Warren is now with John Song at Intrepid. I met John a year ago when they started using SM2. Their focus has been helping their clients to identify new markets, develop new products and services, and create meaningful customer experiences. Clients include brands such as GE, Dell, Microsoft, Nintendo, Dunkin Donuts, and Tesco.

The acquisition is the result of the demands of the market. A little over a year ago Alterian acquired Techrigy which added SM2, a social media monitoring tool to Alterian’s suite of marketing tools. Our customers and partners are requesting services around social media to maximize the value of our marketing offerings. Intrepid is a recognized leader in providing social media analytics and market research strategy. That insight and experience will allow our partners and customers to get the most value across all of Alterian’s products ranging from email, campaign management, web content management, and behavior analytics.

The addition of Intrepid to the Alterian family means that our global presence will continue to expand! We will add offices in Seattle, London and Vietnam. Alterian’s corporate headquarters are located in Bristol, UK along with two other locations, but to date there wasn’t an office in London. And the office in Vietnam expands our presence in the AsiaPAC in addition to India, Australia and Singapore. It also brings us additional language resources as we evolve SM2. At present SM2 offers the most languages in the market.

A very warm welcome from the Alterian family to Warren, John, and team! We look forward to expanding horizons together!

It seems that the larger the organization, the bigger the challenge. Small businesses and start-ups understand the value of having a community manager. In the last few years it is in vogue to add the position. And if the brand has a product support site, then the role is defined as a forum moderator. Oh how narrow that view is!

Let’s start with a definition for Community Manager:

The person in an organization that is the social media specialist and works cross-functionally and holistically to ensure that the business objectives in regard to social media are met. The primary objective is to serve as a translator between customers and prospects and the company and vice versa.

And what is the definition of their community? It depends on what the objectives are. But in general:

A community manager needs to support customers, prospects and colleagues. The three constituents have very different needs. Customers require excellent service and appreciation shown for their support of the brand. Prospects require information about the products and services that the company offers. Both will appreciate from information about additional services that will benefit them. And colleagues need training and support in best practices for utilizing social media to meet the objectives of their roles.

Both of those definitions are open to discussion. But do executives understand the term ‘community’ and ‘community manager’? Should they? or should we be speaking in their language?  

Should the role of community manager include the words Social Media Specialist? Would that better state what a community manager does?

Are we hurting ourselves by using words that traditional organizations aren’t familiar with? Is it arrogant to expect them to learn our vocabulary? Is it seen as vogue and trendy? or should we be speaking in terms of their business objectives? Will we get more respect if we do so?

Allow me a quick walk down memory lane… Aaron Newman invited me to join in Oct 2008. My goals were to build brand visibility and scale customer interactions. There was a huge learning curve for the nascent social media monitoring space. Jim Reynolds joined to sell and we intertwined our skills. We grew the business 840% in 9 months which us to the acquisition in July 2009. We had less than a dozen people as we joined the Alterian family.

Ironically my tenure with Alterian is at one year (longer than the startup stint!), but the time has flown by. Alterian offers products for marketers and realized the necessity of integrating social media into a marketer’s repertoire. In addition to SM2 for social media monitoring, we have web analytics, web content management, email, and a database.

In addition to acquiring a social tool, Alterian needed to walk the talk. So we have integrated social media marketing techniques. We utilize our own products and solutions and that provides our customers and partners with the confidence that they are well suited for their needs too.

My role continues to evolve. Initially I spent considerable time on knowledge transfer. The startup environment requires everyone to be familiar with many functions of the organization. The shift into a corporate environment transferred these into the various parts of the business.

Over the course of the year I have written six white papers on the ROI of social media monitoring. Each one addresses a specific use case:

1. Defining a Social Media Strategy: Breathing new life into Corporate Marketing content and collateral
2. First Priority for a Social Media Strategy: A Brand Audit using a Social Media Monitoring Tool
3. Customers in Control: The ROI of Listening to your Customers’ Needs
4. 7 Ways to Increase the ROI of your Lead Gen Efforts with Social Media Monitoring
5. 4 Ways to Take your Search Marketing to a New Level with Social Media Monitoring
6. Soon to be published

My time now is shifting towards what I love to do: teaching and empowering my colleagues. Many of them are actively involved in social networks and we are continually moving in that direction. My role is unique and it continues to evolve.

SM2 is evolving too. Awhile ago I had blogged about Alterian SM2 growing up (it will always be my baby). Aaron Newman, SM2’s founder, has donned a jacket and explains how it has evolved. I like how he has adopted my phrase ‘meat & potatoes’.

Long ago in 2007 a developer from Microsoft commented on my blog post about LiveWriter. As team lead he asked for feedback. When I read his signature, I rubbed my eyes and asked myself, can this be real? Granted I came into the online world as a result of a company reaching out to me. So I asked my readers what their suggestions for MS LiveWriter (which was in beta at the time) and posted them. Imagine my surprise when I woke to a Facebook message from that same Microsoft developer suggesting that I check out the newest release because they had incorporated my ideas! It made me feel as if my ideas mattered and I felt ownership in the product. I still use LiveWriter, evangelize it & train my staff in it’s use.

So when Chris Byrd @ChrisBatDell invited me to Dell’s first annual Customer Advisory Panel #DellCAP I was both honored and thrilled. The date fit between a couple of corporate meetings and so I booked Austin in between Chicago & Rochester, NY.

I learned in May that 3 cities in one week isn’t advisable, but I was excited to see what Dell was up to. I have been watching them steadily grow their team of online community managers. Their invitation was transparent that there were no expectations and they were taking care of all expenses.

The talented Mack Collier moderated the day. Imagine starting out the morning with an audience of Dell’s CMO and other executives. The group of 15 of us were gathered around a board table at Dell’s Executive Briefing Center and members of various Dell teams were behind us in the room. Our conversation was focused and we were invited to share out thoughts and ideas.

The topics were:

Expectations with CMO Erin Nelson – we talked about Dell’s brand and the opportunities that Dell has. I firmly believe that the new marketing is education.

1. Help consumers help themselves in the purchase process.
2. Capture and utilize user generated content of knowledgeable users to create a knowledge base
3. Use profiles in the Dell community to highlight the type of hardware that person uses to facilitate people connecting with others of similar computer needs.

We also talked about price points, customer service and expectations. I felt completely comfortable in expressing myself candidly.

Customer Support – This was a hot topic and surfaced in the earlier session. Dell is moving towards a new model of combining customer service and tech support. I expressed my experience with having support outsourced. I found Twitter to be much more effective. @ChrisBatDell resolved my issue a year ago. I was surprised to hear that they wanted to encourage social media channels for support. I am curious to hear how they communicate that to their customers?

Support centers rely heavily on scripts. We expressed our frustration with that. It made me realize the huge value in the reference interview that we used in the library world. Imagine if the support were to take a few minutes and ask 3 questions rather than asking, “Is your computer turned on?” Here they are:

1. What is the problem?
2. What have you done to resolve it? (then make an educated decision on how to resolve
3. Set expectations and agree on the goal of the call. In other words repeat and make sure that the customer is in agreement and that both sides understand the need.

Design Lab – This is where everyone geeked out over the new Streak. I enjoyed seeing the Adamo and Adamo XPS. It caused me to realize that my work issued Dell Latitude doesn’t fit my needs.

Technology Briefing Center – A senior product manager gave a product demonstration that hasn’t been shared with others outside of Dell. We signed an NDA and enjoyed being privy to secret information.

The last session of the day was on Sustainability and Recycling. Unfortunately I needed to go to the airport, so i missed it.

One of the highlights of my day was having lunch with Caroline Dietz. She created IdeaStorm. I loved how she described how it evolved. And it was nice to visit with Lionel Mencheca again. He shared that they are transitioning away from a centralized social media team and scaling it out to teams by business unit. I look forward to watching how that evolves!

Overall I have to give Dell total credit for bringing in their leadership to spend the day with us. They brought in a group with very diverse backgrounds. We had a variety of ideas and it was a great focus group. Earlier in the week they had brought in a group of 15 detractors. I had seen their tweets and they were negative. I hope that Dell was able to garner constructive feedback from both groups. Their process was excellent. We filled out a pre-survey. They created a community and now I need to fill out a post-survey. There is a lot of content in a variety of formats floating on the web. I see on Twitter that a couple of people have ordered Adamos so the products sold themselves.

Thank you Dell for your invitation to listen to us and your hospitality! I hope that as an organization you can continue leading the way in implementing ideas from consumers.

If you’d like to read more about #DellCAP, Mack Collier is gathering all the content. Sunni Brown captured the day (this was very cool!).

If you had the opportunity to talk directly with a company, which company would it be? and what would you tell them?

I always enjoy conferences that are well organized. This one was very well done. They interviewed all of the speakers and put them on YouTube. What a nice touch! The slide deck from my presentation is below.

The slide deck on Slideshare. I presented the deck virtually to a Roundtable group in Geneva, Switzerland. The recording is here on my speaking page.

On Sunday as I was driving back from the weekend I saw the Minneapolis skyline and said to myself, “I’m almost home”. It made me realize that I have adapted to my huge transition. Many of you know how rooted I was to rural Minnesota. After forty some years of living the good life on a farm, I moved to the bright city lights of Minneapolis.

There are some stark contrasts. I went from being sixty miles from Starbucks to a short two block walk! And instead of driving for an hour plus to get to the airport, I now have a twenty minute taxi ride. Flying out of MSP has also eliminated the extra regional flight to a hub like Denver, MSP or Chicago. I am enjoying being able to fly direct.

One of the most surprising things is that I enjoy having everything within walking distance. Having Chipotle half a block away is a bit too convenient! No thanks to my sister for that addiction.

And then there is the driving! Before 2010 I had no experience driving in the metro. I learned to drive on multi-lane roads (meaning 3 or more) in the metropolis of Fargo, ND, but that’s not much more than an intersection of two interstates.

I couldn’t live without my GPS and who would’ve known how much I appreciate the word ‘recalculating’?! After a couple of months I’m starting to get my bearings and am not relying on the GPS as much. I’m starting to unplug it now as the roads become familiar. But I still experience a sense of fear mixed with exhilaration when driving in 5 lanes of fast moving traffic. And I have learned to speed up at yellow lights. My sister tried to explain that one, but I am learning. Up north they only put traffic lights in 30 mph zones and they meant stop. I am so thankful that we have Minnesota nice happening here! Overall the drivers are pretty easy-going and don’t exercise their horns like in NYC.

I have finally been in town for a social media breakfast. It was fun to reconnect with my many friends that I’ve known for a couple of years now. It’s nice to not be in the back channel anymore!

Photo credit: http://www.aquaticnet.com

In March Jeremiah and Ray Wang of Altimeter published their report on Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management.

Altimeter has partnered with Web Analytics Demystified to provide frameworks for social media analytics.

Measurement is one of the biggest challenges facing community managers and social media specialists. How can you quantify the progress of your efforts?

Jeremiah & John have created a report that outlines the main areas and also have provided a simple equation to calculate each one.

Make sure that you benchmark and choose the ones that make sense in your case. Then track your metrics from month to month against those.

Here’s the complete report and you can pop on over to Slideshare & download a copy there.

The Abbey and the Roman Baths seem to be the center of Bath. A choir had just started performing and provided the perfect ambience.

A view down a street.

The one thing that amazes me about Europe is the age of the stones and structures. This is what remains of the medieval wall.

Yesterday, Jeremiah Owyang & Ray Wang of the consulting group, Altimeter, released a report on the use cases for Social Customer Relationship Management (social CRM). As Community Managers we all know that the customer is our first priority.Yesterday I presented a five hour workshop on the same topic in the UK. I have been sharing these use cases for quite awhile. I’m in the process of writing white papers on the ROI of social media monitoring. The first is available.

At Alterian we are also starting to quantify the value that advertisers are realizing on the social web. We used Alterian SM2 to measure the conversations around the Super Bowl advertisers and defined a Social Engagement Index that shows the reach and influence of the ads. And we also calculated the Social Sentiment Engagement Index which takes into account how people felt about the ads.

Jeremiah & Ray have put together an awesome report that consolidates interviews with vendors and experts. It’s a must read. They underline that the customers are leading the conversation.

Here’s the whole report. I totally appreciate their sharing their findings in the true spirit of social media. We are fortunate that such talented people (both were at Forrester) are willing to openly share their work! Where is your organization at in this scheme? Are you listening to your customers?

The report highlights:

1. Identifies 18 use cases for Social CRM
2. Captures the best practices of 100 customers in 18 use cases.  More to be added over time.

I am excited to announce the first in a series of white papers on Social Media ROI. I have ten topics planned in which I will be exploring the versatility of social media monitoring and how it can influence your organization’s bottom line.

My white paper series will show how a social media monitoring tool supports business objectives across an organization. It allows you to measure your social media efforts and is a must have for every marketer’s toolbox.

The first topic covers how you can leverage social media monitoring (SMM) to leverage your search strategy. SMM can be a powerful supplementary tool to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for getting your web site ranked and found by your target audience. Every organization wants to better know their customer segments. Traditional market research and focus groups can be expensive and time consuming. Social media monitoring now provides a cost effective method to gain an in-depth sense of what consumers want and need. This whitepaper outlines how you can utilize that information to make your website(s) and Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns more effective.

You can download the paper here: 4 Ways to Take your Search Marketing to a New Level with SMM

You are welcome to sign up for the Freemium of Alterian SM2 and explore my ideas.

Questions? Please ask!  And I would love your comments & ideas!