Since Neville and I recorded the podcast live from the trade show area of the conference yesterday afternoon, I wasn’t able to blog any other sessions. Today I’m not working at all, so I hope to blog every session I attend, starting with…

Charlene Li from Forrester is the keynote this morning.

Introduction

• Successful social computing requires ceding control to build the relationship. Customers won’t put up with any more messaging coming from you. Customers are ignoring firms. Social computing creates a new balance.
• Life used to be simple, but it’s more complex because consumers have more power at their fingertips. Can access the Net anywhere through less and less expensive hardware. Applications like RSS and “presence” accelerate communication.
• Technology is moving away from organizations and distributed to individuals through tools ranging from eBay and Wikipedia to Blogger and Google. Gives people the ability to have a voice.
• People trust recommendations from other people. Forrester research shows primary trust is with friends and family, followed by consumer opinions posted online. Traditional media are dropping off the list of trusted sources. Firms become irrelevant. Concurrently, brand loyalty is dropping. Price behavior is increasing and dedication to brand names is declining.
• Social computing provides organizations with ability to restore balance. Definition of “social computing:” Social structure in which technology puts power in communities, not institutions.

Firms will tap into the network

• Example: US Cellular used blogs to track what people in different demographic groups were saying in blogs about cell phones. Gen Y’ers were stressed every month about running out of minutes. In response, US Cellular innovated a new service to accommodate that group’s needs.
• Example: iStockphoto provided a marketplace for photographers versus stock photo houses with their high fees and small pay-outs to photographers.

Firms will offer experiences

• Push content out to customers who care
• Customized feeds give users greater control, like the iTunes music store RSS feed generator providing various levels of customization and avoiding too man feeds from one company.

Power will low from firms to communities.

• Brands are defined by the communities that accept them.
• Blogs give companies a human face (e.g., GM’s FastLane blog) and allow readers to write back…and write to each other, forming community among your consumers. Not just Lutz talking to customers. The brand experience is positive on FastLane; the users are building the brand experience.
• Creating value requires relinquishing control. Nike, for example, offers NikeID to create a shoe for 145 euros. Allows company to see what’s popular. Reuters has a financial glossary that’s a wiki that can be edited by the readers.

Risks of ceding control (and Li’s responses):

• Employees and executives will say something bad (which they do anyway)
• We can’t have negative opinions on our site (people say negative stuff anyway; there’s value in hearing the negative)
• We’ll lose control of the brand (when did you ever control it?)
• People will delete our RSS feed (unlike email lists where you can force people to stay on)
• We’ll get sued (on the other hand, you’re transparent, which is necessary these days)

Adoption of social computing is small but growing

• Blog readership is on the rise (11% in 2005 vs. 5% in 2004)
• Tough to measure use of RSS. How many people know they use SMTP? Few would say yes, but SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) is email.
• An increasing number of consumers are interested in blogs and feeds from their favorite marketers/retailers.

Getting started

• How involved do you want to be? At a minimum, listen to what people participating are saying. Then, test the waters and immerse yourself in the tools (my emphasis).
• Example: Dan Entin is a blogger. Had a problem; unable to find his favorite deodorant. Wrote about it. Unilver suggested ways to find locations and sent him a case. Dan blogged about it and became a brand advocate.
• Start small and prove the business case. (This is consistent with my belief that the use of new media should be tied to a strategy to achieve business goals).
• Examples of starting small: Have a recruitment blog to put a place in front of prospects. Add RSS feeds for your press releases. Put out your earnings calls as a podcast.
• Let your customers tell you when you’re doing it right—or wrong.
• Measure engagement (e.g., frequency, duration, responses)

The future

• Social computing will move into the enterprise (that is, the intranet and other internal networks), just as IM moved from the consumer space into the enterprise
• Consumers will demand do-it-yourself applications from the firms they deal with.
• Community-based political candidates will emerge
• Social computing will be like air—live and breathe it but don’t have to think about it (as email has become).

Q&A

• Stats on internal blogs? (No, but in process of getting that in next round of business demographics research). You can see ROI from internal blogs right away, nowhere near the risk of external blogs. Something like 14 or 18% of companies are using blogs internally or externally. (From social computing report.) Disney has some group blogs—one will post that a server is down and awaiting a part; next shift, someone else updates that the part has arrived…
• Relationship measuring? When I have a client I’ve worked with in the past who is reading my blog, how much more are they engaging with me? How much more business am I getting from them? Tracking anecdotal information. Can clearly measure clients who come strictly from readers of her blog.

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