Our efforts with iGo2 group continue to advance and we are very optimistic as to the future of Social Business. As a result all our energies are focused on making our customers, our partners, our services, and our business successful. Thus my blogging focus is now purely related to iGo2. You can stay in contact with me through my micro-blogging (i.e. Twitter) stream on the left of this blog.

Come listen to my partners and myself on our iGo2 Blog as that is where you’ll find us.

Michael

The Value of a Social Business Plan

You have to love it when a plan comes together, even when it takes a lot longer than you originally envisaged. More than a year ago, we the founders of iGo2,  took out a weekend to have an ‘Indaba’ (An indaba is an important conference held by the izinDuna (principal men) of the Zulu and Xhosa peoples of South Africa). We held this Indaba in a cold, wind swept farm shed to decide the direction of iGo2 and plan for how we wanted the business to develop and operate and what kind of social business services we wanted to provide our valued clients. We took some decisions about the direction we felt we needed to head to provide true differentiated value – and we argued back and forth about many points. But we  essentially put a plan together about who we wanted be, what we wanted to provide, how we wanted to partner and why we felt becoming a social business was going to be a requirement for all businesses large and small.

Even back then we recognised this is not about the social media networks themselves. As interesting as they might be, they are in a sense only the conduits and pipes that carry the key data in the new media revolution. That, of course, is the digital social communications – the conversations if you will that represent the social intelligence that can help a business transform the way it connects and engages with its customers.

That’s why we don’t spend a lot of time on whether Facebook has this or that feature or issue – or Twitter or LinkedIn or name this social network. And the current ‘gushing’ around Google+ is almost obscene! What matters is where the key customers are engaging for YOUR business – and those are the networks that you need to engage in. More interesting is what form should that engagement take and how do you make it different from that of your competitors.

So we decided to focus on what we thought would be the keys to a business being able to harness the power of the social web. And we wanted to provide the services that organisations need to help maximise the potential of new media for their business:

1. Social Business Training and Consulting – so we all became Certified Strategists in Social Media.

2. A ’social’ sales focused B2B social business solution and consulting through a partnership with InsideView. We saw Sales as one of the most affected parts of any organisation by the social media ‘revolution’ and the key customer facing department that needed to transform its processes for engagement.

3. A Social Community  solution that allows organisations to build compelling customer and employee communities. What better way to foster loyalty, drive innovation, develop better market understanding  and develop brand advocates than through branded communities? Last week we announced a partnership with Telligent to help deliver this vision.

4. A Social Analytics platform  that supports both our research for Social Media Assessments  as well as the provision of Social Intelligence Services. We believe that you cannot develop an effective social business strategy unless you understand through an assessment where you are, where you need to go and what is required to get you there (a social business strategy). Social intelligence is the process of monitoring, collecting, and analyzing social data to make informed and agile  business and policy decisions.  Social intelligence makes sense of the endless number of tweets, comments, posts, and other social data and turns it into actionable insight. And every company needs this capability because there is literally a river of this data. Our current partnership with Sysomos allows us to undertake the deep research required for assessments and other one off projects whilst also providing almost real time social intelligence services.

5. The capability to assist organisations to improve and develop the RELEVANT social presence after the assessment, the creation of a social business strategy with measurable objectives and the intelligence services in place. This really is a Ready, Aim, Fire approach that we see in so few competitive engagements.

And we wanted to do all this whilst remaining CRM agnostic. We believe this allows us to deliver the appropriate services and solutions to our clients as well as having the wherewithall to speak intelligently to any company about the whole Social CRM,  Social Business and social media journey.

After more than a year, we finally have all the pieces in place – the partnerships, the tools, the knowledge and through our early customers the experience to be able to deliver on OUR brand promise.

Ah, you have to love it when a plan comes together. But now the hard work truly starts.

Will B (originally posted here)

iGo2 did an analysis of the Blog, News, Twitter and Forum mentions of “Gillard” over three month periods during the last year. Clearly the digital press smells a rat as their activity is almost the same as during the ousting of Rudd in June 10! However socially in blogs, forums and twitter the activity isn’t reflected when compared to June 10. So are the [Social] people not being led by the press?

Looking at the Twitter conversations

We took a look at Twitter and the key conversations for the period.

Twitter Buzz for May/June11

In 10,188 Tweets clearly Rudd’s Anniversary has come to haunt Julia and Abbott falling away for the first time in 11 months. t.co is weblinks [e.g. blogs, online news, video,…) in Twitter posts.

Twitter Buzz for Nov/Dec10

In 8,091 Tweets NBN is topical and Oprah visited too!

Twitter Buzz for June/July10

In 75,762 Tweets #Qanda shines (the ABC Hastag) and the “Look” was an attempt to find a resemblance of Julia Gillard to Madame Tassaud, Ms. Prissy, botox,… and of-course Rudd, Abbott and Turnbull taking election center stage

Popularity

Finally we had a look at all the conversations over the last 169 days by Rudd, Gillard and Abbott. Can you see the trend?

Find more free research here: Gillard_SocialMedia_Analysis

Notes: Exact Data-set Dates:

• 26th May 11 to 24th June 11
• 26th Nov 10 to 24 Dec 10
• 24th June 10 to 26th July 10

The Australian Government’s Carbon Emissions debate is warning up Twitter in Australia. The volume and conversations are intensifying. iGo2 had a quick look at who is fueling the debate on Twitter.

Twitter Activity Summary:

• 2,149 Tweets
• 3 million Twitter impressions
• 81.65% Twitter users sent only one tweet
• 31.14% of Tweets are re-Tweets (RT), 54.36% are regular tweets and 15.4% were twitter replies
• 78 Tweets mention “Gillard” and 32 mention “Abbott”

Top 5 Most influential Tweeters on “Carbon Emissions”:

1. twitter.com/alicam (Alister Cameron)31-May-2011 05:01 AMIf everyone lived Kate Blanchett’s lifestyle, global carbon emissions would SOAR! Enough said for that hypocrisy.
2. twitter.com/smh_news (SMH) 08-Apr-2011 10:42 AMWorld News: US, Europe carbon allies: LONDON: Europe’s struggling emissions trading scheme will link up wi… http://tinyurl.com/3z57vx2
3. twitter.com/australian (The Australian) 01-Mar-2011 09:16 AMNations split on route to reduce carbon emissions: GLOBAL consensus is emerging around the goal of a less carbon… http://bit.ly/h1I40q (statistics) 10-Feb-2011 17:17 PMNo slowdown in global carbon emissions: THE financial crisis failed to slow global carbon emissions growth as de… http://bit.ly/fhxBRB (statistics)
4. twitter.com/DoctorKarl (Dr Karl)09-Mar-2011 00:31 AM@aleks_convoy Volcanic Activity in a Really Big Year is less that 1/100 of 1% of Human Carbon Dioxide emissions. Karl
5. twitter.com/SkyNewsAust (Sky News Australia)23-Mar-2011 16:28 PMCarbon programs failing – report – A new report says most govt programs designed to cut greenhouse emissions have si… http://ow.ly/1bU512 05-Dec-2010 19:33 PMSA to set carbon emissions limit – The South Australian govt is set to introduce a carbon emissions limit for new el… http://ow.ly/1ajEp6

The six month growth in Twitter volumes

What are the conversations all about?

Note: The thickness of the line indicates a stronger association between terms/words.

The Top 10 Tweeters on the “Carbon Emissions” subject

Note: Authority level for these tweeters is zero and above. So that implies everyone with no filtering by authority level.

Some of the latest Tweets

Notes to research:

• Search Term – “carbon AND emissions”
• Six month Australian data
• Twitter data only
• Tweet Time is reflected in Canadian time

@michae1green

Social Business and Engagement is all about being real within your community and engaging with your partner communities. It is about 1 + 1 = 3 AND Not 3 = 6. What sparked my post was the tweet below.

What I mean with this is that we all have an identity and a personal in real life and that remains the same in Social Media or Social Business. Being real, authentic, and honest is what brings us friends through our engagement. Engagement is now also very transparent on channels like Twitter and Facebook. So first you have to be yourself (in this case the personality of #Wallabies or #AllBlacks) and through those efforts build your virtual (and physical) brand equity. Brand equity that not only brings you ‘friends’, but also partnerships and commercial opportunities (in this case Qantas).

Above we can see that @QantasWallabies (with 8.6k followers) has a way to go to build the brand and equity of the @AllBlacks (with 21.8k followers). These statistics extend to the mentions shown above and the demographics below. Twitter popularity is clear in the graph below.

So what is the learning here?

Clearly I am a proponent of @AllBlacks as they have created their own identity and personality that can be leveraged by partners (1 + 1 = 3). They are not locked in to a specific partner socially (like @QantasWallabies). What happens here to the followers once the brand or partner decides to exit the partnership? How do they engage their fans on message? How do they seek further partnerships – how would ANZ Bank engage @QantasWallabies in a sponsorship?

Obviously #Wallabies have been lured into this approach by a strong digital agency, however, social business isn’t assuming we are on 3 with a specific partner and then planning to get to 6 (or exponential brand leverage! Be yourself; and sponsors and fans will buy into your brand.

What is your view?

Notes:

1. Examining QantasWallabies and AllBalcks
2. Twitter only
3. Data from 01/01/2011

I am not sure about you, but my wife and children keep on spamming my email with offers they’d like me to purchase with my money on their behalf! These offers tend to come either from Groupon or I Love Sydney Facebook pages which they have naturally liked! So I decided to have a look who is winning the battle of attracting fans – their ultimate goal of group buying as aggregation is is customers which means deals and money.

Clearly what is important to baseline is growth & engagement of fans over a period and not the volume per se as these two pages started at different times.

The 30 day statistics show:

Growth:

• Groupon 461 likes in 30 days (5.47% growth)
• I Love Sydney 5,430 likes in 30 days (5.56% growth)

Engagement:

• Groupon with 5.7% engagement factor (482/8,420) and 3.9 posts per day
• I Love Sydney with 0.52% engagement factor (798/152,367) and 6.2 posts per day
• Buzz diagrams for both included

Summary:

• Clearly I Love Sydney is the leader in terms of the volume of followers in Facebook and is growing at the same rate as Groupon
• Groupon is approaching and engaging their customers (i.e. having regular conversations) and being social
• If I Love Sydney doesn’t become social they could die a slow death? What is your view – do you want to have a say or just happy to be notified of a deal?
• The strength of Groupon is it seems (based on Buzz and wall) allow people to post to the Groupon wall and engage. I Love Sydney seems to only allow comments to their posts.

Note: the analysis focused on the last 30 days and a relative engagement compared to volume of Facebook fans – i.e. if Groupon had the same volume of fans their likes and comments (i.e. engagement) would be significantly higher than I Love Sydney.

@michae1green

It is really the battle of the channels on Australian Television with the Logies, MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules all competing for viewers!

iGo2 examined all three over the last six months to understand who has the largest Share of Voice across Blogs, News, Forums and Twitter.

In Television Share of Voice equates to advertising premiums. Clearly MasterChef has trumped in all but Traditional News (could be aligned to Seven’s relationship with Yahoo).

Total Share of Voice

Share of Twitter Voice

The dominance of Twitter is significant and creates significant share of voice for the MasterChef brand. MasterChef has almost six times the Twitter volume of My Kitchen Rules.

Total Share of Voice (excluding Twitter)

Removing Twitter from the analysis brings a “fairer” view of the share of voice, however, MasterChef still has 60% more brand equity than My Kitchen Rules.

Blog Share of Voice

Traditional News Share of Voice

Forums Share of Voice

So what program are you going to be watching – Logies, MasterChef or My Kitchen Rules?

Data Paramaters:

1. Six months Data (183 Days)
2. Boolean My Kitchen Rules: mkr OR (“My Kitchen Rules”~5)
3. Boolean Logies: logie
4. Boolean Masterchef: Masterchef

@michae1green

Inspired by a Sysomos Blog post I played around with Word Clouds today.

First I looked at the references a few kind customers, partners and colleagues had written for my in LinkedIn to see what the outside-in view was.

Next I took an inside-out view of my resume.

……a picture does really tell a thousand words!

Social Media Today

Conversations are taking place today all over the social web that impact your business – whether you are a large commercial Enterprise, a government department responsible for executing policy and programs, a Small or Medium business trying to grow your business;  or a Not for Profit organisation perhaps trying to influence government policy.

Any and all of these organisations today must have a ‘Listening’ capability – the ability to ‘hear’ these conversations on the social web and in turn be able to analyse the resultant data to understand the impact of those conversations on sales, service, marketing, product development, policy formulation, policy execution and to understand the behavior and impact of customers, citizens, influencers and other conversations on your actions.

The social web and social media have a remarkable depth of information. It is possible to uncover detailed information on sentiment, demographics, locations, influencers, reach, amplification and more through the capturing and analysis of online conversations in social media.

And besides general analysis of social media conversations, it is possible to monitor specific competitors in business, or specific groups for government agencies. Indeed, it is possible to delve into a rich source of data to track movements in sentiment regarding specific topics, subjects or brands over time to understand whether your actions are influencing the conversations.

“If a conversation took place on the social web and you weren’t there to hear it did it really take place?”*

The Art and Innovation of Listening

It’s never been easier to hear what your citizens or consumers are saying about you or on subjects you are interested in.

*Brian Solis