15 Key Observations by Bob Pearson

Tonight I am attending Third Tuesday Toronto with speaker Bob Pearson, President of the Social Media Business Council (formerly Blog Council); also formerly of Dell.

http://Twitter.com/bobpearson1875

15 Key Observations about big business and social media

1. Customers are co-shaping your reputation every day.

2. Customers assume leaders will identify issues before they happen.

They have set up a "hot issues" team to try to anticipate.

3. The customer does not care where you want them to go.

We go where we find what we need. Our networks, therefore, are liquid.

4. Less than 1% of a customer's time is spent purchasing a product.

5. E-commerce will become e-community.

Customers don't want to go two places to get what they want. Sears,
Wal-mart and Dell are doing work in this area.

6. How people consume content is changing.

YouTube has become the second largest search engine. Customers go
where they want to.

7. The media world isn't changing -- it has changed.

Traditional media such as New York Times that are content producers
are find. Next successful are bloggers.

8. There isn't a destination for a customer.

If your clients are signed up for your email they may no longer be
coming to your website.

9. Syndication of content is more important than traffic to your site.

Micro-communities, video, etc. Customer-driven preference;
participation is a choice.

10. 10-20% of your customer base in a given year.

The majority are searching online, asking peers, or doing nothing when
they have a problem. Better to empower them to help each other.

11. Customers want to do three things to help each other.

12. Don't measure trust internally if you are living it.

Employees help each other.

13. We judge people by how they interact with us.

We need to speak the customer's language. How many languages can we
speak?

Put ratings and reviews right in front of customers. Be open and honest.

14. Preparing for yesterday is ineffective.

Old models and habits hold back innovation. They look and smell nice,
but hold you back.

15. Ethical behaviour is a key part of maintaining trust.

We should never support fake blog posts. Important we keep our ethics
straight.

In conclusion: "Companies that cling to the past may not realize it,
but they will lose relevance."

From the Q&A:

Websites are a great place to store your content that is syndicated,
but most people will not be coming to your site.

Virtual worlds still have a place but are not yet ready. Shopping mall
or tech support worlds would be useful.

If you get real feedback, some will be positive and some will be
negative.

Companies are mostly using old tech support models. Need to change --
companies like Comcast are heading the way.

Social media monitoring: you can see what is being said about your
brand. There could be 30 to 40 times the discussion of your brand in
social networks than you are seeing in Google.

Getting legal counsel on board: bring them in early as part of the
team. Pick one or two to be your social media experts. Same with IT:
they will set up roadblocks at first. Pick one or two to work with you.

Most people are not talking to their customers each day. Start with
free resources such as Google Alerts or NetVibes to monitor what their
clients are saying and what their competitors are doing. He's usually
working 20 steps ahead of this, but important to get clients starting
here.

Customer service and social media is a journey -- we are 10-12 years
out from finding a good way to approach this. The Social Media
Business Council is important in this respect, it allows members to
share notes and see what works, what does not work.

Search screens in mobile devices: first third of the screen is
important; bottom two thirds is not.

Inside the Council there is a private group where they share
privately. Info is shared publicly at http://socialmedia.org
and on the blog http://blogcouncil.org/blog/

If you are interested in community building, don't look at what
companies are doing, look instead at what Facebook is doing.

Note: Moblogged (live-blogged via mobile) from my iPhone with cleanup and links added afterward. Any errors or ommissions are my responsibility and not that of the speaker.

Happy Canada Day & the Story of the Six String Nation Guitar

It's that time of year when we kick back and appreciate how lucky we are to be in Canada.

Not quite two weeks ago I was in Kingston, Ontario with friends attending Podcasters Across Borders, an annual conference for (you guessed it) podcasters. Each year we come from Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and further afield in Canada, U.S. and even Brazil to converge, catch up and learn. We always expect to be inspired, but on the Friday evening before things had even really had a chance to start, we were caught off guard by a very moving, emotional keynote address.

Jowi Taylor of the Six String Nation project spoke to us about the creation of a very special guitar, the Voyageur. It is made from 63 artefacts of Canadian culture and history, including Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle, Paul Henderson's hockey stick, Maurice "Rocket" Richard's first Stanley Cup ring, L.M. Montgomery's house in Cavendish, and copper from the Library of Parliament among many, many others. The guitar has been in the hands of many people including me and my friends, if you look closely at these photos by Alexa Clark above, and has been played by many famous Canadians since 2006 including Stephen Fearing, Colin James, Hawksley Workman, Feist and many others. If you watched today's Canada Day festivities on CBC, you would have hopefully seen Shane Yellowbird playing it (see photo below):



People have been learning about the Six String Nation project through word of mouth. During his talk we learned that Jowi Taylor has financed the project himself without sponsorship, which has been a fantastic labour of love that has unfortunately left him in debt. Many of us were moved by the collaborative, patriotic spirit of the project and made personal contributions.

A book has now been released to talk about the story of the guitar. It also includes stories of the pieces incorporated into the guitar, and portraits of people with the guitar. This project is bringing together and helping to define our nation in many ways. I encourage you to watch the intro video below, explore the other videos on YouTube telling the moving stories of how the pieces were gathered, and check out the website. If you are lucky to have the Voyageur visit your community, I encourage you to see it live and perhaps even try it out. It is going to be at Harbourfront in Toronto, for example, July 24-26, 2009. The schedule calendar is on the front of the website.



Photo credits (from top to bottom):

Podcasters Across Borders & Six String National guitar photo montage by LexnGer, made available under a Creative Commons license.

Shane Yellowbird at Canada Day celebrations July 1, 2009 in Ottawa playing the Voyageur, photo courtesy Six String Nation.

Connie Crosby's Top 6 Ways to Find Out What's Going On

And It's A Wrap
Originally uploaded by LexnGer

My friend and colleague Wendy Reynolds recently asked me to write about how I keep up. The answer really comes in three parts:
(1) How do I find out about groups and events?
(2) What groups do I belong to or meet with?
(3) What events are coming up?

Let me tackle the first one in this post. Here are my top 6 ways I find out what's going on:

1. Twitter - often the people I follow are in the same groups as I am, or have similar interests. They talk about upcoming events and groups they are part of. My curiosity leads me to check out what they are talking about. Sometimes I hear about them attending events while they are there, in which case I am disappointed I have missed out. That motivates me to pay more attention, and possibly join in with the next event put on by that group.
   
   
2. Facebook - one thing Facebook is very good at is allowing people to organize events. The people who organize events often send messages out to their friends or members of groups to invite them. I also get invited to various groups via Facebook. I have these notifications set up to be sent to my email so I don't have to constantly log onto Facebook. That being said, I check into Facebook periodically to see what events others are signing up for in case there is something of interest. The more groups you join, or the more friends you connect with, the more likely you are to hear about events. To me this is one of the most powerful things about Facebook.
   
   
3. Meetup.com - A number of groups use Meetup to organize meetings. I make sure to sign up as a member of each group I am interested in. Organizers use the system to send notices about upcoming messages to the members. Periodically I am also notified about new groups falling within my area of interest, as defined by me in my profile. I also periodically check to see what groups my friends are signed up for. I used to mine Upcoming.org, a similar site, for events, but find not as many groups using it these days. And to be honest, I find since Yahoo took it over I have difficulty signing into the site to use it.
   
   
4. Email discussion lists - listserves, group lists, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups - yes, email lists are still thriving. I am signed up for a number in Toronto for various associations and interest groups, most of which I read in daily summary mode, and watch them for events of interest.
   
   
5. Get involved - I am involved in a lot of different groups, both formal (associations) and informal (communities of interest). That means frequently I have an "inside track" on events coming up. As well, I am sometimes contacted by people in other groups putting on events looking for advice or, more likely, wanting to spread the word.
   
   
6. Check with someone who knows what is going on - about once a week my friend Eden Spodek and I touch base and talk about upcoming events and meetings we are going to. Once in a while one of us will know about something the other doesn't (usually she is more in the know than I am). It's not something we plan on doing, but it just seems to happen when we start talking. Our interests are similar but we largely work in different industries, so do hear about different things.
   
   People seem to use my blog in this way, too. I try to let people know about things they might be interested in, thinking about whether most people interested are on Facebook, Twitter, or a listserv. I'm a bit slow at getting upcoming events onto this blog. Last month I posted about upcoming Toronto events that were of interest to me, and probably should continue doing something like that which would also address number 3) above.

Note each of these informs the other. Quite often I hear about one event several times over in all different methods. To the point where I don't have to look to find, it almost seems to come by osmosis.

You may be surprised to see I do not check blogs or monitor RSS feeds for upcoming events. Do you? How do you find out what is going on?

Photo credit: BookCamp wrap-up, Saturday June 6, 2009 And It's A Wrap
Originally uploaded by LexnGer. Photo used under Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

SLA Toronto presents... Best of the Web

I will be moderating the upcoming SLA Toronto session, a tour of four librarians' top research websites. It should be a fun evening--I hope you will join us!

SLA Toronto presents ….

Best of the Web

Join friends and colleagues for an interesting and informative evening!
Speakers from a variety of special libraries will show the top 10-20 sites in their area of research.

Speakers:

Robert Fabbro: Ontario College of Art and Design
Valerie Hatten: Ontario Science Centre
Daniel Lee: Navigator Ltd.
Frank Van Kalmthout: Archives of Ontario

Moderator: Connie Crosby

Date: Wednesday June 24, 2009

Location:

University of Toronto, Faculty of Information
Room 728
140 St. George St.
Toronto

Time:

5:30-6:00: Registration and networking. A light dinner will be available.

6:00-7:15: Presentations

Cost:

Members: $20.00
Non-members: $30.00
Retired/Unemployed: $10.00
Students: Free

Click here for Registration information
Registration deadline is June 22, 2009

50 Best Blogs for Law Librarians

The folks at Online University Lowdown have put together their listing of the 50 Best Blogs for Law Librarians. Some fantastic blogs! I wanted to point out those of a few friends that have been included:

• Vancouver Law Librarian Blog by Steve Matthews
• Strategic Librarian by Nina Platt
• law.librarians - a group blog based out of the UK, which Steve and I have both contributed to
• Out of the Jungle - started by Jim Milles, written by contributors Betsy McKenzie, Marie S. Newman, Jacqueline Cantwell and Meg Kribble.
• The Running Librarian by James Mullan
• Meg Kribble's own blog (yay, Meg!)
• WisBlawg at the University of Wisconsin Law Library, authored by Bonnie Shucha
• LLRX.com owned and edited by Sabrina Pacifici
• beSpacific by Sabrina Pacifici
  

And of course there are many friends behind the other blogs mentioned, too. Congratulations, everyone, for the mention!