Common Sense

Getting Beyond the Avatar: How Roche Did It Right

There is a tendency to judge a the social media savvy of biopharma companies by simply tallying the sum total of their online presence. Got a Twitter feed? A You Tube channel? Great: you're in the top tier.

But simply hanging a shingle in the more genteel corners of the social media doesn't automatically mean translate into influence or eyeballs. A couple hundred subscribers to a YouTube channel falls somewhat short of a revolution. That's not to say that incremental progress isn't important. Nor does it mean there aren't folks out there who aren't making waves using these tools. Take Kevin Pho, an internist in New Hampshire, who has turned his oft-updated blog into a daily must-read for thousands and garnered a regular spot on the USA Today op-ed page. That's the world we live in today: one doc, posting in his spare time, has an online footprint that dwarfs most Fortune 500 companies.

It's not breaking new ground to suggest that companies should take some time getting to know these new influencers; tech-forward companies have been doing it for years, and health care giant Johnson & Johnson has gathered a handful of bloggers for dinner at least a couple of times.

But, this summer, Roche took a bold step in health care social media by bringing a couple dozen diabetes bloggers to their Indianapolis campus. This was a stroke of genius: diabetes has one of the largest and most cohesive online communities, a group of motivated individuals all dedicated the kind of constant vigilance need to thrive with diabetes. They enlisted the help of Amy Tenderich, who writes the site diabetesmine.com, and managed to bring a select and diverse gang to Indiana. There were leaders of online communities (Manny Hernandez), writers who looked at the business angles (Kelly Close), longtime online diabetes journalists (David Mendoza), and many, many more.

But Roche shouldn't get full credit just for flying folks to their confab for a song-and-dance routine. They listened. Especially when the assembled crowd started asking tough questions about the economics of diabetes test strips. Reading the blog coverage afterward, it was pretty clear that the Roche line on test strips didn't resonate with everyone. But that didn't matter: the company had heard them out, and that clearly generated oodles of goodwill.

And that's goodwill that's hard to come by through 140-character tweets or even the occasional corporate blog post. It's rare that Bob Pearson gets through a blog entry without extoling the value of listening, and it's worth remembering that -- even in a wired world, dealing with wired influencers -- sometimes it's easier to listen when you're sitting face-to-face.

Why We All Need to Step Up Our Learning Curve in Social Media – 7 Thoughts on How

Remember your toughest classes?  They weren’t always fun, but you sure learned the most.  Life’s that way.  You have to work hard in the gym to get in shape.  You have to work hard outside of your normal day to become expert in an area. 

 

I mention this because we often forget it.  People in companies get cool titles and have big teams with budgets, so they start thinking they know more  than they do.  Meanwhile, the world is changing.  Eventually, what we think is outdated….maybe even wrong.  All because we weren’t going to the mental gym or empowering our teams to do the same.    

 

In business, there are no easy A’s.  And when you are learning a new discipline, like social media, that will transform how we do business internally and externally, it’s critical to your success to learn how to learn again. 

 

Not surprisingly, few companies have true learning cultures.  Here are a few ways companies inadvertently diminish learning power. 

 

#1 – Formal Committees – when’s the last time you learned something valuable in a committee?  It’s a great place to form norms, but not a place where people feel free to admit what they don’t know and explore new ideas.  Don’t defend them.  You know you check your emails and daydream….

 

#2 – The Antibodies – you all know I think antibodies are the biggest drawback for companies.  These folks are so nice and articulate, but they want to hang on to yesterday’s model because it worked.  They want to play it safe.  They are not as intellectually curious as they often think they are.  They enforce the current norm and rarely look at how to reinvent an approach.   

 

#3 – Closed Learning Systems – we’ll just teach ourselves inside the company, right?  We don’t have time for training.  We’re busy doing what worked  yesterday, remember?   This is a closed learning system.  It’s often one where  folks don’t have access to the web at work….or where there is no real commitment to training….and learning.    

 

Ok, enough of that.  We can all remember examples of how companies don’t learn well.  Here are seven ways to unlock the learning of yourself and  your team.

 

#1 – Fill Your Mind with Insights – take a minute to identify those folks who are sharing their key learning’s and build your own reading list.  Follow 5-10 bloggers who regularly explore new ideas, often in different ways.  For example, I like to listen to Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang, but will then check out Joi Ito or Techmeme.  If you read the NYT or WSJ every day, ask yourself which blogs you read everyday. 

 

#2 – Make it Easy to Access Real-Time Updates  – utilize technology, such as widgets and netvibes.com, to bring competitive insights right to your laptop, in real-time.  Make it so you simply turn on your computer and the real-time info is there for you to see.  Make it as easy as it can be.

 

#3 – Set Up and Unleash an Innovation Team – enable a team in your company to explore the future….everyday…and listen to them.  Make it multi-function.  Celebrate its existence.  With a decent batting average, you’ll start innovating more than you ever have.  Don’t overcomplicate it with rules and procedures and governance policies.  That’s the old school in you.   Let your hair down and let the ideas percolate. 

 

#4 – Experts are Your Friends – ask people you think are expert to speak with your company on a regular basis.  Make sure they know it is ok and expected that they are critical, not reassuring. Do it regularly.  Challenge them.    

 

#5 – Go Outside Your Comfort Zone to Learn – take one language you don’t speak and try to track what is going on.  For example, follow China Daily and see  how your company or brand is being discussed…..or how it is not.  Wake yourself up to the fact that more than one language or country exists.  Struggle.  Figure it out.  Do it again. 

 

#6 – Seek out Best Practices – I happen to be affiliated with the Social Media Business Council, which shares best practices every day among nearly 70 of the world’s top brands.  Doesn’t get much better than this.  Best practices are not the ones inside your company.  That’s a subset.  Get the real thing and compare and contrast. 

 

#7 – Participate and Share Your Own Views – the ultimate way to learn is to participate and share your own views.  It helps you figure out if you are really learning or simply just  “talking”.  Present, blog, speak inside your company.  Find what works for you and let your thoughts be known. 

 

And have fun.  If you do this, in a year or two, you will realize you are so far ahead of your peers, it’s not even funny.   They also know they need to get to the mental gym on a regular basis…….but only a handful of folks are disciplined enough to really make it happen.  Be one of them.  We need your insights and your voice.

 

All the best, Bob

 

Want to Know How PetSmart Approaches Social Media? Ask Shana Costarella.

We are starting a new Q&A with social media leaders.  Over the coming months we will be profiling social media innovators and practitioners from all kinds of cool companies that are doing work in social media. In some cases, the practitioner will be profiled first and interviewed a week later.  During the interim week, our readers are all welcome to submit your questions to the person being interviewed and we will do our best to get them answered.

Our first spotlight is on PetSmart's Shana Costarella (@shawniec). 

Shana Costarella is Communications Manager of Community and Social Media for PetSmart, Inc., the largest specialty retailer of services and solutions for the lifetime needs of pets. Shana ushered PetSmart into the strategic use of emerging media for crisis/issue communication, reputation management and brand awareness. She oversees social media community and online reputation approaches for the retailer’s PR and marketing initiatives. In addition, she counsels business units on social media strategies for listening and engagement to achieve key customer service, recruiting, associate relations, loss prevention and philanthropy objectives. With more than a dozen years experience in marketing communications, Shana has spent the last 10 years honing and employing Web and web-based solutions to illuminate and involve audiences. In 2005, she joined PetSmart’s Corporate Communications department, responsible for developing and managing web-based communications projects for internal and external audiences.

Have a question you'd like us to ask Shana? Post it into the Comments or email it to me directly at pdyer@wcgglobal.com and we will do our best to get it answered.

Paul Dyer

Sermo, the AMA and the Rise of the Wired Physician

Of all of the dustups that the great Health Reform Debate 2009 has precipitated, none is as significant -- or as under-appreciated -- as the war of words between the American Medical Association and Sermo, the physician-only social network. Wherever the policy debates on the specifics of a health reform bill fall out, we'll still have much the same system that we have now, assuming the bill passes. Yes, more people may be insured. Yes, we may have an additional government plan. And yes, there will be changes around the edges. But we won't see the $2.4 trillion-a-year health care business reshaped beyond recognition.

What we will see, however, is a sea change in how doctors are organizing. And this is likely to lead to profound changes in everything from how doctors practice medicine to how physicians operate as public policy advocates.

Let me back up. Earlier this summer, the AMA and Sermo ended a two-year partnership intended to allow the AMA to plug into Sermo's logged-in physicians. Then the broadsides began: Sermo's founder, in early July, posted a blog entry that called the AMA "The Biggest Risk to US Physicians." Over the next three weeks, the social social network put out three separate releases that said that an overwhelming number of Sermo physicians rejected the AMA's stance on health reform and opposed the current versions of the bills under consideration, noting that three of four Sermo members were not members of the AMA and that nine in 10 didn't think that the AMA reflected their opinion of medicine.

It is likely true that the AMA's membership is larger than Sermo's, and there is no question that the AMA remains the official (and powerful) voice of the physician lobby. But Sermo's explosive growth and the site's demographic -- younger, Internet-savvy docs -- means that the tables will soon be turned and that what the community on Sermo thinks may represent the collective stance of the nation's doctors. And we probably won't have to wait long for this to happen.

Of course, having an influential group of wired doctors, unmoored from any formal bureaucracy is only the first step. It won't be long before online patient communities, too, become more powerful than the old-school advocacy groups that have long spoken for patients. Just take patientslikeme.com, where the future has already arrived in the form of hundreds of highly involved patients swapping detailed information about their disease and treatment.

These new groups don't mean that traditional patient- or professional-centered associations will cease to exist. But, increasingly, they will have to co-exist with raucous, minimally organized groups of incredible informed individuals. And in a new world in which connections are king and every opinion can be broadcast, this is excellent news. The more voices we can hear, the better.

Don’t Let Shiny Objects Trump Strategy

We all love to talk about the latest tool, site or platform.  With friends, it’s fun to ask if you like Xobni or TweetDeck or if you’ve heard about what Mahalo is capable of doing or if you saw the news that Facebook 3.0 was submitted for use on the iPhone today.  Inside companies, we often default to “hey, you should be on Twitter..or Facebook or use xyz”.    It’s easy to fall into the shiny object trap. 

What I’m not hearing enough are questions related to strategy.  Perhaps this is to  be expected.  To think strategically, you have to have a command of the marketplace.  You need to be fluent in it’s dynamics.  And you need to be up to speed on the tools at your disposal.  You can’t have a surface knowledge of the change transforming the market and make intelligent decisions on where to make the most impact for your company or brand.  

When you study the marketplace continually, you realize things like:

Consumers learning habits are changing as video becomes more dominant.   Maybe our approach to creating content should evolve.

Facebook has 7x the audience of Twitter, but Twitter can often drive news more effectively, since Twitter is wide open and Facebook is still largely a closed system where you impact your friends more than the world.  Maybe more news cycles will continue to come out of Twitter.

15 of the top 23 online countries are not in North America or Europe.  What are the differences in conversations, purchase habits, search and more?

Dissatisfaction is often a big driver of a company’s reputation before they start participating online.  What is my brand’s reputation really like?

The larger topics of interest to a company are often 20-40x higher in volume than search results for the actual brand.  Do I really know where the conversations are that matter the most?

And the biggest observation.....is that the more you learn, the more you realize we are all just beginning the process of figuring out what is possible online....

So the next time someone suggests you use a shiny tool or participate in a new site, ask them to share their strategy.

To keep it simple, here is a way to LEARN with your colleagues:

Location -- where are your customers online today? – for example, you may find that community forums are most active for your brand, yet it is being recommended that you focus on blogs?  Or your customers are largely B2B, so you should be looking at private B2B communities. 

Evidence -- what do your customers actually need? – if you listen to their conversations, you will find evidence of what they actually want.  For example, if there is a strong need for customer support, you aren’t going to have credibility in the market until you address the underlying dissatisfaction.

Accomplishment -- what do you want to accomplish? – do you want to expand news flow or improve customer service or generate ideas to build better products and services?  Each goal may lead to a very different approach, often a combination of activities.

Reach – are you reaching the right people and how do you know?

Normalize – if what you are doing is working, identify why and normalize this behavior, so it becomes part of your organization’s DNA. 

 Those are a few thoughts on strategy.  Now back to talking about shiny objects with my friends for the rest of the weekend.  J

All the best, Bob

The Top Myths to Avoid Change in Social Media & the Role of “Antibodies” in Today’s Corporation

It is easy to embrace the idea of change, but very hard, in practice, to make it happen.  You know that.  In your company today, you are probably filled with ideas and simultaneously struggling with how to get the larger team to understand the need to change now….not next year…now. 

I’ve heard most of the myths that have been created to avoid change.  And I’m not surprised.  When you work in a field that is innovative and transformative, like social media, it’s life.   Myths have been part of human nature since the time we started telling stories  a few millennia ago.  We perpetuate myths as a way to establish  or reinforce a certain type of behavior, regardless of whether or not it is accurate.  Truth rarely gets in the way of a good myth. 

In this post, I’ve listed my favorite myths by area along with a dose of reality. 

Inside a Company

#1 – The Technology Myth – Since many folks don’t understand the details of how technology works inside their own company, they are susceptible to mythmakers who throw out technical obstacles, such as “we would provide full web access, but we don’t have enough bandwidth”.  I haven’t found a situation yet where this was actually true. 

Reality Check:  Mythmakers judge bandwidth on old models, such as holding a global webcast where everyone tunes in at the exact same time and all employees obediently listen to every word.  The only problem with this model is that no one does this anymore.  The reality is that in today’s world, employees can watch vlogs (not webcasts) at their convenience based on their location and time zone.  End of issue.

#2 – The Productivity Myth – I hear that “full web access will distract our employees…..our employees will stop working if we provide them access to the web”.   Really?  Let’s see.  We can distract ourselves by talking too much in the hallways, checking our cell phone, chatting on the phone with friends, taking longer breaks and lunches, leaving early and on and on.  For those who get distracted, they have already figured out how to do it well. 

Reality Check: The world’s best operating system in the world is the web.  You can provide the best content available to your employees by enabling them to access it at work.  It can become a competitive advantage.  In addition, regarding the distraction point, my view is that managers should manage their people just like you always have.  Don’t make the web or any other item an excuse. 

#3 – The Employees Don’t Know Much Myth – I hear “if we ask employees for ideas, who knows what we’ll get” – After all, mythmakers know most of the answers, so you don’t really need to ask employees how to improve the company.  They just work there, right?

Reality Check:  Wrong.  When I was at Dell, we asked employees for ideas via “EmployeeStorm”.  We had over 4500 ideas and implemented over 165 of them.  And it turns out that employees are pretty smart….they know how to improve products and services….and they care about their company.  Ask away.

The Marketplace

#4 --  The ROI Myth – “We can’t determine the ROI of social media yet” is one of my favorites.  Traditional marketing is famous for the quote “I know that half of my marketing budget is effective, I just don’t know which half”.   Yet, when new ways to reach customers emerge, the “mythmakers”…I often call them antibodies (more later)….decide that new, higher standards must be met before investment occurs. 

Reality Check: Social media is very quantitative.  It is easy to generate data.  It is easy to correlate to actual purchase with single sign on capabilities.  The art of the science will be in determining what the data is telling us about our customers and how we need to modify or change our approach, as a result.  The best marketers intuitively grasp this and move forward, since they can build an advantage by learning how to improve ROI via social media.

#5 – The B2B Myth – “We are B2B, so this is not as important for us”.  Companies that are B2B often believe that they don’t really need to interact in a public manner to reach their customer base, since they reach their customers one at a time via an account leader, for example. 

Reality Check: You can build a deeper relationship with your customers via social media.  Private B2B communities can be built.  The account leader can gain access to knowledge never heard before.  My personal view is that B2B may actually be the highest value utilization of social media in the future.  Plus, you can reach all of your partners via social media.  Your news and actions are being absorbed by your B2B partners everyday via online readers, news feeds and more.  By not engaging via social media, you are outsourcing your reputation to those who comment on you publicly. 

#6 – The Social Media is for Others Myth – these are the folks who like to say “Facebook is really for younger people” or “Twitter isn’t mainstream” or “YouTube is just a bunch of kids playing silly videos” or “LinkedIn is just a place for your resume”.   Humans love to grab a piece of data, lock it into their brains and be done with it.  Mythmakers are working overtime in this area.  

Reality Check: The world is changing so fast that yesterday’s facts are incredibly outdated.  Facebook, which has over 250 million members,  is tracking older, in fact there was a 500% increase in people 55 years or older in their latest data.  Twitter has over 35 million people on it and far more impact via its natural search results.  YouTube is the 2^nd largest search engine on the planet…..the planet earth……and LinkedIn is becoming a place for groups to form and for research to be conducted. 

#7 – The Antibodies – This isn’t a myth, it is actually a type of response that is deadly to innovation.  It is the folks who say “I would love to do more in social media, but….”.  I like to call them “antibodies”, since antibodies are basically a good part of our  immune system that has a goal to neutralize foreign invaders, such as bacteria. The people in companies who are antibodies are generally great people who don’t realize that they are viewing new ideas as foreign invaders and their “immune system” automatically triggers phrases to avoid change, such as “why don’t we consider doing this next year” or “if we had budget, we could do this” or “figure out what the ROI is and then we’ll consider” or “who else is doing this, let’s find that out first” and so on.  They all sound polite and sometimes even constructive, but the result is the same….the foreign “idea” is repelled. 

Reality Check: Every company is filled with antibodies and, if we are honest, we all do this from time to time.  Make it fun to call out folks for being antibodies and talk through how you get to a constructive next step.  The key is to recognize it is happening and not allow it to prevent change.

So those are my top myths along with a dose of reality.  What myths are you dealing with that we should explore?  Let me know.

All the best, Bob