Author of Think Like Chinese on Des Walsh & Friends show

The other week on my Des Walsh & Friends show on BlogTalkRadio, I had the pleasure of speaking with a woman of great accomplishment and business sagacity, a specialist in cross-cultural communication, especially for business between China and the rest of the world.

ZHANG Haihua (Helen), author of Think Like Chinese, was born in mainland China and holds an MBA and a Master of Business in Finance from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia and a BA (English Language and Literature) from Peking University. She lived in Australia for 8 years, working in both management consulting and investment banking before relocating back to Beijing in 2002. She is the Managing Director of consulting group ChinaTime Inc.

One of the things I love about chatting with Hai Hua is that she has the ability to explain with great lucidity a range of theoretical frameworks and highly complex issues, as for instance how Chinese think and in what ways that differs from say, prevailing modes of thinking in the West.

I believe part of her gift is to take those theoretical issues and complex frameworks and communicate her perspective and insights not in dry, academic language but through stories, practical illustrations and sayings.

How I misunderstood a famous saying

On the subject of  sayings, early in the conversation with Hai Hua I mentioned the saying attributed to the former paramount leader of China, Deng Xiaoping and included on Hai Hua’s website, the saying “Crossing the river by feeling for stones”, which I took at the time as indicating how foreigners – laowei (don’t ask me to get the tones right) – looking to do business in China could sensibly proceed. Looking it up later I understood that the context was to do with economic liberalization in post-Mao China. The obverse, if you will, of what I was thinking.  But maybe it could in any case be a useful guiding principle for laowei wanting to be effective and successful in China?

Gems of advice for doing business in China

As always in such conversations, Hai Hua shared her unique perspective and provided some gems of advice for anyone wanting to do business in China.

The time went much too quickly although we did manage to squeeze in some chat about the recent Google “ultimatum” to the Chinese Government and shared some thoughts about the context of that imbroglio and how it might play out.

At the end of the session I discovered from Hai Hua that the statement on the relevant page in Amazon, that Think Like Chinese is out of print, is incorrect. In fact, you can get the book: you just need to contact Hai Hua’s office – just click on the Contact tab on the website.

Webmetricsguru is Marshall Sponder, ed. 

I have never been a fan of  Forrester Research – but  they produce a lot of good research. By the way, have you noticed a lot of the research firms have been acquired  or are merging of late.   So, it wasn’t entirely surprising to me Forrester Research would tell it’s own analysts they can’t have blogs of their own any longer.  As reported in  SageCircle

Forrester CEO George Colony is well aware of that savvy analysts can build their personal brands via their positions as Forrester analysts amplified by social media (see the post on “Altimeter Envy”). As a consequence, a Forrester policy that tries to restrict analysts’ personally-branded research blogs works to reduce the possibility that the analysts will build a valuable personal brand leading to their departure. In addition, forcing analysts to only blog on Forrester-branded blogs concentrates intellectual property onto Forrester properties increasing the value of the Forrester brand.

My understanding is the average analyst gets burnt out with all the travel, writing (writing several research papers each quarter) and consulting ,within 3 years.

Forrester Analysts have a tough life and maybe, one of the reasons why it’s worth putting up with less than optimal pay and frequent travel is to build your own brand – in fact, that’s probably the main reason why people sign up to become a Forrester Analyst in the first place.   Well, no more of that.

All things being equal, if your a Forrester analyst and you can’t build your own brand – what’s the point of being an analyst for them?

I don’t care about Forrester analysts that much – but what if it’s not just about Forrester – what if more and more employers decide they want to own all the intellectual IP while you work for them, including your personal blog?   Is that in our future?

Reading more closely, it turns out Forrester Analysts can continue to blog outside of Forrester if it is on a subject not related to their role at Forrester – in other words, you can blog about music, travel, art, cooking, even politics, but you can’t say anything on a subject Forrester is paying the analyst for.

“…..Make no mistake: Forrester is committed to social media, and the number of our analyst bloggers is increasing, not decreasing. Analysts will still have the ability to blog outside of Forrester on topics not related to their coverage areas.“

What, if in 5 years, most employers decide to feel this way ?

Anyway, decided to try to make sense of this action by exploring Social Media and using Sysomos MAP (here’s the query - Forrester AND Research AND blog AND analyst).

Here’s the popular phrases around the decision of Forrester to ban blogging in most cases

Here’s the Key Conversations that happened in the last 3 days around this subject in blogs:

Forrester is investing in building social tools and associated best-practice training for our analysts so that more of them get involved.

In addition, forcing analysts to only blog on Forrester-branded blogs concentrates intellectual property onto Forrester properties increasing the value of the Forrester brand.

Sagecircle shared rumors that a change to Forrester blogging policies would prevent analysts from having personal blogs and would aggregate analysts’ posts into Forrester-branded role-based blogs..

The research we write for clients has always depended on a rich two-way conversation with experts and practitioners in the marketplace.

Blogging is an extension of the other work we do — doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example..

Blogging is an extension of the other work we do — doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example.

There is only one augie, and the thoughts i share on my blog are now based Upon the research i do, the people i meet, and the information i am given access to thanks to my role at Forrester.

So it was interesting to read of Forrester research’s directive to analysts using their own personally branded research blogs: take them down or re-direct them to the Forrester site.

If Forrester is worried Analysts will build their own brands and then leave – instead of punishing Analysts, I suggest they make it more enticing for them to remain.  Here’s some ideas – bet I’m not the first to think of them, either.

1. For any paper that an Analyst writes for Forrester, let the analyst get 10% of the sales money added to their salary every time they’re paid.
2. Provide free education to expensive college and graduate courses if you remain an employee.
3. Cut down on billable travel by 25% and replace it with virtual meetings at a similar billing rate.
4. Allow Analysts to use 10% of their own time for a project of their choosing (and let them get 20% of any sales coming from that work).

That is some of the ideas I had today -let’s think of rewarding employees, not punishing them, for taking initiative.

That’s the map of the US based on Pete Warden’s analysis of Facebook profiles. So I live in Socialistan – of well, I grew up in a Communist country, if this is Socialism, I can handle it

But what about the Rest of the World? I thought it was a good time to dust off the good old World Map – admittedly not based on scientcific research

P.S. to potential flame-throwers: pls. look up the meaning of irony. Or sarcasm.

The social media purists will tell you that a corporate blog serves as a community hub for your brand. They say it gives your customers a connection point to your company and engenders a sense of community. In some cases that’s true, but you’re going to see me exploring corporate blogging a lot more this year to follow up on a theory that your “community” or “audience” for your blog isn’t what you think it is. That, and the ultimate judge of a corporate blogging effort must be more closely tied to success metrics than making everyone feel good.

As you know, I’ve partnered with Compendium Blogware, Debbie Weil and Jay Baer for a research project and some other extensions of that project this year. Part of that partnership gives me access to case studies of Compendium clients in addition to the external research we’re doing. One such case study caught my attention recently.

Aprilaire’s corporate blog has seen a 1,000 percent traffic growth in the last year. Yes, that’s 1,000 PERCENT, not people. Pretty strong. (For reference, Compete.com says their corporate site in total had 50,000 unique visitors last month, so we’re not talking 4 visitors to 4,000 either.) The social media purists will probably jump on that statistic and say, “See! Building community and engaging in conversation is what social media success is all about.”

Don’t jump to conclusions there, hippie.

Aprilaire’s approach corporate blogging with capturing leads through search engine optimization and winning keywords as their primary goal. Using Compendium’s system, which turns a blog into a keyword and search-driven model rather than a single-author, ego platform, the company began climbing the organic search rankings. Of their 1,000 percent traffic increase, 80 percent of it came from organic search results. Mission accomplished.

What Aprilaire did is approached corporate blogging with business metrics in mind. Community and conversation are part of the effort, sure. But even if they all but don’t exist — at this writing there was but a single comment on their last 10 blog posts combined — your corporate blog can (and should) drive your business. The Aprilaire blog features good content focused on targeted keywords and drives traffic. This traffic isn’t their “community” but rather web searchers trying to find content on they keywords Aprilaire is writing about. When they arrive on a blog post, there are clear calls to action on the page and links to action items (more information requests, landing pages, etc.). The blog converts more readers into customers.

Don’t get me wrong! Engaging in conversation, building community around your brand and bringing humanity (and human-ness) back to the marketing table are all vitally important to a company’s social media success. But know this can be done in one or many channels and others, even a corporate blog, can focus on driving business.

Go look at your blog’s traffic. How many of your visitors are finding your content for the first time (through search or referral links)? How many are your, “community?” What does this tell you about your blogging approach? The comments are yours.

We segment our influencers in absolute categories and in categories that are specific to a particular client project. Ever try engaging Food bloggers over a frozen food? You quickly realize that there are many segments of food bloggers. Some will put convenience on the front burner and be receptive. Others would just as soon burn you at the stake for ignoring their "pure" interests in food and presuming that they would ever engage with an FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) product like frozen peas or prepared meals.

I have spoken about our approach toSocial Influencer Relationship Management (Social IRM) which is really the grown-up management of our influencer relationships for their benefit and the brands we work with.

Everyone goes in the database. We track the following types of data:

1. who they are - we love to get to know the influencers we connect with often
2. how influential they are following our 6 measures (it ain't always about "reach")
3. what are their interest by categories and subcategories
4. what have we learned from talking with them about their interests (some really want to hear from brands on certain things and not on others)

There is nothing diabolical about keeping track of this information. Influencers who want to engage with relevant brands appreciate the disgression this breeds. Everyone hates indiscriminate "pitches."

Here's an example of a visualization of a segmentation we have done for a food related project (note to anyone featured here - don't worry, we are not targeting you. This list merely notes your authority and influence):

Segmenting Green

Jacquelyn Ottman had a great post on segmenting green consumers on HBR Blogs. This is the  type of useful segmentation that helps both us, the marketers, and the consumers or influencers (note: our online influencers range from professional witers to proam experts who are essentially regular consumers who have earned some authority in a certain area of interest)

Here's how she sums it up

"Ask: To which environmental organizations do members of our target audience belong (The Appalachian Mountain Club or Greenpeace)? Which types of vacations do they take (hiking or the beach)? Which environmental magazines and websites do they read or visit? (Sierra or Animal Fair?) Which types of products do they buy? (green fashions or energy-sipping light bulbs)? Which eco-labels do they seek out ("USDA Organic" or "Energy Star")?

In observing green consumers over the past twenty years my colleagues and I have found that asking questions like these allows companies to distinguish between four subsegments, which we've dubbed "Resource Conservers", "Health Fanatics", "Animal Lovers" and "Outdoor Enthusiasts." Of course, there are some overlaps among these groups, but discovering which subsegment your customers mainly fall into can sharpen your marketing. The following descriptions are generalizations, but they capture the spirit of each type of consumer."

She continues in describing each segment and importantly some ways marketers can be relevant to them. Here's an example fo her description for Outdoor enthusiasts:

"Outdoor Enthusiasts spend their free time camping, rock climbing, skiing, and hiking. They vacation in national parks and plan their next adventure using tips from Outdoors Magazine. Whether they're purchasing Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap to reduce the impact of washing dishes while camping, or toting reusable bottles like Kleen Kanteen to avoid littering the trail, they seek to minimize the impact of their recreational activities. When shopping, they look for FSC (sustainably harvested) labels on their products, are also likely to purchase outdoor gear made from recycled materials, such as Synchilla PCR (post-consumer recycled polyester) from Patagonia.

Some ways to appeal to outdoor enthusiasts:

1. Conduct a joint promotion with national parks or manufacturers of boots, reusable bottles, and trail mix snacks.
2. Advertise in Sierra Club magazine or online at Backpackers.com."

How do you segment and organize your online influencers?

Let me state my take on ROI calculations as clearly as I can. ROI calculations for information technology are junk calculations, a fraud, a nonsense, and a complete waste of time. Clear enough for you? Oh and by the way, ROI calculations from software vendors are even worse...

ROI assessments are based on the simplistic formula of benefits minus costs to calculate the return on your investment. But simple is not always smart, and most if not all the of the benefits in such calculations are by nature predictive. In other words they are guesses, and in my experience, almost always overly optimistic -- and fatuous guesses at that.

There is a cost to any new system, and there is also always a return (sometimes a good one, sometimes bad, often a bit of both) from the system. Far better and more honest I believe to just build a valid business case that details these costs and potential returns, and utilize more concrete and verifiable calculations such as TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) or CDB (Cost of Doing Business). That way you have a business case that details the investment and what you hope and expect to achieve as a result, and at least have a business case based on facts. One that when it strays into the predictive (as it must at times) is clear about its limitations and values.

The industry analyst guru's guru, Paul Strassman, has written extensively on this topic. For those who want to know more about the pointlessness of ROI calculations, I highly recommend you read Paul's bestselling book, "The Squandered Computer", a work that IMHO should be on the required reading list for any IT or Business related degree course.

But to return to the Forrester research findings, I would respectfully argue that they asked the wrong question.  For rather than asking buyers of content technologies whether they can build a valid ROI for new investments, they could have been asked whether they believed new investments in content technology would deliver worthwhile benefits. The results from that would have been very interesting indeed, and I suspect quite different from the question that was asked.

Just like writing an RFP, developing a solid business case can be detailed and tricky work - and it is work that we help our advisory clients with on a daily basis. But in essence it is the core purpose of our work: we help buyers make the right and best technology investments possible. Yet over the years I have seen so many nonsensical ROI calculations, so many works of fiction claiming to be business cases, and so many buyers misled by farcical ROI calculations, that the very sight of those three letters is enough to make my blood boil...

I'm not a corporate spokesperson for Forrester. But as a prominent social media analyst here, I wanted to comment on the recent discussion regarding our policy on analysts and blogs.

Forrester is and has always been a leader with analyst blogging. Charlene Li started this blog you’re reading in 2004. We love blogging. And many of our colleagues that came from Jupiter, the company we acquired in 2008 are also avid bloggers.

The Forrester management team needed to make a decision about analysts and blogging -- on our site or off. I didn't make that decision, but I did advise the management, and I agree with the decision we made. What people need to understand is that Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product. Blogging is an extension of the other work we do -- doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example. As Sting said, "Poets, priests and politicians/Have words to thank for their positions." Analysts, too.

Think about other companies that employ writers and creators of opinion and analysis, like newspapers and magazines. Where do you find David Pogue's posts about gadgets? On the New York Times site, since that's who employs him to do those reviews. You won't find Katie Couric's posts outside of CBS , either. Why not? Because of the confusion that would arise. You know when David and Katie talk, their opinions are part of the content they create for their employers, who are in the content business.

Companies in the information and analysis business are not the same as other companies from this perspective. There are many good blogs by executives and other workers in all sorts of companies, and we certainly believe such companies should allow their employees to blog, subject to the usual rules about not disclosing confidential information, etc.

But for Forrester, it serves our clients better to be able to get to all our blogs from one place, and to know the opinions of analysts that they see are part of the other opinions they read in our reports, in press quotes, and in everywhere else we talk.

Forrester does not yet have individual analyst blogs on our site, but that's coming quite soon. This is why it's so ironic to read comments that "We don't let analysts have individual blogs" or "Forrester should read Groundswell." I cowrote Groundswell, and I believe our policy is the right one. Groundswell says that your employees will be blogging -- it doesn't say that content companies should have their content creators blog anywhere they want. If you're creating content for a content company, that company ought to host your blog.

We’re not stopping analysts from blogging about stuff unrelated to our analytical work. And they can Twitter all they want. And they can blog all they want, about anything relevant to their jobs, right here on blogs.forrester.com. I count 23 blogs there. Some of them are pretty good.

Our analysts will still be blogging here at forrester.com. We're improving the platform to make it easier for analysts to have their own space, and we expect more analysts to be blogging here more often than ever before. You're welcome to take issue with our opinions. But rest assured, you will be able to read those opinions, and we can be just as analytical, provocative, and interesting here at forrester.com as anywhere else on the Web.

In a not so surprising announcement today SAP CEO Leo Apotheker has stepped down effectively immediately. For a few months now senior software analysts have somewhat quietly predicted just such a move, especially on the heels of a very poor performing year. The timing seems predictable too, as SAP just reported Q4 earnings. Announcing this now also gives the new management team time to get a coherent message together prior to Sapphire, SAP's user conference which will be held May 16-19 in Orlando, FL.

The new leadership team, headed by Co-CEO's Jim Hagemann Snabe, former head of product development, and Bill McDermott, former head of the field organization, both already executive board members. In addition Vishal Sikka, Chief Technology Officer joins the executive board and Hasso Plattner, Co-Founder of SAP and Chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board, will continue to play a role in advising the new leaders on technology and product development. There had been quite a bit of guessing / predicting as to what SAP might do to replace Leo; a company that has been criticized for some major points of its strategy over the last few years. One camp believed that SAP needed an infusion of "new" blood and would bring in someone from the outside while another held fast to the idea that what SAP needs is leaders with established organizational clout so that they could quickly get the SAP ship back on course. The choice is a reasonable one and brings together a strong engineering leader needed to get the R&D teams (SAP has always been seen as an engineering led company) quickly re-focused on moving forward (something Leo had been criticized for disrupting recently) and a customer / sales focused leader to keep the company focused on results. The changes come at a critical time for SAP as they finally bring out a new release of BusinessbyDesign that has been promised as ready for general consumption and as they release a series of enterprise cloud apps (here's my recent post on its cloud strategy). Both moves are promised this year and are seen as critical to get SAP back on track with its cloud initiative.

SAP and its new Co-CEO's face some difficult times as they try to get the company back on track and moving in some important new directions. By Sapphire they will need to make some definitive moves to show that company strategy is aligned, clear and making progress toward stated goals.

Everyone knows there are certain pieces of information that you just don't share online, right? What if you used Twitter or Foursquare to broadcast your location at a bar, and an axe murderer was reading your stream? You just signed your own death sentence. Or how about sharing details about where you live and or pictures of your family vacation, or even your innermost thoughts and emotions? All are things that are getting easier and easier to share online, both purposefully AND inadvertently. Combine this with a new generation used to a different standard of privacy and you have a recipe for a major cultural shift that may redefine what marketers can do to reach consumers.

1. The rewards are clear. As with any new behaviour, the incentive to adopt it must be clear. In the case of sharing seemingly private details online, the reward for most people who adopt this behaviour is twofold. Firstly they add their voice and experiences to the ambient awareness of their social network, but secondly and more importantly it allows for unexpected interactions, such as the chance meeting with a friend who also happens to be in the same coffee shop, or the comment from an old friend on a photo that you haven't heard from in a while.
2. Someone actually cares. Whereas before people may have been able technically to share their real time thoughts and whereabouts, there would not have been a critical mass of their social network who could see it. Today, the majority of your friends and family can connect with you online and this means that broadcasting your whereabouts actually matters because someone you care about will actually see it.
3. Updates are easy. Part of the reason people are sharing more frequently is that updating their social networks has become much easier. Now with an app, a touch of a button and a few words you can send an update. That makes it more likely people will do it more frequently. As frequency increases, sharing becomes an inherent part of your routine. So now you have people who will, as a matter of course, check into any restaurant they walk into on Foursquare without even thinking about it.
   
4. The risks seem lower. Everywhere you turn there is a new service promising to protect you if you ever get into trouble with identity theft. Credit cards will refund you any disputed amount, covering you in case someone tries to use your accounts illegally. Though it may not be true, the risks of sharing more information about yourself online certainly SEEM lower than ever before. You may debate whether this is true, but the perception is certainly influencing behaviour.

This one is from ExactTarget, which worked with Econsultancy to survey 1000 marketers (both in house and agency) worldwide.

It mirrors other reports over the past few months, for example this one by the IAB, by showing that 28% of marketers will shift their budgets from traditional towards digital in 2010, with 66% increasing their digital marketing spend overall. At the moment, digital accounts for 24% of the total, though last year’s IAB survey said that in the UK at least, online spend had overtaken TV for the first time.

Though 70% of marketers planned to increase social media spend, though they also cited the usual bugbear of evaluation as something that prevented them doing even more.    However, on the other hand, marketers are increasingly waking up to the importance of social media in protecting brand value:

According to Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget, “interestingly, brand reputation is becoming a more significant driver of the migration to digital marketing, particularly when it comes to social media.”   On that note, it’s worth reading Joseph Jaffe’s post on how social media could be used to help Toyota “flip the funnel” following its - now pretty much global - car recall.

Image - thornetpics

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With the continued growth of both the pubic social web and private collaboration, communication and social business tools we are creating an explosion of social data. As businesses get more deeply involved in the social business movement and as software vendors create more and different social tools there is a compelling case for tools to help businesses make sense out of all this social data. I wrote about the idea of social analytics last year. This year in our IDC Top 10 Predictions we included a prediction about social analytics: "Business applications will undergo a fundamental transformation — fusing business applications with social/collaboration software and analytics into a new generation of "socialytic" apps, challenging current market leaders." Here's a simple model that shows the concept of socilaytic platforms / apps and how they might be applied:

Some characteristics of socialytic apps might include:

• Aggregate social data from public and private social data sources (user / company selectable)
• Real-time search and monitoring
• Social metrics dashboard
• Natural language processing (NLP) with linguistic analysis capabilities
• Visualization and simulation
• Social trending
• Human search
• User configurability

I'm sure there are lot's of other characteristics and use cases for socialytic platforms and apps that will emerge as more businesses start deploying social tools over the next few years. Once the analysis capabilities are in place, businesses will undoubtedly start to look at automating decisions and building / deploying automated decision architecture-based solutions to help social analysts focus on higher value interactions. A few vendors are offering socialytic apps but the market is far from crowded at this point. An upswing in demand as companies get deeper into their social business projects should drive market growth and the development of new and varied offerings to address emerging needs.

Read the article here (behind paywall), but key points are:

A Facebook group with 84,298 members formed to oppose the pro-establishment DAB was deleted
Kelvin Sit Tak-O, who runs a discussion group that opposes the pro-establishment party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), said his group’s Facebook page was shut down without notice on Thursday. The group had 84,298 members and was aiming for 100,000.

How were they deleted?
The closures could have been triggered by opponents flagging the group as “abusive” with Facebook administrators, Mr. Sit speculated. A spokesperson for Facebook was not immediately available for comment.

This is not the first time it has happened to Hong Kong opposition groups
Controversial Facebook groups were closed in 2008 in the run-up to the Olympic torch relay passing through Hong Kong, as Beijing grew especially sensitive to issues such as Tibetan self-determination. Christina Chan Hau-man, a student protester who waved a Tibetan flag during the torch relay and used Facebook to rally support, had her account closed days before the event. At the time, she said she was told her page had been closed because of “persistent misuse of the site”.

Ironically, this comes as Hong Kong government is pushing to engage citizens online, with a 3-hour online forum taking place today.

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