Ce matin, Google a annoncé le lancement de son nouveau bouton alors que se tenait justement la conférence Web 2.0 Expo à San Francisco.
C’est ici le bruit que l’on entend sur toutes les bouches. C’est la grosse question du moment puisque justement tout le monde se demandait quelle allait être la grande nouveauté de l’année.
Je reste encore perplexe quant à savoir si c’est véritablement une grande nouveauté. Mais il est clair que pour ceux qui croyaient à la mort du web social, la gigantesque bulle californienne y répond par une affirmation des plus simples: Nous ne sommes qu’au début de la socialisation du Web, nous n’entrevoyons même pas encore 10% des possibilités.
À savoir si la guerre continue entre Facebook et Google… allez voir vos web analytics, Facebook dépasse de plus en plus Google en source de traffic. C’est tellement simple: les internautes passent plus de temps sur Facebook que sur Google!
Have you heard about the Radian6 engagement console? We have a feeling that this announcement has gone under the radar. Radian6 has developed a tool that brings social networking and collaboration together. The perfect social media tool for businesses.
The strength of this tool comes from Radian6’s understanding of how social media functions and the philosophy of the web 2.0. The engagement console allows the user to communicate under their own name as well as under the name of the company through the corporation’s social media channels. This flexibility is a time saver that can quickly increase the productivity of employees when they interact in social media. It is a great solution for providing both a human touch and developing the brand on social media.
Moreover, the tool is perfect for the corporation because of its focus on collaboration. In real time, it is possible to see who has already responded to a message online which eliminates the time for searching if the user has already been engaged as well as seeing who took the initiative. This will save time, will not irritate the user, and will reflect the brand positively. The engagement console also shows the history of interaction with the user so that even if different employees replied to the user in the past, it is still possible to understand the conversation and answer fluidly as a company rather than starting the conversation over every time.
The beauty of the engagement console is that it merges the different social media together so that when the employee interacts with the public, it is no longer about tweeting or “facebooking” but simply communicating. It is not only about Twitter, Facebook or Blogs anymore but the whole social web.
Of course, since Radian6 is behind the console, the employees are not drowned with too much information because all the conversations on the web are pulled in. Rather, it allows filtering of the different conversations so that we can prioritize and focus on the conversations that matter the most right now.
The advantage of the engagement console for the corporation is that it can easily involve more people of the company in the social media communication. However, this is a double-edged sword because not everybody should be the voice of the company. Although displaying transparency, authenticity and a human side to the business is increasingly important to the eye of the public nowadays, it is still much more important to preserve branding than engaging the audience randomly and without a proper communication strategy. The more people are involved, the more chances there are that a message can be interpreted wrongfully.
The solution is not to reduce the number of people who can participate in the social media sphere. Rather, it is to train them to communicate their expertise properly in order to increase the number of brand ambassadors and contribute to the branding of the company.
Only then can the company benefit from the brand ambassadors from within the organization.
Facebook is a social network, but people tend to forget that Facebook is a proprietary social network and like Marc Cuban puts it best:
“If you join Facebook, by definition you want to give up some of your privacy”.
Cuban is specifically talking about Facebook however this is true for all social media web sites. Despite having a clear business model or not, they are still businesses offering a service.
Unfortunately, most corporations do not have the expertise and due to costs of acquisition, it is often not feasible for them to develop their own social network platform so that they can control 100% of their content. Therefore, corporations must turn to dominant social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, et al. Especially since there is already a large population on these platforms.
Privacy concerns on social media are very important for large corporations mainly because of the size of their workforce. Every business has sensitive information that cannot be shared and unfortunately, not all employees can understand the implications, despite having the best intentions.
With studies supporting the theory that social networks boost productivity, blocking access to social media in the workplace is a very unpopular ruling.
However, it is important to understand that it is not a question of productivity. Rather, it is a matter of security and not only on a technical and system network level (virus, trojans, etc.) but in terms of information.
Once something is on the Internet, it is there forever and can be accessible at anytime. Do not be fooled in thinking that once it is deleted that nobody can put their hands on the information again (Google cache for instance is one of many ways of accessing something after it has been “removed”).
Therefore, every piece of information that a company publishes on social media needs to be thought out thoroughly. Social Media is a nightmare for the legal department and rightfully so. Since different employees have different levels of responsibility, they also have a different understanding of the implications of any content they share about their work. An employee can put the corporation at risk by simply taking a picture of themselves at work and sharing it on Facebook because although such activity can be low risk, something in the background of the picture can show information that can put the company in hot water. Unfortunately, the employee did not think about it and the damage is done. The truth is, it isn’t the employee’s job to think about every piece of content posted, the implications and the possible repercussions.
It is the leaders’ responsibility.
Unfortunately, due to the new nature of social media upper management often delegates many activities related to web 2.0 to junior employees thinking that the young graduate understands social media and that they themselves do not because they are older. The problem with such a train of thought is that the junior does not have the decades of experience in business that the upper management has and thus cannot understand (and rightfully so) how a piece of content can affect a business.
The solution is clear, upper management needs to become familiar with social media enough to not shy away from the tools. This does not imply that C-level executives should all make YouTube vlogs or Tweet. Rather, they need to learn how social media functions as well as the philosophy of the web 2.0 in order to appropriate them as an additional channel of communication so that they can understand the implications of certain information being share publically.
Hence, the importance of proper social media coaching and training for upper management not so that they can participate on the platforms but that they can manage their business better. Such training needs to recognize the traditional roles and responsibilities of the different executives and upper level managers so that proper information about social media can be shared with them. Training at this level must be broad enough so that executives and upper level managers who are not familiar with the web can understand but not too technical at the same time because they are not all expected to be performing the execution on the social media platforms.
Understanding is key for upper management in order for them to properly lead the organization and avoid missteps from employees with less experience and less vision.
Quatrième épisode du Lunch & Learn présenté à toute l’équipe de w.illi.am/le 6 avril 2010. Matyas Gabor et David Paquet, spécialistes des réseaux sociaux chez w.illi.am/, expliquent leur démarche, leurs méthodes de travail et le rôle de leur département de Conseil en marketing interactif.
Ils présentent ici la méthodologie de l’IMR (Identification, Mesure, Recommandation), développée chez w.illi.am/ et posée en amont de toute démarche dans les réseaux sociaux.
Troisième partie du Lunch & Learn présenté à toute l’équipe de w.illi.am/le 6 avril 2010. Matyas Gabor et David Paquet, spécialistes des réseaux sociaux chez w.illi.am/, expliquent leur démarche, leurs méthodes de travail et le rôle de leur département de Conseil en marketing interactif.
Ici, l’accent est mis sur l’entreprise 2.0, quelles conditions l’ont fait naître, quels sont ses enjeux, comment elle se structure, etc.
Bienvenue sur le blog de la firme w.illi.am/. Notre équipe d’experts essayera de partager avec vous ces différentes réflexions à travers chacune de leurs expertises.
