On 11 August I tweeted about a great new iPhone app called SnapSendSolve (http://go.mrees.com/snapsend) that allows you to quickly and easily send incident reports to your local council.
On 16 August I tried SnapSendSolve for the first time. On our regular cycling route the bushes were taking over the path. Launching the app I took a photo, selected the incident type, entered an optional short message and touched submit. This is the message that SnapSendSolve generated:
I’ve been interstate for a week or more but at the beginning of this week (7 September) I am very happy to report that this problem has been fixed with fresh saw cuts evident throughout the affected section of path. A big hat tip to Gold Coast City Council (GCCC) for getting this done, and so quickly as well. [I am hoping the social media watchers at GCCC will pick up on this praise.]
Needless to say my initial enthusiasm for SnapSendSolve has grown enormously. I hope it is an encouragement to others as obviously our council is taking notice. Good on the GCCC!
Jacob Morgan, Principal of Chess Media Group who taught me to eat with chop sticks and introduced me to Sushi, has a personal rant about social CRM gurus & guidance out there on CMS Wire. I tried posting a comment but it went into moderation. Don't know when & if it will be approved. Either ways I wanted to share my thoughts and troubles here too. Every time someone uses the term Guru I am sure a billion people die a bit.
FWIW:
Guru comes from two words in Sanskrit - Gu & Ru ... quoting from Advayataraka Upanishad 14—18, verse 5
The syllable gu means shadows
The syllable ru, he who disperses them,
Because of the power to disperse darkness
the guru is thus named.
Generally speaking, it is used to refer to a person who guides you, a teacher.
A Pundit OTOH means a learned man, a scholar.
HTH.
As for your points about lofty phrases like “well you can’t be social externally until you are social internally,” or “you have to change your corporate culture first,” or “we need to spend a few months researching and developing a long term strategy before we can do anything”, these are phrases taken out of context. Mere chants of sound bites without understanding the meaning of the 'mantra'.
Neal, what is one of the most recent insights you have learned about LinkedIn that can help us?
Since I wrote the book on LinkedIn, although 90% of the functionality of the site is still the same, I am finding the “Follow” features that LinkedIn have introduced to be of value for some. While this “feature” may still be a mystery to many, here is my advice on how you can strategically use it by thinking outside of the box. For instance:
I’ve been reading Dan Pink’s book, “Drive,” and while I’m only 50 or so pages in, I can say that so far it’s a pretty interesting read. One particular area of the book mentions the difference between algorithmic vs heuristic ways of getting things done. Dan breaks down the difference between algorithmic and heuristic ways of working as being the same as process centric vs more creative ways of working – with algorithmic being process centric. If you want the full definition here’s Wikipedia:
An algorithm is an effective method for solving a problem expressed as a finite sequence of instructions.
A heuristic is a “rule of thumb”, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment or simply common sense. A heuristic is a general way of solving a problem.
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A big IT firm specializing in customized software experienced a decline in customer satisfaction in general and an increase in customers sharing their negative experiences with the customized software online. In order to turn the tide, I advised them to go out on the web and solve the issues as soon as they appeared, rather than waiting until customers approached the firm with their problems.
Together with the communications department, I identified three main areas that needed to make this change. First, they needed to discover the conversations that were going on about their products, services and brand. Second, they had to think about how they would participate online. And third, they would have to require collaboration between departments that weren’t collaborating at the time.
Many companies I work with today are enthusiastic about diving into social media. It's shiny object syndrome at its finest. The problem I find most prevalent is that companies have no realistic idea about what it takes to launch and support a social media program.
It takes a lot more than creating an account and setting up a profile with the best of intentions to participate.
Here are 5 things to consider before you choose to add social media to your marketing mix:
Do you know what social media is? Technically, it is any media that is distributed or circulated via social groups, where people interact socially. This can apply to blogging, micro-blogging, social network platforms, and the like. CRM, or customer relationship management, is maintaining customer relationships with a company. Marrying the two is an essential part of any company’s successful CRM plan today. Here are some ways in which to implement social media CRM right away.
Set the Plan
Sit down with your managers – IT, sales, customer service, and marketing –to discuss your options. Think about the image you want to project. Use this as a guide to direct any future movements in social media CRM implementation.
Choose a Platform
With so many social networking platforms available, which do you choose? Take a look at them and decide which is most well-suited for your business’ industry. Depending on the audience and the nature of your company, you will know which platform is the right choice.
Choose Your Friends Wisely
Think about the phrase “less is more.” While it can be impressive to have thousands of followers and friends, if those accounts are inactive, your business won’t see any benefits. Select friends and followers by thinking of the long-term.
The rise of geo-location services, culminating in the release of Facebook Places, has led me to ask one key question – is there an opportunity for organisations to extend their customer experience into this space?
We’ve already seen Facebook Places integrated into geo-location dating and treasure hunts, but we’re yet to spot any real extension of an organisations customer experience. I think there is the opportunity for some unique brand experiences, or the chance to help customers who check-in at your Facebook Place. It’s likely that we will start to see an extension of the rewards through offers and discounts we saw employed through Foursquare and Gowalla earlier this year. Have a watch of the video and leave your thoughts in the comments.
This post follows on from a post that I wrote last week called Social media is not free and expands on part of a list post that I wrote back in June called Social Media for My Business: 16 Lessons Learnt so Far, where I talked about some of the things that I had learnt on my blogging and social media journey over the last few months.
Going over the rest of the lessons, I noticed that some of them naturally bunch together so today I want to talk about three of the lessons that are about finding your niche, finding it and what I have learnt.
Yesterday I wrote a post entitled CrowdSourcing and Customer Service. No, We're Not Scared, We're Just Smarter Than You, in response to a blog post by a frequent participant in the #custserv chat on Twitter, in which he suggests that the reason people do not agree with his position on crowdsourcing is that they are "scared". His suggestion is to "let go", which might be a good thing for orgasmic dysfunction, but as a psychological explanation for disagrement it's rather sad.
I wondered, though, why some people, particularly those that are ardent participants in social media, often seem to be so out of touch with people who are not enamored with the things they are. It kind of twigged when I realized that for some, social media has become such a focus that they spend far too much time interacting on it to have time to spend elsewhere. That wouldn't be a problem if the people they hang with on their social media "places had different perspectives, or disagreed, AND if those involved wanted to learn through dealing with diversity in opinion.
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I’ve been reading Dan Pink’s book, “Drive,” and while I’m only 50 or so pages in, I can say that so far it’s a pretty interesting read. One particular area of the book mentions the difference between algorithmic vs heuristic ways of getting things done. Dan breaks down the difference between algorithmic and heuristic ways of working as being the same as process centric vs more creative ways of working – with algorithmic being process centric. If you want the full definition here’s Wikipedia:
