Socialising with the

end user

STVY fall conference

Tampere 19 October 2009TanjaKoikkalainenSingle Sourcing ManagerNokia

LauraKatajistoInformation Design Global Concept OwnerNokia

© 2008 Nokia V1-Filename.ppt / YYYY-MM-DD / Initials

Company Confidential

About the speakers

• 10 (Tanja) and 7 (Laura) years of experience at Nokia technical communication teams:

o Technical writingo Information designo Development tasks

• Work with social media PhDs started, follow us in http://socialmediaphd.blogspot.com

• Social media: o web services that receive content from users or aggregate

content via feedso that build on social networks, communitieso that change the consumer to a participant/producer

• Web sites can be all about social media (Facebook), or utilise elements of it (discussion forum on a manufacturer's website)

What is social media?

• Raised out of the collective intelligence and user contribution elements of the web 2.0 discussion

• Part of the paradigm shift in media culture: passive spectators turning into interactive participants

o Not a new phenomenon, but web 2.0 made it accessible to the wider public

Background for social media

figure: Koikkalainen

How social media changes technical communication

figure: Koikkalainen

Social media channels in technical communication

• Blogs

• Videoblogs

• Wikis

• Discussion boards

• Podcasts

• Etc

What could you try?

Blogs

Wiki

Discussion boards

• “Reality TV has been replaced by reality social media – it’s all about my friends and my own reality.”

• “The 30-second commercial is being replaced by the 30-second review, tweet, post, status update, and so on.”

• “Another important piece […] is to take a step back and truly assess the potential upside. It’s easy to have your vision blurred by hype and propaganda.”

Thoughts to consider

• The person behind the personao Believed to be male, but the more social the activity is,

the more females like ito Younger and tech-savvy users are more likely to

contribute contento Communities around a common practice (career) have

a higher average user age

• Geographical differences in the adoption of social media and its channels – where are your users located?

Who use social media 1/2

• A small group uses social media; an even smaller group of them contribute content actively

o Over 80% of user-generated content is created by less than 10% of the users (US)

o However, two thirds of users contribute something occasionally (US)

• However: in the US, web now comes second after word-of-mouth in influencing purchase decisions. The potential to influence sales is there!

Who use social media 2/2

• For social media to be potentially successful in technical communication, in the background you need the right mix

• Your company should be in an industry where internet is a relevant support media; helpful if social media is already in use for e.g. marketing; management should support social media use

• Your product should engage consumers to participate in communities and in content contribution (e.g. common passion, practice)

Social media – not for everybody 1/2

• Your customers should have easy internet access; should include top contributors who keep the content creation ongoing (in the US, typically younger, male, lots of students)

• Internet should be a convenient context of support for the consumers; cf. working at a computer vs. working in the field without access to internet-capable devices

Social media – not for everybody 2/2

1. Go see what your users are doing: discussion forums, blogs, customer reviews, Google (e.g. product names, use cases for your product)

2. Check out what your competition is doing

3. Experiment with social media in your personal life

The three easy steps

• These require effort only from the technical communicator, not yet from the company

 • Useful for user and task analysis even if you never

include social media in your portfolio

Why these three?

• Study if your users want social media features • Have your users formed communities on your

company site or elsewhere in the web? Can you join the conversation and contribute content? 

o Comment blogs or discussions, edit wikis, start your own blog

• There is no social media without users participating; to have your own social media platform, enable users to gather around your product, to form a community.

  

How to get started? 1/2

• Cherish existing communities: reward the most active users, recognise contributions

o It is hard to build a community from scratch, if possible, engage in other social media features first

• Understand the power of the social network: it can make or break a product (case Audi?)

  

How to get started? 2/2

• Lietsala, Katri & Sirkkunen, Esa 2008. Social media: Introduction to the tools and processes of participatory economy. Hypermedia Laboratory Net Series 17, University of Tampere. http://tampub.uta.fi/tup/978-951-44-7320-3.pdf

• Rubicon Consulting 2008. Blogs on the study Online communities and their impact on business http://rubiconconsulting.com/insight/winmarkets/michael_mace/2008/10/

• Gentle, Anne 2009. Conversation and community. The social web for documentation. XML Press.

• Preece, Jenny 2000. Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 

• Qualman, Erik 2009. Socialnomics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. • Nielsen, Jakob 2006. Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to

Contribute http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html • Li, Charlene & Bernoff, Josh 2008: Groundswell: Winning in a world

transformed by social technologies. Harvard Business Press. • Li, Charlene 2007. Forrester’s new Social Technographics report

http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2007/04/forresters_new_.html

References