network can do for you, ask what you can do for your network.”

Now take that sentence and substitute the word “online community” for “network”. It still works. The members of a community are connecting to help each other professionally in some way. And they are certainly helping the sponsor of the community drive a business objective. Part of managing a community, just as in managing a network, is focusing on furthering the interests of the people you’re interacting with, rather on focusing solely on how they can help you.

I was reminded of this philosophy when I read “Seven Steps to Creating a B2B Community on Twitter.”  The article relays best practices for creating a relationship with your followers that is more about giving than taking to help build a thriving community.

What examples do you have of ways  you have created a win-win situation for your community members?

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Blogging for Business II – What to Look for in a Blogger

by Matthew Lees

In his post earlier this week (“Blogging For Business – B2B Best Practices”), Mike Rowland expertly covered a lot of ground in laying out best practices and benchmarks in running a successful blogging program. The “Ingredients” chart alone is worth the price of admission; I’ll bet a lot of people who run blogging programs that are successful now, only after a lot of fits and starts, wish they had information like that when things were starting out.

Some time ago I wrote about this topic for the Patricia Seybold Group (see “Best Practices in Corporate Blogging”). In reviewing that report, I found that there was just one aspect of B2B blogging in which I could add some value…regarding the bloggers themselves.

Who Should Blog?
There is no well-defined or industry-accepted profile of a B2B blogger, but certain characteristics and skills indicate the likelihood of success. Based on dozens of conversations with bloggers and sponsors of blogging programs, the following elements bubbled to the top. For the most part, B2B bloggers should:

1. Genuinely care about what they do and what they’ll be writing about. Lack of interest shows. The most important thing for bloggers to bring to the table is a positive attitude. If they like what they do and enjoy the topics they’ll be writing about, they’ll probably be in good shape.
2. Have some degree of expertise and experience in their subject area and with your company’s products and services. No surprise here. Bloggers need to know what they’re talking about. Note that this says “have some degree of expertise,” and not “be a full-fledged expert.” It’s fine for bloggers to admit they don’t know everything about their subject area. Doing so makes them more personable and can help generate buy-in from readers.
3. Bring a particular perspective to the topics they’re writing about. Regurgitating what’s already out there may work once or twice, but, as they say in the newspaper biz, you gotta have an angle. (Well, they used to say that.) Advice commonly given to bloggers is to “be yourself.” That’s much easier said than done, but it’s relevant when it comes to finding their voice and their perspective. Once they’ve got it, though, it makes everything a whole lot easier.
4. Have an interest in engaging with and learning from readers. One of the goals of blogging, of course, is to generate conversations. So, ideally some readers will comment on posts. It’s almost always beneficial to the blog and to the sponsoring organization when the blogger chimes in and responds to comments. And it’s a much more positive experience if they look forward to, are energized by, and learn from such conversations.
5. Not be overly sensitive about criticism. It’s not that they shouldn’t care. It’s just that criticism, which can sometimes be intentionally or unintentionally harsh, shouldn’t bring bloggers down to the point where they get resentful. They don’t need rhino-thick skin, but should be able to take things in stride.
6. Have some writing ability. Blog writing is definitely different from other forms of writing that business professionals tend to engage in. It’s more informal and conversational than technical documents, marketing plans, business proposals, and press releases, and it’s more structured than most business emails. Although it takes getting used to, most people who bring at least modest writing skills can eventually find their own successful blogging style if they’re engaged, determined, and well supported.

Bloggers don’t grow on trees, but they can be found just about anywhere in your organization. Getting the right people to blog is half the battle in running a successful B2B blogging program. (The other half is following best practices, such as Mike previously laid out.) There are thousands of B2B bloggers out there…but there’s always room for more.

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Blogging For Business – B2B Best Practices

Many of our clients and visitors to our site have questions about blogging in the B2B marketing world. We believe that blogging is a very good solution for starting your interactive journey of engagement with your audience. But we also understand that there needs to be a focus on creating compelling content that helps your audience become informed about your products and service, demonstrate thought leadership, or meet other needs of your readers.

Too often we see a blog that is full of press releases from marcom teams that provides minimal value to the reader. What we mean by compelling content is a blog entry that provides unique viewpoints from executives about industry trends, macro-economic issues which impact the industry, or industry developments. That does not mean static, boring paragraphs on dry topics. Rather it means providing your analysis on why this information is important for your audience. We know from our work with SAP that prospective buyers of B2B products and solutions are looking for executive viewpoints to understand where the company is going and to see if they agree with the direction. This is especially true for those companies preparing to buy a product which represents a significant change to their business operations.

But does that mean that your team must write a long 1,000 word blog entry each time? Some teams think so, and that provides a disincentive for internal members to contribute. As a team charged with blogging for your organization, the best way that you can build internal contributions is to train potential bloggers that entries should take multiple forms ranging from the short paragraph and link to an article to the summary of a key issue that may take several paragraphs to describe properly.

As long as your writers are providing a point of view on the content, the length doesn’t matter. A few sentences detailing why an article link provided is valuable often is more widely read than the long entry. Remember, B2B readers often have less time than B2C readers who are reading for enjoyment. Because of this dynamic, a short and to the point style is often preferable.

In our day long workshops to train organizations on the best practices of social media, we use a menu analogy to help everyone understand that social media works best when there are multiple courses and types used. We teach teams about using cocktails, appetizers, entres, and desserts to tantalize, teach, and engage with their audiences. As part of the workshops, we build recipe cards for our teams. Our blog recipe card is shown below:

This recipe card covers multiple ideas needed to consider when blogging. But overall, the idea is that a consistent well written blog can be very useful for both the organization and its target audience.  Content must be of interest, well written, and invite comments. Once comments are made, your organization must engage even if the comment disagrees with your idea or premise. Organizations that will not respond to user comments should not blog. Those that do engage will receive the benefits of social media engagement, leaving those who do not far behind.

Do you have questions about what to blog? Here is our rule of thumb for B2B blog content (it’s based upon our metrics analysis of client blogs):

1. 50% thought leadership
2. 20% analysis & insight
3. 15% promotional (events)
4. 15% announcements (product related)

Want to engage your audience? Try these best practices we and others have developed

1. Write in a personal voice, have an opinion or point of view
2. Blog content should have an element of uniqueness
3. Offer insight and analysis to events and/or trends
4. Add graphics, videos, charts, etc. Anything that can offer more connection and activity for the viewer
5. Update your blog using a calendar schedule so that it doesn’t become stale
6. Use your personal experiences to enrich your blog, people can easily tell if you are just posting press releases
7. Be conservative with the amount of links to your site or products
8. Talk about what’s on your mind, do not just copy and paste press releases
9. Do not make the blog into a sales brochure, diversify your content
10. Do not replicate content on the blog that you can find on your main site
11. Do not ignore your readers, if you see that there are comments, answer them and create a two way dialogue

Remember that you will have many more readers than those who will engage and comment. Help your audience. Think of their needs, then write the stimulating content in a concise manner that will meet those needs. Ready to blog? We hope so and look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Who Needs It? Dealing with Unwanted Content and Conversations in Your Online Community

by Matthew Lees

Every day seems to bring increased buy-in and understanding of how social media and online communities can positively impact organizations. But there’s still pushback around certain things. For example, community platform vendors, consulting firms, and agencies still regularly hear concerns such as “What if someone uses profanity?” and “What if they say bad things about us?”

Most of the content in your community – and throughout the social Web, too – is stuff you want. These are the questions and answers your community members share with each other and with you. They’re their problems and solutions, their interesting and relevant comments (even their uninteresting and relevant comments), their ideas, wish lists, and perspectives.

But there will also be things that you really don’t want, the content and conversations that you and the community could surely do without.

These things should make up a small percentage of the overall content, but it’s all but impossible to avoid them completely. (You’ll typically find a smaller percentage of unwanted posts in B2B communities than in B2C communities, and you’ll usually see a smaller percentage of such things in support-related communities than in affinity and engagement communities.)

Thanks But No Thanks
To be more specific, the unwanted stuff is posts and content that contain…

1. Inappropriate Language or Content. No surprise here…these are comments, images, or videos of a sexual, violent, abusive, or otherwise inappropriate nature. Note that this is about more than the use of foul language. There are a lot of mean and nasty things that can be said with perfectly acceptable words.
2. Advertising or Spam. Some advertising may be fine in your community. Often, though, it’s not. And I can’t think of a situation in which any community would want spam. (Is there a Spam community? If so, that would prove me wrong.)
3. Incorrect Information. You can’t fully control the quality of user-generated answers, solutions, and comments. Members will, on occasion, post information that’s incorrect. Usually it’s unintentional, but it can cause confusion or worse. Blatantly incorrect info is relatively easily fixable; gray areas can lead to disagreement, dissent, and (hopefully) healthy discussion.
4. Sensitive or Confidential Information. Some customers often have access to inside information, as do your colleagues, of course. If people aren’t careful, or if there’s miscommunication on when and where certain information can be shared, they can inadvertently say things they shouldn’t. This doesn’t happen often, but the cat does sometimes get out of the bag.
5. Off-Topic Comments. Such posts may be benign, but they’re either entirely irrelevant or relevant to another place in the community.

There are also a few types of posts that some may see as unwanted. But community managers and moderators worth their salt see these as acceptable, if not desirable (at least in low volume), since they demonstrate transparency and authenticity, and give community members opportunities to chime in on your behalf. These are post that…

•    Say Negative Things about Your Organization, Brand, Products, Services, etc.
•    Say Positive Things about the Competition

Be Prepared
So how do you deal with all these situations? Best is to have your ducks in a row beforehand. Here are some suggestions:

•    Have a good moderation plan, and a great community manager and moderation team. When dealing with unwanted content and conversations, moderators should be observant, understanding, firm, and fair. And know what you’ll do when you get each type of unwanted post.
•    Create appropriate community policies and guidelines, not only for community members, but for subject-matter experts and other internal stakeholders and participants.
•    Make friends with colleagues throughout your organization. It’s worthwhile, if not essential, to check in with the folks in legal, corporate communications, and pretty much all other business units. They can help with the Action Plan items that pertain to them, and help deal with unexpected things should they arise.
•    Have a library of stock replies at your disposal. This will help you respond to issues quickly.
•    Leverage the tools in your community platform. The moderation tools and accompanying workflow are important here, of course. I’m a big fan of content filters (for catching obscenities and other text strings) that trigger email notifications. And the ability to enable or disable anonymous posts can be helpful, as well, since people tend to take more liberties when they can participate anonymously.
•    Be aware. Be very aware. Technology won’t catch everything. There’s no substitute for paying attention.

Most online community best practices deal with how to engage with community members and get more of the good stuff. Knowing how to minimize and deal with the unwanted stuff is important, too.

And the best way to assuage execs’ concerns is to say “Yes, there will be some amount of unwanted and inappropriate content and conversations in the community. We can’t avoid that. But here’s how we’ll be handling them when they do arise…”

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Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge? (Part 4)

by Matthew Lees

In this fourth and final post on the potential for convergence between Internal and External communities – see Post #1 to start at the beginning – I want to touch on the individuals who are charged with building and managing communities, whether communities of employees or communities of customers.

The Practitioner Perspective
We’re still in the very early days of social software and online communities. Practitioners are the ones at the forefront of this field, which is at the interaction of sociology, technology, and business. And they’re breaking ground daily.

They’re the knowledge management strategists who think about ways of getting colleagues to collaborate more openly; they’re the HR professionals who want to retain top talent by ensuring all voices are not only heard, but also help shape what’s important within the organization; they’re the community managers and moderators who work to get customers to support and learn from each other; they’re the marketers monitoring brand value and customer sentiment across the social Web; and they’re the marketers, developers and researchers who look to engage with customers (and prospective customers) and glean insights in order to innovate and improve.

What they’re not, though, is omniscient. Because social practitioners are working in such a new space, success is a moving target. They don’t know – they can’t know – what things will be like in six months, in a year, or in five years. The guidelines, benchmarks, and best practices are largely still being created every day. Sure, some organizations and vendors are ahead of others, and there’s a lot that (happily) is known and at least somewhat agreed upon, but compared to more traditional disciplines, there are few, if any, codified bodies of knowledge.

Pulled in Multiple Directions
What this means is that it’s tough enough being a social media practitioner in the first place, let alone trying to work in multiple domains, specifically internal and external. Some of the tools and techniques involved in building, managing, and getting the most out of a community apply to both internal and external communities…but many don’t. And, as Post 2 touched on, the business goals are very different.

Last month I wrote about a practitioner in a marketing communications group whose B2B online customer community initiative was sidetracked into becoming an internal collaboration-based community. She was caught in a tug of war between the internally focused IT team and the outward-looking marketing group, with execs on both sides knowing they needed her social media expertise, but not realizing how vastly different their business goals were.

And she’s not the only one in this predicament.

The Downside of Employee Community and Customer Community Convergence
For practitioners, the downside of such convergence is the potential for being pulled unwillingly and/or unexpectedly into initiatives that you’re unprepared for, unsuited for, or uninterested in. It’s nice to ride the excitement of the social media wave, and to be appreciated and in demand for one’s expertise. But the excitement can easily turn to frustration. Here are some things to keep in mind:

•    Bring it back to business goals and business use cases. You may need to hammer on this over and over. It’s a big red flag if business sponsors are unclear on the business goals, or not in agreement with each other.
•    Make sure the technology platforms under consideration fit these use cases. Only a handful claim to support both internal and external communities, and they don’t necessarily do both things equally well.
•    Stay true to yourself. Boy, does that sound corny, but I’ve seen more than a few people take on something they knew they were ill-suited for, uninterested in, and/or knew things wouldn’t end well. It’s a good thing — really, an essential thing — to challenge yourself by going outside your comfort zone, but do this with your eyes open. And if you know it’s not right, try not to go there.

The Road Ahead
While I fully resonate with the holy-grail concept of having a single ecosystem in which both employees and customers participate, the realities of organizational behavior, social dynamics, and technology limitations will preclude this from happening on any sizable scale. Some organizations will continue to move in this direction, and some vendors will support them, but for the most part, inside will remain inside, and outside will remain outside.

The good news, though, is that while this wall will continue to stand, it will continue to become more permeable, with (1) customers and others outside the organization (e.g., customer advisory groups) being able to come in behind the firewall as warranted, and (2) employees being able to participate in more ways in customer communities.

For social media practitioners and community managers, who by nature and by practice place a great deal of stock in the value that customers can provide, this can be a good place to be.

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Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge? (Part 1)

By Matthew Lees

Social technologies have had a big impact on the ways that companies do business, both inside and out. Organizations are using social tools – discussion forums, blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, and more – to help employees be more productive and effective. They are also using the same types of tools to engage with those outside their organization, i.e., their customers (users, readers, members, etc.) and business partners.

Social media is helping to break down the walls that separate internal from external. Those traditionally outside the organization not only know more than ever before about what’s going on inside (thanks to blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), they also have more of an opportunity and ability to influence things within the company (for example, through crowdsourcing mechanisms). For the most part, it’s easy enough to set up a collaborative space for members of a customer advisory group, for example, to interact directly with a group of employees. And if you manage a customer community, you can – in fact, you should – have employees intimately involved. The lines between inside and outside are becoming increasingly blurred.

I’ve had a handful of recent conversations — with vendors and with practitioners at B2B, B2C, and employee communities — about this potential coming together of employee and customer communities. If social software and social media are at the heart of the shift towards increased interaction, collaboration, and transparency, perhaps there is an eventual convergence that can be supported by a single social technology system. Why can’t there be one technology platform and one set of resources supports (1) internal communication, collaboration, and learning, as well as (2) external collaboration, customer engagement, and peer-to-peer support?

After all, social is social, right?

Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?
Idealistic Answer: Yes
As someone who resonates with just about any customer-centric approach, I love the concept of an organization that values customer ideas and insight (and builds process around such input), and looks to connect employees working on specific initiatives to relevant and interested. A convergence of employee and customer communities would enable this to happen more painlessly and more frequently.

Employee/Internal and Customer/External communities have a great many similarities. Both types of communities…
•    look to enhance communication and collaboration among individuals and groups
•    leverage similar tools and technologies (e.g., wikis, forums, blogs, microblogs, etc.)
•    have, at their core, user profiles and directories
•    need to support both individual users and groups, all with granular permissioning to provide appropriate access
•    require underlying technology that can integrate with other data sets and applications (e.g., CRM systems, registration and authentication systems, etc.), extend , be secure, and scale as needed
•    depend upon authenticity and transparency
•    benefit from data analysis by someone for whom the success of the community is important, and who can make improvements based on the analysis

Leveraging these similarities would mean streamlined technology and centralized resources, which are certainly directly beneficial to organizations, and indirectly beneficial to customers.

So there’s a lot to like about the concept of a single technology platform that supports both employee and customer communities. It fits in philosophically with the direction in which many social media enthusiasts think organizations should be headed. But there’s this little thing called “business reality” that sometimes gets in the way …

Next: Part 2 – Pragmatism Rears its Ugly Head

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