I am coming up on my third week teaching at San Jose State University. And while I am having a blast, I am realizing that teaching a class is much more difficult than I anticipated. And I am still trying to get used to the students calling me Professor Brito. Nonetheless, I wanted to share what I will be teaching over the next 3 months. The majority of students enrolled in class are PR, Journalism and Advertising majors. There are a few enrolled from the business school as well.

I decided to divide up the curriculum into three parts (see below) — the social customer, the social brand and the social business in that order.  The first part will undoubtedly cover the growing influence of the social customer, the differences between influencers and advocates, common behaviors of the social customer and we be discussing real time case studies such as the Susan Komen & the Planned Parenthood fiasco, Verizon Wireless, Bank Of America, Comcast and Netflix – and whatever else will break over the next 3 months.

The second part of the class will cover the brand’s “response” to the social customer.  We will go in depth into social CRM (technology and use cases), marketing campaigns aimed at engagement and community building. We will also discuss technology vendors in the space (i.e. Radian6, Spredfast, Lithium) as well as provide case studies of brands using these technologies to engage with the social customer.

The last part of the class will discuss the operational side of social business internally. We will discuss the challenges that many organizations are facing – employees running wild on social media, getting fired for posting questionable content on social media channels; social media policies and governance, change management and leadership.

In parallel, I am going to help the students focus on personal branding – optimizing their LinkedIn profiles, Twitter accounts; as well as writing blog posts each week.  If you would like to follow along, the hashtag is #socialSJSU. Wish me luck!

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This isn’t link bait and it wasn’t created using Klout or any other influence measure. I wanted to share this list because these are really smart people, many of whom I know personally, that influence my thinking, writing and inspiration to learn. There is a certain level of humility and trust with each person on this list and they are paving the way for social business thought leadership in their own unique ways. I highly recommend following each one if you want to fully understand the definition of social business and how you can use the principles to change your organization. I also created a Twitter list in case you are interested.

(1) Rawn Shah – Social Business Strategist at IBM and Forbes Blogger
Follow @Rawn

(2) Dion Hinchcliffe – Executive Vice President at Dachis Group
Follow @dhinchcliffe

(3) Sameer Patel – Partner @ Sovos. Enterprise Social & Collaborative Strategy and Technology.
Follow @SameerPatel

(4) Chelsi Nakano – Writer, CMSWire
Follow @chelsi

(5) Mark Yolton – SVP, SAP Community Network
Follow @MarkYolton

(6) Sandy Carter, VP Social Business Evangelism at IBM
Follow @Sandy_Carter

(7) Olivier Blanchard – Author, Social Media ROI
Follow @thebrandbuilder

(8) Haydn Shaughnessy – Writer for Forbes
Follow @haydn1701

(9) Matt Ridings – Co Founder & CEO of SideraWorks
Follow @techguerilla

(10) Maria Ogneva – Head of Community At Yammer
Follow @themaria

(11) Jeremiah Owyang – Analyst at Altimeter Group
Follow @jowyang

(12) Chris Perry – Head of Digital, Weber Shandwick
Follow @cperry248

(13) Esteban Kolsky – Analyst & Social CRM Expert
Follow @ekolsky

(14) David Armano -EVP, Global Innovation & Integration at Edelman
Follow @Armano

(15) Marcia Conner – Blogger, Author
Follow @marciamarcia

(16) Rachel Happe – Founder, Community Round Table
Follow @rhappe

(17) John Bell – Head of Ogilvy, 360 Digital Influence
Follow @jbell99

(18) David Christopher – Social Business Leader for Oracle EMEA
Follow @davidchris

(19) Matt Dickman – EVP, Social Business Innovation at Weber Shandwick
Follow @MattDickman

(20) Mark Fidelman
A Social Business GM at harmon.ie. Writer for Business Insider
Follow @markfidelman

(21) Dave Gray – Author and Partner at Dachis Group
Follow @davegray

(22) Brian Vellmure – Blogger and Social Business Consultant
Follow @BrianVellmure

(23) Amber Naslund – Co-Founder, SideraWorks
Follow @ambercadabra

(24) Chris Carfi – Social Business Consultant at Ants Eye View
Follow @ccarfi

(25) David F. Carr – Editor of Information Week’s ‘The BrainYard’ Community
Follow @davidfcarr

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A few weeks ago, Peter Kim wrote a post about his trip to Ford. He mentioned a few different times that Ford’s initiative of inviting external influencers – several different bloggers from countries including Canada, Germany and China was a bold move and that it was a great example of how Ford delivers on being a social business. I agree.

Opening the doors behind the firewall to external people and being open to feedback is certainly one attribute of a social business along with operational elements like communication, connections and culture as Peter mentions.

I have always had this philosophy that a social business enables a brand to communicate more effectively with customers, partners, employees etc. and as Peter says “scale” programs such as Ford’s initiative earlier this month. That being said, a natural conclusion of Ford being a social business is that their external engagement initiatives are second to none.

However, a recent report by Visibli, a real-time analytics platform shows otherwise. Visibli analyzed  the top 5 auto brands to see which one of them is most engaging on Twitter, and how they do it. Some of the findings include:

• Honda is more engaging on Twitter than Ford and rest of ‘big auto.’
• Honda does it by targeting the right followers — 45% of their followers are interested in auto-related content, higher than any of the other brands
• Contrary to popular ‘best practice,’ almost 100% of Honda’s tweets are auto-related. Zero variety … but it works!

Other than owning a Honda Civic many, many years ago, I have zero visibility into Honda as a company. Are there social business initiatives happening behind the firewall? Are teams collaborating and engaging internally? I really don’t know and I don’t know anyone who works there. But here are a few considerations:

• This is one study from one vendor; and one could argue that a retweet is not an accurate measure of engagement OR at least the the only measure of engagement
• Perhaps Ford is still early on in their journey of social business transformation per Chris Carfi from Ants Eye View.
• It could very well be that Honda just has a stellar marketing team (or agency) and utilizes real-time analytics to provide extremely relevant content to the community – the right content, at the right time, in the right channel to the right customer.
• Increased customer engagement is only one output of a social business – other outputs include an increase in employee engagement, increase in employee productivity, efficiency and sales; innovation, collaboration, etc.

Image: StockFresh Speedometer

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A few months ago, I wrote about the 4 Pillars of a Customer Advocate Program – infrastructure, technology, content planning and measurement.  One thing I hear from many clients is “how do we scale a program with hundreds of advocates?” or “what kind if technology can scale as we grow our program and increase the number of advocates?”

Before an advocate program is launched, a decision very early in the planning process needs to be made about which technology platform to use in order to manage and communicate with advocates. Many companies use private LinkedIn and/or Facebook groups to manage back and forth communication. This option is free but brands have to work within the technical capabilities of such platforms and customization is a non factor. Others use private communities built with very scalable  applications like Jive or Lithium. This option give more flexibility to match the look/feel of a corporate website as well as integration with other sCRM or online monitoring technology suites.

One company that I have been keeping a close eye on is Fancorps. Fancorps is a customer advocacy platform which enables organizations to activate and reward customers for word of mouth recommendations and reviews. – essentially transforming them from a friend, fan or follower to an advocate.

Here is a quick review of their back end platform:

The dashboard is a quick snapshot or representation of the community environment. It allows brands to quickly gauge the “who, what, where” of the program.

With all the hype about gamification and how it drives engagement, Fancorps has built a significant gaming experience within their platform via a leaderboard and advocate tracking interface.

The Fancorps platform can gauge how involved and influential each advocate is with Activity Points, Store Credits and Klout Score; and then rewarding the advocates based on these currencies for their time and effort.

Fancorps allows brands to manage and assign tasks to advocates.

Sort/Assign tasks based on demographics and Klout score

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In the following video, Chris Heuer interviews Sandy Carter, Vice President of Social Business Evangelism at IBM.  The interview is 17 minutes long but the key takeaway is that “Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch”.

What this means to me is that the backbone of social business transformation has to be grounded on behavior change (culture) – not technology, not social media, not process. In order for effective change to become an epidemic, a certain level of trust needs to manifest itself within an organization through behaviors, actions and communication. And trust only gives birth when business leaders not only talk the talk, but walk the walk as well (or, begin to change their behavior).  This is one reason why I often write about IBM and the great leadership they are taking in this space.

There is certainly change happening in many organizations today but it’s usually within small pockets of teams led by various change agents with little to no coordinated effort to move the organization collaboratively with one vision.

Here are a few indicators to determine if your company is beginning to evolve:

• Company leadership mandating that internal teams collaborate across functional business units, geographies, product organizations and channel partners (they also have to be collaborating themselves not just telling others to do it)
• CEO and/or executive teams using social technologies to communicate internally & externally and encouraging employees to do the same
• Global/functional teams sharing best practices frequently; organizational silos dying a slow death
• Social behaviors become engrained in the everyday fabric of employees’ workflow, processes and job functions
• Social business initiatives becomes a consistent line item in marketing, operations and IT budgets
• Human resources adds “social media” type of behaviors in job descriptions and employees are then held accountable

Now the question is .. what are you doing to change your behavior?

Image: BigStock Paper Lunch Bag

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As a dad of two beautiful girls, this makes me want to produce great bodily harm on someone. As a business guy who writes a lot about social business, this is a dialogue that we have to have openly to help educate others.

It saddens me that social media can be used to provoke behavior like this.  A case WAY TO CLOSE TO HOME in Livermore (20 minutes away from my house) has opened my eyes to the problem with social media in the educational environment. Unfortunately, it had to take the arrest of a Livermore teacher in a child molestation case to have school officials re-examine the social media policy between teachers and students. Investigators say 40-year-old Marie Johnson’s relationship with a 14-year-old boy began with text messages, Facebook postings and instant messaging. Video below.

This is not an isolated case either and I am sure there are hundreds more! In fact, several recent cases in West Michigan, people in authority — teachers, staff members, etc. — have been accused of sending inappropriate messages on social media sites to students.

In business, it’s about co-creation, collaboration and making sure that the entire organization is helping drive the business forward together. And in some isolated cases, social business initiatives are gray in terms of ownership, governance etc. There is no real black and white.

But in situations like this that involve children and an institution that I pay taxes to, it is black and white. There should be absolutely NO contact in social media between teachers and students under 18. No collaboration, no conversation, no negotiation, no committees and no center of excellence needed to make a decision. There are enough problems with the world we live in and with the educational system; and adding this to the mix won’t help parents, teachers, school officials, students and everyone else involved.

What do you think? Am I way off base? Jumping to conclusions?  I’d love to hear from some teachers and understand your points of view.

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Last Friday, the good folks over at Lithium hosted a dinner to honor Dr. Michael Wu and the release of his book, The Science of Social: Beyond Hype, Likes & Followers. I was like the ugly guy in high school that went to the prom without a date — I was just happy to be there. I was surrounded by some super smart industry influencers — Paul Greenberg, Sameer Patel, Mark Fidelman, Brian Vellmure, Chris Carfi, Sean O’Driscoll, Sean McDonald, Todd Shimizu, Susan Etlinger, Esteban Kolsky, Kare Christine Anderson, Becky Carroll, Steve Farnsworth, Charlie Isaacs, Brian Blau, Christine Crandell and of course the wonderful team at Lithium – Lyle Fong, Katy Keim, Dan Ziman and Erin Korogodsky.

Here is my attempt at reviewing Dr. Wu’s book, The Science of Social.

Chapter 1 is really about a brand needing a deep commitment to community building. Dr. Wu starts of the chapter highlighting 7 myths:

• Myth 1 – Being there is enough: a brand needs to do more than just “be there” for the sake of “being there”. Community building is a commitment to listen, to engage, to act – just like a marriage.
• Myth 2 – Social channels are an opportunity to broadcast direct, outbound marketing campaigns to a massive audience: most brands start off with this mindset but learn really fast that broadcasting marketing messages is grounds for community abandonment, lack of trust, and complete failure in social media.
• Myth 3 – OMG, going social means I have to make every customer my BFF: finding a small set of “superfans” or advocates is the key to driving community growth and meaningful conversations.
• Myth 4 – I am the authority on my company, products and services: the recent issues with Netflix, Bank of America and Verizon Wireless prove this time and time again to be false.
• Myth 5 – If we go social, we must be on every channel: brands need to be smart and prepared to scale before they create a multitude of social channels. Listening to the online conversation will help determine which networks a brand should spend time in.
• Myth 6 – Influencer campaigns don’t work: they do work if they are a part of a meaningful community
• Myth 7 – Social media are all the same: social media encompasses more than just Twitter and Facebook; and Dr. Wu breaks down the difference between communities and social networks.

Chapter 2 is about cultivating superfans and influence. Much of this chapter explores what makes superfans tick; and the underlying nature of influence, trust and relationships. According to Wu, superfans account for 1 – 2% of the community and can create real business value:

• Lower support costs by answering questions from the community
• Helps a brand scale and manage a multitude of fans
• Helps with marketing because superfans will serve as evangelists and tell others
• Contribute to ideation, co-creation and constructive feedback
• Spend time with the brand, in the community (essentially becoming the brand)
• Generate content on the site (articles, tutorials, Q&As)
• Quantify ROI

Dr. Wu continues to analyze the 1% (or superfans) and examines their behaviors, the way they interact, act and influence others to act. He then goes into detail about the six factors of influence:

• Domain Credibility
• High Bandwidth
• Content Relevance
• Timing Relevance
• Channel Alignment
• Target Confidence

And, he points out that it’s not enough for someone just to be popular. It’s not even enough to have a big, influential, talkative following. Someone who is truly influential for the brand needs to have all six factors listed above.

The chapter concludes on the basis of trust and Dr. Wu even cites Richard Edelman, “Trust is no longer a commodity that is acquired but rather a benefit that is bestowed.”

Chapter 3 is about gamification and motivation. The biggest takeaway for me was that people buy products and services.  But they crave experiences and that’s what gets them to come back time, and time and time again. Throughout this chapter and the entire book, Dr. Wu gives quick nuggets and case studies that validate his thinking.

What also stood out for me was the concept of motivation; and Dr. Wu’s explanation that the goal of dynamic gamification is to create lasting engagement. And, that the job of game mechanics is to reliably, predictably and repeatedly drive customer behavior.

Chapter 4 is about a deeply engaged community. This is where Dr. Wu starts to bring all the points from the previous chapters together in one cohesive thought process – the power of the 1%, what motivates them and the altruism principle.

Dr. Wu also illustrates the characteristics of a well designed community:

• prioritizes and ranks good feedback
• acknowledges the most useful contributions
• allows anyone to earn a good reputation
• awards privileges to community members who have provided value to others within the community (i.e. writing blog content, early visibility into new products, co-creation of products, processes, etc.)

On the contrary, Dr. Wu also illustrates the problems with siloed communities:

• offers little incentive for members to engage with others
• decreases overall participation levels
• prevents the influx of superfans

This book was very enjoyable to read. It’s full of insights, wisdom and key learnings that will help marketers, support professionals, executives or anyone else wanting to learn how to create meaningful communities on the social web. Dr. Wu is the ONE social media scientist and yet too humble of a man to even admit it, much less put it in his Twitter bio.

I highly recommend reading this book.

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