This is another in a series of notes from the 2009 KM World.
These notes are done real time so please excuse typos. It is
titled: The Role of Social Techniques in Search
& How It Impacts Your Organization by Charlene Li, Partner, Altimeter Group. Here is the session description.
“Social technologies are
transforming the way that people use the web and, with it, the way that
companies engage with their customers and employees. Search is certainly being
affected by the increasingly social nature of online activities. Impacting the
socialization of search are the factoring in of the social graph and social
activities into search results. Also, online people increasingly turn to their
social networks when seeking information, recognizing that these people are
likely to lead them to results. Li, a former Forrester analyst, provides
insights into how social technologies are transforming the way
people search for and discover information and how you can prepare your
organization for—and create business advantage with—this shift.”
Charlene is now writing a book
on how social technologies are impacting organizations and making them more
open. She started her talk with
search. Googlesearch results now
provide a lot of personal context.
Then she showed Twitter results on Bing. It shows the most popular links
about a topic. She said search will change to provide more social content both
inside the enterprise and on the Web.
There are three ways search
will improve. First, semantic search will better understand the meaning behind
your search query. For example,
people will use the words Saints differently. Some people will think of a
football team. I would. It will also be more personalized and more social.
Your social content will be
integrated everywhere. You will not have to go to a site like Facebook but it
will be found in many contexts.
Now there is a greater culture of sharing. The engagement pyramid starts with watchers, then sharers,
then commentors, then producers, and finally at the top are curators. The curators mange the content produced
by the pyramid. She said most
organizations support the top of the pyramid but the focus should be at the
bottom so the watchers are well served.
These people are the foundation.
Facebook Connect puts Facebook
content on other sites. For example, you can comment on Huffington Post and it
will appear on my Facebook and my friends can see it. So you can bring your friends into Huffington Post and bring
Huffington Post into Facebook. This openness is the future.
Then she showed Tech Crunch
with Google Sidewiki. You can see the side conversations around this site. Tech
Crunch cannot control this conversation but now you can see it easily.
Next, she showed Amazon with
GetGlue that allows you to see comments on a book from multiple sites. You can see what people are saying and
where they are saying it. The
comments are being separated from the site and pivot around the topic or the
person.
With these tools you can target
marketing much more. You can use social graphics: who is like you who might
have the same interests. Media6 identifies who is closest to you. Then they can
target those people with ads based on what you do and like. You can also map relationships within
organizations to target business communication.
Be careful not to get too
wrapped up in the technologies. Start with what types of relationships you want
with your employees and your customers.
Loyal and constant relationships are more valuable.
Obama redefined political
campaigns. The relationship with
the candidate was more personal and got more engagement with supporters. This
type of connection will be very powerful for businesses.
You also need to create
learning organizations. There are many tools for seeing what is happening on
the Web. Good to get these tools in the hands of everyone so they can see what
is happening inside and outside the organization. This is a role that Darwin
Ecosystem serves as you can see the relationships between topics on a near real
time basis.
There also needs to be a
culture of sharing. Internal micro-blogging tools such as Yammer can promote
this sharing. You need to create
new information workflows to support this sharing. Everyone is getting the
information that used to be department focused and siloed like marketing. Comcast is using Twitter to respond to
customer issues very quickly and the whole organization has become more
customer focused. I have conversed with Comcast through Twitter and they are very
responsive.
Kohl’s has a very interactive
Facebook page and responds quickly to comments put on the wall. Saleforce.com
is integrating a Twitter-like comment feature so you can talk about sales
issues.
Openness requires
accountability. The Red Cross gave guidelines for its employees on how to use
social media and avoid risks. Finally you need to be open to fail and but you
need to learn from these failures – Google says fail fast and fail smart. Walmart failed many times at first with
soclal media through fake blogs and other stuff. Finally they started a blog
for their buyers that worked.
In summary, Charlene said you
cannot ignore social networks as they will be everywhere and integrated into
many things. You need to be prepared to give up control to succeed.