Real Estate Relativity

This article by CNET, Why Google is Ditching Search, prompted me to look for empirical research supporting the author’s premise. And I found this gem of a research paper, #TwitterSearch: A Comparison of Microblog Search and Web Search.

The Stanford and Microsoft researchers compared how individuals use search in Twitter versus traditional Web platforms like Google and Bing. What the researchers found:

• Web search can leverage social search to discover additional search queries that are temporally and contextually related, thus delivering a more relevant set of search results
• Social search influences the perception of online reputation
• Web search can leverage the hashtag and tagging concepts central to social search (especially Twitter and del.icio.us) to identify and deliver non-spam results that deep link to further relevant results
• Web search can leverage social search to understand what issues are trending, the nuances of these trends, and then relate these discoveries to search queries and thereby deliver a more relevant result

We’re already seeing these types of things integrated into Google’s search platform through its integration of G+ . And now Twitter and Google are engaged in a PR smack-down .

Similarly, these findings above suggest there is increased opportunity within CRM systems. The researchers found that individuals bounce between social and Web search as they narrow their queries. If a brand is leveraging a social platform (via Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc) and focused on SEO, and consumers find consistent redundancy in results for their queries via both search platforms, the likelihood that this consumer will reach out to this brand increases. And if this brand is capable of tracking the source of the lead (what platform delivered the lead) in conjunction with tracking the query that generated the lead (what was actually searched), then the brand can engage the consumer with a higher level of insight. This type of process necessarily promotes high consumer satisfaction (and increased likelihood of lead conversion).

Photo credit: visualpanic

Following is a series of research articles focusing on social CRM. These articles explore different facets of the concepts underpinning social CRM.

Interactive digital advertising versus interactive community (download). This article focuses on what motivates individuals to participate in social networks and what causes these individuals to respond to social advertising.

Advertising on Facebook. This is a well-written article on Facebook advertising best practices, strategies and tactics.

Customer engagement and Facebook pages. This is an in-depth article focusing on many nuances of how to leverage Facebook business pages to increase customer loyalty.

Value-based CRM. This article explores the relationship between marketing, IT, and finance to deliver an effective CRM solution. The authors make some great recommendations as to how finance departments can work with marketing and IT departments to set proper metrics tied to corporate business objectives.

This article discusses values-based CRM concepts in regards to aligning marketing, IT, and financial functions. An interesting point made by the authors

[F]ocusing just on the ability of IT to support strategy and processes bears the risk of not utilizing the full potential of innovative technologies[.]

It’s clear there is a critical interdependence between both marketing and IT departments. As marketing seeks to “engage,” “relate with,” and “delight” customers in the continuous battle for share-of-mind and share-of-heart, relegating IT to the sidelines as bench support is not a good strategy. Rather, incorporating IT vision is a critical component in setting strategy. The complexity of consumer interactions with a firm’s brand, demands increasingly sophisticated infrastructure and data management tools to ensure that a firm can meet the needs of these consumers.

Similarly, firms ought to align financial management goals within this marketing-IT milieu. Financial concerns, in this context, center around setting proper marketing metrics to measure ROI and lifetime value of a customer. The paper points out that

[A] number of financial concepts (e.g. capital asset pricing model, portfolio theory, and real option approaches) have recently been transferred to customer portfolios…Such “marketing metrics”, based on these approaches and thus taking a future-oriented, long-term, cashflow oriented, and risk adjusted perspective, allow for an identification and measurement of the economic value contribution and the ROI of marketing[.]

To enable such penetrative insights, firms need to leverage data mining tools to create timely (i.e., near real-time) metrics to be shared across business to ensure uniform adherence to meeting clients’ expectations.

Here’s a short article from the Harvard Business Review on lead capture. The stats:

• $12.5 billion in 2005 to $22.7 billion in 2009: The amount of advertising dollars spent generating leads
• 2,241 U.S. companies: The number of companies measured in the study to test lead response time
• 37% of the companies responded within one hour, 16% responded within one to 24 hours, 24% took more than 24 hours to respond, 23% never responded
• 42 hours: The average response time by all companies measured
• 7X: If you try to contact a potential customer (i.e., a “lead”) within one hour of receiving a query, you are nearly seven times as likely to qualify that customer as those individuals who wait two hours
• 60X: By contacting a potential customer within one hour of a receiving a query, you are more than sixty times as likely to qualify that lead than individuals who wait 24 hours

Take-away: The fastest to respond wins the opportunity to serve a customer. Insight: Once you’re earned that opportunity, keep delighting that customer by remaining responsive.

Data analysis is the new plastics. Remember this scene from the movie the The Graduate?

Below is a curated list of articles from this week of innovative social analytics and business intelligence initiatives.

In this article from O’Reilly Radar, we learn that social network analysis is amalgamation of social science analysis such as sociology, political science, psychology, and anthropology combined with traditional mathematical measurements. At it’s core, social network analysis measures relationships between people and organizations. But cutting edge research is also looking at ways to leverage social network analysis as a form of early warning system for natural disasters. Much social network analysis has been regressive in nature, the future will focus more on real time analysis.

And speaking of real time analytics, the article from the Washington Post makes the argument that real time results may have a significant influence on the up-coming 2012 elections.

Perry is done,” came a Twitter posting from a viewer called (at)PatMcPsu, even while the Texas governor struggled to name the third of three federal agencies he said he would eliminate as president. Another, called (at)sfiorini, messaged, “Whoa? Seriously, Rick Perry? He can’t even name the agencies he wants to abolish. Wow. Just wow.

The key point to remember is that the “real time citizen” is no longer content to remain passive. Additionally, will the “real time citizen” quietly wait for poll stations and voting counts to close in other states before announcing the results of his/her own state? Will be interesting to watch how quiet or loud Mr. and Mrs. Real Time Citizen will react in 2012.

Finally, social app analytics start-up Kontagent snagged $12 million in a Series B round. According to an interview with Kontagent’s founder, what makes Kontagent unique is that does not perform “traditional” social analytics function (such as conversation monitoring, tabulating likes, etc) but performs deep analytics, with a focus on teasing out profitability KPIs, and has a team of data analytics and data visualization scientists working to help clients understand, interpret, and make informed business decisions based on Kontagent’s proprietary data visualization techniques.

This e-loyalty research paper helps clarify the roll of online customer service in creating customer loyalty (“e-loyalty”). The paper focuses on the Austrian mobile industry but the findings are applicable to many industries, including real estate.

Two broad categories frame customer loyalty: customers who become your repeat purchasers and customers who become promoters of your brand. Superior customer service across the pre-purchase, acquisition, and post-purchase stages of a typical transaction is the differentiator for brands.

The Internet consumer, more and more, is demanding personalized and targeted customer service. Data acquisition strategies, such as registration forms, tying information to a user’s social graph, etc, enable companies to perform this customization and targeting while supporting broader electronic Customer Relationship Management (eCRM) and electronic Customer Care Management (eCCM) strategies.

The researchers conducted a variety of online surveys, crunched the numbers and found that timely and personalized responses to customer complaints was a key influencer on whether a customer would switch mobile carriers. Extrapolating this to other industries one can posit that brands which leverage unified technology solutions to enable quicker and more informed customer service will undoubtably have a competitive advantage.

This video, The World Park Campaign, illustrates an excellent use of QR to not only drive a marketing result but reward users’ participation with something delightful. The focus of the campaign was an immersive marketing experience to drive wider participation and learning within a NYC park.

Similarly, read about what Bjork is doing to take participation with music to new levels. What Bjork has done is create a way to interact with her music via an app; for example:

Bjork fans with iPads or iPhones (there’s no Android version yet) can download a main app for Biophilia that’s free. You tap on it and open up to a black background with white, glowing starlike objects. Using your fingers to swipe and tap, the universe expands and turns, and bits of music and songs emerge.

Each song has its own star. You tap on it, and you can buy its app for $1.99 from the iTunes Store. Each one has essays about music and science, and each interacts with its song in a different way. Take “Thunderbolt,” whose arpeggiated bass line you can change by tapping on a lightning icon.

“You change the speed of the arpeggio, or the range,” Bjork says. “Basically, you’re like this crazy lightning bass player.

It’s the participation economy. Participatory media is the message (visit here for reference point).

I thought this kiosk flyer below, which I found pinned to a wall somewhere in Estes Park, Colorado, is a novel use of QR.

QR Kiosk Flyer

What I like is how the purveyor has conveniently arrayed the subject matter. As a tourist, I especially liked the choices put before me and the prospect of interacting in an interesting way with the “place” the QR took me. And it is on this latter point where I was let down. The “Arts” QR simply took me to a website, listing a series of events with more links to click. Understandably, having this list of links is definitely a convenience and I would not have visited the site but for the QR. However, I cannot help but think that an opportunity was missed that could have “rewarded” or “delighted” or “surprised” me with some experiential marketing. For example, the QR could have landed me on a page inviting me to play a video that has interviews with local artists and events organizers…let me feel their passion, let me understand their love for their community…grab my engagement by letting me know the impact of my participation. Then I’d be much more likely to click the links related to each event. Further, since these arts events are seasonal, this is a process one can repeat. In real estate one could use QR in a similar manner by showcasing a homeowner interview, interviews with shop owners, or a narrated neighborhood tour. How do you/would you use QR?

A lower attack occurs when, at the time of its entry, a new technology performs worse than the dominant technology on the primary dimension of performance. An upper attack occurs when, at the time of its entry, a new technology performs better than the dominant technology on the primary dimension of performance

Three blog posts that recently piqued my interest:

Wake up, the demographic shift is flattening us. Although targeted at catalog marketing executives, what Kevin Hillstrom has to say is relevant to the marketer in us all. Here’s the essential take-away:

Right now, “The Big Shift” is steamrolling us.  We are essentially addressing the 55+ audience, and wondering why our businesses are eroding?  We must begin investing in the 18-44 year old audience, if we want to remain relevant in 2020, while optimizing profitability from catalog mailings to the 55+ audience.

Very poignant observation, and very applicable concepts to the real estate industry.

Is Google building a stealth social network? Well-reasoned argument that Google is doing this, and that Google’s +1 initiative is part of a series of tactics Google has recently deployed to continue playing its ground game in the social sphere.

Rich media + display ads + social = advertising perfect CTR-engagement metric storm? “Rich media” (aka multimedia) has been around for some time. Similarly, rich media has had periodic bursts of hype and utilization for over a decade (anyone who was in the email marketing space around 1998/1999 will recall the covey of rich media vendors present at the variety of “internet conferences” that occurred during the same time period). Well, it seems rich media is back again (like a poltergeist?) and advertisers seem excited (according to the article). What’s interesting to me is whether there’s an opportunity for enhanced engagement via a rich media ad conduit that will support social CRM initiatives.

Previously I wrote about creating a culture of creativity and innovation. The salient points to remember in such an initiative are: foster a high level interaction, discussion, debate and have a leadership team that nurtures such an idea generating ecosystem.

Related to this topic is a fascinating research article I found that focuses on creating a culture of participation (.pdf). The article discusses collaborative design projects (as in architecture, landscape design, etc), but the premises are transcendent to many industries:

1. Creativity is an inherently collaborative and social activity and social-technical infrastructures facilitate such by organizing people around shared concerns as opposed to shared location
2. Diversity (as facilitated by shared concerns) promotes new ideas, insights, etc, by building bridges between local knowledge sources and exploiting “conceptual collisions” (related to Von Hippel’s studies in innovation at MIT).

The article elaborates on a couple of case studies and points out the following areas for further exploration: (1) the role of curators—as supported through technological infrastructure—to organize “living information repositories” (see related article on how the BBC uses data mining principles to enable more informed curatorial choices) and (2) enhanced tagging mechanisms that support heuristic knowledge discovery activities.

Additionally, there are two blog posts that relate to the themes raised above, courtesy of Daniel Rothamel and Rob Hahn respectively, essentially “create, then debate”  and “embrace your inner auteur“.

Photo: Håkan Dahlström

Three papers for your geeky enjoyment (all .pdf):

Online Social Networks: Status and Trends is a great summary of current research and opinions regarding the current and future status of social networking. Section five has an interesting discussion of decentralized online social networking services and applications.

And here’s some excellent work, creativity, and analysis from University of Cambridge, University of St. Andrews, and Imperial College London researchers:

First, Socio-spatial Properties of Online Location-based Social Networks, which is a total geek special and offers a detailed analysis of the spatial properties among users of Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla. Here’s a peek inside:

We provide evidence that mechanisms akin to gravity models may influence how these social connections are created over space.

[Gravity models] have long been used to model connections in spatial networks such as trade flows across countries[.]

Second, Track Globally, Deliver Locally: Improving Content Delivery Networks by Tracking Geographic Social Cascades delves into how tracking geographic social cascades could aid in the development/exploitation of…

[P]re-fetching of Web content, caching of normal HTTP traffic, datacenter design and placement and even to devise security mechanisms.

This research also relates to a better understanding of social cascades generally (i.e., understanding how information flows through links in social networks) and improving the performance of content distribution networks.

Will mobile apps soon be dead? What’s not so black and white about the “native versus web app” debate? Each article makes great points relative to each side of the argument. The most prescient point, and one that I think will gain the most traction over the next few years, is the concept of hybrid apps; that is, web-based apps that leverage downloadable features.

App withdrawal? This article focuses on keeping a mobile strategy focused on business-building basics. And the “basic” the article chooses to focus on is: email marketing. The author makes a simple, salient point: ensure that any email campaign you execute is mobile viewable (including sites relying on outbound links from the source email). Email marketing may still be an ugly stepchild when compared her app sisters, but it still drives relatively high conversion metrics if properly deployed. The article includes great email-to-mobile marketing tactics.

Favorite quote from the articles:

“[F]or every ‘Angry Birds,’ there are 1,000 angry developers.”

Related post:

Collaborative CRM strategies and concepts

Below are three articles discussing emerging analytical theories on the nexus between Web+Social+Mobile:

Executive Primer: CISCO CIO Summit (.pdf): Excellent primer on how The Cloud, generally, is affecting enterprise IT strategic direction. Two gems: Chapter 6 “Together, the Customer Is Everywhere and Everyone” and Chapter 10 “Scenario Planning: Are You Ready?”.

Business Intelligence 2.0:  Are we there yet? (.pdf): Excellent paper focusing on innovation in business intelligence; includes and excellent benefits analysis chart.

Toward Emerging Topic Detection for Business Intelligence: Predictive Analysis of ‘Meme’ Dynamics (.pdf): This is for analytical geeks only (:-D). The paper discusses the problem of monitoring the Web to spot emerging memes. Essentially, using predictive algorithms to tease out future memes, which would be useful to brand managers in terms of seeding current campaigns with flavors of the future as dictated by the algorithm. The risk is that it can get a bit tautological.

What’s the ROI of conversing with someone while queued to buy a PEET’s coffee? What’s the ROI of engaging other parents and teachers at a monthly PTA meeting? What’s the ROI of swapping stories at a monthly book club meet-up? Common sense tells us these interactions are inherently unquantifiable, yet immensely important and powerful.

Now compare this line of thought to the recent Fortune.com article that digs into some reasons why Facebook–in its current iteration–may not be as valuable to marketers. Essentially, Fortune points out that despite the fact that 1 out of 8 minutes spent online is spent on Facebook, marketers are still trying to determine whether buying ads on Facebook is worth the investment given that Facebook ads perform half as well as banner ads. This said, certain firms like Virgin America have had positive experiences with Facebook and a social presence generally (could this success simply be that their service is stellar, and the promotion of this stellar experience hearkens back to Godin’s concepts around making something remarkable?)

So what about the conversation? Or “MONETIZING THE CONVERSATION”? Fortune cites a Razorfish Liminal study pointing out that customer “relationship” management (er, CRM), as a concept to interact with customers, is shifting:

It’s not enough anymore for marketers to have a top-down mentality, simply making sure they have a presence on multiple channels, but to understand what makes some customers still use an 800 number, while others reach out to brands on Facebook.

Here’s the problem: the above assumes your customers want a relationship with you. They don’t. Yes, they will engage with you, yet only if it is on their terms. The findings in “Liminal” demonstrate that, in the future, marketers will need to find ways to sustain those engagements over time, regardless of channel, whether they are traditional, emerging or new.

Wow. Customers don’t want a relationship with a brand? But want engagement? Multi-channel marketing strategies tied to understandable analytics that yield actionable business intelligence is a must, it seems. Enter Stage Right: Gahlord Dewald.

I recently dug up predictions Gartner made in January 2010 about IT and new media (Gartner’s recent predictions are referenced here [.pdf]). The two 2010 predictions that piqued my interest are:

• By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization.
• By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the Web.

Following the “Facebook as hub” meme as a research concept, I came across empirical studies focusing on the Web and “socialization” of family units (i.e., new media as a “hub” within the family unit). Similarly, I wanted to see if empirical research existed that explored how “context” is defined or determined via computer science. I found two interesting studies:

Relating to tech-media “socialization”:

Media, Communication and Information Technologies in the European Family. A couple of key findings:

• (Finding 1) Two tech-media trends contribute to familial tension. Trend one: families using emerging media to generate and reinforce communal experiences. Trend two: increasingly personalized consumption of media used in private spaces. These trends consistently collide and cause familial tension.
• (Finding 2) Promoting media literacy (which one could extrapolate to mean “Internet literacy”) is a key policy concern given “today’s technologically convergent, globalised market” and is critical to ensuring that individuals have the means and methods to participate in all spheres of society.

Facebook—despite its autocratic set of rules—could be seen as an enabler of promoting “new media literacy”, essentially a democratizing and leveling tool regarding “Web socialization” globally.

Relating to “context”:

Context-Aware Recommender Systems is an excellent academic article exploring how a recommender system uses “context” as a primary factor to deliver relevant results. The authors distill “context” using six vectors: data mining, e-commerce personalization, ubiquitous mobile data, database management systems, effective information retrieval, marketing and management processes. Further, @briansolis authored a great post, Behaviorgraphics Humanize the Social Web, where he essentially argues that understanding behavior is a key factor in determining and understanding context, which will enable marketers to more meaningfully and relevantly communicate with individuals who are within social networks.

Photo credit: ViaMoi

Hank and Frank are wannabe SOcial MEdia consultants. Their job is to do one thing: To Awesome U Up! Below is Episode 1 of their new YouTube series. Enjoy. Hopefully you’ll get a laugh or two. ;-D

Awesome U Up! Episode 1: How NOT to Grow Your Twitter Followers (YouTube link)

Below are two fascinating studies on communication theory and practice. The commonality between both is the nexus between effective use of social media and word-of-mouth marketing.

The first study Social Media Marketing vs. Prevalent Marketing Practices: A Study of Marketing Approaches for Micro firms in Sweden (.pdf download) focuses on micro firms leveraging social media to promote higher customer loyalty. The author sought to answer the following questions:

1. Which of the two types of marketing is more effective in terms of targeted segment coverage and expenditures?
2. Which marketing approach enables micro firms to maintain better relationships with customers?
3. Whether or not it is the right time for micro firms in Sweden to adopt social media marketing practices?

The heart of the study is Section 4.2.3.

The second study, Structured Viral Communication: The Political Economy and Social Organization of Digital Disintermediation (.pdf), is the best analysis I’ve read of how Obama used structured communication plans to spread his message and increase loyalty.

Photo credit ssoosay

In response to a request by @Gahlord to research the concept of “social proximity” I have found eight articles that broadly sketch the primary issues and principles related to “social proximity”.

In Towards Design Guidelines for Portable Digital Proximities A Case study with Social Net and Social Proximity (.pdf), the authors apparently introduced the concept of social proximity, which they define as:

[T]he relationships between people in space, within social networks, and through time.

In Life in the network: the coming age of computational social science, the authors discuss the rapidly changing pace of computational social science.

In To join or not to join: the illusion of privacy in social networks with mixed public and private user profiles (.pdf) the authors discuss privacy issues related to social media and the natural tension between “public” and “private” information (see also my earlier article relating to this topic).

In Inferring friendship network structure by using mobile phone data, the authors found that it’s possible to infer with 95% accuracy friendships based on mobile data.

In Bridging the Gap Between Physical Location and Online Social Networks (.pdf), the authors demonstrate how to predict friendship between two users using their respective location trails.

In Social distance, heterogeneity, and social interactions (.pdf, and I hope you’re good in mathematics to understand this article), the authors propose a new model to analyze peer group interactions.

In Connectivity Does Not Ensure Community: On Social Capital, Networks and Communities of Place (.pdf), the author proposes that the strongest online communities are those create senses of social ownership within the community.

In Semantic Grounding of Tag Relatedness in Social Bookmarking Systems (.pdf) the authors discuss how collaborative tagging systems can be used to derive a global tagging relatedness structure from an uncontrolled tagging folksonomy.

In The anatomy of a large-scale social search engine (.pdf) the authors present Aardvark, a social search engine.

Two seemingly unrelated articles recently caught my attention. Both articles touch on a similar meme: making sense out of the data bog which is le Web.

Article one: The Path to Web Intelligence Maturity (.pdf) discusses how companies can leverage Web analytics to gain behavioral insights on individual prospects and customers. The author walks you through how you turn such insights into targeted marketing initiatives at key stages of the customer life-cycle.

Article two: Social Network Markets and ‘Public Thought’ (.pdf), written in response to Clay Shirky’s Internet post The Shock of Inclusion, the author takes you through a fascinating and enlightening read on the quality and reach of public thought. Indeed, the paper touches on themes raised by Gahlord Dewald during his recent presentation at Inman Connect NYC 2011 on “convergence” versus “dispersion”, where Dewald essentially argued that dispersion as opposed to convergence should function as the governing archetype that drives social web app and platform development.

As you head into 2011, here are three sources to get your innovation game plan together:

In the research paper, Collective Intelligence for Competitive Advantage: Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation, the author–a global transition manager at Nike Inc–conducts an exhaustive analysis of current research on the topic of leveraging crowdsourcing concepts and open innovation principles to deliver innovative products and services. The author makes the following recommendations:

Recommendation # 1 – Focus on creating an innovative organizational culture, in which experimentation and failure are supported and encouraged. Use the seven lessons of innovation by Koulopoulos (2009) as the guide.

Recommendation # 2 – Create a collective intelligence (CI) system by answering the four primary questions: Who is performing the task? Why are they doing it? What is being accomplished? How is it being done?

Recommendation # 3 – Focus on the utilization of an open innovation business model by developing a plan for and defining the primary tenets of the model, to include (a) value proposition, (b) market segmentation, (c) value chain, (d) revenue generation, and (e) competitive strategy.

Recommendation # 4 – Map out the four types of innovation: 1) Neutral, 2) Positive, 3) Negative, and 4) Open. An organization should operate in all 4 quadrants, but for market leadership open innovation is the most critical (Koulopoulos, 2009).

Recommendation # 5 – Understand how the CI system can be deployed into the value chain where internal and external knowledge is leveraged. Define how the CI system will integrate with the current value chain and which parts exist to support the system and which elements need to be developed.

In the paper, Organizing Innovation: Complementarities between Cross-Functional Teams (.pdf), researchers found that deploying cross-functional teams across new product/systems development processes yields positive gains for consumers and companies. The researchers also found that marketing departments are critical components of an innovative-driven cross-functional team because of the customer-centric views customarily espoused by such departments.

In the Harvard Business Review podcast, The Economics of Mass Collaboration (~ 15 min) the commentator, Don Tapscott, author of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, discusses the concepts of how companies can harness mass collaboration to deliver innovative products and services.

Recently, at the Web 2.0 summit, Palm’s CEO said (as reported in All Things Digital):

Palm created the PDA space with the Pilot and the smartphone space after it with the Treo…So by birthright, Palm should have owned the smartphone market, but it just lost its way.

I’ve been intrigued by this facet of the “smartphone era”: Palm’s, NOKIA’s, Motorola’s whole job—theoretically—was to understand the needs, wants, desires of the mobile phone user. Theoretically they each spent millions of dollars a year in R&D, consumer research, prototyping, product development, etc. Yet Apple smoked them all. Apple focuses on the user experience—from the moment a user decides to enter Apple’s commerce stream, to the moment a user opens a box, to the moment a user first sets up a device to the moment a user interacts that device. With Apple, product = experience and experience = product. It seems a superior user experience—a 365 degree, multi-dimensional experience—is the ultimate killer product/app.

The book Democratizing Innovation by MIT Professor Eric Von Hippel (available via free .pdf download) makes an interesting observation about the term “consumer”. Throughout his book, Von Hippel employs the term “user” as opposed to consumer:

Users, as the term will be used in this book, are firms or individual consumers that expect to benefit from using a product or a service. In contrast, manufacturers expect to benefit from selling a product or a service.

This is a powerful–albeit simple–point of distinction within the context of the social web, with implications for social commerce too (which I have recently written about here). Focus primarily on the benefits of the user, not solely on your needs as a “manufacturer”. What value are you bringing a user of your content, service, advice, etc? By constantly evaluating the needs of your user-clients and delivering benefits based on these needs, you’re increasing the odds that your user-clients will become a passionate community centered around this value as opposed to simply a crowd that wanders by.

“The future is all about designing for multiple use cases[.]“

–

“Digital design isn’t fading, but it is changing: to keep pace with evolving technology, to drive new economics, to satisfy users’ dynamic desires. Indeed, the fact that we tend to call them “users” in the first place–instead of viewers, readers, or audiences–is important to keep in mind when considering the role or future of digital design.”

This article on social media New Influentials raises an interesting question regarding “influence” in the social web and in social commerce: what’s the core driver of influence?  A person? Her community? Or both? The article profiles six individuals who have variously used YouTube, corporate resources, quasi-anarchist tactics, and curating to attract and sustain dedicated communities. Indeed, the question of “what constitutes influence in a social network” has captured the interest of researches, as is evidenced by the articles “A model of influence in a social network” and “Learning Influence Probabilities In Social Networks“. Similarly, Brian Solis has written an excellent post on the genesis of the social consumer. According to Solis:

When a brand does its job right, it creates an emotional connection. The affinity it engenders contributes to who we are as individuals and how others perceive us. In the social web, sharing our purchases and experiences serve as social objects which are essentially catalysts for sparking conversations. At the center of this discussion is the product. Experiences, impressions, and perceptions cast bridges that link us together. As the conversation unfolds, the hub connects the product to individuals who not only respond, but also consume, where information directly or indirectly influences behavior and opinion. This form of subconscious empowerment seemingly builds confidence according to some new research. As social capital factors into the equation, these conversations represent touchpoints where positive experiences take the shape of endorsements and ultimately c0ntribute to the overall branding process.

Solis’ sentiments are echoed by a recent Altimeter Report (also accessed here on Jeremiah Owyang’s blog:

Going back to the original question I posited, I’ll say “influence” is a combination of brand (personal or corporate) and respect and empowerment of one’s community, but where community is the main driver. Solis describes how American Express empowers its community by facilitating conversations along with promoting commerce (and doesn’t this remind you of fundamental concepts discussed in the Cluetrain Manifesto, particularly chapter four?). But for an empassioned–and spending–community, American Express would not necessarily be influential. Thus, the core question of what defines “influence” hinges on how committed you are to your community, what value you bring to your community, and how well you are developing and fostering that community.

According to this Harvard Business Review podcast on collaborative innovation, the Internet dramatically drops collaboration and transaction costs thus enabling corporations to orchestrate capabilities more efficiently. Collaborative innovation can yield dramatic results in meaningful new product designs, service delivery models, and customer satisfaction; potentially yielding an endless supply of “good ideas”.

But where do good ideas come from? This video gives a succinct explanation of the basic genesis of good ideas:

Assuming good ideas require a certain period of gestation to manifest, collabortive innovation principles can collapse the time required to let great ideas blossom. MRIS recently took a bold step in collaborative innovation by incenting university students to use MRIS’ data resources to create novel, customer-driven products (in 2009 I suggested that MLS’ follow a similar model). The real estate industry is a perfect industry to employ collaborative innovation principles; it will be interesting to see what the crowd develops for MRIS.

Photo credit: jacreative

Related posts: Innovation and competitive differentiation using idea management systems and Sustainable innnovation and excellence in product development

This research paper on the Gaps Model of Service Quality (GMSQ) serves as an excellent framework by which real estate brokerages could begin analyzing their service value. As compared to tangible goods, there is little focus on service excellence, service research, and service innovation, say the authors. They posit that the GMSQ (introduced in 1985) is a perfect model to foster service quality assurance and quality control as well as service innovation because of the inherent cross-functional elements and voice of customer perspectives a company must adhere to in applying the GMSQ.

The research article delves into the impact technology has had on service delivery. Companies like Amazon, eBay, and Zappos obviously have leveraged technology to deliver superior service. Similarly, technology has enabled many customers to serve themselves more effectively and efficiently while giving companies a global reach. But as the expectations of customers and the pace of technological innovations increase, firms will encounter obstacles to delivering a superior customer service experience.

The GMSQ explores the gap between a customer’s expectations, their perceptions, and the reality of what they experience. Technology profoundly affect these relationships. To illustrate this, the authors focus on personal photography. In the past, individuals took photos, passed film off to be processed by a service provider, and then shared printed photos amongst family and friends. Now many individuals take digital photos, download those photos to their computer or upload those photos to a photo-sharing site, and digitally share their photos, albums, etc. An individual engaged in this process is a co-producer with the technology service provider. Thus, technology fundamentally affects a customer’s expectations and perceived value of the service provided and the GMSQ offers a way to ensure that firms leverage technology to meet customers’ expectations.

There are four gaps in the GMSQ: Listening, Design and Standards, Service Performance, Communication.

Listening Gap
What is the difference between a customer’s expectations and a firm’s understanding of those expectations? That is the gap. In other words, a customer could have a different set of expectations than what a firm understands those to be. Thus, firms need to engage in active and passive listening. Active listening can take the form of surveys, polls, etc, and passive can take the form of web data analytics. Close the gap by: (1) engaging in customer research, (2) focus on building relationships over time by meeting customer needs (i.e., CRM and relational database marketing), (3) when there is a service failure actively solicit input from customers on what went wrong and rectify this failure.

Design and Standards Gap
Focus on developing systems that meet customer needs while setting standards to measure your service operational environment against customer expectations. Close this gap by: (1) engaging in services R&D, (2) conduct 365 degree service mapping or blueprinting (i.e., map the customer lifecycle through all points of engagement), (3) measure operations against CUSTOMER-DEFINED rather than company-defined standards.

Service Performance Gap
Even though a firm may have closed the listening and design and standards gaps, if employees or independent contractors lack motivation or lack proper training and support, customers’ needs could remain unmet. Close this gap by: (1) aligning HR policies and practices around delivering superior service (Zappos’ core values are a great example of this tenet); similarly you should consider employee reward practices as articulated in the book Drive, (2) clearly tell customers what’s expected of them (oftentimes customers have no clear understanding of what they’re to do), (3) ensure that technology designed to support employees’ core functionality maps back to the listening and design and standards gap analysis (a good book to read in this regard is Rework)

Communication Gap
If your communications do not actually reflect what’s delivered to customers, there’s a gap. Close this gap by: (1) employing integrated messaging strategies, (2) actively manage customer expectations over time as their needs change (e.g., integrate social media messaging options in your drip marketing messaging platform), (3) ensure that you have consistent messaging before, during, and after a transaction, and make sure this messaging aligns with and reinforces customers’ expectations.

Photo: malias

This study and this presentation are fascinating examples of what’s occurring in sentiment and message analysis. The first study focuses on a sampling of 9,664,952 tweets from 2008 and found that Twitter (surprise ;-D) is an excellent media for analyzing public sentiment on topics of national significance (e.g., the 2008 Presidential elections). The authors find that social, political, cultural, and economical issues have relatively short-lived effects on public mood, but that Twitter may “highly affect the dynamics of public sentiment.”

The presentation cited above gives an overview of the concept of media influence modeling to better predict audience opinion formation. The author cites as theoretical underpinnings: Agenda-setting theory, opinion leadership theory, social influence theory, co-orientation behavior, priming and framing theory, and information theory. What’s interesting about this presentation is the depth and sophistication going into analyzing message influence. The bibliography (page 13) is an excellent resource too.

This research paper from Nokia Research Center, Stanford, and Queens University implies that humans can ascertain with an uncanny degree of certainty when a social message is sent from a computer versus a human. Social responses to communication technologies theory (SRCT)  predicts that humans cannot reliably ascertain such nuances. This research contradicts this premise.

The research team, using prior research in SRCT theories, tested whether humans could discern whether a text message was sent via a human or computer when flattery was an element of the message. They found that humans reliably discern the originator of the message apparently because certain social cues were missing in the computer-generated messages.

Why this is relevant research: SRCT theories could be used by software designers to create computer programs to engage social network users with the goal of getting them to increase self-disclosure under the guise of an interaction seemingly being conducted with a human. With the FTC recently considering allowing people to opt-out of behavioral targeting on the Web, the issue of nudging people towards more self-disclosure is timely given all the issues surrounding privacy and use of PII in social networks, especially if a user discloses such PII under the assumption they’re interacting with a human. This is a very interesting article and quick read (four pages).

Motivation, ability, and triggers influence users’ website behavior, according to this research paper by Stanford researcher BJ Fogg. This is important if you’re targeting specific behavioral action (e.g., filling out a lead form). Before a user takes a desired action, she must be sufficiently motivated to perform the desired action, have the ability to do so, and be appropriately triggered to take action.

Fogg’s model is fairly easy to digest. For example, let’s say you want to drive more listing appointments (the target behavior), there is a trade-off between motivation and ability. In this scenario, a user’s motivation is somewhat variable (either they are interested in the property or not). Thus, as website designer you should concentrate on the “ability” side of the equation: do you make it a simple fill-in-your-email-address form, or do you make users fill out more detailed information prior to submitting their request? On this issue, Fogg concludes:

The implication for designers is clear: Increasing motivation is not always the solution. Often increasing ability (making the behavior simpler) is the path for increasing behavior performance.

Contemplating appropriate triggers is where it gets really interesting for website designers. According to Fogg, without an appropriate trigger, targeted behavior will not occur even if motivation and ability is high. There are three elements of a successful trigger: the trigger must be noticed, the trigger is associated with the targeted behavior, and the trigger occurs WHEN we are both motivated and able to perform the targeted behavior. Fogg argues that timing is THE critical element and is often missing:

In fact, this element is so important the ancient Greeks had a name for it: kairos – the opportune moment to persuade. As I see it, the opportune moment for behavior performance is any time motivation and ability put people above the behavior activation threshold.

Poorly-timed triggers (e.g., pop-ups) generally do not drive a user to take a targeted action and can even cause a negative emotion. Thus, Fogg argues that proper triggers will align with collaborative CRM concepts (which I earlier discussed), functioning mostly as “signals” or “facilitators”. I encourage you to read Fogg’s research paper (all 7 pages) as he further details the discreet elements under motivation, ability, and triggers that influence website behavior.

Photo credit: ell brown (off to Italy)

The Gartner Hype Cycle is a useful graph for analyzing technology hype. Looking at the Gartner graph, I’ll posit we’re somewhere near the “Slope of Enlightenment” and the “Plateau of Productivity” with respect to social media. Over the past couple of years, business leaders have stepped up to the plate and faced some serious pitches while trying to figure out a sound business strategy that leverages social/emerging media. Indeed figuring out how to intelligently deploy emerging media can be like facing pitcher Stephen Strasburg.

Are augmented reality concepts a curve ball to your mobile strategy? Are emerging legal issues surrounding privacy, intellectual property ownership, open source and cloud computing licensing, etc, a change-up to your business game plan? Is the iPad a fastball?

It’s clear the pace of emerging media will continue unabated. Business leaders will continue to face a tsunami of innovation. Thus, it’s great to have a working archetype, or mantra to fall back on when analyzing whether to adopt an emerging media in your business plan. To this regard, Steve Harney has some excellent tips.

During a recent interview I had with Steve, he articulated a process he calls the “5C’s”. Harney’s list of 5C’s is a useful checklist to run through when you’re thinking about how to leverage emerging media—particularly social media—to achieve a business objective. Steve’s successful blog, Facebook page, and KCM Quick Report represent a choreographed social presence that he’s used to build a community that supports his business objectives.

Steve Harney’s 5C’s:

1. Concept: Understand the concept of what you’re trying to do. What is your brand? What do you want to be seen as? What are your core values?
2. Conviction: Have conviction to your brand. Once you have established your concept, how much conviction do you have to that brand concept? Ensure that your brand concept is translated into everything you do. The allure of emerging media—particularly social media—is that it’s omnipresent and relatively easy to deploy…and easy to get side-tracked. For example, when Steve launched his Facebook page, he decided that he did not want to dabble in Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc, because those social media activities—although fun, engaging, and playful—were not aligned with the core concepts of his brand.
3. Consistency: Let your community know that you’re there for them on a consistent basis. For Steve’s brand it’s important to blog every day and update Facebook every day. His community has come to expect this. He therefore must maintain consistency to meet this expectation.
4. Content: Focus on getting and supplying great content. Ensure that your content is strong and relevant to the community you’ve developed. Act like a curator.
5. Collaboration: Allow your community to come up with the answers. Provide an environment that promotes sharing of ideas. Bringing minds together so they can learn from themselves is the key driver to getting the community passionate about you and your brand. Actively facilitate discussions that align with the Concept of your brand.

Photo credit: david.nikonvscanon

This study focuses on how to find similarities amongst individuals using social media based on their behavioral characteristics. Finding such similarities across myriad social networks has beneficial uses: making users aware of other users with similar interests, finding users who comment on the same blogs, and enhancing already existing recommender systems (e.g., Pandora’s partnership with Facebook). Would be interesting to see a real estate application using these theories.

Facebook is at the epicenter of issues surrounding “publicity vs privacy” as marketers seek to leverage the social web to engage existing and new consumers. This CNET article is a really good summary of issues swirling around the latest changes Facebook has made to its data sharing policies. Here are the salient take-aways:

• Facebook marketing “partners” (e.g., shopping sites, news sites, etc) have seen huge jumps in referral traffic after implementing Facebook’s “social plug-ins”
• Despite the success Facebook marketing partners may experience, security issues have emerged with the implementation of these social plug-ins
• Facebook’s brand image is rising with adults 18-34 but dropping with adults 35+

Brands appear to benefit by tightly integrating Facebook into their customer outreach efforts. For example, this MediaWeek article (thanks @ReggieRPR for the heads-up) reports that Starbuck’s Facebook page is valued at $20 million. Nevertheless, the CNET article points out interesting issues that could impact Facebook’s marketer outreach efforts. The core of the issue is the inherent tension between publicity vs privacy; that is, just because someone makes something public does not mean they necessarily want it publicized. Danah Boyd in her keynote address at the 2010 SXSW Interactive made this latter point, as well as the following observations:

• Technologists’ have a mantra that “privacy is dead”, but this is not true
• People still care about privacy and the “public by default” “private through effort” dichotomy represents an inherent tension for individuals wanting to navigate online social worlds (Danah was referencing the fact that in many social networks users’ personally identifiable information and activities conducted through these social networks are rendered “public” by default and that users have to proactively change their privacy settings to make such information and activities less public or wholly private)
• Marketers should remember that just because you can “see” someone does not mean they want to be “seen” by you
• A Pew study showed that most adult social network users are privacy conscious (see related Pew study here showing that younger adults seem to be exerting even more control over their digital reputations)
• Product developers need to think through publicity-vs-privacy-vs-control issues if they want to develop and launch successful products that tap the inherent benefits of the online social world

It will be interesting to see whether consumers will or will not readily use Facebook’s social plug-ins as privacy issues continue to gain mainstream media attention. What are your views?

Photo: alancleaver_2000

Two articles recently caught my interest. The first article from the Financial Times, Smarter leaders are betting big on data (registration required) focuses on how companies use data analytics for business intelligence purposes. The best quote from this article:

Data is the new plastics

The second article from the Los Angeles Times, He’s start-ups’ best friend, profiled angel investor Ron Conway and his theories about investing in start-ups. The most telling quote from this article:

His current focus is “real-time data” companies that help people share what they’re doing instantly – using text, photos and video. “This sector is going to be huge,” he said.

As real-time data begins to inundate firms more and more by virtue of their forays into the social web and mobile world, data analytics offers a way for firms to utilize this data in novel ways to deliver more engaging and relevant experiences to their customers. For example, a firm could use data analytics in a predictive manner to dynamically deliver more relevant web pages based on consumers’ behavior throughout a firm’s website. Similarly, firms can use a service like Flowtown in conjunction with a service like First American Core Logic’s lead qualification services to gain insight into a registrant by combining their social persona with their transactional persona and then deliver relevant data and content based on this combined persona. Firms that begin to leverage data analytics will have distinct advantages over their competition in the near and long-term future.

Collaborative CRM strategies offer firms unparalleled opportunities for establishing more meaningful relationships with their customers and clients.  Mobile CRM is closely aligned to collaborative CRM concepts. This research paper characterizes collaborative CRM as:

The notion of collaborative CRM is still in discussion and has two interpretations that are often mixed…The first is closely connected with communicative CRM and focuses on interaction channels (e.g. phone, fax, e-mail, self service portals) between a company and its direct customers. The second extends the CRM concept on the level of value chains and business networks. This approach consolidates concepts of networked organizations and marketing to enable the creation of customer relations and value at a network level by sharing or pooling of network resources and capabilities…It enables producers, distributors and service providers to extend their customer acquisition, retention and development beyond their company borders and even to involve the customer directly.

Fundamental concepts of Web 2.0 and the social web such as transparency, authenticity, trust, engagement, and listening underpin collaborative CRM concepts. Similarly, customers’ demands for immediacy and relevancy in communications further support collaborative CRM. And mobile technologies have the potential to be the catalyst to firms’ implementation of collaborative CRM practices. But as pointed out in the research paper mobile technologies are not a panacea for collaborative CRM. The researchers point out that to facilitate collaborative CRM goals, existing business processes must be redesigned so as to take advantage of the unique characteristics of mobile technologies while delivering additional value to customers. Many companies are simply using mobile technologies to deliver information in a one-dimensional manner (i.e., a messaging service) as opposed to a multi-dimensional manner.

The authors conclude with several recommendations to consider when setting up a collaborative CRM strategy:

1. Set up appropriate customer segments, which allows firms to deliver individualized services
2. The CRM system must integrate mobile data (mobile sales, mobile content usage, location based services, etc)
3. Ensure customers understand that a firm’s mobile services offer enhanced value so they will make use of these services
4. Firms should consider specialized mobile CRM data analytics platforms that integrate with core CRM systems because current core CRM platforms lack sufficient sophistication to account for mobile CRM data needs

Photo credit: The Lightworks

Word of mouth marketing–WOM–can be a powerful form of marketing. Some claim it is the most powerful. Here’s a short video that hopefully highlights the potentiality of WOM power. Let me know what you think.

The Power of Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing from Eric Bryn on Vimeo.

This research report delves into how Microsoft used a grassroots idea management system to encourage individuals who do not routinely participate in “formal” product development processes to contribute their ideas to new product development initiatives. Out of 1,491 users, 315 ideas were generated, 100 prototypes produced, with six ideas absorbed into product teams.

Microsoft approached this process in four phases: pose a challenging business problem (Microsoft posed challenges on Peer2Peer advertising, identity-based systems services, and social computing), foster community ideation, filter/refine the best ideas, and launch/integrate qualified ideas into designated product pathways. Once an idea is submitted, community participants had a chance to vote, comment, and extrapolate on those ideas. Not so surprising was the fact that development and sales/marketing personnel participated the most. Nevertheless, the researchers cited several instances where other types of participants valued the exercise because it allowed them to informally break out of their silos and contribute to an overall corporate goal.

Despite the success of the system, the researchers recommended several areas for Microsoft to improve:

• Foster meaningful participation across the broader corporate community by offering incentives that would allow individuals to justify deviating from their normal job functions
• Use business relevant criteria in the voting process, not “popularity” voting
• Measure and appreciate outcomes beyond revenue (the authors cite improved workforce ideation skills, cross-functional cooperation and pollination of ideas, and breaking down silos)
• Structure the idea submitting phase so that it cuts off at some point; some ideas that were submitted towards the end of the process were not seen or voted on
• Great ideas center around challenge problems (i.e., focus ideas around business critical issues to resolve)
• Have ideas meet some minimum threshold so as to weed out truly frivolous ideas
• Encourage product developers to review relevant ideas in the system that previously had not been acted upon; this ameliorates the perception that the system is an “idea graveyard”
• Clearly label each phase of the innovation system/process so it enables users to fully understand their contributions within each phase
• Create a support system for users whose ideas were not selected but nevertheless want to further develop them; some people are simply passionate about their idea and are willing to spend their own time developing such, and the idea management system should have a template for them to follow

A idea management system can operate as a competitive advantage for firms. By internalizing and facilitating an idea groundswell not only are firms harnessing internal talent but they’re creating valuable intellectual property assets that can potentially deliver a huge competitive advantage.

Influence on Twitter is not necessarily tied to the number of followers one has, at least this is one of the conclusions in this report on Twitter influence which came to my notice by a @papadimitriou recent tweet. The core finding: it’s more influential to have an engaged audience that actively retweets and mentions the user, and one keeps this audience engaged by frequently interacting with this audience (see common sense paragraph below).

The dataset used in the report consisted of nearly 2 billion follow links among over 54 million users who produced over 1.7 billion tweets. Here’s a link to a website the report authors set up that further describes the dataset. The report compares three measures of influence: indegree (i.e., number of followers one has), retweets, and mentions. The most followed users were news sites, sports stars, and politicians. The most retweeted were content aggregation sites like @Mashable and @TwitterTips, @GuyKawasaki, and @TheOnion. The most mentioned individuals were mostly celebrities.

The report found that retweets are primarily content driven (including both the username and link to a source), whereas mentions are mostly identity driven. In looking at retweets and mentions, individuals who were both retweeted and mentioned the most showed the highest engagement metrics (i.e., conversing with their audience), as well as posting creative and interesting tweets.

Finally, the report focused on how much influence “ordinary users” can exert within the Twittersphere. In this case, the authors looked at how completely unknown users exerted tremendous influence (as measured by retweets and/or mentions) during serious news events. By limiting their tweets to a single news topic, users like @oxfordgirl quickly gained influence.

This report, I suppose, just reinforces common sense at some level. But it’s nice to see someone crunching the numbers to reinforce one’s intuition.

Photo: soundfromwayout

This research paper focusing on the hotel industry indicates that although delighted customers have generally positively views of brands, a satisfied customer will more likely take action supportive of loyalty marketing constructs (i.e., actually book a return trip) because they have an emotional connection to the brand. Thus, the researchers suggest that marketers focus on loyalty programs that seek to instill positive emotional experiences with the brand. Such mechanics go beyond baseline experiences like prompt response times, meaningful communications, knowing where a customer is in the life-cycle of a transaction, and extend to activities that prompt a positive emotional response (like receiving a handwritten thank you card).

This research paper focuses on the influence of word of mouth (WOM) on customers’ perception of service. It’s axiomatic that negative WOM can significantly impact brand reputation. Studying the effect of WOM on such perceptions, though, is another matter. And the research article delves into some interesting bits. First, customers’ perceived service value influences their revisit intention, which in turn influences positive or negative WOM. Second, gender influences WOM. The study points out that women trend more towards a relational aspect versus men who are more trial-and-error focused:

For female customers, relational service quality will have a stronger total influence on the WOM than core service quality.

For male customers, core service quality will have a stronger total influence on WOM than relational quality.

The total effect of relational quality on WOM will be stronger for female customers than the male.

 The total effect of core quality on WOM will be stronger for male than female.

The implications seem fairly obvious: focus on delivering superior relational and core experiences. The study suggests different methods of CRM (call scripts, greetings, etc) based on gender, especially where the CRM involves human-to-human interaction. In real estate, this could trickle down to agents’ initial interactions with cusomters too: for men, generally, get right to the point, whereas for women, generally, focus on establishing a relationship first and ease into the data as relationship-focused interactions mature.

This research paper on CRM strategies used by RBC Royal Bank of Canada (Bahamas), analyzes whether the bank successfully applied the four P’s of CRM (planning, people, process, and platform). It’s well established that financial success is tied to a well executed CRM strategy which drives customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. What this research paper found was that although the bank lists CRM as a strategic initiative and policy, it has not integrated the CRM process at each customer touch point. The methodology used to correct the problem was instituting a wide-ranging customer satisfaction survey initiative to ascertain–from the customers’ viewpoints–where the service breakdowns and gaps actually occurred and to make changes accordingly at those points.

According to this MIT Technology Review article, agile groups with fluid ideation and development team dynamics routinely create more innovative products. Yet commercialization of an innovative product is another matter. Successful monetization of a product requires a disciplined approach towards continuous systems and process improvements. But herein resides a trap: once an innovative product becomes systemized, further innovation on that product can become frozen as profitability goals dictate less variance in the process. Companies like W.L. Gore & Associates seemed to have solved this dilemma.

This blog article on “controlled serendipity” spurred me to conduct a little content curating of my own, resulting in this gem of a research paper that documents how the BBC utilizes Linked Data technologies to make it easier for BBC users to navigate its vast programming database.

The first article discusses how the Web collective–the user commons if you will–is benefiting from individual efforts at curating content, done largely as a free service driven by a spirit to share.

Sharing has become a reflex action when people find an interesting video, link or story. Great content going viral isn’t new. But the sharing mentality is no longer confined to the occasional gems. It’s for everything we consume online, large or small.

I think anyone engaged in the social Web would readily agree with this sentiment. It’s what makes participating in this distributed forum so fun. The article also points out, however, that the vast content mines that exist can be somewhat difficult to navigate to find true gems. Thus, the implication is that content providers need to step up to the plate and deliver content systems that make it easier on Web “content curators”.

The research paper referenced above describes how the BBC used a concept called Named Entity Recognition (NER) to extract concepts from textual input. This allowed for more efficient human editorial input to ensure that these concepts were accurate. Once approved these “concepts” were transformed into links appearing on a Web page. This process then allowed the BBC to use the “concept links” to create user journeys through their site. All this is based on semantic web principles. The future looks bright, indeed, for those of us who constantly scour the Web for salient content.

I love it when research/theory manifests in application/practicality. In 2007, I wrote about research being conducted on semantic analysis related to social media and blogs, and now there are companies using products stemming from this type of research.

Information Week covered text analytics, describing how JetBlue uses text analytics to understand customer sentiment from email messages, which informed the airline how to draft its customer bill of rights. And KMWorld discusses how the burgeoning field of “customer experience analysis” uses text analytics to increase customer engagement and loyalty.

Customers today aren’t just customers–they’re influencers and social networkers. Across the Web at any hour, they’re sharing observations about your company’s products and services, and those of your competitors…These new modes of customer behavior make it essential for companies to move beyond traditional ways of gathering, analyzing, and acting on customer information - Information Week

For a long time, text analytics was a technology in search of a business need. Now, thanks to social media, the need is there; the question is whether the technology can ramp up fast enough to be commercial – KMWorld

Where social media in real estate sometimes has the floor manners of a dog’s breakfast, it’ll become increasingly important for real estate firms to engage in text-sentiment analysis as part of their overall CRM and customer experience efforts. Here’s a list of companies that offer text-sentiment analysis services:

• Ata Plana
• Jodange
• Radian6
• Attensity
• Clarabridge

Photo credit: mnapoleon

This research paper, Power, media culture and new media, delves into social justice issues surrounding the democratizing effects of new media. The paper points out that new media benefits (e.g., easier access to information through widespread platforms like mobile devices) are not equally shared or distributed across class, race, or national origin. The paper also implicitly points out that the use of mash-ups along with the increasing diversity of media outlets could create a “ripe” environment for effective government-sanctioned propaganda campaigns.

Similarly, the new media environment where essentially everyone can be a “content producer” offers unprecedented opportunities for government surveillance and ultimate suppression and/or obfuscation of speech by using new media outlets as viral engines to discredit speech that’s counter to government views or objectives. The author does point out some positive reverberations from new media harmonics; and this is the alignment of human rights initiatives with new media (as embodied in such organizations like Mothers Fighting for Others). Nevertheless, the paper ends with a caution that discriminatory (and by implication, repressive) actions can re-emerge in new media, despite the overarching democratizing effects of the medium.

Does this paper relate to real estate? Not directly. It’s simply a great education piece on the broader implications of our new media economy and society.

Writing a “playscript” is an incredibly powerful way to conduct a competitive business review, according to this Harvard Business Review article (subscription required). The article advocates writing a “playscript” using characters and character analysis to define your company and competitive landscape for use as a foundational element in corporate strategy development.

The article argues that “traditional” strategy tools like five forces maps and blue ocean thinking are outdated because they assume a static competitive environment as opposed to a rapidly evolving one. The article argues that by drafting a “playscript”, companies are in a much better position to map the landscape and anticipate emergent competitive forces.

In developing a playscript, the article suggests focusing on the following:

1) Draft a current playsript: Broadly describe the setting in which you operate by identifying the other characters, their motivations, what role your company plays, how this role is perceived by others; it’s important to view your role as critically as you can through the eyes of others (i.e., perception is reality); map the links among all the actors and the rules that govern them; give voice to the value your organization adds.

2) Rewrite your playscript: the goal here is to rewrite your playscript and, if possible, reinvent the playscript for an entire sector by answering such questions like “Can my organization attract new alliances to my sector where I can then leverage these alliances to add to an existing link or create a new link in a customer-centered value chain?”; determine where there’s a value need and fill this need (the article cites Intrawest as an example of a company that filled a value need by creating alliances with partners that deliver an exceptional destination living experience which has allowed Intrawest to emerge as a dominant player in managing experiential destination resorts, whereas before its focus was on developing these types of properties).

3) Future-proof your playscript: consider how changes in your customer needs will affect your company by finding the correlation between who your customers are, what they want, and how they get the things they want (the article cites IKEA as a company that’s done this well by foreseeing high volatility in the prices governing the wood it uses to make its products so it purchased forests in Poland and the Baltic states to help stabilize prices, thus allowing it to confidently focus on dominating the low cost segment of the “lifestyle furnishings” market).

Since 2005, we’ve seen many playscripts written and re-written in the real estate industry with the advent of Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, etc. Since 2007, we’ve seen new marketing and customer acquisition playscripts written and re-written via the explosion of social media and social networking. And currently we’re seeing playscripts written and re-written with the emergence of mobile applications and augmented reality. What’s your playscript that will allow you to position your firm as a dominate player in your market? How do you plan to adapt to the changing needs of your clients and customers, especially in terms of mobile solutions? Who are the dominate characters in your company, your competitors, and the industry at large? Who’d you cast as Othello, Brutas, Caesar, Puck, Mr. White, Mr. Pink, Mr. Blonde?

Photo: tanakawho

This Harvard Business Review article (subscription necessary) makes a strong case for companies to create customer strategy departments and positions. One section of the article focuses on “Customer-facing functions” and makes some great recommendations:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) responsibility should migrate away from corporate IT and into the customer strategy department since CRM helps companies assess customers needs and wants and that’s the role of customer strategists
• Market research should break-out of the marketing department silo and extend to all departments and focus bilaterally on the aggregate and the individual (for example, creating customer profiles as espoused in the book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR) with a singular focus on customer for life (CLV) and customer equity metrics to measure success (here’s a sample lifetime value of a customer analysis from the Database Marketing Institute that will help you begin thinking about CLV metrics
• Customer strategists should drive the product development process rather than the engineers; the article notes that NOKIA launched NOKIA Beta Labs in Asia and enjoys 60% market share there because, in part, this developer community helps drive the product development process, whereas in the U.S. Nokia pursued a different strategy that has far less consumer input and has suffered

Voice of the customer is not a new concept in product design and development. It’s sure refreshing to see HBR tackle this issue. What’s your view of creating a customer strategist role in a company?

Photo: ishrona