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As a follow up to our earlier post today, we came across another good article further emphasizing the need to actively monitor and protect your brand.
Tim Lynch, senior experience design specialist at Molecular, explores the concept of brand-jacking. "If your brand is online, it's susceptible to consumer influence -- both benign and malicious. See what steps your company can take to mitigate the risks."
The Economist tells a cautionary tale of companies who find out after the fact that their employees are revealing or misrepresenting their employers' brand online with their own posted indiscretions, gossip or exchanges on community sites like myspace, Facebook and Twitter.
It's a must read for organizations who currently have not addressed social networks usage policies - not only "at work" usage policies, but also "general usage guidelines" that are highly recommended to manage your brand and online reputation. The article has three important recommendations to consider:
As a strategic marketing and communications firm providing services to the State of California, we have the privilege of working with many innovative and progressive state departments, public and local agencies, who are driving inventive strategies to meet the demand of processing business, delivering program services, responding to ongoing State and Federal legislation, adapting to election and State budget cycles, as well as supporting the rapidly increasing activity and demand to stay competitive (compatible, connected, integrated) with "sister" agencies, business partners (vendors and suppliers), citizens, and other reliant stakeholders.
Deloitte currently has an excellent report out on e-government that addresses the challenges "conventional government" is facing and will continue to face with emerging risk - Change Your World or the World Will Change You - The future of collaborative government and Web 2.0.
Premise for eGovernments in the Era of Web 2.0
Deloitte writes, "Today’s tech-savvy world demands tech-savvy government. Increasingly connected citizens and stakeholders are asking governments to deliver services more rapidly and efficiently. Yet the public service bureaucracies that form the governmental backbone often take a conservative approach to adopting the latest Internet-based technologies to accelerate service delivery.
Developing a “Government 2.0” culture is more involved than simply setting up a
wiki or a blog. It requires leadership, investments in technology,
organizational change, and risk-taking to overcome cultural, process, technology
and policy hurdles.
In the end, increased levels of collaboration will result in enhanced service delivery through all operational and policy-making functions of government. This culture will allow tomorrow’s government to do more with less."
Today, Forrester Research released its report on The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption, which includes 2008 data from around the world. Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research and co-author of Groundswell writes a great follow on post on this report and his findings in, New 2008 Social Technographics data reveals rapid growth in adoption. He writes, "Data is my secret weapon. ...But data gets old, especially in the rapidly changing social world."
With extraordinary tools like the Social Technographics Profile, Bernoff's team from Forrester Research were able to get data from 11 countries by age and gender.
"Looking at the US data, the big news in 2008 is that, not unexpectedly, social technology participation has grown rapidly. Inactives -- people untouched by social technologies -- have shriveled from 44% down to 25% of the online population. Spectators -- those who read, watch, or consumer social content -- have ballooned from 48% to 69%. If you think social technology is about to become a universal phenomenon, we just handed you a nice little bundle of evidence," Bernoff writes.
Bernhoff outlines this migration from inactives to creators in the Social Technographics Ladder. This visual representation clearly shows the evolution in the human experience today online.
"As you can see, there was also a nice healthy jump in Joiners (social network participants), Critics (those who react to social content they see), and especially Collectors (those who organize social content). None of these are quite as popular as being a Spectator, but I think there’s plenty of growth ahead for these groups. (If it’s bothering you that the numbers add up to more than 100%, remember that these groups overlap – this is not a segmentation.)," say Bernoff.
A great point, Bernoff makes in summary notes that not everyone must/will work up the ladder to become a "creator" to engage with social utilities. There's room for all levels of participation.
Be sure to check out Groundswell's blog where Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff share great research and insight on how the world is being transformed by social technologies.
The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption - Executive Summary
Social technology adoption increased tremendously this year. Three in four US online adults now use social tools to connect with each other compared with just 56% in 2007. What else changed? Ratings and reviews, "voting" for Web sites, and peer-generated video experienced the largest growth, while blogs and tagging closely followed. Older adults are now also more likely to participate socially as Spectators and Critics, placing them in the active rungs of our Social Technographics® ladder. Marketers have to get on board with social now — more advanced marketers will speed up customer-driven innovation, sharpen metrics, and improve customer experience. Those who wait to join in will find it increasingly hard to catch up.
As I ended my original post on My Friends, I realized there was a natural follow up for brands engaging in social media to connect with partners, consumers, fans, etc.
Within the context of social networking, the definition of friend comes with the responsibility of a trusted and responsive relationship.
As brands and brand representatives are connecting more intimately with their followers, there has been much discussion about the appropriateness and community effort required to cultivate and sustain a conversation and trusted relationship. When you think about making a connection at this "friend" level from brand-to-consumer and/or consumer-to-brand - setting clear expectations of what this relationship means and how it is cared for, trusted and valued will reveal the true sincerity of transparency and authenticity in this relationship.
If there was one brand representative who completely excels at this naturally is @Comcastcares on Twitter. Frank Eliason, the "friend" at the heart of @Comcastcares lives and breaths a responsive, "we can help" presence on behalf of Comcast that to me is remarkable and the perfect case study in being "brand friendly" in social networking.
I read a great blog post by David Berkowitz today on Blog Search Stuck in Beta and it really captured a long-time complaint I've had about search engines, specifically for blogs and blog content. Whether you use Google or a micro-search specifically for blogs, overall they have been very ineffective in my experience.
Taking a look at the blog search landscape, Berkowitz finds there is a lot missing to the search experience, particularly "a sense of understanding a user’s purpose." (Big cheers! Smiles! Total agreement!)
Ending my day today, I learned of SocialMention, which I feel starts to address the Social Web and how blog and micro-blog content is out there and in the mix. Not unlike other cool search tools, like Lijit, SocialMention really does everything on my "nice to have" wish list for a Social Web search engine. SocialMention provides search results that are organized by blogs, micro-blogs (like Twitter mentions, Brightkite and Posterous posts, etc.), bookmarks, comments and so on.This is not just a search for blogs, but when we searched one of our own, Extraordinique we were so pleased with the immediacy and comprehensive return of results.
Our experience with SocialMention exceeds any results we've ever been able to extract from Google, Google Blog Search, Technorati and others.
In seconds, SocialMention had every post we've done on Extraordinique, all of our micro-blog conversations involving "Extraordinique," social bookmarks in Digg and Del.icio.us, comment threads, including FriendFeed, and the list goes on. It is the next great aggregator of numerous social media sources remixing it into a single stream of really useful and valuable information.
It is a thing of beauty to see all of this information indexed so quickly and so well organized. It will be such a useful tool for brand and community managers to keep up on all "SocialMentions."
Great idea. Great execution. Great results!
I imagine this will show up in SocialMention's "socialmention search query," so while I have your attention -- Thanks! You rock! And why no @SocialMention? Your fans and your critics want to include you in the conversation while they learn about you and endure some of the heavy loads. :)
We find there is a continuous challenge in the workplace as Organization 2.0 continues to impact, morph and mashup disciplines that were without question very clearly defined. Take the evolution of the I.T. department, for example. I just came across Steve Smith's 2006 post, Web Development and Information Technology that posed the question: Should Web development be housed under I.T.? I recognize tremors can be felt along much of the organizational fault lines by even posing such a question in many structured organizations, but it's interesting to consider, particularly as new lines are drawn and cross-functional teams are formed in today's Web 2.0 organizational structure.
The essence of Smith's post notes that each discipline within the Web development lifecycle contributes to the process and that contributors must work "hand in hand" to fully create a successful online experience. The post breaks down the territorial stance of where "Web development" lies within the organization. It also clarifies, which is refreshing, the difference between "Web development" and "Information Technology," which seems to be a common identity crisis in many evolving IT organizations.
So, in 2008, is this question, "What does Web Development have to do with Information Technology?" still relevant, important, even controversial? Are organizations shifting and changing to create more cross-functional "interaction" teams or standing firm as independent skill-based silos?
What I love most in this post is Smith's take up front about Web development:
"IT is a necessary part of keeping the web alive, but one that is so separate from the creation of a website that it makes me laugh every time I think about it. Information Technology is, and always should be, concerned with the reliability, stability, and effectiveness of serving a website. Those creating websites should focus their complete attention on the effectiveness of the message, the design, the interface and the content."
What's your thought? How do you define today's Web Team? Does it reside in one camp or another other? Is the modern enterprise ready for dynamic, non-traditional organizational structure that is collaborative and multi-disciplinary lead by specialists and championed by "customer evangelists?" How far have we come?
Tonight's historical acceptance speech by Barack Obama for Democratic nomination for president has been captured in a word cloud by GraphicDesignr. It strikes me because of the meetings we had today covered everything from keyword optimization for search, the art and science of tagging, and then watching this evening's speech with iPhone in hand refreshing Twitteriffic to the max. I was able to experience a historical speech, and monitor as well as participate in the discussion on the back channel for #DNC08.
Experiencing the 2008 Summer Olympics and now this election in the era of Web 2.0, it's clear that we have more access, more organization, more ways to track, convey, collaborate and develop meaning for any given message, event, and opportunity.
I thought instantly, a historical speech captured in a tag cloud, the perfect conveyance of form and function!
Yesterday, I wrote about two new redesigns launched and realized I failed to really address the pros and cons of "context" included within the designs. ReadWriteWeb has a great article today on Beyond the API: Why Companies Should Have a Presence on All Major Platforms, which places context (and what the user's value most") at the center of the user experience framework.
A long-standing mantra on the Web has been "Content is King." For most working in user experience, however, we've had to educate most that the richest content can't reign without a well-designed user experience.
Sound the horns and roll out the red carpet, user experience is now annointed king!
ReadWriteWeb notes that "user interface innovation is a major part of the ongoing web revolution" and outlines the emergence of contextual user interfaces in user experience design.
With posts this week on Personalization 2.0 and now this post, there is a major challenge to deliver a more streamlined experience that is based more intelligently on context. ReadWriteWeb states: "The new user experience is about fluidity."
As I wrote yesterday, "simplifying the experience improves the experience." Users cannot afford to be bombarded with too many options. They need an experience that allows them to be easily self-directed to find and select the information or services they need quickly and easily.
Side note:
To write this post, I ended up revisiting a 2005 post on Putting Context into Context by Jared Spool, which examines the fundamental importance of "context." Flashing forward to 2008, how context can be delivered now in 2008 and beyond is where things really gets interesting.
Related Post:
The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces
Accessibility is important to user experience design
Let me say this up front... making your Web site accessible adds another layer of optimization to your user experience design. Making your website accessible not only removes the barriers of access to certain groups of individuals, but by design, it has inherent benefits and techniques to improve usability and interaction overall.
Good user-centered design means accessible design
Often in our consultation, we see fear, confusion and sometimes even indifference ("Our website doesn't necessitate accessibility compliance. Our users want more, not less.") when it comes to Web accessibility compliance. Such resistance is easily overcome when "compliance" can be understood first as a fundamental commitment embedded within your website strategy and secondly, as a continuous process improvement, thereafter.
What you resist, persists.
I am a true believer that if you create a holistic user experience, your website will include accessibility methods in design and development to maximize your functionality, features, design and content. I also believe, and have seen it time and time again, if the design and development does not facilitate varying degrees of accessibility compliance (based upon user expectations and interaction design) the Web experience will remain compromised and reveal itself in user satisfaction ratings, traffic metrics, online reputation, etc.
Most Web strategies get teams excited when measurable tactics are taken in SEO or even multivariate testing, for example. But, today, with "engagement" as the key metric, we challenge our client teams to include accessibility as part of the equation. If everyone can use a website more efficiently (minimizing barriers), can you imagine how all measurements will improve!?
Often, the biggest challenge we see our client teams face regarding compliance starts with the questions, like:
For years, the W3C has worked to define important guidelines to establish a structure for compliance. Unfortunately, the Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), while comprehensive, have tended to be complex and quite frankly, a little overwhelming to most business users who are trying to guide Web initiatives that include accessibility.
Today, Andrea Hill, Social Interaction Designer/Developer and blogger, explores the WCAG and addresses the question What’s the deal with… Web Accessibility and WCAG? It's a great post noting the basis for WCAG and the evolving improvements in WCAG 2.0. Her post inspired me today to add to this conversation.
Related Sources:
Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Gottfried Vossen: Unleashing Web 2.0: From Concepts to Creativity
Robert Brunner: Do You Matter?: How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company
Bryan Eisenberg: Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi: Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means
Duncan J. Watts: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Open Market Edition)
Mark Buchanan: Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks
