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Small Business …… do I really need a Twitter account revisited

I was just at a Third Tuesday Meetup Group on Social Media. The guest speaker was Michelle Kostya on RIM’s approach to social media. The talk was fascinating on how RIM is using social media platforms to keep in touch with their user base and to promote their products. In effect the customer service and marketing groups have merged since they both perform similar functions in an integrated social environment.

What I found of particular interest is that Blackberry sends over 800 private or direct tweets per day to respond to various queries and customer issues. They use their broadcast tweeting primarily for tips and hints, which they control to a very limited number otherwise if they broadcast every response it would overwhelm and potentially alienate their followers. They also have over 50 Facebook pages ( language and product pages) as well as 8 twitter handles. They feel that their Social Media efforts have payed off hugely in keeping their Blackberry users happy.

This made me think about how a small service type business could use twitter to respond to their customers. Instead of using it to send regular tweets, although the odd message can’t hurt, it can be used to direct message between a client and an adviser or other professionals when advice or input is required but a phone call is not essential or desired. Texting can also be used in a similar fashion but Twitter may actually be easier and more intuitive for some users.

So the answer is that in certain circumstances having a twitter account can be very useful for a small service oriented business in particular when a social media savvy clientele is involved.

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Small Business – Do I really need ……..a Twitter account

This question was recently asked to me during a Third Tuesday Meeting and my immediate Luddite answer was no…. but of course that isn’t the right answer because each person and organization situation will be unique.

There are two reasons to have a twitter account:
1. To listen or follow
2. To tweet

The first is probably the best reason, there are some fascinating people with some very relevant things to say, one just has to filter out the non essential stuff. I have found out about a lot of interesting events, thoughts and opinions on the occasional time I actually look at the tweets I follow.

However if you do have a community of interest with a few “Thought Leaders” creating a list of tweets becomes a valuable tool for keeping up-to-date with current issues in your field. This is, of course, only one of many channels one should use to keep professionally current.

This leads then to the next question should I tweet? Going back to my initial reaction – why?, but if you are involved in a community that is active and many people share the same concerns, then this becomes an excellent channel to share your knowledge or at least to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

The criteria would be –

  • do I know what I am talking about,
  • can I share something new and relevant on a regular basis, and
  • is there a ongoing or recurring need for this information.

An example of where this could work well is a early childhood development professional who regularly deals with challenging situations in schools. Usually parents or teachers encounter these situations regularly and there is no one short term solution, it is an ongoing challenge. In this situation a parent in need of guidance could benefit from following experts in this field and when a relevant bit of information passes through they can utilize that resource, be it a link, a resource or other areas that can help.

Conversely if you provide a product or service that is needed only infrequently – insurance, mortgage, car purchase, etc, once the transaction is made it then falls off the radar until the next time. So tweeting about this may not be an effective use of one’s time , of course there are always exceptions, but common sense dictates otherwise.

Twitter is just one tool in your arsenal, and it will have relevance, however, you need to integrate it into your overall communications and marketing strategy and assess the impact and value it has to both you and your customers.

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Building the Foundation for a successful Social Media Marketing Initiative

by Peter de Gosztonyi

I don’t know about you, but this entire social media wave has at times completely overwhelmed me – the pace at which the whole trend is moving and changing is breathtaking. Yet, as a business owner, I know that one can’t ignore this. It certainly is not going away, so you have to get on the train or be left at the station wondering what happened…….
See the entire blog at http://ow.ly/2nFRN

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Brainstorming techniques or How to handle your boss(es) in a brainstorming session

by Peter de Gosztonyi

Project is off to a great start, you have representation from all of your stakeholders and everyone is going to attend the first brainstorming session. Everything is going perfect until your boss says oh by the way I will be attending your workshop.

Even if you have a good relationship with your boss, running a brainstorming session with different levels of authority present can be at the least uncomfortable to a down right disaster. The challenge is usually ensuring that everyone has an equal say in the idea generating and that no one individual can dominate or push a specific agenda or even force a specific outcome.

I have been in many cross level sessions and in a well managed environment the facilitator will utilize a number of different techniques to discretely neutralize these potentially disruptive influences. But what if you don’t have a trained facilitator and perhaps you haven’t encounter this situation before ?

Here are a few variations on the idea generation process that can get even the most reticent person involved as well as creating a level field for the idea generation.

There are 2 prerequisites that must be in place:

1. The statement or issue to be brainstormed is clearly stated and understood by everyone

2. A set of rules is presented and agreed upon such as no criticism of ideas, the crazier the better, all ideas are documented and visible, build on the ideas and encourage participation.

The classic approach is to have each person state an idea that is recorded on a flip chart and in a structured environment each person has a turn building on or providing new or variations on the ideas. If no idea is presented then they pass. The session is over when everyone passes. In an unstructured environment ideas are voiced by anyone at anytime. The disadvantage of this is that a quiet person or one that is intimidated will not participate fully.

An alternative would be brainwriting, and this is more suitable to individual expression where individuals write down up to 4  ideas on a paper and then either pass it on to the next person (6-3-5 method) or select a previously completed paper to modify or add to those ideas. Eventually when no more ideas are being generated, the papers are gathered and ideas consolidated.

Using the traditional sticky paper where ideas are first noted down by each individual and then grouped and organized by the team. This approach has a tendency not to generate builds or go off on different directions.

The use of analogies / free word association can result in unusual connections by comparing the problem to seemingly unrelated objects, creatures and words. Similarly visual brainstorming makes use of the team producing a picture of how they see a situation or problem. These approaches are all participatory and can be dominated by the more vocal elements so a facilitator is necessary to ensure that all participate.

In a group where only advantages or disadvantages of a problem are identified, or when members fo the group are polarized and arguing, a method called Plus Minus, Interesting PMI, can be used. Clearly identify the subject of the PMI, then brainstorm the positive aspects of the idea, then the negative aspects finally the interesting points of the idea – neutral aspects, points to explore, or unusual features.

An important element in getting the ideas ranked is the multivoting approach, where each idea ( after consolidation) is ranked based on the groups opinion. This is another potential area for influencing the outcome if not handled properly. In an open voting system, each person selects one third of the items on the list and then the votes are tallied by a count of hands for each item. Then eliminate the items with the fewest votes and redo the voting until a manageable list is made. Note that this does not discard the idea or say that it is not important, just that in the context of the particular issue under discussion these items rank lower than the others, and they may be addressed later.

In lieu of public voting, each person has a set number of stars or check marks and then place them on the items they deem important, or they rank them and place a 1, 2, 3 etc on the top 5 ideas. This method encourages anonymity and identifies the sequence based on the majority. Thus one individual would not be able to easily influence the outcome.

A more formal method that combines and uses these techniques is referred to as the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and many trained facilitators favour this approach.

The importance of any brainstorming session is the usable ideas and solutions that are generated by the group. The follow through of actually implementing or doing additional research is necessary to ensure that the time and resources have been well utilized. If no visible outcome is seen, it becomes harder and harder to get people involved on other projects.

The following references can provide more detail on these concepts:

The Team Handbook Peter Scholtes

The quality Toolbox Nancy R Tague

The Creativity Tools Memory Jogger Goal OPC

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The Mind Map and the Creative Process

 

We had a great session at Govcamp recently where Laura documented the discussion using a mind map. The question was : what it takes to develop a public engagement strategy. With the advent of social media enablers and the reticent policies of the Government this question defies a clear answer, or does it?

If I revert back to my Quality training, I view this as a problem solving challenge and this means that there is a process ( us engineers love process, not only does it mean that there is logic to follow but also it gets to the solution faster and more effectively – saves lots of time and money). If we adapt the quality based approach then we can use the tools and techniques to get to a solution.

The problem that is being faced is complex, has many facets and crosses many departments with potential for any number of viable solutions, some of which may be specific to only one group or applicable across many. As an outsider, many of the conversations I participated in or overheard, faced the same issues around the role social media can play in engaging the citizen in debate and contribution.

Rather than trying to answer the global question i.e. one answer fits all, the approach would be to start with a specific issue or problem, see how that can be addressed, and then apply the solution to a broader perspective. This process can happen in many different areas and can result in a multitude of viable solutions, but the critical part will be the sharing of these results across the communities. This becomes the challenge of the different groups to communicate. However this is not the purpose of this entry, what I will outline is the basic process that gets people working together to come up with a series of potential solutions.

The first step is of course after identifying the fact that a problem exists (Problem identification) what is the problem that needs to be resolved. The first adaptation is to start using the term “issue” versus “Problem” which has  a negative connotation. The process remains the same.

In our Govcamp session the issue really came down to “What is the process” not how to solve the question of public engagement. Implementing the process that we came up with will ultimately address the question.

Context is always a critical element as it provides the anchor to the discussion. So each group that embarks on this process needs to establish context for their specific situation. For example if you are in the Public Health area, needing to establish public engagement on a specific issue such as Fetal Alcohol  Spectrum Disorder (FASD), then this establishes the context for the problem definition.

Finally we get to the creative process and where the Mind Map methodology fits in. First a bit about the creativity tools – these “help people to visualize, organize and analyze new ideas that lead to solving problems, developing new products and improving processes” ( The Creativity Tools Memory  Jogger). There are a lot of variations and uses for these tools, but the fundamentals hold true for all of them:

  • Open
    • Brainstorm the ideas, get as many as possible (Classic Brainstorming, knowledge Mapping)
  • Narrow
    • Group and identify common ideas ( Affinity Diagrams)
  • Close
    •  Prioritize and assign a prime to the top prioritized items (Multi voting)

The rules for brainstorming are simple:

  1. Good ideas are not praised or endorsed. All judgment is suspended initially in preference to generating ideas.
  2. Thinking must be unconventional, imaginative, or even outrageous. Self criticism and self judgment are suspended
  3. To discourage analytical or critical thinking, team members are instructed to aim for a large number of new ideas in the shortest possible time.
  4. Team members should “hitchhike” on other ideas by expanding them, modifying them or producing new ones by association.

Brainstorming technique Juran Institute. Juran’s Quality Handbook by Joseph M. Juran

For the social media engagement issue, the statement needs to be restated in a more meaningful and manageable statement. The original statement is far too comprehensive an issue to realistically come to any conclusion other than it is overwhelming. There are several tools that can help in restating or refining the issue – Knowledge Mapping, Purpose Hierarchy and Problem Reformulation, Heuristic Redefinition.

As a start this is where the mind map approach can be used as it is easy to understand, doesn’t require a lot of structure and generates ideas fast. Mind mapping is a variation on a more formal method called Knowledge Mapping. Knowledge Mapping is a method that graphically breaks down  a broad goal into increasing levels of detail to better understand the existing knowledge about it.

A mind map is a tool that helps people to show graphically what the brain does naturally. The brain structure and resulting thought patterns are tree like and the branches are the connecting ideas that help us make sense of the world. The ideas are recorded on lines around major ideas and linked to other ideas. Any idea expressed in any way is appropriate. The best art of this approach is that it can be used effectively in teams or by an individual to generate connecting ideas.

You need to apply the brainstorming rules to ensure that the ideas keep coming until they are exhausted. Then the next step starts – making sense of what came out. To be continued.

Peter de Gosztonyi is a quality practitioner and has led numerous groups through the idea generating process. He is an active member of the local American Society for Quality (ASQ) in Ottawa and has certifications as Manager of Quality and Organizational Excellence, Quality Auditor, and Quality Engineer.