Weather Check!

Rolling out next week for a nice little ride. Weather check - at least I'll get out of the Kansas Hot!

Chamberlain, SD - 75 and wet
Spearfish, SD - 65 and wet
Red Lodge, MT -50's and wet
Moscow, ID - 60's and wet
Nelson, BC - 70's and wet
Glacier NP - 60's and wet in the valley, 50's and wet up top.

 At least it'll stay above freezing . . .  Seriously glad I'm not camping this trip!

(update 13-June, departing day after tomorrow: No Change. Still Wet.  Sigh.)

What am I doing lately...

Boss wanted a list of what I'm doing these days...
Assorted Roles, Responsibilities

E20 Internal Social Media – Provide VP level consultation, implementation and training for Internal social media efforts on Jive and Sharepoint
Community Technology – Define, drive execution strategy for platform upgrades
Community  Strategy – Contribute and collaborate with team on Community strategy for customer facing site
Community Execution – build custom community layouts, assist team with technical implementation of widgets, layouts
Community Reporting – Execute custom SQL reports for variety of requests
Community Network Space Owner – read, review, respond to network concerns by customers; work with Sprint Network team to identify pain points and deliver communication to customers.
NO&W Leadership Program – VP Core Team Representative for NLP program providing support to mentors and protégées, VP reporting on status, leading internal Social Media efforts for NLP program.
Google Analytics – provide consulting, metrics from Google Analytics for Community and other Sprint.com sites.
Google Webmaster – work with system admin team to optimize Google crawl rate, exclusions for Community and other Sprint sites.
Akamai Admin – Provide technical, implementation, contract and reporting support to IT, Marketing, Sprint.com teams for Akamai Edgesuite content distribution network
Search – Provide technical, implementation, best practices consultation for Google Site Search option; Inquira search of Community.
Support – Provide technical, content, layout and implementation best practices consultation for Support team.
Assorted Web Stuff -  System Admin, network admin, app admin for TheMobe.com and Varacam.com supporting both Sprint.com and Marketing initiatives.
TheMobe.com – provide Drupal / Word press technical assistance to internal teams.

Community Kickoff

"...rally their core supporters to .. seed the community with killer content that will make newcomers feel welcome and pique their interest. Make it irresistible for them to dive right into a vibrant conversation, instead of asking them to create the first content."

- Ian Greenleigh on building uptake on a community.

http://daretocomment.com/breathing-new-life-into-books-with-official-hashtags/

Another Statistically Impropable Phrase

I find the coolest terms that aren't in Google. Before: "mudsucking shitfoot" I used to be the only hit for that phrase.

Now I found another -- "bio viral interface implant", or "BV two eyes" from the book Dome by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry.

Came up on a teleconference today about future phone interfaces. And of course there's no summary or link to explain what it is.

And then the call degenerated into a talk about vajazzling your cellphone.

Nuclear War May Stop Global Warming?

Sorry, what? In 2006, National Geographic posted that, "Even a small nuclear conflict would cause long-lasting global devastation that could kill tens of millions, scientists warned this week."

Then last week, they posted that, "Even a regional nuclear war could spark "unprecedented" global cooling"

Sorry, what? Is global warming such a concern that 'long lasting global devastation' is a reasonable risk?

Hat tip to FerFal for the pointer.

ATT Data Rates for 4G LTE

Was just reading from TiPB about proposed AT&T data rates for their upcoming 4G LTE service. It runs from 5MB/sec to peaks of 12MB/sec. They're offering two tiers - 200MB and 2GB of data. How's that add up?

Go ahead and get the 2GB plan -- it's good for almost an hour at normal speeds (only 22 minutes if you get the max speed). Overages will only cost you $1.10 a minute.

Want to 'save' some money? Their lowest plan ($15 a month) at 200MB will last you 5 minutes and 33 seconds at 'average' speeds (5MB). Just 2 minutes and 13 seconds at peak speed. Overages would range from $2.81 to $6.75 per minute of use. Classic! Just like the good old days of Ma Bell Long Distance rates.

Keep in mind - those are *monthly* plans - you get to use your LTE from ATT for anywhere from 2 minutes a month to almost a whole hour a month before they charge you extra. Isn't that nice?

Mo Bloggin

Wow, native blogging software on the HTC Evo. Nice. Is Blogger becoming relevant again?

Even offers in post photo adding:

Bill of Attainder - not just for civics class anymore

he needs to be prosecuted to the, the fullest extent of the law; and if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Blog Post Wrapup

Lately most of my writing has been on the Sprint Community - I've called out a few of the posts I've written over there if you're interested:

• Spotlight on Sprint Stuff - getting help
  
  
• Social Commerce SEO Benefits
  
  
• Developing Apps for the Samsung Galaxy Tab
  
  
• Vlingo for Android with In Car Mode Review
  
  
• What's in your Social Media Policy?
  
  
• AT&T's Facebook approach
  
  
• A Faceless Corporation Speaks!
  
  
• Complaint Handling on Social Media
  
  
• Campaign or Long Term Engagement
  
  
• What’s Community About Anyway?
  

Social Commerce SEO Benefits

Lots of buzzwords there in the title - but in a nutshell, putting customer generated content on your product pages helps people find your stuff in search engines.  Bazzarvoice hosted a webinar last week featuring Cabelas.  Cabelas has always had a great online catalog, but hasn?t always had great placement in the search engines.  They?ve started featuring the latest 4 or 5 customer reviews directly on the product page.  Many other sites (Sprint included) tend to keep the reviews hidden behind a tab or a sub-modal somewhere.

By placing the customer reviews right on the product page, the search engines index the product and the words real customers use to describe the product.  Instead of having to manually (and often disingenuously) seed your page with the words you think your customers may use to describe your product, you let the customers do it for you.  By putting real world customer words right on the product page you end up with multiple benefits:

• Better search driven traffic - north of double the organic traffic
• Fresher content - the page is updated frequently with customer reviews.  Search engines like fresh content 
• More transparency - you show you aren?t afraid of customer opinions of your product.
• And the above should lead to increased sales and more revenue.

Win - win situation.  You get more traffic and sales, your customers feel more trust in your product and brand.

Where are you using your online product reviews in your site?

What tools or tactics do you use to encourage your customers to contribute reviews and user generated content for your social commerce platform?

Originally posted on the Sprint /meta discussion Community

Adding Value

You can add value in two ways:

• You can know the answers.
• You can offer the questions.

Relentlessly asking the right questions is a long term career, mostly because no one ever knows the right answer on a regular basis.
Via Seth Godin

Designing for Social Media

Jason Falls writes an insightful article on the design of social  media websites on Social Media Explorer.  Great quote (emphasis mine):

There’s a really good reason people love apps, and in particular applications from brands. They are often streamlined and simple versions of a company’s website or serve a specific purpose. There’s no annoying copy in marketing speak, no flash banners slowing down the page load, no pop-ups and, often, no confusion on where to go to get what you want. Why? Because mobile or tablet/iPad apps are supposed to be simple, serve 1-2 purposes and get out of the way.

Which is precisely what most users want from a corporate website.
[...]
Want to make your website kick-***? Build it like you’d build an app. Think of the 1-2-or-3 things your main audience wants from your website, or cool stuff you can give them. Then just deliver that.

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2010/09/01/how-mobile-apps-can-inspire-website-design/

[image courtesy Electrolux Design Lab
http://www.flickr.com/photos/electrolux-design-lab/4730081230/ ]

Complaint Handling in Social Media

Megan Berry writes an interesting article on Mashable listing five strategies for dealing with complaints on Twitter.  Her strategies are targeted at the short, realtime medium of Twitter, but they can be expanded for use with any social media customer service channel -- like this site!

Megan writes:

"It’s all too easy to get frustrated and respond with something that will just make the situation worse (“I’ll give you a refund right away… oh wait, you didn’t actually pay for this!”) or to take it personally and get upset. While there is no magic formula for dealing with complaints in social media, I do have a few tips that have helped me.

1. A Quick Response Goes a Long Way
- many situations can be defused by a quick reply to clarify the problem

2. You May Have To Respond As You, Not Your Company
- Posting from a personal account brings humanity back into the equation, not a person vs. a faceless corporation.

3. Give Yourself More Than 140 Characters To Respond
- Using email or even a phone call can help to turn around a problem

4. Let Someone Else Respond For You
- This one is touchy; if you have a following and fans who can provide a counterpoint, you can bring the issue to their attention.  But done wrong it will appear you are ganging up on the negative commenter.  This is where having a robust community is most helpful - you will find that the long term helpful problem solvers will automatically step in to try to resolve the issue.

5. Know When To Let It Go
- Sometimes, there's people you just can't help.  Examples for Sprint: Customers who just don't have coverage.  Products priced out of their budget.  Features that are discontinued.  The best you can hope for in some situations is a neutral agreement to disagree.  Then step back.  There are some people that just want to feed the flames or stir the pot, and continued dialog with them isn't productive.

There's no magic formula for defusing problem situations in social media, but these steps can help.  Be sure to check out the original article for some interesting comments!
http://mashable.com/2010/08/13/twitter-complaints-tips/

via Rich Pesce from Sprint

(original post on Sprint Community /meta blog)

Netbook Restored!

While waiting for the interminable weekly software update to complete on the work laptop, I unboxed and fired up some new parts for my Asus EEEPC 1005HA.  Somewhere over the summer I lost the power adapter for it, and it's been battery dead for a couple of weeks.  I finally got around to buying a new eee PC power adapter off Amazon from Battery1Inc.   I've read a lot of reviews about aftermarket adapters, and they universally warn that none of them fit right.  For $17 I figured I couldn't go too wrong - and surprisingly  it works perfectly!  Right voltage (19v), right pin-size *and* pin-length.  It snaps in place just like the factory adapter.  Appears to be very similar to the factory adapter, too.

Now that the battery was recharged, I upgraded the RAM.  I know that's spooky for some people, but Asus made it as easy as possible.  Unscrew battery door.  Pop up.  Press the retaining arms out of the way.  Use a plastic spudger (or plastic fork) to pop the installed 1GB memory module out.  Carefully seat the new 2GB module on the pins and press down.  Reboot, holding F2 down to get the BIOS to re-check the installed memory.  Done!

Now I've got the one with more Gee Bees!

Anyway - the Netbook is now rebooting and installing a months worth of Windows updates, and the work PC is back online. so back to Omniture report trolling!

Have a great weekend!

W

(original post at 'on the geek side', my work blog)

My Values for a Content-Centric CMS-driven Website:

So, you want to design a content centric CMS website.  Here's a few tips for you.

1) As small a page size as practical for fast download times.

2) Minimal design elements - the focus is on content, communication and participation.  Whitespace is good.
    http://www.ecoalign.com/
    http://www.topnotchthemes.com/theme/1007

3) Flexible design using repeating elements
    a) flexible for us to modify layout using CMS admin tools
    b) flexible for various browsers -- media driven CSS for smallscreen viewing
    c) Graphical elements that resize from small to wide, short to tall (lines, corners, etc)
    d) Text for all variable items

4) Focus on What's Important.  People-centric story-driven site?  People should be front and center.  Content?  Content front and center. 

5) Use familiar navigation structures to enable rapid discoverability of content

Social Media Notes from T-Mobile UK

I just attended a webinar from T-Mobile UK about "Using Social Networks and Knowledge to Deliver a Better Customer Experience". Took some notes. Follows is the notes. Errors are mine.


* Social Media is Fast growing
* Poorly documented with few 'best practices'
* 45% of companies have zero FTE dedicated to social media.
* Reports show nearly 10% of support incidents handled via social media across all businesses.
* Social Media channels change - 'second life' --> 'twitter' --> 'facebook' --> ???

* 53% of customers for TMUK want to use web for first point of contact

* Content delta confuses customers - need unified content system / strategy. Content delta decreases first call resolution. TMUK uses Inqira for content management to present a unified set of information. Everyone has the same answer regardless of channel. Content ownership / authorship is distributed among the lanes in the company, not restricted to an authorship group.

* TMUK Integrates direct customer feedback into change efforts - feedback from the community on how they are doing.

* TMUK Forums have 3 moderators (FTE 8a - 6p). They remove personal attacks, spam, profanity. Encourages negative views of company. "Allows us to identify, react to negative perceptions". Takes problems into company (firmware foulup in this example) and changes processes for communication, execution.

* TMUK measures ROI on call deflection - shows 5% call deflection, relates that to the 3 FTE. Notes that the same level of call handling would take 22 call center reps.

* TMUK uses Inqira forums - because the content workflow / content management tools keep a consistent message.
http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/discussions/index?page=forums&board=TMO_TALKS

* Online 120 days. 1.4 million page views. Not fully launched. Working on customer recognition / reward scheme for customers that answer questions - how helpful they are.

* Beginning to use Twitter for customer service. Immediate use for customer support. Listen, respond, build oppty to sell.

* Trial with video content. Phase 1) TMUK generated. Phase 2) User Generated Video content. Unsure of how they'll do it or what form it will take.

* With single content management system, they have created 'single version of the truth'. Having consistent, clear, accurate and transparent answers, being accountable to the customers and reacting to customer concerns is their key to success.

Social Media Primer – what’s a Blog?

So you’re a business major. You know there’s this Internet thing. And people are facebooking and twittering all over themselves about it. And your boss mentioned that you need to get a social media strategy. What do you need to know?

Time and Risk are an important consideration in your Social Media strategy and we discuss them in another Social Media Primer article about time and risk.


To get started with your Social Media strategy, we have a few key words for you to understand.

A blog is a one-to-many social media model. One author or a small group of authors in your company write articles (posts) about your products and services. Customers, prospects and unknown people can read and post comments on the article. A blog is great for mass communication. It offers limited interactivity between customers, the company and other customers. The primary model of interaction is comments on each article. These are in a linear format, not well suited for diverse discussion. You control the content and the message of the blog site and articles. Blogs are fairly easy to set up. There is a relatively low time commitment. There’s also a fairly low risk in setting up a blog. Content on your blog will be searchable by the whole Internet and available somewhere forever.

A forum is a many-to-many social media model. In a forum, your customers can ask questions, post opinions, and talk amongst themselves. Other customers, visitors and prospects can read their posts, answer questions and engage in discussions. Not all topics will be complimentary to your product or service. Your company can also post your comments, start discussions and interact with your customers. You can also simply ignore the forum and use it solely as a customer-to-customer site with no company involvement. In a forum, you need to be aware that your voice has no more weight than any other poster. You have to build your own reputation in the forum. Forums are people talking to people. Relationships start to emerge as people get to know each other. Relationships with your company can start to emerge if you have committed caring people engaging on the forums. Forums offer far less control over the message and content. Moderation can be used to remove or redirect unwanted topics, but that carries a risk in itself of alienating customers. Forums are a more difficult model to set up, and require more time commitment. They also require more initial and ongoing funding. Forums also carry a much higher degree of risk. Content on your forum will be searchable by the whole Internet and available somewhere forever.

Twitter is a new ‘micro blogging’ service where you can talk about your products, services, features, ideas and more in 140 characters at a time. It’s ideal for mobile devices and quick hits. It’s also a great site to monitor for customer feedback about your products and services. Getting started in Twitter has no cost and requires very little time. Proper engagement with the ‘twitterverse’ requires more time and resources – especially if you are a service company with potential customer challenges coming up. You’ll need a plan in place on how to handle problems raised via Twitter. The resource and risk model vary depending on how you choose to use Twitter. Content on your Twitter account will be searchable by the whole Internet and available somewhere forever.

Facebook is the biggest ‘walled garden’ social media platform around right now. Creating a ‘page’ for your brand is fairly straight forward, free and requires little time commitment. Making the page a success requires more time, more engagement with customers and more risk. With Facebook you have the option to engage directly with customers, encourage posting on your page about your product or service, show photos of your business, products, people and more. You can go as far as having custom applications developed to enhance your primary product or service, or to advertise your wares. Several subscription model companies (phone companies) have applications on Facebook that allow you to check your minutes used and other account statistics – all within Facebook. Content on Facebook is more controlled and is not indexed by the public internet – hence the ‘walled garden’.

Choosing which platform to use for your social media strategy should be take into consideration how much time you have, how committed you are to using the tool, and how much risk you are willing to accept.

Social Media Primer: Time and Risk

So you’re a business major. You know there’s this Internet thing. And people are facebooking and twittering all over themselves about it. And your boss mentioned that you need to get a social media strategy. What do you need to know?

We’re looking at time and risk today. Some key terms are defined in the primer about ‘What’s a Blog’

First, there’s time. Social media is about people talking to people. That takes time. You have to have someone look up from their budgets and spreadsheets and pay attention. It can be a full time job, or an entire department dedicated to social media. The time commitment depends on what technology you want to use.

Second, there’s risk. You’re putting your brand out there for people to talk about. And they will talk. Good, bad and ugly. If you offer a platform for their comments, you will hear about it. Managing that flow of potentially brand damaging negative comment flow is challenging. You can accept it, take the criticism, modify your behaviors (products, plans, etc). You can ignore it – but why are you in social media if you’re ignoring it? Being transparent, and acknowledging your problems can bring significant customer perception rewards. Comcast, Zappos, Sprint and others have used social media technologies to defuse potential time-bombs of customer problems.

A bad social media presence also creates risk – social media is where people are talking today. You wouldn’t put out a website designed by your second cousin, or produce commercials with a camcorder and a work light? Social media is coming of age and should be treated with the same level of professionalism as traditional media. Social media is just faster, more immediate and more (virtual) belly-to-belly relationship building.

Scheduling IT Development in Big Companies - Rule of Thumb

So, you’re scheduling IT projects and you ‘know’ how long it should take. But you don’t want to get burned by making a too low estimate. Late projects are bad. I’ve developed a handy rule of thumb for large company development projects. I have found it to be surprisingly accurate over the past (mumble) years.

How long will it take for hard-core knowledgeable developers to get it done? (Say, 10 days).

Since you’re in a big company, double that estimate. You need have to have meetings about the project and get approvals. (Now you’re at 20 days)

Are you the developer? Nope? You have another org doing the development? Double your time estimate again. The IT org will have to have meetings amongst themselves and meetings with your business team. This is important – they need to know what you want developed. (40 days)

Is your development team handled by a third party / offshore contractors / not under your companies’ direct control? Double it again, because they’ll have to talk to your IT team and have meetings. (80 days) And then double it again, because they just aren’t best of class on your application. Most contract development models depend on rolling in resources as needed, then rolling them out as soon as code is complete. So, there’s some learning curve and training needed for the project. (Now you’re up to 160 days).

That’s the general rule of thumb for big companies with lots of layers and the typical outsource development model.

(Editorial comment removed – my boss reads my blog.)

Alec's Limerick

There once was a silly cat named Line
That silly old cat was fat and fine
He was a creeper
Always asleeper
Creeping or sleeping, that cat was Mine