There has been much written about measuring the value of online communities such as Social Networks or Communities of Practice. However, most pundits tend to think of measuring value from a purely financial perspective, i.e. the Return on Investment (ROI). Clearly this is an important factor, but it’s not the only factor that should be considered. Surprisingly few organisations consider the value that is being created by having better informed and more knowledgeable staff, or the potential value of getting closer to customers and local communities. These latter factors are quite difficult to measure in terms of ROI, and will normally take more than one business cycle (e.g. a financial year) before any meaningful financial measures can be made. Unfortunately – and especially in today’s financial climate – organisations plan around 1 or 2 year business years, whereas online communities will not usually be time-limited, and very rarely be driven by finance and budgets. Allowing for the relatively small cost of bandwidth and technology, conversations are – for the most part – deemed to be free.
I was pleased to see that Matt Rhodes over at Freshnetworks did refer to non-financial ROI, though I would have liked to have seen more emphasis on the value that is generated for the members of these online communities, rather than the usual social media impact measures (numbers of page hits, numbers of conversations etc.) – important as these are, and adequately illustrated in the accompanying presentation.
I have taken a slightly different approach to the issue of how the value of online communities is measured, giving more emphasis to the discovery of value rather than the dispassionate assembly of a series of metrics – financial or otherwise. I should also add that the perspective is on public sector communities since this is where I’ve been primarily engaged over the past few years. The main points are covered in a presentation I gave to the Public Health Information Network Conference earlier this year and reproduced below:
1. We need to distinguish between cost and value.
I used the humble nutmeg to illustrate this point. Weight for weight more valuable than gold in 17th century Europe. The spice was held to have powerful medicinal properties. It rocketed in price when physicians in Elizabethan London claimed that their nutmeg pomanders were the only certain cure for the plague. So, cost was very high, but the value? Well, despite the assertions of the medical experts of the day, it certainly didn’t cure the plague!
The point is reinforced by the following quotations:
I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things. Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900.
2. We are more likely to find and create value from the communities we choose for ourselves than the communities we are compelled to join.
I have argued that one of the key characteristics of a Community of Practice is the fact that the members are self-selected, i.e. they are there because they want to be there and not because they have to be there. They may select to become members because they share the same interests, passions and goals as the other members. A successful CoP will create value for the members – either collectively in terms of working towards a common goal or objective, or personally, e.g. through self-development or sharing knowledge.
3. We are re-discovering networks and communities and through them, re-learning how to have conversations.
It’s sad fact that 20th century working practices and pressures of modern life have led to a sense of personal isolation. Mass production, prescriptive and repetitive tasks and limited social opportunities in the workplace have created a workforce conditioned to think and act as a corporate entity, limiting individual aspirations and creative thought. The opportunities for sharing information and knowledge have been gradually eroded over the past 50 years; social clubs have closed; people don’t have the time (or money) to regularly socialise after work; we are increasingly driven by task-oriented emails.
What is sometimes forgotten is that professional communities, where good and notable practice is shared amongst fellow artisans, are still flourishing today in the form of Worshipful Companies (over 800 in London alone), with most having existed for many hundreds of years. Communities of Practice are not new; they’ve just discovered they can exist in a virtual world. The key issue for many people though, is learning how to have on-line conversations. The following points from one of the slides are worth re-iterating:
We don’t know what we don’t know
People don’t learn from content – they learn from other people.
We don’t know the value of knowledge until it is shared
We need to find where the conversations are happening….and join in!
And…
Dialogue is NOT:
Discussion, deliberation, negotiation
Committee, team, task or working group
Majority wins, minority dominance, groupthink
Dialogue IS:
Free-flowing exchange of ideas among equals
All ideas are solicited and are considered
Best ideas rise to the top
4. ROI doesn’t just mean ‘Return on Investment’
I’ve taken the liberty of using something I once heard Euan Semple say: “Keep the I small and the R will look after itself”. I think this is a good mantra because anyone worth their salt in the Social Media/Social Web world knows that implementing a social media strategy doesn’t have to cost a fortune. The days of multi-million pound corporate websites is fast diminishing, and anyone with this amount of money to spend is going to be quite rightly questioned on ROI – and they better make sure they have the answers.
I’ve given some alternative definitions for ROI, such as:
Return on Influence
Return on Interaction
Return on Impact
These are the things which should be measured for value, and add a different dimension to the traditional financial measures.
5. Recognise that value to the organisation is different from value to the individual.
There is an over-emphasis on measuring value of online communities from the organisational perspective. I’ve given a (financial) example in the slides, using cost savings of online conferences as an example. However, it is important to remember that there is also a value to the individual in being a member of an online community, and this aspect often goes unrecognised (and unmeasured). The value or benefit to a community member is quite difficult to measure (the member may not be able to articulate or recognise what knowledge they have gained from the community) and any outcomes may not be easily aligned with corporate goals (e.g. job satisfaction). It is nevertheless important to consider this dimension in any overall value measurement. Qualitative metrics can provide some answers, but it’s also useful to examine quantitative data to gain a better understanding of the community itself, e.g.:
Number of community members
Number of contributions
Number of contributors
Number of inactive users
Having a Social Network Analysis (SNA) application is even better, since this can reveal who the key ‘nodes’ are in the community chatter. It’s a useful discipline to consider what would happen to the online community if these community members decided to leave the community. Dependency on one or two ‘power’ contributors should be recognised as a risk.
The presentation concludes with a number of lessons learnt from the IDeA CoP platform, which has now been active (and by all measures, successful) for over 3 years. It’s always useful to have a distilled list of “do’s” and “don’ts”, herewith reproduced:
Do…
..identify and look after your facilitators – they are quite often the difference between successful and unsuccessful communities
..let users drive their own experimentation and use of tools.
..target and support areas that have a clear desire and need.
..build trust and relationships face to face where possible.
..condition your managers for failure – not every CoP is going to be successful.
..use online conferences and ‘Hot Seats’ to build membership growth and encourage conversations.
Don’t…
..think you can force people to collaborate
..assume everyone understands how to use Web2.0/social media tools.
..assume everyone knows how to contribute.
..worry about the ‘lurkers’.
..let command, control or hierarchy hamper or kill your community
..set unrealistic targets
I hope this has been helpful to anyone involved with social networks or communities of practice, and particularly those who need to show that their online communities are delivering value. Just remember there is more to ROI than finance!
These are my links for December 23rd through December 30th:
Defining social media : Tim’s Blog – Definitions are useful things in research and critical thinking around a subject. When studying the youth work uses of social network sites, I found boyd and Ellison’s clear definition of what constitutes a social network site to be extremely useful in giving focus to the work. Right now I’m working with Kevin Harris on an essay around the potential uses of social media in frontline public services, and one of the first challenges I’ve hit is finding an operational definition of social media.
ReadWriteWeb Interview With Tim Berners-Lee, Part 1: Linked Data – The Semantic Web and Linked Data connect because when we've got this web of linked data, there are already lots of technologies which exist to do fancy things with it. But it's time now to concentrate on getting the web of linked data out there.
http://squawk.blogs.starnewsonline.com/ – So North Carolina’s state government has its first social media policy. Gov. Beverly Perdue announced today the implementation of the policy, which includes a set of best practices, a tutorial that gives an overview of social media sites and tools and a reminder to employees that all communication via social media is subject to the state’s public records law. You can read the entire policy here, and see a tutorial made for government employees here.
Knoco stories: Heirarchies of Knowledge – When you are building your store of explicit knowledge for the organisation, you need to make it clear how much validity your documentation has. Knowledge comes in different levels of trust, and you need to make it clear to the reader what level applies to all documentation.
These are my links for December 17th through December 22nd:
Knoco stories: Data, Information, Knowledge – Nick Milton explains the difference between data, information and knowledge, and by association, data management, information management and knowledge management. Good, clear narrative.
Digital Engagement | Director of Digital Engagement – The Government will encourage local government to release local public data and make it free for reuse, and establish an open-platform local data exchange. Professor Nigel Shadbolt from the University of Southampton has been asked to head up a panel of experts to oversee the release of local public data and ensure that data are linked effectively across local authorities, the Local Government Association, government departments and agencies.
knowledge management for development – Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) is a community of international development practitioners who are interested in knowledge management and knowledge sharing issues and approaches.
Social Media Governance – Online database of social media policies and guidelines from public and private sector organisations. A really useful reference source.
Oneplace – Welcome to the Oneplace website. Here you can see how local public services are performing in England, if they provide value for money and where they could improve.
These are my links for December 6th through December 9th:
Tweepular – Tweepular has a bright colorful interface that helps you to organize your followers and your followings. You can sort the tweeps by date added, number of followers or last updated in either ascending or descending order.
Twitter follow stats, graphs and widgets | Twitter Counter – Twittercounter provides you useful insights on you are doing on twitter in terms of number of followers and tweets. You can measure and track progress of your competitors account as well and redesign your strategy on twitter.
TweetEffect- When did you lose or gain twitter followers? – Still in its beta phase, TweetEffect find out which of your twitter updates made people follow or leave you. It analyzes last 200 updates and color code the tweets that affected your number of followers.
Online Information 2009, Your Connection to the Future of Information – Stephen Dale has been appointed Conference Chairman of Online Information. Stephen takes over the helm from retiring Chairman, Adrian Dale, on the final day of this year’s annual international gathering for the information profession at Olympia Grand Hall, London, UK.
Twittering Causes Blindness: Busting Social Media Myths – OK, I know twittering doesn’t really cause blindness, but I am constantly hearing all sorts of myths about social media these days, and I’m surprised this one hasn’t made the rounds yet. I’m here to dispel some of the most common myths I’ve heard about social media tools and tactics. I would love to hear some of the myths that you’ve heard.
The second meeting of the Knowledge Hub Advisory Group took place yesterday, 7th December. ( For some background to the Knowledge Hub see previous posting).
It was regretable that we didn’t get more attendees from local authorities, but those who did manage to attend were involved in some excellent workshop sessions aimed at teasing out their vision for how the Knowledge Hub would deliver efficiency and performance improvements for the local government sector. This was a valuable exercise because we managed to put some flesh and bones onto what has been up until now an abstract concept for many people. Before reporting on the outcomes from the meeting, a brief summary of the terms of reference for the Advisory Group:
The Advisory Group membership will be made up of technical and social innovators and local authority officers each with practical experience in helping deliver Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 solutions within the public sector or workplace, and with experience in cultivating a culture of knowledge sharing and self-development. The Advisory Group will:
Provide technical advice and strategic insight for the procurement and development of the technical platform.
Identify opportunities and sources for seeding and pump-priming content for the knowledge hub.
Provide expert advice in the development of a new ‘knowledge ecology’ for the sector, where the sector can learn from its own experience and where barriers to participative learning can be identified and resolved.
Advise on new and emerging knowledge sharing techniques such as social reporting, narrative & storytelling, and development of games for simulation of behaviours.
Identify training needs and other support requirements for the sector.
Provide on-going help in resolving problems and provide a quality assurance function for the Programme.
The main element of the meeting was a workshop session where delegates worked on two scenarios and my thanks to Ingrd Koehler for making these both challenging and a reflection of the sort of issues facing local authority staff.
Scenario 1
You work with Hubville City Council. You are new to the Youth Offending Team. In a meeting with the Performance Officer in charge of LAA (Local Area Agreement) monitoring and another officer from the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership you discover that councillors are concerned that your area doesn’t look on track to meet a key monitoring figure for its LAA : NI 111 (national indicator) – First time entrants to the Youth Justice System aged 10-17. It’s a single measure, but part of a wider set of priorities about reducing youth crime and anti-social behaviour among youth in general – and in some ‘blighted’ communities in particular. You are going to conduct a snapshot review of your current programme and try to identify a network of people who can help you. How will Knowledge Hub help you to: Identify your current performance and compare it with others. Understand how you can track and monitor information which might be related to or influence NI 111 (for example – reported crimes, prosecution rates, NI 117 the number of 16-18 year olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs))
Know what ‘best in class’ are doing
Identify people locally who are working on similar issues
Identify people across the country who are at the same stage in your improvement journey.
Find resources to help you deliver improvement against NI 111
Share your story and help others find the resources that worked for you.
Map your journey using the paper and materials provided. How will you come into the hub? What will it look like? What data sources do you expect to find? How will you navigate through it? How will you others be able to see and learn from what you’re doing? What ‘new’ data, aggregated data or mashups do you expect to create with the resources you have found? How will you make these new resources available to others?
Use the sheets provided, markers, stickers, etc to draw your map.
Output from Scenario 1
Scenario 2:
You work for Hubville Primary Care Trust. You’ve never worked for local government, but now you’re looking at working with Hubville City Council on a partnership target of reducing: National Indicator (NI) 39 Rate of hospital admission for 100,000 population for alcohol related harm. As well as a serious problem with binge drinking among young people, there is an older workless population with a high incidence of alcohol related illness. This has only gotten worse since the Hubville Automated Industries closed down last year. As people in the council don’t feel the direct financial impact of this indicator you have to work to influence council partners and other local public service, business and voluntary sector partners. You know something about Local Area Agreements and the local strategic partnership, but you’re unsure how to find out all the information you need. How will Knowledge Hub help you to:
Identify your current performance and compare it with others and identify how the council’s performance is contributing to this indicator.
Understand how you can track and monitor information which might be related to or influence NI 39 (for example NI 20: Assault with injury crime rate NI 21: Dealing with local concerns about anti-social behaviour and crime issues by the local council and police )
Know what ‘best in class’ are doing
Identify people locally who are working on similar issues
Identify people across the country who are at the same stage in your improvement journey
Find resources to help you deliver improvement against NI 39
Share your story and help others find the resources that worked for you.
Use the sheets provided, markers, stickers, etc to draw your map.
Output from Scenario 2:
The key fetaures that surfaced from this mapping process process were:
A central dashboard function, allowing you to choose types of information and subject areas – it would allow you to see what’s new, what’s hot and what’s relevant to you
High levels of personalisation – you can choose your own dashboard – the functions that you want, but at the same time it would help you make links to things you didn’t know existed.
It would allow you to make associations with ‘people like me’ – those who had similar responsibilities in their work – as well as to identify ‘experts’ in different specialised areas. Or be recognised as an expert yourself.
It would make it easy to share your experience and your views – even if you didn’t always know that you were doing so – that is – just the fact that 20 performance officers in a council had downloaded a document would have more weight than if no one had – or that only external consultants had.
It would help central and local government facilitate the development of a community (of interest or practice) around a particular indicator, where the community would define the performance parameters and measurement criteria for the indicator.
We followed this up with a Knowledge Cafe, where we posed the questions:
What social media skills are required to navigate and share information and stories of improvement?
What’s the best way of explaining what the Knowledge Hub has to offer? (i.e. it’s not just another website)
Outputs from these discussions as follows:
And finally, the wrap-up courtesy of David Wilcox, Social Reporter:
So, grateful thanks to all who attended the meeting and for both arcticulating and mapping out for us what the Knowledge Hub is all about. The next stage is conveting all this into a real product – which is well underway as part of the procurement process. The next meeting of the Advisory Group will be in the first quarter of 2010.
These are my links for November 25th through December 5th:
COI – Structuring information on the Web for re-usability – Government is committed to making its public information and data as widely available as possible. The best way to make structured information available online is to publish it as Linked Data. Linked Data makes the information easier to cut and combine in ways that are relevant to citizens. This document describes how to put government consultations information into Linked Data using RDFa.
Why Google Wave Sucks, And Why You Will Use It Anyway – Google Wave is a hot topic at the moment. The ambitious group collaboration and micro-messaging platform started rolling out in beta via an initial batch of 100,000 invitations two months ago. Many people still want invitations. Among those who’ve tried it, some criticize it, some praise it. For now it has a lot of usability problems that are described below. Yes, you should look at Google Wave. But there is no need to desperately long for an invitation yet.
Leadership is not obsolete in the networked world :: Blog :: Headshift – The evolution of social networks and internal social tools within large companies offers a huge opportunity for leaders to break out of the stultifying constraints of internal corporate communications and reach out to people across the company, sharing their vision, encouraging people and listening to what they have to say.
TFPL Training : Web 2.0 tools for facilitating knowledge management – This one day course provides a practical and detailed introduction to Web 2.0 tools and techniques that will support more effective collaboration and knowledge sharing, and will give greater confidence to staff that may be on the periphery of the socio-technology changes that are becoming increasingly prevalent in both their professional and private lives.
The following was published in the Guardian IT Supplement on Thursday 26th November. It was produced as a leader article for the Online Information Conference 2009.
We are witnessing an extraordinary growth in user-generated content, whether it is conversations on social networks such as MySpace, Bebo or Facebook, or photos and videos uploaded to websites such as YouTube and Flickr, or comments and opinions published in the ‘blogosphere’ or ‘twitterverse’. It has never been easier to get ‘digitally connected’, where more often than not the only technology required is a mobile phone.
What some commentators initially referred to as a trend is now being seen more as a revolution, with a potential impact as great as that seen in the 16th century, where the introduction of the printing press made mass production of books possible and created the environment for better educated societies.
The phenomenon has been variously labelled as Web 2.0, or social computing, but the term ‘social web’ is a more accurate description since it invokes the concept of people and relationships that that are supported and enabled by technology. Perhaps the best description for the social web is that it is the democratisation of voice, conversation and opinion. It is no longer necessary to be elite or famous, or have a newspaper, TV or production company behind you in order to be heard. The cost of participation is trivial, where almost anyone can blog, or upload their clip to YouTube, or their photos to Flickr.
But what does all this mean for 21st century organisations? Opinion remains split between two camps; those who see the social web as something to be embraced and incorporated into how their business is developed, and those who consider it as irrelevant or hostile to their business, or a time wasting activity for their staff.
In the ‘pro’ camp are those organisations that are aware that their products and services are being discussed by their users and customers, and have realised that this can be a rich source of intelligence and research. Participating in these conversations provides a potential business advantage if they can respond to, adapt and deliver on user requirements ahead of their competitors. EBay and Amazon are two of the more well know organisations that have embraced this way of working, where the social web is providing thousands of touch points with their customers, replacing the more traditional single-channel CRM model.
An example from the public sector is Patient Opinion, which encourages hospital patients to comment on their experience in their local hospital. These comments are then collated, categorised and aggregated before being automatically directed to the relevant manager in the NHS. Though each comment may focus on some micro aspect of the service – e.g. “The ward orderlies never knocked”, or “The consultant never once washed his hands”; collectively they have the same power as a highly organised lobbying group for influencing policy change and improvement.
The ‘con’ camp is more likely to comprise of those organisations that are conservative in their outlook, and hence more risk averse. However, the new risk is in not being able to adapt to an increasingly volatile environment. The social web is an agitating presence that can create rapid change in user requirements and erosion of brand loyalty.
Organisations that remain oblivious to the social web also remain oblivious to what their customers are saying, with the consequence that their products and services become irrelevant. Successful 21st century organisations will be fully tuned into the social web; they will have a better understanding of their customers’ needs and concerns, which will drive innovation, improvement and efficiency.
What is certain is that everything remains uncertain; that the ability to adapt and change are prerequisites for survival, and that the social web can no longer be ignored – by anyone!
