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 ‘Social Media Monitoring’ Category
If you are listening to 1,000 social media practitioner you get 1,000 different ways and ideas how to deal with social media. Typically just tactical ideas, most of them start with how you can use certain tools and a variety of other inputs.
Once you get in touch with more experienced consultants they will tell you stop the experimentation and think strategically. Most will tell you to start with a well defined goal or objective. Continue Reading →
Social media spans the whole gamut from marketing, PR, support, product management and sales through the entire organization. Social Media became the new way for higher integration with the market. It offers marketing departments a whole new opportunity to interact with the entire organization.
CIO or CMO?
In many of the larger organizations the CIO (Chief Information Officer) is busy taking care of network infrastructure, computing power, security, ERP systems and much more. And so it is actually the CMO who is weaving the network for the market interaction model that has just expanded like the big bang over the universe of a business. In other words the new CMO will gain significantly more influence and watch the business as a whole – no longer just from a promotional perspective.
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?
Jorge Purgly is the undisputed No.1 in Xeesm visits. What makes him the No.1?
Here are a few things that really matter – it's all about 'xee and be xeen':
1) Don't be a social couch potato
And please don't say "I have no time" – that's like saying "I have no time for my customers, partners, vendors, friends and other people who are important to you". Xeesm visits are a reflection of the engagement in the social web. The more active you are the more likely you get visited – assuming you share your Xeesm all the time.
Your Xeesm IS NOT ABOUT YOU – it is about making it easy for others to get to know you – even for your closest friends it is much easier to click than to search! Yes, they know you well, they even know your Twitter handle by heart – yet it is easier to click than to type it in! Be xeen ;)
For the past two years we were focused on the social media strategist education. We actually coined the term Social Media Strategist about two years ago when it was clear to us that social media in corporations is a strategic engagement. We were fortunate enough to have attendees from world class companies including 3M, ADP, Dell, EMC, Oracle, Qwest, Salesforce.com, SAP and many others.
Consequently the demand for social media managers is rapidly growing. Companies who now have a social media strategy in place need managers and social media helpdesk teams to actually execute the strategy. And in that position, there is more to know than just how to tweet or how to build a fan page.
New Social Media Manager Certrification
As a result of that we put together a three week Social Media Manager training with certification.
In the early days, in 2003 when LinkedIn was founded and I was one of the first 8,000 users, or 2004, when Facebook was founded, all the way to 2008, there was no education on social media and we all learned by experimenting and trial and error. It took a year or so to get our arms around it, but back then that was OK.
Education was always the best shortcut to results.
Today – 2011 – we have over 600 Million in the social web and trial and error is a daunting and time consuming task. And more so the complexity of social media has exploded. The number of tools has grown to a staggering 10,000 with an additional 100,000 of little gadgets that float all over the social web. For business leaders the strategic options are overwhelming.
What a social media director needs – what a social media certification needs to include:
The number of data aggregation sites is exploding.
Companies provide free services to aggregate and sell social media data to marketers. This maybe a free business network, a ranking service, games and all kinds of services that look like fun, interesting, important – must haves…
Do you read their privacy policy? I guess most don't. Branch-Out was the first that just astounded me. Many of my network friends invited my to join, obviously not even looking at the almost empty privacy policy that basically stated that there is no privacy.
Continue Reading →When we talk about social media, we often reduce it down to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. But the 2010 presence report from over 100,000 business users unearth a very different picture. For instance here are the 25 top sites my connections visited me on. The biggest part is "others" meaning out of the approximately 35 sites I am present on there are a bunch more which are still relevant.
It was pretty surprising to see the rather equal distribution of many of the social presences I've been on. It was also amazing to see the strength of SlideShare, Stumble, and even FriendFeed who is now integrated in Facebook has a rather interesting portion of the visits. Honestly I haven't done anything on FriendFeed for a long time.
I asked other Xeesm users whether they are willing to share their reports:
2010 marked an important milestone in the young social media industry. Mainly because businesses began to leverage social media to be closer to their customers, have a better and almost real time understanding of their markets and reduce marketing expenditure while growing brand reputation and market share.
Businesses who are not leveraging social business technology to monitor, research, connect and collaborate socially with their clients will have a competitive disadvantage over those companies who do.
* 60-80% of purchase decisions are based on recommendations
* Time in the social web exceeded time spend on TV
* 16 Million search results on "has anybody experience with…" indicates that product and brand exploration is no longer influenced by traditional advertising
Social business tools will become strategic in 2011.
