Social Media Software + Silos Redux

This is a post I wrote for SocialFishing, but I thought I'd share it here as well. This is an issue I'm kind of obsessed with, in case you can't tell from the post. ; )

The big thing these days is social media software–everyone wants to get into the game. Whether it’s social media monitoring, social media management, social CRM, community platforms, social media measurement, the bottom line is that every company seemingly wants a piece of the social media pie. I mean, why wouldn’t they, with revenue from enterprise social software projected to surpass $769 million in 2011?

While it’s great for software companies, for associations, I think it’s a recipe for potential disaster in the form of redundancy and overspending, especially at large associations.

Why? Think about it. Large associations have large staffs which, in all likelihood, operate in silos. Each department probably is empowered to select software and services that they need to do their jobs effectively. Typically departments that use some kind of customized software may include advocacy, marketing, PR, education, web, publications, membership, fundraising meetings…to name just a few. Over the past few years vendors have been hard at work adding social features to the software that supports the functions of each of these deparments. Capwiz recently added a Facebook feature. Vocus added social media monitoring. Avectra acquired NFi Studios, a  white label online community platform. Small Act’s Thrive is a social media management system that helps organizations identify and nurture relationships with donors and influencers. HighWire Press’s H2O platform incorporates social features. iCohere features online discussion boards….as do content management systems like Ektron, community platforms like Higher Logic, and event community platforms like Conference 2.0. I could keep on going but I’ll spare you…suffice it to say there are a dizzying number of social media-related software solutions out there, and a lot of overlap among the features of many.

If each department within an association is using these technologies without knowing what other departments within the organization are using, there is a lot of redundancy of features going on. PR using Vocus’s social media monitoring and marketing using Radian6? Education using a learning management software platform and membership launching a white-label online community? The association publishing a blog featuring member posts, but members encouraged to publish their own blog posts in the online community? Event handouts housed in the online event community platform but members uploading their own handouts from the same event in the online community platform?

What is it that we want members to do and where do we want them to do it?

While association staff in each silo are focused on providing the most up-to-date solutions to members, not only is there the potential for costly overlap, but members are most likely going to be confused and overwhelmed by too many conflicting choices. The result of this feature overlap? Poor member experience and poor ROI for these often expensive software solutions.

How can associations avoid overlap and overspending on social software? For small associations, this is probably a non-issue, as organizational culture and internal processes frequently keep these kinds of issues from occurring. But larger staff organizations are potentially headed for trouble.

If I were the head of a large staff association this is what I’d be doing as soon as I finished reading this post: asking myself “what systems do we have in place to prevent this from happening here?” And this is how I’d then answer: do you currently have procedures in place where the COO or the CTO–or, even better yet, both–know what software services each and every department are using, including a breakdown of costs for add-on social media offerings? Are departments communicating with each other when considering new social media-related services? Is there someone on staff who understands social media well enough to distinguish between which features are best addressed by one platform over another, and is that person empowered to keep less knowledgeable staff from opting into costly features that will go unused or that are unnecessary? Is that person in the loop to be included in all demos and decisions about future software purchases and/or contracts? If the answer any or all of these questions is no, I’d say there’s a decent chance you’re already spending money you don’t need to and potentially confusing members in the bargain.

Why the Foursquare/AmEx Deal is the Least Likely Thing to Prove Social Media's ROI

Photo by Cometstarmoon

I always wonder, when I read articles like these, whether the author actually uses Foursquare him/herself. Because, as someone who does use Foursquare--against my better judgement--I'm here to tell you that the idea of it being the thing that is going to prove anything other than that location based services, in their current form at least, offer users little to nothing and therefore are doomed to failure, is laughable.

The most ironic thing about the Fast Company article is the tie in between Foursquare, AmEx and ROI...because Foursquare itself is not making a cent off the deal. Really--we're all looking to a company that makes no money off a deal like this to prove the ROI of social media?

As a Foursquare user, I'm here to tell you--unless you live in Austin or some other social media mecca, nobody uses it. Ok, maybe not nobody, but very few people. If you do use it, the time you're spending fumbling with your phone to check in while you either ignore your friends, spouse or family at dinner or annoy the person behind you as you enter the grocery store is basically time wasted because, for the average user, the return on the investment of your time using Foursquare is basically nil. I recently went to England and while I was there thought hey, maybe something cool happens if you use Foursquare when you're in a foreign country--some kind of international traveler badge (while in the US the idea of Foursquare badges means nothing to me, when I was in England, the idea of badges was oddly alluring to me for some reason). So I checked in a bunch of places and....nothing. Back in the US I'm losing patience with my quests to regain my mayorships at Dunkin' Donuts and movie theaters because, in reality, once you do become mayor, nothing happens. Or at least nothing happens when you live in Olney, MD, where no businesses have heard of Foursquare, let alone specials for the mayor.

But I digress....back to the AmEx deal. The huge red flag I see with this partnership is the concept of anyone connecting their credit cards with their Foursquare accounts. Seriously? With all the recent Sony hacks--a company that is not a "revenue free zone" and can therefore, presumably at least, invest in the most secure user data protection yet STILL gets hacked multiple times--who in their right mind would trust Foursquare with their credit card information? Yeah, not me. Where are they planning to store my credit card data--in an Excel spreadsheet? On a white board in their offices? 

Call me crazy, but I would be shocked if the Foursquare/AmEx deal does anything for Foursquare, AmEx, or businesses signing up deals. Earning a $20 statement credit for a $50 purchase at Sports Authority is not worth risking giving Foursquare access to my AmEx account, having to troll my next statement for the credit, then attempting to explain to the customer service rep at AmEx why I think I'm due a credit when it inevitably doesn't show up. You're telling me that every AmEx customer service person is going to be prepared to deal with issues arising from this thing? Cashiers at stores don't even know what Foursquare is or how to process stuff like a free scoop of ice cream if you check-in at their location; how are AmEx users going to explain and prove Foursquare check-ins over the phone to customer service people who have no idea what they're talking about?

So anyway, color me unimpressed. Looking for social media ROI case studies that actually make sense? Here you go, just for starters. Or here, if you want to read a whole book on it. (not an affiliate link.)

Facebook Blocks Page Admins from Posting Legit Links

I've blogged before about why Facebook will never replace your website, but in case you're still thinking I'm full of it and using Facebook as your corporate website is a good idea, allow me to share yet another reason giving a third party control over what/how you post online is a bad idea.

This afternoon I went to post something on the Facebook Page I manage. It was a link to a totally legit mainstream news piece about a kid with selective mutism and how he communicates using music. Actually, I don't have to bother describing it to you--here's the link. Nothing shady about the story or the site, just a nice video about a kid who uses a guitar when he can't use his voice.

Well, Big Brother Facebook apparently didn't like it, because when I tried to post a the link, this is what I got:

Huh?

I clicked "let us know" and stated that the post was NOT spam, and of course got the "we'll look into it" response. So there went that post--I tried again several times and each time got the same message.

The worst part? I tried to post the link in a private group on Facebook, just to see if it would work...and it posted! So much for it being flagged as spam--why does Facebook let me post it in a group but not on the page I admin or my own profile?

So what's to keep someone from flagging your company's website or sites you want to share on your company's Facebook Page, therefore preventing you from directing Facebook fans to those links? What's their process for determining what's spam and what's not? How many people have to report something as spam before they block it? How long does it take to get a site unblocked once it's blocked?

Maybe you're ok with having this little control over what you share on a page that's ostensibly controlled by your company, but I hate the fact that I was unable to share a totally legitimate news item that I know the Page's fans would have appreciated because Facebook decided it was spam.

Still think using Facebook as your company's website is a good idea?

United Breaks Guitars...and Still Treats Passengers Like Crap

These days, who hasn't heard the United Breaks Guitars story? Or the Delta Charges Soldiers Returning From Afghanistan $2,800 to Check Bags story? What do you figure the total cost of the crisis management/damage control for each of those fiascos was? In the case of United Breaks Guitars, the figure of $180 million has been tossed around, which I think is a bit of a reach, but even without the drop in stock price allegedly caused by the incident, there are certainly costs associated with managing a brand's reputation in this age of social sharing. From the cost of social media monitoring software to social media staff and/or agency fees to staff time monitoring, compiling, responding, and doing general damage control...we're talking a big chunk of change.

So while behind the scenes brands--especially United, after the guitar thing--are spending this big chunk of change to monitor and maintain the company's reputation, it's up to the people who actually interact with customers face-to-face to make sure the customers' experiences are good. And while "the customer's always right" has always been a good practice if a company wanted to be known as one that excelled in customer service, these days it's even more important when you consider any given customer may be what is reverently known as an "influencer." Obviously United thought there was nothing special about the guy whose guitar they broke....guess they didn't realize that a "nobody" on a plane can easily end up being a "somebody" online, as in a person capable of generating 10,565,270 views on You Tube, inspiring who knows how many negative comments about United both online and off, and certainly affecting both sales and crisis communication spending in a negative way--not to mention stock price.

I say all this as intro to the ridiculous experience I had on United flight 925 from London to DC on June 20, 2011, which I am sharing here in hopes to illustrate that, while I'm surely not the United Breaks Guitars guy and most certainly not in the same league as the service men and women who risked their lives in Afghanistan defending our freedom only to be shown gross disrespect by Delta, I am a customer. A customer who trusted United as my airline for my first overseas voyage ever, and who paid not only a large price for the privilege, but an additional $89 each way to upgrade to Economy plus.

I was traveling with a friend, and when I booked the tickets, I spent a decent amount of time on the phone with the United sales person orchestrating our seating arrangements. The agent helped me select two seats next to each on both outbound and return flights, and both my friend and I paid the up-charge to sit in Economy Plus so we would be able to sit in a two-seat row.

The first leg of the trip went fine. On the return trip, we printed our boarding passes the night before only to realize our seat assignments had been changed and we were not sitting together after all. At the gate the agent quickly remedied our situation, giving us two seats together again. We boarded, found our seats, and took them--only to realize there were not one, not two, not three, but FOUR toddlers directly next to us already screeching. Had the flight been full, that would have been the end of it--sucks to be us. But it wasn't --the Economy Plus section had plenty of empty seats and Business class was well over half empty. Figuring we had nothing to lose, we asked how much it would cost to upgrade to Business. The answer: 500 pounds. Each. So basically double the cost of the flight--no thanks. Instead they gave us two new seats in economy plus. Fabulous--we were fine with that, and it would have been the end of the story.

Then the movie came on and my friend realized her seat's sound was broken. Great--this is a seven and a half hour flight and we paid an extra $90 for these seats--thanks but a broken sound system is not ok. I figure at this point, flight already in the air, business class empty--if I were the flight attendant I would have just moved us to Business class and been done with it.  Nope. No dice. We were told by the purser (I guess this is like the head flight attendant?) that we could move back to the screaming kid seats to sit together, or my friend could move back to Economy or another empty seat in Economy Plus. Those were our choices. We noticed the woman in front of us had an empty seat beside her so maybe she could switch with us and everyone could be happy. Perfect solution, at last. Except she refused. Didn't want to move.

So my friend said fine--now having already missed half the movie--for the next movie she'd move to the seat in front of us--the EMPTY seat. But before that could happen, that lady decided she was entitled to two seats and spread out, falling asleep with her legs spread across the empty seat. So my friend went to check out our original, kid-screamy seats--one of the kids lay sleeping peacefully across not one but two unpaid for seats. Nobody wants to mess with that, and I wouldn't want them to.

So basically this resulted in two hours of chaos, three unpaid-for seats being used by other passengers eliciting nothing other than a slight shrug from the flight attendant--and me and my friend having to sitting at separate ends of the cabin once she finally relented and moved to a new seat to watch the second round of movies. Oh, and Business class remained 90% empty.

Do the math: they wouldn't allow us to move to business class because we didn't want to pay 500 pounds each. Meanwhile, the flight attendants allowed the lady in front of us to take an extra seat worth more than that for free with no problems, and the other passenger was allowed TWO unpaid seats across which to lay her sleeping kid. (Which, by the way, I don't begrudge the mom or kids...I'm just trying to make a dollars and cents point. I do, however, begrudge the lady in front of us for taking  two seats with working sound systems when she could have had our two seats and everyone would have been happy.)

Add to the unearned revenue for those three unpaid-for seats the fact that I will NEVER be flying United again--seems like it would have been a lot cheaper and easier for United to let us sit together in Business class. Other airlines do it all the time.

Oh, and I didn't even mention the fact that the flight crew basically disappeared during most of the flight, and  that two of the three restrooms located next to my sear were accidentally locked early in the flight, resulting in two hours of throngs of five or more people at a time loitering in the aisles waiting for the ONE available restroom because some genius had managed to lock the other two even though they were empty? At one point I pressed the service button on my seat THREE times and waited 30 minutes with no answer and no flight attendants in sight before I finally had  to go up to the next section to ask where the crew was because I was getting tired of people crowding around my seat while they waited for the one available rest room.

Was my experience really that horrible? To me, it was. Did it cause the world to end? No. But what it did do was two things: gave me time to write a blog post while stuck on a flight with no friend next to me and having missed half the movie dealing with BS, and made me mad enough to vow to never fly United again. First world problem to be sure, but from the standpoint of social media ROI, it's something I find compelling--the disconnect between the hype and effort companies like United and are putting into social media on the back end and the flight attendants and employees interacting with customers.

United, how much are you paying for social media monitoring, Tweeting, triaging issues, and responding? What's the point if your on-flight crews don't give a bloody rat's ass about passenger experiences, however minor they may seem? That my friend could say to the purser "I need to sit near my friend because she has to take medication when she flies and I don't want to leave her alone" and he could just totally ignore the comment--why is that ok? Why was the purser (and by the way, WTF is a purser anyway?) "on break" for hours during an international flight? And why was it acceptable that two out of three restrooms were accidentally locked and sitting empty for three hours resulting in a mob scene in the aisles with no crew to be found? Aren't there supposed to be restrictions about passengers standing around the aisles in a huge throng during flights?

I say do yourself a favor and implement some cost savings by just abandoning the ruse that you care about a good customer experience, good customer satisfaction ratings, and exercises in futility like having a presence on Twitter. Because it's absolutely clear your in-flight crews have no idea what marketing is trying to accomplish with social media and aren't capable of providing even rudimentary customer service.

P.S. Southwest--please start flying to the UK. kthxbai.

Community Manager Confusion, Influence, and More

Even though I'm 43 years old I can't resist announcing--it's my birthday today. What am I doing to celebrate? Well, today, working, but tomorrow I'm taking my first trip to England. Yes, it took me 42 years on this planet to get a passport, but I finally got one and I'm going to visit a friend in England. Which is my roundabout way of saying I won't be blogging for the next week or so.

If you can't stand the thought of being without my rantings for the next week, you can visit a few other blogs I've posted on lately:

• Community Manager Confusion on Waxing UnLyrical. Huge thanks to Shonali Burke for having me, and be sure to check out the Blue Key campaign she's championing, as well as some other great causes she recently blogged about. 
• Last month I did a guest post for SocialFishing about SocMetrics, an influence-measuring tool that I think is really awesome. I have another post there coming up on June 16th about a topic which I'm kind of obsessed with lately...so be sure to go over there later this week and check it out. Another thing you should definitely check out if you're in the nonprofit or association world is SocialFish's new Think Tank. They describe the Think Tank "an online peer-to-peer learning hub and knowledge library of social media resources for associations and nonprofits" and it is truly awesome. It's not just another discussion board; it's a very cool platform that includes video tutorials and a unique Q&A format that you have to see to appreciate.

 So that's about it--wish me luck on the longest flight I've ever been on (I hate flying) and I'll see you sometime after June 22, depending on how long it takes to get over jet lag and catch up on work.

Who Wants to Win a $25 Dunkin' Donuts Gift Card?

If you read this blog, you know I almost never write about or review products--unless I just happen to be writing about a product or service just because I feel like writing about it. Once I did a review of ProFlowers because I liked their non-nonsense blogger outreach approach. I was a BitMom blogger because I'm genuinely passionate about online safety for kids and teens. But mostly I just blog because I like writing.

About a year ago I wrote a post about Dunkin' Donuts and Foursquare. The guy behind the DCDunkin account reached out to me to tell me he liked the post and my ideas. I liked that he liked my post and that I wasn't just a number to him. So when he recently invited me to a blogger event at a local Dunkin' Donuts, I went. And I have to say it was awesome.

We got to try all kinds of Dunkin' Donuts stuff--drinks and food. The best were the frozen drinks--frozen lemonade, frozen iced tea and frozen hot chocolate. Since these drinks have sugar and I'm a diet drink kind of gal, I wouldn't have bought any of these to try but I have to say they were all awesome. I learned that the flavor syrups for their coffees are sugar-free, though, so I can now have hazelnut or blueberry iced coffee instead of my usual plain. (By the way, in case you're thinking "oh, I didn't know Maggie was diabetic and couldn't have sugar"...I'm not; I'm just vain.)

While the food and drinks were tasty and I enjoyed meeting the Dunkin' Donuts staff and local marketing people, The BEST thing I learned was that Dunkin' Donuts K-Cups will soon be available!!!

So kudos to DC Dunkin' for his personalized approach to blogger outreach. I already was a Dunkin' Donuts fan but I admit attending the event broadened my horizons as far as what I order there--I have already gone back for the frozen lemonade/iced tea combo. Even though it is swimsuit season.

The good news for you? They gave me a $25 Dunkin' Donuts gift card to do a giveaway for my readers. The handful of times I've done giveaways I haven't gotten too much interest, but who would not want a $25 Dunkin' Donuts gift card?! All you have to do to enter to win is leave a comment with your name and either Twitter handle or email address so I can contact you if you win. On Friday, June 10 sometime after 5 pm I will use Random.org to generate a winner. Giveaway only available to US residents--sorry but making it to the PO is not one of my strong points and I wouldn't know how to send a piece of international mail if you put a gun to my head.

Disclosure: I received a gift card and some other DD goodies, including the most awesome swag of all time--the DD flash drive--as well as yummy food and drinks at the event.

UPDATE: Congrats Rebecca Frank! You won the gift card! Thanks everyone for entering!

Why I Won't be Visiting Intel's Museum of Me

Intel is getting a ton of buzz for its "Museum of Me" app. I've read many oohs and ahhs about it, and even that Intel is "changing advertising" with it. Sounds cool, right? I finally relented after seeing the tweet about it changing advertising and went to check it out.

The first step of the journey is connecting to Facebook. In order to satisfy my curiosity and check out the app, this is what Intel wants from me:

You know what? Call me paranoid and/or crazy but that's BS and I don't care what  mysteries lurk in the Museum of Me--I'm not doing it. Why do I have to give Intel the ability to post to my Facebook Wall and access my profile information, photos and videos, and friends' information?

I know I'm supposed to be the cheerleader for this stuff since I'm a social media manager and all...but I'm sorry, I'm just not. You want me to give you my email address in exchange for possibly winning something or being able to receive coupons? Ok, fine. But pretending to provide entertainment or amusement or whatever it is that Facebook apps claim to do in exchange for me giving a company access to every detail of my life as it lives on Facebook? Forget it. That's not advertising, that's mass stupidity on our parts for allowing it.

I think there needs to be WAY more transparency about exactly what we're exposing when we allow apps like Intel's Museum of Me and countless others access to....well, everything about us and our friends on Facebook. Why does a company spend thousands of dollars creating a virtual museum of your Facebook stuff? Just because it's cool and good PR for them? Or because they get to suck every drop of information out of us in the process then sell it or market to us or do who knows what with it? We go apeshit about privacy when the TSA wants to scan us, but we all bow to companies like Intel for creating stuff like this--then bend over and let them take us for all we're worth digitally. Frankly, the TSA can scan the crap out of me--I couldn't care less--but this continued private information pillage via Facebook? No thanks.