While this is from 2009 it still tells an awesome story about how Social Media changed the face of Comcast. Sadly Comcast could never got to a point where the positive front end was igniting more change in the back end of the company. A pattern we see in many very early engaged companies who never actually introduced a comprehensive social media strategy and stood kind of still at the experimentation level.
Archive for the ‘Activities’ Category
We all hear people saying “companies” do that or don’t do this. Companies don’t care about customers, companies don’t understand social media and on and on. I feel it would be helpful to change terminology towards the team of company X does this or fails to do that. The management of company X and so forth….
Companies are legal bodies – nothing but an entry in a register. Companies can’t use social media, but their teams can. Companies can’t create a better customer experience, but their teams can. Companies don’t ignore the changes in our society but executives may do.
This is not about semantics – it is about addressing people not walls of bricks and mortar behind teams and managers are hiding.
I believe if we change the way we address companies, the teams and managers would feel much more responsible for what is going on behind those walls. Today I can hide and say “Well, it’s how this ‘company’ works”. But if instead of the company wasting energy and polluting the air – we address the team that “the team is wasting energy and polluting the air”, woooh what a difference. If instead of the accusing a company providing a bad customer experience, we accuse the team providing a bad customer experience – again aaaarrrrrg - that maybe ME :(
1) I wonder what we could do to make that shift in the way we communicate?
2) What would be a good approach to introduce that?
3) How could we explain the benefits? – without having an epic story like this ;)
Thanks for any thoughts
How can you build a trusted network without spending hours and hours each day? How is it possible that some high ranking executives from Billion Dollar companies spend time in the social web while somebody working in the trenches cannot? Why chose other executives with equally big organizations to not participate at all – still wondering why they are just not as successful? How can people out of the blue just raise up the trust ladder and grow an enormous follower-ship all of a sudden? Today it looks like this is just a random pattern with no structure and all coincidental. But it is absolutely not. In this PART 1 I will talk about some fundamentals of Social Media Time Management.
Social Media is NOT a technology play
I guess you all rationalized that Social Media projects are typically difficult to close and painful to execute if executives are not well aware of the impact of Social Media to their business. The single biggest problem is that most executives do not speak your language.
Getting your or your client’s executives to understand Social Media has become for many the single biggest obstacle. Even if you have a good story, they may not trust you – but they may trust the Social Media Academy. SMACAD is trusted by executives from ADP, Dell, Salesforcce.com, SAP and many others. Based on our own experience dealing with world class executives, we created this brand new executive program: “Social Media Business Essentials” for executives and top executive consultants http://bit.ly/smacadsmbe $395 incl. certificate Continue Reading →
This is a great case for a social media strategy on some of the highest levels
The EU is committed to invest Billions of Euro specifically into the digital advancement of EU Member countries and their respective businesses. The EU Commission fully comprehended that the digital infrastructure is the next most important investment of a developed nation. Clean water supplies, transportation infrastructure (Water, roads, air traffic), radio communication, and now Internet and Social Media infrastructure is the pathway to a successful and globally competitive nation.
The purpose of the Social Media Strategy Europe
Helping small and medium size businesses and innovative start-ups across Europe to leverage social media to create a sustainable growth, additional jobs and being able to compete in a global market. We want to empower 25,000 business owner in the EU to leverage social media with a measurable positive impact on their business growth which created new jobs by 2016. Continue Reading →
I began tweeting being an executive of my former company – I remember what it was like when I started ;)
If you google “how to use twitter” you’ll receive over 10 Million results. Brilliant tips and tricks how to set it up, how to follow etc. but how should I actually make use out of Twitter was not really to find – obviously I did not have the time to grind through 13 Million results.
I searched for “why should I use Twitter” and the results were still 85,000 – but most were an epic explanation what Twitter is.
Michael Campbell writes: “Twitter is a way to get your message out”, uhh really? Blogul says “It is a cross between blogging, texting or SMS” hmm, if I’m not doing either am I off? Wayne Moran posted: “Twitter is all about the relationship and the socializing.” true, but is that helping those who don’t know?
So why should I use Twitter?
The presidential campaign in 2008 was a milestone in Social Media history. Where does it go in 2012? As of now President Obama is the clear leader in the race for president in 2012 when we read the emotions of the American people.
In accordance to Overdrive Interactive who managed to accumulate all the data points in the social web, Barack Obama has a higher rank in the US population than all other candidates together. So far so good but what does this really mean?
Yes you heard it right, and yes, it's me who said it: Social Media Experts. The bad word in social media. Why do I say so?
Joe doe Social Media Consultant hates the word. Why? Because he is not an expert but rather a situation driven self made social media consultant.
Social Media Has Grown Up
The argument "Social media is growing so fast no person can keep up with the speed" is approximately 5 years old. My first interaction on LinkedIn was in 2003 that is 8 years ago. And if we didn't learn anything in 8 years – heck we should just not discuss the topic in the first place.
It's true there are new and better tools coming in every week. But seriously if all there is are how to use tools, you talk to the wrong people. And if we, at least many of us, didn't become an expert in what we are doing, there are no experts at all. Social media, social interactions, social dynamics, behavior whatever cool term you pick from the word cloud isn't just trivial. But neuroscience, physics, brain research… isn't either.
No more social media rock stars
Here is one of the biggest obstacles for executive teams: While there are thousands and thousands of social media rock stars, social media hippies or whatever you want to call it, it is very hard to find social media expertise – hence no experts. And those who are – are terribly busy.
Putting up a fan page, sending out scheduled tweets from a robot pretending to be a brand pretending to be social is not social media but old style push marketing brute forced onto a new media hoping it works because so many say so. And indeed you don't need an expert to do that. Any average Joe social media consultant whether here in the US or one of the people in the Philippines who do that for $5 an hour can take over those jobs. Impact? None, ROI 'hehhh"? Benefits for the company and even the customer: zero.
Executives need experts not hippies
Consider this: You are a CEO of a company with 5,000 employees and your "social media strategist" is rambling about a fan page, more tweets, listen to your customers and all that old blah blah blah. What will you do? Nothing – and that is actually a wise decision. The next step: You ask your team to come up with some ideas. They will want to get some external expertise. Again rambling about fan pages, tweeting and adding value to the conversation is the same blah blah blah – just on the next lower level.
Social Media Experts need to be able to re-assess a market from a holistic point of view considering the conversations of the customers – but think of some Millions of customers spread all over the planet. They needs to consider business partner integration, those people who actually "own" the customer relationships. And of course the company's own teams from executive to clerk and back. Those experts will need to develop a true strategy – not a list of cool tactical measures but a strategic model with a strategic objective, a well balanced benefits model for both company and market, resource planning, financial planning, ROI and so forth that will be the base for any consecutive action programs. The social media tools are at best a secondary side effect. Strategic models methods and frameworks are the heart and the core of a social engagement that can be introduced to 5,000 employees who in turn collaborate with maybe 50,000 partners and say 1 Million or more customers. You need to be an expert in that field to be able to construct, plan and execute such a social media strategy that will be carefully interwoven into a multi Billion $ business plan.
More executives than you may think are ready to take the challenge from a rapidly evolving society and its inherent changes in the way to do business – most consultants are not.
I wonder – if you are a social media consultant – are you able to help a CEO like mentioned above to get their strategy developed and embraced in their organization?
Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS
(my social presence)
Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, lately Google Plus have rapidly evolved over the past few years. Online interaction took center stage and having a profile is only a commodity. LinkedIn developed into a different direction. groups degraded to cheap classified add boards, question and answers were basically replaced by the likes of Quora and Focus and the actual "conversation" circles all around spam.
14
SEP
Social Presence Management
When you start your social media engagement you probably start on LinkedIn or Facebook. You explore Twitter and maybe have already an account on YoutTube or Flickr. As you get connected with people you hear about Foursquare, Yelp and Google+, maybe SlideShare and Quora. Others introduce you to LinkedIn Groups or Facebook groups, maybe Focus and Plancast, Tumblr and WordPress. Over time you play with social bookmark tools such as Digg, Delicious or StumbleUpon. Then you get introduced to Klout, Posterous, PeerIndex and approximately 100 or more other tools.
Before you even started to make notes about all your profiles and accounts you have a bigger presence than you think. And now it's getting messy.
