[Podcast] Being Present on Social Media: It’s Harder than You Think
It’s finally here, and we couldn’t be more excited. The Customer Engagement team is proud to present the first episode of Titans of Customer Engagement: A Customer Experience Podcast, Being Present on Social Media: It's Harder than You Think featuring Kerrie Robert ExperianKerr, Social Media Manager of Customer Service at Experian. The Titans podcast features Khoros customers sharing best practices, insight on the evolution of customer and business demands, and what is or is not working when it comes to successful digital customer engagement strategies. Please share with your peers, leave us a rating or review, and continue the conversation in the comments section! Listen to strategic conversations with your peers and leaders about creating the world’s greatest customer experiences. Now available where you listen to your favorite podcasts Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Google Podcasts Stitcher TuneIn Also, don't miss out on CX Confessions: The Customer Experience Show, a thought leadership podcast on CX featuring C-suite executives Interested in becoming a Titan of Customer Engagement? Learn about what it takes to ascend to Titan status7.7KViewsSign in to react to this post1CommentExploring AI Use Cases in Khoros Communities
Welcome to the Khoros view on our future with AI! It really is an exciting time for online communities in many ways, but we are just at the beginning of exploring how this technology will impact how we work in communities. At Khoros, we have been hard at work on Aurora, our next generation of online communities. While we have focused on our new technological foundation, natural language processing, and large language models have come to dominate the conversation in tech. Naturally, this has led to plenty of exciting discussions about the future of online communities. With Aurora, we are focused heavily on developing robust API’s, decoupling the UI from the backend of our platform, and building modern app experiences that will enable us to quickly tap into future trends in technology, whether it’s the metaverse or generative AI. What is Khoros working on now to further innovation in this space? There is much to explore with generative AI as it is still very new, but we will experiment and are planning on incorporating new technologies into our products. “One of the biggest initiatives we are working on is an orchestration layer for customer engagement that sits between these services and direct engagement with users offering the ability to control the use and workflows of that engagement. Whether it's easily swapping or testing new services, or putting the technology in front of humans to experiment and refine, we believe this will be a critical component of enabling and controlling the many use cases that these services make available.” - Nick Hill, VP, Product - Communities at Khoros There are some focus areas for us in product development with the application of generative and conversational AI. The most notable is the relationship between community-generated content and self-service / discovery. Five out of the top 10 sites on the internet today are communities of peer content. Communities rely heavily on SEO to index this content and on searches to drive traffic to the community. Generative AI offers a new approach - but it's still heavily reliant on the continuous sharing of user generated content. With the incredible scale of 18M new posts per year and hundreds of millions of solution views across all Khoros communities, the fundamental need for experts to share, and the need for others to find is unchanged. However, the approach of crawling and links will shift to summarization and intelligence responses. Some exciting new capabilities will be to build on your query, or to generate questions where knowledge is insufficient. Another opportunity we have is exploring the improvements for content moderation. Generative AI tools can help us better caption and classify images and text, which reduces the need for manual moderation and helps improve moderator mental health. This addresses spam and inappropriate content in new ways and adds much more to the moderator's set of tools. However, we’ve also seen ChatGPT, among other Generative AI tools, used to increase human-like content spam in communities for nefarious purposes. Consequently, focus on these tools and implementation of guardrails around these tools is paramount to the success of community moderation going forward. Content is key in every community, and the focus should absolutely remain on human-created content. When it comes to the content generation space, brand communities are often specialized knowledge sources and their existing content can help fuel creation of new content such as guides on how to use a product, marketing materials about use cases, value stories, etc. The usage of these tools depends on the expertise and validation of humans. These tools can be leveraged for suggestions on how to improve the content, tag your content for search optimization, and help guide you to follow the community guidelines. Generative AI is better suited to aiding humans in the creation of valuable content versus being used solely to generate the content—especially given how prone to errors it can be at this point. Personalization on the user front is another very important use case to consider as we work toward leveraging AI tools to surface content relevant to the users’ interests. Beyond the end-user impact, we’re also exploring the potential impacts in the community management front. Managing relationships with your community is key to your success. We see possibilities to apply AI to the user onboarding process as well as tracking and bolstering engagement with your most active, loyal users. Imagine being able to derive analytics, insights, and trends all relevant to your query. This knowledge would give you more power in determining your community strategy and help direct you toward your next steps. Understanding your users’ sentiments and challenges, along with surfacing the most impactful tasks you can focus on, will be key to supporting community management in the future. Additionally, we are exploring support use cases with agents. Agent efficiency is a key metric for any enterprise. Therefore, we are seeking to combine knowledge in the community with previous agent responses to better assist agents in resolving cases quickly and accurately. We are investigating suggested responses, incorporating community knowledge to better assist agents, and exploring the ability to summarize a case and transform it into reusable knowledge that could be posted back to the community for self-service. For example, in a marketing use case, we are investigating how to generate content of different lengths and keywords to publish across channels, including recommendations on how to tag and when to publish. We’ve been working on automation, text classification and NLP for a long time and they are key parts of many of our solutions. With that existing framework, there is plenty of opportunity at Khoros to continue to integrate AI technologies in our products, and we are very excited to work to include these tools in Communities. The importance of having a platform, generating content, and strong community experiences focused on engagement with extensible platforms like analytics, metrics API, and firehose all provide us with the right foundation to ensure brand communities and user-generated content continue to play a leading role in the future customer experience. What are you most looking forward to seeing happen in the community platform? What are some challenges you are facing today? Let us know your thoughts in the comments! Join the discussion on these great topics in the Atlas community! Looking into ChatGPT, what types of use cases/ideas are you coming up with? - StanGromer We built a bunch of stuff - Unified search & Zendesk, ChatGPT, and Coda.IO integrations - StanGromer Impacts on Community from AI Chat GPT - akloepfer Check out our podcast episode covering The Future of Conversational AI, with Khoros’ Gijs Van De Nieuwegiessen.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsPOV: Is there room for brands on Clubhouse?
Clubhouse App POV Is there room for brands on the hottest social media app? It’s a fact: everyone is talking about Clubhouse and chances are you’ve probably been invited by someone you know. In January and February of this year alone, there were 5.9 million mentions of Clubhouse on Twitter (667% growth in comparison to the previous 2 months) as people have been flocking to the app in the name of FOMO (Source: Khoros Intelligence). But what exactly is Clubhouse and how does it work? More importantly, should brands activate on the platform? With the app’s rapid rise to popularity during late 2020, brands are quietly scrambling to learn more about it and trying to figure out how to navigate the emerging platform from a marketing/PR perspective. We hope this POV helps brands better understand the app and gives social media teams the information needed to determine if Clubhouse is right for them. Clubhouse at a Glance Audio-Only: This is the biggest element that differentiates Clubhouse from other social media platforms. As an audio-only based application, you can't share pictures, videos, or even text. All you can do is talk. The app has heavily capitalized on leveraging the use of sound and minimizing visual elements. As our CMO Katherine Calvert stated in an interview with CMSWire, “Clubhouse is the anti-Zoom,” which is quite refreshing for the many who are experiencing screen fatigue this year. Invite-Only: Currently, you need to be invited by someone to create a Clubhouse account. This approach has been a large factor in propelling the app’s popularity forward. It is perceived as exclusive and people around the world have fear of missing out (understandably so). iPhone-Only: The Clubhouse app is currently only available via the Apple App Store (sorry, Android users). However, in a January 2021 press release, the company announced their intent to begin working on an Android app “soon.” They better hurry: the latest data shows that Android devices make up more than 70% of the mobile market share worldwide, compared to less than 30% for iPhones. In the United States, however, iPhones account for 60% of the mobile market share, with Android lagging at 39%. So, How does Clubhouse Work? The Largest Virtual Conference in the World: Clubhouse can be described as a huge virtual conference about every single topic you can imagine. When you enter a room, the audio switches on and you can hear people speaking — it’s like walking into a conference room where a panel or Q&A is happening. The room’s creator can decide who gets to speak. Users can create and join "rooms" where you can chat with others about topics like dog grooming, starting a small business, and even getting a divorce. There is a large focus on high-value conversations: Say goodbye to produced/precomposed content. Clubhouse is fueled by real-time, highly engaging conversations where everyone who speaks brings value to the conversation. This culture has generated a loyal user base who adheres to and fosters an environment of quality conversations. A Hallway with Endless Rooms: The Hallway is what Clubhouse calls its main feed. This is where you’ll find active rooms and panels. Think of it as walking down a hallway at Comic-Con, SXSW, or any other conference. Brands Using Clubhouse In a Clubhouse Townhall on 2/28, the company shared that they don’t want brands making accounts; instead, they’d prefer brands make clubs* in order to maintain the identity-based culture of the platform. That said, here are a few brands who have given the platform a shot and our learnings from each: Netflix: In partnership with the Clubhouse club known as “Binge TV,” Netflix co-hosted a room following their Twitter watch party for the movie, Malcolm and Marie. When promoting the movie on Twitter, @StrongBlackLead shared details about the multi-app experience and the schedule for accessing, “6p PT: PRESS PLAY, 7:45p PT: CLUBHOUSE CONVERSATION w/ Zendaya & Sam Levinson.” Takeaway: This feels right. Who wouldn’t want to watch a movie and then walk in a room to talk about it with the lead actress? Kool-Aid: The Kool-Aid Man (yes, the mascot) made an appearance on a Clubhouse panel alongside Gary Vaynerchuk and LA Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner. While he didn’t contribute much to the conversation outside of an occasional “OH YEAH,” people noticed. While this move makes sense for the Kool-Aid Man’s fun, interruptive persona, people are cautious about brands entering the space and what this means for the future of the conversations held across the app. Takeaway: This feels a little off. While the Kool-Aid character remained on brand with the classic “OH YEAH” interruptions, it didn’t necessarily contribute to the app’s focus of having high value conversations. It’s important to not come across as trying to insert yourself into a new space if it doesn’t add value to the conversation or make sense for your brand. Slice: On Valentine’s Day, Slice found an opportunity in a “shoot your shot” room, in which users were aiming to win a date on the audio platform. By partnering with the hosts of “nyu girls roasting tech guys,” they sent a free pizza to everyone who didn’t win a date. Throughout the conversation, Slice made sure to take a backseat, only chiming in to ask the pizza recipients to DM them their details on Twitter or Instagram. Slice’s approach of not dominating the conversation with self-promotion should serve as a learning for all brands looking to get their feet wet in the Clubhouse space. Note: Most of the “sponsorships” on the app right now seem to be handshake agreements between brands and Clubhouse clubs or hosts (Source: AdWeek). Takeaway: This feels a little clunky. Slice’s approach of cautiously participating in the conversation while not dominating it was a great example of how “sponsorships” work on the platform. However, asking users to switch to another platform to message you their details feels a bit incongruous and can come across as if your initial strategy wasn’t really meant for this space. *Shared during 2/28 Clubhouse Townhall: Please email [email protected] to get a club set up for your brand. Considerations for Brands Looking to Use Clubhouse Stay Alert: Clubhouse has definitely made a name for itself, and we don’t expect it to disappear overnight. Continual social listening and trendspotting will be key in identifying the right time (if ever) for your brand to build a presence on Clubhouse. Especially as the app scales and opens to a broader audience throughout the year, stay informed of how other brands are entering the space. You may want to consider an Intelligence query that allows you to keep a pulse on how people are talking about brand presence on the platform (I.e. ((Clubhouse OR joinclubhouse) AND (brand OR brands OR travel))). Lead with Your People, Not Your Brand: Steer clear of entering the space and “forcing it” through giveaways or other “salesy,” brand-centric moves. Instead, stay true to the platform’s mission around transparent human connection and identify opportunities where your people (executives, employees, influencers, advocates) can speak on your behalf. This B2B, C2C style approach is far more likely to succeed in the space, at least for the foreseeable future. For example, we could see Peloton executives leading an engaging conversation on “Fitness in a Global Pandemic” and discussing topics such as their growth in sales due to COVID-19 and how they’ve seen their community rally together around fitness during the pandemic. They could even co-host their room with influential instructors and invite an open conversation with their customers about where Peloton is headed next. Moderators will be Your New influencers: Clubhouse is currently ad-free, meaning the only way for brands to reach audiences within the app is by identifying moderators (Clubhouse’s version of ‘influencers’). Moderators lead conversations in Clubhouse, and if you find a conversation happening around a topic relevant to your brand, then there you have it -- a virtual platform to speak to an audience that’s vested in the topic at hand and who’s actively, willingly chosen to be there. Exclusive in Nature: Although the exclusive nature of the app may not last forever, take some time to consider what that approach means for your brand. Joining the platform while it’s still invite-only and iPhone-only may cause certain audiences to feel alienated from the brand, especially considering more than 70% of people own an Android device worldwide and are unable to join at this time. Moderation is a No-Go: With no written messaging capabilities, staying vigilant of user conversations related to your brand (inquiries, complaints, hate speech, etc.) is nearly impossible on Clubhouse. If your brand is in a regulated field, like pharmaceuticals, Clubhouse is not recommended as it’s nearly impossible to be federally compliant with reporting adverse events. Watch the Industry: As Clubhouse’s popularity skyrockets, similar products are bound to emerge. For example, Twitter has already launched a similar product called Spaces, which is currently being tested but expected for a wide release soon. Most notably, Twitter has already opened Spaces to all Android users in a likely attempt to capture users who have been excluded from Clubhouse.ViewsSign in to react to this postComments
Community Managers & Mental Health: Nurturing Connection
As community managers (CMs) on the Khoros Strategic Services team, our job is to help brands create meaningful connections and trusted communities for their customers. From engaging with customers who are sharing love for our brand, to providing safe environments for people to connect, we are engrossed in fostering connections and building communities for brands every day. While there are many rewarding aspects to building flourishing communities for brands, it can, at times, leave us feeling stressed and isolated in our new work-from-home worlds. Suffice to say, when we invest so much in creating connections for others, it can be difficult to invest in our own relationships with our personal communities. According to Mental Health America, 9 in 10 employees report that their workplace stress affects their mental health. Other studies have shown that an active social network can play a significant role in reducing feelings of isolation and provide a sense of belonging, in addition to increases in self-esteem and happiness from rewarding interactions. While Mental Health Awareness Month has come to a close, we feel it’s important to keep discussing how we can better care for mental health as CMs. In this blog, we wanted to share one way that we, at Khoros, are promoting self-care and helping each other invest in personal relationships and community building: simple acts of service. Below we’ve provided a few avenues to help bring your communities back to life through simple acts of service. We Are Stronger Together. Re-invest in community. Right now, it’s important to re-invest in the very communities that once grounded us. Businesses and corporate entities are offering more opportunities than ever for their employees to safely service areas of need in their local community or even for friends and family. No act is too small. Some especially at-risk individuals or co-workers with young children may need help gathering groceries. However big or small these actions are, they’re rooted in selflessness and care for one’s community. Opportunities such as these are ever-present and can represent chances to stimulate social networks by teaming up with co-workers, while servicing a common interest, and fostering a stronger community. Connect and Encourage Through Notes. Words have power. It is easy to forget the true weight words carry. A few well-placed words of appreciation can easily bring someone to tears of joy and provide motivation for the coming days. While IMs and emails have become the norm for sending praise at work, in an all-consuming digital world, these may no longer be outlets, sufficient enough to fulfill the needs of each member of a community. Time to go old-school? For some, sending personal cards or even delivering handwritten notes serve as a form of greater emotional release that ultimately aids in cultivating appreciation and boosting one's own self-esteem. Sometimes a handwritten note can even bridge the gap between two physically distant individuals, by bringing about the feeling of being in one another's actual presence. Meet, Greet, and Repeat. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3. Sometimes the simple acts that go into “fostering meaningful connections” and staying active within one’s social networks can be drastically overanalyzed. If someone has invested time in developing a genuine relationship with a co-worker or friends, taking another step forward can be as simple as setting recurring meet-ups over a cup of coffee or alternating weekly treat deliveries. Setting events like these not only helps with keeping social networks active, but they deepen relationships by adding a level of dependence and expectation. While building comradery is never easy and takes time, time well-invested will inevitably result in beneficial returns. For an entire year, we, our communities, and much of the world were forced to take a step back. This time of reflection and learning shed a light on the frailty of one’s mental health, as well as the litany of dangers many CMs face. As it is said, with awareness comes knowledge, and with knowledge comes power. Well, now it’s time to use that power and begin to take steps forward in defense of CMs everywhere. After all, a solution can be found right in the title of our job description, “Community” Managers. In spending our days protecting and educating our brand’s community, we can begin to neglect our very own. It’s time to prioritize managing personal communities like CMs do for employer’s every day, and work toward maintaining happy and healthier minds through fostering connectionsViewsSign in to react to this postComments3 social and digital trends to watch in 2021
Looking for insights to bring to your next team meeting? In case you missed it, we recently released Volume 2 of the Khoros Smart Social Report. Our Strategic Services team dug into Khoros Intelligence, native platform insights, and third-party data to identify three major trends impacting brands in 2021, along with the subtle trends that ladder into them. New tech has driven subtle shifts in the way consumers engage with brands and each other Overhauling content strategy as traditional brand social guidelines evolve Navigating sensitive moments means listening to your audience is essential Across the board, these trends showcase the impact on the consumer mindset, customer behavior, and brand responses in social communities right now. My favorite finding? Sound is BACK. If you’ve been in social long enough to remember the shift to soundless, text-heavy videos – this may be music to your ears [literally]. The mix of TikTok’s popularity, and at home listening habits during the pandemic, has shown that sound is getting smarter and is playing a larger role than ever before in how we consume content. Take a look at the report and let us know your thoughts in the comments below!ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsMeet GenZ’s newest craze: BeReal
A new social platform has entered the scene and has become popular with Gen Z audiences in the past year: BeReal. Hear from our Strategic Services team about what the app is offering its users, why Gen Z is drawn to it, and what brands can learn from its popularity. BeReal empowers users to show their most authentic selves BeReal was created in 2020 in response to the so-called, fake social media landscape and is hailed for its “anti-Instagram” ethos. The app implements a time limit on posts such that users have 2 minutes to share a genuine version of what they are up to. BeReal strives to create a unique way to share experiences with friends as they are in their daily life, with no ads. BeReal embraces authenticity through a multitude of factors including not having filters, pushing users to post the mundane times in life, not having likes, having a lack of curation, no ads, and no paid influencer content. BeReal sends a notification to users to take a picture using their back and front camera at the same time with a location and optional caption - there is a 2 minute countdown to do so. There are no likes and dislikes, but users may comment on posts. If a user wants to give a reaction to a post, they would use a “RealMoji,” which is a picture of their own face. Additionally, users can look back at a calendar of their past posts to see their lives day-by-day at a glance. BeReal has pulled ahead against other apps trying to get Gen Z’s attention by empowering the user’s not to overthink what they post. This app has become an antidote to the pressures of young users to be creative and look perfect online. BeReal Traction Gained: Downloads for BeReal are up ~315% this year BeReal has been installed 7.41 million times since its invention in 2020 As of April 2022, BeReal is the 10th most popular social media app in the United States on the Apple App Store By encouraging users to only post content once a day at specific times, there is no need for users to continue looking at the platform throughout the day. Although this is an intentional goal, it creates a lack of need for the platform. This attributes to users not abandoning their other social media apps for BeReal. Sourced from: BeReal Platforms are embracing a casual feed BeReal users share randomly timed posts, Instagram users have popularized a casual feed with carousel posts of everyday activities and TikTokers are regularly showing mundane, “day in my life” videos. Additionally, the use of “realmojis” and a lack of filters in BeReal is a significant draw to social audiences who have become fatigued with content being “overworked” and highly edited. How can brands align with BeReal’s success? Should brands join BeReal? Well… maybe, but it would be challenging. In terms of reception to joining the app, BeReal originally pushed hard for a platform with no ads and no brands. However, brands like Chipotle have joined the BeReal users. The overwhelming sentiment of Chipotle joining BeReal was positive, especially when users discovered that following the Chipotle account would give them access to a discount code. Watchouts: This will be a challenging platform for brands to upkeep because, as of April 2022, joining the app requires users to grant following access to each individual account requested and there is no way for brands to have their content set ahead of time. Because of BeReal’s alert system, the social media manager would need to be available and ready at all times to post. Additionally, there is a risk of backlash in joining a platform that is praised for its lack of brand activations. Opportunities: The following types of brands could do well on BeReal: Health and Wellness (LuluLemon, Nike, Outdoor Voices, Fitbit) Food and Bev (Ben and Jerry’s, Wendy’s, Heinz, Domino’s, Dunkin' Donuts) Retail (Target, Build-a-Bear, Barnes and Noble, The LEGO store) 💡Through sharing screen break reminders and self-care themed content, brands have an opportunity to empower their users by supporting their overall well-being. Because this is a valued attribute sought after in brands, this could help better position brands in an ever scrutinized market. 73% of Americans care more about self-care than they did in 2019. BeReal’s focus of spending less time scrolling on apps is a manifestation of this statistic. TikTok has also incorporated in-app messages to remind users to take breaks from the app when “doom-scrolling.” 💡Increase the ratio of simplistic and low lift content. Gen Z is often unimpressed by overproduced and highly edited graphics/photos, take this opportunity to help brands lean into content that is simple and reflective of what a community member would send to a friend. This easy going tactic is drawing in a significant audience, users love seeing “ugly” and carefree feeds. 💡Play around with incorporating a sense of urgency for your brand's community. BeReal’s use of a time requirement energizes its users and gets them to act quickly. Examples: You have 6 hours to vote on your favorite picture for us to set as our profile, our secret sauce recipe will only be up for 45 minutes until we delete it, you have until 3 pm to tag us in your Earth Day themed picture for a chance to be reposted by us, we will be posting a riddle between 2-4pm, the first to guess it correctly wins. Let’s be real about this… Only time will tell if BeReal is here to stay, but for now, it is a strong indicator of how strong trends of simplicity and authenticity currently stand. Brands should continue to keep a pulse on channel development and evaluate opportunities that align with their strategies.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsMaia Q1 review
Hi there! Travis with the Maia team here and I wanted to take a moment to give an update on the cool things we’ve been doing with Maia. If you’re not familiar with who Maia is, they are Khoros’ virtual assistant. A bot that is designed to get you the help you need, when and where you need it within the Khoros ecosystem. I bet you’re curious about what we’ve been working on, even if you’re not, you should be. There are so many cool things you can do with a chatbot, and we try to push the limits with what you could do with a minimal team. Last month was no exception, Introducing the Support Case Submission experience! Now you can submit support cases directly through Maia, all you need to do is open a chat with Maia by clicking on the icon in the lower right-hand corner and type “Open a Case”. Maia will then walk you through submitting a support case in a conversational manner. We think this will be a great alternative to submitting a case in the Case Portal. We’ve also improved other functions Maia performs for you, for example now when you use Maia to register for Atlas, they will programmatically give you Case Portal access as well. No more need to email the Support team to get this access. We’ve also leveraged the Khoros Care tag system to assign tags to Maia conversations when certain outcomes are achieved so we can better keep track of how helpful Maia is. Last quarter we gave you the ability to check on and escalate cases via Maia, we have added the ability to close the case as well this quarter. I also wanted to take a moment and point out that If you interact with Maia and the conversation is not productive or Maia is unable to help, please understand that Maia is still learning how to interpret the way humans talk. We monitor the conversations that did not go as planned and adjust Maia’s training accordingly. Chances are you will have a better experience the next time you interact with Maia. Thank you, Travis Berryhill Lead Engagement DesignerViewsSign in to react to this postComments- ViewsSign in to react to this postComments
Strategic Services Trend Round Up: Week of August 8th
Did you see Twitter's finally exploring that Edit button?! Read what happened this week across social trends, the latest social platform updates, and important world events from Strategic Services below.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsStrategic Services Trend Round Up: Week of July 18th
On a weekly basis, Strategic Services will be providing a pulse on the week’s top social trends, the latest social platform updates, and important world events. This week, we dove into some TikTok trends that can be activated on by brands, explored social platform updates, and wrapped it up with some sweltering world news. 🥵 Explore the full report below.ViewsSign in to react to this postComment
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