Being Peter Kim

Using Twitter at scale

In three short years, we've witnessed the evolution of Twitter from a way to exchange "inconsequential information between friends" to a business communication tool with a US$1 billion valuation.

As Twitter's user base has grown into the millions, companies have followed their consumers onto the service and started participating in conversations. You're already familiar with companies like Comcast, JetBlue, and Best Buy, among the hundreds of companies with corporate Twitter accounts.

But many of these companies are starting to face the scalability issue; a single person can manage the communication channel to prove the concept, but moving beyond one person/purpose can be difficult. Companies, unlike individuals, need to think through participation strategies for channel migration, which requires process, culture, and technology support.

To that end, Dachis Group is pleased to be a part of CoTweet's Enterprise Innovators Program. We will be working with forward-thinking brands to help capture value from their Twitter activity. These companies have started moving beyond the proof of concept stage and are starting to measure their efforts to better manage outcomes. If you are interested in participating, you can request an invite.

Some of the experience we'll be bringing to the program comes from a project that we completed recently for a well-known B2C brand. The company has been using a combination of personal and corporate Twitter accounts on an ad-hoc basis for customer support, but needed to step back and formulate a strategy for making their efforts work at scale. In our research, we found that most businesses are still using home-grown approaches, which are near if not already at their limits. If your company could use some help with this issue, let me know.

Binary thinking

A couple months ago after Snow Leopard was released, I was speaking with a friend about base 2, base 10, and base n numbers in general. Over the past month, I've been thinking about the definition of Social Business Design and considering the range of reactions from supporters and detractors.

All business discussions can be reduced to a single binary argument focusing on the bottom line. Does it improve profitability, yes or no? In practice, the range of decisions a manager must make consists of a multitude of choices better described by real options theory and system dynamics.

To make a difference in social business, activity must be measured and managed, whether loosely or tightly. There's value in focusing on the 0's and 1's while understanding how they roll up to create bigger, more elegant numbers. Let's start simple, because we're still only at the beginnings of social business.

A conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk

A couple weeks ago, I had a public, online conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk aka @garyvee. He’s on a PR blitz to promote the release of his new book “Crush It.”

If you’re not familiar with Vaynerchuk, he’s a self-trained wine expert who has used social media, online video in particular, to drive exponential growth in his family's wine business. At the same time, he's built a kingpin personal brand, signing a seven-figure, ten-book deal in Spring 2009.  Vaynerchuk stands as proof of how participating in one’s customer ecosystem leads to business success.

To view the entire conversation, visit The Dachis Group Collaboratory.

And you may want to consider subscribing to the Collaboratory's RSS feed.

Defining Social Business Design: Style vs. Substance

Since communicating the definition of social business design earlier this month, I've noted a wide range of reactions to the concept.

For the most part, people understand that we're talking about what's on the horizon for business. However, most detractors seem to take issue with the style of the idea's communication rather than its substance. Some say they don't understand. I'll take that at face value and suggest they try harder. Others ask why simpler words weren't used. Well, as a certain bald-headed guru told me, "words matter."

Words do matter. When I began my stint as a Forrester analyst, I was directed to write for the smartest clients in the room. I patterned my blog with a similar approach. I'm not a journalist, reporting about what's happening now - Mashable, Consumerist, and TechCrunch are great at that. I'm a business consultant who analyzes what's happening now in order to advise companies on what happens next.

But style matters too. A lesson I learned the hard way years ago was that often perception matters more than reality. Some people have difficulty with how Dachis Group has defined social business design, which reminds me of another lesson I learned long ago - if you're going to complain about something, offer a constructive solution.

As for substance, I believe there's quite a bit in our thought piece. However, to put a finer point on the definition:

• Social Business Design [the key concept] is the
• intentional creation [deliberate, not accidental] of
• dynamic [live and constantly changing, not static] and
• socially calibrated [a primary filter/perspective]
• systems, process, and culture [three key elements of all organizations].
• Its goal: helping organizations improve value exchange [whether monetary/non-monetary or short-/long-term]
• among constituents [people who care about the organization for some reason].
• Social Business Design uses a framework [i.e. how it can be applied to different scenarios] of
• four mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive [MECE is a key to strategic problem solving]
• archetypes [ideal states that serve as goals]:
• ecosystem, hivemind, dynamic signal, and metafilter. [connections, culture, communication, content]
• This model can be applied to improve customer participation, workforce collaboration, and business partner optimization. [business functions that relate to professional roles]
• Doing so provides insight to help measure and manage business [you need to measure it to manage it] to
• produce improved and emergent outcomes. [results - read this for more on emergent outcomes]

I welcome the conversation around social business design and hope that we can help guide the way for the confused.

How open are you?

A couple weeks ago, my company launched its online presence, The Collaboratory. Part of the site contains a feed of our communications activity - whether public tweets, private "yams", or messages emailed. Each channel carries a varying level of opacity, for good reason.

After operating the live stream in public view for a couple weeks, each of us has reflected upon the experience and shared our thoughts. My take:

The Collaboratory made me rethink my perspective on authenticity in social media. For the most part, people live by the old T.S. Eliot quote, "prepare a face to meet the faces you meet." That is, despite claims of openness, most social media presences are carefully crafted, user-controlled portraits of what they want the world to see. As a company that advises clients on social spaces, it's paramount that we push on boundaries ourselves. I'll admit, I was uncomfortable when we turned the feed public - but the more I thought about what was being shared, the more I realized how often legacy thinking can roadblock new ideas...and how much work we have ahead of us before people truly understand the fundamentals behind social business design.

To read perspectives from the entire team, read We Work In Public on the Dachis Group Collaboratory.

And if you find the content interesting, may I suggest subscribing to the Collaboratory's RSS feed.