Eye Surgery - Again

Dear friends, my apologies for the low amount of postings this week. This is just to share that posting will be light, as I am going for an eye surgery again.

It's this operation.

I'll be back online after a week.

Oh by the way, I was honored that Career Overview listed this blog as a top blog in the Top 50 Blogs for HR Wisdom !

Skills for the Organization 2.0 change agent

What do you need to make your business "social"?

Caroline Dangsen puts down some characteristics she thinks the social media evangelist needs to shepherd the organization to become social:

• Passion for the business
• Appreciation for the organization’s cultural heritage
• Limitless determination and stamina
• Ability to influence
• Skills to maneuver the political landscape

These five characteristics are in addition to excellent interpersonal skills and a passion for social media.

Looking at these - it is worth noting that these are similar to Change Management skills - and I think Enterprise 2.0 and social media evangelists should look at the already considerable literature on driving organizational change - and take some pages out for it - and focus less on the tools and more on the cultural aspects. Caroline's post is worth reading in this light :-)

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Managers Should Nurture Not Just Subordindates But Networks

In his blog post futurist Ross Dawson writes that many of us have made choices to be content creators. And that there are two kinds of professionals now, those who create content - and those who don't.

Those who are content creators - are given a leadership role by their audience. But as Ross notes, it is a slippery slope.

Which got me thinking, what next? And I knew I had an answer - in the 7 social roles - that I had blogged earlier.

A content creator (or curator) adds value to the audience by connecting them with new ideas - to trigger fresh perspectives.

However, I would argue that a higher value is provided by a community creator, a person who helps connect people with people who have similar interests.

As Gaurav says, the calling of the community creator is to scale passion - and content creation is the first step.

So if you are a content creator, my question to you is - what community are you nurturing? What passion are you scaling?

I have chosen to nurture a community of HR professionals (via this blog and this community) without being aware of what I was doing then. But now I can connect the dots :-)

Create a B2B Social Media Marketing Plan

In association with NASSCOM, 2020 Social is presenting a one day workshop on How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan on April 23rd 2010.

Take a look :-)

Here's what it would cover:

• What is social media
• What are the specific social media channels
• How social media impacts marketing and business
• How certain case studies will help in understanding the use of social media in marketing
• The importance of social media listening and measurement
• How to create your own framework for a social media based marketing program by focusing on:

• Understanding your business objectives
• Understanding your audience
• Defining your strategy and selecting specific social channels
• Creating your tactical plan
• Setting up a listening program
• Successfully presenting your plan and implementing it.

So go here and apply to register.

In the age of Social Media Employees & Customers

Shiv Singh posts at his blog :Owning the Brand. Employees & Customers. This reminds me of the two blog posts I had made earlier on how your employees are the "new" media (think social) and are the new marketers for your firm.

If you understand them in this context. Else they will be "unused assets" :-)

The conversations reminded me of the above slide that was part of a presentation that I gave to a Fortune 20 company CMO two years ago. I used it to explain the fact that every employee is an interface to the customer and companies need to think about them as untapped assets to leverage. Her organization had well over 100,000 employees so explaining that each employee has an influence network of at least 20 people translating into a circle of 2 million people really resonated with her. In that moment she got social influence marketing.

As we move through 2010 and figure out how to leverage this hidden asset, the question is how do you manage your brand in a world where employees can (and I believe should) be your brand advocates. Is this even possible? Does it run the risk of doing more damage to your brand than you can handle? I don't think it does and nor do retail brands like Best Buy and Starbucks. Both are brands that I discuss in my book as ones that are leading the way with the creation of social voices - real people that speak authentically on behalf of the brand. Developing social voices has had another wonderful unintended consequence - the brands themselves have become social at the core or as I refer to them, they've become social brands.

So what's next? More companies in more industries are going to need to open up their brands to their employees and their external advocates. To let them share control of the brand. An industry where I believe we're going to see the next big move - hospitality. The industry is inherently about customer relationships. Every employee in a hotel chain for example, is going to need to be the social voices for the brand. The question is which hotel chain will be the first to do this?

When your employees are not just employees, how does that change the HR view you have? How does that change the Marketing and Communication plan that you draw up?

Do you want to empower and engage them - or do you simply say even if they are interested "This is not your job?"

Companies that will learn to risk and trust will succeed in this new age.

Analysis of a company's Employment Brand on Social Media

We at 2020 Social (http://2020social.com) recently compared the employment brand related conversations of two large IT firms on the social web by bloggers and on social networks.

The analysis looks at trends, themes and sentiments associated with these two IT firms over the period of one month (March 2010) It also has a representative recommendation section on how one of the firms can leverage the social web to build its employment brand.

Please note for confidentiality's sake all identifiable data has been masked.

We would be happy to share this analysis with people who'd like to explore such a study for their own organization. Do send me a mail to gautam@2020social.com with the subject: Request for Employment Brand Analysis

Do also go through our corporate blog at http://2020social.com/category/blog to understand what we do :-)

The Social Business and The Acquisition of Hinchcliffe & Co by Dachis Group

Yesterday the news spread on Twitter - and came to know of it via Lee Provoost (@leeprovoost)- that the Dachis Group had acquired Hinchcliffe & Co. headed by Enterprise 2.0 thought leader Dion Hinchcliffe.

As Dion wrote on the Dachis Group blog:

When Web 2.0 arrived on the scene in the middle of the decade, it was clear that something momentous was happening in our personal lives, but it was almost too large a change for most of us to easily digest. Now, much the same transformation has begun in our businesses. Back then I decided to immediately create a company to bring these ideas — and changes that accompany them — in the most positive possible way to enterprises around the world and I haven’t looked back.

The outcome was something most of you are now quite familiar with in the subject matter we explore in depth in our blogs, workshops, books, articles, speeches, and consulting practice: social software, cloud computing, open APIs, innovation, crowdsourcing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social CRM, and more. It is now increasingly clear that these ideas are all part of a macro set of trends and concepts that are changing the way we structure and operate our organizations today. Thus, as I stated in the press release, I believe that Social Business Design captures these ideas in a comprehensive approach that will be an essential foundation of next-generation enterprises.

The coming half-decade is going to be a tremendously important and exciting one in the business world as organizations look to fundamentally retool for the 21st century, an era that has quite different expectations and requirements around business and how it gets done.

Enterprise 2.0 Council member Susan Scrupski posted what this means to the new industry:

This is a terrific development in our sector as the consultants who’ve been independent are recognizing there is a tremendous amount of demand to understand and adapt to the technology-driven disruption and innovation that is exploding around the globe as a result of the socially interconnected web. Where the majority of our members in the Council are inventing wheels for the first time, the extension of their hard work will require a bench of professional talent. In order for consultants to meet that demand, consolidation is the only way to deliver by taking advantage of economies of scale. Whether the opportunity is strategy, technical integration, education, or assistance with deployment, the days for external evangelism are probably coming to an end. The idealism that led the first era of this sector has now been replaced with pragmatism and will help businesses of all size move to the next level.

It reminds me of the boutique firms that cropped up in other eras that helped large companies manage the transition from before to after. Over time, the large consultancies will enter the market. That’s when we’ll know we’ve arrived. I’ve already seen some interesting arrangements with off-shore firms who have some unique capabilities to bring to the party. As this business turns its attention to growing up, I applaud the pioneering efforts of these early bloggers and teachers who’ve brought us to this point.

As the only Indian firm who is looking at advising clients on leveraging emerging social technologies both internally and externally to transform themselves into social businesses, we at 2020 Social applaud this development. As Susan says, it means the market is maturing and thought leadership will now transform to business results for clients.

Personally, I feel HR people are well equipped in their organizations to drive this change - and a great post by Volker Seubert on what is the relevance of Enterprise 2.0 to HR should be a must read.

Check this presentation Volker made:

HR Relevance of E20

View more presentations from Volker Seubert.

Interested? Contact me :)

Community Managers - What do they do?

In my previous post, I stated that soon Recruiters and Hiring Manager would evolve from users of search engines and headhunters - to also adding their skill sets by becoming Talent Community Managers.

A valid question is - what does an Online Community Manager do? What are the skill sets, and what is the nature of this new emerging role? Do they really tweet and facebook all day long? A dream job for social networking addicts, perhaps?

Here's an interesting post on the Responsibilities of Community Managers by Itamar Kestenbaum (@tweetamar) on the Techipedia blog.

Here's what the key roles are according to him:

1. Make friends in the Industry
2. Look at boring stats and make them interesting
3. Have a little knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
4. Develop Relationships with Clients
5. Get Co-Workers Involved Online
6. Organize Logistics of Social Media generated Operations
7. Connect Good-Will for brand
8. Work with web developers to update your site to web2.0
9. Strategize with your webmaster to create a better conversion
10. Create and Execute Email Blasts

As more and more organizations move into managing online communities of customers, partners and employees - be prepared to see more and more roles being added to this list.

Until then - go ahead and read the full post.

If you are a Community Manager I would love to hear from you! Drop me an email :)

cross posted at the 2020 Social Blog

How Organizations Can Build Talent Communities using Social Media

HR and Organizational leaders face two big challenges in the context of two ever-changing realities - as the talent market booms and as job seekers turn from immediate peers to their connections and the collective wisdom of the social web. The two big challenges organizations face in this new reality are:

1. How to Build an employment brand that is relevant to the needs of their talent pool and to monitor the conversations on the social web to understand how to join in the conversation
2. Understand where the super talent prospective are, what they talk about and how to engage them to attract them to consider you an employer.

It is our belief that organizations will need to move away from building their presence from social networks and integrate them to build online communities for their talent pool - moving away from the existing debate about "passive candidates" or "active job-seekers"

When a person joins a talent community owned/ stewarded by an organization - he or she gives permission to the organization to have a conversation with him/her - and it is up to the organization to either mess it up by "pushing" its message or to take it to the next level by active engagement.

As this becomes more and more common - recruiters and hiring managers will move more and more into "community manager" roles and need to build and take on newer skills to augment their existing skill sets. The ability that will count will not be to tell their own stories, but encouraging participants to tell their stories.

Here's our suggested approach on how organizations can build their talent communities:

The 2020 Social approach to building Talent Communities

View more presentations from Gautam Ghosh.