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.

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

Unlike many who just don’t know much about Social Media find it confusing to be on all those sites wasting their time. It seems complicated to understand the difference between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Xing, Pinterest, YouTube, Flickr, Connect.me, Twylah, Favo.rs, Scoop.IT, XeeMe, Qwikr and the 300 – 500 other places. Do you have a drivers license? How familiar are you with breaks, engine, gear, steering system, suspension, platform, wheels, navigation, rules, regulation, speed, acceleration…. Also a car is no longer a technology play. Get off of the tools discussion!

Social Media is a Relationship Play

First and foremost: unlike in the past you can easily quaddruple the number of meaningful and strong relationships, you can learn twice as fast from others and you can double or triple your influence. You get typically twice as much done than in the days before Social Media. I’m not going into the details of how but into the trouble of how much time. But for the sake of this discussion, that is the core of Social Media in business.

It’s not about the amount of time – but the allocation

One of the key things in “Online Trust” versus the one we developed over time is the mechanism of collective trust development versus developing trust between individuals. Two or three people can trust each other after they worked together intensely and got know the other during that process. However when we talk online trust we have to take the above mentioned advantage of massively more connections into consideration. If you are a very busy person, you are most likely sporadically pretty active in the social web and then there are times you probably are very heads down, work very focused on something and just don’t take the time to be online. That up and down effect is seen not only in the online trust development, such as connect.me for instance but in all kinds of scores like Klout, PeerIndex, Kreds, XeeScore and many others.

One day I realized that there is no difference between highly social leaders in the old world versus the new world. People like Sam Walton (Walmart) was known to visit his shops frequently, walked around in the distribution centers or warehouses. Tony Hshie, CEO of Zappos is no different, he is walking and talking inside his organization almost all day – his focus is supporting the culture. Others are more like an office person, thinking about the future, nudeling numbers and just less outside. The social web is no different – other than much bigger – ha ha ha.

What I help top executives with is keeping a good balance. not percentage wise but timing wise. Meaning spending 3 of 30 days with the public social web can be 3 days online and then 27 days offline. This is less successful. But spending 60 minutes a day online and 640 minutes offline each day makes a huge difference to your audience and increases the effect of information feedback for you – yet it is exactly the same amount of time invested :)

Why is that? The CEO that is only seen at the annual employee meeting is on average across all cultures less successful than the one who is in the company visible every week. 10 Minutes times 52 weeks = 8.6 hours. The personal presence is the most trust and influence building aspect online and offline.

This is the reason why top notch executives have no problem to always present in the social web and others just not. Compare their respective annual reports and you will be amazed about the result.

Summary

To Summarize Part 1: Don’t waste your time with tools and try to understand every aspect of it. Be where the people are who are really relevant to you. Remember: Social Media is about learning faster than ever, build more connections then ever, contribute more quality content than you ever imagined and expand your influence. If anyway humanly possible, spend 10 minutes a day – seven days a week (70 Minutes) than 140 minutes on one day. In Part 2 I will share some concrete examples how you can best allocate your time and about the ‘Social Minutes’ Project.

By accident I came across an older blog post defending the creation and even focus on developing a USP . Ironically that sparked a series of thoughts leading me to the believe that the USP is indeed dead.

The picture of the unique Apple which is clearly different and immediately stands out of the crowd of all the other apples made the point. I would just NOT buy that red apple. Now you may say well this is just a symbol for being different maybe exaggerating the situation. Is it really? I think it is a perfect example. And here is why:

If you are different you need to explain the difference. The more different you are the more explanation is necessary. In times where nobody is listening to a vendor or producer but only to recommendations from early users, trusted friends etc. the producer just doesn’t have that voice or marketing power anymore. Now consider a very large organization – take Procter&Gamble for the sake of the discussion. You would think they have infinite marketing power. Well – a) today even they don’t, given a 3 Billion consumer market around the world and b) about 1 billion of the three billion share their stories in the social web – there is no company big enough anymore to overshadow the voice of that 1 billion people.

Whether you like Darwin or not, but one discovery is very interesting: It is not the outstanding leader that survives long term but the average and very adaptable species. If we look for green apples, we may still look for the nicest of them but would not want that outstanding, different red apple. If we look for a piece of software, we want that easy to use and just practical tool that many already recommend and not that USP loaded super duper tool that is all different.

The game changer in the USP discussion however is Social Media. If you have a product where you need to survive based on a one or more USPs, it is probably not going to cut it since all the people who use that product need to be able to communicate all the differences and it is not likely to happen.

Now – obviously there are those types of products that stand out but they will either be pretty quickly mainstream or live in a difficult niche market. Apple lived quite a while in a difficult niche market. Now the iPhone stood out for a while but quickly became the mainstream product that everybody has to have :)

Obviously this thought may spark very different and very controversial discussions – but I guess it is worth thinking about.

Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

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

This is not about Twitter or Facebook, it is NOT about how important social media is. This is all about the strategic leverage of a medium that has a significant impact on business and society.

We built this program based on content and many discussions we had with executives over the course of the past 4 years closing and executing major social media strategy projects. As such we are not talking about why they should Social Media, nor do we explore the importance of any of the tools but exclusively focus on business impact, strategic business development, customer experience improvement, cost reduction and developing significant competitive advantages on the sales side.

Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

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.

Wanted: 100 Social Media Consultants

We are going to develop a pan European Social Media Strategy as part of an engagement of the EU Commission. We are seeking approximately 100 Social Media Consultants, Strategists and highly experienced Social Media Practitioner to volunteer on that project with the opportunity to later on consult businesses across Europe to evaluate, implement and grow with social media.

Methodical Engagement

The first step will be an Assessment, using the four quadrant assessment model to better understand the issues in some of the countries we will work on initially. This will give us not only important insights into the respective needs and wants of the population but also a good first step in our own project collaboration.

The Assessment will explore:

1) The current EU presence in the respective country. How approachable the EU is there and how active.
2) The needs and wants as well as the current state of social media of the population
3) The engagement level successes and failure of the  businesses in the respective country
4) The state of the biggest competition of the respective country on a global scale
The assessment will be concluded with a factual SWOT analysis

Strategy Development

Following the Assessment we will develop the actual Social Media Strategy. Also here we will follow a solid strategy framework where we cover siy major aspects of that strategy:
1) Strategic goal – A measurable goal with a clearly defined end date of the strategy
2) Mission – A short description how we want to achieve that goal
3) Benefits – We describe the benefits of all participating parties including the EU commission
4) Actions – Resulting from the above we design a program framework that can be executed in the countries and ultimately lead to the strategy goal
5) Resources – We describe resources, time tables, possible budgets and ROI for all stakeholder of the strategy
6) Reporting – Defining KPIs, tools we use to measure progress and success and reporting distribution.

Strategy Execution

The initial part of the execution is program development in accordance of the strategy and especially item 4 (Actions) of the strategy framework. Those programs will be instantiated in the respective countries and monitored by a team that specializes in monitoring across the EU. The lion share of the execution activities will be defined in the strategy model and determined by the available resources for each country.

Progress Evaluation

The whole strategy group will meet quarterly reviewing progress and success, decide on possible strategy alignments and explore ways to overcome obstacles that arose during the program.

Online Collaboration

This project is all about social media which happens online. Given our past experience with global online projects we are conducting the entire project online. That saves enormous travel expense, helps keeps our carbon foot print low and allows much faster action and reaction.

Collaboration Tools

We will use the best and most helpful tools available to us at a minimum cost. The following list is just an initial suggestion:

- Facebook Group as the single point of collaboration. Easy accessible and relatively good features
- Facebook page – public update. A window for the public to see where we are and where we are going
- SlideShare – a place to store all our project related presentations so everybody can see it and we can embed from here
- YouTube – as we will produce videos we will store the on YouTube
- Pinterest – as a host for images, videos and other visuals so we have a central image repository and maximum public visibility
- Wunderkit – An easy to use Project tool to keep track of tasks and task completeness
- Twitter – short notes, updates, news to augment our public information stream as well as feedback channel from the population
- Scoop.IT – as an information summary page collecting all project relevant information, curate it and display it on one page
- Forum – as a question and answer platform for all kinds of research
- Google+ – as an additional information channel for those users who actually prefer to get information updates via G+
- bit.ly – URL shortener  with a good reporting capability
- EU Commission Forum – as a EU Commission back-channel for project updates and leadership summaries

Team Composition

We are seeking people from a mixture of EU countries i.e. economically very stable such as Germany and Sweden, some from countries with good economy but internal issues such as France or Italy, some highly challenged economies such as Spain or Greece and some from emerging economies such as Poland or Hungaria. The only requirements are a) Must be part of the EU and b) must have the network and the energy to make a mark in the country :)

The ideal project team would be 2 highly experienced social media strategists as project leads plus 4 experienced social media practitioner and 4 supporter from up to 10 countries.  That would be 10 times 10 people makes it 100.

I will continue posting about this project at the Digital Agenda EU blog If we move the blog we will do an automatic redirect.

Next Key Event

We will explore the above and decide on a going forward strategy at our upcoming   Online Strategy Meeting   Thursday May 3 – 15:00 Central European time. If you are interested to join the project in any capacity, please join the Strategy Goup on Facebook and let us know how you like to contribute.

Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

We talked to several people, business owner, marketing manager, social media practitioner what they would really love to see down the social media road. We then tried to draw a trajectory from where we are, what people dream of, and where it may go. This post is the beginning of a story that we plan to continue. Where are we going? This is the beginning of a new Social Media Academy Research Project and you are invited to add to it.

All in all, here is the single biggest change Social Media is bringing to our society: We no longer can say “I have no influence”. It’s no longer true that you as an individual can’t make a change. It evolves to the opposite situation:

Change will only be possible if most of us wants it.

Is this really positive? I don’t know yet to be honest. But that is the most probable development.

The democratization of influence (also the title of my new, upcoming book) is moving with incredible speed forward. Politicians around the world have a huge respect of Social Media. The less developed societies which are under dictator leadership try to prevent social media, others believe that they have to control it like the radio stations in the past. Democratic leadership actually does the opposite – they leverage the social web to learn as fast as possible what the population wants and try to deliver as much as possible. Obviously they also use it to influence the population. But most importantly that influence is no longer an unbalanced power. If a president of a nation uses social media to communicate the power is only and exclusively there as long as that president has many followers and social media friends. You may think President Obama for instance has an advantage over you because he has millions of followers and you don’t. Well yes, because he understood to leverage the media before you did. Time is of essence and valuable content over a large network is what makes all the difference. But here is the other side of the medallion. President Obama could loose most of his followers and friends if he would work against the interest of the population. Today Barack Obama has 14.7 Million followers on Twitter, Mitt Romney has 470,000 and George Bush is not even present on Twitter.

2014 Social Media Metrics

Businesses began to understand the huge impact Social Media has on their brand and the way people recommend products and services. And so do investors. Over the next few years we will see brands using their social media metrics to reiterate their leadership. Brands like Virgin, Amazon, Starbucks, SAP, and similarly forward looking leaders are most likely one of the first who will do so.

2016 Product Co-Creation

Product co-creation is already a concept several companies are practicing. But it is less than 1% of the 60 Million registered businesses around the world. It may take several years t make this one of the standard ways of doing business but it will happen – the advantages for both business and customer base are just to big to ignore it. The reason it may take longer on a global scale is simply adoption. Most European countries ate just starting to even adopt social media in the first place, let alone leveraging it to a full  extend.

2018 Shift in medical treatment and trust

The pharmaceutical industry is just too often accused to think only business and have way to much influence on what doctors subscribe. But also the mega marketing campaigns around cancer treatment to push scans to a degree that may be more harmful than helpful will drive more and more people to  expose their experience and results and maybe more trusted than even the doctors. This is just one example how social media will change industries, whether it is the food industry, electronic equipment, car makers or any other industry.

2020 Hologram like technology

While we are seeing enormous improvements in reading “digital body language” hologram like technology may significantly improve the Social Media experience.  Already today we see great improvements on hologram technology in Japan. However, I can very well imagine it may actually be something different than a real hologram that serves the same purpose. That kind of technology would even further reduce travel requirements and add a hugely positive effect on reducing energy consumption. Making it easier to see products, processes, or other means ov visualization may actually be the commercial driver for that development.

2022 Democratization of influence in full swing

We already saw politicians leveraging Social Media in 2008. But over the coming 10 years we will see more and more political decision making in the social web. Voting is only one of it. Much better sentiment analysis another one. Voting on locally relevant decision not only by checking a box but also reading reasoning for why others vote this or that and more quickly and also more thoroughly learning  what all the implications are when going into one or the other direction. It may well be that only once somebody confirmed understanding the implication, a vote is even possible. Another implication of Social Media will be seen in the collective power of the society. In the next ten years we will learn not only to publicly express our interests but also to organize and focus them. For instance: We all know that smoking is a deadly addiction and even the strongest mind can’t just stop it as it manipulates our brain. The tobacco industry, the exorbitant tax income are all forces that still prevented a radical stop of even selling tobacco or at least selling it to people under 30. But a society with no other commercial interests could by now enforce such a decision. Calling everybody working in the tobacco industry assisted manslaughter is just one example to build up pressure.

2024 Social commerce redefines trade

Today we see only embryonic steps towards social commerce. Mostly it is e-commerce within a social network. On the other side we see recommendations like in Amazon and many other sites and people to combine buying power like in Groupon. If we draw that development further, understanding that 60-80% of all purchase decisions are based on recommendations and that sales people on the other side have a rather negative image, social commerce will change the way we sell and buy products. This is not an easy task. Trust is immediately shaded if somebody’s recommendation is influenced by a commercial interest. But we will find a balance between trust and commercial interests. By now most commercial communication i.e. “getting the message out” will be history. User generated content will be the only content that is trusted, read and used for educated purchase decisions. Commercial content will be either highly entertaining or very educational – always carried out by advocates and friends of the brands – not mass marketing.

2026 Business collaboration changes enterprises

Our society is moving more and more towards total individualization. We just don’t want to be a number and we find better ways to make a mark AND a living. The number of freelancers is growing faster than ever. The number of small businesses are growing fast in most free countries and more and more enterprises are outsourcing services they won’t call strategic. Over the next two decades we will see global enterprises shrinking by the number of employees but not necessarily in revenue or influence. We see this already in the fashion industry, which is the one industry that rationalizes most the trend to more individualism. There is no reason for managing hundreds of different production sites and even design firms coming up with very different products. Social Media based business collaboration however is what makes this all possible. There is no need to walk every morning into a marble tower working with 10,000 others who you never meet even after 10 years with that company. But working in an independent team of 25 or 50, not bound to massive administration may not only be much more fun but also develop much better results. This is no news – but the way those smaller companies can now collaborate is very different.

2028 More democracy

The democratic societies may have been through a remarkable evolution. The engagement to maximize the participation on elections may have shifted to maximize education on what voters should vote on. Democracy may have evolved to ensure voting is based on educated decisions of the population rather than influential presentations in billion $ campaigns. What is the “educated customer” in the beginning of the first century in the new millennium may evolve also to an educated voter understanding that responsibility of voting is much grander than the right of voting. The upcoming generations may not only better execute that right but take much greater care of the responsibility and will be way more than ever engaged in the democratic process of the society they live in.

2030 60+ year old working via Social Media.

The Social web will be the single biggest work space  for people above 60. By now the rapidly growing life expectancy may already reach an average of 100 years. Most people over 60 will still need to or want to work. Working by contributing valuable content, networking with others, sharing experience, collaborating globally online are all activities that somebody maybe able to do even with age 80 or older. Already today we see many elderly engaged – even though most for personal reasons.

2032 “Social Revolution”

The Social revolution over the past 30 years will be recognized as equally significant as the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution we fundamentally changed how products are produced and were able to mass produce virtually anything. The Value chain from raw material to finished product has changed forever. During the social revolution we changed the way those products are marketed and sold. Marketing and sales are typically 50% of the labor cost of a business and the social revolution allowed pretty much any business to introduce, market and sell their wares in an unheard-off speed and reach on a global scale. In the previous years logistics organizations will have changed to accommodate small businesses in selling on a global scale at a price that is not possible today. Democratization of influence will not only improve our economic system but also our democratic system and as such Social Media will have the biggest impact on our society since the industrial revolution.

2034 Facebook turns 30, lost its edge

With the 30th birthday Facebook is an old company, very much like 30 year old Microsoft today. While it will have lost its edge, Facebook may still be the no.1 and the largest social network, yet most will see it just as a commodity like any computing device, an airplane, or electricity. By now Facebook will be gone through many iterations of monetization. Advertising sales will be virtually gone, and most revenue may come from ‘taxation’  where Facebook simply charges anybody doing business on Facebook land. Very much like Bill Gates or Larry Elison, Mark Zuckerberg will still be running Facebook – or if replace by a more ‘bankable CEO’ he may be back on the helm by now.

2036 Over 20,000 major special intrest networks

The Social Web will continue to change. The global interest of our population for more individual expression will also change the face of Social Media. Aside a few monolithic behemoth I expect to see many many quite large networks with people for special interests or special functions that we don’t have today. Pinterest is a great example of a company entering the almost 10 year old social web and not only replacing older photo pages but bringing a new set of functionality and engagement into that web. By then many non US networks will have developed. With 700 Million European, being twice as much as the US population, 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indian, plus a billion from Latin America, Australia and other regions we may see combined 4 Billion users in those different networks. What killed the US automobile industry and also the US computer industry may actually kill the US based Social Media Industry: Consolidation through mergers and acquisition to the point that nothing globally competitive remains in the country.

2038 Law significantly influenced by the population.

The Social Media era may see its peak when law and judging is significantly influenced by the greater population. While this may become the greatest risk it also may be the greatest opportunity for our society. It may influence not only the improvement of a law in the most developed countries but much more importantly it may influence the law in less developed societies and actually make the world a saver place. Similar to the industrial revolution that made most of the developed countries a very comfortable place to be, this next phase of development may help to make many more countries a better place to live in.

2040 First net natives (born after 1990) turn 50

By now Social Media is a commodity like a power plug in the wall. We have most likely seen very interesting and completely unexpected innovation in the area of medicine, aging, healthcare, and we may have seen technology we just can’t even imagine today. Social Media will have a very positive effect on long term space travel. We will also remember the beginning of WWII 100 years ago, where 50 to 70 Million humans died and no one – as in any other war before – was exiting as a winner.  We hope that social media is strong enough to let no country leaders start such a war again. The first net natives will turn 50 and are expected to retire at age 75 or 80 after pursuing probably 3 to 5 different careers.

Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

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.

Mother of all mistakes

Starting with your Goal or Objective is a great idea but it’s wrong. Even though this is what 80% of social media consultants will recommend to you – and it sounds absolutely plausible – yet it is the mother of all mistakes !!!

I developed social media strategies over the past 6 years for all kinds and all sizes of businesses and recently for the public sector. About 4 years ago I realized that starting with the goal – actually the goal of the owner of said strategy – is a major mistake.

We all know by now that social media works best when all the human and social beings in a given market get engaged. Customers recommend a certain product, provide feedback to new versions and improvements, ask questions publicly in the social web, customers help other customers and so forth. A brand can call itself really successful with social media when all the above happens and the economic impact is a reduction of support cost, shorter time to market with new products, less marketing expenditure and faster trend analysis.

ASSESSMENT

Obviously to achieve all of the above, you need to know what your market really wants, you need to know the gap between what they want and what you do, you need to understand strength and weaknesses and you need to know where your brand is, relative to your competitor and your distribution channels, agents etc. A good old SWOT analysis is actually a good way to do a gap analysis between you and your market. It would be fatal to believe you can create a strategy only by defining what YOU want to do. OK you did all that – can you now develop your strategy? NO – unfortunately not.

STRATEGY TEAM COMPOSITION

We said earlier that your engagement shows the highest success if your customers and partners are highly engaged. Now the question is what to do to actually inspire customers to engage? Didn’t you hear almost every month that this community is dormant, that page didn’t get as many fans… ? Well if YOU define a strategy in which you decide what the customers and partners have to do – without ever involving them in the strategy development – the likelihood that they do what you want is very very slim. That means you need to motivate customers and independent business partners to develop such a social media strategy together with you.

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY OBJECTIVES

Got your team assembled? Great – now is the time to explore objectives. And you guess it already – the objectives in that composition is  with 100% certainty different than the strategy you develop on your own. Also since your customers become a part of that strategy they take ownership and you have what you need so badly – advocates in the market. Without those advocates your social media strategy is doomed to fail.

SUMMARY

Most social media initiatives are based on trial and error. Lack of highly skilled social media strategists make it even worse. It takes a few months to see the real effects of a social media engagement and that means it may take a whole year to figure out what works and what not. While many mistakes can be fixed quickly – there are still several counter intuitive aspects of a social media strategy that make it fail – the one described here however is based on my experience the No.1 mistake.

Get the full size Infographic here on Pinterest

Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

Silicon Valley remains to be a phenomenon when it comes to technology innovation and startups. And Social Media is no difference. XWeek is an initiative from XeeMe Inc. helping users around the world getting a view into those technology boosters before they become as well known as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or lately Pinterest. Every other week users will be introduced to a new technology or new product, being able to hear from entrepreneurs what the vision of their company is and where the industry is heading.

XWeek also helps startups to get additional exposure to the market and to people they may not know.

This week XWeek is introducing Twylah

a very interesting summary and publishing tool to re-purpose your Twitter content

Twylah on XWeek: April 16 – 20

Twylah creates an excellent looking summary page from your most important tweets. It may look like ourCEO’s Twylah. If you are active on Twitter you may introduce your updated Twylah daily via Facebook and the other networks. Why should you do that? Because a person is on average just a few minutes on each platform a day – do you catch them all when they are there? Never. :)

Join the webinar, tweetchat, read blog posts from expert users or see the video interviews.

Click for the details

Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS