Enterprise Social Media:

5Five Common Questionsand Lessons Learned

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Introduction: Approaching the Web 2.0 Groundswell

Managing Participation

The Question: How Do You Encourage and Manage User Participation?

Lesson Learned: Speed Up and Slow Down Community Activity

Controlling the Flow of Bad Content and Good

Slowing the Surge of Bad Content

Controlling What Users Perform

Using Automated Moderation Features

Leveraging Good Content

Controlling Security and Access

The Question: Who Can Get In; and What Can They See and Do?

Lesson Learned: Categorize Content and Users; Control Access

Compliance and Auditing

The Question: Who Did What?

Lesson Learned: Use Versioning and Audit Tools

Recognizing Content Ownership

The Question: Who Owns the Content?

Lesson Learned: Establish Ownership

Choosing a Technology Strategy

The Question: What’s Best for My Users?

Lesson Learned: Be Ready for Change

Summary: Learning from Experience

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5 Common Questions

The rise of Web 2.0 communities such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn isdriving a groundswell of social media activity that many businesses are clamoringto take advantage of. As organizations begin to think through their social mediastrategy, they raise a lot of questions. An experienced provider of Web 2.0communities, Awareness hears many of these questions first hand. And weoffer practical advice on ways to address them. This report discusses five commonquestions we hear and the real-world lessons we’ve learned helping customersbuild effective Web 2.0 strategies.

These lessons stem from our experience developing internal- and external-facingsocial media communities for leading brands such as Marriott, the New YorkTimes, McDonalds, Cannondale, Northwestern Mutual, Discovery Channel,JetBlue and Kodak. One major observation is that regardless of the business acompany is in or nature of the community it wants to build, its concerns areshared by almost everyone considering a Web 2.0 strategy. They typically relateto the same issues, including:

• Legal considerations

• Brand image

• Community ethics and integrity

• Participation and community dynamics

• Intellectual property rights

• Technology strategy

As your business begins charting its course in the Web 2.0 frontier, you’re likelyto encounter the same concerns. The questions highlighted in this report andresulting lessons learned will help you address them with confidence.

Introduction: Approaching the Web 2.0 Groundswell

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5 Common Questions

Every community’s success depends on user participation. When considering how to

optimize this, customers often express two concerns at opposite ends of a spectrum.

The first is that they will devote resources to a community and no one will participate.

The second is that everyone will participate in what could become a chaotic, difficult-to-

manage “wild west” environment.

Lesson Learned: Speed Up and Slow Down Community ActivityEffectively managing user participation requires some essential capabilities:

1) A speedometer that enables you to watch the flow of content, and gauge

how the community is evolving

2) An accelerator to increase the rate of contribution and speed up participation

3) A brake pedal to decrease the rate of contribution and slow down participation

The best social media solutions provide these capabilities through a combination

of facilities:

• The ability to place users into different groups and control their permissions

• The ability to control if a user’s content is published directly to the community or

requires explicit approval from a moderator first

• The ability to monitor content with strong manual and automatic moderation tools

Managing Participation

Common Web 2.0 Question: Will too few or too many participate?

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5 Common Questions

1

?No one EveryoneParticipation

Failure? Wild Wild West?

You Need

Speedometer Brake PedalAccelerator

Social media tools for controlling the flow of bad content and good content.

THE QUESTION: How Do You Encourage and Manage UserParticipation?

Controlling the Flow of ContentSome organizations are understandably concerned about ensuring that community

content is consistent with brand image, not hurtful or offensive, or doesn’t violate IP

ownership rules. It’s common for these organizations to launch their communities with

controls that closely regulate the flow of content, then open them up to allow a faster

rate of participation as they become more comfortable with the dynamics.

Slowing the Surge of Bad ContentOrganizations that notice a surge in “bad” content can use social media software

controls to moderate the postings of specific community members or member groups,

and restrict their permissions if necessary. This is often achieved by controlling a user’s

status. Two common status settings are Trusted and Untrusted.

The contributions of a member who is Untrusted, for example, can be automatically

routed to a moderator’s inbox for explicit approval before it appears in the community.

In contrast, the contributions of Trusted users are posted automatically without any

moderation restrictions. As community behavior evolves and you learn more about

specific individuals, you can change a member status and their authority to perform

specific activities. You should also be able to adjust these controls for specific users or

groups of users, depending on the needs of the community.

Controlling User ActivitiesControlling what activities a user or a group of users perform is another valuable

capability. For example, some organizations start by allowing some users to just comment

or vote on content. Often, they will later give them the option to post their own content

or edit others’ in a Wiki.

Using Automated Moderation FeaturesAutomated moderation facilities make it possible to watch contributions for bad content

without requiring a moderator to manually review each post. By creating rules that

automatically flag or reject content if it contains certain words or phrases, an

organization can be comfortable that the content flowing to community members

is not violating company ethics, codes of conduct, or IP ownership rules.

Fostering Open,Transparent CommunitiesMonitoring content for contribu-

tions that are offensive, hurtful

or inconsistent with brand

image, or violate IP leakage rules

is very different from looking for

controversial or critical content.

It may be appropriate to reject

content that uses swear words,

for example, but we advise

companies not to reject content

from users that criticize the

company or its products or

services. We’ve found that the

best communities are open,

transparent, and enable

members to express themselves

freely in an appropriate manner.

5

5 Common Questions

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Managing Participation (cont.)

Leveraging Good ContentIt can be equally beneficial to watch postings, comments and RSS feeds for “good”

content. What qualifies as good content varies by the nature of the community and

goals of the organization. Perhaps you’ve just launched a new product and want to

know when a member writes about it. Or, maybe you want to know what people are

saying about an event or user conference you just ran.

With automated moderation, your social media software can automatically watch every

piece of content — such as postings, comments and RSS feeds — to see how often

certain words or phrases are used, and notify you when they are posted. This is an

effective and nearly effortless way to monitor positive content in your community.

You can leverage this capability in other creative ways. Here are two examples:

1. Automatic categorization. Some automated moderation facilities automatically

assign categories to posts based on the content. This is useful for importing an RSS

feed and ensuring that the content is placed in the appropriate categories.

2. Automatic link insertion. Having content with appropriate links to other relevant

content is a useful capability, but authors often forget to insert the URLs. Some

automated moderation facilities replace text in a post. This enables you to watch for

certain words and phrases, and then convert them to URLs that point to predefined

destinations. For example, you might maintain an online glossary of acronyms and

convert any acronyms in a post to live links to entries in the glossary. You can also

convert any mention of your company name to the URL of your website. The latter

is a capability we use in our public Awareness community.

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5 Common Questions

Managing Participation (cont.)

3 Use manualand automaticmoderation tools

3 Control userpermissions

The Lesson

Another set of questions involves controlling access to and participation in Web 2.0

communities. Common questions we hear include:

• Who can access my community?

• What security measures do I need to control access?

• What content can a user see? Can everyone see all content?

• What actions can users perform in the community?

When dealing with these questions, here are some issues to consider:

1) Will your community be a public one that anyone can access? Or, will it be private,

for example, only for groups such as employees, customers or partners?

2) Will your community have a mix of participants? If you build a community that

mixes employees with prospects and customers, you need to think about security

and access implications.

3) Will you segment your users? If you build a community that includes all customers,

you should think about giving special permissions to certain customers that have

paid for a “gold” level of service.

4) Will your users require some type of authentication? If this is the case, you might

want to integrate your community with your single sign-on or identity management

systems. You may find it useful to integrate with one system for employees and

another for customers.

5) Is there some content that only certain users can see? If you mix partners and

employees in one community, you may not want your partners to see the same

content that your employees see.

6) Do you need to control what actions a user can take? For example, you may want

to allow a set of users to read and comment on some content, but not directly

contribute to it.

Typically, companies start by building two types of communities: 1) Internal-facing

communities for employees; or 2) External-facing communities for customers, prospects

and/or partners. Eventually, companies find they can achieve the greatest value with a

blend of participants. That usually implies that not all of them have access to the same

content with the same privileges.

Controlling Security and Access

THE QUESTION: Who Can Get In, and What Can They See and Do?

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25 Common Questions

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Lesson Learned: Categorize Content and Users; Control AccessA strong social media solution should blend security and access management with a

category structure that enables you to control what specific groups of members see

and do when they log in. You can apply a category structure to both private and public

communities, as well as internal- and external-facing communities. You create categories

to match the varying characteristics of different community groups. There are many

different use cases for category-level access and control. Here are some examples:

• Category for executives only

• Area only for members working on a special project and including a blend of users

such as employees, customers and partners

• ”From the experts” category where anyone can see or comment, but where only

users with an “expert” status can post

• ”Suggestion box” where everyone can post but only select people can read

• ”Featured posts” area that only select users can write to but anyone can read

• Wiki that only select users can edit, but anyone can read

Security and Access Case In PointAn innovative online travel business offers a social media community that blends

content contributed by consumers with content contributed by travel experts.

The expert-provided content in contained in wikis that only the authors are authorized

to edit, but anyone can read. This gives the online travel business two advantages:

1. Ability to track version histories of expert-delivered content

2. Maintains credibility of expert endorsements

Controlling Security and Access (cont.)

Category-Level Security and Access

Topics

• Topic 1

• Topic 2

• Topic 3

Post?

Edit?

Delete?

Comment?

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The Lesson

5 Common Questions

3 Decide who can get in

3 Build category-levelstructure

3 Use profiles

3 Assign privileges

3 Use single sign-on oridentity managementintegration whereappropriate

Internal-facingprivate

External-facingprivate

External-facingpublic

?

Another common concern we hear is how to find out who did what and when. Consider

a situation in which an employee posts objectionable content to an internal community

and then later realizes the misstep and retracts the posting. What if the posting caused

some damage during the short time it was live? Can you prove the employee actually

made the post? You can’t if your social media solution permanently removes the

deleted posting.

You need to be able to prove the existence of the original posting, if necessary. This

requires capabilities for tracking the history of content posted to the community at any

point in time, even content that has been removed from public view. This is particularly

important for discovery and compliance purposes.

Lesson Learned: Use Versioning and Audit ToolsWe recommend that you track community content activities with a social media solution

that saves deletions and versions all generations of members’ postings. If you’re ever

concerned about a user’s activities, you can use the social media software’s auditing

features to verify how the user’s content evolved over time.

Compliance and Auditing

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5 Common Questions

3The Lesson

3 Track member content

3 Version

3 Audit for complianceand discovery

THE QUESTION: Who Did What?

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THE QUESTION: Who Owns The Content?

Today’s focus on intellectual property rights is sharp. And whether you’re building a

corporate Web 2.0 community or using an open solution like Facebook or MySpace,

you need to ensure that members have a clear understanding of several factors.

These include terms of use, content ownership and what happens in different

ownership scenarios.

Lesson Learned: Understand OwnershipIf you’re considering an open community to generate conversation about a particular

offering or event, one of the first things you need to think about is how your content

may be used. For example, some social media providers have terms of use agreements

that give them the authority to use your content however they choose. While this may

be appropriate in some cases, you need to consider the implications in respect to the

kind of content you want to generate.

The second factor to understand is who owns the content — whether it’s the user, the

company that sponsors the community or the service provider that stores the content.

The answer to this question is essential for understanding what happens to content in

different circumstances.

For example, if an influential employee leaves your company, should she be able to

take her blog with her? You may not have a claim to it if it was executed in an open

community like Facebook or MySpace. When it’s in your interest to own and control use

of employee blogs, it’s best to build your own Web 2.0 community and ensure that you

have ownership rights to the content.

Other questions to consider: If an employee leaves your company, can he take his

e-mail inbox and saved messages with him? Can a sales rep take the contents of your

CRM system? Are contributions to a company-sponsored social community the same

or different?

Recognizing Content Ownership

The Value of EstablishingOwnership:Two Cases In PointA highly-recognized Microsoft

blogger was able to take his

blog with him when he left

the company. Was that good

or bad for Microsoft?

When a former Motorola CTO

announced her departure for

Cisco, Motorola was able to

take her public blog down

immediately because it was

managed in a corporate

community.

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5 Common Questions

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Terms of use?

“…you grant, to the Company an

irrevocable worldwide license to use,

copy, publicly display, reformat, trans-

late, excerpt and distribute such User

Content for any purpose, commercial,

advertising, or otherwise.”

• The user?

• The company?

• The provider?

• The user leaves the company?

• The content is inappropriate?

• The content violatestrademark or IP ownership

Whose owns it? What happens when?

The Lesson

3 Establish ownership

3 Understand terms ofuse and differentownership scenarios

The Web 2.0 world is new for most companies. As a result, deciding what features and

technologies you need in your social communities can be daunting. One point is clear:

Wherever you start, you can be sure you won’t finish in the same place. What’s the

implication? As communities evolve and members’ needs grow and change, you need

the flexibility to incorporate new capabilities into your Web 2.0 solution as quickly and

easily as possible.

Lesson Learned: Be Ready for ChangeYou need to ensure that you can build a community that can adapt to the addition of

new features and enhancements over time. If you create a community with a collection of

point products — such as separate blog, wiki and photo sharing tools — the responsibility

of integrating these products into a unified community experience falls on you. This is not

easy and there are additional challenges when you want to incorporate new features.

A better alternative is to use a social media platform. With this strategy, the vendor bears

the burden of ensuring a unified community experience and integrating new features

over time. You can focus on the business benefit of the community while the vendor

focuses on the technology.

Choosing a Technology Strategy

11

5 Common Questions

5THE QUESTION: What’s Best for My Users?The Lesson

3 Use scalable, extensibletechnology

3 Use a platform, rather

than point product(s)

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As companies increasingly embrace Web 2.0 communities, they will continue to

encounter questions. Among these are deciding how to approach legal and intellectual

property issues; promoting a consistent brand image; upholding ethics and keeping a

pulse on community dynamics; and implementing effective technology strategies.

Awareness has built a wealth of experience helping leading brands like Marriott, the

New York Times, McDonalds, Cannondale, Northwestern Mutual, Discovery Channel,

JetBlue and Kodak create successful Web 2.0 strategies. In the process, we have learned

valuable lessons on how to effectively meet the challenges of this evolving technology

environment. We share these lessons with you in this report. And we encourage you to

use them to your advantage, as you navigate ways to achieve real business value from

the growing social media groundswell.

Summary: Learning from Experience

© 2008 AWARENESS, INC.

Awareness, Inc.880 Winter Street, Suite 300Waltham, MA 02451United StatesTel: 1 866 487 5623Fax: 1 781 622 2378

Contact Information:

Awareness Canada5050 South Service Road, Suite 100Burlington, ON L7L 5Y7CanadaTel: 1 866 487 5623Fax: 1 905 632 4922

5 Common Questions

Awareness helps companies build and operate branded Web 2.0 communities. These onlinecommunities let customers, prospects, employees, or partners connect with each other and sharecontent. At the core of the Awareness solution is an on-demand social media platform thatcombines the full range of Web 2.0 technologies—blogs, wikis, discussion groups, socialnetworking, podcasts, RSS, tagging, photos, videos, mapping, etc.—with security, control, andcontent moderation. Awareness builds these features into complete communities for companies,or customers use the Awareness API and widgets to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into theirown web properties. Major corporations such as McDonald's, Kodak, the New York Times,Northwestern Mutual, and Procter and Gamble use Awareness to build brand loyalty, generaterevenue, drive new forms of marketing, improve collaboration, encourage knowledge-sharing,and build a “corporate memory.”

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