garykoelling

Here's a recent email exchange around how to measure and benchmark social media. Please feel free to question or comment.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tracie [name]
Sent: Thu 6/26/2008 8:59 AM
To: gary at blueshirtnation dot com
Subject: Need help

Hi Gary,

I am a director at [company], Inc. I am a part of the corporate
communications department. I oversee [company]'s corporate portal
intranet site and business applications. We are close to rolling out our
custom enterprise 2.0 framework and am trying to reach out to other
companies who have been successful in their deployments to set a
benchmark for comparisons of adoption and overall usage of these
features.

I am also interested in learning what "terms of service" or "usage
policies" where deployed to your work force.

Thanks,
Tracie

Hi Tracie,

not sure how answer benchmarking questions without comparing apples to
oranges. were there specific metrics you were looking for?

Hi Gary,

Thanks for sharing the "use" policy. I think it's to-the-point and the
writing is very clever- who wants to become a social outcast...

At [company] we went live with our new intranet portal in Jan. We
receive great adoption and are planning to launch its 2.0 framework this
summer. I've been working with our Legal and HR departments to develop
an appropriate "use" policy that umbrellas each 2.0 feature and the new
intranet site as a whole. So, I really appreciate you sharing Blue Shirt
Nation's policy.

Well, as far as benchmarking  questions, I guess I'm trying to work on
my approach and show to our middle management the benefits to embracing
2.0 within their areas by reaching out to other companies who have taken
the plunge and have received great benefits b/c they implemented these
collaborative features.

As far as benchmarking, what I am trying to benchmark is employee
adoption and effectiveness of introducing 2.0 features into the business
environment. Also, how did you get middle management to embrace these
features? I will need their support in effort for their employees to
embrace it without labeling 2.0 as add time or responsibility to their
workload.

Currently, my biggest hurdle I face is convincing our operations
managers, HR and Legal departments that these new features are helpful
and will empower associates to be informed, connected, efficient and
make better decisions.  I want to articulate and show the business the
value and gains of deploying these tools.

Let me know what you think. Need help here.
Tracie

Tracie,

Measuring social media is hard. It’s hard especially if it’s being used to judge ‘success’ or roi.  I think part of the answer is you have to examine the opportunity cost. What are you potentially losing by not providing such a tool. This is true from a recruiting standpoint (for an increasing amount of prospective employees this is just the cost of doing business) as well as a retention standpoint to say nothing of the any peer to peer efficiencies you might gain plus any “game-changing” or even incremental innovations that might surface as a result of giving folks a social platform to connect.

After being live for 2 years blueshirtnation.com has about 23,000 registered users. That’s out of a total workforce of 150,000 employees. Nearly all the users came to the site via word-of-mouth. Everyone I talk to thinks its a success on that metric. But what we use it for and what the expectations are for it both near and long term are very likely different than the expectations you may have. The best advice here is to set out one or two objectives then test and try so you have a baseline that you can look at and be sure to seek out and act on user feedback. That being said, the two numbers I tend to watch most closely are ‘active users’ - the percentage of users who visit at least once a month and average time spent on the site - higher is better.

In terms of middle management including legal and hr, my best advice is to get an executive sponsor. In most organizations the middle represents inertia - it’s their job. Senior leaders are your best bet. That advice may not be very encouraging but it’s essential. So to answer your question, I didn’t get middle management to accept it. Senior leaders saw the potential value and then users saw the value then the middle saw the value.

I’m not sure what else to say except good luck. I’d be happy to dig further into specifics if you lke. You may want to take a look at a recent article that gets at some of your issues here:  http://minnov8.com/2008/06/27/bsn/

Cheers
Gary

Recently got a question about Groundswell via LinkedIn

INMAIL: YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE

Subject RE: Enabling groundswell in an enterprise

On 6/22/08 12:33 PM, Jill [name]  wrote:
--------------------
I am a researcher/manager/innovator working at [company] and exploring social media as a mechanism for empowering employees to participate in innovation and company transformation. Like everyone interested in social media these days, I am enthralled by the story about Blue Shirt Nation. I'm also intrigued by the experiments you are trying with vendors and local store communities.

I've read a bunch about Blue Shirt Nation, but I was hoping to learn more. I am specifically interested in whether or not there are specific mechanisms for ideas from Blue Shirt Nation to receive funding.

I understand that one huge benefit of the community is the ability for associates to pose problems and collaborate to find solutions. But are there instances where new ideas are specifically targeted for funding? In Groundswell , Li and Bernoff give the example of how associates got email. My question is - who is monitoring and reviewing those ideas? How are they being raised and acted on by senior management? What is your point-of-view on the role (if any) of senior management in the community?

I wondered if you would be willing to share some insight, based on your experience. I am also happy to share more about what I am trying to do at [company].

I can be reached through LinkedIn or at jill@[company].com

Thanks,
Jill

On 6/26/08 2:45 PM, Gary Koelling wrote:
--------------------
Jill,

Hi, thanks for the email. Happy to answer your questions best I can.

You question about how or when ideas are specifically targeted for funding is a great one. This is probably one of the biggest challenges of trying to map a social network onto a corporate hierarchy - lot of gaps. We would see conversations spin up around ideas that would get posted and almost inevitably the thread would surge and then fade as the question of “Who do we talk to?” emerged. In some instances people who knew people were in on the conversation or knew who to talk to. In a few cases someone would take the initiative to find someone who could help. In most cases, the conversation died and idea just hung out there.

We’ve tried a couple things and have employeed a couple different approaches to help jump this gap.

In November of 07 we launched the Loop Marketplace as a sister site to BlueShirt Nation (BSN). The Loop is kind of an idea launch pad. BSN users can log in to the Loop and submit their idea by answering a series of questions that are meant to help frame the idea in business terms by helping identify the end user, the problem, the objective, etc. Once the idea is posted anyone with a budget can (who visits the loop) can see the idea and ask questions or hit the big “Fund This” button. At that point the idea person and the budget holder are connected and the gap in essentially crossed. To be clear, this is a pretty rickety bridge at this point and there are widely divergent opinions coming to bear on how to strengthen the tool.

Right now there is little awareness and there are no real incentives to engage and look for deals that might fit their business needs. Discussion around how that may be addressed is beginning to surface also.

What the solutions are, I’m not sure. What I am confident of is that if we keep platform for trying things open and flexible we have a much better chance of finding solutions.

LinkedIn

INMAIL: YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE

Subject RE: Enabling groundswell in an enterprise

Gary,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. The Blue Shirt Nation story is really inspiring, especially the grassroots nature. While we are at the front end of our work, it's obvious to me that we may have the opposite challenge ahead of us. That is, we have commitment of senior management and funding - but yet to build a community. And true authentic community is not going to emerge because senior management wants it. So we have an interesting road ahead of us.

The Loop sounds really interesting because it puts power in the hands of middle management. That anyone with a budget can fund something (or, presumably, request expertise/feedback.) I guess experimentation is key.

Thanks again!

Jill

The MIT Sloan School of Management has posted a review / preview of an upcoming book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester called 'Groundswell .' The book and preview use the work Steve Bendt and I have done on BlueShirt Nation, the Best Buy social networking application we've been working on for the last year and half, as one case study on how companies can use social technology internally.