Portals and KM

My App Gap Posts for April 2013

The AppGap posts began toward the end of January 2008.  Here, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Below are the ones for April. 

I have been reviewing software for the AppGap and writing about other topics for this blog since January 2008.  It has been a great run and much fun. I have met many great people and been exposed to some ground breaking software. It has been a wonderful way to stay current with the market and observe its trends.  I often refer to the blog myself, using the Appopedia to look at past reviews.  This resource is organized by both product category and by vendor.

Last November I moved back to my childhood home, New Orleans, to focus more on my painting.  Here is a post on my move: Driving Through Hurricane Sandy To New Orleans. Here is another post on my more recent experiences with the Arts Council of New Orleans where I do a monthly booth to sell my paintings.

I will continue to stay connected to the emerging technology space and write about it on this Portals and KM blog, as well as the AppFusions blog. However, I am also modifying my PKM blog content to include more posts on my new hometown and my painting, as well as stories on new technology trends and software. I will announce more on this move the beginning of May.

I greatly appreciate the support of Francois Gossieaux and his Human 1.0 team, especially Kelly Morrissey. They continue to do interesting work in the social business space. It was also fun to work with them on the FastForward blog where I started in 2007. We are looking into ways to make that content accessible again. This is an exciting space and it is with great reluctance that I make this move.  

Review of Digital Workplace Trends 2013: Part Three – Selected Details

Wrike Now Offers Mobile Visualization of Project Schedules on an Interactive Timeline

2013 Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Process Starts

Moxie Software Partners with Microsoft to Enhance Customer Service Capabilities

IBM Brings Social Business and Integration to Messaging

My Last AppGap Post

 

Paintings with Paintings: Peabody Essex Museum

Here is another in a series I am doing on looking within paintings to create new compositions in my mind. This is from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. 

                                        

Images from Salem Willows Amusement Park

Salem Willows is a wonderful small old fashioned amusement park in Salem, MA that was foudned in 1866. It has both old style mechanical rides and the new electronic ones. There are a lot of willow trees and a small beach. I try to visit it whenver I am in Salem. 

                                       

Social Business Has More Work to Gain Real Satisfaction

Prescient Digital Media has released its latest useful report, Social Intranet Study. They interviewed participants in 651 organizations. Social media is becoming widely adopted as they found that most organizations (71%) have at least one social media tool available to some or all employees. The most popular social media tools are instant messaging, blogs, discussion forums, wikis, and user commenting. Here is my post on their excellent 2011 study.

However, the average respondent organization gives their internal social media efforts a failing grade.  This can be a result of insufficient investments in both tools and adoption efforts. Prescient Digital Media found that failing grades show a direct correlation to investment where the average company spends about $10,000 or less on their internal social media (intranet 2.0).

To be specific, the five most popular social media tools are instant messaging, blogs, discussion forums, wikis, and user commenting:

• 76% of organizations have instant messaging.
• 75% of organizations have blogs.
• 70% of organizations have discussion forums.
• 67% of organizations have wikis.
• 67% of organizations have user commenting.

The investments have been very modest. Most organizations spend little or nothing on their enterprise social media tools. This may explain the lack of satisfaction. Many organizations that implement social media tools spend less than US$10,000:

• 47% have spent less than US$10,000.
• 30% have spent between US$10,000 and US$99,999.
• 23% have spent US$100,000 or more.

Prescient Digital Media found that executives and employees alike are less than thrilled with their enterprise social media. To be specific:

• The average rating of internal social media by their host organization is 4.5 out of 10
• Only 22% of organizations rate employees' satisfaction with Intranet 2.0 tools as good or very good.
• Only 17% of organizations rate executives' satisfaction with Intranet 2.0 tools as good or very good.

I do not see this as an failing of social business but a failure in how it has been used in most organizations. As I have written many times, for social business to succeed it need to be integrated into work processes (see for example: Putting Social Media to Work and Giving Social Media a Good Job. That is not going to happen on these limited budgets.

 

Governments are Leading Many IT Innovations

This week I am back to covering emerging technologies and their practical uses. I have been seeing some innovative social business efforts from government for some time so this post, Governments Are Out Front in IT Innovation, was not a surprise. It mentions President Obama’s campaign to see innovation in IT, ranging from its use of big data to open source technologies. On his first day in office, the President also pledged to make the federal government a model for open data. It will take time but there is progress. The use of big data by his re-election campaign to target get out the vote efforts  remains a model for this space.

Innovation is also happening at the city level. New York has its own chief digital officer.  The article writes, “cities and states are not only making use of open source tools, they’re also walking the open source walk by participating in open source communities and contributing their work back to open source repositories such as GitHub.”

It goes on to add that, “in addition to releasing data that citizens can use, governments are increasingly making themselves more available electronically to help them fight crime, by predicting where crime is likely to occur.” I have seen the IBM ads on this type of effort. It makes a lot of sense. Below is an excerpt from a post I wrote after attending Lotusphere 2011. I t shows another innovative effort by government.

Tracy Hackshaw, is the Chief Solution Architect for iGov for the government of Trinidad and Tobago. Tracy discussed how the government is using social business for more effective e-government efforts. There are 1.3 million people in Trinidad and Tobago. A main goal is to increase the engagement of these people with their government and have them more satisfied with what the government is doing. They often look for what the people want and more interaction was a request.  Another was the simplification of information, which became another goal.

Within the country there is a high percentage of access to mobile phones so this was one channel they focused on. They wanted the user experience to be similar to what was offered on computers. One popular example was maps with the location of government offices and transit information on to reach them. Another was the reporting of such things as broken street lights or potholes in the roads. They have reduced the time that these issues are reported.

The different government agencies were each providing their own siloed source of information. So they consolidated this to offer a single, consistent point of access.  Different agencies could collectively created content that they shared with the residents. They also built in more interactivity to get greater feedback. They wanted the government to be more accessible so they created interactive town hall sessions.  They have achieved a 90% satisfaction rating from the residents and this is remarkable for government services. As you will see, each of these cases in their own way demonstrates the value of social business but, of course, I was already convinced. It is nice to see these tangible examples. 

Top 100 2013 Knowledge Management Influencers on the Twitter Hashtag #KM

MindTouch has a history of researching and producing lists of influencers. They recently shared their internal annual report of Techcomm influencers that they produced using LittleBird. This year, MindTouch also analyzed Knowledge Management influencers. It appears that they used the Twitter hashatg #KM as the basis for their research. While this captures some knowledge management people who use Twitter, specifically those who use the KM hashtag.

Here are the top eight on the list and there are some very good people here. I know all but the top one very well and they all deserve their rating.

1.  weknowmore
2.  David Gurteen
3.  Dave Snowden
4.  Stan Garfield
5.  Nancy White
6.  VMaryAbraham
7.  Jack Vinson
8.  Euan Semple

Here’s the entire list of 100 names to know in #KM. To be fair Aaron Fulkerson acknowledges, “We know there are several profoundly influential people not represented here. However, it should be clear that this list constitutes a core group of influencers in the KM space on Twitter.” I would agree that there are many influential people on the list and also that many are missing.  Those missing must not use the KM hashtag much.

Any list of top KM people that does not include Luis Suarez, Tom Davenport, Larry Prusack, and Clara O'Dell, to name a few, shows the limitations of sticking to one medium. Luis, for one, is very active on social media so he is the one I am most surprised to not see. This is not a criticism of the current list and Aaron does acknowledge the limits of the research. I commend them for making us aware of these 100, some of who I did not know before. 

We just need to be careful how we generalize from these lists. For example, I have ended up on some lists of top influences on things like SharePoint where I was not sure how I got there, even though they were algorithm based.  I am not surprised or concerned to not be on this list as I now write much more about social business and enterprise 2.0 than knowledge management and rarely, if ever, use the KM hashtag, even thoguh I rermain a strong supporter of KM. 

MindTouch plans to make available their list of top 100 influencers in customer support and customer experience. 

Painting of a Red, Orange, and Yellow Pepper on a White Plate

Here is a 16" x 20" acrylic painting of a red, orange, and yellow pepper on a white plate. I now an artist with the Arts Council of New Orleans and particpate in their monthy art market. These markets occur generally on the last Saturday at Palmer Park in New Orleans, at the corner of S. Carrolton and S. Claiborne. May 30 is the next market and I will have a booth and offer paintings for sale. It is earlier because of Jazzfest. 

 

Two Paintings of Flambeaux Carriers, Mardi Gras 2013, New Orleans

When I went to the canrival night parades as a child in the 1950s, I remember the flambeaux carriers. They carried gas fired torches to light the parades. Now many parades use electic lights but a few perseve the old tradtion. Here are two form this years carnival season. One is a 12" x 12" work and the other is 16" x 20." Both are aryclic. I also did a 9" x 12" version of the larger one. 

I now an artist with the Arts Council of New Orleans and particpate in their monthy art market. These markets occur generally on the last Saturday at Palmer Park in New Orleans, at the corner of S. Carrolton and S. Claiborne. Today, Aoril 20 is the next market and I will have a booth and offer paintings for sale. It is earlier because of Jazzfest. Since I arrived back in my hometown, I have been painting a variety of themes related to the city. The May market is held on May 25. 

  

Darwin Ecosystem Rolls Out New Awareness Product, TweetZUP

I continue to be connected with Darwineco Systems and have been pleased with their progress. Last Fall they launched a new product under the name Tweather. It received “SAP Big Data Startup of the Year” award at the TechCrunch Disrupt event, held Sept. 10-12, 2012 in San Francisco. This latest achievement goes along with our win of the KM World Trend Setting Product in both 2011 and 2010 and the Most Promising Software award in 2010. Darwin was also named to the 100 companies that matter in 2010 by both KM World and eContent Magazine. The name has been changed to TweetZUP and the capabilities continue to be expanded.

TweetZUP.com is a free Web awareness utility, supported by online advertising, for anyone wanting to know and share in real-time “what’s up with tweets?”  With TweetZUP, users can create, save, set up alerts, and share their own ZUPs (pages) about any topic they care about on Twitter. For researchers, brand promoters, and anyone else who wants to find out what’s going on in any subject, identifying emerging, spiking and trending issues within a ZUP topic is easy, and alerts inform them of movements in the subject matter of interest. ZUP page sponsors can create self-reinforcing communities of users who are already interested in their product category.

Here is a blog post that shows how the tweets around the recent bombing in Boston evolved as the news emerged. It is free and I encourage you to give it a try.

 

Google Offers a Person Finder for Boston Tragedy

Google is providing a useful service by setting up a person finder for people either looking to check on the status of someone or to offer information.  Here is the link to the Google Person Finder: Boston Marathon Explosions. The site also mentions two important numbers: the Boston Mayor's Hotline for families of victims: 617-635-4500 and the Boston Police line for witnesses who may have information: 800-494-8477.  

I appreciate this service and have used it to check on some friends in my former town. Fortunately, everyone I know was not at the site and is fine. My thoughts are with those not so fortunate.

This reminds me of the people finder set up after Katrina. We could have used Google’s help then and the Katrina locator was much more of an effort. The Katrina PeopleFinder Project was set up by some people at the Berkman Center at Harvard after it was discovered that there was no center clearing house. After Katrina hundreds of Web sites were gathering hundreds, and probably thousands, of entries about missing persons or persons who wanted to let others know they were okay. The problem was: the data on these sites had no particular form or structure. So it was almost impossible for people to search or match things up. Plus there were dozens of sites - making it hard for a person seeking lost loved ones to search them all.

The Berkman Center volunteers set up this central database in a few days to simplify the search. It was a great service.  However, they needed massive help to transfer the data into it. There was a call on the Web for volunteers and thousands responded within the first day.

I did some work on this. It seemed a bit complicated at first but there were good instructions and a non-technical person like me could do it. You took data from one of many separate databases and added it into a central one. There appeared to be several benefits in addition to a single source to find people. You were taking databases with different formats and putting them into a common format so searches and sorts can work better. Also, many entries were multiple people and you were creating separate records for each individual. Your work gave a closer personal look at the displaced people. It let you see who was looking for who and the status of this search. Some of the individual stories emerged.

Google, in its usual way have simplified the interface and process. The more personal connection achieved by volunteers was lost but, more importantly, it has made it easier for those who need to find or share information. 

Arts Council of New Orleans Saturday April 2013 Art Market Held Early

I now an artist with the Arts Council of New Orleans and participate in their monthy art market. These markets occur generally on the last Saturday at Palmer Park in New Orleans, at the corner of S. Carrolton and S. Claiborne. Saturday April 20 is the next market and I will have a booth and offer paintings for sale. The April market is held a week early because of jazz fest the following week. Since I arrived back in my hometown, I have been painting a variety of themes related to the city.  Below is my booth for the February market. Under it are some of the new paintings I have finisehd since the last market. Many of the ones in the booth picture are aloso available. 

               

Moxie Software and Microsoft Partner to Enhance Customer Service Capabilities

In November, Moxie and Microsoft announced a partnership to pursue a joint go-to-market strategy to offer Spaces by Moxie within MSFT Dynamics CRM. (See – Moxie Integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM).  In March, Moxie announced full integration with MSFT Lync to further strengthen their contact center capabilities. I recently spoke with Tara Sporer, VP of Marketing at Moxie software and Nikhil Govindaraj, VP of Products, to discuss the significance of these moves.

As part of the partnership, Moxie Software will provide Microsoft Dynamics CRM with comprehensive, multi-channel and knowledge base solutions for delivering superior customer experiences. Offered on premises or in the cloud, Moxie Software’s Knowledge Spaces™, Email Spaces™, Chat Spaces™, Web Self-Service Spaces™, CoBrowse Spaces™ and Social Media Spaces™ are now available to work with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Below is a sample screen of Dynamics with email.

Spaces by Moxie enables Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers to provide differentiated and personalized customer experiences at scale. The combined solution allows customers to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the single source of truth for all customer and interaction data.  This ensures accurate data by allowing agents to update Microsoft Dynamics CRM while on their Moxie desktop. Moxie becomes the translation layer and Dynamics serves as the layer of record.

Microsoft Lync is their unified communications offering. It currently does not connect to Microsoft Dynamics, but now it can through Moxie so this is a very helpful addition. Lync provides integrated voice, IM, screen sharing chat, and more. Lync currently cannot do intelligent call routing, but Moxie can. Moxie can intercept the call, evaluate the needs and route the call to the person with the most related experience. This person then will have multi-channel response options. Below is a sample screen of Dynamics with chat.

 

Contact center agents can now have a single agent desktop that seamlessly works with multi-channel interactions to contact and case records within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This ensures accurate data by allowing agents to update Microsoft Dynamics CRM while on their Moxie desktop. They can now automatically search the knowledge base from within the case record for faster case resolution. 

Agents can also publish information from the case record into the knowledge base as knowledge articles to improve effectiveness of the knowledge base. This is a critical capability as it allows an easy way to keep content current without placing a heavy demand on agents.  I am sure it must increase compliance with putting upgraded content into the knowledge base.  I have seen the benefit of a god knowledge base on call center agent performance many times, accelerating performance on a variety of measures such a first time call resolution and cross-selling.

The integration of Moxie with these two Microsoft products rests on a shared foundation as .net apps. Moxie can leverage a company’s existing Microsoft infrastructure and reduce the need to purchase high-end call center services. As a result, Moxie is targeted at the mid-market and this makes sense.

The resulting integrated customer response system provides control over customer experiences regardless of what channel they engage the company. It also providers multiple self-service options and has complete mobile integration. This is a good move, as customer connections will increasingly occur through mobile channels.

This move also takes the call center out of the silos than many operate within. Now Moxie’s collaboration capabilities can be engaged to handle escalations. It puts Moxie in the center of connection between Microsoft Dynamic and Lync. This is a nice place to be and I can understand the positive customer response to this move. 

Painting of a Ventilator Cap #2, New Orleans Roof

Many homes in New Orleans have tin roofs and ventilator caps such as the one shown below. This is the second in a series of paintings of New Orleans architectural details. Below is a 16" x 20" acrylic painting. I left the canvas blank behind the ventilator cap and focused in on the the details of the cap. 

I now an artist with the Arts Council of New Orleans and particpate in their monthy art market. These markets occur generally on the last Saturday at Palmer Park in New Orleans, at the corner of S. Carrolton and S. Claiborne. Saturday Aoril 20 is the next market and I will have a booth and offer paintings for sale. Since I arrived back in my hometown, I have been painting a variety of themes related to the city. The April market is held on April 20 because of jazz fest the following week. 

Images from the Zydeco Cajun Prairie, South Louisiana

Another benefit to going west to take in some Zydeco and Cajun music and dancing is the roadside scenery. There is a Zydeco Cajun Prairie Scenic Byway that we followed a good bit. Here are some highlights. 

                      
                                 

Data is Made to be Shared

As reported in Information Week, a survey, Fostering a Data-Driven Culture, by the Economist Intelligence Unit indicates that executives who feel their organizations handle data collection, analysis and sharing well are also more likely to feel that their companies outperform their industry peers.

Specifically, 75.5% of those who indicated their organizations were "substantially ahead of peers" financially also said data collection was "very important/essential" in their organizations. In contrast, half of the executives who ranked their companies as "substantially" behind peers in data collection also indicated their organizations were "somewhat" behind financially.

I think that is it not just collecting the data but sharing it is key here. The report noted some interesting results in this issue. There is a double curve as smaller organizations believe in wide sharing, but sharing tends to tighten as companies grow and data-governance rules are applied. However, with really big companies data sharing opens up again.  The new digital workplace allows this sharing to occur, even in the largest organizations making them in some ways as nimble as the small ones.

In general there is a positive feeling for data usage on the job as 84% said "most to all" employees should work this way. Data is an asset that grows in value as it is used. The more people who see it the more valuable it becomes and more ideas can be generated from it.  You also need to educate workers to get the most from the available data. The research indicates that companies that invest in training for data skills perform better than their peers. Now that is a good finding that makes sense. 

Bloomfire Provides Comprehensive Knowledge Connections

Bloomfire is a relatively new offering in the knowledge management space, founded in 2010, that is meeting a need that has remained with us for some time: how do you connect people with the knowledge they need to accomplish their work tasks? This need has been made more acute with the advent of easy-to-use knowledge tools on the consumer Web. For the past few years, workers have become accustomed to accessing better knowledge tools in their personal life than in their work life. The goal of Bloomfire is to provide tools to close that gap. I spoke with Craig Malloy, CEO of Bloomfire, to get an overview of their offering.

Craig provided some stats on the knowledge-sharing problem. Knowledge workers spend up to 30% of their working day looking for data and only 44% of corporate users can find the (internal) file they’re looking for compared to 86% of similar internet users. I can relate to this as I have often asked audiences at knowledge talks to raise their hands if they can find content easier on their enterprise systems than on the Web. No one has ever raised their hand.

There are also issues with enterprise learning systems. Craig showed data that said more than 70% of important job-related knowledge comes from other workers or learning on their own rather than employment-related courses. I have seen more extreme stats that showed that 90% of knowledge came from informal sources. Bloomfire, unlike many social business systems, combines learning capabilities with social networking, content management, and cloud-based file sharing. I like this move.

There is great opportunity here as McKinsey has projected nearly a trillion-dollar market opportunity around creating better-connected enterprises. The convergence of social features, mobile capabilities, cloud storage, and new content tools, creates a compelling stage from which to address these benefits, which is where Bloomfire plays. Their mission is to “help businesses create, capture, display, save, and share information, connecting people who have knowledge with those who need it.” Through application integration, Bloomfire wants to be the “primary location to access relevant content, and the primary communication channel for noticing, collaborating, deciding and acting on information and knowledge.”

Bloomfire has successfully acquired more than 220 active customers to-date and raised $18 million in funding from Redpoint Ventures and Austin Ventures. Their two main use cases are social knowledge creation and sharing, as well as delivering social capabilities to enhance sales enablement. They integrate with popular CRM systems, such as Salesforce, to address the latter and have designed an easy to use a system designed for individual work groups, rather than enterprise wide implementation. This simplifies the adoption process and enables business users to gain quick access to Bloomfire’s capabilities. You can see a sample of their home page below.

The essential elements of the newest release of Bloomfire include a multimedia content engine, a social engagement system, an analytics dashboard, and enhanced iOS app and new Android support. The content generation includes co-authoring, drag and drop file management, and intelligent search. The social engagement features include Integration with LinkedIn so users can bring in their profile and not have to re-create profile information. There is also recognizing and mining expertise and recommendations. 

I was impressed by the comprehensive nature of Bloomfire’s analytics feature, including the ability to indentify content that provides the most benefit, as well as the content related activities of community members; there is also a “hands on the buzzer” measure that tracks the average time it takes to get an answer to a question. Craig said that their current time for internal use is two hours. Here are some sample analytics screens.

With the new mobile capabilities you can stash content on your smart phone by storing what you would like to read later and save it locally to your iOS device to  retrieve and view anytime, anywhere, regardless of connectivity options. Bloomfire will also release a full-featured mobile app for Android devices in Q2 2013. You can see a sample mobile interface below.

Bloomfire focuses on content management and knowledge sharing, rather than activity streams. There are notifications of several types and a notifications tab within the interface.  It also has strong capabilities for handling video as the team has deep experience in this space. You can see a sample video handling screen below.

I like the combination of features and the clarity of their goals and messaging. I can see why Bloomfire has attracted strong attention in a short time. I wish had these capabilities within a tool when I was implementing knowledge management systems a few years back. 

2013 Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Study

The 16th annual Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) studies will begin on April 15, 2013. The 2013 MAKE research program consists of the Global, Americas, Asian and European studies, as well as national studies for Brazil, China, India and Indonesia. This award always brings back memories. The Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) award has been around for some time. Back when I was with a large consulting company and involved in our knowledge management practice, I spoke at the awards meetings in London several times.  These were the days of better travel funding and the relatively early days of KM. I am pleased that this award is still around and still relevant.

The 86-page "2013 Knowledge-Intensive Sector Leaders Report," part of the "2013 Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Report," has been published by Teleos. It identifies the Knowledge Leaders for over 25 knowledge-intensive business sectors. The ranking tables and commentary have been established based on the MAKE research team’s assessment of national/regional/global MAKE studies as well as a number of independent studies focusing on industry-specific metrics and rankings.

Apple was recognized as the Overall Winner of the 2011 Global MAKE study. Other include: Accenture, APQC, ConocoPhillips, Fluor, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Infosys Ltd., McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, POSCO, PwC, Royal Dutch Shell, Samsung, Schlumberger, Siemens, Tata, Toyota, Unilever, and Wikipedia.

An even more select group of organizations form the 2012 Global MAKE Hall of Fame.  These 24 organizations have been Global MAKE Finalists in each of the past five annual studies: Accenture, Apple, APQC, ConocoPhillips, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Fluor, Google, IBM, Infosys Limited, Mars, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, MindTree, Petrobras, POSCO, PwC, Royal Dutch Shell, Samsung, Schlumberger, Siemens, Tata Group, Toyota and Wipro Technologies.

Successfully managing enterprise knowledge can provide quantified returns. The 2012 Global MAKE Winners trading on the NYSE/NASDAQ showed a Total Return to Shareholders (TRS) for the ten-year period 2002-2011 of 19.7% - nearly three times the average Fortune 500 company median.

The Return on Revenues (ROR) for the 2012 Global MAKE Winners was also 3.2 times that of the Fortune 500 ROR median at 12%. In addition the Return on Assets (ROA) for the 2012 Global MAKE Winners was 9.9% - nearly four times that of the Fortune 500 ROA median.

Images of Homes in the New Iberia Louisiana Area

On the way to to going west to take in some Zydeco and Cajun music and dancing, we took the slow route from New Orleans on Route 90 to see some of the pleasant towns and countryside along the way. There were many lovely homes in the New Iberia area, starting with Franklin and continuing through New Iberiato St. Martinville. Franklin had a wide road with white lamp posts and Chtistmas decorations, along with many large homes. Here are some of what we saw, along with a few other local views. The past five posts have covered other parts of our trip. 

                                                  

Images from the Atchafalya Basin, South Louisiana

The Atchafalya Basin is a huge swamp in Louisiana that might become the future home of the Mississippi River according to some. It is a beautifual place. with several state parks for camping, canoing, and walking inlcuding Lake Fausse Pointe. Here are pictures of the swamp and several music venues alongside it including McGeee's Landing where we also had some seafood harvested from the swamp including basin catfish. 

                                       

How Can a Restaurant Use Social Media?

Paul Beaulieu asks the question, Why is social media still underutilized by restaurants?, on the Smart Blog on Social Media.  He sites some useful stats such as: consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals, 1% of U.S. survey respondents say friends’ social media posts have directly influenced a purchase decision, and 15.1 million consumers go to social media channels before making a purchase decision.

Paul does not provide data on the use of social media for restaurants. I do know some that are using Twitter, for example. It is very popular with food trucks as a way to reach a mobile audience. He does offer some ways for restaurants to use video and mobile. 

Here is a successful example for 2005 when the main form of social media was blogs. At the time Ben Williams ran a restaurant, Horsefeathers in North Conway, New Hampshire with his partner Brian Glynn. Ben writes a blog, “Horsefeathers Restaurant: It all about the food folks” to support his place.  The blog is no longer up so I cannot give you a link but it worked well then.

Ben started the blog to provide a more immediate presence than a static web site. He wanted to promote a loyal following and get regular return customers to the restaurant.  A restaurant needs steady customers to sustain itself.  Ben saw the blog as a way to create closer on-going ties to the local people and frequent visitors to the tourist area where they are located.  He was also not a technical person so the ease of use of the blog was appealing.

The effort has been reasonably successful when I spoke with Ben in 2005. The number of unique daily visitors was over a 100 and growing. He also noticed that the number of blog visitors fluctuates with the different highs and lows of the multiple tourist seasons in the mountain area.  It also peaks on Thursday when people are generally planning their weekend. These patterns suggested that visitors appear to be mostly potential restaurant customers and not simply web surfers. 

The success was also measured directly from the great feedback that Ben got from his customers. Ben wanted to use his blog to start conversations that will be continued at his place. Customers responded and talked about content in the blog when they came in to eat or listen to the music. Ben went beyond the traditional restaurant site content of menus and schedules and added regional information to give customers something to talk about and to promote more regional visitors. He wanted people to go to his site to find out what is going on in the area. The region has several seasons, summer hiking, winter skiing, and late fall seasonal shopping at the outlet stores. He focused content consistent with these seasons and wanted to be the trusted resource for area news.

Ben was also interested in getting more women to read his blog so he asked them for suggestions. He also tried to appeal to the many second home owners who want to stay in touch with the area so they will then think of his place when they return. When we spoke Ben was looking for new features and the blog currently includes current views of nearby Mount Washington, current weather in the area, news of the area, their live music schedule with pictures of the performers, cook books “from their prep tables,” and menus.  The posts include pictures and cover a variety of topics that would interest people who like food and like the area.  Their mission statement is to be “the greatest neighborhood eatery in the known universe.”

Now you can go beyond blogs and use other tools, as my favorite neighborhood, Chiba, does with Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, and Google+ recommendations.

 

My App Gap Posts for March 2013

The AppGap posts began toward the end of January 2008.  Here, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Below are the ones for March. There will be more posts in April. 

2011 IBM Global CMO Study – Results

eXo Announces Codenvy and Plans for eXo Release 4.0

Social Media Levels Off in the Inc 500 in 2012

Bloomfire Offers Comprehensive Knowledge Connections

Who Are the Top 20 Social CMOs in the Fortune 100?

Digital Workplace Trends 2013: Review Part 1 – Overview

 

 

 

April Fools: Facebook Fake Friends

Happy April Fool’s Day. Here is a good story for today. Unfortunately, it is real and a sign of the times like the PeerIndex offer to give you rewards for tweeting about products and their whole offering in general which seems easy to scam.  David Lee wrote about how you can buy Facebook “friends” in his story, Fake girlfriend: I paid for make-believe love on Facebook.

David found that for $5 you can hire someone to be your girl friend on Facebook. In fact, there are many people offering this online escort service. For example, one site, Fiverr, has many women - and some men - offering services relating to relationship activity on Facebook for $5. The US-based lists many things people are willing to do for $5.

He selected one and then interviewed her after a bit. David found that “Sophia” has made hundreds of dollars selling her "relationship status." He added that, “twenty-four-year-old Sophia is smart, pretty and has hopes and dreams of getting to grad school.” She also told him that, "the whole Sophia thing is just my marketing username. Nothing on that Facebook profile is real! My photos on there are really me, but nothing else is." Sophia started writing love notes on David’s Facebook page until he confessed that he was a journalist and interviewed her.

This is like all those services that offer you Twitter followers. I get suspicious when some has tens of thousands of followers so no obvious reason. All of these services discredit the value of followers and miss the point. I wrote more about this a while back, see my 2011 post - Our Obsession with Scoring is Now Taking on Individuals on the Web. BTW my Klout score is 56 but I have no idea in what that means nor have I looked at it since I wrote the post in 2011 when it was 55. I tried to find my PeerIndex score but I could not get the site to work. Perhaps it is still mad at me for what I wrote in 2011 when I was a 59.