Importance of Adding Better Admin Functionality to Enterprise Social Apps

8 Jun

I saw a great post by Cara Freidman @Caraizzle on Social Media Today this morning regarding the new Facebook admin functionality that enables community managers to schedule posts in their communities/pages: http://bit.ly/KOQ2fS. I agree with Cara’s 3 predictions that the this feature will become standard other big social community providers, e.g. Twitter, will also soon provide, that third-party vendors, Hoote Suite, other, will go away – less is more! and these kind of admin tools will become universal standards.

We read often that community managers are burn out as they need to be on 24/7. I know at an enterprise level anyone working is this space is overwhelmed primarily trying to help the communities they support grow and mature post launch. With most big org knowledge management teams being reduced and faced with serving a booming demand for social media/networking related services, helping internal clients maintain and manage the post launch activity calendars is a tremendous effort. To the best of my knowledge most of the big community apps out there, IBM Connections, MS SharePoint lack this kind of admin functionality.

The lack of this functionality puts a significant strain on community managers to manage and maintain their activity calendars manually and having to follow-up with community teams and members to do things like remind leads to post their blogs, organize webcasts on hot topics, monitor discussion forums…causing them to focus most of their attention on managing logistics and little time on developing relationships with community advocates/members and monitoring community activity. Overall this slows the growth and development of a community.

Another functionality that would help community managers build the communities they support is to be automatically kept up to date on what content is being liked or recommended by the community members. Currently building community advocate/champion lists and determining which content to curate takes a lot of manual effort.

So really hoping enterprise social app developers start incorporating more of this kind of functionality into their social collaboration suites. I’d love to hear what others think about this topic. #cmgr

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Looking to Aggregate Your Social Media: Try Bottlenose

14 May

I was looking for new tools to help aggregate the social media streams I follow, contribute and participate in and discovered the new Bottlenose and like what I’m seeing so far. http://bottlenose.com/ Get new beta features by using code “Scoble”  What does it do? Brings Facebook, Twitter, and more in and finds the really good stuff in those streams for you. Liking the visual view of what streams relate to my interests and the ability to apply filters to help weed out some of the noise. Looks like a better alternative to TweetDeck, Hootsuite and looking forward to playing with the beta features this evening.

New Google Language Immersion Tool

4 May

Way to go Google! I discovered the new Google Language Immersion tool via Twitter and I have been using it since yesterday. Having lived abroad for 15 years and learned a bit of Japanese, Chinese Mandarin and Spanish I really like learning as part of my daily work flow. In my limited opinion immersion is the only way to learn a language well. As anyone who has learned a new language living abroad it is an ongoing challenge to keep the language ‘alive’ once you return ‘home.’ The new Immersion tool adds a level of context, as it’s now part of things I read everyday that interest me or pertain to my work, that listening to CDs doesn’t provide me with even if I’m listening and repeating phrases business Japanese, Chinese or Spanish CDs.

I found a few bugs including not hearing translated words enunciated when I wave over them and it doesn’t look Japanese (although available in Google Translate) has been added to the Tool yet but in the spirit of Google I’m sure this tool is only going to get better and better.

As most of us know there is an ongoing issue with use of social media and communities to support global audiences. What we find more often that not is that although the target audience may ‘consume’ global content from a common repository/site they will only use tools that enable customers to ‘contribute’ and ‘collaborate’ knowledge and content in their own local language. Even with translation tools available in most browsers, there are many lost opportunities to get insights and benefits, novel ideas and common threads from the larger global members/customers, as no one has the time to copy>paste>translate>disseminate>respond>translate>post>etc.

If Google gets this to work in Google +, didn’t work for me yet, this could bring a new enthusiasm to idea of global community.

Way to go Google!

Don’t Miss ‘The State of Community Management in Social Business’ Webinar

2 May

I’m really looking forward to Rachel’s and Sandy’s webcast on BrainYard. Living and breathing community management on a daily basis I’m particularly interested in what skills are needed to be an effective community manager. I think it’s a blend of acute business acumen, understanding of content editorial and publishing processes and deep insights into client needs.  Providing the webcast summary below and adding the sign up link (free) here: http://bit.ly/IU7OgQ

In this webcast hear from IBM’s VP of Social Business Sales & Evangelism Sandy Carter and co-founder of The Community Roundtable, Rachel Happe, as they discuss the state of community management and the impact the emerging role is having on today’s social business. You’ll learn about:

  • the power of community for your organization
  • the role of community manager for your organization and the impact it can have on your business
  • How community leaders can help their organizations evolve into a social business
  • what skills are needed to be an effective community manager
  • where/how to find qualified community managers
  • case study examples of organizations who have added the role of community manager to their social business

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Welcome to The Social Speak Easy

1 May

I’ve been thinking about a good name for a blog for a few days and had a brain flash this evening to entitle it “The Social Speak Easy.” Organized and unorganized crowds driven by clear objectives or emotional ties provide opportunities to accelerate and enhance knowledge sharing, learning and connecting networks to drive yielding returns, strong sense of community and personal value. Feels good to take a step back from the very long weeks to share thoughts on how being social helps drive better results. Welcome!

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