Michael Leighton, Industrial Designer and Product Manager Trek Bikes

I recently had the opportunity to attend a Monona Terrace Wright Series Lecture. Although traditionally the topics are on architecture and sustainable design, the subject was extended to include sustainable product design.  Trek Bicycle’s Industrial Design and Product Manager, Michael Leighton, was the speaker covering the sustainability efforts in the design and production of their latest urban utility bike the “Belleville.”  With my focus on product management, new product innovation and social media use in product development, I couldn’t resist. I also have a passion for biking and support the premise that more people biking for fun and transportation could in fact help us with a number of greater issues such as pollution and the drastically overweight population of the USA.  My other purpose was to understand where and how Trek might have employed social media for research, product validation, product improvement, or product promotion in the launch of the Belleville.

Sustainability for our health

New products are created every day in manufacturing. In the broader scope, not much is done with sustainability of our environment at heart. Bottom line profits are the driver.  If we consider the benefits that a bike can bring to the environment, our personal health, and reduction of congestion in urban environments, much more attention should be paid to bicycles.

Just consider that over 3,500,000,000 gallons of gas are burned at idle by people in cars each day.  From a health standpoint, obesity trends  are staggering.

“You are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.” Michael Leighton on Twitter

Greener product design

Greener product design means designing the whole product system from a life cycle perspective.  Understanding what this means and how to design this way is the first step.  In the presentation, Leighton had many charts and graphs to elaborate on the rather complex process of data tracking and information gathering  as you compare product design iterations and the effect they have up and down the process. The key is to quantify and speed up the product decision process for environmental design and manufacturing decisions.  Don’t expect this to be a fast process either.

Trek: beliefs and mission

Leighton expounded on Trek’s beliefs and missions. They are working to change the mindset of people by creating new cool products that can change the way people live and work.  Trek is building more than just bikes, with products extending to clothing, accessories and components that build on the biking lifestyle.  From children’s bikes and the worlds fastest bike – to urban utility bikes and an innovative bike related vending machine on a urban bike path, Trek and its passionate employees are focused on the entire experience.  Leighton reiterated the mantra that is repeated within Trek, “for every decision or product,  it needs to be a better solution.”

Can they get people out of cars?

The goals that were shared on the Belleville design effort centered around the following:

• Are they able to get  people to move and get out of cars?
• Is it comfortable?
• Is it built robust enough to last?
• Is it inspiring to get on?
• Is it easy to ride?

They also considered nostalgia. Can they  remind people that biking is fun and that they could still do this activity.

Inspiration – French porters

In the 1920s and 30s, French porters were making a living on a bike. Crisscrossing urban environments, they could carry packages, deliver goods, messages and access jobs in better paying areas. Rural families could carry products to market. In the congestion of a city environment, bikes could get somewhere faster and more economically.  Trek believes they need to endear this same concept on the Belleville bike design.  Trek thought about the entire impact of the process from sourcing materials, manufacturing and getting this new bike to market.

Sustainability in design

I was surprised to hear that Trek had not really started the process of sustainable design on any other product or on their manufacturing process. So they consulted with expert, Professor Philip White, at the School of Sustainability, Department of Industrial Design, Arizona State University. They worked with “Okala” which is a lifecycle assessment methodology and education course, developed to help product design organizations, practitioners and students create, develop, and manufacture more ecologically sustainable products.

Life cycle assessment was done to make decisions and see the problems. The steps in the process are innovations, materials, manufacture, distribution, usage, life-cycle  – how long will it work, end of life  challenges (i.e., how do we get ride of it, when and where does this occur).  Trek went though every single piece and part, and every process. Not surprisingly from their analysis, the highest impacting items were the tires, and inner tubes.

Several important manufacturing decisions were:

• use harder tires – to reduce wear
• use hollow crank arms to remove some weight
• use certified sustainable rubber in the tires
• use 90 % recycled content in packaging
• use recycled material in tubes

But how did you get social?

During the presentation, Leighton didn’t share a lot of info on the consumer comments that drove the product or changes. So I went back and asked additional questions and share his answers here.

Wsoucie: With a thought to consumer research – focus groups, survey, personal stories, email request, etc, what social media tools did you use to validate your desire to build this bike in the first place?

[M.Leighton] Our decision to develop the Belleville was inspired by many things — current events, pollution, etc.  But before any of the ECO story manifested, we were inspired by many of the emails and stories that we hear on a daily basis about how people use bicycles in the city for transportation and utility.  At Trek, we spend a large portion of the product development process on ethnographic research and having an intimate understanding for how people truly use products and the experiences that those products deliver or shape.  The idea for the Belleville as a city transportation/utility bike was inspired by what we learned about getting from A to B, but also the numerous values that the end user is looking for in type of bike and experience.

 

Even Michael was involved in getting this message out with some more personal videos on Youtube.

Social media in crowd sourcing and feedback

I was especially curious to hear more about Trek using social media to gather input. What were consumers saying they needed. Why a totally new bike, why not just “Eco” design one of the other urban bikes?

WSoucie: It is not enough to build it because Trek people wanted to have a cool commuter bike that was more eco-friendly.  You stated, that Trek will build it if it solves a problem. What people (demographic) were you thinking of and what problem did they express that you attempted to solve?  As the audience member pointed out when she asked how much it weighed – it obviously wasn’t built  light enough for a 55+ woman to carry up stairs.  So what was the Voice of the Client (VOC) in this case?

[M.Leighton] There is an enormous variety of “urban cyclists”, and each rider has different needs and reasons why they ride a bike for transportation or “urban” riding.  I will say that the Belleville does not meet the needs of every urban cyclist.  Trek did however focus on a specific rider and usage scenario when developing the Belleville, that being the urban dweller who parks their bike outside 24/7.  In many cities, it is not permitted to bring bikes inside buildings, and in a large percentage of these users don’t have access to a garage.  So they lock their bikes up all day, every day.  This has great implications and challenges, but also offers opportunity to offer real solutions.

The first issue that we hear time and time again, and see every day, is the cost and perceived value of the bike.  Based on the targeted user, environment and usage scenario, initial purchase cost and replacement cost is in the top 3 factors for not only getting someone on a bike, but keeping them riding a bike.  Expensive bikes get stolen faster than a New York minute.  Ask anyone who commutes in Chicago or New York City, and they will tell you that cheaper the bike, the chances of it not getting stolen are better.  There are bike shops who will take a brand new bike, wrap the entire bike in electrical tape in order to make it look like junk, all at the buyers request and effort to detour theft.  So when you take the target retail price the end user is willing to pay, and in this case it is very low, we were really limited to the amount of unique (outside standard bike production practices) features we could add to the bike.  Also from an aspirational perspective, this target user wants just a “bike”.  When thinking about of cycling or bike in their head, it is a simple machine with 2 wheels.  That was our target.

So there were a number of insights that we learned from our research of the targeted user/rider.  These insights impacted the final product at every level — rider geometry, frame material, accessories, even varying usage scenarios for the same targeted rider.  For example they might use it as an A to B transportation vehicle in the morning, but on the way home from work, they have a need to carry some cargo such as groceries, etc.  One of the key insights was the final one, of the targeted end users purchasing but also cultural value of “riding a bike because is good for the earth”.  That was the seed for the whole ECO initiative.

WSoucie: Did you do any crowd sourcing using social media channels to gather intelligence to help?

[M.Leighton] Not on the Belleville project.  Riding a bike is an action…and we learn much more when we watch and capture what people actually do, versus what they say or even think they do.  Not to say we don’t speak with riders to get better insights as to who they are and their needs, but our research, especially for the Town category of bikes, is more heavily weighted to the observation/ethnographic research side.

That being said, we are continuing to look at all avenues of information gathering and using, and social media research is an extremely powerful tool.

Marketing with social media

Any consumer products has huge cost associated with the marketing of the product. Costs for advertising, printing, getting to the distributors, tradeshows, etc. I was interested to hear if Trek was using social media in targeted ways to let word of mouth and the “referral chain” also provide a sustainable earned media component.

WSoucie: Did you use social media channels to introduce the bike to market?

[M.Leighton] We did use readily accessible social media communities — Facebook, Twitter, etc. The one we relied on most in addition to our own website was YouTube.  Again, watching somebody do something, seeing the proof, is much stronger that just reading some words, etc.  So we put our efforts in telling the Belleville and ECO story through some short films.

WSoucie: Did you have a social media strategy in place for promotion?

[M.Leighton] It was really pretty simple, tell a compelling and relevant story…and tell it often.  Social media networks are the perfect place for not only for us to tell our story, but more importantly let other people tell it for us.

WSoucie: Did you have a media effort with bloggers to ride and review product?

[M.Leighton] When the Belleville was released, we didn’t have a specific group aside from many of the mainstreaming cycling websites, which are hubs for bicycle and product review.

WSoucie: What is your strategy to monitor and provide feedback to the consumer audience?

[M.Leighton] Our first step is that we are open to ideas from anywhere and everywhere.  We are constantly monitoring cycling and cultural blogs, as well as social media communities for review, thoughts, comments, rants, raves, anything that can help us deliver a better product, which ultimately will get more people riding bikes.  We have our website setup for customer reviews, along with questions where our tech department answers many of the questions people have about our product.

In addition to the Trek in-house monitoring and information resources, we also rely on our dealers.  We have an incredible network dealers who do an outstanding job taking care of our customers, and they are great listeners.  We go to great efforts to make sure our dealers know the ins and outs of our products, features and the stories behind them so they can answer customer questions immediately.  We are in constant communication with our dealers, so if there is a trend, concern or question, the product development team will have visibility on it.

In my opinon

After a quick search via Google for conversations on the Trek Belleville, I found  comments on blogs that weren’t exactly complimentary from actual riders not just product review sites. Granted, you can usually find the less than complimentary comments quicker.   In general the comments across several forums indicated that avid bike commuters just plain don’t like the seat and switch it out pretty quick. Hand grips head in that direction as well and seem to be noted as a replaceable item immediately. These are of interest since the seat and hand grips are made of a eco-friendly material, and were one of the sustainable design components as Michael Leighton noted in his presentation.

Leighton also mentioned that they had a customer review area on the Trek site.  I didn’t easily find the review page from consumers on the Trekbikes.com site, only the expected complimentary posted product review comments.

Product Review Comments from Trek Bike Website

Several forums and commuter-focused bike blogs had several postings by people who had ridden or purchased the Belleville.

 

“Trek clearly skimped on the saddle and grips.  These components are part of Trek’s “eco-friendly design,” but after only about 15 miles, I immediately wanted to replace them.  Here in Philly, we have no recycling for #7 plastics, so in the trash they will go.  In fact, the hard plastic, slippery grips got tossed at the bike shop this morning-they were just that bad.   I replaced them with more comfortable rubber grips.  The saddle is passable, but ugly and not all that comfortable.  It is actually held together with plastic zip-ties for ease of deconstruction/disposal.  So much for “eco-friendly design.”  Trek would have been better off using high-quality grips and saddle that don’t end up in a landfill right away-hopefully they will take note in future redesigns.”  Car Free Philly

or

“Changed the seat and added mountain bike clip peddles. Was getting a numb butt and feet on hour + rides.” Bikes For the Rest of Us – Allen

Sustainable design accomplished?

By the way, I think we could say that they were successful in this attempt at sustainable design and manufacturing.  Trek was  able to improve their score on the product from 16 to 50 points for sustainability. I guess there is always room for improvement.

Time will tell on how the consumer conversation goes on this bikes success as a commuter-friendly and/or utilitarian bike. I know that I am not the target audience.  I live rural and have too many hills to make a 3 speed an immediate choice for me. I will stick with my Trek Pilot and a BOB trailer for traveling into town. In the meantime,  I have several google alerts setup to monitor the ongoing conversation and see if they engage the audience more inclusively for this product.

By the way, its Bike to Work Month in May nationally, but Bike to Work week in Wisconsin is June 6-11, 2011. Don’t forget to get on your bike and ride.

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On Monday, March 14, 2011 it was announced that Social Business Consulting Group, a global social media consultancy launched with 17 founding partners.  I am proud to say that I have joined as one of the founding partners. I bring manufacturing, professional services and technical product experience to the team blended with social media, social selling, product management and engineering expertise.

Stepping onto the world stage

Due in large part to my experience with the Social Media Academy, I have rapidly broadened my network to include many of my social media counterparts located in other parts of the world. It has been exciting to chat with fellow alumni Walter Adamson in Australia on SaaS operations for businesses; discuss social media leadership and strategy with Miceli Pierre from Paris; and include Catherine Sherwood from New Mexico on my team for financial services project work.

This all led up to the announcement this week that I have joined Social Business Consulting Group (Sobizco) as a founding partner. Sobizco, a global social media and business consulting firm, is the brain child of co-founder Axel Schultze.

“This group of 17 social business consultants covers the U.S., Europe and Australia. Each is a certified social media strategist with hands-on industry experience from companies such as Oracle, Dell, Western Union, GE, Southwest Airlines, Rockwell, Symantec and Franklin Tempelton. These founding members have been selected for their expertise in applying social media to the goals of business and for their particular areas of specialization.”  Axel Schultze, C0-Founder Social Business Consulting Group and CEO of Social Media Academy

Social Business Consulting Group Founding Partners

Social media strategy benefits

Social media has provided enormous economic benefits to businesses around the world, including growth in market share, brand reputation, improved customer experience, higher return on marketing investments and reduced support costs—all resulting from more engaged customers.

I want to be part of a team that helps large enterprise organizations move from disjointed campaigns to a strategy focus that will transform its business. Sobizco’s services include social media auditing, strategy development and engagement planning, as well as technology consulting and a wide range of implementation services.

Help for Fortune 1000

Sobizco is a powerful team that will enable Fortune 1000 and other large companies to embrace social media with effective business results while benefiting customers and avoiding the high-profile mistakes made by so many companies in recent times. With a team of 17 founding partners and a total of 80 consultants and technology professionals we can tackle large, complex projects and challenging situations. This makes us the largest social media strategy team working globally.

Specialization in social business for B2B

The benefits of social media have not been limited to the business-to-consumer space. Increasingly, I find B2B clients exploring how social business can improve their profitability and brands. It may be hard for them to manage the loss of control, but truly a cross functional social media strategy can energize an organization.  I look forward to helping shift the mindset of technology companies and professional services to a social selling and social business relationship way of thinking.

Social Business Consulting Group

Axel Schultze spoke with me about how clients, including SAP, EMC, Quest, Oracle and many others, had a need for a larger social media consulting organization that is capable and skilled enough to work with them on larger  and more challenging projects. The founding team is unique in that they are all certified social media strategists from the Social Media Academy. This means we can apply uniform methodologies and frameworks for social media strategy across multiple time zones.

Social Business Consulting Group is a global management consulting firm with a focus on social media. The firm’s purpose is to help executives create an exceptional competitive advantage by leveraging social media. The strategy consulting focuses on a holistic approach where all market facing departments leverage social media to create a mutually beneficial business relationship with the constituencies of their respective ecosystem. Social Business Consulting Group is considered a thought leader in applying social media in large corporations. The consultants help business leaders and their teams to make strategic business decisions and create measurable economic success. The Social Business Consulting Group is based in Palo Alto, California.

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Doug Tangwall and I work on a lot of things together including End Result Marketing where we find creative ways to integrate nurture marketing

The best place to go in Madison for pizza!

and social media for business clients. Doug is a nurture marketing strategist, market researcher and even better -  a gifted writer. When he said he wrote a post on his blog on the @IansonState happenings, and needed my review for social media context, I was ready.  After reading it, I just had to share it with my audience as well. This version is adapted and shortened from the original but go to  Pizza and Social Media Can Bring the World Together to read the entire story.  I added several picture embellishments from my last visit to Ian’s Pizza.

Doug Tangwall author:

Our international social media success story begins in Madison

Madison, Wisconsin is not exactly what I would call a metropolis. It’s the Wisconsin state capital, and it’s a college town. The hero of our little story is a restaurant named Ian’s Pizza on State. Ian’s sits at the head of State Street—the six or so blocks that connect the Capitol building to the University. This cross-section represents Ian’s livelihood: students at night and the lunch crowd, a good portion of which are public employees plus a mix of conservatives and liberals from the state legislature. So, you might say that politics is at the heart of this small business.

Since this post is about the business and marketing side of the story, I’ll brush over the political debate. Suffice it to say that roughly 100,000 protestors—mostly public employees and students—encircled the Capitol in mid-February, in the snow, right outside a small pizza restaurant. The passion of this protest spread via social media and connections were made across the globe—some of these connections were people who had been involved in similar struggles in their own cities, some wanted to express solidarity, and some simply liked pizza and wanted to help.

Bottom line: Within a few days, Ian’s had taken orders for pizza to feed the protestors from individuals in every U.S. state, 60 countries and Antarctica.

Cause Marketing or Just Because?

Can't get any better than the plain cheese "pie by the slice" at Ian's

How did it transpire that the restaurant would begin taking international orders to feed the protestors?” As I traced back through various posts, tweets and Facebook updates, I began to get a picture of how the events unfolded [according to Ianonstate]:

“On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning we took a late-night call from folks still over at the [Capitol]; they were wondering if they could have our end-of-night leftovers. Well, of course—we’re always glad to hand out food at 3:30am!”

“The next day we got a handful of calls from folks throughout the country, people who had heard about our late-night donation…Then a few more the next day, and next thing, fast forward to 5pm on Saturday when we were so inundated with calls—from over half the states in the Union and from international locales ranging from Canada to Denmark.”

Since the grassroots launch of the pizza ordered ‘round the world, Ian’s has organized a slightly more formal cause marketing campaign.

We’ve also been hearing that people cannot live on pizza alone (shocking news to us, but toothpaste is good, too, we guess). In the spirit of the protesters needing more supplies than what Ian’s Pizza alone can offer, here’s a link to help you better support them in many ways.

The reason our story feels so authentic is because it is…This was not a marketing plan that was executed. It unfolded in real time with real people.

Checklist for an International Pizza Ordering and Social Media Campaign:

1) Resourceful Staff, 2) Phone and 3) Chalkboard

It turns out I was also was wrong in my assumption that Ian’s Pizza used a slick online ordering system to capitalize on this opportunity. I found instead that the tenacity of its staff combined with a shoestring social media budget added up to overnight international recognition.

In fact, Ian’s shut down its online ordering system. This is the message on its website:

Call us at 608-257-9248, then press 1. As we have just three phone lines it may take a while to get through, and we apologize in advance for that.

The results: “Media coverage soon followed with articles mentioning us by name in newspapers all around the world. The followers on Ian’s Pizza on State’s Facebook page alone grew from 3,900 to almost 15,000 fans in one week.”

Add to that some great comments and tweets:

Manager Staci Fritz who handles the social media for Ian’s tells of the challenges of being a small shop during some unusual circumstances.

For the most part, I am responsible for coming up with our message, how our voice should be throughout and how the message needed to be conveyed.

It was pretty informal. When we had news, we wanted to get it out there as quickly as possible. Also, when someone posted something that struck a chord with us, we wanted to respond. I had some help from Adam May, a State Street employee who was able to step in when I needed to focus on other things. Let’s face it, the online stuff needs a lot of watching and I had to sleep sometime!”

Customer Service Is Important Even When You’ve Stopped Serving Customers
“[Our] normal business had to essentially be shut down so we could focus on feeding the protestors,” says Ian Gurfield, founder of the Ian’s Pizza by the Slice group of restaurants.

I advocate using social media to improve customer service, but in Ian’s case, the business needed to reverse-engineer the process to set expectations and explain why the restaurant couldn’t serve its typical loyal customers.

Check out these posts from the Welcome Page of Ian’s Pizza on State Facebook Page:

We are not advertising the online ordering process at this point, and it’s not because we don’t want to help you out; we really just don’t want to over-promise & under-deliver.

And it never hurts to be polite…

Everyone is thanking us, and to that we say, “You’re welcome.”
(After all, we are polite Midwesterners.)

We are still taking calls starting at 10am to help you feed the protesters, by the way (we’re not done yet!) but our business is back to normal, with both deliveries to the Capitol and to our regular customers. Thank you so much for all that you do!

A Balanced Approach vs. a Balanced Budget

I had assumed that Ian’s was taking a stand on one side of the controversy. But again I was wrong. Look at how elegantly the company balances its message in this heated atmosphere. (After all, its customers come from both sides of the political aisle.)

We rarely take sides on any debate unless you want to talk about food—fresh vs. old, delicious vs. yucky, Wisconsin cheese vs. California cheese (whose cows are truly happier?). But other than that, we really just want to serve you the best food we can, using the best possible ingredients, with the best possible customer service.

Yes, we’ve seen tens of thousands of people vigorously exercising their right to freedom of speech, steps from our front door. We’re not going to get too in-depth here (we are just pizza people, after all) but suffice it to say it’s been a rather unusual mid-February downtown.

[L]et me conclude by stating what will come across as obvious to everyone, but during these heated times, might be forgotten by some: Ian’s Pizza is not a political party. We stand in solidarity with anyone who shares our company’s values, but we don’t believe it’s our job to endorse a specific political entity. Despite the highly polarized political climate we live in, we feel food (especially pizza!) is something that brings us together regardless of political orientation.

I asked Fritz, “How do you see social media tying into your business objectives, especially in light of recent events?”

We are known for being friendly and for doing interesting things with pizza. We use Facebook as a way to get information to our “fanatics” and to continue a personable presence.

The social media is done at a store level. I am the person who very loosely oversees what they are writing and how they are writing it. In that role, I essentially make sure posts aren’t too full of typos and that the voice is similar to “Ian’s Voice.”

By and large, it’s a very “go with the flow” type of atmosphere. However, in these past couple of weeks, I have been primarily responsible for coming up with and writing the messages on Facebook. We were starting to get a lot of attention, and I wanted to make sure we adhered to our main message of not taking sides. We also encouraged staff to post but to be mindful that we were not taking any side and that they should keep their posts on a lighter note overall.

Lessons Learned in My Own Backyard
This story has all the components of  the American Dream: the freedom of speech that social media enables; the entrepreneurial spirit of a dedicated team from a small, main-street business; the delicate balancing act necessary to maintain our democracy; and, of course, pizza.

But, in the end, it’s less a story about marketing (or even simply running a business)—than it is about Ian’s doing what they do best: feeding people.

Ian’s Pizza deserves praise for rising to the occasion during extraordinary times. But the candor, grace and affection infused in the company’s social media messages hold lessons that go beyond business: These are lessons for life. (Politicians, are you paying attention?)

• Be transparent about your values
• Serve your customers (constituents)
• Take a balanced approach
• Show respect
• Be polite
• Do what’s right

Politics divide us. But if we follow Ian’s example, maybe we can all find a way to get along. It’s a simple recipe…Pizza and social media can bring the world together.

Maybe Ian should run for office. What do you think?

Tangwall is founder of End Result Marketing, a nurture marketing and social media company based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Note from Wendy: I think this story is worth sharing based on a company staying on brand, carrying that consistent message onto the very place they need to manage the social business relationship.  They continued to do what was right and rose to the occasion. How do you feel about this?  Please share and tweet about Ian’s Pizza on State.  I am objective about this since I eat gluten free so can’t really enjoy the pizza but I like the business ethics I saw portrayed over the past few weeks.

Related articles

• Cairo Lends Support to the Protestors in Wisconsin – With Pizza (newsfeed.time.com)
• World Buying Ian’s Pizza For Madison Capitol Union Protestors (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• Blizzards + Social Media = Pizza (iowabiz.com)
• Support for Wisconsin unions pouring in worldwide–in pizza form! (dailykos.com)
• The New American Revolution: Are Wisconsin’s 100,000 Protestors A Sign of Further Resistance to Come? by Andy Worthington (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
• How Egypt inspired Wisconsin (salon.com)
• Feeding the Protest . . . (nylondaze.wordpress.com)
• Andy Kroll: Cairo in Wisconsin: Eating Egyptian Pizza in Downtown Madison (huffingtonpost.com)
• Pizza – the latest weapon of protest (guardian.co.uk)
• Free Pizza to Protesters in Madison – From Afar, Very Afar (mypetjawa.mu.nu)
• “Someone in Egypt Ordered a Pizza For the Protesters in Wisconsin” and related posts (nymag.com)

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The level of confusion around technology and technology definitions is increasing. The Social Media Academy together with Xeesm worked on a way to resolve confusion and help explain the major pillars of the Social Technology Cloud.

Social Networks
Social Networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Xing and many others serve a variety of purpose in business as well as private lives. They become instrumental in an engagement to create a better customer experience as it allows to meet and to listen to customers where they are. However Social Networks are not exclusive to sales and marketing teams to connect with clients.

Online Communities
While Online Communities had some ups and downs in the past, they will become a strategic play in a companies customer engagement strategy. All businesses will very soon want to provide a dedicated platform for their customers to meet and converse online – way above and beyond the classic support communities. While market leaders including Lithium, Jive and Ning will need to improve their community offering to serve a broader customer spectrum including SMB companies, online communities are an integrated part of a social business engagement.

Social Media Monitoring
A whole different type of solutions are Social Media Monitoring products. While most started out to identify sentiments in the market and learn what customers saying about their brand, Social Media Monitoring became a strategic solution in lead generation and opportunity identification. Social Media Monitoring tools help feed CRM and Social CRM systems and continue to be paramount to monitor brand attitude and brand value. Leading brands include Alterian/Techrigy, Scoutlabs (Lithium), Radian6 or Sysomos and many others. New applications in the SMM field will include influencer identification, business partner monitoring and other more granulate ways to better understand the needs of a given ecosystem.

Social CRM / Social Relationship Management
SRM and SCRM systems are again different beasts. They are built to help teams actively engage with customers, prospects and partners as well as other market constituencies. Sales Teams, Marketing Teams, Product Managers, Service Teams don’t ‘live’ in the SRM or SCRM tool but use it to quickly reach to their contacts and focus on specific objectives or goals while still socializing. SCRM and SRM tools provide the bridge between the external social web and internal systems. While a customer may never have direct access to an ERP or CRM system, they should have access to a Social CRM system. And like the traditional CRM systems also SCRM systems need to have functionality such as Forecasting, Opportunity Management and provide some work flow guidance to the sales, marketing or support teams. Market leader Xeesm.com and young companies like SocioToco or Gist try to enter this market with dedicated solutions to support business teams in their challenge to create a better customer experience.

Social CRM is a solution that supports a “Business Strategy” (not a social crm strategy) that most likely is set to create a better customer experience measured by increased advocacy for brand, products and services. Social CRM needs to interface with Social Networks, Social Media Monitoring, Branded or non branded online communities on the outside and traditional IT on the inside. Only if the actual customer has access to that Social CRM system, the attribute ‘Social’ is appropriate.

Tools
In addition to the four major pillars of the Social Technology Cloud there is a large offering of tools. Currently more than 5,000 tools support the above core systems and many of the core systems establish themselves as platforms to support and host those tools.

An industry in the making
The Social Technology Industry will be a Billion Dollar industry by end of this year. While the majority of the revenue is generated through advertising and sponsorships, many of the services and tools for professional usage is sold as subscriptions or consulting services and trainings.

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I am continuing to chronicle my various efforts to use Xeesm and its business applications to replace my last ‘tool’ which was ACT!.  I am a Xeesm Business Partner for the Upper Midwest.

My previous post covered data uploads and some of the mistakes that I made, before I finally had my big initial data upload complete.  There are some additional nuances that I learned after that last post.

Clarifications on Tip 1: Export your contacts into a spread sheet prior to uploading into Xeesm.

• Create CSV file
• Decide ahead of time the category for the contact and create a column for that designation
• Consider contact level (prospect, client, partner, affiliate etc) also add a column
• Create your empty flights ahead of time and grab the identifying FLIGHTID and also add that in a column

• Xeesm filters out the duplicates and non-email address/name combination (does it in the background) – After you upload your file, it show in the dispatcher if the email address is missing or not valid.
• No need for clean up the spread sheet prior to the upload

Clarification Tip 2: Uploaded into Dispatcher

Sample worksheet for prepared for data upload

• You can edit in the dispatcher the email address and update it
• Or just leave it in for cleaning up later
• Duplicates will not be processed, user will only get 1 invitation
• You can edit the notification message or not send it at all.

Last but not least

Clarification Tip3: Once in the dispatcher there are some symbols that are not explained well.

• ? – Contact is in Xeesm but not activated his account yet
• Check box – contact is using and active in  XeeSM
• Blank – contact is not in the database yet, a totally new user.

What was your social engagement this week? Could you have been more productive using a tool like Xeesm?

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Your sales process is old and it sucks

Axel Schultze is a thought leader on social selling and community. Just read this recent post on social selling on his Xeesm blog:

Xeesm Sales Process in 2010

The sales process you follow was developed 20 years ago and it matched with the buying behavior from back then – but no longer today.

* Lead qualification is nonsense because there are not enough leads.

* Cold calling is less and less effective as nobody returns the call.

* You no longer see inquiries because prospects google their stuff.

* Email lands in spam filters and advertising is ignored

* Reference selling is old because clients find the real users of a product themselves in groups, online communities or blogs like this.

* Consultative selling is limited as you are no longer the most trusted person – nor is media or the “independent” analyst

* When a client comes to you – they know what they want and what price they are willing to pay.

via XeeSM.

No more cold calls

I am currently using the Xeesm Pro version to change up my selling and connection process for 2010.  I have first hand experience with traditional selling channels.  Whether original equipment manufacturer, distributor, rep, professional services, technical  consulting, or technical products, over the past 30 years I have sold the product or service, experienced the channel on both ends and then handled the marketing strategy as well.

I have clearly felt the change in the selling process and wondered how to counter the trend of lead generation going down – even as the marketing efforts have gone up.  It  was critical to be comfortable with traditional networking and understanding how to participate and engage with people in the important groups, not just join to get names.  Even in that scenario trade and association members are aware of this tendency, which has driven them to caution every speaker at a meeting not to do any “selling in the presentation.”

The new social  sales process recognizes the change in how the consumer/buyer educates himself before they make the first call. You must provide more value and knowledge to the relationship first.  I have seen how this process can be managed with Xeesm.com.

So over the next few months, I will report on my progress and share with you my experience on social selling with applied social media.

What action will you be taking to change up your selling process?

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One of the things that might take a hit this year is the retail store holiday card industry.  With so many options to connect with people via anything but paper (email and social media), I expect to see some very creative online ideas.

Its not just the sending of cards either.  Consulting firm Deloitte estimates that 17% of consumers would use social media during their holiday shopping to compare or shop for gifts. How do you plan to send your greetings or shop this year?

What did you get?

My first e-card was just received for 2009 Holiday season.  It was from one of my favorite volunteer groups – the Ice Age Trail. If you are looking for a way to increase your activity in 2010, get outdoors more, and enjoy wonderful Wisconsin scenery, I suggest you consider joining and contributing time and funds.

I have also gotten a creative animated card from the Dane County YMCA Lodi Branch . They used  JibJab that was an absolute hoot since you add the faces of people to the animated dancers.  And of course its free.

If you are looking for a more substantial gift I love Amazon for widgets for building a wishlists  for yourself that lets others get exactly the education gift you are looking for.  On my book wishlist are Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel, and the latest LinkedIn book Rock the World with Your Online Profile by Mike O’Neil, founder of Integrated Alliances  (Disclosure – I am a regional executive director for IA).

These wishlist widgets can be added to your sites as well if you want to be helpful.  For IPhone apps this might be a good place to down load your choice.  This recent post at Widgets Labs highlights 3 different sites to go to for other types of apps.

Send me a card

Paper cards aren’t going away either.  Just how you send them. In fact, I recently started using real cards that I send from a web based system called SendOutCards.  Judging by SendOutCards, who indicated they had their largest day of sending cards last week at 405,203 cards in one day, real cards are going to continue to be big.

Why? Because we all get a little tired trying to find a WIFI location to read our e-cards!

Video has arrived 12-19-09

Yes! Today I started getting the first video greetings from businesses such as Hupspot and other social media related organizations.  I will have to create my own response to post.

How are you sending your holiday greetings this year?

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A reality check for Twitter: what’s next for businesses now that the hype’s wearing off? (part 2 of 3)

A reality check for businesses using Twitter

Twitter is primarily aimed at individuals, but Twitter’s popularity is driving many businesses to explore the microbogging tool.  It has been said that social media is hard to understand from the outside looking in. Nowhere is this more obvious than Twitter. But its also very important to listen first. Unfortunately, without going out to research and follow people, you won’t see any conversations.

Potential users are wondering how best to use Twitter and how to get started.  What’s the right business goal? Manage public relations? Be your own best news and update source? Drive the most hip and attentive customer service group? Provide only casual conversations with customers? Let the sales team connect with far flung internal team members?  Promote a blgo? Its hard to say.

But jumping in without deciding on the business goal, strategy and tactical approach before talking could alienate those very people you want to engage.  It takes time to be one of the 198 Zappos employees who are delivering happiness by using Twitter.

Social media users on LinkedIn have had a space controlled connections and relative ease of use and safety.  As they are now trying Twitter, many are faced with a free for all friend and follow system. This  scares some business users so much they delete their profile and leave the site.

Gartner published a report breaking down Twitter uses. Let’s look at the pros and cons of ways Twitter could be used for business:

Direct: Push messages out; one-way scenario

• Pros: Typically this is done by a Brand profile. This can work effectively if you have followers for your brand profile.  By only pushing messages out and intentionally avoiding having any conversations you limit the possible chances any employee can say or do anything wrong or controversal.  However, if you are only pushing a message out, you obviously only see Twitter as a free advertising mechanism.  Your followers won’t ride with you for very long.

• Cons: The general social media user audience may have a negative view of how you are using Twitter. especially if you don’t indicate that your profile is just a feed.  Worst case is that you will get noticed, but by bloggers who can be pretty harsh. You may find yourself as an example on a blog – not the best publicity. And really, we are human so count on someone doing  or saying something wrong.  Prepare, determine an escalation plan, determine a spokesperson and create some policy to help your staff.

The BoduBlog:

The social networking revolution isn’t just about you putting out messages about your brand – it’s about constantly listening to what’s being said about your brand, and twitter makes that delightfully simple – To use twitter or any other social networking tool effectively, you have to think in wider terms than simply sending out ‘we’re great’ tweets daily. 

• Recommendation: Be sure to indicate the feed is not interactive. If this is a pure coporate profile, then you may have a team managing the posts. It will be important that they are trained together and have consistent presentation and message.

Example: Business News @e24business is only a news feed but no note, McAfee News Feed includes the non interactive statement

Indirect: Letting employees tweet, converse and grow their personal brand, enhancing company brand as well.

• Pros: If you have selected the right employees to get started with this, and they are on social media with the right policy understandings and guidelines, this can work very well for the company. If they are committed to Twitter then their popularity can reflect well on the brand.

• Cons: This can also reflect negatively on the company brand should policy, guidelines or decorum not be followed.

• Recommendations: Add statement of “opinions expressed are my own”on the account, but it still we refelct on the brand.  This could be a employee with a branded account, or an employee with a personal account.  Follow a 80/20 rule either way.  If the former then 80% of your tweets corporate news, information of value, and  20% conversation and personal.  20% if the other 80% is done, can be justified for business.  Of that 5% direct promotion of product, services, or event (unless the event is educational in nature). If you are the later – employee with a personal account, they 20% business related and 80% personal.

Example: Zappos – @zappos_sole_man

Internal: Having conversations internal to the organization across departments or offices

• Pros: The platform is free. You can make your tweets private and only allow in your friends or fellow workers.

• Cons:Its not really that secure.

• Recommendations I would not recommend using Twitter in this way. There are better and more secure sites or software available to do this such as the Yammer or Salesforce.com Chatter application.

Example: Can’t find any – its internal and private

Inbound: Using Twitter as listening and trend tracking tool

• Pros: You can capture real time information and trending on topics. Competitive intelligence and business research professionals love Twitter for the insight it can bring.
• Cons: You will need to spend some time interpeting and following links to gather the intelligence that is linked to the 140 character posts.
• Recommendations: If you are looking for free applications and tools, use Twitter in conjunction with Google Alerts and more specific /niche search tools to dig up the info you are trying to find. Most of the social media tools require you to have a profile on the account inorder to fully search the site. Even so, privacy settings for individuals will be in effect.

Example: sites like Trendmap.com and Twendz can help get you started on Twitter info searchs

Twitter isn’t the end-all-be-all it has been hyped up to be, but in my the next blog I’ll discuss key demographics and potential Twitter applications that make sense for nearly all businesses to explore. 

How are you using Twitter today?

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What happens in one day in the social media ecosystem.

• Over 475,000 new users create profiles on Twitter in a day.
• Excess of 4 Million tweets are sent each day on Twitter.
• Almost 900,000 blog posts are uploaded by bloggers each day.

What numbers are you most interested in?

You just have to love social media and programmers. They develop cool applications like this by Gary P Hayes:

What part of the social ecosystem did you contribute to today?

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What Bloggers Want

Incorporating social media into events, conferences, and entertainment is the latest hot topic. In response to Lindy Dreyer of Social Fish talking about what bloggers want at a conference at Engage365 a new community. She says she and other bloggers want:

1. Free WIFI that actually works
2. Strong AT&T data network coverage
3. Plenty of outlets
4. Tags and
5. Access to photos/videos you create
6. Access to speakers
7. Access to each other
8. Boundaries specified

#####

I recently attended the Social Media and PR Summit at University of Whitewater. WIFI was available with some initial trouble logging on – I decided ultimately to use my Broadband card.

They didn’t have enough outlets.  I had to sit on the far edge of the room and not leave because of outlets and I wanted to tweet the conference. I did leave once to see a presentation upstairs, but ran out of battery near the end.

They should have seen this list by Social Fish before that time  and prepared better. Also there should be a blog room provided as there has historically been press and media rooms for writers to get away and “do their thing.” A screen was posted for live tweets but it was at the front of the room and not really accessible if you didn’t have a plug or binoculars.

25 Social Media Blogs You Should Read

Freelance Folder

A pretty interesting list of 25 social media blogs that Freelance Folder recommends reading. Some keep you current on new trends and others give you advice on how to leverage social media to your advantage.

#####

In response:

Your selection was excellent and I appreciate your brief intro since it allowed me to quickly go to some of these sites and add them to my blog role.  I picked some new I started to follow.

1. Social Media Explorer – one I added
2. Dosh Dosh – I added this one as I found it pretty interesting.
3. Conversation Agent
4. All Facebook – good place to collect updates on Facebook tips and updates
5. SmartBrief On SocialMedia – added this because of its social media news aggregation
6. Web-Strategist
7. Dan Zarrella – added along with deciding to buy his new book which is available in an audio version
8. Twitip – added this one to round out some Twitter info

PeopleBrowsr Opens Up In Public Beta, Unifying Social Activity

In response to a review of PeopleBrowser by Louis Gray on his blog.

####

Your description makes me wonder if this tool, like so many others, is a following tool that does not let you actively pursue relationships.  Social Relationship Management is really the direction that I would like to see as this type of tool develops.

While CRM is internal to the organization SRM manages the social relationships outside the organization. I like what CRM helps me do in building business relationships, tracking my conversations, notes, current and future business potential.  I like that several people across my organization could share this data so we were all on the same page.

On the social side of business I don’t want to just follow people and only catch them from time to time. I want to set up goals about my relationships with people and business I wish to pursue. I want to track how the relationship is developing.  Have I interacted with them on many levels and many sites?  When was the last time I offered some value to this contact?

What I really want is to engage a very select few at very targeted times, while the rest that I am following continue within my social ecosystem.  I don’t think even PeopleBrowser does this.

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